Land-use panels may get more say on zoning issues

Thursday, April 24, 2003 | 9:48 a.m.

Members of Clark County's regional land-use advisory groups took their first close look at new rules governing zone changes Wednesday evening, and the reaction was guarded but mostly positive.

The county's town advisory boards and citizen advisory councils, about two dozen all told, have long been repositories of resentment toward frequent changes to existing land-use plans, dubbed master plans. The Clark County Commission recently instituted new policies designed to make it more difficult to change master plans and to regularly update the plans.

The boards make land-use recommendations to the board, but many members of the boards have complained that their advice has too often been ignored, especially when a zoning application contradicts the existing master plan. The board members now can play a role in the drafting of new master plans for their neighborhoods.

"I think it's a definite step in the right direction," said Michael Dias, Sunrise Manor Town Advisory Board chairman, after the meeting with county staff and Commissioner Rory Reid, one of the champions of the reforms. "It increases notification and citizen participation."

But he is not positive that it will limit the power of developers, who in the eyes of many citizen activists seemed to have nearly unbridled influence before the changes.

"We'll have to see," Dias said.

Evan Blythin, chairman of the Red Rock Citizens Advisory Council, said he wants to see how many so-called "nonconforming" zone changes are forwarded and approved before he is ready to call the rule changes a success.

"The essential problem is -- we need a body count," Blythin said.

Among the master plan changes are requirements that allow amendments to the plans only once a year and that nonconforming zone changes must receive support from the commissioner representing the district. Nonconforming zone changes now will also require a two-thirds "super-majority" of votes from the board for approval.

Reid, who helped shepherd the new rules into law, said he hopes the changes will reduce Clark County residents' cynicism towards local government.

"People have lost faith in Clark County government," Reid said. "We need to change all that."

He said the commission's embrace of the new planning rules -- by a 5-1 margin -- and of new rules limiting new billboards show that the commission is responsive to citizen concerns.

"We had to do something to instill public confidence in the process, and I think this will do that," Reid said.

But Reid and county staff members said that much of the rhetorical combat over what should go where in the region's neighborhoods will shift to the master-planning process, where developers will represent their interests.

"We're going to have a lot of debate still on what these maps are going to look like," Reid said.