Friday, Nov. 4, 2005 | 8:35 a.m.
Dissenting members of the recently discharged Neighborhood Casino Committee say the group's work was an exercise in wheel-spinning that would make your local roulette dealer proud.
The committee, asked by the Clark County Commission to recommend new rules and restrictions that would reduce friction between off-Strip casino developers and neighboring residents, was stacked with casino supporters, said Carolyn Edwards, one of two members who opposed the group's final recommendations.
The Neighborhood Casino Committee presented its official report to the commissioners Wednesday, but Edwards and like-minded member Danny Thompson submitted their own proposed changes, saying the majority report would do little to relieve casino-community tensions.
"I don't think we've solved the problem at all," said Edwards, who along with Thompson drafted stricter recommendations that were not adopted.
The final report, presented to the commission by committee chairwoman Terry Murphy, includes new procedures and design restrictions that neighborhood casino developers would have to follow if they are adopted as a county ordinance.
Many of the proposed rules deal with making sure residents are notified when a casino project is proposed, and allowing them to give input.
The committee also provided a technical definition of what constitutes a neighborhood casino, which includes casinos away from the Las Vegas Strip not located in areas already heavy with commercial development.
However, the report does not recommend placing any restrictions on casino floor size, the number of rooms or signage.
Edwards said those are the very kinds of restrictions that would have made neighborhood casino projects less contentious.
"These recommendations don't address any of those issues," she said.
Six of the committee's 11 members have ties to the gambling industry, Edwards added.
The committee-endorsed report recommends placing a 100-foot height restriction on neighborhood casinos, unless the area's zoning permits taller structures. Edwards and Thompson said they wanted to add a 35,000-square-foot gaming floor limit and a maximum of 500 hotel rooms.
The committee's minority also proposed increasing the allowable distance between casinos and schools, churches and residential development from the current 1,500 feet to 2,500 feet.
Edwards said the official report failed to adequately address a "double standard" within the county that allows casinos to build near a proposed school site as long as the school has not yet been constructed. Conversely, the school district is required to consider even undeveloped casino sites when building a new school.
However, Clark County Planning Manager Chuck Pulsipher said the county does consider potential school sites when deciding whether to approve a casino project, and that schools are not prohibited from building near casinos.
Murphy said it was impossible to please everyone in the group, and that the final report represents a successful compromise.
"All of us got a little bit of what we wanted, but nobody got everything," she said.
Another change requested by Edwards and Thompson was to apply the new rules to neighborhood casinos that already have been approved but not yet built.
But Pulsipher said such retroactive restrictions would face legal problems because they would amount to breaking a contract with the developers, and they would violate a state law regulating the development of neighborhood casinos.
The committee's majority and some county commissioners agreed that imposing new rules after the fact would violate property rights and would simply be unfair.
"It would be difficult to remove a right that had already been granted," Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald said.
J. Craig Anderson can be reached at 259-2320 or at [email protected].
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