Clark County will postpone annual changes to its comprehensive growth management plan for three years after delays in prior procedure led to a potential violation of state law.
During its Sept. 6 meeting, the Clark County Council voted 4-0 to suspend its annual amendments to the plan starting in the 2023 cycle. Though the suspension will prevent changes to zoning on properties, it isn’t expected to affect development on parcels that already have the required zoning to proceed.
Per state law, the county cannot approve amendments or revisions of the comprehensive plan more than once a year, Clark County Community Planning Director Oliver Orjiako told the council at the meeting. The last year’s cycle of changes were adopted on July 19, 2022. This will lead to an issue when the county does its overall update to the comprehensive plan, which has the deadline of June 30, 2025.
The suspension will not affect the current cycle of changes the county has been processing, Orjiako said. That cycle would be complete by July 2023.
He noted plan change suspensions aren’t out of the ordinary. For the county’s 2007 and 2015 updates, the council also voted to suspend changes, but neither of those were suspended for as long as three years.
Orjiako said land already zoned for its intended uses will not be prohibited from moving forward in the development process, noting only properties which require a comprehensive plan change will be affected.
“This proposal does not at all suspend the ability to apply for development projects,” Christine Cook, attorney for the county council, added.
Orjiako didn’t anticipate the suspension to affect any economic development outside of the impacts a potential recession could bring.
Cook said if the county didn’t comply with the timing restrictions it could lead to sanctions on the county. This happened during the last major update to the comprehensive plan.
“That would be a negative economic impact,” Cook said.
Councilor Julie Olson stressed their vote was for a suspension, not an outright cancellation of any zone change.
“They’re not going to not ever happen,” Olson said. “It’s just they can’t do them in the next few years’ annual amendment cycle.”
Councilor Richard Rylander, who “reluctantly” voted for the suspension, asked whether or not the review process could be shortened in order to comply with state regulations.
“The short answer is, unfortunately no, we cannot,” Cook said. “We got to July this year and now it cannot be sooner than July.”
Council Chair Karen Bowerman said she supported a request by the Building Industry Association of Clark County to only limit the suspension to two years and keep the 2023 changes in place.
Cook explained that would lead to a conclusion in July 2024, which would be within a year of when the county needs to complete its periodic update.
Having the full three year suspension will allow applicants to consider changes for the next cycle. It also means the county would not have to adopt annual and periodic reviews at the same time, Cook said.
Neither staff nor the council mentioned any specific reasons for why the annual updates were delayed.
“This is no fault of anyone. It’s just that when we were adopting plan amendments and dockets late beyond the 12 months, we were sounding the alarm that we’re going to run into a conflict at some point,” Orjiako said. “We are here now.”
Olson said if the council adopted the changes earlier, they wouldn’t be in this situation.
“I’m not saying we didn’t have good reason to do it, if there was a good reason to do it, but that’s why we’re at this (point),” Olson said.
Rylander said the delay is disappointing.
“I just have to observe the frustration of a single month (is) pushing this out almost the equivalent of another year,” Rylander said.
Though she understood the frustration, Olson said the three-year suspension is the only option the county has.
“It is unfortunate, for sure, but we are up against a state statute that I don’t think in my view we can find our way around,” Olson said.
