Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Signs of dissension grow

The newest chapter of the seemingly neverending story of Clark County's evolving billboard regulations opened Wednesday.

Sparked by sharp disagreements between two wings of the County Commission, commissioners asked their planning staff to take yet another look at the controversial rules and propose changes to the existing law or a whole new ordinance.

"We really need to revisit the ordinance," Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said.

On a subject where the two sides often disagree, the commission reached a consensus: Send staff back to rewrite the law.

The idealogical divide is largest when it comes to the Las Vegas Beltway, where several commissioners are fighting a rear-guard action to stem a flood of billboard applications.

Woodbury, county staff and others fear miles of uninterrupted billboards could soon flicker past the windows of beltway commuters, blocking views of the Spring Mountains to the west.

Since the ordinance came into effect just three months ago, the commission has considered dozens of new billboard applications -- most for the southwest beltway.

The existing ordinance was the product of two years of wrangling between the billboard industry, which wanted the right to put up more signs, and community activists, who generally opposed them. Both sides had advocates on the seven-member commission, but the law passed last February was largely written by the industry.

The February version was also a replacement for another billboard law passed two months earlier.

Now commissioners are divided over the interpretation of a key provision of the February law: a rule that gives the commission the final say over any new billboards through a requirement for a "special use" permit.

Chairman Dario Herrera, whose wife works as a consultant to billboard companies, often abstains on individual sign applications and has managed to stay above the fray, at least lately. Herrera also abstained on the passing of the existing law, although he supported the earlier version in December 2001 -- and successfully fought an ethics complaint based on that vote.

But Commissioners Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, Erin Kenny and Myrna Williams support a more open reading of the rule which would usually allow billboards unless directly in conflict with provisions of the law such as distance requirements from homes or other signs.

"I don't find billboards offensive on a freeway," Kincaid-Chauncey said. "The purpose of the ordinance was to keep the billboards on the freeways."

"We should have a reason for turning them down," Kenny agreed -- and those reasons should go beyond recommendations by regional advisory boards and county planning staff.

Kenny said unnamed forces outside the County Commission "have tried to politicize and polarize" the board on the issue, apparently with some success.

Commissioners Woodbury and Chip Maxfield, often joined by Yvonne Atkinson Gates, support a more restrictive interpretation of the law: They argue that the law was meant to give wide latitude to the commission in deciding the placement of the signs.

The opposition block joins community activists, including members of the county's town advisory boards, in arguing that the billboard industry promoted the commission review of new sign applications as a stopgap to proliferation. But the opposing commissioners now believe that the industry's concerns about an over-abundance of the billboards, especially on the beltway, have been dropped in favor of a rush to get more signs approved.

"We are basically approving every one of these that conforms to the ordinance and some that don't," Woodbury said during the regular zoning meeting Wednesday.

"Everywhere they can put a billboard, they're applying for a billboard," Gates agreed. "It disturbs me. That was not the intent."

Those concerns are supported by staff, which consistently recommends denial of new billboard applications along the southwest part of the highway because of proliferating requests and the possibility of "visual blight."

But the staff concerns may no longer be part of the written record. Based on complaints from the pro-industry faction on the commission, those comments will no longer be included in the staff analysis of new applications along the beltway.

Clark County Manager Thom Reilly said the analysis' "subjective language" would be gone from future write-ups.

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