Henderson council, planners agree to more communication

Greg Harman

Friday, Oct. 6, 2000 | 10:19 a.m.

Members of the Henderson City Council and the city's Planning Commission agreed at a joint workshop Thursday that they need to talk more.

They got the message through an anonymous survey of the council members and commissioners. The results revealed that frustration over the city's planning process has left some commissioners feeling undervalued by the council.

One recurrent concern was that developers have been allowed to skate past Planning Commission recommendations and conditions by pleading their cause directly to the council.

Further, one anonymous comment by a commissioner suggested that by voting against the Planning Commission's recommendations, the council was undermining developers' respect for the commissioners.

Council members and city staff agreed there are problems with the current process, which begins with developers submitting their plans to the city's Planning Department. The proposal, along with specific conditions of various city staff members, then goes to the Planning Commission, which passes along a recommendation to the City Council to either approve or deny the project.

But often while the project is passed between the agencies, the developer changes the plans before taking them to the next body.

"I'm getting tired of, after eight years on the council, developers presenting to me an entirely different project" than was presented to the Planning Commission, Councilman Jack Clark said.

But as to feelings of being slighted, the council members reminded commissioners that the council must weigh more issues when considering a proposal than the Planning Commission, including economic and political considerations.

Both groups agreed that more joint workshops, possibly held every other month, would be useful. And there was a consensus that better policies need to be adopted on how and when to require developers to hold neighborhood meetings and when to require independent traffic studies.