The Clark County council passed a resolution at its Tuesday evening hearing that will finish unwinding a controversial program that waived traffic-impact and application fees for nonresidential development in unincorporated areas.
The program was created in 2013 by then-county Commissioners David Madore and Tom Mielke, who argued that it would help economic growth in the county, which was still recovering from the Great Recession. However, the program drew criticism that it did little to create jobs while other types of development bore the costs of fees.
In December, the council voted to repeal the program. But it left open what to do with pipeline projects, those that came in before the program was formally repealed.
“Essentially, this establishes the milestones for projects to receive fee waivers,” said Marty Snell, director of the Clark County Department of Community Development. He noted that there are about 160 “live and active” projects in the queue that could remain eligible for the program.
The resolution, which was crafted with input from the engineering community and passed unanimously, establishes a series of deadlines each developer needs to meet to keep the fee waiver.
The first milestone a property owner or developer must meet to remain eligible is to file a fully complete application one year after their pre-application conference.
After that, a developer must obtain preliminary and final site plans and engineering approval within 24 months.
Projects in their final stage must obtain building permits within six months of final engineering or within 24 months after filing a fully complete application for preliminary site plan approval, whichever is later. Snell explained that this provision was added to accommodate more complicated projects.
Resolution
The resolution allows the director of Clark County Department of Community Development to waive these deadlines if he determines that the property owner or developer had been actively working toward completing the project and the delay was due to circumstances beyond their control.
Snell gave the example of a federal or state agency not issuing a needed permit fast enough.
Responding to a question from Councilor Jeanne Stewart, Snell said that the longest a project can take between becoming vested and completion is 30 months.
He said he was not aware of any projects that would exceed this time frame unless they required a permit that would add to the timeline.
