Henderson's Development Record Under Mayor Romero
What the Actual Votes Show
Looking at 2025 highlights the Henderson City Council's priorities. Every vote related to development unanimous. No denials of anything developers want. Even Planning Commission denials get overturned by the Council, or the Council side with the developer. Why is the public ignored? Why are public hearings worthless? The Council only has one priority, and they're campaigns are funded so they can rubber stamp development projects.
I spent more time than I should have had to pulling City Council and Planning Commission records, local news coverage, and city agendas covering Mayor Michelle Romero's first term (Jan. 2023 – present). Here's the pattern that emerged.
Nothing gets denied. Across her entire term, I could not find a single confirmed outright denial of a private development project by either the Planning Commission or City Council. One "denial" on the books was the Council rejecting residents' appeal against a tavern near a church — meaning the Council sided with the developer. Another was a Planning Commission recommendation to deny a cannabis dispensary's 24-hour request, which the Council overturned days later. That's the extent of it.
The big votes never split. Three Kids Mine (3,000 homes on a former manganese mine site), the Inspirada Station casino-resort, the $70M West Henderson Fieldhouse, and the $184M+ Reimagine Boulder Highway corridor all passed unanimously or near-unanimously. When two Planning Commissioners recused themselves from the Inspirada Station vote over direct financial ties to the applicant, the project still sailed through 5-0.
Major projects can skip elected oversight entirely. The 300-acre data center campus (Trammell Crow Co.) was approved through a Conditional Use Permit — a process that doesn't require a City Council vote at all. No public hearing in front of anyone we elected. Hardly anyone even notified it was happening. Romero has since said publicly she doesn't want that happening again, which tells you the oversight gap was real enough for her to claim surprise after the fact.
Taxpayers carry real risk on at least one project. Three Kids Mine involves a documented $550 million cleanup of a site with lead, arsenic, and asbestos contamination. Simply buried under the new community. The city's arrangement reimburses the developer 80%-85% of property taxes generated on the site for 45 years. Money that won't go to schools, police, fire, or any other city infrastructure. That vote passed 4-0, with Mayor Romero absent. She has since said she would have abstained, since her husband's employer, Las Vegas Paving, is doing paving work on the project.
Bottom line: This isn't a story about one bad vote. It's a council that approves virtually everything put in front of it, a process that lets the largest projects bypass elected accountability, and a mayor who was not even in the room for the single largest taxpayer-exposure decision of her term.
Sources: Henderson City Council and Planning Commission meeting records; Las Vegas Review-Journal; Nevada Current; The Nevada Independent; KTNV; 8 News Now; FOX5 Vegas; News3LV; Las Vegas Sun.