Question of the Day - 17 September 2024

This question is, presumably, in response to the News item about the new development proposed for the north Las Vegas Strip next to Fountainebleau. The Clark County Planning Department approved plans for a mixed-use hotel, retail, and entertainment development proposed for the 10-acre parcel south of Fontainebleau being sold by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to local developers for $125 million. Neither timeline nor budget was discussed at the planning meeting, but parking will be somewhat tight. The Winchester Town Board earlier approved a reduction of the mandated 3,000 parking spaces by 52%.

To answer the question, we have to back up a bit. 

There are three incorporated cities in Las Vegas Valley: Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and Henderson. The rest of the Las Vegas area is officially unincorporated; Clark County provides government and municipal services to those residents, while the cities provide them to residents within one of the three.

However, there are other geopolitical designations in the Las Vegas Valley. The three "townships" are the Las Vegas Township, the North Las Vegas Township, and the Henderson Township -- yes, the same as the three cities, but they have different boundaries, which delineate the jurisdictions for the state courts. The post office also follows the township divisions. The Census Bureau recognizes the unincorporated towns as proper population divisions.

A third political subdivision is the "unincorporated town." There are six of these: Enterprise, Spring Valley, Sunrise Manor, Whitney,  Paradise, and Winchester, the one in question. 

The six unincorporated towns are incorporated, so to speak, in the Las Vegas Township (a couple have edges that jut into the Henderson and North Las Vegas townships).

Unincorporated towns have voluntary "town advisory boards" that confer with the Clark County Commission on town issues, such as zoning and planning. In addition, town homeowners and landowners pay less in property taxes than their city counterparts.

Lowered taxes were a beneficial unintended consequence of the inception of unincorporated towns, whose main reason for being started out as jurisdiction, annexation, and service conflicts with the cities.

Paradise, for example, was formed way back in 1950, at a time when the City of Las Vegas was launching an attempt to annex the incipient Las Vegas Strip. But the bosses had built their resorts way out in the desert specifically to avoid city regulation and taxation, so they petitioned the county commissioners to form the town of Paradise to block the city’s land grab. The commissioners quickly saw an opportunity to expand the county’s own fledgling tax base and granted unincorporated-town status to the Strip, forever blocking the city from acquiring it.

The town of Winchester, which is mostly to the east of the Strip, was created in 1953, splitting the big -- and growing -- town of Paradise in two. That's why the Winchester Town Board has jurisdiction over the new development on the north Strip, part of the old Riviera property.