The Clark County Council reluctantly approved suspending annual reviews of site-specific applications to amend the county’s comprehensive plan for the next three years.
The council unanimously approved the request from Community Planning to suspend reviews until Sept. 30, 2025 in a 4-0 vote. Councilor Gary Medvigy was not at the meeting.
The council’s hesitation stemmed from delaying the review process for a long period of time.
“We can only update our comprehensive plan once a year. Those are changes that are property owner-initiated requests,” County Planner Jose Alvarez said in an interview.
The requests are typically for zoning changes, such as changing residential zoning to industrial or commercial zoning.
Alvarez said suspending the reviews is necessary because previous annual reviews, which are typically a 15-month process, have been delayed and would conflict with the timeline for the comprehensive plan update due by Jan. 30, 2025.
Community Planning Director Oliver Orijiako explained during the council meeting that applications submitted in January 2023 wouldn’t be completed and adopted until July 2024, putting them within the 12 months prior to the comprehensive plan update.
“That’s a big conflict and inconsistent with state law,” Orijiako said.
Orijiako said the county has previously suspended the review cycle when a comprehensive plan update was approaching, though prior suspensions were typically for two years. He said delays in the review process created the need for a three-year suspension.
Alvarez said pre-applications are done during the fall with applications due by the end of January. Reviewing the application takes around 11 months and, if approved, becomes effective the first of the following year.
“We’ve gotten further and further out of sync with that cycle,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez said the suspension will only affect applications that would have been filed in January 2023 or later. It will not apply to applications the county is already reviewing. He also noted site-specific applications are different from development and permit applications, which will continue to be processed as usual.
“It doesn’t apply to what Community Development does. If there’s a subdivision coming in, it wouldn’t apply to those things,” he said.
Alvarez said the county received three requests for the 2022 review cycle, which is similar to the number of requests submitted each year for at least the last several years.
It’s not all bad news for property owners hoping for a zoning change. Orijiako said zoning change requests could be included in the comprehensive plan update, which will begin after July 1, 2024.
