The latest round of Lyon County zoning regulations are headed to the Lyon County Commission following the County Planning and Appeals Board’s latest meeting Monday evening.
The board voted 4-2 in favor of recommending the regulations, now in its fifth draft, for approval by county commissioners. Board Chairman Mike Langley along with board members Phil Mott, Robert Dieker and Mike Ratcliff voted in favor of the recommendation.
Langley and Mott both agreed the new draft is a major improvement over the original regulations. Langley says the new regs essentially streamline several processes that could otherwise be hung up for a significant amount of time.
Prior to the board’s decision board members entertained more than an hour of public comment with no individuals stepping forward to speak in favor of the document. Among those to offer comment was Angel Cushing, who has been highly vocal in her opposition to the plan since the beginning.
Cushing says the new regulations would essentially shift the county from euclidean based zoning to form-based zoning. She believes form-based zoning is not suitable for Lyon County.
Board members Gary Watts and Aaron Davis both voted against the motion to recommend the current draft of regulations. Watts stated his reasoning is simple, if there is no one in favor of the plan then it makes no sense to approve it.
Watts, along with the majority of individuals in attendance, felt the next step should be to “scrap” the new regulations and instead review and refine the current zoning regulations to develop a document more suited to Lyon County.
With the board’s approval, the draft will now go before the county commission who will have essentially four options. Either commissioners can accept the recommendation and approve the document, deny it, override it or send the document back to the planning board for further discussion. A date for when the document will come before the commission has yet to be determined.
At this time there is a protest petition circulating the county in opposition to the current draft of regulations.
