Members of the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition receive a progress report from the Regional Trails and Open Space Workgroup during a meeting in the Clark County Commission Chambers Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019.
Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019 | 6:40 p.m.
The Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition will disband after months of squabbling about the effectiveness and future of the body.
At the body’s Tuesday meeting, six members voted in favor of a motion from Chair and Las Vegas Councilwoman Michele Fiore to disband, while four voted against it.
Fiore, Las Vegas Councilwoman Victoria Seaman, Clark County School Board President Lola Brooks, Henderson Councilmen Dan Shaw and Dan Stewart, and North Las Vegas Councilman Scott Black voted to disband.
Clark County Commissioners Justin Jones and Tick Segerblom, Boulder City Councilwoman Claudia Bridges, and North Las Vegas Councilman Richard Cherchio voted against disbandment.
It was the third motion of the evening relating to the body’s future, and the only one that didn’t end in a 5-5 vote.
Tuesday’s discussion about the body’s future started off with a motion from Stewart to disband, which Black initially voted against, resulting in a 5-5 impasse.
Stewart and Fiore say the body is ineffective and lacks clear direction, echoing comments made at the last coalition meeting in June.
“We’ve been here two years, and what have we done besides waste taxpayer dollars?” Fiore said.
Established in 1999 through a Nevada state statute, the coalition is tasked with coordinating planning efforts in Southern Nevada relating to land use, air quality, conservation and other issues. The 10-member body comprises two representatives from the Clark County Commission, two from the city councils in Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas, one from the Boulder City Council and one from the Clark County School Board.
The coalition has limited staff to carry out its duties and faces challenges when it comes to continuity of efforts, as board members come and go with election cycles and appointments. It also has little ability to fund the measures it proposes or supports, and some members say its efforts overlap with the work of other entities such as the Regional Transportation Commission. Nonetheless, it is the only entity in the region with a sole focus on regional planning.
The board’s method for allocating how members fund its work has recently come under scrutiny as well, especially by Shaw. The Clark County School District, for example, lacks extra funds to cover the costs of SNRPC activities, Brooks noted.
It is also unclear to Brooks how the school district fits into the goal of regional planning.
“I don’t know if it’s just that I’m not in the right place and I’m trying to find the relevance for me, or if there just isn’t relevance,” Brooks said.
But those in favor of keeping the body in place in some form said it could take up issues not covered regionally by other entities, such as climate change or water conservation. Southern Nevada as well as the area's cities lack a specific plan to address climate change, something popping up in cities across the United States, including Reno. The Las Vegas area is the most rapidly warming region in the country, the nonprofit climate news organization Climate Central reported this year.
"Like i said in the previous meeting, it's a lack of vision, a lack of leadership to make (something) happen," Jones said.
Given that Southern Nevada continues to experience rapid growth, Segerblom said the “overall function” of the entity remains relevant.
“This (coalition) does have the word planning in it, which in my seven years, I've never really seen happen in Clark County," Segerblom said. "To me, the sky is open, and we have the ability to try and do something, which I think was originally intended here."
Cherchio, who has been on the board for longer than some other members, said he recalls some of the successes of past iterations of the coalition, in contrast to where the coalition is now.
“If we’re tired of doing nothing, I think that blame really is on us over here,” Cherchio said.
Black, who voted against Stewart’s initial motion to disband, said he believed the group could be successful under a different structure and that it has been successful in the past.
He made a motion to modify the group into something he described as a one-year “experiment,” proposing that members meet five times next year and identify two issues to tackle as well as an “end goal” and ways to measure the entity’s effectiveness. The group could address homelessness, for example, while working to ensure that it wasn’t duplicating the efforts of other agencies, Black said.
His motion failed on a 5-5 line, with all five members who first voted to disband voting against it, and all five who voted against disbanding voting for Black’s plan to restructure the coalition.
Both votes mirrored the situation the coalition faced at its last meeting in June, when members were unable to come to an agreement on the entity’s future.
“That’s so peachy, we’re back to where we were in June, which is fine,” Fiore said.
About one hour into the discussion, Fiore made another motion to disband, while also promising to turn over the body’s Regional Open Space and Trails Working Group to the RTC.
This time, Black voted yes.
“I just felt like, ‘Time to go in a different direction,’ and that was the vibe I got, to try it another way,” Black said after the meeting.
