Court Opinion

ID: 9557479
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 16:51:02.299098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:52.856818
License: Public Domain

Shearing, J.,
with whom Springer, J., joins,
dissenting:
I would affirm the judgment of the district court denying the petition for writ of mandamus and upholding the decision of the Clark County Board of Commissioners.
In 1968, this court stated:
The days are fast disappearing when the judiciary can look at a zoning ordinance and, with nearly as much confidence as a professional zoning expert, decide upon the merits of a zoning plan and its contribution to the health, safety, morals or general welfare of the community. Courts are becoming increasingly aware that they are neither super boards of adjustment nor planning commissions of last resort.
Coronet Homes, Inc. v. McKenzie, 84 Nev. 250, 255-56, 439 P.2d 219, 223 (1968). In 1996, decisions regarding land use are much more complicated in the increasingly urban environment of Clark County. This court must be very circumspect about interfering with the decisions made by those who are selected by the people of Clark County to make those decisions.
I agree with the majority that a grant or denial of a variance is a discretionary act which this court must uphold if the discretion is not abused. Nevada Contractors v. Washoe County, 106 Nev. 310, 314, 792 P.2d 31, 33 (1990). I believe that there was substantial evidence presented to support the grant of the variance under Clark County Code Section 29.66.030 and that the Clark County Board of Commissioners did not abuse its discretion.
Section 29.66.030 authorizes the Commission to grant a variance to relieve a property owner from the zoning regulation when “such regulation . . . would result in peculiar and exceptional practical difficulties to, or exceptional and undue hardships, upon, the owner of such property.” The plot plans showing the long, narrow shape of the property abutting the railroad tracks and the photographs showing the railroad tracks, the tower, the gravel pit and the existing structures on the other side of the railroad tracks, together, make it clear that the property is not suitable for residential zoning. The photographs alone testify to the “exceptional practical difficulties,” and the “exceptional and *663undue hardships,” in requiring the owner to keep the land for residential use.
The complainants did not even raise the issue of lack of difficulty or hardship. They raised numerous other objections which the majority of the Commissioners obviously thought had been adequately addressed by the property owner and by the conditions to the variance imposed by the Commission. I do not believe that this court can conclude as a matter of law that the Clark County Board of Commissioners abused its discretion.
I disagree most emphatically that any adverse inferences should be drawn from the fact that M-2 zoning for the property had previously been turned down or that three separate requests led to the grant of the variance. Changing an R-l zoning to a zoning permitting manufacturing is quite different from granting a variance on a particular parcel that has unique problems. Granting an M-2 zoning could lead to a change in the entire character of the area, while a variance on a parcel is unlikely to do so.