By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
The Clark County Board of Commissioners, in a meeting last week, voted to follow the recommendations of the local Town Advisory Boards (TABs) on every request made for changes to the Northeast Clark County Land Use Plan.
The vote, which was taken at a meeting in Las Vegas on Wednesday May 8, ended a Land Use Planning process which had been ongoing in the northeast Clark County communities over the past year.
The Land Use Plan sets the perameters for all zoning decisions in the area. It is updated every five years.
Clark County planner Kevin Smedley introduced the agenda item to the Commissioners last week, giving a report on the year-long process.
“Over the past year we have been working on the Northeast Land Use Plan,” Smedley said. “Through that process we have held a series of 10 open house meetings in the communities.”
Smedley explained that three separate workshop meetings were held in each of the towns of Moapa, Logandale and Overton to gather proposed changes to the plan, and to get public input on those requests. A tenth meeting was held in Bunkerville.
As a result of those meetings, a total of eight requests for changes were made, all in the Moapa Valley communities, Smedley said. Three of those requests were in Moapa. The other five were in the Moapa Valley township.
Of those eight requests, the TABs had recommended denial on only two.
The first of these denials was for a ten acre parcel located at the northwest corner of Lawson Drive and Barlow Ave in Moapa. Parcel owner Susan Pulsipher was requesting a change in designation from Residential Rural (RR); which allows zoning of only 1 residence for every two acres; to Rural Neighborhood (RN) which allows zoning densities as high as 1/2 acre lots.
Representing the land owner before the Commission last week was her son, Kyle Pulsipher. He argued that Moapa needed more growth and that smaller lots would encourage that growth in the community. He said that public funds had been used to build recreation amenities in the neighborhood of this parcel including a park, library facilities and a recreation center. Bringing more people to the neighborhood would further spread the costs of those facilities.
“We are not talking about hundreds of apartments,” Pulsipher added. “We are talking about half acre lots with rural zoning. We would just ask that you take a common sense approach so that everyone can utilize these amenities that are already in place.”
But in a February meeting, the Moapa TAB had recommended denial of this request because so many of the neighbors of the parcel showed up to oppose it.
The Commission upheld the TABs recommendation last week.
The other instance where the TAB had recommended denial was in the Moapa Valley on a two acre parcel at the northeast corner of Lou and Ron, owned by Terry and Rita Gettle.
Terry Gettle was asking that the land use designation on the parcel be changed to allow zoning for two one-acre lots on the parcel. The TAB had recommended denial on the grounds that all surrounding parcels in the neighborhood were on 2 acre parcels.
Gettle argued that in a broader perimeter around the property, there were smaller parcels existing as well as light industrial parcels. He said that the request should be allowed because there was general interest in smaller parcels.
“The way this property lays out, it would be nice to put it into two one-acre lots,” Gettle told the Commission last week. “Everybody is generally trying to get a one acre lot because they are better to manage and easier to afford.”
Again, the Commissioners chose to follow the recommendations of the TAB in this matter.
On all other requests, the TABs had recommended approval. Most of these were routine matters that seemed clear.
But in one case, the request had been opposed at the TAB by a group of the neighbors. This case was a request from Mesquite residents Mike and Kim Otero who own a parcel at the southwest corner of Cram and St. Joseph in Logandale. The Oteros were requesting that the designation be changed from RR to Rural Agricultural which would allow zoning for 1 acre parcels. They argued that there were already numerous properties in the immediate neighborhood that had zoning for smaller lots. Thus it was appropriate to change the designation on their property, they said.
The Moapa Valley TAB had agreed and approved the request.
But a few neighbors had objected to the change. And they showed up to argue it before the Commission as well.
“When we purchased our property it was two-acre lots,” argued neighboring resident Ralph Starita. “We want to keep our area – that whole block of Liston – as two acre lots.”
During board comments, Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick stressed that she had promised to follow the recommendations of the TABs on this planning documents. She insisted that she would follow through with that promise.
But Kirkpatrick also expressed the need for an openness from the community on the subject of growth.
“I am following the Town Board recommendations,” Kirkpatrick said. “But I am telling you that if people bring development projects for those areas, we are going to talk about them. We have to have that conversation.”
Kirkpatrick said that some degree of growth must be encouraged in the outlying northeast communities.
“Population is declining there,” she claimed. “That is a problem for any community. When that happens your revenue sources start to dry up and go away.”
At the same time, Kirkpatrick said that she has been “browbeat” by rural residents over a lack of recreation facilities in the communities.
“I keep hearing from people that we need more things for the kids to do,” she said. “People want recreation amenities.”
Kirkpatrick said that county staff had looked at the finances of building recreation facilities and found that the reveneue wasn’t there from the community to do so.
“We found that if we increased property tax a dollar per rate for the entire region of Moapa Valley, Moapa and Bunkerville, it would take that region 30 years to actually get enough to build a recreation building,” Kirkpatrick said.
“So if the town wants to have absolutely no growth for the long term, people need to understand that there will be no way for me to provide services out there,” Kirkpatrick added.
Kirkpatrick made the motion to follow the recommendations of the TABs in all the requests. The Commission approved the motion with a unanimous vote.
