Clark County staff to remove freight-rail-dependent overlay from comp plan after state law change

County staff told the Clark County Council on June 3 that a state law change eliminates the county's authority to maintain a freight-rail-dependent use overlay zone and that the overlay will be removed from the county's maps as part of the comprehensive plan update.

Jordan Bogie, policy analyst, summarized the history: the freight-rail-dependent use overlay was added following Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 55 17 and was implemented via amendments to the county's comprehensive plan. He said, "senate bill 58 20 was passed, which repealed the county's ability to create or utilize a freight rail dependent use overlay zone." Bogie said because the county never fully adopted implementing county code for that zone, the overlay can be removed through the comp-plan map update rather than through repealing code provisions.

Oliver Jericho, speaking for staff, said there would be no impact on job totals from removing the overlay because the area is rural and the overlay was a mapping layer rather than a direct rezone. He recommended preserving the transportation policies from the 2018 adopting ordinance while striking the freight-rail-dependent-use parcel listings and three rural-element policies tied to the overlay.

Council members gave a general thumbs-up to the staff recommendation and asked staff to pursue the change as part of the periodic comprehensive plan update. Staff noted that if county code implementing the overlay existed it would need repeal; because there is no such code in force the map update is sufficient. No formal vote was recorded on this item at the meeting.

Next steps: staff will prepare ordinance language for the comp-plan update to remove overlay references, strike parcel numbers and related policy subsections, and return to council with proposed text.