Pahrump Regional Planning Commissioners voted 6-1 to recommend approval of the zoning map Wednesday. It now goes to Nye County Commissioners who are scheduled to consider it Wednesday.

After three meetings in which lines of residents approached the microphone to query planning officials and consultants about the upcoming zoning, the final discussion lasted a little over a half hour.

RPC member Dan Schinhofen cast the sole vote against the zoning map.

"I've been in favor of hard zoning for a long time, a year and a half, two years," Schinhofen said. But he added, "I'm not convinced this is ready. I've seen a lot of questions raised. I have a lot of questions about some of the categories, some of the ways it's been handled."

Other board members conceded the zoning map wasn't perfect, but a good first step.

"I think it's as good as we can do at this point in time. There are things that I could live with. I think the one thing we need to remember, zoning will change," said Carrick "Bat" Masterson.

RPC member Norma Jean Opatik said, "If Pahrump is going to continue to grow we have to do something to do it in an organized fashion. What we have and what we're living with right now is not working. It's broke."

She added, "I don't believe any city, town, county has created a perfect zoning world."

RPC Chairman Mark Kimball said if the county commission approaches this subject with the same civic spirit, "we will be able to have at least 85 percent or more of the zoning to be complete and correct and then it's up to them and to us to work to fix the rest of it."

However Kimball said "the board of county commissioners can adopt, amend, deny, extend, continue, whatever they decide to do."

A separate motion passed unanimously, requesting a few areas in the Pahrump Regional Planning District be remanded back to county planners and consultants for further study.

Those areas include:

The Calvada Meadows Air Park;

The Calvada mobile home subdivision southwest of Highways 372 and 160,;

The Calvada multi-family study area south of Mount Charleston Drive along Pahrump Valley Boulevard;

The Calvada north area;

The industrial north area, south of Tiffany Street, east of Leslie Street.

Attorneys for Focus Development Group and other large developers were in attendance for the vote. Other large players in Pahrump projects weighed in on the zoning.

Garry Heberer, Great Basin College dean for extended studies, said 280 acres on the zoning map outside Carpenter Canyon Road is marked as reserve.

"We would like to build a college on that land. We have petitioned BLM to transfer it to Great Basin but your planning people tell me the way it's marked now it's reserve, we wouldn't be able to build a college on it," Heberer said. "They told me it was going to be reserved for single-family dwellings regardless of the size of acreage."

Kimball said county commissioners could take care of that problem.

Curt Ledford, an attorney representing Wulfenstein Construction, noted he sent a letter to the consultants regarding 37 different parcels near Telegraph Road, currently designated neighborhood commercial. He asked it be designated general commercial.

Bill Griffin, 6030 Hawkins Way, said he had a business in Pahrump for 54 years near Terrible's Lakeside Casino.

"I still want to stay in business, with this new zoning they're going to put me out of business," he said.

A few regular critics of Nye County voiced their concerns. Sam Jones said his property on Leslie Street is commercial.

"Stop trying to blow smoke to us in Pahrump with all your hogwash," Jones said.

Jim Petell hinted at litigation saying, "We're going to do something that's going to be painful to both sides and you know what I'm talking about."

Harley Kulkin said his remote area in northern Pahrump Valley was drawn in the master plan for five-acre lots, in the zoning plan they were changed into 10-acre lots.

Some uses of property aren't represented on the map. Nye County Planner Jack Lohman told Ron Murphy the county wants better quality development after the gravel pits close. Murphy estimated his gravel pits have a life of 20 more years, but he may want to put a shop building at one of them in the meantime.

Attorney Maren Parry said a 277-acre block out of 1,500 acres her client owns on Fort Churchill Road near Blackrock Avenue would be a non-conforming use, sending up a red flag when someone wants to do their due diligence researching the property.

Another real estate agent criticized the process.

"What really concerns me in this whole situation is the arbitrariness of the situation," Bob Little said, from Century 21 real estate. "It's like in the Gamebird subdivision where businesses are being zoned general commercial in an area that was always residential."

Hogle Ireland managing partner David Thiele told a Bell Vista Avenue resident that street was intended to be a new visitor commercial zone to provide services for travelers arriving from Death Valley National Park but the plan was scrapped due to negative input from residents in that area who wanted it to remain residential. The visitor commercial zone is one of several new zones created in the study.