All [Music] right, Madame Vice Mayor, if you'd like to call this meeting to order. It is 10:00. Okay. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 city council meeting. It's a beautiful day. We're ready to get started. We will start with the pledge of allegiance. And I see Miss Donna in the audience. Donnie, will you lead us in the pledge of allegiance, please? Donna Claunt of America. Thank you very much. And may we have roll call, please, Madam Clerk. Calling roll for Wednesday, June 4th, Reno City Council meeting. Vice Mayor Taylor here. Council member Dor here. Martinez here. Eert here. Reese here. Anderson. Shivy here. Madame Vice Mayor, you do have a quorum of the Reno City Council. Fantastic. And can we move into public comment, please? Absolutely. Give me just a second. Madame Vice Mayor, our first item today is opening public comment. Members of the public may hear, observe, and provide public comment virtually by registering through the following link, which can be found on reno.gov/meings GV/meings https colon slash slash l i n ks period r e n o period go vward slash c o u n c i l06-04. It should be noted for those in attendance that comments are to be addressed to the mayor and council as a whole. Comments heard under this item will be limited to three minutes per person and may pertain to matters both on and off the council's agenda. Council may not take action upon any matter not agendaized on today's agenda. When you're called on for public comment, please state your name for the record and begin speaking. The timer will begin when you state your name and you will be afforded three minutes. For those participating in chambers in accordance with council rules 6.3.11 while in this room, please be respectful. Disruptive behavior from audience members like yelling, whistling, clapping, etc. which impede the meeting may result in a warning issued by the presiding officer. If the behavior continues, you may be removed from chambers. If you're an attendee in the Zoom meeting and would like to make public comment, please raise your hand at this time. Our first public commenter today is Jerry Miffs, followed by Terry Brooks, followed by Craig Bronzen. Good morning, please excuse my appearance. Um, I didn't say my name. You're not supposed to start that clock. My name is Jerry Miffs, aka Jerry the pizza man. That's because I made pizzas in a career around it. Um, Mayor Shei, is is she uh is she on the video? Can she hear me? Mayor, I'm here to make an appeal to you. You know, the renovation of the apartment complex that I live in is taking place. You know, the owner, Robert, tomorrow I'm being moved out of that building into the Ramada Inn. It's part of the relocation. They could wait two weeks, Hillary. Two weeks. I could stay in place with my cats and move in to the building that they're going to complete that I was designated to move into. But they won't do that. Um they they're going to disrupt my life and the life of my two little kitty cats and stick me in this place called the Ramada Inn. And I' I've been to this place the last five nights. What they have at the Ramada Inn is right next to the Diamond Casino where you could get order of fries, a hooker, drugs. This is the environment that I got to stay away from because I like French fries. I was robbed yesterday as I was making an appeal at the senior center to the attorneys. Hillary, get me. Call up Rob. call a problem. Have him put a stay of execution, a stay where I can stay at the senior complex, a stay at the uh the senior apartment house that I'm at just for two weeks to move in instead of move me downtown with all my stuff and my two kitty cats into the Robert Hillary. You know who I'm talking about. He's just a little bit taller than you, which still makes him shorter than me. Anyway, I I need your help, Hillary. I need your help now more than ever. Uh I'm just at at loss. I don't look very good. I'm 80 years old. How good am I supposed to look? Um, I I don't know if I know Robert, but I need you to give me the address of where you're staying and any information you can to Mickey so I can call and reach out because I know that sometimes moving can be very traumatic and especially on So, you're asking me for this is the Carville Park Apartments. Robert's the owner. give that information to Mickey and when I get there today I will make calls and I will be in touch with you. This is we have we have Ela from our housing services here to help him too. Great Ela Elaine's here to help you too. I'm I'm asking I'm asking you to repeat anything she said cuz I didn't quite hear everything. Madame Mayor, this is appreciate your I'm going to step off the dis for a minute and go and chat with Mr. misfit and I think Rob Benner is who Jerry may be talking about. So, let me get some information for you and we'll work it out. Perfect. Thank you so much. Terry Brooks followed by Craig Bronzen followed by Sharon Honing Bear. Good morning. It's me, Terry Brooks, again, and today I'd like to share with you my thoughts on owning your own home and what seniors go through. Most seniors through time have sometimes owned their own house. And it's usually been a long time that they've lived in their own house. And since it had been a long time since they had bought their house, they already paid off their loan that they got to buy their house. And for most people, the longer you live somewhere, then the more you have adapted to the way you're living there. And not only have you adapted to your house, but through time, you also could have very much adapted to living in your neighborhood. The longer you have lived there, the more you really believe that you really want to stay there and don't ever want to leave. But the older you get, you find that it gets hard to take care of your property, such as having to mow your yard. It might take a while, but you finally become aware that you're not still physically able to make a needed repair. Just cleaning the house can become quite the chore or having to put a new lock on your front door. I once built my own house. I drove every nail in it. I even installed all the plumbing and electricity in it. At that time when I was young there was nothing to it. But later on in life when I got older I couldn't remember how to do it. From the time I was 21 till I was 62 I owned my own house. But when I couldn't take care of it anymore I just sold and left that house. So as time goes by there are things we still can do. But there are also a lot of things that we can no longer do. I would like to thank you all for listening to me today and I look forward to coming back if I remember how to get here that day. Thank you Craig Bronzen followed by Sharon Honing Bear followed by Cynthia Cooper. Gary is a tough act to follow. Good morning honorable mayor, members of city council, city staff. My name is Craig Bronson and I'm currently the chair of the city of Reno Recreation and Parks Commission. I've spoken in front of you many times about park recreation issues and I wanted to express my support for agenda item C4 which is the professional services agreement with pros consulting for exploration of forming a park recreation special district. I have three main points for your consideration as I'm a park and recreation professional who spent over 50 years in my profession. First, from a historical standpoint, just like today, when there are downward budget cycles, parks recreation is the first department to get cut and the last department to get made whole when better times return. Consideration of moving parks recreation into a special district could relieve the city of Reno of general fund support and better insulate the district with its own dedicated funding source. That could free up general fund monies for other city priorities. Second, I can tell you from experience that citizens want to participate in quality programs and facilities regardless of the agency that provides the service. When I moved to Reno 6 years ago, I had a hard time differentiating between the city of Reno, the city of Sparks, and the county of WOO related to services as it was difficult to determine where one service started and another service ended. The turf, no tun pun intended for parks and wreck that exists between providers is one that's con that has been constructed by city and county limit lines, not based on the wishes and the wants of the people who participate in the programs or their facilities. A special district could unify for everyone park recreation services. Third, I know that budgets are tight and I appreciate that the parks and recreation department and staff have found the funding through their budget to support this request. I still work as a consultant for two agencies and I know how professional services contracts can expand in scope and uh and in uh price. I'm hoping city council will give strict direction to staff to make sure that pros consulting performs on time and on budget. Let's keep scope creep to a minimal. Lastly, I want to thank the city manager uh and staff for allowing the recreation and parks commission to have our joint meeting with Wo County and the city of Sparks Commission to discuss this very important matter on June 26th. If you approve this contract, the commissions are happy to roll up our sleeves and move forward with consideration of a special district. Thank you. Sharon Honig Bear followed by Cynthia Cooper followed by Barbara Dunovan Elder. Good morning um mayor, city council, and staff. Um my name is Sharon Honick Bear. I used to come here quite frequently because I chaired the arts and culture commission for many years. And today I stand really wanting to thank the um the city I guess for having the discretionary funds for council members. And in particular, I'm here thanking Naomi Dur. And this is consent item B14 to um provide some funding for Historic Reno Preservation Society to again repair the pillars along Nixon the the Newand's Manners pillars. We did a public so I'm representing Historic Reno Preservation Society today. I've been a longtime board member there. And about 10 years ago, we did a communitywide people in the Newand's neighborhood to raise the money to really redo those pillars. They were falling apart and they were it was a very successful campaign. But interestingly enough, if you if you know th those pillars, the we had to replace the blocks that had the names of the streets on them, Luru and and Nixon and whatever. and some of the inking on they have they're they were engraved and then they needed to be inked are fading. So, um it's costing us $5,000 to redo them. So, they're bright and they're not only a historic marker, but they're also street markings. And so, um we we requested and Naomi was wonderful to to find some money to do the match on that. So that the work will be done in the next few weeks and we really appreciate the support of the city to match that that money because we are a nonprofit. I'm a volunteer and so any help you can get and that idea of the partnership between the city to understand the importance of preserving and admiring our older neighborhoods. I think the Newand's neighborhoods are probably considered the most prestigious. And by the way, I hope it's still at it's at your desk. I just put um HARP's Historic Reno Preservation Society does a full series of walking tours all summer that really connect people with the communities, the older communities in and not just the Newlands. I mean, we're talking about up at the um the old mental hospital. I mean, we're all over the place. So, um pass it on. And anybody who's listening elsewhere, historic reno.org will tell you all of what we're doing and um you can donate and also that um that you can how to sign up for the tours. So, thank you and thank you Naomi. Right. Well, if I may, Madam Vice Mayor, just comment briefly. Um, I am so grateful for the work that you, Sharon, have done along with the other members of the Reno Historic um, preservation society as well as the folks on our Reno Historical Commission um, to identify how important our history is and to identify where you need help. And you know, we have the biggest project in front of us, which is the Lear, but there are many, many, many smaller projects. For example, the mayor and I contributed years ago to plaques uh to recognize places on Virginia Street that are historic. Um that's $1,000 maybe per plaque. So much smaller efforts, but they all contribute to understanding and respecting our history. So, I'm so glad that you reached out. I'm so glad that I was able to move the money around and scrape things together and be able to help um you know, both the organization, but most importantly the community and our neighborhoods. Thank you, Councilwoman Dor. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Cynthia Cooper, followed by Barbara Dunovan Elder, followed by Donna Clants. Good morning. Um, I'm Cynthia Cooper. I live in uh Miguel Martinez's ward. Um, I wanted to give a shout out to Donna today. Um, especially, I mean, I'm here to support the idea of a parks district. Um, but I especially wanted to thank Donna for everything she's done. Tylia Park looks better. It looks it looks better and better. Um, it's really come a long ways from even a year ago. And if you haven't been there lately, you ought to come on Wednesdays and and walk with the AARP. Um, the parks are are so important and um uh to quality of life. Um physical activity is just about the most important thing you can do for your health for um it helps boost your immune system. Uh it helps reduce risk of diabetes uh risk of dementia. Uh it's just so so important and uh Americans in general, you know, we we just can't be encouraged enough to get outdoors and move around. And um I've visited quite a number of the parks here in in Reno and and in the uh Wo area and they're all delightful. Uh it's a good way to get people out of their houses so that uh we're not living in isolation. So um anyway, I just wanted to support the uh u the idea of the parks district and thank you for all you do. Barbara Dunovan Elder followed by Donna Clants followed by Carrie Brown. Hi, I'm Bob Barbara Denovan, Elder. Everybody calls me Bobby. I'm here because I w wanted to speak to F2 and I will be here this afternoon for that, but I have some other concerns regarding that. uh road conditions out in our area with possible major trucks, change of our property status from residential to commercial without contacting us. Nobody contacted us and the the homeowners association can say that they did. They had a small thing out by their office. Nobody called us. Nobody sent us anything. We were not able to come to you and give you our feelings. A lot of us couldn't be here today because they're working. I happen to be 80. I'm not working. But I have other concerns including safety and those kinds of things. U there's a lot of retired disabled veterans out there with us and more traffic could cause them considerable issues. My husband is 91 and he served in in Korea and then he was at the Bikini Atoll for all of the atomic testing for one year and he's one of less than 1% that live to be beyond 45. So, and he has issues and um I think that I would like to speak again when F2 comes up and I believe that's this afternoon and I will be here. I want to thank you all for being willing to listen to us. Thank you. Donna Clants followed by Carrie Brown followed by Steven White. Can I get the overhead, please? See if people can see that. Good. Donna, they'll put it up. Give it just a second. There we go. Thanks. Um, my name is Donna Clans. Uh, I live in Ward 5. I am a volunteer with AP Nevada and I wanted to thank the city for all of the work that they have supported especially uh Nathan and the group with reckon parks for um the support that they gave us when we started walking two years ago in Teglas Paradise Park at the time it was overrun with homeless it was a really scary place crime was happening so many places um that the neighborhood was afraid to use its own park and it's a beautiful park um second largest in the city, full of ponds with all kinds today of geese and ducks and baby geese and so on. Um, and the community garden. This is a picture of the AP garden box that we were at today because it's Wednesday morning. We're walking at 8:00 in the morning these days because it's getting warmer. And so we stop at our garden box and we have about 10 of us that are in there tending that garden. You can see we planted two week uh two months ago and we have greens and everything's coming up great right now. So, thank you for the community garden. It's it's full. All the boxes are taken, I heard, today and there's a wait list. So, again, that community garden is bringing the community back into uh Paradise Park. Folks are walking. They're playing the big playground, the brand new playground for the kids is bringing parents and kids to that playground as well. Um, we I'm going to change the change the thing. Um, we need more signs to tell folks not to feed the ducks or the other critters in that park. This lady was there feeding the ducks and gave us a really hard time and cussed us out. But I have her license plate and I'm reporting her to Reno Direct for feeding those ducks. But we need we need more signs. Virginia Lakes got bigger and better signs to keep people from doing that because it kills them. It makes them sick. Um um that was the second one. And then I wanted to let you know that there there's some crooks that are attacking the garden shed. They broke into that shed two weeks ago and didn't take very much. But they tried again over the weekend. They they cut the fence. They did not get into the building and then they came back again last night. So, City of Reno was there repairing that fence. We need real cameras. We need we need more safety in that park because there's a there's a a burglar out there that's going to break into that that thing tonight uh to try to steal the equipment that's inside the inside the garden um garden tent. Um, I came to support, this is the last thing. We, uh, we got a grant from AARP last year to build a shuffleboard court and a, um, a, um, uh, botchi court, uh, which is now finished. We're playing, uh, once a month now. We're teaching folks how to play these these games in the park for free. We have the equipment. And so on Saturdays, we're going to be playing botchi. The reason I came today was to support item C4, the parks district that you're going to have on your agenda today. I think it's really important that the city move in that direction along with other partners so that we continue to have funding and staffing to bring our parks back because you know it's high on the list of the loves of all of us who live here in um Wo County and the city of Reno. Thank you so much. Thank you. Donna Nathan says signs are coming and so is a camera. Carrie Brown, followed by Stephen White, followed by Jay Howard. Hi, my name is Carrie Brown. I'm the clinic manager of Options Veterinary Care. Um, we're a nonprofit vet clinic and um, I just want to take a second to thank all of you for everything that you guys do for for our community. Um, Options is the only uh Northern Nevada nonprofit vet clinic that serves the public. We especially serve um lowincome families, individuals, and many seniors in this community. Um, these are people who would likely go without um veterinary care for their beloved pets, family members. Uh and we provide uh sick pet wellness um surgeries including spay and new spay and neuter access um at low cost and often free for those who really need it. Um most Americans consider pets as part of their family members today. And um with the nationwide shortage of veterinarians and veterinarian technicians, we're seeing um incredible rises in uh ongoing veterinary care for even basic needs. Um, at Options, we're able to provide uh affordable or free uh veterinary care to um individuals who and pets who would otherwise go without necessary service. Um, options provides uh I'm so sorry. Um, often we often provide these services to um, community members who are in greatest need of other services in our communities and um, we're really grateful for the opportunity to be able to help in any ways that we're capable of. Um, healthy pets are really important to public health um, overall. And the other service that providing veterinary care helps in our community is we're helping keep these pets with the people who love and care about them and who are part of their family and we're keeping them out of our local shelters which as I'm sure most of you know are are overcrowded. Um, and lastly, I just want to say thank you uh specifically to Devon Reese for recommending um options for a uh donation to our nonprofit clinic. And um I want to thank um Mayor Shivi and uh Naomi Durr and uh Kathleen Taylor for your ongoing support and um just can't uh tell you how grateful we are for this opportunity. Thank you. [Music] Steven White, followed by Jay Howard, followed by Claire Mckenry. Bring that up on the screen. Good morning folks. You know, you've heard me talk to you over the over the, you know, last several months about the loss of artistic freedom in our country. Just yesterday, I went to a hearing as a state tax department to defend a friend of mine. Here's a citation he was issued. He carves bears. If any of you have driven through Mounds House recently, you've seen his bears along Highway 50 there. carves bears, does bear sculptures. He incorporates painting into doing the bears and he also has a lot of bears holding his written words like welcome little signs. They literally cited him and threatened him with confiscation of his artwork, shutting him down, locking him locking his house up and you know threaten him with a crime for selling his bears without a tax license. Now, if you remember, I've told you about how I sued Reno back in 2002 in federal court and beat Reno in 2003 when they admitted they were wrong for requiring me to get a business license as a result as a condition of selling my artwork. I went on to sue the city of Sparks for the same thing. That case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. And you know about that case. Second sentence of that ruling. We hold that an artist's sale of his original artwork constitutes speech protected by the first amendment. But as you all know, none of these people know the difference between a commercial vendor and an artist. They have no clue about the first amendment constitutional rights of artists. And yet here they're doing this at the state level. The reason why I bring this up to you is because I want to illustrate once again how Reno is at the forefront of literally giving the gift of art back to communities all over the country. Having lost that lawsuit, you've been involved in a lawsuit over this. The greatest things to have ever happened to the arts in this state in my lifetime. Number one, the ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court. Number two, the ordinances that Mayor Hillary Stevie and I got passed in 2014 that exempt artists from licensing here in the city of Reno. And I don't know what, you know, I don't know how to it's so frustrating to me. So anyway, I want to I want to thank uh Councilman uh Mart Martinez and Councilwoman Eert along with the city manager for agreeing to meet with me this coming Monday to discuss how do we facilitate art in the park. That's the third thing. State Assembly Bill 351 that requires state uh uh park administrators all over the state to have areas in the park for artists to sell their artwork. Now, we've I've cover given you papers to explain the difference between a commercial vendor and an artist, and we need to move forward on that. It's an incredible opportunity for you folks. Thank you for your time, and God bless you. Jay Howard, followed by Claire Mckenry, followed by Sarah Gobsill. Good morning. I'm just going to put that up. Um, good morning and uh, thank you for um, letting me come up and spend a few minutes to express my support for a parks district as well. My name is Jay Howard and I'm with the Truckucky Meadows Parks Foundation and my program um, at Parks Foundation is Truckucky Meadows Trails. Um, I think the council is is aware of what we do with our regional trails program and um, this morning I'm just here before you to express my support as is others that you've heard from so far and I think there's probably going to be more for a parks district. Um, I too cannot think of anything more important than the services and the things that parks provide, the the programs and the events that go on. Um it's just critical that we have parks. Um the city of Reno, city of Sparks, Wo County, there are some fantastic parks in this area as you know. Um some are really beautiful parks along the river. Um some big gorgeous parks like Golden Eagle and uh you know, Winfield. There's just nothing uh you know, there's nothing like it. And it's critical that we maintain our services. Some of the parks are a little bit older with their facilities. Some of the parks are newer. Um, but again, critical that we maintain clean restrooms, trash cans get taken care of, and why wouldn't we want to join forces um throughout the Truckucky Meadows to share resources, right, to uh to to meet that mission um of providing great services and clean facilities for the people of the Truckucky Meadows, Reno Sparks, and Wo County. This is the Truckucky Meadows, right? And I think it's true. A lot of people kind of don't necessarily differentiate, don't might not really know where the boundaries are. Um, but we all know what the Truckucky Meadows means. And I think the idea of joining forces with a parks district. um at least um I know this is a tough budget time but but funding um this service plan the idea of you know looking into a a a service plan um for a parks district it just makes sense um if not now when I mean it's tough budget times this is the time that we need to come together um so I wanted to put up the the cover of the plan that we put together again my program is trucking meadow Meadows trails. We're a regional trails program that seeks to bring people together. Again, it's about the Truckucky Meadows, right? So, with trails and all things related to the efforts to improve our trail network and uh to create, you know, create the connectivity um that we all want to see. There's some great projects going on um with my program and a lot of the other partners to do just that. But we do that through a collaboration and and coming together and not acting kind of more like islands where we're doing our own thing. So please support a parks district. Claire Mckenry followed by Sarah Gobs Hill followed by Shan Hill. Good morning. My name is Claire Mckenry and I'm with the Truckucky Meadows Parks Foundation. Um, we are an organization that is dedicated to protecting and enhancing our community's livability through public engagement, education, and the sustainability of our parks, trails, and open spaces. And we accomplish this through programming, um, acting as a fiscal sponsor to support our parks infrastructure and, um, helping with advocacy in our region. Um, I have two items I would like to remark on. First, I would like to thank Vice Mayor Taylor for uh your support of the Biggest Little Dog Park. Um the Biggest Little Dog Park is a project that the Truckucky Meadows Parks Foundation has been involved with with since its inception. And it's a unique dog park located in downtown Reno that provides a very much needed space for those living and visiting downtown to come together and celebrate their love of animals and give their dogs a chance to run around outside in a very dense city area. Um your donation will be an an essential um part of the growth for that project. So thank you very much. Second, I would like to speak on um item C4. I would like to thank the council for bringing attention to the needs um for a dedicated funding for our parks, trails, and open spaces. Uh we see the demand of parks and recreation services growing and increasing um the gap the city faces for available funding. The service plan that's proposed in C4 will provide a roadmap of how we can work together um collaborate and um not only build but most importantly maintain the work of the system that we have in place um in a community that values our rivers, trails, and active recreation. Um the time is now for a sustainable fundraising source. So, thank you again for taking the time to consider the service plan, the first step in finding a dedicated funding system for our parks. And I ask you to approve C4 for the professional services agreement with Pros Consulting Incorporated for the development of a service plan to investigate the formation of a park district. Thank you. Sarah Gobbs Hill followed by Sha Hill followed by Bill Miller. Excellent. Thank you so much for having me. Um, I just want to say uh good morning to both the mayor and the esteemed council members. I know that you guys are busy um and so I'll try to make things quick. My name is Sarah Gobsil and I'm here with Education Alliance of Wo County and I'm honored to join you all and uh to say thank you to Miguel or Councilman Martinez's generous donation and ongoing support to our programs. Um our mission is really to unite our community to support our students at Wo County School District. Um we believe in public education and we believe that building resiliency and success in our next generation um is h happens by working on our students and the quality of uh their experiences today. So what we are really working on right now is a fight against chronic absenteeism. You probably have heard about this issue because it's one that is if we don't get on top of as a community will be very costly I believe and very devastating to our community. So we have doubled down to try to work on evidence-based bring in support for evidence-based uh programs that can help to mitigate the impacts of chronic absenteeism. In particular, we're focused on the middle school students because we know it's a crucial age to get them excited and engaged in schools and also um support of family resource centers because we know that the issue of uh chronic absenteeism is incredibly complex. It's not just one where students aren't, you know, liking school, but many times it has it it's they're dealing with barriers such as transportation or housing and food instability. many of these families are in crisis and so we're focused on students that are the most vulnerable. Um so this donation will go to support those efforts and we are currently really actively trying to help the last uh with the family resource centers. Um our goal is to meet students with compassion, consistency and support so that they can attend school and thrive. We know that those relationships in the schools are what um give back so much to our students. Um, we believe that this is an investment in our students, our families, and our neighborhoods. Um, and the long-term health of our community. I know you guys know this, but education is the number one uh social determinant of health. It how educated your community is directly impacts your thriving economy as well as the health and quality of life. And so, it's really important. Um, I just want to say thank you on behalf of Education Alliance. Um and uh and again to Councilman Martinez who's not here. Um but I can hear you. Oh, excellent. Okay. For um his leadership and commitment. It means a lot. Um so, uh again, I believe that you guys are helping us create a brighter future for each one of our students and we really appreciate it. So, thank you, Miss Miss Gobsill. And Madame Vice Mayor, if I may for a second, um are you tracking the RTC's decision to allow free transportation for students? our our goal was to reduce chronic absenteeism. So, I hope you're tracking and if not, let's find a time to meet. Yeah. So, we are so excited about that and I didn't know if I this was the time to talk about it, but I feel like that is such a tremendous win for our community. Um, but yes, we I'm sure there will be uh talking about that with the data department. Madame Mayor, who is online and can hear, she was the champion for that over at RTC, so she's really owed a great deal of gratitude for it. Thank you so much. Wonderful. All right, have a good one. Sean Hill followed by Bill Miller followed by Lisa Hill via Zoom. I have an image if you wouldn't mind. Thank you. Uh good morning everyone. My name is Sean Hill and I'm here representing Sier Nevada Journeys. Um thank you council members, staff, uh Mayor Shidi. Um you have a lot on your plate. You have a lot of priorities to sift through. So, I just want to uh share my deep gratitude to you and to Council Member Martinez for recognizing that getting our local kids connected to the rich access of the outdoors that we have around here is also a priority. Whoops. That's that's that's the downfall of that system. Um we are so Sierra Nevada Journeys, we've been around the community for almost 20 years. We started off in the back of a climbing gym and our founder's story was that he had a group of kids that he took up to Lake Tahoe and one of the kids said, "Are there are there any sharks in that ocean?" And so, you know, demonstrating um lack of lack of awareness, lack of certainly science education. Um so, we're out there every day trying to bridge those gaps, trying to build access to the outdoors, uh that that our that a lot of our kids do not receive regularly. Uh just a couple stats that are staggering. Um youth uh there's some statistics, there's some research showing that youth are spending 15 times longer on screens than they are in the outdoors. Um 70% of teachers uh report that they're spending, this is elementary school, less than 3 hours a week on science, science education. In many cases, much less than 3 hours a week. Um, we've done some external evaluation that shows that 6% uh more students um score as proficient on the state science exams after having participated in a Sierra Nevada Journeys program. Um, so we're we're out there. We're taking kids to Galina Creek. We're taking kids to Sun Valley Regional Park Oxbow Nature Study and again our this funding would go into our scholarship fund which allows us to uh sliding scale those program costs to those schools. So super important work. Um, thank you for consideration of funding under B19. Thank you, Council Member Martinez. And, um, thanks everybody. Bill Miller, followed by Jeremy McKe, followed by Lisa Hill via Zoom. Good morning, uh, Mayor Shivi, uh council staff, and fellow Reno residents. I'm Bill Miller, back from a long absence due to being sidetracked by that election last year, followed by an onslaught of data center proposals this year. More on that later. But for now, I'm glad to be back and want to start by thanking once again acknowledging and thanking you for your efforts to increase our climate sustainability by supporting solar installations, planting trees, and other heat mitigation efforts, including parks you hear hearing about today. Many of us realize and appreciate that voting in favor of actions that do not produce immediate results and in fact may not produce anything measurable for years is politically risky. So, thank you. Now, we face a new challenge to our future most of us did not see coming. Data centers and artificial intelligence. Just two years ago, for most of us, those were obscure concepts. to us maybe, but not the boards of major tech corporations like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, and Tesla who have been quietly working behind the scenes to plan and implement these energy and water consuming behemoths. So, while we were out comparing Energy Star appliances, they've been buying up square miles of land in Nevada for data centers that consume more electricity than small cities and nearly as much water. In return, they employ maybe a dozen people, yet demand ownorous tax abatements for offering Nevada next to nothing in return. This onslaught of data centers can conceivably consume all of our scarce resources and even begin to drive us out. According to the MIT Technology Review, the currently proposed and approved data centers will increase Northern Nevada's power grid by 40% and consume literally billions of gallons of water every year, and many more are on the way. To date, they have the advantage of surprise, which they played well, and the advantage of a disjointed political and regulatory system. For us, our only advantage is having our backs against the wall. To prevail, we need to be united, creative, passionate, and committed. We can conceivably coexist with data centers, but only if the people come first. As it is, the people are an afterthought. So again, I thank this council for your foresight and then ask that it be extended to managing this existential threat to our exquisitly beautiful way of life in Nevada. Thank you for your time. Jeremy McKe followed by Lisa Hill via Zoom followed by Katherine Schmidt. My name is Jeremy Mckame. I'm a a resident out in Cold Springs and I'm here to speak on F2, which is the Hines comm the Hines project or whatever. And uh I just I represent a lot of people out there that that don't want this and they all are worried about the traffic that it's going to cause, the bad roads that we already have. the home values, the water strain on our community out there because there's a lot of people on wells out there and all that's going to go down and also the safety of our streets. We have kids that walk around that bike around that all the time and you got a hundred 100 trucks coming in and out every day. What's going to happen? Also, there's plenty of empty warehouses in northern Reno. Most of them are empty. Not most of them, quite a few of them are empty. and the zoning got changed and it was just we were not notified. We didn't get letters and the the signs that they uh they posted are unreadable in a in a bad spot. Nobody could read it when it's folded up. I have pictures of that also. It's folded up and you can't read it right there on the exit. What are you supposed to pull over on the exit and read it and it's all fine print. So, I think there's many matters that need to be discussed on this. Thank you. Lisa Hill via Zoom, followed by Katherine Schmidt, followed by Darcy Phillips via Zoom. Lisa Hill for the record. Um, I submitted some written comments. Also, this is about the staff report today on the boards and commissions. Um, I appreciate the need to update the process and make it uh more efficient, effective, and so on. I I read the report. Um, I don't know if I'll have time to be able to sit through for the staff today. I'd like to if I could, but um, a couple of comments. I think there's a need for agendas and open meeting laws and minutes to provide transparency to the public and accountability especially when it comes to development reports. Um the NAPS have served in the past when they've been well supported by the city an important forum for developers to come to community members, the board members themselves and then also anybody who wants to participate. Um, it's an important process for developers to come to into the neighborhoods and present their development to the community and get comments, feedback so that they can um be aware of some of the issues and maybe even refine their development project um to better fit within that neighborhood before it actually comes to council. And so I think between now and whenever this is studied and a new system is rolled out, there needs to be some process in place for the neighborhoods to participate and publicly comment on, especially development projects and in a way that provides transparency and accountability through an agenda process in the minutes. um as it stands right now, you're really completely removing that pre um public participation in city processes. And as we've seen over time, um without that in place, then the council meetings themselves become forums for maybe misinformation or a public who hasn't been properly noticed and could potentially, you know, take up a lot of time at council meetings that are usually packed with lots of agenda items. So, I'd like to see um something like that put in place as well as proper noticing in terms of when the meetings are going to be and ways for people to participate who who work and also can't come in person. So, thank you for listening to the comments and I'll await the agenda today to see how the discussion goes. Thank you. Bye-bye. Or the minutes, excuse me. Katherine Schmidt, followed by Darcy Phillips via Zoom. Good morning, council members. I have so many comments. I agree with that last commenter um too, but I'm here very specifically. My name is Katherine Schmidt, and I have come to give a quick and very excited endorsement for agenda item C4, um the development of ser of a service plan for a potential parks district. nature, wildlife, and citizens and visitors don't know the boundaries between the county, the cities, and there's inconsistent care and value for our parks right now. Um, we need better funding, and we need this collaboration. Um, thank you to the council and staff for finding potential funding for this and for taking the lead for Sparks and Wo County, too. I'm excited uh for the city of Reno to be doing that. We've been working at Lake Park with the friends of lake park group which is now about 85 people um collaborating with the city and other partners and I just came from the park. That is a success story and I think it shows the value of what collaboration across boundaries can do. Um, so I'm I'm just really excited about this proposal. Um, that it our community will be safer, cleaner, and stronger with collaborations such as these and more stable funding. Um, especially as our area grows and it becomes increasingly dense. Please vote yes on C4. Thank you. Darcy Phillips via Zoom. Good morning. I'm Darcy Phillips. I'm here representing Keep Truckucky Meadows Beautiful. I'm here for agenda item C4. We just wanted to pipe in and express our support for this. As Kathy just mentioned, the collaborative piece of it as well as stable funding. We exist in large part to take the burden off of city parks and county parks departments where we can. So to to free them up to do other work that's more important and that they are more skilled to do. So anything that we can that can be done to support parks department we are fully in support of. So thank you for con considering this and we appreciate that this is happening. Thank you. Patrick Turner. Good morning. Patrick Turner with the Discovery Museum. Just here to express gratitude for the uh potential gift you're considering for the museum. Um for those of you who don't know, we're actually in the old Reno City Hall. So uh our walls were your walls at one point. Um, former uh, mayor Bob Kashell used to always stop by and visit and would say that uh, the museum is a lot more fun or the building is a lot more fun now as a museum than it was at city hall. Um, and we also occasionally will get people stopping by looking to buy a building permit or pay a parking ticket. So, we send them your way. Just a couple of interesting facts about the museum. We opened uh, September 10th, 2011, and we've seen 2.2 2 million people through the doors uh since we opened to the public, which is uh makes us a pretty sub substantial attraction for the city of Reno. Um through our camp program, which serves K through 8th grade students, we see about 2500 students per year and we run our camps uh anytime the school district is out of session. So, fall break, winter break, summer break. Um we also offer a variety of adults programs as well. We're trying to engage people in science regardless of their age or interest. Um, so I encourage you to to uh look into that as well and we we appreciate the potential support today. Thank you very much. Our final public commenter is Susan Lynn. Good morning. For the record, my name is Susan Lynn. I have served as the commodor of the Truckucky River Yacht Club uh for many years uh state stated name going now to other people. Uh I also served as your representative to the regional water planning commission and the flood project and uh I've had 45 years of experience working on the river and I am pleased to be here to support your item C3 which is the park's open space uh update plan perspective for a Truckucky River District. Uh I'm excited that this can take place. We've been asking for it for many, many years. It I think its time has come. The population in Reno has probably doubled since I moved here. Parks are in heavy use. Trails are in heavy use. Uh gosh, it's just exciting to see people out enjoying the outdoors. And I really really think that the if we can form some sort of an entity that is a unification of all three governmental entities whatever shape it takes it's going to require a lot of work a lot of advice and a lot of looking at other communities and what they have done and in my time volunteering I've been to many river uh communities been on many rivers on boats, walked along them. The art, the recreation, the outdoor education is exercise is all extremely important to the community. And I really hope that you will find it in your hearts to support this contract and this effort to unify into a district and find funding that is more stable for parks. open space, trails, and the river. And that's all I have to say. And thank you very much for this opportunity and to see all your new faces up here. Thank you very much. Well, Susan, before you leave, and Madam Vice Mayor, if I may, um I'm not sure everyone recognizes what an icon we have in our midst. Um, you Susan, you rarely come to council, so it's very rare that you would get acknowledgement, but you have committed over 45 years to our community and our waters in particular and our Truckucky River. Everyone in water knows it, whether it's at Tamwa, Western Regional Water Commission or Lake Tahoe or throughout the state. I mean, you are a very special person. So uh I recognize that many may not know you that are sitting in the audience or even up on the up on the council dis but those of us that are in water do recognize the the commitment and the contributions you've made. So thanks for making time for being with us today. Thank you Naomi. Thank you all. Madame Mayor, Madame Vice Mayor, we have no additional live public comment. For the record, we did receive written correspondence as one letter of opposition and five letters of concern for general public comment. Those have been distributed to the Reno City Council and are part of the permanent record. Okay. Thank you, Madame Clerk. Um before I turn it over to the city manager, I was going to ask the council if um you are okay with hearing item C4 first because we have lots of people in the audience for that. We would run through the consent agenda, pull items, and then hear the pulled items after C4. Okay. And madam manager, do you have any questions with that adjustment? No additional changes. Um, as a reminder, we do have an attorney and client uh briefing today during the lunch break. Okay. So, we're going to pull items from consent. Approve consent. Move into item C4 and then we'll go through the rest of the agenda. Madame Vice Mayor, can I move to approve the agenda then as you've identified? Second. You have a motion to second. All those in favor? I. I. Motion carries unanimously. I'm sorry. I was unclear if we we're going to pull consent items later. We're going to approve you. We're going to approve consent. You can pull the items and then we will we will hear them after C4. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Madam Vice Mayor, as to A5, which is the approval of three separate minutes, I'll make the approval of those at this time. Second. We have a motion, a second. All those in favor? I I. Motion carries unanimously. And madame clerk, um we're going to move into the consent agenda item. Members, do we have items to pull? We'll start with Council Member Anderson. No, nothing, Madam Vice Mayor. Nothing today. Okay. Uh, council member Eert consent. Uh, B4, B5, B7, B8, and B10. Madam Mayor, nothing. Thanks. Move to approve all the items other than those that have been pulled. Second. We have a motion, a second. All those in favor? I I motion carries unanimously and we will move into item number C4. And I believe we do want a presentation. Do we have any public comment specifically for this item, Madam Clerk? We do have public comment on item C4. Okay, we will run through the presentation and then go into public comment. Thank you. Welcome Nathan. Thank you everybody. Nathan Elliot, parks and recreation director for the record. I think we've had a lot of great public comment about um this item and appreciative to the community for the support not just today but throughout the years of really propping our system up um while we went through a lot of challenges to get to to these points. So, um, KTMBB, one Truckucky River, all of our folks, uh, in Rysa, and the different, uh, community groups that support us. So, um, what we're here today is to talk about a contract for a parks district service plan. Um, so you'll hear me say it a lot. This is not the creation of a parks district. This is just the contract to go through a service plan, a feasibility study to see what a park district could mean for the region. So the alignment with our strategic plan uh fiscal sustainability this would provide a stable uh a park district could provide a stable uh funding source for for our park system. Uh obviously parks and recreation and trails and open space uh increase uh economic impact and provide community value at all different levels from health and all of that. I couldn't say it any better than a lot of our public comment did. Um and then also arts parks and historical resources. Uh so going back to some previous direction in February of 2020 uh the city of Reno strategic plan was adopted and that mentioned the development of uh creative and sustainable funding sources for our parks and recreation services. Uh, in August of 2023, our recreation and parks commission made a recommendation for um the funding and moving forward of a service plan to explore a park district. That was reinforced in November of 2023 when council accepted uh and adopted the parks, recreation, and open space master plan, which the number one recommendation for um the parks, recreation, open space master plan uh implementation was uh to explore the creation of a parks district to provide stable funding. Uh, also in September of 2024, council adopted the Truckucky River vision plan, which had this as a key strategy for um improving and and lifting the river. And then, of course, we're here today with our service plan contract. But I also wanted to mention uh our partners with the county who um in in um May of 2023, their parks, recreation, open space commission also supported, similar to ours, the uh moving forward of a service plan and exploring a park district option. Um, and then there is an item going to uh the county commission next week on the 10th uh tentatively scheduled which would provide funding support uh as a reimbursement to the city to offset the city's upfront cost for this contract. Uh, and right now that is listed at 100,000 for tenative approval. U just a quick snapshot of where we are. Again, I think public comment did a great job of explaining this, but uh we estimate that right now we have $150 million in deferred maintenance. Um, our funding levels never really recovered from pre-recession. So, we have less staff. We have less money. We have the same or more amount of spaces and and uh things to maintain. And we don't have a really good funding source for capital improvements. So, our new facilities are done through a bond or uh another measure. We don't have a good funding tool to to build new things either. So, why a service plan? A service plan is a legally required first step in the exploration of a park district. It's going to tell us a lot of things about a lot of different ways a park district could work. So, we're not here to answer what a park district could be for Reno. That is what this process will do. So, this process will take us through all of the steps, all of the options, all of the boundaries, all of those things. So, that's why it's legally required uh through NRS 318A, which governs the creation and maintenance of a park district. So, what a park district service plan is, again, a legally required first step. It's a strategic blueprint for a park district, what it could be, how we would fund it. A governance framework, how would it be set up through uh through the legislature? Um it would be a community planning to cool uh tool which would be heavily involving the community at all steps to be what would what would a park district look like? What would we want in that? What would we not want to be included uh at the jurisdictional levels? and then of course a financial forecasting tool about how how much the operation cost would be and how much capital cost would be what it isn't. So what we're not doing today is making a final decision to create a park district. Um we're not getting anything other than the contract as a a fiscal obligation. So what's approved today is the contract. It's not uh binding anything for the future other than the contract and it's not a substitute for public engagement. This is public engagement. This will be the process that we take to the public and work through with all of the um boards and commissions from uh from the wreck and park side but also from uh the elected officials as well. And it's not an immediate solution. This is going to take time. It has to go through a legislative process to to be approved and created. So this isn't going to help us today, but we need to start today. Um so the estimated timeline is probably about a year. We're hoping to do it as quickly as possible so we can make sure we're ready for for any of the legislative processes that we'll need in the future. And then also if there's uh ballot initiatives, we we have every chance to get in front of those when those come forward. Um but you can see a lot of data gathering in the initial phase. They'll learn about what our current uh master plans have for each area in each jurisdiction. Uh consolidating all of those similar to what the Truckucky River vision plan did. Get the stakeholders in the room um and make sure we're aware of the information that's already out there. providing a situational analysis uh which will talk about the different boundaries, what could be in that space, and then an action plan and development for how uh the district could be created, a governing board could be assigned. Again, all of those with public input and with this this body and um your colleagues and other jurisdictions input as well, and then finally the service plan with uh we'll prepare documents to go forward for approval. So, what's what's important about this? It's not just another plan. Loud and clear. Uh we don't want another plan that'll sit on the shelf. This is specifically different in that at the end of it, we have decisions to make that can actually impact the change from a funding perspective, um from an efficiency perspective. There will be multi-jurisdictional uh hopefully support on what those decisions are. Uh it will at that point include what assets would be included, whether it would be trails in the river or aquatics. Don't want to get into all that, but it could be anything or it could be nothing. So, it will be a study that helps us get to that space. Um, and then how the park district could be funded. We'll know options for that and we'll have decisions to make. So, again, the summary the summary of the contract is $223,550. Uh, that would get us from today to the documents we need to form and go to legislature. We would have all of that ready to go after we've made those decisions. uh we would initially fund it in in in total at the 223,550. Uh we do expect uh support it's tenatively scheduled as I said in Wo County at 100,000 and then the redevelopment agency had in their approved budget uh 60,000 for the support of this service plan. So the general fund would re would fund the remaining part of that plan if both if the WO county portion is approved next week at the difference at that time. So, all right. So, with that, I have a recommended motion and I'm ready for any questions. Thank you, Nathan. We're going to move into public comment and we'll come back to questions. [Music] Madame Vice Mayor, the only public Oh, we have two three public commenters today. We have two public commenters today. Um, Iris Jaye Papard followed by Danielle Henderson. Hello, my name is Iris Jay Papard, the executive director of One Truckucky River. My comments are my own with our mission in mind to ensure a healthy, thriving, sustainable river connected to the hearts and minds of its community. I'm 100% in support of C4, moving forward with the service plan. Thank you, council, for putting your attention to this topic and for our partners and residents that are providing input on this item today. From my experience being in this position now for seven years, I see many praise and very few prioritize the Truckucky River. Last summer, this council made a big positive step to complete the Truckucky River vision plan and back in 2016 approved unanimously the one Truckucky River management plan. Now, we watch to see what happens. Will it collect dust on the shelf like some in the past? Or will it be a blueprint for the river to evolve into a thriving recreational, ecological educational economic and social well-being asset for everyone in this region along with our visitors to enjoy. A big part of the answer to that question is what is the level of funding allocated for parks, recreation, and open space departments across all three jurisdictions. Right now, the answer is not much compared to everything else. One thing, other things are important, but what about our trails, parks, pools, open space, and Truckucky River? What about the places that bring the outdoors and tranquility to so many people? The service plan is the first step required towards a park district that could dedicate funding to parks, trails, open space, and yes, the Truckucky River in our region. Service plans give us the data needed to assist agencies on how to best work together to collaborate. Supporting this is a key step to praising and more importantly prior prior prior I am so passionate about this that I can't even say this word prioritizing prioritizing prioritizing we need prioritizing not verbal praising I will close with one the one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The time is now. Please support the service plan. Thank you. Danielle Henderson. Good morning. My name is Danielle Henderson. I am the natural resource manager at the Truckucky River Flood Management Authority. I am in favor of approving this contract and moving forward with the development of a service plan to explore the future formation of a park district. The flood management authority is a joint effort among the cities of Reno and Sparks, Wo County, and numerous other stakeholders to reduce the devastating impacts of flooding along the Truckucky River in the Truckucky Meadows. We are building infrastructure and managing the flood plane to reduce flood damages, safeguard public health, and create a more resilient community. We are also, as part of this effort, preserving open space, restoring the ecosystem, and enhancing recreational opportunities along the Treky River. This service plan is very important. It will inform the electeds and stakeholders about how best to work together to manage and take care of our public parks and open spaces that are so vital to our community. And with that, I urge you to please approve this agreement and develop the park service plan. Thank you, Dori Martinez via Zoom. Good morning, Madam Cler. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes, we can. Okay. Good morning, Madame Clerk and Mayor and all of the uh council folks. This is Dora Martinez. For the record, I just want to thank um April Wolf and all of the people that are in charge of the our city parks. They're very accessible and clean. And the ADA bathroom are usable and clean the one I've been. And I want to thank um the um mayor Hillary Shibi for making it possible. So now RTC Access can bring me to Penrook um to do the adapt adaptable bike um cycling. So thank you so much and please uh support this uh agenda. Thank you and take care and stay hydrated. Madame Vice Mayor, Madame Mayor, with that we have no additional live public comment. For the record, we did receive 10 comments associated with this item prior to 4 PM yesterday, June 3rd. 10 letters in favor and zero letters in opposition, zero letters of concern. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to start with Council Member Martinez. He is the liazison to the parks and wreck commission. Thanks so much, madame vice mayor, and thanks for the presentation, director. I also want to thank everybody that contributed to the conversation, all the different organizations that have come out um and supported this effort. Um as we heard from the clerk, there was zero opposition and concern for this item. So for me, it's very easy to support this service coming in this service plan getting approved and moving forward, especially because we don't want the parks recreation open space master plan to be a plan that just sits on the shelf. But these are actions that we can take to implement what was recommended from that plan and many of the others that you uh pointed out in your presentation. And I think the other thing that I am really impressed by your team is that you found multiple ways to figure out the funding of this service plan and making sure that the effects to our general fund were as minimal as possible. So, I want to applaud you and your team's efforts for figuring that out and making sure that the budget deficit within the general fund wasn't as big of an issue as it could be to help this move forward. So, I just want to start there and make sure that uh I'm setting the stage to incorporate all of the approvals and the support that we've been getting from our community members, from the joint commission meetings that happened between the county, the city of Sparks, and the city of Reno when our parks commissions actually met and discussed this um and supported the efforts of moving forward. So, I'll just start there and leave it at that. Thanks so much, Madame Mayor. Thank you. And we will be using our technology for the hand raising. And I see council member Reese has his hand raised. Thank you so much, Madame Vice Mayor. Um, Mr. Ruad, I may not have a lot of questions, but we'll see about that in the second round. I suppose I want to speak first to the folks who've shown up here today and who are watching online and like Miss JL Pard, I am incredibly passionate about this topic and so it's easy to get very excited about what's in front of us. This is a really big deal. It is the moment where we have been directing traffic for at least the five years, six years I've been on council and all working towards a point. Now the frustrating point of course is that in government we move rather slow and the situations that we find ourselves in with our budget create the conditions under which we don't always get to make our priorities be the top budgetary item. I would say for my part um this council has done everything it can within the framework of a very difficult financial budgetary system and the way that our tax dollars fund resources that we have made small steps incrementally over the time things that we wouldn't have been able to get to this point to do if we didn't do those things first. And so I'll point out a couple of those. First is that we have recently reclassified the river as a park, right? And so that decision helps us to move forward with this. Um when we went to um as a city and a city manager's office went to Columbus a couple of years ago and inquired about how they were so successful with their parks department and their answer was park districts. You know, they have 119 parks districts in Columbus and then we were able to lure you away from your prior employer and to come here um set us on a path that we're now here today for. And so as frustrated as it may be at times, the goal is still the end result and the thing that we are most import uh I think seeking for which is to say I believe we should have 500 700 million a billion dollars in parks, right? I I think if you look at the model that the WC1 bond related to the school district, right, the same thing is ultimately going to happen in this community, I think, is we've got to decide as voters how we're going to prioritize the funding of the things that we desire to see happen, which are more parks everywhere, more trails, more pools, more flat fields, more ice rinks, right? All the things that we know that our community prioritizes, but we lack the resources to create. So the parks district I think is ultimately the thing there. I I will say too that you know the arc of history bends towards the light right and so where we have um been able to do something like the Moana Springs Aquatic Center so the first groundup pool in 30 years in this community where we have been able to prioritize things that um like improvements at Sky Tavern or the creation of the cycle track at Northwest Reno Park. These are all small incremental things leading us to a larger thing. I will be absolutely in favor of this agenda item. It will be my priority for the 10 years that I have remaining on this body to make sure that we have the most worldclass parks, that our river is um the jewel that it deserves to be um and that we move forward with all due speed. So, thank you so much. And I may have questions in round two. Council member Der. Yeah, thank you. Um to say I'm super excited about this would be an understatement. So, I'm double triple super excited. Um, we went to the legislature, not not actively, but as part of a larger group, and we got the legislature to authorize these parks districts for for our region. Um, and here's the next step. Uh, we already heard several speakers speak to how important parks are. And why is it? It's because it directly speaks to our quality of life. It's kind of what we live for, many of us. you know, we work, but then we live to play. And many of us play outdoors. Um, whether we're just enjoying nature or whether we're participating in a very focused activity like a tennis or a swimming. Um, so parks and the amenities are incredible. And when people rank cities, this is what they talk about. How many places there are to go hang out, how many places to experience the city and what it has to offer, the climate, the region. Um, you know, I don't think um anything is more famous in New York than their Central Park. Um, you know, it's it's worldrenowned. And why is that? You have an incredibly dense city, but they're surrounding an incredibly special space that has a lot for everyone. So, we have been extremely frustrated with the way that we move this forward with maintaining the um uh the per door price, the residential construction tax that people pay, whether it's a home or an apartment, not people, but the developers pay um is very restricted in what it can be used for. It cannot be used for maintenance. It cannot be used to repair old things. It can only be used for new things. So, we're always been adding adding adding without the ability to understand the life cycle of that thing that we're adding, the need for maintenance. What is the full cost of putting in a picnic table for example, to take care of it, to clean it, to replace it when necessary. So, I have a few questions. um given that I'm committed. In fact, our very first um uh proposal to the legislature since I was on council, we went and asked for a parks ballot initiative, our very first. It was 2015 and we were not successful. They would not allow us to ask our residents what they thought. It it was extremely disappointing at that time. And since that time, we've tried to figure out what else can we do? How else can we get to the end? So, I have a few questions for you in my remaining time. What is really a service plan? A service plan sounds like it's to provide services, but is it really also about facilities? Why is the legislature involved? Is it going to be a JPA? In other words, they authorized us to set these districts. Why do we have to go back to them uh a second time? um the amount of 223,000. Is that the total amount or is that in addition to what other contributions we might get? And um 119 parks districts. I went to Columbus, too. I didn't realize that. But how many I mean, do we need a separate parks district for each of our 87 parks or can there be one big parks district? So answer as many as you can. Um I'd appreciate it. What's the service plan? Start you off. Have some time. Okay. Um, let me start with the with the money. It 223,550 is the contracted amount. Total amount total amount. So, minus if if the county approves their contribution, so minus 100,000 that would come off of it for Reno and then 60,000 through the RDA, which will be a reimbursement. Um, so, wow, let me I don't want to miss anything. Um, essentially what a service plan is is a feasibility study and gives us the answers of what the right park district for Reno could be and that includes boundaries, that includes the financial uh financial cost to operate it and also the financial method to fund it, the options that are available. So there is no there is no one boilerplate that we would just drop a park district on. So um what we did specifically in this agreement as a request to the consultant is u we want to know what a river district cross jurisdictional would look like, what a city of Reno specific jurisdiction would look like and then what a regional district would look like. So we have options and then even within those options will be service level uh choices. So like you know good, better, best if if we wanted it funded at the highest level and you know white glove service and all our public restrooms it can be an option. it has a cost to it, right? Versus what's what's the uh the best answer for Reno. So, we're not going to answer any of that today. I'm trying to stay away from examples as much as possible because that's what this plan will do. Okay. But then the legislation Okay. Council member, do we're going to move on to council member Anderson and then we can come back to you again. Can I ask my questions? No, we are going to stick to the time and council member Anderson has not had any questions yet, but we'll go right back to you. Hello. Good morning. I just want to start with thanking all of the volunteers that are in the the audience here. It just brings joy just seeing everyone that's been working and supporting our parks. You are just so beautiful and so full of joy and so full of just what we need in this community. So, thank you for the work you do in the parks, but also for being here to support this today. Um Mr. Ulad, I am just so excited that this is on the agenda today. Um I think it was maybe six weeks ago when I was meeting with um Jennica, our liaison about what's going on with the parks and what we can do to start looking into getting a parks district um formed and blah blah blah and she just looked at me like you mean outside of what Nathan's already handling. So um I didn't have that agenda yet. So I was just so excited to see how far along you were on this and I am excited to support it. So thank you. We'll go to council member Eert and then we'll come back to you council member door. Council member Eert. Yes. Thank you. So, um I also just wanted to say thank you so much for your work on this. And when I saw the the pros plan, parks and recreation open space plan, I was really blown away with um just so much of the information that was in there um and plans for what we could do, but also the areas that it showed where we were um lacking. You know, the acreage that um Reno needed to catch up on. Uh the amount of parks specifically in my ward I believe it's either four or five out of the city is 83 parks are currently in ward four. So, um I'm extremely um uh excited to get new parks um for my words uh for all of Reno flat fields and all that, but also specifically for word for uh to increase tree canopy, maybe um plant some fruit trees in some of my fruit deserts or food deserts. So, um I just want to start off with that, but I wanted to ask um you know, you mentioned that it would potentially need to go to the state. Um so, can you explain like what portion of this plan would potentially need to go to the state for a vote? Yes. Thank you, Nathan Ol Parks and Recreation Director. For the record and for Mickey, um this would need to go back to the state because it's a part of the the 318A. it's it's forming a special government body. Um so it has to go back to the state with with uh forming documents. So that's the part it it after the uh jurisdictions decide this is what we want our park district to look like whether it's interjurisdictional or not um whatever jurisdictions are involved they would uh recommend that that go back to the legislature and the legislature approves it for creation and at that point it becomes uh the district with a governing body and with the ability to move forward on another initi other initiatives for funding and things like that. Okay. So at that point, what what would kind of be the expectation for a funding mechanism for for that type of um uh organization or plan for for um forming a parks district? Sure. There there are quite a few different options um similar to some of our other options that we have currently as a city. Um it it really will come out in the service plan which uh which through discussion with the jurisdictions what um the recommended choices would be for funding. But as an example, not as um a a choice at this point. It can be anything from room tax to fees for their services, rentals, things like that. Um it can go all over the the board with what fees uh government typically has the ability to to levy and ask for support for. Okay. So there there isn't a a park specific fee right now that goes into the general fund that we would carve out and put into this. It would likely need to be a new fee, but we don't know where it would land yet. Is that accurate? Well, it all of that all of what you just said is possible. Either or, and so um that will be discovered through this process and and we'll make decisions at the end of it. Okay. U Madame Mayor, do you have any questions? Council member Eert, we'll come back to you. Yes, I do. Okay. Council, uh, Madame Mayor, please. Okay. Thank you. Um, first of all, Nathan, thank you so much. Really, really appreciate you. I I can't begin to tell you. Have you been working with Julie Conway in any way? She was um our parks director at one time and this was really one of her um babies. Do you has she met with you by HS? Nation? Yes. Um, she was one of the first people I met with when I got here. um and she has uh her partners in crime who have been supportive of this and were I think really instrumental in helping get this uh to be a possibility at the state level too. So um yes, great great lady. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I just wanted to recognize her because um she is just so dedicated to this and quite honestly I am not excited. I am I'm going to remain cautiously optimistic. um this has been such a heavy lift and I don't understand why when it's so popular and people um you know obviously are so supportive. What I would say is Councilwoman Dur is exactly right. It was really disheartening and anytime we have to go to the legislature we have to hold our breath. So I'm I think there should also be that what does this look like in the capacity? Can we also separate the river? So, if we go down there and the parks district crashes and burns, you know, what's um another viable way for the Truckucky River because I do think um people separate that and don't realize it as a park and um I I think it's just been horrific how the lack of resources have been um funded for this. We actually need one person dedicated from Sparks, the county, the city of Reno dedicated to the river. That's all they do. Um, it is so complex and it absolutely needs the love and attention. It's our best asset and we treat it like it doesn't barely exist. Um, I want to just commend you, Nathan, for doing a stellar job getting it here. It was something that I could I had a really hard time um getting the support the support even though everyone says it but it's you know I that has not been my experience. Um so I just commend you but I do think we should have what happens if the legislature it dies. Is there something we can put on the ballot for our citizens? uh we should have other plan B's um other ways when we go down there that it's not just one bite at the apple because politics is a funny thing when you get down there. So I'm just asking you to think a little bit more um broad on what other alternatives we can have. Not to mention I think the messenger um means a lot at the legislature. So these are all really really strategic things we need to think about. And I would say all of the supporters, they have got to get down there with pitchforks. I mean, I don't know what else will work. Um, so I'm just saying that we've got to get highly, highly organized if we want this to be successful in any capacity. Um, but we also need to be realistic and realize all of this money could be spent for not if we don't come up with other ways to, you know, fund these initiatives because we can't rely on the legislature. I think that's really clear. Council member Der, thank you. I I want to follow the mayor's thought on this and I I want to re ask my question. What exactly do we need from the legislature? It sounds like you've already thought it through. So I understand you don't want to answer but I you've included in your presentation. So what's your vision here? No I I sorry I was I just very similar to what I uh answered council member Eert's question. We have to get approval from the state to create this special governing body. Okay. But that's what I want to understand. Is it a special governing body? Is it like the flood authority? Is it like RTC? Those are special governing bodies. I I think in many ways it it functions in a similar fashion. There's a specific intent for it. It's specialized and expertise that would go into it and it has dedicated funding for it. So I think in many ways it is similar to those that you mentioned akin to a GI. Well, and I I was going to say so what we have here for those bodies is a joint powers authority where we bring our authorities together to manage a new thing. And I didn't know if that was what you were envisioning. A G is a little separate set up under a separate statute and um it's a separate unit of government that that is separately voted on. So I didn't know if you were saying bring together leaders, elected officials from Reno, Sparks, Wo County to run this like we do all these other in you know regional bodies or if your vision was a brand new group that you vote on and they just run the parks district. I I didn't know what you were already thinking. Sure. So I I'm I'm really trying to keep my vision out of it and and that that's what the service plan will do is help cast the options. Again, it could be Reno specific and this this body decides it's a Reno specific if that's what and then we don't need to go to the legislature. That's what I'm trying to understand necessarily. No, not necessarily because it would still be a park district, but it wouldn't necessarily have the interjurisdictional element, which we may want. We may not. I again I'm not saying what we will do. I'm saying what the plan will provide for us. Okay. And to the mayor's point, it may very well be a separate uh ballot initiative. We didn't have to go to the legislature for WC1 for the schools, for example, and and the schools are in all the jurisdictions, but we had to go to them to get um dedicated funds with an override, right, on our sales tax. And so I'm also trying to understand is your vision or the vision that's contemplated here is that they would come up with a separate funding plan along with a separate governance model that again that is what the service plan will do is give the options of how it can be funded and at what level and at what boundary. Okay. Well just to think about some stuff. Um the flood has a 1/8 cent sales tax that was part of a one quarter cent sales tax that half of it funded the railroad trench and half of it funded the flood project. Um RTC has a road impact fee that is charged and gas tax you know just to use their two biggest sources of income as well as federal funds. Um the the other interjurisdictional things TAMWA has its own service charge um and etc. So there's many ways to get there whether you charge people or there's a government large s or you add to taxing. So just some things to guide your person and I guess a question is is your consultant are they going to visit with us or Yes. Okay. Thank you very much. Absolutely. Council member Ree, Mr. Ultad, it's of course we're all chomping at the bit because we have a lot of details and and government sometimes both lives and dies in the details. So forgive us if we're excited. I I suppose for my part I understand what you're going to go out and do. I believe that what I hope you're hearing from my colleagues is that the pros planning process will include a bunch of permutations. It may be that there are needed to be 119 separate parks districts. It may not be. It may be a consolidated and colllocating government entity with all the other jurisdictions. It may not be. But are you saying that you're going to explore that and they're going to present a layer and multiple types of options? That's right. Right. Because at the end of the day, sometimes people who go out to the parks, they don't know if they're in a Reno park, a county park, a state park, they're on the river. It they just want to be outside, right? And they don't really care about the minutia of government and who has which silo and which funding mechanism comes for. They just want the park, right? And what we're tasked with as a body, of course, will be all the details that come with it. And I think time will tell as to how we do it. Um, I uh remember the discussions in the legislature around the formation of park districts and creating them and it's much like a 474 fire district where the people vote to create a geographic area and then as part of that vote they then decide how to fund it, right? And so I'm not passing on which one of the versions of it will be the one that's correct. I'm just saying that we'll get there through that process. Um, and so for my colleagues who are not familiar with those kind of governmental or quasi governmental entities, those are good examples. GIS and 474 fire districts. Um, I want to ask and make sure that I understand because one of the things that I am hoping you will do is that you will create a gathering space at some kind of place where all of the entities who would be a part of this might be able to come. And I'm thinking about people who've been here today. KTMBB, Truckucky Meadows Parks Foundation, uh Tamba, High Sierra, Lacrosse, Wo County School District, um you know, all the different entities, the um Truckucky uh Yacht Club, which I had only just heard about today. Um I hope that there will be some I don't know, gathering at the convention center where all the people get to come and get to offer their good advice and thoughts because um that outreach is important, but also the collective knowledge that people in this region share. And one of the groups that I haven't heard mentioned by anyone today that is very important to me uh as we talk about the river. The river is one park, right? And but is our indigenous communities and so I want to make sure that they are um at the table that they have a seat to have a say in what we do. Um they will be an important part because the the river has both aesthetic values but also has intrinsic values. It has spiritual values to the people who have made their home along the river for thousands of years. And so just make sure that that is included too. Um I'm excited. We're all excited. Everyone believes that this is the the next best step and I'll be excited when the motion comes. Thank you, Nathan. This is fantastic, exciting, great, all the things. I know it's very um all of my colleagues are very passionate about this. As I remember when I first came in to interview for this position in front of all of you, Councilwoman Dur, one of her first questions was, "What are you going to do to fund parks and recreation?" Oh, parks district sounds good to me. So, now we're finally at that point and I've learned a lot more about it. Um, I have one question. When we had the pros plan come before us, one of the suggestions or recommendations out of there was that we were going to needed a whole bunch of more parks for the people that we have. That was one of the things that they said that we could use more parks based on other jurisdictions. So when we move into the service plan, um I think it's it's going to be appropriate to look at that comment, but I also for for my consideration, I am concerned with maintaining what we have and making that fantastic and great first. So I think I understand in this service plan is the first step to get us where we need to go and there's a whole bunch of things that are going to happen in between that time and when it comes back to us again where we're going to start figuring out the details and I have confidence in you and your team that you're going to help us get there to where we want to be eventually. Is that accurate? We're just going to come back and ask you. So if you get it right, we'll get it right. I'm just kidding. We're uh a big part to your point of any any park district would be um what it costs to maintain what it costs to maintain capital features. You know, that's a big challenge as things wear out. And then what it would cost to build new features, to build new parks, to build new trails, things like that. So, it'll be very clearly lined out and there'll be menus of options for for this body and the other bodies to choose from. Fantastic. And I've also heard um as Councilman Ree and I'm sure all of my colleagues that this is extremely important to our commun community. It is very important with all the and we have lots of good resources out there too. So the outreach is going to be important. And I had a whole bunch of things to say, but we got this public comment from uh Susan Lynn and it says this is where I will end. This is a pivotal point for our river and our parks. So I want you to go forward and make it happen, Nathan. Okay. Council, Council Member Eert, do you have another question? Yes, thank you. Um, I was going to thank you earlier when my time was up. Um, but I just wanted to say, um, it's been wonderful working with you. I've worked with you, um, on parks specific to my war. You've really helped me kind of, um, focus on improving my kind of central park and making it, um, the best it could be. um until we are able to increase our parking bridge. Um and you've also been incredibly helpful to me with my senior community and helping people get signed up with discount programs and things like that through Medicare Advantage. So um I just want to say I've really appreciated working with you and I know that you're really um uh a go-getter, get things done. So I I agree with um Mayor Shei that you do not know what's going to happen at the legislative session. like it's just um I don't know what motivates people, but um I think if anybody's going to be able to get it done, I think it's going to be you. I've seen you really um do incredible things in a lot of different capacity for parks and wreck and um I'm just really excited to see this happen and um look forward to, you know, what we can do in the future. So, just wanted to thank you and and um provide those comments and um yeah, that was it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, I just want to um throw one thing in here when it comes to the river. Um again, Nathan, thank you so much. I'm like I can't tell you how proud I am of you of getting it here. Um like I said, it was very very painful for me. One of the things that I think is really essential that we could do this is this would be really important with the Truckucky River. One of the biggest threats is the flooding aspect and it's a huge threat to this community. What I think should happen is we have all three jurisdictions that sit on the flood project. I would ask um I believe Councilwoman Der sits over there and so does Councilman uh Martinez that they go and bring um a resolution to have you have Sparks over there. You have Wo County, you have the city of Reno to ask for dedicated funding for that one person that can continue to help you all three jurisdictions. So, it's not siloed because that's where I really identified some pain points. Everyone loves to do this. Um, oh, not our responsibility, but that river connects all of us. Um and if we could get that funding to have that one dedicated person to really make sure they're in coordination with one Truckucky River, all the other initiatives um you know mitigation along the river, that's public safety, every single aspect of that river and I think it should be um a pretty easy lift. Um I think it would also show a lot of camaraderie between each jurisdiction to show that the river really matters and means something. But the biggest threat is the flooding aspect and I think that their eyes should be keenly aware of it. So I would also um include that in the motion Councilman Martinez that you will go to flood uh project go to the flood project with a resolution asking for all three jurisdictions for them to fund. Um, remember that's a lot of tax dollars that goes into there and um, it's certainly an initiative we can all get behind together. But I that's my fear, Nathan, is that um, it just it has to have someone that is just so dedicated and that's all they see and the partners. Um, I know, you know, staff is busy. We're doing a lot more with less. Um, and I just would love to see you have an additional set of eyes. But I think that is one thing that um, if there is a will, there's a way that we could uh, find the funding to make sure that that happens. But I do think that they need to be much more engaged at the table on initiatives like this. So anyway, thanks so much. To the motion. Kick it to council member Reed Martinez. All right, Councilman Martinez. All you I just had one more thing that I wanted to add if you don't mind. Go right ahead. Um I know that um one, you know, because I'm sure you want another government agency thrown into the mix here, but this is something that I just wanted to make sure was studied in in this pros plan. I know that the RSCVA be our parks, everything, it's critical to our community, hands down. wouldn't I mean wouldn't have it any other way that I would fully support this this energy behind this um this plan and the district. It's also critical and it is my dream that our parks and open spaces will become a much larger part of our tourism, you know, mix. And so I know the RSCBA is set up currently with um what are they? They are rec a fair and recreation GI currently. Um I am wondering if there's a way that they could be a part of the funding mix with that GD. So just making sure that we engage them in that understand what what the um strengths and weaknesses of and you know maybe getting some part of the funding from that um as a part of the study. So thanks perfect. Thank you. Thank you for noting that. And madame mayor, did you want me to include some of that TurfMA stuff in the motion or do you want us to move forward? I know in the past Durma has been supportive of like the River Rangers uh initiative and helping sponsor that as well somewhat. Yeah, they've been somewhat supportive. We've gotten that's why um so I don't think you necessarily have to, but just okay. I think that both of you being on that board really need to raise it. Yeah. Um and it's more so that they hear that we need cooperation and that this really matters. I would also say to Councilwoman Anderson's point, there's a lot of key players in this. RTC is one of them. Um because I think we forget RSCVA should be one of them. There are that's why I'm saying you have to have someone that really understands uh the capacity and the complexity of everyone that needs to come together. A matter of fact, um I I received a grant from Harvard. they came out, they did extensive research um on the river uh because they identified it as such a huge asset. Um we should make sure that that is sort of included in some of the educational aspect of it because it's got a lot of great information. They were here and we were all working on it. So um and this kind of picked up from you know co we were we were really working on it. We got a lot of momentum and then that happened and it really kind of set us back. So, I'm so grateful, Nathan, that you're you're getting us here, and that really is because your your massive passion. It really makes a difference when you have a director that's right at the forefront of their passion. So, good job. Thank you. Thank you. And it sounds like we have our marching orders. And with that, I'm honored to move to approve the professional services agreement with Pro Consulting Inc. Second. Second. And I have a second. All those in favor say I. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Okay, I looks like we are Yay. I like I said, I'm not I'm not excited yet. I'm caut cautiously optimistic. I just want it to happen overnight. So, um but it is exciting and I just want to thank Julie Conway. I don't know if she is she's probably not here, but she's probably listening. um massive champion for the city for for decades and uh without her I'm not sure we would have come this far. So, thank you Julie for listening. Madame Mayor, we all none of the members in chambers had any consent items. Just the member online had consent items to be pulled. Okay. Um then we're going to head into is that at your request, city manager? Um heading into consent items right now. Okay. Um, Councilwoman Eert, I'm going to start with consent item uh four. I think we could pull four and five together possibly. It's for sewer and um lift station um funding and contracts. Okay. And this is um just because I'd like to have a little bit of discussion and kind of um explanation about what what we're doing on this project, what this funding is for. Um I know that sewer is always a hot topic for me and my constituents and my ward. So, I know that there's um staff reports available online, but I just would like to have just kind of a highle um not necessarily presentation, but if you can just explain what we're going to be doing with this contract with KG Walters Construction, Inc. Um I know that um Reno's portion is um is uh shared with uh Rizworf, but if you can just kind of talk about what we're paying for and why that that um cost is shared. Well, good morning uh Madame Mayor, city council. This is Nick Brothers, associate civil engineer, utility services. Um, Councilwoman Eert, uh, Rizworth is owned and operated solely by Reno, and so we don't have a cost share for this facility, but item B4 is for the award of, uh, our flowshaped capacity project, which is to replace some pumps at our wastewater facility in your ward. Uh, if I can give a little background, the Renostead water reclamation facility provides high quality treatment and water reclamation services uh, to our users out there. And uh part of a critical part of our treatment is removal of solids. Our solids pump station there at the facility sends our removed solids to uh our partners at Tommorf uh for processing there. Normally solids would be processed by dewatering and then trucked to a landfill. We don't have that equipment in the Renoad area. Uh this project is for replacement of those pumps which serve two critical needs. The first is managing those solids and the second is wet weather flow mitigation and sending high flows uh over the hill so that we can reduce flows to Swan Lake. Um that's sort of the general overview of the project and uh we're recommending that we award the contract to KG Walters and replace those pumps with a properly sized pumps to do those jobs. Great. And when do you know when those pumps were last replaced or first installed? I guess maybe that's a great question. I believe those pumps were first installed in 2004 and they were modified for uh the flow shave activities that they've been asked to do in 2019. So, okay. So, lasted a while, but um and then where do we take the shave to? Where does it go to? It goes to uh the regional facility, Truckucky Meadows Water Reclamation Facility processes that that flow. Okay. And is that the facility that we share with Sparks? It is. Okay. So, that facility we pay a portion based off of usage and they also pay a portion. Correct. Uh that's a good question. So, our flow our flow shave goes to sewer and and no, we don't get uh payment from Sparks or for anything that we send to them. That would be um maybe a portion of our uh overall capacity that Reno owns. Okay. Yeah. I meant that we share the cost of the facility with Sparks or is that Yes. At to at Tom Warf they do this project is at Reno Stead. So it will be solely funded by us. Okay. Okay. And um it says on B5 it's for wards 2, three, and four. Can you explain what's happening at two and three? Is it the same same um equipment being replaced? Uh so Eric Miller, associate civil engineer with utility services. Uh these are for sewer lift stations. So kind of separate from the treatment plant. Sewer lift stations will elevate the sewer in order to go gravity again to eventually head to the treatment plants. Uh and with this 2025 sewer lift station improvement project, there are three lift stations. Sagittarius lift station which is located in Ward 2, Donner Springs lift station which is located in Ward three and then Steadb bus lift station is located in Ward 4. So all three of these lift stations are getting various amounts of improvements to them. Uh piping uh valves, some are getting a forcement replacement. So this infrastructure is just starting to deteriorate and we're getting ahead before it actually fails. Okay. And what's the like expected lifespan of this type of equipment? Depending on the environment it's living in, it can be 20 to 50 years. Um, we are trying to push that farther and farther as new technology becomes or new uh parts uh come to the area um for whether it's wet wells, polymer wet wells to prevent corroding. Um, so we're trying to hit closer to that 50-year as we rehab these ones. That's great. Okay. Well, thank you very much. I don't have any further questions. I can make a motion. Do I need to make a separate one for B before and B5? Miss Nebert, before you do that, can I just make a couple of comments? I I think um I want to just thank you uh Miss Mcun and your team. Um Mr. Brothers and Mr. Miller, very impressive. I I don't know why you're wearing ties, but maybe that's just me. Um, but it is incredible to see your team and I thought the staff reports were incredibly well done. Um, I don't always get into the minutiae of every page, but these were incredibly well written, so thank you for that. Okay, I'm going to do that for all. All right. Anyone else? No. Okay. Councilman Eert to approve uh V4. All right. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. All those opposed. Motion carries. Councilwoman Eert. Yeah. A motion to approve uh B5. Second. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Okay. Heading into item seven. Councilwoman Eber. Yeah, I this is for parks and recck software and I was just curious if this would be um helpful with anything that was happening with C4 that we talked about today or if this is um completely outside of that. Um so I was just kind of um wanted to find out if um you know maybe that would help um identify some areas that um maybe need more attention. Um, so I just wanted to kind of hear more about um what what we're looking for with this software and if if it will help us with um any kind of um uh surveys or or reports or we're doing to create a parks district. Sure. Uh thanks for the question, Nathan Olia, parks and recreation director for the record. Um active is our kind of um portal into parks and recreation for the public. This is where you would sign up for um any of our programs or services, rent a park space, rent a building, um take swim lessons, things like that. So, it's a registration reservation um and membership uh software. So, we already have it. Um, but we are adjusting the contract effective July 1st to move into a flat rate so that as our revenues grow, um, our payment doesn't grow at the at a at a, uh, a rate that would exceed what the flat cost would be. Um, and then also, it's moving to, um, pass on, consistent with the rest of the city's initiatives, the credit card and debit card fees to, uh, our users rather than the city absorbing those. So, that's that's the kind of big items here. Um, it's it's a service that uh connects a ton of people to what we do and and we're happy to keep it going. Great. And is this a contract that we renew every year? uh it's it's not uh renewed every year u through council because it it generally will have renewals but we are changing it this year and that's so because of the changes we're bringing it forward and then also uh we only did it for a one-year period to make sure it works in the city's favor and that we have the option to renegotiate based on revenues and things like that. So uh you may see it again in a year. Okay. So it might change in some some way next year. So, it might be back, but if it's working, you'll just do a renewal and we won't need to necessarily see it at council. Uh, that that may be the case. Yeah, we will find out. So, okay, great. See what the next year brings. Yeah, thank you. Um, I don't have anything else right now. If anybody else does. Nope. Why don't you give me a motion? All right. Motion uh to approve. Second. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Councilwoman Eber, I'm going to put um eight and 10 on hold uh because we are on a time schedule um because we have to go into attorney client. So, I'm going to move up two items if that's okay with you to be heard now and then we will go into attorney client and then we could come back to your consent. Okay. Sure. No problem. Okay. Uh with that being said Cody Which one? Let's see. All done. We're going to um head into item C1. Madame clerk, do you have any public comment on this item? Hello, madame mayor. We do not have any public comment uh submitted or registered for item C1. Okay. Um this is annual city manager performance evaluation including discussion of accomplishments potential action to accept the evaluation established goals for the upcoming year. You know what this is always one of those items where it I can not even imagine how you feel uh Miss Bryant. Um because you know when you're doing this in public it's always you know you I don't know if you have anxiety. I always have anxiety for anyone that has to go through this. I know uh our madame clerk has to do the same thing and so I just have a lot of um respect for you when we do these things in in uh in person and in public. All right, Cody, I'm going to hand it over to you and you're going to start the uh process. All right. Thank you. Uh mayor, council, city manager Bryant. My name is Cody Freeman, HR business partner for the city's HR department. I am here to present on item C1. That's a summary of the city manager's performance evaluation. Although the city manager plays a key role in all the strategic plan, this item aligns most with governance and organizational effectiveness. Before we hop into the summary, I want to take an opportunity to talk about the process. The first step was one requesting feedback about the process in general. two, followed up in by HR then facilitating the process and then three having three stakeholder groups review the city manager. These groups included external which are peers from our regional partners, internal which are employees of the city of Reno and council. The response rate was a little over 80% which is considered excellent and the responses were gathered using an electronic platform in a confidential and anonymous manner. Next, the following rating criteria was used from exceeding expectations to no basis for judgment. No basis for judgment means that the reviewer did not have the opportunity to work with the city manager in that capacity and therefore could not submit a response for that category. Speaking about categories, we looked at the following six. I'll cover those six over the next six slides. And then finally, the survey also included a field for comments, and you'll see those comments scattered throughout the presentation today. The first category being vision and strategy. 97% of respondents rated exceeds or meets expectations. And I'll really quickly just to make sure that math is mathing, break down the bar there, the bar graph. And so the 97% comes from the exceeds expectations and meets expectations. You see in the area for growth that equals about 3% there. But there was also no basis for judgment about 2 and a.5% and what I said for no basis for judgment is that the reviewer did not have the opportunity to evaluate the city manager in that category. So the 97% comes from exceeds and meets in the areas for growth. When looking at vision and strategy, this included supporting and developing council's vision and strategy, as well as ability to tackle difficult tasks and balance day-to-day demands with long-term interests. The next category being communication skills. 99% of respondents rated exceeds or meets expectations. in communication skills. This included fundamentals of oral communication, written communication along with effective presentation skills and ability to understand difficult and complex subjects. The next category being interpersonal skills and relationship summary. 99% of respondents rated exceeds or meets expectations. When looking at this category, it included ability to gain trust, craft positive working relationships, and foster collaboration among citizens and other organizations. The next category being leadership and culture. 97% of respondents rated exceeds or meets expectations. This category included uh supporting and managing city values and council priorities, providing staff with direction, having the ability to make decisions in a timely manner, and staying current on management practices and techniques. The next category, innovation. 99% of respondents rated meets exceeds or meets expectations. Within innovation, we have included in participating with council and staff in strategic planning, promoting creative thinking, and being receptive to new ideas. The final category being management. 99% of respondents rated exceeds or meets expectations. This category included being knowledgeable of the city charter, having the ability to create logical sequence for items under consideration, ability to delegate authority, and promote a cohesive work environment. Now, as I approach the end of my presentation, what usually goes handinhand with this evaluation is a discussion around salary and benefits. As a reminder, the salary and benefits for the city manager are set by city council. That being said, at this time, city manager Bryant is not seeking an increase. On the benefit front, this means that city manager Bryant will be affected by the upcoming PERS contribution rate increase. This increase for regular members is 3.25%. Half is covered by the employer and half is covered by the employee. This would result in a reduction, also known as an adjustment in the city manager's salary, of 1.625%. What we are here to do today is approve the recommended motion, which is approval of the annual performance evaluation and give direction for the performance goals for the upcoming year. And that's it. All right, Cody. Thank you so much. Okay. Any public comment, Madame Clerk? Okay. Seeing that there are none, I'm going to start um to the left. Councilwoman Doer, I see your lights on. Oh, thank you. Um I don't know if you left that on, but I left it on, but I'm glad it was on. Okay. Okay, good. Um it's it's a real pleasure um to have Jackie Bryan as our city manager. I think that says it all. She's taking up the reigns. she um you know transition is always incredibly hard moving any position around but because she was here and because she was very familiar with the details of the operation she was able to not miss a beat and in this type of very fastmoving organization where things are coming at us constantly. She's been able to step up and meet those challenges incredibly and you just saw the results that you presented. Um thank you very much Cody. Um, so you know, I actually had a chance to meet with her in advance and I told her some of the excellence should be excellent plus. In other words, the the chart didn't go that high. But those particular things have to do with communication empathy kindness you know, leading with heart, those kind of things. I mean, there wasn't room on that forum to put that on, so I had to say it verbally, but you know, she just really excels in those things. Um, no one's perfect, right? None of us. And so the the one uh one or two things I had a chance to talk to Jackie about was something that you can think about going forward. Um now that we're into this transition a bit, you know, she was a par excellence uh number two uh assistant city manager, the problem solving part person par excellence. So, it's time a little bit to let the reigns go on that as she trans continues to transition to the manager role, uh, the city manager role and continue to build up her staff to tape to be as good as she was in those roles. Um, with one exception, I I still think that Jackie has to pay a lot of attention to the QC, in other words, the quality control of the decisions and make sure they align with council policy. Um, and I think that remains a critical function for her. The only other thing I would recommend, and this is something I say to every manager, without a doubt, and it has to do with when um Jackie's already demonstrated that she is a great problem solver. And so the one thing I would suggest, and I had to learn this as a manager myself, and it was kind of a shock, but that um when when someone says something's broken, you know, that's one point of information, but there may be other points of information. And it's really about spending some time u diving into the detail about what the real problem is that you're trying to solve. And and that goes for all of us. And I learned again very early on I used a surveying analogy. And the survey analogy is that when you when you're surveying you're shooting a line. And so you have information along that line. But it's very important to get information from other directions so that I I can do what I call centering in on the truth or surveying in on the truth if there is such a thing as truth. Um so I just think keeping that in mind that you know there's many different perspectives on an issue and making sure we're really solving the right problem. She is already a famous problem solver so that is not anything we could add. Um, in fact, Jackie, this may embarrass you a little bit, but there's a term around the city. Um, you know the term speed of light. Well, there's another term called speed of Jackie. Um, and that means that you work incredibly quickly and to solve problems in particular. So, um, I would just moderate your speed a little bit with just a little bit more information and then you'll get to even better answers. So, thank you so much for sticking with us and putting yourself out to be the manager. I know you didn't originally apply, but you overcame your initial um uh concerns and stepped into this limelight, and I'm glad you did. Thank you. Nice comments. Thank you, Councilman Door. Okay, Councilman Ree, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I'll try to address my comments to you, Miss Bryant, as best as I can. It's hard to look this way and talk into the mic, but um it is a unique thing to evaluate your manager in a public meeting. Um and so for my part, I hope my comments are reflected in the written um evaluation that I provided and I I like Miss Derer believe that there were many areas in which you exceed exceptional. So it's the E++. Um I will say that the person who reluctantly comes to the job is often the best person qualified for it. And I know that a year ago when we tasked you with joining and and really thinking about this, there was some hesitancy. Uh but you did take a risk on us as I think we uh believed in you and and it's paid off. We have been very fortunate. I've uh served with four different city managers. Each one had their own style and quite frankly each one was challenged with different things that only they could have handled at the time. Whether that be a pandemic, uh whether that be a riot, you know, all sorts of things. I think what I am looking forward to, of course, is seeing how we get through the next uh year or two with our budget. It's very easy at times, I think, in government to be um happy and doing well when the budget is fat and and um allows for the kind of forwardthinking progress that this city is engaged in. It's much harder when you have to make really hard choices and sometimes that creates the conditions under which you have unhappy employees, you have unhappy council members. Um, but I think that you're the right person at the right time to take up that challenge in part because I see you as very measured in your approach. I never see you getting super hot and high or super low. Where I see you getting um very passionate is when it comes to your people uh and also people in general, our community members and and quite frankly animals too. And I think that speaks to something that Miss Derer talked about um which is that you care for your fellow human beings and for animals. You care for the earth. These are important qualities I think in a person but they also impact your ability to lead an organization which has you know somewhere in the neighborhood of 1600 people. You might flex up or down during the summer or whatever. But I think you have a unique ability to impact people because of your really innate goodness and kindness. And um I I hope no one sees that as weakness because I also know that you're tough as nails. You don't put up with a lot of uh including the that we sometimes bring to the table as electeds. And I continue to believe that um you should do that. Lean into the work that you're doing. Um work on the things that you know that uh everyone can to improve. And of course, um, seek to surround yourself with the qualified people that you have so that that you never end up being sort of a yes person. Uh, I'm thrilled with your performance this last year. I know that the budget is making it difficult. Uh, and certainly understand the position you've taken about your salary. Uh, but kudos to you. Kudos to the organization. I'm very grateful for your leadership. All right, Councilwoman Taylor, I'm trying to streamline because I know, let me tell you something about Jackie. She does not take compliments. Well, I know she's crawling out of her skin right about now. So, um, go ahead, Councilwoman Taylor. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I was going to say this is probably the worst thing ever. She's It is the worst thing ever for her because she is so incredibly humble and it just doesn't feel comfortable when people are singing her praises. So, I I know she's sitting over here shaking like a leaf, but um I you know, I always like to keep things out in the open. And so, I will be very brief because there isn't much that I can add. Um I will I will say that it is an honor to work with you and your team. I believe that you have an excellent understanding of this position and I didn't see uh transition I didn't see you miss a beat stepping into this at all. So I I would say um you are perfect for the job even though you did not want it. Our job is to set policy. Your job is to execute it. And at times you can have seven different directions with 15 different subsets from us and you manage that excellently and with um dignity and integrity and that is not easy to do. So what I will do in supporting you is respect you and support you every single day of this job. We might not always agree, but I I respect you in this position and the judgment that you have and that is my commitment to you. And I wish we could give you a big raise, but you told us we don't have any money. So I'm going to tell you we don't have any money and I'm sorry. Thank you. but you have my full support. Thank you, Councilman Martinez. Thanks so much, Madame Mayor, and thank you to everybody who's already brought up all the love that we feel for our city manager. I know the process last year, you know, was very eye opening and having somebody step up to the plate where uh she didn't want to has really demonstrated how much of a light you are to our city. And I just wrote down some of the comments that I saw throughout the 360 evaluation that you received. and I'd just like to take a little bit of time to read some of those. So, she's a tremendous asset to the region. So, you're just wanting to make her a little more comfortable. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. Go ahead. Uh she works hard to respond to all concerns. She's disciplined and adaptable, transparent and honest, supportive of robust community engagement, which is important to me. Uh gifted communicator. She's direct. She has a direct approach with council members that has made it easier for staff to prioritize and manage their workloads and become more efficient. Um, and then one of the areas that I noticed in the 360 was just maybe having a little bit more exposure to frontline staff and mentoring emerging leaders. Um, which seems like some of the stuff that were coming out of the internal stakeholders 360 comments. But I'll just add to that in my own words that seeing you in action and seeing you speak with our community members during the town hall was very enlightening to your approach and your straightforwardness as a leader. I think people really respect that and want to see more of that in in our leaders. So, I appreciate you stepping up to the plate and being part of the team with us as we lead the city of Reno to greater and better things. Thank you. Nice. All right, Councilwoman Anderson. I'm going to respect how much you hate this and just say very importantly um what makes you so good at what you do is you meet people where they are. You're not afraid to deliver the news whether it's good or bad and you are very very confident and willing to find solutions. The speed of Jackie is only possible because of the speed of trust that you have created with your council members and also your team. And so I am here to support you in any way and I want to know every and any new way that um you could use the support and anybody on your team. I'm very grateful that you are leading us. Councilwoman Eert. Yeah. So a lot of things I wanted to say have already been said, but I just really appreciate um how Manager Bryant has worked with me. I know everybody has different communication styles and I just appreciate how she works with me and she's always extremely available and I don't know how she can just support all of us so um quickly and delegate and get things done just incredibly fast. We we've all mentioned that. But she's also helped me with things that are incredibly specific to my ward that have been pain points for years. and um as soon as I talked with her about it, she just jumped on it and got things fixed in a matter of weeks. And I'm just really impressed by her um interest in helping me with things that just kind of have fallen off the priority list um in years past. So, I just really especially appreciate her and I appreciate that, you know, she talks with me, talks through issues, and she's honest and direct with me. if I have some kind of idea, it's just flat out not going to work. She's not afraid to tell me no about things, you know, she's very um down to earth earth with me and I appreciate that. Um she gets me answers right away. Um I just really really um feel like she's a a partner with me and the things that I want to get done. Um and I just I can't thank her enough for for the things that she's done for me or helped me with. Um and I just want her to know I appreciate that. my ward appreciates um the things she's helped me accomplish um and that's just really really um wonderful. So I just appreciate the job that she's doing and um look forward to the things that um she continues to help us do with the city. So thank you manager Brandon. Okay. Um thank you to our entire council member or the entire council. Very very kind comments. Um and I think very well said. I mean, I would just ditto all the same comments, Jackie. Um, I do want to add that most of the public probably did not realize how much experience you brought to the table working um, you know, for Governor Sandaval and so many other bodies and elected leaders. Um, I just have to tell you, I cannot begin to stress to the public what a heart Jackie has. I've never seen anything like it. full of compassion and love for people and animals and every aspect of this city. I I it blows me away every single day. And not to mention, I don't think I'm used to the speed of Jackie because government is so painful with all the red tape. And I I had to I had to get used to it the first week whenever, you know, I was I was bringing up something. And she said, "I already took care of that. There were like five things I wanted to add into it." Oh, hold on. Wait a minute. cuz I'm not used to even working that fast. And Jackie is just a remarkable a remarkable leader. I can't begin to tell you how lucky this city is to have you at the helm. And I don't know a lot of people that want to be in this position because it is so stressful day in and day out. I will call Jackie in the morning and I will say, "Jackie, I didn't sleep all night." And she said, "Oh, I didn't either." I mean, we these are the conversations that we have. I have never seen a level of commitment um in a city manager to this capacity. I think the the numbers that you put up there, Cody, uh speak volumes um from not just this council, but the other people that you interact with. I also will say she keeps a really open door and meets with every constituent that reaches out to her. I have never seen that before. Oftenimes I get that city managers get incredibly busy. They have 9,000 things going on. But she comes in I am she comes in with I am never too good to meet with anyone. She does puts her every I guess checks her ego at the door. It's really easy to get ego in politics. This woman has no ego. I just I can't even tell you. Um and we might not always agree. I think, you know, we brought it up, but that's what makes such a great leader is that um they hear you, they respect you, even if they don't agree with you. And I just I can't tell you what a breath of fresh air you are, Jackie. And we are just tremendously lucky to have you. I will say my only criticism is that she is such a good person that I think she gives people a lot of leeway. And that is not a bad thing, but I just don't want anyone to ever mistake your kindness for weakness. But I want to send the message that um do not mess with Jackie Bryant because she is a force and a leader that um you know, you you won't you won't win because she is that good and she is that impressive and um I just hate to see anyone taking advantage of her in any capacity. um she doesn't let them, but she does give them extra passes, but it is a great quality to be that compassionate. It really is, Jackie. Um so anyway, thank you so much, you know, for all that you do for us every single day. All right, I'm going to send it to Councilwoman Der. Go ahead. Thank you. Um I wanted to add because I I want to put exclamation point on something that the mayor said and and Mr. Martinez as well. Um, uh, Miguel mentioned seeing Jackie in action at our town halls and I had the same opportunity and when she first took the job, I said, "Jackie, I think a challenge in transitioning from our previous manager to you, one thing that you could probably better him, Alan, is um, engaging with the public because it is so easy when you're leading an organization to hide out at city hall and just talk to the people that all want to talk to you every day, you know, and you need to talk to them." But in in uh watching her at the town hall, her responsiveness to the questions was so appreciated and it really spoke to the point that she can hear. She doesn't just communicate outward. In other words, she's listening too and she heard what I said and she said, "I heard what you said and I am making more of an effort to engage with the public." So I know firsthand because all of us that are elected, we always engage with the public. I mean, this is what we do. We we we are carrying the water for them. We are their representatives. So Jackie is getting out there mixing it up with the public and they are really appreciating it. So I just wanted to comment on that. Okay, with that I want to Oh, wait. Hold on one second. I do want to I do want to address one thing because this was not addressed and I want to tell you it's incredibly rare and very um appreciated Jackie and that is um for not taking the increase. I don't think anyone understands how rare that is to see. and this is how good she is. She came to me first. Obviously, this was a conversation that's been top of mind for um our entire city looking at the budget constraints and she said, "I just I could never do this. I would never feel right. This just isn't who I am." And that's the kind of person she is. So, I want to say thank you. I've not seen that before. Um, and I, you know, and I value everyone, but I just want to tell you it shows, um, your class and character. So, thank you. Okay, Councilwoman Dur, go. Yeah. So, so, so, so so so so so so so so so so important, and I know firsthand, having been a director, how hard that is. Um, I've done something similar and it takes a lot to decide. That's who I am and that's what how I'm going to be given our budget constraints. And I do want to thank you for that. That shows a lot of leadership. So, with that, what I want to do, um, the motion is really inadequate to the praise that we've given Jackie, but I do want to move to approve the annual performance evaluation of the city manager, uh, for her past year of employment. And, um, at at the right time, probably when we're doing our strategic plan, come forward with um, the goals for the upcoming year. I think that'll be shortly after the summer, but I'll give you time to put them together. So with check marks plus+es, um I recommend the council approve the performance evaluation. Okay. Thank you. I have a motion from Councilwoman Dur. Second. I have a second from Councilman Ree. All those in favor say I. All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Woo. Jackie, do you feel better now? All that love and praise. She can't take it. It's like an out-of body experience. She can't take it. She hates it. Thank you all. Anyway, no thank you. Okay, moving on. Um C2 C2 consent items. Um no, we're going to head into item C2. C2. And I'm going to ask, madame clerk, do you have any public comment? This is overview of the Reno Fire Department, Reno Police Department overtime utilization, staffing practices, and operational impacts. Thank you so much for being here. Um uh Madame Clerk, Madame Mayor, we do not have any live public comment, but we did receive one comment associated with this item as one letter of concern that has been distributed to the Reno City Council and is a part of the permanent record. Okay. Thank you so much. I'm going to start uh with you, I guess, Chief Cochran. Take it away. Yes. Thank you. So, this will be a joint presentation. I'll start. I'm Dave Cochran, Chief of the Reno Fire Department. Um would you like to introduce yourself before we Chief Nance Reno Police Department? So, there's been some coverage in the media about city salaries and whatnot. And as part of that, there's been some identification of the overtime that's been paid out. And it's pretty clear though that there wasn't really a good explanation of the why. What, you know, it's just a number. Until we give some context to it. It doesn't really mean anything. So, that's what we're here for today is to talk about the ways in which we spend overtime, why we spend it, and then the consequences of not spending it. And the public safety sector being the biggest consumers of that, that's why it's myself and Chief Vance here before you today. So, of course, the uh this is in alignment with city goals, fiscal sustainability, and of course, public safety. So, so the uh one thing we want to really talk about is why is over time used? How do we utilize it? And why do we even need it? Because that's always the question we get is can we just staff big enough that we don't have overtime? And frankly, that's virtually impossible. So, part of the reason why we have staffing, why we have overtime is that ongoing staffing challenges that we both face. uh remind everybody that we are still not recovered fully in our staffing numbers from where we were years ago, but our population has grown tremendously. So, both of us do feel that pinch and want to provide even more and better service, but we do have those challenges that I think we're working really well with. the police department and the fire department different staffing models than most businesses even than regular city government. Staffing for us is needed 24/7 every single day of the year. Uh Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Fourth of July, we have people that are working no matter what. Sometimes we have to actually have more people working on those holidays than you would expect not to. I'd invite you to think back to CO when people were working from home, when we were able to have non-essential workers. We in the police and fire department still had people showing up every day and going out on the street to handle emergencies and calls and that never is going to change. We are seeing increased emergency call volumes and public events. Um we've talked about public events a lot and the the what they bring to the city, but we want to make sure that you're aware that those do require additional staffing. And then increased emergency call volume is really has a lot to do with our population growth. We have training and necessary training and certificates. Things are mandated for us and an increase in those training um desires that we have for all of our staff to make sure that they're best trained around and to make sure that we are not oper operating at a deficit when we respond to calls. Um grants, special events, and mutual aid. We'll talk a lot about that about how that is uh overtime specific. And I want to remind everybody, emergency services are unpredictable. We have no idea when the next emergency can happen. We're all sitting here right now. We have no idea what's happening out on the street or when that next response is going to be required from us. So even though there's a lot of overlap, there's little difference between the fire department and the police department. So we're going to each talk about the specific challenges we have and the way overtime weaves into that. So of course we staff our 15 fire stations daily. Um, we have requirements set forth by our collective barting agreements that require a minimum level of staffing on each apparatus for the Reno Fire Department. Of course, that's four people. I know you're all aware of that. Um, and the goal, of course, is to keep every apparatus staffed, every station open. Um, we have the training requirements that Chief Nance talked about. Those are minimum requirements, but it's a lot of training throughout the year. And then we add additional training. As you're all aware, we just took on responsibility at the airport. We have some additional training called aircraft rescue firefighting training that has to be done. We're going to be doing that next week. That's an additional mandate that we have as part of our training. And then we have the mutual aid deployments. We've talked a lot about the fire service being an organism at large. No single fire department can be can handle the nature of a major incident that we face on a routine basis. The Davis fire being the most recent one. You need help from the outside and we provide help to the outside. We have a dozen people out right now at various deployments because we're doing our part to give the help, but we also know that we're going to get that help if and when we need it. Um overtime of course pre using overtime prevents those staffing shortages, those station brownouts because we use our people on an overtime basis and we'll talk more about the fiscal responsibility piece of that to keep those those apparat staffed the stations open. I talked about the mutual aid deploy deployments and then I would like to talk just a little bit about the consequences of browning out stations. If we brown out a station that has a cascading effect. It's just just not, for example, the station on Skyline that we brown that out and now they're getting a slower response time, longer response time, not just for fires. Very important for EMS because even though the fires grow exponentially for every minute that goes by, if somebody is in a cardiac arrest situation, um any sort of major life-threatening situation, every minute counts. If that district is closed, if that station is browned out, we now have to send station three up to District 7. Now, district three, which is an extremely busy district, is unstaffed. So, we're gonna have to send send station five into there, maybe station six. And so, it like I said, that has that cascading effect. So, a single brown out is not just going to be affected affect that area of the city. It's going to affect all of us. Um, while we have a lot of similarities and some of the things that he talked about, we do have differences. So, kind of for us, what how it works in the police department is really we have to look at what is coverage for high demand calls. what happens that make us need to respond. Um things that we really want to make sure that we have the ability to cover. So um things like that are sideshows. We we we acknowledge there's a sideshow happening one weekend or one night. We have to have additional people that work that dignitary protection for different visits. Those kinds of things. We have to have people there to handle those incidents, but also people on the street to handle the calls for service that are going to come in. Anyways, we have to be able to support uh investigative responses for crimes that are uh different than what the average officer is going to see. So, we have specially trained officers to handle things like homicides, officer involved shootings, traffic fatalities, sex crimes. We have to have the ability to respond in the immediate when those things happen. And we never know when they're going to happen. So we have people that are on call and ready to respond in a moment's notice to be able to provide that type of level of investigation that's needed by those highly trained officers in those assignments. Some of our overtime is also reimbursible. All of our grants come with over a lot of our grants come with overtime. So if a grant has a financial capacity to provide an additional resource or service that is done on an overtime basis. Also for staffing events, we need to respond to those um and make sure that we have adequate staff, but we get that money back. Goes back into the general fund, but we're able to provide that service. We provide the dollar amount initially to pay the employees after they've handled that, but then we're reimbursed through the general fund to the city for those things. And then additional overtime is required for post-certification courses to ensure that everybody's properly trained. And court court is a large draw of overtime for us. Court happens Monday through Friday 8 to 5. I only have a handful of officers that actually work Monday through Friday 8 to 5. So those that are working on the graveyard shift, if they make an arrest and it goes to court, they are going to have overtime associated with that to testify in court. And that's something we don't have a lot of control over because our different court systems try to work around the officers and get them in and out as quickly as possible. But sometimes those cases are more complex and do require some overtime. So, here's some of the the reasons why we use the overtime. Um, it gives us flexibility and sustainab or scalability. Um, and summer that we're coming into wildfire season now is a good example of that. If we were to hire FTE sufficient to staff all our stations to the levels that we need during the summer and we can have up to 30 vacancies a day between offdist assignments, sick leave, workers comp, vacation. We hire those 30 people. Great. during the summer. In the winter, we're still going to be paying them even though we might not have vacancies. And frankly, hiring a person for a single day if that's all I need them for on overtime is cheaper than hiring that FTE on a daily or even an annual basis. Um that goes to the cost effective piece of this why the overtime why as Chief Nance mentioned, it's not practical for public safety to staff with FTEES all the time. Overtime is a critical piece because it gives us that flexibility. She also me mentioned the reimbursements. I think you're all aware, but I'll say it out loud so we all know those off district assignments like the 12 people we have out now. We're getting 100% reimbured for all that. All that money is coming back into our general fund budget. So it may look like a blip. It is a blip on the overtime radar, but that money is coming back. So that's the reason we send them out is twofold. the training and experience they get and the service they provide to the other communities, but in return we're bringing that back here, which benefits the city of Reno at essentially no cost because it is 100% reimbured. Um, using the overtime of course ensures that we have uninterrupted service so that when we have that need and it's unpredictable as we've pointed out, you don't we don't know when that emergency is coming, but we're going to be ready for it as best we can. And I know you're probably all aware that on occasion we up staff just as Chief Nance does because certain events come up. We have a red flag warning um some other weather event um maybe some sort of public disruption that we know or police intel has told us may happen. We need to be prepared for that as well. And then I mentioned the CBAs earlier. We staff according to those. We need to follow the rules set forth in CBAs. That means when we staff an engine, we don't down staff to three or two. We staff four people on an engine and a truck every day. Y um so looking at what how does this work in the budgets? We've talked a lot about why and the money and what we're doing and and really justifying this in that sense of what we need to do, but we really want to make sure that everybody understands that this is not just something that we allow at will. So people don't just show up to work today and put on a uniform and get in a police car and head out and handle calls for service. If we need that staffing, a supervisor, myself, a captain, an assistant chief has made a decision that we have to increase our staffing based on the needs or to fill vacancies or spots that we may have if somebody's out sick or injured or in training. So, all overtime is something that we know about, we monitor, we keep track of, we look at it on a monthly basis, sometimes even a weekly basis to see where we're at and how much money is going out by who and what it's for. Um, it all has to be approved by supervisors. Um, I will speak for myself some and we've been here with since I've been here, I have put stop gaps in place to make sure that we're monitoring overtime and staffing and we're being consistent with those and that we're meeting best practices for law enforcement and to meet our audit requirements and to provide that uh accountability back to our financial groups to say, "Hey, this is what we're spending the money on and this is why." And I know that you do the exact same. We're very much cognizant of where this money is going and for why. We don't want to incur any more overtime than we have to. Uh our overtime is included in our adopted budget. Uh rein reimbured overtime that I've spoken about is uh tracked through the general funds. We have very robust grant management and tracking system and tracking system for the money that we charge for special events to ensure that we're not over or undercharging and we're meeting all of those needs. And everything has to be tracked for that financial accountability. We have to be good stewards of the money that you have entrusted to us. And we have to make sure that we're making those those choices for the reasons that are going to meet our public safety needs, not for any other reason. And so the key takeaway is of course public safety is job one. That's our job one. I know it's a priority of this council. Overtime helps us meet that need. It helps us make sure that we are as ready as we can possibly be on a daily, hourly, minute basis. Um, we sound like a broken record, but like I said, a lot of that overtime comes back. It comes back into the general fund. We're getting a benefit from it. The crews are getting experience. Chief Nance is meeting the needs of the city and her department, but the money is coming back into the general fund. Um, it I can't emphasize enough the flexibility of having the ability to just plug somebody in on overtime without entering into that long range annual or even a career commitment that an FTE would entail. And then it reflects the that piece along with our need to meet or our mandate to meet the public safety needs of the city guides what we do and how we utilize that over time. Chief Dance excellently described how we manage and monitor that so that we're being responsible every day. So with that, I think we are done here with the presentation. Thank you. I really appreciate it. I asked for this to be on the agenda. Um, and why that is is because I think we're living in a time where people are very politically charged. Um, and I understand it. And, um, there are, you know, initiatives now more than ever that, um, are communitydriven and I think they're great. Um, and there's a lot of validity. But I would also say where I think we failed is to really explain why we have to. And also there's a lot of uncertainty in what we do whenever we have incidents like I'll just say you know um Colin Ranch fire um you know many of your officers were there 247 days on end protecting the neighborhood making pe making sure people weren't going in there and robbing homes or whatever or keeping people out of their homes cuz you know everyone wants to run back in and grab 10 other things or whatever. But I'm just saying like um I think there are a lot of events where we can't predict right and that makes it really challenging um to sort of u manage but I would say that from what I understand it and for years and I know that when those concerns came out publicly we kind of look at it and go well we can't really do anything about it because you really can't cuz it's always sort of a moving target but I think where we forget is that just with transparency and the reasons why we have to do something that that goes a long way with the public at large. And I know um that has been really important to our city manager Jackie Bryant and she um has um said that she thinks the best measure is to put in an overtime report here at the council seat um whenever that comes in so that the community sort of knows where we're at and where we're going with that. Um, and I don't think people understand that actually you can save money on the back end of the overtime whenever you're not paying for full-time um, you know, FTEES. Uh, so you know that again I think we don't communicate that well. Um, because we we live in this space and we see it every single day. Um, and I also, and you know this, Chief Nance, a lot of cities have to operate this way because can you imagine if we didn't allocate the overtime, what happens is then you're coming back, we're going to have to augment the budget back and forth. Can you imagine what that looks like and how angry the public would be then cuz they it would look like you're, you know, just spending whatever, right? So you have to sort of put it aside knowing that incidents are going to happen that you don't have any control over that we're going to need all hands on decks. There's a lot of different factors. There's also um there's also um contracts with our labor agreements that things that we have to also adhere to. And so I appreciate your transparency on this. Um, I do think where we failed is to be more communicative on what we can bring to the public so that they know we're being responsible because we are living in this time where people want accountability, which is fine and it's great, but I think um, we can do a better job communicating to them why we do what we do. Last but not least, I would just say this. I also want to be very uh clear and also and I'm not saying I'm not accusing anyone at all here. Um but in other cities we have seen where overtime can get abused. So I want to make sure we have every measure in place that that doesn't happen from our city manager level to your to your level to make sure that that really is staying in a lane that we don't get sideways. you know, I haven't I mean, I'm not saying it, but I do know in other cities it's been problematic. So, it does concern me. So, but I just think this and coming and being transparent is going to make us feel a lot better and the community feel better. All right, Councilwoman Anderson, go ahead. Yes, just to build on one of your very important points, I think that um the public oftentimes doesn't know what an investment each one of our police officers or each one of our firefighters being a full-time hire is. And I'm going to mince these numbers, but I know in 2010 it was around each fireman costs on average, and when I say cost, it's an investment about $750,000 to recruit, train, and hire, and get them online. And with police, it used to be around a million. Is that correct? Or has that gone up with inflation as well? I would say that um I don't have the exact numbers for what it is for each person but it is substantially more and just to give it an example uh just for PERS we pay 45% of the salary back so uh you are already walking into that with a new employee with 45% additional just for PERS and then there's other benefits and things that come along that that so and then the cost of training is really invaluable. So, um, we can put somebody through an academy, get them through the training program, get them out on them on their own. When they're gone, when they leave, um, we it takes us 18 me 18 months, and you're probably close to similar to get them ready to be alone again. And so, we've, that's 18 months that we have to essentially double pay a person to get them retrained. And so, when we lose people in that space, these costs and these numbers just continuously add up and rise, right? And so, um, just to make that point further, that's why overtime becomes such a critical flex opportunity for the city because the last thing we want to do like we had to experience in the 2010 2012 time frame is have to lose any of these very important investments in our law enforcement and firefighters through layoffs or other riff measures. So, um, overtime is used so that we can have surge staffing when we can control it and when we and when we don't have control over it. Um, and I think we should just constantly be talking about what an investment every one of those positions are to the city because they're like individual mortgages and we want to make sure that we manage those investments well. Um, I just want to clarify because the way that it might have sound is that we pay them a million dollar a year, we $750,000 a year. I want to clarify um what what she meant by that if you can explain to the public. Yes. No peop the individual person doesn't cost that much. So depending on their Well, I I just I can see it now. All the online haters. Nobody's making a million dollars a year. No, it's the it's the cost of hiring, recruiting, training, equipping, making sure that they're ready to be um in full service to the community. So, thank you for that clarification because that could have been a tricky headline. Calling that an investment is is very accurate because we're in the same boat that Chief Nance described where it it takes so long and so much money and well spent to establish a baseline that they can then operate from. Yeah. How many hours of training do they have to have? Is there uh the firefighters the minimum is 250 hours per year? Yeah. And that's just to maintain minimum levels. So I think people need to understand you have to pay for that training just to get them onto a truck or those things or what 250 is just for the people who are already here the new people. Yeah. Yeah. Hundreds of hours. Hundreds of hours because you want these people highly trained. They are in some of the most um dangerous situations and protecting our life. I mean training is everything. So, it's almost a one year that she does. 2,000 hours um for a new officer to go through the academy, through the training before they're on the street and then onto the street. It's almost a full year. And a full year in hours is 280 hours. That's for the brand new person. That doesn't include specialized teams, trainings, and other services that we have to provide to the people that are already here and are still existing in our space. Okay. All right. Counciloman Taylor. Uh thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I appreciate it. I think it's you mentioned it in the in your um presentation but it is essential to understand that if we look at overtime and we say we're going to decrease overtime because of budget constraints you can do that in other departments and there will be a reduced service right people will see a reduction in a service they will wait a little bit longer for whatever service in public safety that is not an option we don't get to say sorry you're going to wait longer because you need us so we have to have overtime and we have to be 247. Um, when I was doing my research on this, it looks like again in your presentation, the things that we can do is we can increase staffing. That is one thing we can do. We can review overtime policies. Um, we can look at some of our contracts and we can look at management practices. Well, if I go back to we can increase staffing. We're not hiring anybody this year. We are in a freeze. That is not really an option that we can look at with our budget constraints. um shift schedules. It sounds like you check that box that you are looking at that there are management policies. Chief, you said that you are going through and looking at all the overtime. It has to be approved. So, I feel like that box is checked. Um reviewing of overtime policy. I think there are possible rooms for improvement for that. Room for improvement for that, but it sound it you guys are working with our city manager to make sure that those boxes are checked, too. So, I think we just have to be very clear in why the overtime is needed. Nobody wants to wait for this service and it's got to be paid for. So, thank you. And your jobs are not easy. And I I I take pause when people in the public criticize you and your teams for what you are doing, which is a very difficult job. So, thank you. All right, Councilman Martinez. Thanks so much, Mor. Thank you uh both for the presentation. I think it really helps clarify a lot of the information that came out during that and I think there seemed to be a lot of sticker shock, you know, when that those numbers came out. So, I'm really appreciative of the presentation um and the work that both our firefighters do and our police um do to continue to keep our city safe. And so, uh, in light of that, I I know, uh, Chief Nance, you talked a little bit about some of the stop gaps that you had in place to kind of oversee, um, overtime paying and just wondering if you can elaborate a little bit more on some of that. Absolutely. So we um unlike fire, we didn't really have a minimum staffing setup and so there was some uh practices that were happening within the organization that were allowing too many people to be off at one time, requiring a lot more overtime to fill a shift. So we drew that back a little bit and made uh what I would say are appropriate allowances. So we can still have people take their vacation time, take their leaves as needed, go to training, but we're not filling an entire shift um on overtime. So we we started managing that and putting some rules in place so that we had some consistency. Uh we're also looking at how the overtime is requested and approved to make sure that it goes all the way up through the chain of command all the way to a captain to say yes this person worked it. This is what they did and things like court really to be mindful of when people check in and out making sure that we have all the documentation attached to it to ensure we're not paying somebody for something they didn't do. I'm fully aware that there has been uh fraud and overtime throughout uh public safety agencies throughout the world and they've made a lot of headlines. They've shown up in places and I don't want to be one of those agencies. So, we want to make sure that we are monitoring, using it for the proper purpose, and making sure that everybody is held accountable for what they need to do, but compensating our employees for the work that they're doing and making sure that they have those opportunities to receive overtime if they desire and watch what their well-being is to make sure they're not in a space that is unsafe for our community from working too much overtime. Yeah. And I think that's one thing that I was thinking about when I was getting ready for this item is just thinking about the impacts to the human beings that are actually doing this role, right? It's it's very mentally taxing. There's adrenaline rushing through your body. I've only gone to a few uh ride alongs with folks. I'm looking forward to going back out there and exploring some of the other stations and the new headquarters and kind of seeing what's going on there. But I can just imagine how you all take all that into consideration as you're making sure that our staff have healthy mental health that are physically in a good place to continue to provide these services. And so thank you for the presentation and thank you for providing that clarity for us and keeping us out of the headlines. So thank you. That's our council. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh for my part, both chiefs, um thank you so much for the presentation. It's always a good refresher. I I certainly think that um I have a good deal of a handle on what happens in your uh respective entities and why overtime happens. I I just want to balance that against the general concern where people say well I insert do X you know I work at um you know the mall and I make X right and then they they find it very hard to compare that to the salary. And so what I've tried to help people understand is a couple of things that are important. First on the fire side, I think people don't always understand that we have four-person crews, right? So that staffing model requires a bit more than a different model. And that model is important, I think, to all of us because it means that we have an appropriate staffing responding to those kind of incidents. And I don't think that anyone who is calling at 911 and says, "Hey, I have a fire. Someone needs to come help." is ever going to complain that we sent four persons rather than three. Right? So it's a safety issue fundamentally. Um, I suppose too on the fire side, uh, you know, a better fire response means that people are getting better insurance rates, right? So they're they're not al always seeing well they're not seeing the, uh, push and pull that happens with it. Um, and and I think too um because I did watch a lot of some of this debate, we'll call it, unfold online. Uh, we're all human beings and and unfortunately look at social media and we have our haters. you know, there's a leprechaun named Shawn Mullins who's a hater who says all these unthink untrue things. Uh, it just happens. But at the end of the day, um, I'm happy with the response that you provided today. Please understand that what people are are really wanting to make sure is that we are appropriately staffed, neither overstaffed or understaffed. And and I guess that's ultimately where the council inflection point comes is to say whether or not, you know, would we save money by hiring more people and not having as much overtime. And I think you've answered that question today very well, especially on the on the policing side. A very different model than the fire side, which has defined crews and um has response capabilities. The other thing I'll say because um you know we don't always get to comment on it uh but we've had some great media partners in our region. Jaden Urban from Channel 2 is here today has been covering some of the staffing issues on our pools recently. Got into the pool swimming around. I appreciate that. Joe Hart I think was one of the key folks who sort of had this story and wanted to know a bit of information about it. We love that. Right. We we really want our media partners to be inquiring and asking those hard questions. What I want us to be able to do is provide timely responses to the inquiries that are meaningful to our public. Uh because we we don't do this alone and without our media partners um co covering the stories, sometimes good stories, sometimes bad stories, whatever the stories be, um we really need that. So I thank uh Joe Hart for his work in this area. Jaden's here today. uh great people all and and really working hard to communicate to our community about important topics. So, thanks to that, too. I just add to that, I I would agree. I'm very happy that that people ask these questions because it forced us to look into it, really explore it, and then provide the information back because they need to know what our staff is doing on a daily basis, how much time they are spent away from their they have spent away from their families to take care of our community and city. These things are very important messages that we have to get out. So, I'm happy that they asked the questions and we could provide more information. Well, and Chief, you raised an important point. I I I don't think that Joe Hart, for example, who has an Ask Joe segment um is necessarily like henpecking at us. That that's not his goal. He gets inquiries from people in the community and then he follows the lead where it takes him, right? And so, just again, thanks to those folks. We need our media partners to really, especially legitimate news, journalism. We need them to be really taking up the important stories and focusing on, you know, truth, not uh conspiracy theories, not lies, all that sort of thing. But we need them. We need them. It's important that independent judiciary is really the fourth rail, right? Thank you. Um, I'm, you know, I'm really glad that we brought up the media because I know that sometimes they get disillusioned with us and with government because I think, um, we make it really hard, not just the city of Reno, I'm talking like in government in general when you see sort of the landscape of what, um, government makes the media jump through to get information. I mean, honestly, it's like it's ridiculous. And I think we fall into that. And we need to remember they're people too that live in our community. Um and and so they're concerned and they also have sort of constituents like we have or you know supporters like we have that want to know the same information. You know I've had Richard Jay on the FAB for a long time and he's been sort of a watchdog over there. I'm super grateful. Things that if I did not have him I probably wouldn't have known. Same thing with the media. I think there was something that just came out. Um there was and we're Listen, I think it's always better to address it. We're going to make mistakes. We're human. That's just life. Um but if we can get better to, you know, from reporting or reports or any concerns that come up, that just makes us better. We shouldn't take it personal or have our feelings hurt. There's one right now that says mayor pushes for fire prevention while city- managed properties failed to follow fire safe practices. Okay. Well, they didn't write any stories on like the wonderful things like the goats provide. Like I mean when everyone sees the goats, they're like, "Oh my gosh, it's the goats." Like we love we love the goats. is an incredible measure um so that you're not putting pesticides into the ground and you're preserving the environment but you're also using fire mitigation and um and I don't think that they're wrong in this when they say that right and so that's when we have to look at ourselves and say we got to do a better job um I appreciate when they bring it to light we might not like it but it's going to make us better moving forward so I always think um even though you know they get a sour taste in their mouth with us and some of the things that happen here. And I'm not proud of them either. We make mistakes. We make a lot of mistakes, but they are our partners and they do make us better. Um, and I think if we just always keep an open door and if it if you're wrong, admit you're wrong. I'm sorry. I don't know the answer or we we effed that up. And we we do it, too. We're all human. We're not ran by AI yet. We probably will be at one point. We'll never make another mistake again. But while we're around by humans, we are going to make mistakes. But I think if we address our media part partners and our community members together in those shortfalls, we're going to be better for it. So, um, okay, Councilman Dur, go ahead. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. I'm really glad we had this presentation because, uh, to many people's points here, it's an opportunity to explain the why, right? We see raw numbers, but there's no explanation ever what's going on. And I think uh the the chief um put the point to it that we don't have infinite resources to solve every problem. Um and this delicate balance um okay I got the message but I've only spoken 30 seconds or less. So um so it is a delicate balance of more people or more overtime and and to several points that were made the more people is the much more expensive way to go because you've got to fully embed them train them. you guys already made the points. You got to hire them in the first place. That takes time. Um, and while you're hiring them, you got more overtime. So, I mean, you know, it it's a it's a difficult question, but I think to point put a further Okay, we lost our minds with the timer. Uh, to put the further point on it, um, that in in order to understand the measures. Okay. What? I don't know what Okay, madame clerk. No, just kidding. You're fine. Go ahead. Nothing's never stopped you from making a comment, so go right ahead. So, one of the measures, though, I think we have to show the numbers, and I think I asked for this 10 days ago when we did a preview, is we're we're talking in um theory here, but we don't have actual numbers. So, whe I thought you were going to present them today, but if you haven't, then I'd at least like to see them in a memo. And to the mayor's point earlier, I think we need to see them regularly, and it's it's not raw numbers, and it's not only percent. We need to see both like we have no context if we see a percent or what and if we see raw numbers we also don't have a good context because we don't know is that a very small piece very big piece so is there an opportunity for you to provide us with these numbers I before you answer I had talked to our CFO she was on our briefing she said she sent you information um she last did this overtime analysis around 2019 2020 so five years ago but they corrected a lot of things internally to make it a a lot easier to track over time. And so I guess I'm just wondering no where where go ahead if I can tell I'm going to have you interject it it is not easy to do. Uh so when we received this request we were in this what about six weeks now so or so. Um I have had multiple days where my staff members have done this all day long trying to pull the data out to get it. It is not an easy system to work with. Um, we keep this stuff in multiple different places that have to be drawn from. Uh, pay not to get too technical, payroll codes go in, they get merged into other payroll codes, go into other systems to extrapolate and bring that data out has taken countless hours of staff time given the constraints of our system. We can we have total dollar amounts. We have no problem that those are things that we can pull. But to say is that overtime or is that um holiday work? an officer that works a holiday gets overtime for that day. There is a lot of variables in there to extrapolate that takes an excessive amount of time. Um, so we don't really have the ability or the staff to do that in an ongoing manner that is as detailed as the information we pulled to come up with this stuff that we've brought out here today. Okay. So, um, maybe you need to call upon the CFO and her staff instead of your own staff with them together to do it. I'm just going to um I appreciate the request. We have spent months trying to gather the information necessary for this presentation today and reviewing. As you know, our payroll system is ancient, right? And it does not allow for the level of reporting that we need to in order to be um transparent about where our dollars are spent. It requires a manual pull. Uh we are you know as you recall we are currently doing an analysis with a vendor to give us some recommendations about what a new payroll system would look like and one of the expectations is that a new pay payroll system would be able to pull this data very quickly. Right? We do not have it today. We are just living in the 19th century when it comes to our payroll system and trying very hard to get out of it. It's just that we can't meet that request today. Somebody has the numbers because they've written stories about us, right? And maybe I'm not looking for a detailed breakdown. I'm just looking for a global number like on a on a year, not not a day, a month, a week, a year. And I understand what your point is is that some of the overtime is overtime because a person's absent and some I think your point was is that they're working overtime like holiday pay or special events. I mean, there's a lot of right stuff that comes out. But if other people have some numbers out there, then we should What we can do is say here's an annual um spend on overtime. That's all I'm talking about. Got it. What we can't do is this amount was for um fire for additional fires. This amount was for training. This amount was for the not yet, but that is the goal of a new payroll system. And when I brought it to city manager's attention, she immediately said, "Here's what I have to do. It takes me a while to compile the information because of the antiquated system. But she said what I'll do is I will bring it to council, you know, on a like a quarterly basis or whatever the council wants to see so that it is transparent and then the council can weigh in on um you know those allocations because I think it would help all of us to have the list with no numbers. But I do what the reason I think it's important is that I think Chief Nance brought this up. you have implemented management changes to change that like not everybody being out on vacation at the same day where then the entire shift has to be overtime. I want to celebrate those wins and the only way that we know it is to first look at numbers, second hear your wise and your explanations and what you're doing. That that's I think the beauty of this presentation. It's not the generalization. It's actually we did this. That's where I'm interested. I want to know what you did to get a handle on it. And you did something. And that's what I want to talk about is what you did and if is that transferable to the fire department? Is that transferable to any other department? You see what I mean? That that's where I'm focused is on that kind of stuff. And I really this gives us a great understanding of the why, I think. Thanks. All right. Um, and I will just say say this because I know there's also been some criticism about um, you know, pay and contracts and things like that. I don't think people truly understand what can happen whenever and I remember this. Councilwoman Der, you you wouldn't remember this, but I remember right whenever I was elected, it was right after the fire divorce and things were incredibly contentious. We had to work almost over a decade to build these relationships back. And what we saw was not pretty for the community, the service levels, um the you know disillusionment with um you know firefighters and the way that you know people perceive them. It is a very very different landscape today. And I let me tell you, you can't put a price on life. So when you want to sit there and complain that, oh these guys make, you know, so much money or whatever that looks like, listen, I want to be part of a city that compensates those people that put their life in front of mine every single day. And that's what they do in in our community every single day. Whether you're a police officer or a firefighter, let me tell you, it's competitive. Cities have to be competitive now more than ever. People don't want to do these jobs. Now we're dealing with terrorism. That was not a thing when you guys signed up. I commend you for your service, but you know these are real things today. This is not what policing even looked like 10 years ago, right? Or look at our firefighters. Every time we turn around, there are massive fires. There have been a lot of fires this week. There are wildfires. Climate is changing. I don't care. Anyone can say, "Oh my gosh, conspiracy theory there." But no, it's a real challenge. It's a change. And anyone that wants to be in public safety should be highly commended. But I would also say, so don't don't go at me that you, you know, with raises or things like that. I mean, their lives matter. And if we're not compensating for the for putting their lives in front of ours every single day, what the hell are we doing? Do you want people out on your streets that don't know what they're doing, you're not investing in, you're not training in? I don't want officers like that. I want the best of the best, the ones that we that we invest in every single day. I want some of the best of the best here so people can say Reno is a safe community. I always say a safe community is a prosperous community. Um that is one thing I will continue to defend and invest in is our police and our fire services and the men and women that are in those departments every single day fighting for us. I get really angry whenever I hear that. And that's probably coming from someone that has never lost someone in a fire or had their home burned down. Cuz if you had and you want to argue with me with, you know, oh, how dare you with threeman engine, how dare you give raises to our fire and our police officers, call me. Happy to happy to sit down anytime. So, I just get really angry about that. So, I just want to say the message that you send when you don't invest when you're you're fire police is really dangerous. So, anyway, I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. We'll keep doing um the overtime uh assessments and allocations. I think it's important. Again, we're living in a different time where people want to know where that money goes. And I think it's okay to be completely transparent and apologize for the delay, but as Jackie said, it's hard to get that information right away. We can't pull it from the antiquated payroll system we have, but we are changing that. And so, um it it'll be a good thing. So, thank you so much. Um I don't think do we have to Madam Mayor I did have some comments too. I'm just Yeah. Hi. Hi. Sorry didn't see you over there. Yeah, I had my hand on mine too. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. So, a lot of people have said the things that that I would have said, but um you know, Chief Nance knows that I always like to give her an opportunity to shine whenever grants come into the council to accept so she can share with us and the community what what um RPD is is doing. Um what new things um she's doing with the city and also what existing programs are being funded and things like that. And Chief Cochran um I really support the firefighters as well. And to uh Mayor Shivy's point, you know, when you're calling 911, you want somebody to come that is trained and knows what they're doing. Um and I know that I have to call 911 sometimes for um family medical reasons. And it's so important to me that I have people that show up that that can help. Um and um you know, that's worth everything to you when you're in that position. Um, and I think it's great that this is an opportunity for you guys to share with us and the community um about these costs and and salaries. And um I think we should keep this as an ongoing thing so that um there is less potential for any kind of um misuse of these things. Not that I think anybody is, but I think transparency is always great. And um I just think that you know these people are risking their lives for us and what would what would you want to get paid you know collectively that the we what would we want to get paid to risk our lives and that's kind of the context I put it in and um my family and I deliver pies on holidays to the fire stations in my ward and dispatch and I know some other council members do um and on Christmas morning my kids can't open their presents until we deliver pies because um it's a little thing that we could do to recognize the firefighters that are spending the day away from their family um fighting fires, people lighting turkeys on fire or whatever it is they may do. Um and um just to acknowledge that this is a sacrifice for the community. This is time away from their families. This is them risking their lives when they have wives and children at home or husbands and children at home potentially, you know. So, um I'm I'm appreciative for you guys taking the time to go through all of um how this works out and and letting us know the true cost of training and getting people to where they need to be and the cost of ongoing training. Um so, um thank you for all of that and thank you for the work that you guys do um to keep Reno safe. So, thank you. Appreciate that. All right. Thank you so much. I am going to say one thing and I know this is um this is something I've wanted to say for a long time and sometimes when you get emotional then you just say you know what I'm going to say it because it's weighed on my heart for a very long time and Mr. Lorton should listen up. I have never and this is on the record right now. I have never ever said we need to defund the police or tell the police to stand down. That is not my job. That is your job. That's why I have a um a police chief and um a a fire chief because I'm not the expert. I would never tell you how to do your job. I would never tell those police officers right there how to do their job. But I want that on the record because he loves to be a conspiracist and continues to lie about me. Um and I want that on the record because he's tried to damage my reputation with our police department and how much I I back the blue. Um, and I just uh that has been an ongoing rumor that he um loved to start and I just I want to address that publicly because I never have. I didn't want to stoop to his level and here I am stooping to his level. But I think it's important for um anyone to know that and you both know working with me how supportive I've been. Matter of fact, every year we have done more and more and more. It's one of the reasons we have a a police station that they should be proud of, that they should go to work every day saying we're investing in them. Um, and our and our fire department. Things have changed dramatically and we finally have great working relationships with everyone to make our community better. But I wanted to address that because I think it's disgusting. And I have addressed it to his face. He's even comeed up come He came up behind me one time at a grocery store and actually physically touched me which was super inappropriate. Um and but I any day I will absolutely meet with him. Um he knows it's not true and he knows it's a lie and so I just wanted to address that because he continues to spew online how corrupt I am all these things and I would say prove it Mr. Lorton and um you know in a court of law if that's where you want to go we'll go there but stop accusing me of things and lying about me and lying about our police officers and how we how much we care about the men and women that serve this community. I'm sick of it. So anyway, thanks so much. Go ahead, Council Member Barice. Thank you so much. I um yeah, it's a it's a lot. You have as the mayor had to endure a lot. Let let me say two things and mostly in response to mayor um manager Bryant um the payroll system issue. Look, this is a critical issue and I think for each of you uh you've highlighted one of the critical issues about it. I think I understood it correctly that it takes 13 days for us to process payroll every 14 days. This is crazy. So, we've got to get a better system. I I don't I I know we have a budget issue, but we can't wait any longer for the payroll issue. It is, of course, one of the reasons why we're not seeing the kind of reporting that you want us to see. I understand there's workarounds, but those workarounds take hours to do. So, the workarounds are making your job harder, which then makes it so you need to have more overtime. We we'll fix it. Um that's on us to do that. Um the second thing and and maybe we're all conclude here is um what Madame Mayor really said which is um we're so very grateful to the men and women who serve in each of your departments. Um there is, you know, a and certainly as Madame Mayor can attest more than any of us, but there is a great deal of peace and comfort that comes with knowing that we are protected by the men and women of the Reno Police Department and that when we have emergencies that Reno Fire is responding, right? And so we are so ever so grateful. Uh I hope that um we uh have conveyed that to you of course today, but make sure that your teams know how very much we value them and and we aren't um buying into some of the arguments about um overtime and and people being paid too generously. Uh the work you do is meaningful. It's not easy. Uh very few people will ever have a job where they um you know run the risk of not coming home to their families each night. I think Chief Nance, you know that um my good friend as the Boulder Police Chief, he's had just a terrible week. Um and as Mayor Shivy said, it's very difficult at times when you are dealing with different kinds of uh things that you maybe you didn't think you were getting into when you got into policing, uh like acts of terrorism. Uh and I can tell you the overtime happens when it happens because as you've indicated here, overtime is essential for maintaining public safety. That's really the high level takeaway. So, I'm grateful to both of you. Thank you for the explanations that you provided today and I appreciate you're checking in with us. If I could just add 10 seconds to that, I just want to echo what you said about the people because that's the most important thing. They're the ones out there putting it on the line and we appreciate them more than anything. And for my part, both of us chiefs have always done that. You've always put our communities first. You've always believed in both our people, meaning the people who work for us, but the people we protect and serve. So, thank you. All right. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you listening to me. I get very emotional during those things and unfortunately politics is not always pretty and um I just wanted an opportunity to defend um the wonderful work that you both do and um the men and women of our police and fire departments. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we do have to go into item B8. I've got to get people back to their offices. It's going to be 8 and 10, I believe. And I am so sorry because we have people here for Stonegate. Um, and we do have to go in to an attorney client meeting after that. And then, um, that'll be about a half an hour and then we'll be back. The first item we're going to hear is is Stonegate. Okay. Okay. I mean, mayor. Oh, yes. So, after you do this these two items, you're going to take a Right. We've Yeah, we have to go into an attorney client meeting. Okay. And then you would be back here and then we are going to be back um 30 minutes after that. Takes about 30 minutes for that meeting and then so I would say 2:00 2:00 be back here by two. Jackie, thank you very much for Well, I am so sorry. Can we get you any water or anything? Are you Are you hungry or get something to eat? Okay. So, guess what? Here's what we're do. We'll do I will not hear that item until you get back here until I see both of you sitting here. So, you go and take your time. F2. Okay. F2. Okay. I just want to say don't worry, we won't hear the item without you. I will wait until you get back so you don't have to rush either. Okay. I want to thank all of you for your Well, thank you for being here. Well, thank you for being here. I appreciate you for being so patient and listening. All right. It was interesting. It's always interesting, isn't it? All right. We'll see you guys soon. Okay. So, um, Councilwoman Eert, that's going to be you. Yeah. I just had some questions on um the use of temps, like what kind of positions we'll be filling just for um, you know, public knowledge. if it's going to be um positions like the liaison that we're short or what type of positions we'll be filling and what um budget we'll be using to fund these positions. Sure. Vicky Bambiran, director of finance for the record. Um to answer that question, yes, the city citywide temp uses temp services um in general and you see that when it comes forward to you in the budgets. Um, police and fire are big users to cover gaps in staffing and a lot of that is just office staff type people. They have special projects or they have someone who's out on extended leave, they can use tent services to do that. What's before you today is just so that we would be able to join on to any state contracts that are available at that point. It allows for the administration to move quickly. If they have something that they need done and they can um get a temporary employee to do that, they're able to do that. Um and then also we join onto those contracts ensuring that we get the best pricing for those. Okay. So this is um not affected by our budget um shortfall or where this is this is a separate um this is not affected by it. The departments that use use these services they have temporary budgets that they typically use in this manner to cover gaps in service. And so they would use that budget if it's like an extended uh absence of an employee or they have a vacancy, they would find other savings if they need to cover something and they would cover it within their current budgets. And will this be used to cover positions that are frozen as a result of the I'll take that budget. I'm Vicki. Sorry. Um thank you. Thank you for the question. So it's twofold. One, we have an annual contract that uh we it's annually that you get this done. This is every five years we bring it back so that we can join contracts. So we have to have a contract we join to make it the most um efficient as well as the least expensive approach. Part two and we do that regardless of the budget situation. Part two is that yes I fully suspect we will be using part-time work in order to get things done that we cannot do because we don't have full-time people to do it. Whether that was part of the 20 positions that were defunded or moving forward as we don't fill positions, we will assess what is the most critical work that needs to get performed and can we do it with a part-time person temporarily while we kind of move through the next 24 to 36 months. Will it be possible to use us for maybe a part-time liaison for council? Because I don't think we have a budget for that right now. Um, we don't we don't have the funding for that right now, but is certainly something that is on the list of things to look for. Yes. All right. Thank you. That was it for me. Thanks. All right. Um, okay. Motion to I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. All those opposed. Motion carries. Okay. B10. Okay. B10 was um Wo County. Um, this is a multi-hazard mitigation plan and I just wanted to know like what is the plan? Can we get a brief presentation on this? This is kind of a hot topic and it's kind of a big one and I thought, you know, we should probably talk about it a little bit. Uh, Andy Anel for the record, Reno Fire Department and the emergency manager. So, there's been a lot of talk about what and why. So, let's hit that real first. Sounds kind of like what you want. So the the regional hazard mitigation plan assesses the potential impact of all hazards to our community members and to property, right? And then it provides mitigation strategies and mitigation actions to reduce such risks. So the plan will prioritize um the mitigation strategies and there's also an imple implementation process to ensure that those mitigation actions are carried on through completion. So, that's a brief overview of what the plan does. Um, every five years, every four years to five years, it requires a plan update. Um, that update is federally mandated. That's why we're here today. The regional hazard mitigation plan update will ensure that all of our community members have the most up-to-date uh hazard risk information, but it also it also ensures that we remain eligible for federal funding for mitigation grants, right? federal mitigation funding. So, as we speak, most of the other agencies that um participated in this plan have already had the the plan approved and adopted by their respective boards, commissions or councils. The state has approved and adopted it as well, and it's currently at FEMA. It's been there for the last several weeks, and the last update I got at the end of last week was that they're in their final revision with just a few minor tweaks. Okay. And is there any kind of public outreach to get the um you know this information out about this at all or is this just kind of shared with the stakeholders? No, we actually had um public outreach was part of the plan update. I believe we had over 600 650ish. I have it written down here somewhere, but uh we had a so it went through a public review process and there was over 600 survey responses that were received and there was also a public meeting that we held where the public came and asked questions and gave their input also in the development of this plan. Those were requirements and then the draft of the plan was posted on everybody's respective websites for more. Okay. So was it specifically distributed to those 600 people that um provided feedback to was provided to everybody through the public meeting and the websites and then they were able to do their public commentary or or input. Okay. All right. Via those those websites. Yeah. All right. Any questions? Anybody? Okay. Um I'll go ahead and make a motion to accept or actually just real quick, can you tell me where somebody could find this? It's on the WO County website. Okay. right now and it's in the final draft form. Okay. So, if somebody goes to the Washoe County website, what do they search for? I think you could just type in hazard mitigation plan and it'll take you right there. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Uh I'll make a motion to accept. Second. All right. I have a motion. I will second. All those in favor say I. All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Okay. Here's what we're doing. We're going to go take um a break, but we're actually going to do Thank you, Chief Fanto. Um we're going to go take a break. We're going into attorney client and then when we come back we will go uh we will hear stonegate if um they have returned. If not then we'll just jump back on to the regular agenda. Okay. All right. So that means I would like everyone to try to be back by two o'clock. All right. Thanks. All right, madame clerk, hello. Thanks for coming back. Okay. Uh, madame clerk, we are now um resuming the meeting and we are heading in to item um, am I correct? F2 and I do believe, hold on. Um, we're going to head into item F2, which is, um, I'm going to now open the public hearing. Was proper notice given and any correspondence received? Madam Clerk, thank you, Madam Mayor. Just for the record, we're reconvening at 2:25 with all members present. Um, for item F2, proper notice was given. There were two comments that were received on this item. One letter in opposition and one letter of concern. Okay, thank you very much. Um, do you have any public comment on this item? We do have some public commenters. Okay. Sorry. I um and then just before we head into anything right after public comment, I'm going to read a disclosure. So, if any other council members have a disclosure, but I do. So, go right ahead, Madam Clerk. Okay, great. Our first public commenter is Barbara Dunovan Elder, followed by Jeremy McKe, followed by Frank Shank. Okay, come on up. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, there are two of us in opposition that I'm aware of. And, um, if anyone were to truly read F2, they'd understand that it's going to affect both sides of Highway three. I keep forgetting the number. 395. All right. That has been for years a total residential area which had does have a couple of little small stores, but they were there before. And what bothers me is that there are a lot of children in that area who have been brought up to believe they can ride their bicycles or whatever all over. Our streets are very narrow. If you put a car here, only one person can go around it going each way at a time. In other words, you can't have two cars passing at the same time. And the other thing is that we live there and we've in a way been spoiled, but we have two schools in that area. We have a high school, we have, excuse me, a junior high school, an intermediate school, and we have the elementary school. Children walk all over because they don't have the standard. When I grew up, everybody went to school from 9 to 3. Okay? They don't do that anymore. And so you have children walking through the area and or riding their bicycles. I don't want any of them injured. We also have an area that is very safe. It's very it has no major crime in it except a few months ago they had one killing. Uh I was also in law enforcement so I understand what those things mean. Okay. We don't we don't need to have our children out there in danger. They need to be go to be able to play, go to the park, and do all of those kinds of things. I wrote you a letter, mayor. I think you got it. I sure did. It was very kind. Thank you. Thank you very much. You're welcome. And um I also don't want the value of our homes to go down. My husband, as I mentioned before, is 91 and a veteran, a disabled veteran, then we got burnt out in the Paradise, California fire. But because our next to the youngest daughter had been a student at UNR, we were up here all the time, she got a full ride scholarship. Wow. Okay. From Paradise. And we came up here all the time. and we said, "Okay, Californians going to somewhere without a hand basket." Okay. Well, there you go. We decided to move here. Okay. When in 2018, we were burned out. Mhm. Well, thank you so much. um your time um is 30 seconds over so I think we have another public comment but um you know I I really commend you coming here and that was a really terrible terrible tragedy. So and I heard you speaking about your wonderful husband and you tell him thank you for his service. My best friend. Yeah, your best friend in life. Well that's right. Yes. And I know my time is up, but I did want to let you know that water rights are very important, too. Yeah. Great. And there's people on wells there. Yes, you're exactly right. Jeremy McKenna, followed by Frank Shank. All right, Jeremy. Hello. I'm a Jeremy McKime and I'm a resident there in Cole Springs. I bought up there in 2015 and uh I'm really concerned about the zoning changes to the from the residential to the commercial or the industrial, whatever you want to call it. And I think that may have been rushed a little a little too much and I think that uh a bunch of our roads are not capable of handling this with all the traffic of the animals across there. It's a migration path that hill Anderson Hill is a migration path for the mu deers and I'm a avid hunter and sportsman and all the other animals and also the safety of our streets like she was commenting is above reproach and I don't want to take any way to jeopardize that and uh I just think that there is no way that that's going to be positive. in our community. The home values are going to go down and we bought there relatively early and our home values have went up, but they're going to go down. That's there's no there's no way it will not go down because of this. We need to keep it a strictly a residential area. I understand if you want to put some services in there for for people, but not industrial services. It's it's not good business. I don't Well, it's probably good business, but that's not what the residents want. I have a lot of outpouring from from people all over Cold Springs about this. And uh most of them can't make it. They're working right now. They can't they can't get on the webinar. They can't they can't come in and voice their opinion. And they all care. We all care about our community up there. I know it's not part of Reno. It's Reno unincorporated or whatever they call it. And I had so many comments that were like, "The city just does not give a f about us up there. They just want to make their bottom line better and screw up our little community." And it's just it's horrible. And I think that uh you guys need to take another look at this and uh before you guys rush to put these uh industrialists in our little community. And also I I get the water is a big thing. Yeah. And uh I know a lot of people out there that have wells like she was saying and these wells are keep having to go deeper and deeper and deeper. The more people that get out there, the more industry that comes in and all this. And so I don't understand how the uh water district that we're in up there has somehow backed this industrial complex thing that's going the warehouses and whatnot when they have warned us a couple years ago about how the water's receding. I just want to thank you guys and everybody up here for listening. All right, good job. Thank you so much. Frank Shank. Well, not sure if you can see that. Um, my name is Frank Shake. I've lived in Cold Springs over 20 years and uh, you know, I've talked numerous times to developer and I wish there was some little compromise. I asked about three things. a community center for the community, maybe a mental health facility for kids and adults when Spectrum and um and saving some parcels. And I never was clear if they could help out on that. And you know, I I mean I've seen other developers give some compromise and I wish I could I've heard a better answer to you know, like share the wealth, help support the community. Uh I I'll read my statement here. I have concerns about flooding that could impact residents of Pulch Springs about the water. There are sections that I would like to see taken off the map that you've all I sent an email to. Uh some of these uh I consider are wetlands environmentally sensitive areas for wildlife also that Stonegate wants to develop on. I contacted Jeff Foron city planner and sent him a map of the parcels. The sections of the parcels pres if preserved would also help prevent flooding for residents along White Lake Parkway and Village Parkway and Pul Springs. Pul Springs is a closed basin sum of Swan Lake in Lemon Valley. Residents homes in Swan Lake were flooded out because of poor planning of bailed out that was approved and not focusing on residents it would impact. I worry if residents could get could get flooded out in P Springs and if stonegate gets approved there could be similar lawsuits that residents won against the city of Reno S1 Lake. I would also recommend an outside entity to do a study on possible flooding in P Springs before Stonegate gets approved such as the Army Corps of Engineers. Another issue is water. When stonegate switches from Tuma to Great Basin, this could have an effect on people who have wells and cold springs and existing residents who use Great Basin water. Recently, Great Basin has put in a rate increase on residents. If Stonegate passes, I believe our rates will increase substantially more and Great Basin will pass on those costs onto residents of Cold Springs to help pay Great Basin to drill more water. From what I understand is that Great Basin's wells are running dry and there is going to have to find places to find water. If residents who are in wells run out of water after stonegate development passes, it will cost residents thousands of dollars to drill deeper or or to connect to Great Basin water. There are many residents that are retired and I am not sure how they pay for the costs. Also to um I was recently in in touch with Endow. They've did a experiment where they put trackers on deer and uh 40% of those trackers, they've all been k uh killed on the road between um Red Rock Road and White Lake Parkway within a 2-year period, and they're really alarmed about the future of the of the uh mule deer and the and the pong horn uh deer. I I Anyway, thank you for listening. Thank you, Frank. Thank you so much. and also thank you for highlighting mental health. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madame Mayor. We have no additional public comment. Okay. Thank you so much. Um, just really quickly after the meeting, I'm so sorry. We had one member via Zoom, Rebecca Flannry via Zoom. Okay Rebecca. Hi. How are you today? Hi. Hi. Um, I really have a little bit of a concern um with the Stonegate. I'm obviously completely against this development, but the one thing I'm like really wondering is because I keep constantly hearing from council members um about lack of housing and yet you're attorney you're allowing them to transfer 5,000 homes to a bunch of warehouses. So, I don't know how this constitutes or benefits anybody's life for the cost of living in the city of Reno. And I'm kind of disappointed in the four that voted for it, but we all know that they're bought and paid for by developers. So, I would really like them to really reconsider their decision on this because Reno needs housing board that we need more jobs. We don't need more jobs. We need homes. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much. Um, madam clerk, do you have any more public comment? Emily Ooa via Zoom. Okay. Hi, Emily. Hi. Hi. My name is Emily Ooa. I spoke at the Stonegate meeting a couple months ago. I assume so. Um, I was the first person to speak on the first Stonegate meeting. Um, I'm here again because I am strongly against this project, so many others of the Colt Springs residents. Um, I lived in Colt Springs my whole entire life since the day I practically left the hospital. This is my home and I'm tired of pretending like this project makes sense for the people who actually live here. It does not. We said it over and over. We do not want the city of life here. We didn't move out here for warehouses and traffic. We moved here for peace, quiet, and nature and the stars. I go outside at night just to stargaze and talk to friends. And unfortunately, I don't want that to be gone. Cold Springs brings in, you know, tourists. Actually, I have met a few tourists that came here from all over the world. South Africa, Japan, Canada, South Korea, um, Australia, all to see White Lake in our skies and the wildlife taking pictures, posting on social media. So, I don't understand why Stonegate in particular wants to ruin that. There are already enough empty, useless warehouses all over Reno that hasn't been used, and the news keeps telling it all the time, there's no plan. There's Amazon is going to be leaving soon, and it's going to probably be an abandoned warehouse. Who knows? Um and unfortunately if you know this is not listened it's going to be a bigger issue for a lot of people. Cool Springs is filled with a lot of kids. Um and you know safety is you know a huge issue in terms with a lot of you know parents and I just think again like what I'm just saying I'm just you know opposed to this project. I think it should just let it be. I don't want, you know, to see the wildlife to be gone. And, you know, if they want to spend money, then spend money on something that's useful, not something, you know, that's going to be be useless or that's eventually going to be on the news again where it's like Cold Springs has another abandoned warehouse and there's no plans. That's, you know, all I have to say. Thank you for listening. All right. Thank you, Emily. With that, Madame Mayor, we have no additional public comment. Okay. Thank you so much. And um I would just say anyone um here for public comment um I I don't know but council member um Eert probably a really good idea after this to sit down with them and make yourself available so you can continue to work with your constituents. Okay. All right. Thanks so much. Um okay. Uh I also am going to put um my disclosure on the record. Fellow city council members and madame clerk, item F2 involves Stonegate. Josh Hicks is an attorney from McDonald Toronto who represents Stonegate. In my private life, I have retained Adam Hosmer Henner, a partner at McDonald Corono on a civil matter unrelated to Stonegate and Mr. Hicks that involves an electronic tracking device that was secretly placed on my car. I have asked the city attorney's office for guidance and have been advised that I may have a commitment in a private capacity to the interest of McDonald Corono pursuant to NRS 281A. However, this item has nothing to do with my civil case and I am not represented by Mr. Hicks. Uh to the best of my knowledge and any action I may take today on this item um I will will not have it will not have any impact on me or McNal Corano. I will be participating in this item. So madame clerk please accept this disclosure and enter it on the record or into the record. Thanks so much. Um okay. I think I'm sending it to you for second reading, Mr. Are we all city attorney? Thank you, Madam Mayor. I was going to say the one and only Carl Hall, but I should uh respectfully, Mr. City attorney. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Mir Hall. Ordinance adoption. This is ordinance number 6708 uh case number LDC 24-000051 Stonegate Hines Ranch master plan and zoning map amendment ordinance to amend title 18 chapter 18.02 02 of the Reno Municipal Code entitled zoning reszoning a plus or minus 1,767.3 acres generally located partly north of US Highway 395 and west of White Lake Parkway and partially south of White Lake Parkway and US Highway 395 and Cold Springs from Stonegate Planned Unit development PUD to plus or minus 923.3 acres of industrial plus or minus 385.7 acres of single family residential 5 units per acre SF5 5 plus or minus 54.6 acres of general commercial GC and plus or - 4003.7 acres of parks, greenways, and open space together with matters which pertain to or are necessarily connected there with Ward 4. All right. Thank you so much. Um I'm going to send it to Councilwoman Never. Yeah. So I have a lot of comments. Um this is a community that I represent. There's um some city of Reno residents. Most of them are county, but as the people that live out there know, we're a community. We have um a community that crosses city and county boundaries. And um I know I speak for the community when I say that they oppose uh this ordinance change. And I would like to ask um my fellow council members if anybody would be willing to reconsider um their previous vote on this um and just make some statements about it. Um, you know, I brought up the the issues with the groundwater before um the change from the PUD from putting um the onus on the developer to build out Toma uh infrastructure to shifting to groundwater rights that um Great Basin will provide for them. shifts the cost of infrastructure from the developer to the Cold Springs residents who will pay for the the improved infrastructure through rate increases with Great Basin which they've already asked the public utilities commission for approval on. There are um environmental concerns. Um somebody from um Endow um reached out to me. It doesn't want their name revealed, but they said that 40% of the mule deer that live in that area that have collars on have been hit and killed on the highway there in the last 2 years. So 40% in two years. That's not good numbers. There's also the Webers of Acia that when I took a tour of the location, it's an endangered species and only lives in Nevada. The applicant told me that the largest patch ever found was directly where they plan on building their warehouses. Um there was comments made about um you know that the the residents out there would like to see nothing built out there that there was nothing that they would want. Um and I would like to say that those comments are inaccurate based off of the community feedback and efforts that went into creating this PUD. I think that's exactly what they want out there is a community with community resources. I also heard comments from people saying that there was no need for a school out there. Um I'd like to remind everybody that Ward 4 does not actually have a high school. North Valley's High is um a county high school. Um it's also a high school that's had a broken scoreboard for years. Um it would be nice if Ward 4 could have a high school. We have um constant talks about housing crisis in in the state, the need for housing. Um this goes against the city of Reno and the state of Nevada's goals of increasing housing. Um the um this project um really only benefits the developer. There's no benefit to the surrounding community. they have been loud and clear with what they want to see and what would be a benefit to them and the PUD and going from that um just takes away from everything that they've been very vocal on. And one last thing if you'll allow me, Madame Mayor, we have a lake there. We have several lakes in the north valleys that instead of treating like natural resources like they do at Wo Lake and protecting it like a park and putting trails around, we use these areas to put in um industrial and surround these places um and treat them kind of like dumping grounds. And it would be really great if we could start to treat our natural resources like our forests up there and our lake up there like the beautiful resources that they are and start protecting them for our f future generations to enjoy. Um also there's only one way in and out of this valley, two lanes. There is no plans from NDOT to widen to three lanes to get into Cold Springs. Um there are no alternate routes. So, if there is an accident, let's say the roads are snowy and there are big rigs coming over that pass, people will not be able to get home until I don't know when, however long it takes to clear the roads. These are things that I just wanted to call out and just again to ask council to consider the needs of the community and ask if there could be a reconsideration um of our previous vote on Stonegate. Okay. Thank you so much. So, I have a motion from Councilwoman Eert. Is that a motion? I assumed it was a motion. Yeah. Oh, no. Sure. Okay. I'll second that. Jonathan, just for clarity, for the record, this is an ordinance. Not on. What's that? Your mic's not on. Apologies. Uh, for the record, John Shipman, City Attorney's Office, this is an ordinance adoption. You don't have to do a reconsideration. You just don't have to adopt the ordinance. Not adopt. Yeah. My motion is to not adopt. Okay. Okay. I'll second. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. I. I. All those opposed? Opposed. Nay. Okay. Uh motion. Didn't council member Martinez vote? So, sorry, Madame Mayor. I don't know that I got a clear vote on that. A roll call vote. Okay. Um, Vice Mayor Taylor, no. Der, yes. Martinez, no. Eert, yes. Reese, no. Anderson, no. Sheavy, yes. Vote uh fails 34. Okay. So now, um yeah. Did you want to go? I I wanted to I had some stuff to Okay. Go ahead. On on this. Um, so I've given a lot of thought since the last meeting that we've had and the issues that were brought up and I just I wanted to be super clear about where I was coming from last meeting and where I'm coming from this meeting that the reason that I spent so much time on the last PUD where there were a lot of issues in this in this valley. Um, and I visited with Stony I think I went out to the property four times. I went to special meetings they held at the GSR. um on and on. And what I was impressed about and why I supported the Stonegate PUD was they addressed issues like schools. In this particular case, they want to change the zoning. Instead of have 5,000 homes, have 1300 or 1500 homes. That still demands a elementary school. That's it. Still needs an elementary school. And so, um they said there will be no school, but the PUDA allocated land for that. Um flooding. We went through the whole situation with Swan Lake and we ended up doing a settlement and it's public knowledge for $4.5 million that the city paid. Why did the city pay? One of the allegations and and a settlement doesn't assign blame, but the concern from the residents was that the industrial development around a variety of lakes is what caused the flooding in Swan Lake when we had a big rainstorm. that it wasn't adequately compensated for with the flood system. And they had a big point and and I wasn't even on that team at that point, but the city agreed that yeah, we'd rather pay this than go through a whole court case on that. Um so the original PUD had addressed flooding. Uh it addressed storm water. It addressed preservation of trees. It addressed how to get the water, what the best way to get the water was. We are becoming overbuilt and industrial. there are empty warehouses and so I'm concerned when we have a desperate need for housing and we've already shown we have a lot of industrial that we're getting way out of balance. Um, so I was deeply disappointed when we abandoned this well-crafted PUB, which I supported. And all I asked the developers was to keep the PUD in place, switch the percentage of housing and industrial to whatever they thought was a better fit for them now, which they basically said 2/3 industrial, one/3 housing. I don't know if that's the right number, but at least you have an umbrella covering the site. you have each issue addressed and if an issue doesn't apply because you have too many, you know, less houses now, you delete that issue. It seemed very straightforward and that's something I could have supported, but just getting rid of all of this work and leaving these issues unressed and we've just brought up the issues about wildlife. I I pointed out last meeting that the open space includes half the open space is in water. I I don't know how that gets to count for the open space. um the previous open space did not count um open water as open space. So I would really like I'm sorry we just took the vote, but I was really hopeful that the right answer for this developer who I want to succeed would be to keep the PUD in place and reallocate the proportion of industrial, housing, commercial, etc. So that at the end of the day we have a good solution in the north valleys. they have productive development. And that to me would have been a much better answer than just saying, "Hey, let's just do straight zoning and whatever comes in comes in." So, I'll leave it there. Um, I do have some questions about water for my second round. Yeah. When we get there. Okay. And I appreciate that. Um, and then I would also just encourage that um, Councilwoman Eert and um, anyone, it doesn't matter who it is that comes in with the project continue to work with you and those needs. Just because if we don't have the support today doesn't mean that um that project should not be um well thought out or continue to work with you since you are the representative especially if they have to come back to council in any capacity. It's always really favorable whenever um they are communicating and respecting um that it is your ward as well and working with you and the residents because otherwise I see sometimes where then the residents really get nothing at all in any capacity. I'm not saying in this in this instance, but I've seen where, you know, sometimes it's really good to be at the table to ask those um concessions and oftenimes they can happen, but if there isn't that um communication, then sometimes I think the residents absolutely don't get a voice. Yeah, I completely agree. I've had several meetings. Yeah. And just I'm just saying in any way um make these projects better for the people that live in those communities. Um because I think there is a lot of work left to be done here and that's why I can't support it. But I'm just saying in any project, it doesn't matter if it's, you know, one down the street, um, all of us, when you're ward representatives, everyone needs to work really hard, um, regardless because it I I've seen it shift dramatically because of word only voting. I know everyone's sick of me saying that. Thank you, Sheila Lesley. Um but I will be really honest that I think it's fragmented um you know the outcomes of neighborhoods dramatically. And so I would just beg council members continue to work with developers even if projects do or don't pass um for your community to make sure that you can bring other things to the table that some of those concessions I still think they're important whether you get there or not. Um, I think it's respectful for the developer if he really wants to be here and do something that adds value in these projects. So, I'm just saying that I want everyone to think about that. Councilman Ree, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Can I uh who is our staff person on this? Mr. Foster, can you come forward? I I suppose as you walk up, I want to be able to use my time appropriately. Um, in the first reading, we had sort of a history lesson looking back at this property. And so as I understood it, there was a period of time that that property was industrial. Is that correct? The entirety of it was industrial. The vast majority of it was industrial. And then um through some decisions by the owner of the property, they came in and they said, "Hey, we've got some things we want to change. We don't want it to be industrial anymore. We want it now to be a mix." It was basically mostly homes, some industrial, some PGOS. Is that accurate? Uh yeah. Jeff Foster, for the record. Um, yes. So, it was mostly homes, some industrial, some commercial, and PGOS. Yes. And were you here at the time that that project application came in? No, I was not. Okay. I was. And so, I was the at large member representing the entirety of the city of Reno, including all of Ward 4's current configuration. And the ward representative there at the time was Miss Weber. And this and Miss Der, I think, also recognizes that she supported this project in that change. So we went from industrial to a mix mostly residential and now essentially the developer wants to go back the other direction right and so um what is the water consumption decrease between the current PUD and the proposed zoning change so the the number for the proposed zone change it's roughly a thousand acre feet is what is there demand is roughly a thousand acre feet I don't uh council member Reese I remember the exact number for what was what 2500 so 2500 acre feet now 1,000 so 1500 acre feet less okay so the proposed zoning which eliminates the PUD results in500 acre feet less of water being used in the basin basinwide based on the applicant's information correct okay and when you when you say it like that I don't know if you're hedging your bets you say based on the applicant's information do you believe it to be different than the 1500 no it's just that these are not numbers that the city developed. These are numbers provided by the applicant. Understand? And then um with regard to traffic, same analysis. If it had been the old PUD that we voted last time to remove and now is a second reading for a different type of zoning, what is the decrease in traffic? So again, I don't have precise numbers, but what I can say is across the board from water to wastewater to traffic to every issue, school children, etc., every issue the the numbers go down in favor of uh a reduction of impact and why isn't um it misder posits that we could have just taken the existing PD and finagled with it why isn't that the right thing to do from a planning standpoint just a purely paradigmatic question about planning so there were that that PUD was essentially as we've talked about today almost entirely residential So, uh, trying to kind of redesign it, uh, it might as well just be start from scratch. I mean, we they could have done a new PUB, but in terms of trying to kind of alter the existing PUD when it was fundamentally residential, had had schools, had all of these other things to this the current uh, development model being primarily industrial. Again, it just didn't make sense to try and go through that process. Well, and a followup, Madame Mayor, um, with regard to a change to being going from PUD to zoning. So, if we were in the new world, which was zoning only, there are still things that have to come in front of this council for approval. Correct. Um, not necessarily in front of the council, though many uh, things will come in front of the planning commission. Well, and they can be appealed to this counc. They can be appealed to the council. Right. So, if there were some abhorrent project that the residents opposed, it would go through the planning commission. they would up or down it and then that it could end up here. Is that correct? That's correct. Yes. Okay. Thank you so much. All right. Um or go ahead. Thanks so much, Madam Mayor. Council Martinez. Go ahead. I think as part of these conversations, things that have been the most concerning to me obviously are the water usages. Yeah. And I'm just wondering if prior to some of these building permits or development permits coming into place, what sort of uh studies need to occur in terms of water for these usages to be approved at the planning commission or staff level? So the the fundamentally what the city's position is is that we require a will serve letter from the provider i.e. Great Basin in this case. So there won't necessarily be studies done at least as a part of an individual entitlement. Um the the city would basically be saying as a part of the ultimate buildout of a project the project would require a wellserved letter. So we the city kind of takes a hands-off approach on water. Um we basically say look if the building gets approved they still have to get a serve letter from the water pro provider. So that does that answer your question or it does. I think maybe if I can be a little more specific and talk about flood mitigation, drainage, uh wells, the levels there. Is there anything that the city does to kind of oversee those pieces and how this land use will affect that? Yeah. So again, when development permits come in, um flood issues, uh dealing with the you know the the um yeah flooding th those issues will all be analyzed at the individual uh building permit stage uh for individual projects. Okay. And then I think all of us are just obviously concerned with what happened in Swan Lake and just want to mitigate as much as we can with those efforts happening at uh is it Whites Lake? uh over in Cold Springs. So, just wanted to make sure that we're doing our best to protect our communities and whether it is the land use that's going to come in the future or the neighbors that are there currently, we wouldn't want any of these disasters to be exacerbated because of the land use. Sure. Um good afternoon. For the record, Mikey, planning manager to kind of elaborate on what Jeff said. Each individual project will have to do there'll be hydraology reports, drainage studies, that sort of thing that comes in as part of our standard development review that will be analyzed with each each individual project and those like you mentioned will go either to staff or planning commission unless appealed will come back to the city council. Okay, that's all I have for now. Mr. Can you do name and title, please? Mikey, planning manager. Thank you. Okay, Councilwoman Anderson. Okay. So, just not to beat this horse any longer, but for clarification, all of the work that Miss Door is citing that was so important to her and that was, you know, well planned in the PUD, even though it's not in the PUD anymore, all of that same work is going to be done again for current conditions for each project that comes within this new zoning. Correct. Um, I'm not sure that that's correct. I think council member door, you were referring to just the process of putting together the PUD. And I was talking about a regional flood management system or storm water system versus one for every individual building that stands on its own. And that's the just to be clear, that's the problem that led from Silver Lake development, flooding, Swan Lake. Each building was evaluated on its own instead of a regional system. Okay. Thanks for that clarification. All right. Okay. That being said, um I'm going to send it to you, Councilwoman Taylor. Well, are you ready for a motion? Oh, we had another question. Okay, go ahead. I had used my time before. Um and did you have a good question? Okay. Um so, what I wanted to explain is that one of the comments was that all of the impacts will fundamentally go down. And what I think we're missing in that simple simple statement is that they the fund the fundamental nature of the impacts will change. So, what I was just explaining about flooding is that there um while there might be fewer buildings, potentially fewer homes, there's going to be more concrete because industrial has huge buildings, it has lots of uh pads that cover over lots of land, which channel runoff, which has to be incorporated, which is much different than homes, which have open space or green space around them and have ability to have the water sink in. So all of this concrete, the water has to be channeled somewhere. And that's why I'm very concerned about a peacemeal flood management system versus the kind that they put in the Pud, which was a regional system. Um, when you talk about the water, so in the PD, yes, the water use will go down, but the provider which was in the PD was Tamwa has a reliability level that they require standards to a certain height. They don't have their wells going dry because they mix water from groundwater and surface water. It's a different style of provision than what Great Basin has to offer, which is relying on wells because they're in the north valleys. They don't get to mix it around with the rest of the community. Um, a different kind of example is that this is just incremental development. Some of the building will require um building permits. I mean, they'll all require building permits, but some of them will require potentially coming back to council, uh, an SUP or minor CUP or something like that to where it even goes to the planning commission. Many will not. Many are are not within near residents, um, just standalone building will go to the building department, won't be analyzed as a group. That's what I'm concerned about. Not that they'll get a later analysis and it's equal. The impacts are fundamentally different. we're bringing in for traffic. We might have less cars. We're gonna have more trucks. Okay, big trucks. We just heard about a two-lane road. It's not even a three-lane road. There's no passing. So, if if something happens on the road, the road's blocked. It's a lot easier to fix a one or two car collision than a big semi. So, those are the while there might be a less that the nature of the impact is changing and I think that's what's important. We we talked a lot with the developer about addressing Virginia Street there and improving Virginia Street so we could also address 395, you know, a bigger 395 issue. So anyway, my time's up, but what I really wanted to understand, I see we have a presentation from the developer on water and there were a lot of water questions that came up and I just wondered if they were going to speak to it. It's called Stonegate Cold Springs Water um Reno City Council second public hearing. It's in our backup and maybe they would address a number of these water issues, you know, I don't know. So, it's here. It raises questions for me, but I didn't know if they were planning to speak to it. So, thank you. Are are you I mean, what we were provided it, you know, one of my water questions just to use another couple seconds was um it's all groundwater. Um yes the state engineer has approved that there is groundwater there but how does that groundwater get over to the great basin system you know how how does it get integrated how is it used how is it served back um great basin already sent a notice to as part of their integrative planning to PUC saying their wells are dropping we've had testimony that they've already raised rates are in looking at increasing rates further to deal with their private water issues so those are still outstanding concerns to me I know we're going to get answers here today, but I hopefully my colleagues understand. Andy, do you want to do you want to come up and address that so there's clarity, please? I think that could be helpful. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, council, for the record, Andy Derling, and with me, James Een with Great Basin Water Company. Um, yeah, just having had, you know, conversations last time about water and and questions that were raised, uh, we did put together just in case there was a question, um, to be able to kind of add some color to it. Um, James can jump in at any of this, but um, Great Basin Water Company. It's part of the Nexus Water Group. Um, reliably serves uh, 1.3 million customers across 20 US states. Um, in Nevada, they operate as Great Basin Water Company. They're regulated by the Public Utilities Commission. Um, they serve about 25,000 uh, customers in Nevada, 4,000 of which are in Cold Springs. Uh, their infrastructure there consists of five groundwater wells, four storage tanks, and they have about 2,400 acre feet of water groundwater. um those come from two two different basins. Um when we look at this in the context of the entire hydraologic bowl that is out there, the the Cold Springs Valley is is a is a bowl where all the water kind of ultimately ends up uh into uh White Lake. That's you know where the groundwater drains as well as surface water. Um White Lake is that seasonal playa. Um and the interesting thing here is that you know there's there's five layers of sort of um geologically in the valley where there's actually two aquifers. there's a a high aquifer and a lower aquifer. Um and Stonegate's infrastructure would tie into those aquifers. Um drill wells on the south side of the valley where all the current wells are on the north side of the valley. So that provides redundancy for the system. Um currently there's no kind of migration between north and south because of that big clay uh lake that's in the middle there. So by developing Stonegate with the water resources that we have on our side of the valley, it helps Great Basin in the overall. Um I do want to add it's not just um groundwater. Stonegate has uh 1,700 acre feet which consists of both groundwater and surface water. Um so that would be adding into um Great Basin's system. Uh just a reminder it did come up you know um Great uh uh Stonegate has 1700 acre feet of adjudicated water with the state engineer. Um our estimates are that they only need about a thousand of that. So about 60% uh is what they need to serve our project. So um you know there's there is excess water there that gives additional flexibility to Great Basin. Um this concept of kind of the pumping and and wells going dry uh James can speak to that obviously much more than I can but just you know a picture says kind of a thousand words. So, this is a three-year snapshot of uh all of Great Basin's wells. And yes, they they eb and flow, right? Water levels go up and down throughout the year, especially in the summer months um when, you know, we don't have rain uh we don't have rain with, you know, our wet uh time of the year is in the winter. And in the summer also, people have their sprinklers going irrigating their lawns, things like that. So, it's a normal draw down uh in the summer months and then it gets recharged in the winter. And if you look at the trend here over the last 3 years, the water level is actually higher now than it was 3 years ago to the point where they're even having issues with um you know having to dewater because the water groundwater is coming up so high that it's you know getting into manholes and some of their other infrastructure there. Um so uh we don't anticipate that there is a water problem. We feel like adding on this Stonegate portion into Great Basin does nothing but help them. Um, furthermore, this doesn't preclude us from ultimately, you know, having some sort of wholesale water agreement with Tumbla in the future. Uh, the letter that's provided in your original staff report from our last hearing um had, you know, at the at the very end there an acknowledgement that, you know, Great Basin, Tumbla, and the and the developer have and will continue to work together um to have, you know, multiple options in the near-term, midterm, you know, Great Basin is going to serve this in the long term. if there's a need for uh additional resources and hooking into tumble that's that's still on the table as well but we don't think that's um quite necessary. So um that just to proide for add a little extra color I don't James if you wanted to add any specifics on that. Yeah, thank you Andy. Uh, James Een for the record, EAS N. Um, couple things I wanted to point out. One is we are regulated, as Andy said, by the public utilities commission. Uh, foremost, I think that's the most important thing. We cannot accept any development that does not pay for itself. So, I want to get that on the record. Stonegate will pay for all of the infrastructure, not Great Basin and not Great Basin's existing, excuse me, rate payers. The second thing I want to also point out is the current rate case that we're just completing right now is for past projects. They have nothing to do with any future projects. Um, as I said before, we do go through an IRP process. We finish that in 2024. We do that every three years and we also file a rate case every three years. All the work that has been presented for this project will be bore once again by Stonegate, not Great Basin customers. Our rate case that we are doing right now is a consolidated rate case that actually helps all the customers in the state of Nevada. As Andy pointed out on the previous slide, we do serve multiple communities. What we've recommended was one single uh water rate for all those customers so we can defer capital investment and spread it out to lessen the rates and impacts. And the last thing is this development will also keep rates lower for our customers in the Cold Springs Basin. So I know I'm out of time. I just wanted to respect that. Thank you. Okay. Anything else? Go ahead, Councilbert. Um, I'm having some technical issues, so I can't pull up the um, Great Basin report to the PUC right now, but I recall that the wells that that were submitted on your report that said that they all had a significantly lower groundwater um, level than when they were initially put in, um, all of the wells said that they were pretty much close to the end of their useful life. So, I'm curious what past projects in Cold Springs, this rate increase that you've requested, um, are covering. Um, great question. I did bring the 2024 IRP, so do you have a section you want me to look at real fast? If you have the report you submitted, I'd like to know because I was looking at the wells where you get your water for the residents in that area. And the wells that I looked at said that they they were either um no longer in service or um at the um almost at the end of their usable life and that the groundwater levels were um significantly lower than they'd been. And this this report was from last year. So, I'm hearing one thing when somebody's coming in to um get a project put through and then when I read Great Basin's report, it's it's giving me a whole different picture. And again, there was a a section in that report that specifically called out that Stonegate would be using um uh Toma Water, that it didn't need to be taken into account in a different section. and I think it was 3.133 in that report. So it was significant enough that it was mentioned and as I stated that it's there is a picture that Great Basin paints of there not being water as much water there as there used to be and the wells at the end of their usable life. So what infrastructure was put in that this current rate increase is for? It is for none of it right now. So in prior rate cases, I'm going to go back. We are required to file a rate case every 3 years. And if you go through the well section in the report, you'll see that we have five wells that we serve the customers and cold springs from. Two are from Long Valley, which is a completely separate basin than the Cold Springs Basin, and then three in the Cold Springs Basin. So, we have done well rehabs on all of those wells. We have put in new liners on three of those wells. Two of those wells did not require new liners, and the pumping has not changed in the Cold Spring side. In the Long Valley side, the pumping has changed because it's a fractured rock system. I don't want to get into those details, but I can. Um, but we're pumping from a completely different basin and we're importing. Okay. So, I might have misunderstand and the Great Basin plan on the original 5,500 homes. We're talking about importing water. And I agree with Councilwoman Der. What are we going to do about the change in the landscape? I'm concerned about the heartscape because it's not going to soak into the ground anymore. And we have a removal of free ratifyes in that basin, which is trees or plants. They're consuming the water. This plan right here balances that out. It gives us time to look at this basin because we pump from the north. We also pump from a consolidated zone that's in a fractured rock system that is not impacting anything in Cold Springs. If anything, it's adding water to and if you look at this slide, water is increasing in our areas of well 8, well one and Van Dyke. Those are the primary pumpers in Cold Springs and that's our concern and this plan balances that for us. So I agree with these earlier statements and with Tumblr introducing 2500 AFA with no return outflow, we are looking at a Swan Lake scenario and that's why we sat down with the developer to work on this proposal. So our wells are not going dry and I can walk through the report with you any time or any of the city council members. The state engineer sees this report and so does the public utilities commission engineering staff who vets and approves these projects. So I know that's past my time or almost. Madame Mayor, go right ahead. Thank you so much, Mr. Een. Thank you for being here. So um I think probably what you can recognize is that aside from Miss Der who is an expert in water, um the rest of us are not. Right? I'm a lawyer. Miss Shivy is a small business owner and it goes down the line. What we don't want to do is hurt people, existing people in the valley and we certainly don't want um new persons who move into the area whether they be residential or commercial to not have access to water. Right? So now that you understand that I I cannot say that I read what my colleague from Ward 4 read and read it I read it very differently. I did not read a line that said your wells are going dry. something is you know hydraologically imbalanced out there and you've now explained something which I think is important and I I suppose I would turn to my colleague Miss Dur as like a independent verifier of it but is the project uh I'm sorry there's not a project in front of us but is the proposal which reduces the consumptive water in that valley and also does not hook into Tamwa is it the right thing to do from a water balancing standpoint and do you result in or would this change result in wells going dry. So you've answer asked a couple of questions. First off, in my opinion as a water operator, yes, this plan that is presented is the right plan for this basin. Our hydraologist has evaluated it. Our hydraologist is aware of it and we need to balance the water in this basin first before we introduce or import any more new water into the basin. That's what this plan. What you're saying is that this improves the water balance in this hydraological area, improves it from what was pre-existing and plan for the PUB. In my opinion, that is absolutely correct. And again, I I think um I'm trying to be very specific so that I can understand the implications of the vote that we have to take from this dis. Um and so now that you've explained that, I think that answers some of the questions. Um, is there some technological study that shows that your wells are running dry? What what is that all about? I I think what the report is saying is that wells change over time. And wells fail for different reasons. Whether the casing is old, it gets corroded. You need to that's why we put in liners in three of those wells. the formation, the recharge, depending on what the formation is on the three wells that are the main suppliers in the Cold Springs area. It's all in the alovvium. Those water tables are not decreasing. They've been going up. Well, I I thought I read in the report that there was a great deal of dewatering that happened, meaning you had more water than you could handle. That's what I'm talking about. That's not decreasing. Sorry. Yeah. That we are having to dewater different assets down by the lake area. And that is I'm sorry I maybe used the wrong term, but yes, we are having those challenges. The wells are not going dry. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any further questions? Yes, I have. Just one more and then we're Yeah. And I don't need to take very long. I just I'm confused by your answer, sir. Um, you've written in the IRP that your WA wells were drying up and you had to to deepen them. So, I'm confused by your answer to Mr. We have not deepened any wells in Cold Springs and I'd like to see that section because if it is, it's a mistake. What we have done pull it up for you right now. I mean, I read directly from it at the last council meeting. Rehabilitated our wells, every one of our wells in Cold Springs. Okay. And the other thing I don't understand about water balance that you're explaining is are you saying that the water levels in the wells are rising and suddenly they're they're going to become artisian or something or what are you trying to say? No, what I'm saying is that they rebound as this chart right here shows. They rebound every year, right? So that's a good thing, right? Absolutely. And but so I'm not sure what you're saying that we're out of balance and somehow pulling more water out will put you back in balance. I'm confused by this. So, if you could go to the slide of the basin. It's a previous Well, you can actually control it right there. Oh, I can. I'm sorry. I didn't know that. Thank you. There's some arrows. Yeah. Okay. So, you you see where where the four wells are? We don't. So, is it the blue circles? Yeah. It says the blue wells. Yep. Okay. We pull from the north area. The new stonegate wells will come from the south and there is a blockage or there's a clay dyke that separates the north from the south. Sure. And so to ask answer one of your previous statements, where's the water going to come from? Stonegate's going to pump their existing resource that's already existing from the south side. So you're going to drill new wells in the red area and that's what's going to serve Stonegate. Is that it? Yes, ma'am. Okay. And that water is then going to be treated and it's going to go to the north to be treated. And when it goes to the north to be treated, it's going to be return inflow basin through the ribs. And we are going to have another issue that's up there. And that's where we've been working with Wo County to address that. And so that is to try to get at least 200 AFA back around the corner to be reinjected back into the lower portion of the basin. Well, are you going to be part of our advanced uh treatment system to advanced purified water treatment system? Is it going to the Reno Stead plan? Is it going to Lemon Valley plant? No, it's staying right in the basin right now. It's not because remember Councilwoman, right now there is no plan to export water out of this basin. I'm just wondering where where is your wastewater being treated? Um, as a plan said that was presented before, see where it says CSWFR ribs? That is Wo County's existing wastewater treatment plant that already treats all the waste in Cold Springs area. That's what I wanted to know. Okay. I'm sorry. Didn't understand your question. Thank you. Okay. All right. Anything further? I'm trying to get to that report, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting to my email if I can get some support from staff. Okay. Um I'm going to hand it over to you, Councilwoman um Taylor. Okay. Um thank you, Madam Mayor. I move to adopt ordinance number 7300. All right. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed? Discussion. Go right ahead. Yeah. I just want to say that I'm again just really disappointed in the applicants just complete, you know, disregard for any feedback that they were given by the community, by, you know, all of the people that came. Can we do this in a minute, please? Okay. Um, the community members that gave feedback, the meetings that I had, the tour I went on, um, it really just the read between the lines message to me is you guys had the votes and you didn't need to make any accommodations. And whether that's true or not, um, you know, perception is reality and that's what the community thinks and that's what I feel about this situation and it's really disappointing. It's not a great way to come into the community um being viewed as somebody that doesn't care uh about the community and you're just there to um increase generational wealth for your investors. Okay. Um it doesn't seem like you want to be good neighbors. Um, and to the gentleman's point that said, it feels like Reno doesn't care about them. Hard to disagree with votes like this and with neighbors that do projects like this. So, those are my comments. I'll be a no on this motion. Okay. Thank you. Um, all right. So, I have a motion, a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed? No. Opposed? Opposed. Uh, motion passes. Uh, 52 or 53. 43. 43. Sorry, I can't count. Um, okay. Um, C3. Where are we going? She C3. Short-term. Okay. We are now heading back to Sorry, we're we are bouncing today because I wanted to accommodate um everyone that has been here on this item. So, I apologize if we took your item out of place. So, we are now heading back into item C3. Okay. Here we go. Madame Clerk, do you have any public comment for this item? Thank you. Uh, Mayor Shivi, we do not have any public comment registered on this item, but we did receive two letters of correspondence. Um, two letters of concern. Those have been distributed to the Reno City Council and are a part of the permanent record. Okay. Thank you so much. All right. Hello, Lance. How you doing? Good afternoon, mayor. Council members, so fancy. Well, thank you. Seriously. Um, so thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for you, um, bringing this back to us. Um, I know you do a lot of digging and research and I mean, I know you always want to bring the best possible solution, but I'm grateful that you heard um, the request and so, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, I'm going to give it to you. Yeah. So, uh, as you mentioned, we're uh, we're here today to talk about short-term rentals. Um, what I'm going to do is get a current overview of the short-term rental market in Reno, discuss some service request information that we found, uh, and what the other jurisdictions around us and just outside Nevada are doing, and then the impacts of creating an ordinance versus not. So, like you said, council had had discussed this in the past. It's come up many times, but more recently, it came up during an ADU discussion, and council decided that we wanted to hear more about short-term rentals before we move forward with ADUs. um there was a concern that you know uh going forward with ADUs first could cause an uptick in the STR market. So here we are today to talk about that. So just so everyone's on the same page, short-term rentals are the same as transient lodging, which is by designation basically the same as a hotel. Um it's defined as a rental of a room for a period of 28 consecutive days or less. They pay the same sort of transit lodging tax that a hotel would goes to the RSCVA and then it's distributed accordingly. So, in Reno, we have about,00 plus, 1150 short-term rental listings at this time. Um, there were also comments and concerns over housing availability and how short-term rentals may affect that. So, just uh some some census data in 2023, there was approximately 114,000 uh occupied housing units. And so, with those 1100 short-term rentals, that's less than 1% of the occupied units are currently listed as short-term rentals. So, just a little more information and background on that. As far as service requests, we went back 28 months um back to January 2023. And you can see right there generally uh the inquiries surrounded how do I get licensed? What are the rules? What do I need to do? Obviously, when we get those sort of comments, we let them know that we don't have short-term rental regulations, but thanks for checking in and keep checking back. Um some people report unlicensed STRs, which is not a thing because they don't aren't required to be licensed. Um complaint-wise, you can see we got 10 complaints uh through Reno Direct over those 28 months. The things you would suspect, parking, trash, noise, uh pretty common uh complaints that you would anticipate from something like this. So, as far as other jurisdictions, we looked around uh Nevada. We looked in Clark County, Washa County, City Las Vegas, Henderson. Um, and outside of the state, we looked at Boise, Denver, Fort Collins, Austin, Texas, and many of them require a business license or registration for these rentals. Um, the fees range from a wide range, $80 to $1,500 a year. Uh, nearly all of them, well, I will say all of them require parking, trash, noise requirements. A lot of them have occupancy limits. Um other other general um general general requirements to operate. Um some of them require inspections from the fire department, building department. Some of them annually, some of them uh every few years they allow for self inspections, things like that. And then some of the jurisdictions have distancing requirements. Uh specifically in Nevada, you can't be, you know, in southern Nevada, they can't be within 2500 ft of a resort casino. Um there are caps on them. there are caps on the number that people can uh own. So they're they're all there's a there's a a vast uh difference between the jurisdictions. So while you're considering this and what we're what we're going to do going forward, some of the potential costs are pretty obvious. Um money and time, right? We're going to create create an ordinance, implement it, enforce, and we will probably need some additional staff based on the research that I've done with the other jurisdictions. Um some of the benefits that we would get from putting an ordinance into place are just the awareness. where are these at? Um, we could control the location and the size of them. Obviously, we'd have the ability to regulate and and and to uh uh enforce things. And then just the community confidence. I and I might as well say consumer confidence because people are knowing that these uh these rentals are um have been inspected and they are safe to stay in. Um things of that sort. So, with that, uh I've got two proposed motions up here for you to to think about. One is to direct staff to conduct community outreach and return with a draft ordinance or um any alternative accept this report and direct staff to continue monitoring the situation that we do and we will return with updates as needed. So with that, I'm uh I'm here for any questions. Okay. I'll um Council Member Anderson, do you have any questions? I'm not sure yet. Okay. Council member Martinez. Um yeah, just thank you so much for your work so far. uh on this. I think for me it just I understand the concerns that have been expressed by some of our constituents just given the numbers that you have given us today. It just seems like a non-issue based on the number of incidents that have happened whether it's complaints or general service requests that have been asked of the city. Um, and did did you talk about how many staff members you're calculating it would take maybe to implement something like this? Uh, Lance Broad for the record, we would I would anticipate that it would take a minimum of two additional staff. Um, in speaking with Washa County, when they implemented this, they uh they have one full-time staff uh administratively, one code enforcement agent um full-time, and then they also have some uh part-time employees that are in inside that are, you know, helping process applications and renewals. Um, at one time they did have three additional temporary employees when they were setting all this up. So, uh, just in a similar jurisdiction that's right outside of us, they they have at least two, um, with, you know, room for need for more if if necessary. If the body were to decide to ask you to research this and maybe go out into the community and get more information, um, is the ability to deny licenses going to be included in that sort of a rubric on how and why? I'm assuming there would be guidelines there. It wouldn't be just like I don't want it next door to me so I want you to deny it. Right? And I think council would have to give the direction to say these are the kind of things we want to be able to consider when this is happening. And that could be a distancing requirement. Maybe you don't want neighbor you don't want 10 of them on a street. Maybe you only want one every certain amount of feet. That gets a little tricky, especially with people that are already operating at short-term rentals because then you have to consider grandfathering rights and things like that. Um, but it would be a a discussion that where where council would say, let's let's figure out how we can we can decide to uh evaluate these applications. We could come back with examples, deliberate on that and and kind of move forward. I just from the last comment, I think I do appreciate the community confidence portion that you talked about and ensuring public safety um if with folks using these uh Airbnbs or uh what do you call it? Transient housing lodging. transient lodging uh opportunities in the city. So, there could be something there, but I don't know if I'm fully convinced to ask you to go in that direction as of right now. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Martinez. And I'm going to go because I'm I'm building off of that. Based on what you said, there's 10 complaints over 2-year period. I'm looking at the month of February. We have 2900 calls for service. I'm not sure this is an issue. I appreciate the information, but I think to me it shows this isn't I don't we're not really trying to solve anything yet. I want to be proactive. I want to be I want to make sure that we have the resources, but from where I'm sitting in the data that this is a non-issue and this isn't necessarily a priority at this point. But um that's all I have right now. Council member Ree, thank you so much. Mr. Ferdo, I suppose um I'm not as focused on the calls for service issue. I'm trying to figure out whether or not the existence of short-term rentals decreases the available housing stock for people to have housing as their option for and mostly attainable or affordable housing. Right? And isn't that what we're trying to balance? Right? We're trying to balance the competing concern of a person who owns a piece of property and wants to rent it to make income or maybe they're going to in this case rent the granny flat or ADU that they put in and turn it into an STR. Right? So, you're asking us um to address a thing which I'm not sure I know enough information about. Um so, a couple of questions. First is Wo County. You said they're currently regulating short-term rentals. Is that correct? That's correct. How many are they regulating? Approximately 750. Okay. So, they have 750. We have a thousand. And are those 750 all in incline village? 90%. Okay. So, this is where I don't know. So, in in Incline Village, I think we could say proof positive that it's very impossible to live there because you can't find housing. So, if you're working at the Lone Eagle Grill, which actually I think is gone now, if you're working at the Hyatt and you're a a blackjack dealer, there's nowhere to live because everything has been gobbled up by short-term rentals, right? But I don't know if that's happening down here. So, I I can't tell you whether it's a good use of your time to go do a thing unless you can tell me that that thing is impacting our housing supply. I also am concerned about what I see happening in Clark County where they have gone out of their way to now regulate but their ordinances that their council approved have been tied up in litigation for the better part of three years now. Right? So I don't want us to rush headlong thinking that we are going to fix something that's broken about housing supply and do it in such a way that we end up in court and being squeezed between people who want to put their unit into service for themselves to make income on it. passive income or you know the retiree who wants to rent out their uh second above garage unit. I I I don't know. And so h how are we to find and reach those conclusions? Is it that I go with your first one which is do a bunch of outreach which I think takes your time and staff resources or do we do this second one which is uh monitor and see what is your professional opinion? Maybe that's laughter for the record. In my opinion, I mean, I think the facts uh of the presentation kind of speak for themselves at this point. As you said, it doesn't appear that there's a massive infl or a massive housing shortage due to short-term rentals. Now, I'm not an expert on that. And these are the basic figures that I've gathered from Census Bureau and from the number of rentals available. A thousand units seems like a lot. Sure. Right. That's a thousand I don't know. We'll say that's a thousand apartments or studios that someone could be renting as housing. Right. It is. Yeah. Okay. So you're you're positing that it's the number that leads you to conclude that it's not yet reached a critical mass that we should do something about it as well as the number of complaints. I guess I would ask um if we were to move forward with this basically what is the problem we would like to solve and what what would you like to see in order to uh address complaints the 10 complaints that we had or to free up housing to say like we need to limit these to less than the thousand you know and I'm not sure I totally understand your answer. Are you saying complaints like there's a party house next to me, come and bust up the keer that's going on there? Is that the type of complaint you're talking about? Correct. The service requests that basically we gathered from Reno Direct. This is what we pulled in over 28 months. Um four people complained about parking issues and they're saying it's because of an STR. It's not really a way to validate that. I mean, we can go out and we can check, but um to say like, okay, which one was it and who was it and who has the STR, but we're not regulating them at this point. But these are the ones that we've got from the public. Well, for me it wasn't the complaint issue. It was the housing issue. Right? I'm trying to figure out is the thing that is depriving us of the housing stock we need the existence of short-term rentals. And that's what answer I don't know. Yeah. And from my perspect uh community outreach is is is always a way to go. Um we're going to get varying opinions. as far as an expertise in, you know, someone that with an expertise of what our housing shortage is and how this contributes to that, I'd have to do some some serious research on who who knows that answer and what can we can we believe it? Can we support it in that thing? Um, Lance, I think you've done a great job because, you know, we can we hear, you know, some people raising it to a level that it's, you know, oh, you know, it's very serious. But here's what I'd say that I think the reason we look at things like this is to that we are being proactive instead of reactive, right? Knowing that the county has something in place, knowing doesn't Sparks have something in place? Uh, not to my knowledge. The county does though. County does. Um, and so for consistency, but more for I guarantee you this council would be backing council if there was something really, you know, I would think problematic that happened in a short-term rental. And that's when everyone's like, "Oh, we can't have that in a short-term rental." So, that was my point of like being proactive. I think your numbers speak for themselves. I also want to be really careful. I know your guys' time as staff is super valuable. Um, and so having this is helpful looking obviously to other jurisdictions. Um, but that's what I wanted to avoid. I know that, you know, you might have people that feel like this is a non-starter. It will be a starter when you have a problem with it. Um, and that's what government loves to do is be reactive instead of proactive. And I think if we put in some measures um to help us say, "Hey, this is what that looks like." um then we're doing probably a lot better off than we are right now. Right. So, I do think it's a balance. I I never believe that this is taking away from affordable housing. Um I just, you know, and I think looking at what you've presented um makes some very clear arguments because, you know, these are numbers that we have. That's all we have to go off of. So, I appreciate that. Um Councilwoman Door. Yeah. Thank you. Um I too was not concerned about complaints, but here's what I was concerned about. two things. One is the point uh the mayor was bringing up about being proactive. Here's here's why people have raised the issue because we have been in a conversation about ADUs and a lot of the concern is that what if ADUs are not so much for granny flats and family and kids that haven't left home or coming back home, but what if it's just a rental unit and how are we going to regulate that? And that's why they wanted us to get out front of it. So when we did our ADU regulation, we already had a plan with SDRs. So let me go the next step. We have over a thousand businesses that we are not collecting a business license from. They're not paying anything. They're they're making money now. I work at home. I I don't have I I have maybe an occasional one car at my house extra once a month or twice a month or something. I don't have a routine of having cars in front of my house. I'm not having parties at my house because of my business. I am simply working at my computer, right? But we're we pay I'm licensed. Okay. And all I'm doing is working at home. Okay. So, I guess I question and and I I'm I let me just be really careful. I support having STRs. I stay in them when I travel. I think they're really great as an alternative to a hotel. I become part of the community. It's quieter. I don't have neighbors on either side, people running up and down the hall. I'm in a little house. It's It's awesome and I want to embrace it. But I also don't know why do they not pay a license fee even if that's all we did. Um and if we did that, I mean, even if that license fee, let's say, was $300 a year or $500 a year, something fairly minimal. Um that would raise, given your data, over 300,000 or over a half a million dollars. We could certainly afford one a full-time person on that and a part-time person or two on that. So I I am not moved by the cost thing. I think it pays for itself. Just like with parking, we've shown that if we go out and enforce parking, it'll pay for itself. So my concern is more being fair. We're talking about licensing nonprofits. They don't even make a profit, but we want them to have a license. Why? because we want to know where they are in terms of planning and allocating other units near them, especially commercial. And I would think we would want that if we have a STR that we want to know that they're there, that they got their inspection from the fire, um that there's ADA if that's what's needed. I don't I don't know. But I also know that Henderson has a pretty thorough regulation. I'm not even saying go down that path, but they I mean, has it worked for them? I mean, you haven't really been a you've you've recorded that they have an ordinance and I read your staff report and it looked really good like what they had in their ordinance. In fact, I starred something from every group that you had something in the ordinance. So, that's what I'm looking at. I'm looking at getting them under license, making sure they're safe, and going from there. If that's all the regulation we ever do, that's all we ever do. If we want to do more, at least we know how to find them. They have a business license and we can say, "Hey, we adopted some regulations." We're sending them to them proactively. So, okay. Counciloman Ebert. Oh, yeah. My thoughts are I think we should license them. Um, I mean, if we're going to charge people to file an appeal, um, an $1,200 to file, you know, potentially an industrial commercial warehouse going into their neighborhood, I think that, um, you know, if we're going to charge that for the cost of doing business, I think we should have a fee to, um, do business with these short-term rentals. So, I absolutely agree with licensing fees for these are generating income if they're being used as as short-term rentals. Um I think um I don't know the comments about um taking away residential units is kind of hypocritical given the rest of the conversations today. So I'm just not even going to touch on that. So those are my comments. Thank you. All right. Anything else? I just wanted to add that I can support looking at some type of a a registration fee for these. Um they are no different than a homebased business. Um, and it gives us the opportunity to track the data so that we know what percentage of our overall, you know, single family homes in the area are being used as short-term rentals. It is a way to also have the ability to go and inspect them. Correct. Absolutely. Well, it depends on how the regulation is set up. Um, some of the jurisdictions do require inspections and others do not. Some of them allow self inspections every couple years. Um obviously we'll have to uh you know charge the there would be a fee associated with the with a registration and then there would be a fee associated with an inspection building fire etc. So um yeah yeah I can definitely support that. I mean you don't inspect our homebased business right but uh we we don't in the cases that I've seen and the stuff that I've read it essentially uh you know you're talking about public safety from someone you're living in your home. we can accept the fact that you you're responsible of your home and and you're taking that. But if you're going into someone else's and you're you know like a hotel room or you want a fire extinguisher, right? You want the smoke alarms and the and the egress and everything else. Yeah. Okay. Um I was going to No, go ahead. Well, yeah. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Lance, I suppose again I come back to the fundamental question of what we're trying to solve, right? I thought that we were looking at ADU uh we were looking at STR ordinances in order to answer the question about whether ADUs would be allowed to be short-term rentals. Sounds like the colleagues are going in a different direction and I'm fine with that. The the now uh pivot is uh Miss Derosits and it sounds like most agree that as businesses they should be regulated just like any other business. So, these are not exactly what um your presentation was about, I don't think, or or is it? It's both. Um and again, this is something that's come up uh throughout multiple meetings. And so, I think that the council's desire to hear what's this all about and should we move forward was just basically me coming forward and saying, "What do you want to do with these? Do is it something where you just want to ban them in in ADUs? Is it something where you want to license them or register them across the city?" Um just getting feedback. Well, of course, we adopted or or directed the planning commission to look at the ADUs in advance of AB396, which the legislature has now passed, which requires cities to allow ADUs in all single family zones. So, even though, you know, people can have conspiracy theories online about um what they think our motivation for things are, we knew as a body that that was coming, right? So, we've gotten out ahead of it. There will be ADUs in this state allowed in single family zoning areas. Right. The issue is a subset of that though. It's about whether or not they should be regulated in some way so as to not allow ADUs to be turned into um hotel rooms as you said, right? Um and so I I think I um like Miss Der am saying I favor some regulatory scheme, but I don't know that you've yet answered the question about what that regulatory scheme is designed to do. Right. Is it about the safety of it? Because in Incline Village where they regulate ADUs, the fire district has to go in and make sure that you got proper ingress and egress, you got smoke detectors, you got carbon monoxide detectors, you have um fire extinguishers, right? That's what they are paying for when they pay their fee. And I don't think $300 is going to cover the inspection level that that requires, right? you're talking about probably the $1,500 range to do those. Um, and again, if an ADU is being just used as a granny flat, um, and it's for a long-term renter, maybe it's not part of this equation at all. Um, and so again, I'm I'm still not sure where the body is. Um, and I'll also say one other thing, which is you've said that there are a thousand units, right? Um, what about the ones that are not known to us, right? Aren't there like unregulated? A whole subtext of other ones that are not regulated. You only found those by like pulling some data off Airbnb, I think. Right. So, there there are websites out there that gather the information. So, if they're not being advertised, then they're probably not being pulled into those. So, you could have an unadvertised Airbnb, which you're probably not pulling that much business in. It's possible. That makes sense. Yeah. You know, Lance, looking at your um data, I I would assume we also probably charge a business license fee for regular rentals. Correct. We do for uh rentals of um if you have three or more units on on a parcel, then you have to have a business license. If you have two, you don't. Um if you have Wait, on a parcel? If you have them on a parcel, so like a triplex or more would require a business license. If you own 10 houses scattered throughout Reno, you don't have to have a business license. the way our code reads. What? Right. Wait. So, a person who owns 24 rental properties is not paying a rental. I think that's probably something worth looking at, right? If if a person says, "I own 24 rentals. I am, you know, renting them below market, they probably should be paying a fee to the city of Reno PSA." And I would think this reminds me a lot of why we need the business licenses in the same way that we would for the nonprofits. It goes back to this and that is, think about it. That's why we ended up, you know, having a marijuana dispensary near a school when we were not supposed to. How would you know if they're not on your radar or have a business license and who's operating? Could that be a potential problem? Sure, it could. Um, and and in this case of uh someone owning multiple units across a city, that's a little more difficult to track. As uh Councilman Ree had said, how are you finding the ones the short-term rentals? Well, we can find those cuz they're advertised. Generally speaking, from an investigative perspective of compliance officers looking for, oh, I think that person owns more than one house. It's a little more tricky. Sure. Sure. We stumble upon it and people ask questions and we can educate them accordingly. But um it is a little more difficult to hunt them down obviously. But I would I think that you could when you go and look up the property data, you can see based on someone's name how many properties they own. Sure. If you have a hunch, then absolutely. Okay. Um if if I think someone then we can type them in and go, yeah, they do own five houses in this in the city. Um yeah, we then we would have an avenue to get to go. So why don't we just look at business licenses for all rentals and that takes care of everyone? So you're not picking and choosing between STRs and permanent rentals. Yeah, we could absolutely do that. Okay. Because I think that would make a lot of sense. Okay. Yeah. And and I I obviously some of this will will cross over into Title 18. Yeah. Um so we'll need to go through that process as well, but yeah, you could you could use a um um just a broad approach, okay, to to all rentals. Yeah, I'm I'm surprised. I did not know that. Wow. Okay. Um, so can we did you want to include I was gonna um make a motion um and um under your recommendation, Lance, what do you think the best path is um for you? And Councilwoman Dor is right. We wanted to do this because the ADU discussion is coming in and people, you know, they with good reason people get anxiety not knowing what their neighborhood could look like or what their neighbor could look like. Sure. Right. Yeah. And I think that there's there's two pieces as we say here. There's the short-term market which where people um are you would probably want to require if you're going to license those the individual inspections and the and the things like that. Whereas, if I just own rental properties throughout Reno, but they're long-term rentals, that's going to be a little different. We're probably not going to do inspections on those kind of things because those are uh they're just treated differently. Um, so there there's two pieces there. And if if you're asking for a recommendation and for me to go out conduct community outreach into the rental market and who would apply for a license and who would be required for a license, that would be the way to go. But yeah. Um, well, I guess here's where I'm at. Uh, we should probably continue, um, to monitor, right? But I also think we should get the licensing sort of ramp uh, shor up. Um, would you agree on that? I I would agree that the licensing needs to be shored up. I mean, it's a 40-year-old ordinance and um, buying houses in bulk wasn't a thing 40 years ago, I don't think, in Reno. Um, so that part of it, yes. And then the short-term rental stuff that there's there's definitely more to look into. And I would think if if too if you have landlords that are being predatory, right? Um, that happens a lot too. And maybe some of them shouldn't have a business license when they're taking advantage of incredibly vulnerable individuals like senior and we've seen that too, right? So, thank you. Thank you. I just want to manage expectations that the purpose of this particular presentation was are you interested in a next step? Sounds like we've got a v a wide variety of interest in a next step. We'll take a look at it. We'll see what's going on in other jurisdictions. We'll come back in a few months uh before we bring back a first ordinance draft. Uh two different things. This is going to be rentals short and or long. We're going to go do some work. We're going to come back to you and talk to you about what we found out before we do a first reading. Yeah. And Madame Mayor, and I apologize, just I just want to call the body's attention to that this item is just about short-term rentals. So, if if we want to do something about long-term rentals and the business licensing of that, I request that we put that on an agenda to discuss that and give direction. I gotcha. And now with respect to ADUs independently, I recommend, but you do not have to take this recommendation, that your ADU license says that you can't use it as a short-term rental. That solves the problem. And we don't hold up one train for the other. So, it's something to consider. You don't need to do that today. Just food for thought. Yeah. All right. Well, then let's move forward with getting um a license on these. That's important. And then I want you to come back, Lance, with what you think your best recommendation is. I want to be really respectful looking at that data. There's not a lot. And it's probably one of the reasons why there is not a lot of people in this room. There's actually no one in this room right now. So, it always kind of gives gives us a gauge where everyone, you know, you get some people on online, you know, I and that makes sense. I get it. Um, but I'm just saying like I don't know how I guess putting a whole bunch of services and time and resources into this may not make sense, but we can come up with something that does make sense. I, Madame Mayor, is yours the second motion? I had a question too regarding um uh city manager Brian's comments. Um I've heard some people say that we should deed restrict these ADUs as they come in to not be short-term rentals. Is that essentially what you're saying? No, I'm not. I'm saying that's a um issue for the ADU conversation. There's a path forward on ADUs that you don't have to hold up ADUs while you discuss rentals and licensing broadly. Okay. All right. So, two different things. We shouldn't conflate the two. And is that when we would have the discussion about parking and all of that too? Okay. Correct. All right. Thank you. Okay. Lance. Madam Mayor, I'll second your motion for the second one. Is that okay? So, uh, I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries. And then you'll bring the other one forward on the separate rentals. But a question on what we just voted on because I voted yes. But you you also wanted him to It doesn't exactly say this. I mean, you wanted him to move forward with licensing on short-term rentals, but it doesn't say that. It says except a report monitor activity. Can Can I Yeah, go right ahead. Can I state that I understand the body's interest and we'll get on it? Yes. Thank you. Yes. Um I like that. Okay. All right. Moving along. Thanks so much Lance. Uh, madame clerk, madame mayor, we're moving on to item C5. [Applause] All right, Madame Clerk, do you have any public comment on item C5? We do not have anyone registered for public comment. I have not received any correspondence on this item. Okay, thank you so much. I think I am sending it to um um Hall. No, just you. Yeah, just me. Okay. Hey, you. How are you doing? Good. How are you? Good. Good to see you. Madam Mayor, take it away. Members of the city council, my name is Carter Williams, associate planner with development services. Before you today is a an item that considers the uh sponsorship of a regional plan amendment for um uh gas infrastructure improvements in north valleys. So, a little background. So the regional plan is a guiding document for the region that identifies regional utility sites. These could look like um electrical substations. In this case, it's a gas substation. Whenever a regional utility site is added or removed, u maps need to be updated within the plan. And that's what's happening today. So MV Energy has proposed a project that triggers um an amendment um by adding a utility site and decommissioning another. Um the jurisdiction traditionally that uh receives the request for um the project is the one who sponsors the amendment. Onto the project, this is located within Ward 4 within the Sierra Sage Golf Course. Uh and this is north of Silverlake Road and west of Ste Boulevard. So for area context, it's it's a southeast of the um of Silver Lake and then northeast of Ste Elementary, O'Brien Middle School. So the specific project and this was considered by the Reno City Planning Commission um in early May. It was unanimous unanimously approved to um uh construct a gas line that runs along an existing utility corridor and then install a gas substation associated with that corridor. So the regional plan amendment doesn't um isn't related to the corridor or the um the gas line itself. It's just related to that green dot, the regulator station that needs to be updated in their maps. So this is a map of the um the map of the regional utility corridor and the existing sites represented in blue. Um the proposed site is is to be clustered with those existing sites in in green. Um staff generally and there's policies in the regional plan and the master plan to locate these facilities within existing corridors and the fact that we're locating their them near um other utility sites is is good as well. Uh the generally the the the gas line is going to be underground. The only above ground improvements proposed are a is the regulator station. Um the equipment itself is less than 4t in height. Um the pad will be surrounded by a 7 foot security and screening fence and there's conditions that require that it be earth tone screen so that it kind of it blends in with the existing environment out there and then actually also provides us some screening for that the industrial warehouse. Um the planning commission analyzed the um compatibility with surrounding uses. So the the the actual above ground component is about is greater than 200 feet away from the the residences. Like I said, it's it's integrated and and um located near existing utility sites. From the master plan perspective and on a high level, uh this sponsorship allows for the regional plan amendment that um would allow for gas impraments in the north valleys um to better serve that community um while not compromising on public safety. Um our master plan has a number of policies related to infrastructure improvements and uh their relationship with regional utility quarters. So staff is in support of this as it relates to the master plan. Just to give an idea of what the process has looked like. So in May we went before the Reno City Planning Commission. They approved unanimously. Today we're seeking a a sponsorship for the regional plan amendment from city council. In July it'll move on to the regional planning commission. Um, and then August, it'll receive um final decision by the regional governing board. And I'm looking for a motion. Uh, staff recommends uh uh sponsorship to the regional plan. All right. Great job. Okay. Great job. Um, Council Ebert. Yeah, I have I have some questions actually. Were there any um public comments from uh people that golf at that golf course or from the management company that runs it regarding this or any um requests from them regarding like hours of construction? So um thank you for your question. Uh there was not comment submitted directly to staff but I am aware that NB Energy is working with the superintendent to ensure that um their operations aren't disrupted. Um, and generally there is a condition that requires that they um that they do construct only during normal construction hours. Okay. Okay. So, it'd probably be Monday through Friday then, right? The condition is Monday through Saturday. No work on Sunday or holidays. Uh, construction ends at 7:00 p.m. It won't start um after I think it's 8:00 p.m. 8 a.m. In Cirrus Age, the golf course didn't have any kind of comment on that. They didn't reach out about that at all. Uh, no. We did not get comment from them. Okay. Okay. And it looks like that path kind of avoids the the different holes at the golf course. Is that is that accurate? Is that why that route was chosen or is it just coincidental that that's that's where the existing corridor is? So, it's on it's along an existing gas line um that they're they're actually replacing. Um that uh corridor is an access road that runs the entire length and it follows again the the that gas or the electrical utility that's overhead. Yeah. Um the there are two crossings towards my understanding. So those will be have mitigations when they get to them. Okay. So people will still be able to golf there. The business will be able to continue to operate. Correct. Um okay. Okay. Okay, those are just concerns that I have because I know that's a really popular resource in the community for outdoor activities and want to be supportive of our businesses out there. Okay. Um, does anybody else have any questions? No, comments. Yeah. All right. Any further questions? There are none. Um, I would like to make um a motion to approve um I move to sponsor the Truckucky Meadows Regional Plan amendment to update utility mapping consistent with the planning commission approval of LDC25-000047. All right, I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed? Motion carries. Good job. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Um, Madame Clerk, Madame Mayor, we're on item F1, an ordinance adoption to be read by the city attorney. Okay, I will send it over to the uh, infamous Carl Hawks. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Is it famous or infamous? Infamous. Oh, infamous. Okay. You like infamous. Okay, we're going with that. Ordinance adoption. Ordinance number 6709, case number LDC 25-000037, ranch era planned unit development master plan amendment and handbook amendment. Ordinance to amend title 18, chapter 18.02 of the Reno Municipal Code entitled zoning to change the text in the rancher planned unit development design standards handbook to A. Change a plus or minus 7.2 acre portion of the land use plan from equestrian center to single family in order to create village 8. B reduce the total number of units from 722 to 469 units. C. Modify the objectives of the PUB by removing all references to equestrian and riding facilities. And D, update the flexibility section to reflect current RMC processes and other miscellaneous updates to reflect current RMC references together with matters which pertain to or are necessarily connected there with W 2. Thank you. Um, Madame Clerk, do you have any public comment on this item? We do not have any um public comment and have not received any correspondence on this item. Okay. I'm going to send it to Council Dor. Thank you. Um this is the Rancher PUD amendment. I in the whole PUD I think there's been five changes. I think Andy told me was was like the third for this round something like that. But I don't support um as I mentioned last time going from the equestrian PGOS to um 20 I think it was listed as 29 in the application 29 housing units for all the reasons that we stated last time I couldn't make the findings. I appreciate the fact that they've reduced the number of units to be closer reflective of what's actually been built. I do worry about 10 years after they began marketing they suddenly take the word equestrian out all horse references out all um to to the project um I it was ranchera everything about rancheras has horse names horse um paraphernalia horse everything and and now it's nothing about horses I guess but anyway I can't support it and so I recommend I make a motion to deny this change thank Okay. Thank you. Um I have a motion from Councilwoman Der. I I will second. Okay. Um all those in favor say I. I. All those opposed? Nay. Nay. All right. Uh motion fails. Move to adopt. Um I have a motion to adopt. Second. I have a second. Um all those um in favor? I all those opposed? Opposed? Nay. Motion uh carries. Wait, hold on. I'm sorry everybody's Can you stop clicking my screen? Okay. Why don't you Do you want to do a roll call? Can we do the roll call on the denial first? Sure. Yeah. So, I may made a motion to deny. It was seconded by the mayor and then you're calling ro Taylor. Der. Yes. Martinez Eert. Yes. This was on council member Ders, correct? Okay. Yes. Reese, no. Anderson, no. Shivy, yes. Okay. Motion fails. 34. Okay. Second motion is motion to approve by council member Reese. No, I think it was Miss Taylor. Yeah. Okay. So, a motion to um adopt. Council member Taylor, yes. Council member Dor, no. Council member Martinez, yes. Council member Eert, uh, no. Council member Reese, yes. Council member Anderson, yes. Mayor Shivy no. Motion passes 43. Okay. All right, madam clerk. Item F3, correct? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Um, I'm going to send it over to the infamous Carl Hall. This is another ordinance adoption. Ordinance number 6710, case number TXT23-00002 Title 18 signs ordinance amending the Renom Municipal Code Title 18 annexation and land development specifically in chapter 1802 zoning districts and section 1802602 entitled general overlay districts chapter 1805 signs section 1805103 entitled location of permanent on premises signs section 1805107 entitled The permit required. Section 1805108 entitled exempted on premises permanent sign. Section 1805109 entitled on premises signs prohibited. Section 1805112 entitled removal of abandoned on- premises signs. Section 1805113 entitled permanent on premises sign regulations by zoning district. Section 1805114 entitled additional regulations for animated sign. Section 1805115 entitled non-conforming on premises. Section 1805 118 entitled alteration enlargement or relocation of on premises sign. Add a new section 1805123 entitled content neutrality and substitution. Chapter 18.08 administration and procedure section 1808602 entitled minor site plan review. In chapter 1809, rules of construction and definitions, article 4, entitled, "Are other terms defined in order to remove the sign regulations from the gaming overlay? Amend on premise sign regulations and exemptions for more clarity and consistency among the allowances. Allow for animated signs associated with schools. Address content neutrality. Address the relocation of signs relating to public projects. An amend and includes certain definitions relating to science together with matters which pertain to or are necessarily connected there with words one 2 3 four five and six. Move to adopt. All right. I have a motion. Sorry, Madame Mayor. For the record, I just need to state that we did receive 19 comments associated with agenda item this agenda item prior to 4 p.m. yesterday, June 3rd. 18 letters of opposition, zero letters in favor, and one letter of concern. And that has been distributed to the Reno City Council. Additionally, we don't have any public comment registered. Okay, thank you so much. Um, I have a that was a public hearing, so thank you. I wanted to um just state that for the record. Okay, we are really like everyone's like a little slower today. I know I am. So tired. Sorry. I'm like, huh? Second. Yeah. Okay, I have a motion. Um, I have a second. Council door. Yeah, thank you. Um, on this motion, we discussed this at some length last time. I I was really impressed with um Scenic Nevada's position, which is that they supported digital signs at schools, which is quite a step for them since they generally don't like digital signs, but they supported them just like I did. In fact, I made the motion a time ago to move forward with this. Um, where I struggle is that it's I know we want to help the school district, but what is odd to me is that we now have each jurisdiction adopting a different ordinance. What I brought up last time was trying to be some kind of consistent. So, we've pic we've picked one thing to be consistent on and that is a I think it is a 15 Where is our person? Here she is. A 15 uh is it a 8-second flip time on signs. That's one thing we would be consistent with. Where we're not consistent is the other jurisdictions have a six foot tall maximum. We say depends on zone. I I find that odd. Do you want to did you want to address that? Sure. For the record, Lauren Knox, senior planner with development services. So, um, in the presentation that I did provide, I do have a slide that kind of talks about some of these pieces. And the issue here is there's not consistency between either of the jurisdictions, watch county and sparks on many of the issues, right, and on many of the issues. So, even the height, for example, that you bring up the six feet piece, really Sparks also allows for a 16 foot sign. So there's really just not consistency among any of of the standards. Well, I'll just go on record as saying where we can I think it would be good when we have a public agency like the school system seeking direction, but depending what jurisdiction they're in, they have to go to all different permitting requirements. Now, this is different than a developer. We have different development issues in each community. But I think for schools, I think it's something we could have banded around, worked harder with the other jurisdictions to come up with sort of a compromise where we could and where we couldn't. Like I think there's some things in the county that are pretty different um because of the size, right? The size of the parcel distances. Um they're different for a reason. But where we have a difference for no reason, just because we're call ourselves special or different, I do am challenged by that. So a different way we could have gone was to work together with other jurisdictions and come up at least with some let's say six things that we could have agreed on even if we couldn't agree on three. So that would be my hope and dream. I really think that um Scenic Nevada came up with reasonable recommendations. I didn't support it last time because I I thought some of our regulations are just too either too overarching or not controlling enough. I couldn't find the reason for them. So, I'm not going to support today. But I do support I want to make this clear schools having digital signs. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. I I have a question uh for my colleague from uh war two. I I don't understand your position. So on this to answer if you're going to ask of course I have a question for you. So um so on this one for example it says 150 knits between sunset and sunrise. But in the other ones it's about candles and candles above ambient. Right. So what happens if you can't convince Sparks and Wo that ours is the better rule? So um what I said is we might be able to find common ground on six things but three things we might not be able to and actually there's already common ground on more than six things on that list. Well eight things then what whatever number of things we can find common ground on. Thank you so much that answers my question. Okay good. But I want to share that your candles I guess are also equivalent to so many knits and those are 350 which is also different from what we're recommending and I support what we're recommending and I would have hoped that we could have talked to them when they were doing theirs and all agreed on what it should be but we can't we didn't so that's how it is understood. Can I also just real quick ask again what this would allow for schools to have for for digital signage. So, um what we've proposed on the size is 32 square foot maximum for a digital sign. Um those signs can only operate from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. We were trying to deal with the residential component and impacts there. Um a hold time of of 8 seconds. Um limiting that brightness to only 150 nits. Again, it's a little bit um darker, if you will, than the the other jurisdictions. And then the actual rest of the pieces. So things like height or the structure type, meaning is it a monument sign or a pole sign, that's all dependent on the zoning district that that school is in. And that's why it's a little bit different too than the other jurisdictions. They have an entirely different sign code structure. Um I will also say that the school district also has said if this stuff were to go through, they are going to look towards Wo County and Sparks to try and make those same changes because this is what they want at the end of the day. They like ours better. and what's what's the maximum number of signs a school could have with this change? Sure. So, it's based on the zoning district. Um, most of them I'll just gonna I'm going to pick residential. That's the most conservative, but generally it's one per frontage. Um, that is similar with the city of Sparks. Okay. So, I have a question then. I have a new elementary school being built um in the middle of a residential area and I don't know if that's something or can we show um map on on the screen if I give an address or anything? Is that something we're capable of doing? Okay. So, I'll just say the address. Um it's going to be at um 926 Cloudburst Drive, Reno, Nevada. And it is surrounded on um all sides by residential. So does that mean that they could have four signs? It depends on the number of frontages with access that they have. So if they have two frontages with access, that means they'd be able to have two signs. Okay. So um I just want to call out that there are people homes facing the school on all four sides and that this change would allow signs to shine into these bedrooms. potentially children's bedrooms until 10 p.m. So, unfortunately, I'm going to be a no on that just because of the potential impact again to the residents of my community. But, I appreciate all the work you've done on this and all your time presenting. So, thank you. Laura, can you define frontage for me? Frontage is the area along the street, a rightaway. So, when you can enter into a property, that's the frontage of the building. Okay. Yep. Okay. Okay, I have a motion second. All those in favor? Motion carries. Okay. Um, madame clerk. Thank you, madame mayor. Moving on to item F4, an ordinance adoption to be read by the city attorney. Okay. Infamous Pearl Hall. Ordinance adoption. Ordinance number 6711. An ordinance authorizing the issuance by the city of Reno, Nevada of its general obligation limited tax sewer bonds additionally secured by pledged revenue series 2025A in the maximum aggregate principal amount of $69,599,200 and series 2025B in the maximum aggregate principal amount of $400,800 principal forgiveness for the purpose of financing the American Flan advanced purified water facility sewage project for the city providing the form term terms and conditions of the bonds and other details in connection there with and providing other matters relating there too. Move to adopt. Second. All those in favor? I. Motion carries unanimously. And I believe we are moving on to item uh F5. Ordinance adoption. Ordinance number 6712. Ordinance to amend Reno Municipal Code Title 14 Building and Construction Chapter 1404 Building and Housing Code Section 1404001 Purpose and Section 1404 0007 Interpretation Section 140410 International Existing Building Code Section 140450 International Building Code Section 1404100 International Residential Code Section 14041 105 International Mechanical Code section 1404110 International Fuel Gas Code section 1404115 Uniform Mechanical Code section 1404120 Uniform Plumbing Code section 1404120 010 section D apprentice plumbing certificate section 1404125 National Electric Code and to adopt and amend the versions of the following 2024 International Existing Building Code 2024 International Building Code 2020 24 International Residential Code, 2024 International Mechanical Code, and 2024 International Fuel Gas Code, 2024 Uniform Plumbing Code, 2023 National Electrical Code, section 1404125005, Section C, Certificates required under National Electrical Code, section 1404125005, Section E, Certificates required under the National Electrical Code. Section 140412510 section D, apprentice electrical certificate. section 1404130, International Energy Conservation Code, together with Northern Nevada amendments associated with each code and to add and delete certain wording related there too, together with matters properly relating there too. Do we have a motion? Madame Vice Mayor, just for the record, on F4, we did not have any public comment or any correspondence. On item F5, we do not have any public comment or any correspondence. Okay. Okay. I'm making a motion on F5 to approve. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I I motion carries unanimously. Okay. Uh madame clerk, I believe we are on to the G items. G1, do we have a presentation for this? Okay. Do you have a preference on public comment? Do you want to do it now or do you want to do it after? We don't have any public comment. So, perfect. Okay. Move into your presentation, please. Thank you. But did we receive We received public comment. No public comment and no correspondence received. Okay. Oh, wait. Actually, we did. There were two. Yes. One second. Um, no, we did receive uh three comments. They were distributed as letters of concern. Sorry. Hi. Good afternoon, uh, Madame Vice Mayor, members of city council, city manager Jackie Bryant. Um, I'm Mickey Huntsman, city clerk for the city of Reno. Um, and I'm just here to talk about the city of Reno boards and commission's potential review process. Um so earlier last month um there was a 90day hiatus um requested by the city manager so that we could take some time to look at the processes and the fiscal impacts that boards and commissions have for the city of Reno. Um, and so this is basically just kind of today. We just were really looking forward to talking about what that process may look like moving forward and for me to get direction from this body as far as what you would like to see as um a review for the boards and commissions process holistically. So this is um like all others in alignments with just kind of our general governance and organizational effectiveness. And then again we're talking about the fiscal sustainability because we are going into a budget deficit. And so how will this all correlate together to make sure that we are making the right decisions as an organization but also obtaining the right amount of feedback to make sure that you guys can make the best decision for how we want to proceed with our boards and commissions. These have been this slide just gives you the identified boards and commissions that we've outlined as the mandated or required boards that need to continue meeting moving forward. Um, so you have the building enterprise fund, civil service, financial advisory board, redevelopment agency, advisory board, which is separate from the Reno City Council that falls under the redevelopment agency, the Reno City Planning Commission, um, and then the Wo County Stadium Authority. These are what have been identified as the non-mandated boards and commissions and committees. Um, the list is extensive, so I'm not going to review those. So basically these are any of the ones that are not mandated by NRS, interlocals,us, so on and so forth. These are any of the um specific city and city of Reno city council subcommittees. Um these lists I'm just going to say outright these are being requested to be paused effective immediately just because any of the information that is coming to these boards, these are subcommittees that just council members sit on. So they're information and advisory only. So any of the presentations or discussions that come to these boards end up coming to the Reno City Council for final approval or recommendation regardless. So we're asking for immediate pause on these because all of that information is still coming forward to you. Can I just stop? I I don't think the PowerPoint was part is in the attachments your presentation, right? I was just trying to follow which boards and all this stuff, but I I couldn't get the PowerPoint, but perhaps your staff have it or something that they could load it. Lauren is nodding. Yes. Yeah, perfect. Thank you. So today, what I really would like to talk about is kind of how how are we going to get there? What does that look like if we do take a pause? What is the point? What why are we doing this? Why are we talking about this? Where are we looking to go? Um and so working with the manager's office, we've sort of identified some guiding principles that we hope to utilize to really do that audit, if you will, of the boards and commissions to make decisions about what those um how we want to do the review overall. So at the very top, I'm just going to start and kind of go around in a circle. Um enhanced governance. So the intention of this is um kind of an administrative evaluation of our boards and commissions. City staff provides support to 37 city of Reno boards and commission boards, commissions, and committees. Um and so we have questions like who's responsible for compliance on those boards? Um what kind of monitor and evaluations are we doing operationally to make sure that those boards are functioning properly? who and how are we defining u members roles and responsibilities. So that's going to fall under kind of the overview or the review of that section. Um additionally these boards and commissions and committees are governed by 14 different ordinances. 17 different resolutions. Um 11 of them are are guided by NRS which also sometimes conflict with some of those ordinances or resolutions that we have. Um and additionally there's 18 different sets of bylaws. So we would like to have the opportunity to take a look at that holistically and sort of identify spaces where we can maybe make one governing ordinance or one at least a platform that makes things a little bit more consistent on how we make appointments, what those terms look like, how do we fill vacancies, so on and so forth. So all of that is going to fall under um how do we enhance the governance for um our boards and commissions. The second set there is to promote inclusivity. Um, so when we look at this again, we know that boards and commissions matter to our city council. This is how you get feedback. Um, and we know that because we've received 143 unique applications for boards and commissions over the last year. So FY2425, we've received 140 people that are interested in serving our community in this capacity. Um, and council has made over 45 appointments in the last year. So again, we know that you care about these spaces. um but how do we make that better and how do we ensure that there is inclusivity in that space? So some of the questions again that we want to answer or look for there is maybe something like do we want to assess the diversity of the individuals that are sitting on those boards? Do they actually do they um represent the demographics that are correct for the city of Reno. Um we're not currently collecting demographics in our applications. Um so ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, so on and so forth. That's not a requirement. So we don't necessarily have the data to understand what those demographics may look like and so is that something you want to do moving forward. Um how do we ensue how do we achieve demographic inclusivity if that is something that's important by this board? And then how are we promoting the vacancies? How are we getting the word out to make sure that we are actually reaching the community of individuals that want to serve in these capacities? And also what does it look like? What are the the dates and times that we're holding these boards and commissions? Does that allow for the inclusivity portion? um of the guiding principles. We want to improve engagement. Um I think this is topically the most the hot topic that we're all talking about because we're looking at the engagement. Cynthia is going out and doing a community engagement um push right now. So I think this is kind of the section that we're really trying to focus on. Uh meeting engagement. Between July of 23 and March of 25, the city of Reno hosted 332 public meetings. Um, the average attendance rate for our boards and commissions are about 86%. So, it's not terrible, but it's it could be higher. Obviously, we would like to have something a little bit more than 86. The average duration is about 90 minutes. Um, and generally on average across those 333 public meetings that we held, on average, it's about one public comment per meeting. So that doesn't necessarily mean that at every meeting there's only one person commenting because obviously it's an average across every single thing that we've done. So some are going to have a large quantity, some are going to have none, so on and so forth. But if you look at the engagement, we're just saying across 330 meetings on average we're getting one per meeting. So when you look at engagement, it makes it difficult to say that we are getting enough engagement from our boards and commissions. Um the second issue that we've heard from mayor Shivy and I think from council member Dor is that that feedback loop um evaluation. So how is the city council getting informed about what's happening at the boards and commissions? Um how are we providing that official feedback? Is it coming from the board members? Is it coming from the chair and the vice chair? Is it coming from the staff liaison? Is it required from the city council member that sits on that board to give an update? What does that look like? Where is that feedback coming from? Um, and then how are we utilizing it? Are we actually taking the topics that are coming before those boards and commissions and then using them in policy decisions? And then finally, should should we look at some sort of more formalized and this is going to go back to maybe the enhancing of governance? Um, but should they be providing you guys with annual, bianual, quarterly presentations, updates to say this is what the board is doing and this is how we're engaging so that you all stay informed with what those bodies are doing. So, that's a way that we're hoping to improve the engagement both of the board and then also their engagement with you as um the elected officials. The next box is fostering collaboration. So, again, 37 Reno boards, commissions, and committees. Um but how are they connecting both with each other, with the public, with you? So, we're hoping to kind of look at, you know, are there public engagement opportunities that our boards and commissions should be serving in? should they be out in the public going out and making sure that they're making connections with the citizens to promote these initiatives that they're taking on in their capacity as board members for the city of Reno. Um making sure that they're collaborating with the city of Reno, which we talked about in the last the last discussion, but presentations at the city council meetings so that you guys have more information. Um and then cross meetings, so concurrent meetings for topical overlap. So, we're having one collaborative discussion touching a bunch of different things rather than just having individual discussions and not taking the other boards and commissions into consideration. And then finally, um, supporting continuous improvement. So, we want to take time and be thoughtful. Something I'm surprised that we haven't done in the past, but we would like to initiate a boards and commissions training program. Um, it's a huge lift because we do have a ton of boards and commissions members. they get appointed once a month. So, what does that look like? How do we actually hold up staff time um to make sure that our boards and commissions members come on and actually know what they're supposed to be doing? That they understand OML, that they meet their staff liaison, that they actually know what Robert's rules of orders are. Um you know, our team comes out once once a year and does an OML or a decorum training for them. Some of them have done it multiple times. Some of them have never done it, but they've been serving in this capacity for a year. So, how do we get them acclimated into that space before they start serving rather than after they've been doing it for a period of time? Um, and then the secondary piece of this, I think, between the continuous evaluation of all of these spaces, but really, um, you know, when we look at kind of some of the other cities that have healthy boards and commissions, they have a regular audit of the functions. um the just just generally a a performance audit. I'm sorry escape the words escaped my brain when I started talking about it but a performance audit uh generally annually of what those boards and commissions doing. So those could be cons how do we want that performance audit to be um do we want a committee that does that who sits on the committee so on and so forth so those are some of the kind of the ideas within these guiding principles that I'm looking for feedback on today. So in the the the way that we look to do this is through feedback groups. So this slide is very similar to Cynthia's because she's doing we're kind of working together in tandem. So the feedback groups are going to look very similar to that. We want to work directly with our council members. We want to understand what your what your hopes and dreams and goals are for our boards and commissions. We want to go to the boards and commissions members, what's working, what's not working, get a better understanding of how they would like to see boards and commissions moving forward. Um, we want to work with our internal staff members. They have a very large impact both on the process, but they also have a very large impact on their workload. So, what does that look like for you? How much time are you spending um both prepping for it, doing it, and then closing it out because it's not just holding a meeting, right? They have stuff on the front end, they have stuff on the back end, and then they also have to be present for the day of. How many staff members are there? Each board's going to be a little bit different. So, we want to take time to kind of meet with them and understand what the impacts are for them. Um, we're looking at doing a digital survey. We have a myriad of a myriad of them out right now. So, I want to be thoughtful about when and how that digital survey goes out, what it looks like, what questions are being asked. So, some of those first three feedback groups that we're we want to meet with. We'll hope to develop what that digital survey kind of looks like and then we can go out and survey the public to really get a better understanding of what the impacts are for them if we do have boards and commissions. we don't have boards and commissions, what they would like to see, what they would like to meet on, so on and so forth. Um, and then lastly, direct constituent engagement. So again, this would just be kind of like town halls or open meetings where people could come and talk about it if they're not comfortable doing a digital survey, so on and so forth. Um, and so finally, this is really just kind of I've taken each of those phases and sort of broken it down into a 12 month timeline. Um, and so my ask today is that there is um a formal extension placed on the 90-day hiatus that was requested by um, city manager Bryant last month. Um, that would really give us the time to take a deep dive into sort of those areas that I've just discussed in our guiding principles to help us really understand what the what the landscape is. Looking at today, we're talking about the guiding principles and engagement. Phase one would be that administrative analysis. So looking at the bylaws, the regulations, so on and so forth. That's going to be something that's heavy on my team. We've discussed it. We're starting to look at it already. We can have that probably in early late summer, early fall. Second phase. Um we hope to tie some of the discussion towards your strategic priorities workshop that's happening in the fall of this year. And so some of that we want to come back after that discussion and look at how we can tie those priorities to your boards and commissions. Phase three is talking, you know, deeply about the training program analysis and development so that we have a better understanding. We're going to come forward to you and give you really what that looks like. Four would be the final analysis of all of the feedback that we've gotten for the community engagement pieces. Um, spring of 26 and then hopefully this time next year, summer of 26, we'll actually have a full-fledged program that we're coming back to you saying, "These are the areas that we have identified. These are the way that we think the boards and commissions should look. this is the program and sort of adopt a finalized program. So my motion today is in front of you. Thank you, Mickey. I'm going to ask uh Manager Bryant to clarify a couple things for us, please. So I I need to um restate a few things. We have three things happening at the same time. The first is we haven't done this type of review in a very long time and it's way beyond necessary and that's what Miss Huntsman is proposing to do now and we in the city manager's office are fully prepared to support her and her team and getting it done. Um we need to shore up boards and commissions. Um that needs to happen as Miss Huntsman has stated it. thing too that is happening is Miss Esparazza is working on a public engagement uh protocol. We're lacking in public engagement. It is a broader umbrella than boards and commissions, but boards and commissions are a type of public engagement. So that piece is going to land with Miss Esparazza and you had that report last month. The third thing happening really unrelated to either one but can easily be conflated is I said I need staff not to work on certain boards and commissions for 90 days. I didn't pause boards and commissions. I said I need staff not to work on them for 90 days. They certainly could have gone on without my staff if it were possible to do that. But I needed to reorganize some staff and I'm almost done with that. So I don't want to conflate that with a resolution for me. So I just want to make sure that any resolution being requested is not about my pausing staff on certain boards and commissions for up to 90 days. I want to make that clear for the record because I can feel like there might be some confusion around that. So what is the ask? What what what are we asking for today? Do you just want comment on the boards and commissions? Do you want a resolution? So, I'm I'm looking for two things. If if this body is amendable to taking a pause on boards and commissions minus the mandatory ones that were identified on the the very first slide, which I'm happy to go back to for a year. Yes. So my recommendation is a 12-month pause so that we can holistically look at the program, make decisions, come back to this body, continue getting feedback, getting constituency feedback, so on and so forth. So I think the the first section of this is the request to draft a resolution to bring back to the body with the pause. The second part of it for me specifically is I've presented you with kind of the guiding principles. Is that in alignment with what you're thinking? The timeline, is that in alignment with your thinking? So, I'm here for feedback on that separate piece. So, I'm sort of two different actions that I'm asking for today. Okay. Okay. Um I'm imagining that we all have questions on this. I will start with Council Member Ree. Uh thank you, Madam Vice Mayor. Um a couple of things. So, uh as I can tell, um the easy one are the mandated boards, commissions, committees. Those are going to go forward, right? Correct. Okay. uh the Reno City Council subcommittees. Those are real easy to pause and quite frankly I'm not sure any of them serve a purpose anymore. And I'll just say that about those three. So then we're on to this slide. Non-mandated boards, commissions, and committees. And here is where I'm having some heart angst, some wrestling. Um I think that all of these boards, commissions, and committees, um especially to the people who serve on them are very important, right? Um, if you serve on the Reno Urban Forestry Commission and you have done so for a long time, uh, and you have heard, we've paused and you haven't been meeting of late, I think you're probably a person who's out there saying, "Well, why? Like, what what did I do or why am I not valid and important?" And ultimately, I don't know how to answer that question because I do think that everyone who serves on every one of these bodies, um, whether it's access or Reno urban recreation parks are doing great stuff, meaning they they provide a valuable touch point in the community to have conversations about whatever the topics are. That being said, I also understand what you're saying, which is top to bottom, we have not an analyzed these in a long time. Uh many of them probably are not serving the original function for which they were created. I'm not even sure although I think I've almost served on all of these at some point in time. I'm not sure um you know what their function is. I'm not sure what they're doing. Some have had money in the past. Some do not have money. Some are co-terminus. Some are appointed. Some are by the manager. A lot of things going on. So I I sort of would like to hear my colleagues uh concerns. Uh the neighborhood advisory boards are a real specific carveout, right? Uh it's like an elevated board and commission in in many ways because this is what we have done to help uh community members connect in their neighborhood, right? So it allows them to understand development projects coming down the pike. As the ATL large member, I did not have one. So I mostly went to other people's um and I have not had one since um being elected November as the W five representative. And so I I don't have the same strong tie to them having never held one. I do think that they um if we are going to go forward with them, everyone would have the same thing. I don't want to see one member not have NABS and other members have NABS. I think that's a strange position to put us in. But I do think that they serve a very important function. Um, yeah, I I I think no one's going to disagree that everyone who serves on all these commissions has contributed some way to the very rich fabric of our community. So, those are my thoughts and I'm interested to hear my colleagues concerns. Council member Der. Sure. Um, so it is uh Miss Bryant put in her thoughts, but it is being conflated because most people didn't know you were asking for a 12 month pause. They assumed it was validation of a three-month pause. Two different things, right? That that's what I'm saying. So, um, so generally, first of all, I am completely supportive of continuous improvement, and I do think they have to be looked at. And I will tell you, I'd be 100% on board if we had not done this 90-day pause. This 90-day pause gave me pause because I'm in the middle of a lot of contentious developments and suddenly I had no formal way to solicit to to allow the public to come in and um give developers their thoughts before these things progress on to the planning commission. So from a development perspective it was very important. The pause came, the 90 days pause came when two of our NABs had held um information sessions on ADUs and the other three or four had not. So the only public ADU conversation happened at my NAB and I believe one other it might have been W 4. So that's all that we had to go on and they didn't get it from the other neighborhoods but there wasn't also a central one. So there was a modestly um attended maybe one that the staff did. But my main point is they serve a valuable function. I certainly want to continue get back on regular track with the neighborhood advisory board as soon as possible. I also am very supportive of for example re Reno urban forestry. Um we are working diligently on part one of a two-part um improvement to our urban forest uh rules. if I don't have a urban forestry to go to then we miss their input on that and and that for a year that that's not acceptable to me. Um similarly with historic resources commission this summer we're launching the lear friends of the lear and that hopefully will turn into a friends of the lear not a new nonprofit but a way for a group without being formalized without staff support to support this project but it feeds right back to historic resources commission which do have a regulatory function. So what I would love to see is these ones that you have highlighted here, these non-mandated boards and commissions, they may they are mandated by uh many of them are mandated by our ordinances that they say that how often they'll meet right in city ordinance. That's a law. That's a rule. It's a regulation. So, what I'd like to do is I'd like to have the liaison to these, the council liaison to these weigh in and if they're fine, like I don't even know who's on special events sponsorship, but if they're fine with just having the staff do um the work without having this official group meet, I'm fine with that. But if uh it's you city council, for example, and the liaison is not fine with not having that meet for a year, then I think we should respect that. So, I think that this is very those people know those the best and I think we have to look at them and what their job is. Um, I'm only here for a year and a half. So, if I don't meet with these boards and commissions, that work just is not happening. And I I wouldn't support that. I didn't support the 90-day pause. I don't support a year-long pause. I do support very strongly this evaluation process. I think it's absolutely essential. I You already mentioned I'm going to move on to Council Member Eert. Thank you. We'll come back. Can you just say Naomi, your time's up and I'll do on round two. Thank you. Well, I mean, you can see the clock. I wasn't looking at the clock. I'm sorry that your time is up. That's fine. Okay, your time is up. Thank you, Council Member Eert. Yeah. Um I um can understand the the reason behind the desire to cut these. I just really want to express the importance that I see of the NABS. Um, I really appreciated the community forum that we had um for my in place of my last NAB and I appreciate um Manager Bryant coming out and kind of fielding a lot of questions about where the NABS went and all of that. Um, I have a really hard time saying um I would be okay with not having a NAB for 12 months. Um but as long as we can continue having some form of meeting where we can have presentations from developers because unlike Stonegate um most other developments are willing to make some accommodations and changes based off of community feedback which leads to you know better end result for everyone. So I think it's very important um that um we continue to pro provide those opportunities um especially in the evening especially for my community. A lot of people cannot come to council meetings during the day. Um so I can't stress enough how important um that one is for my constituents. The other ones I I really support the senior advisory board. Everybody knows that. Um I really also support um youth city council, arts and culture, historical resources, like all of these are wonderful, but I think in the the bigger scale like the the nabs are the most important. Like if I had to pick one out of here, it's like you can only have one to keep. For me, it would be the nab because you could discuss pretty much all these other things at the nab to me. So that's my um thing. I just really um if we can't have it, I really want to make sure that we have some type of community meeting. So, that's all. Thank you, Council Member Eert, uh Council Member Martinez. Thanks so much, Madame Vice Mayor, and City Clerk for the presentation. Uh it kind of helps to see the list of the full boards and commissions to see which ones are mandated, which ones are non-mandated, or which are internal subcommittees. that really helps me see and visualize it a little bit more. I think I'm going to echo a lot of the sentiments that were already put out there from my colleagues. For me, I think the neighborhood advisory boards have been a good way to connect with different members of Ward 3 in particular. I've been very intentional about getting folks that live in different parts of the ward and understanding their unique needs whether it is more walkability near Midtown or if it's pedestrian or bicycle multimodal issues down near Donna Springs in Miraloma and kind of understanding that and I know that the NAB members have been reaching out to me in particular about when the next meeting is and they reached out yesterday to see if we were going to have another town hall and we had multiple discussions about those things. So, I know how engaged the folks on the neighborhood advisory boards are and how much they want to contribute and be a part of this. And so, within your research, if there are ways I think for the chairs or vice chairs or the members of these boards and commissions to put a little bit more work in, I think that would be something that would be amanable to just based on my conversations with the folks on the boards and commissions that I'm the liazison to. Um, I think that would help. I did get a question from one of my board members that I wanted to pass along. When it comes to terms, um, how would this hiatus affect the term limits or their the life of their terms on these boards? So, um, what we've done in the past and what will be presented in the resolution is basically just a time extension on their current appointment time. So, if we do a 12-month hiatus, they would just get a 12-month extension. So, they'll still serve an additional year past what their original appointment date was. Um, if it's 6 months, it will be six months extension. So on and so forth. So, whatever the time period is that we choose to take a pause um via the formal resolution, that time would just be added to their original appointment. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That's all I have for now. Thank you for the information. I'm having a hard time understanding what is a financial recommendation and what is a structural recommendation and I think that we have to be considerate of both and in moving forward obviously as council member Reese said I support the mandated boards support um your recommendation. I think the big for the council boards, some of the non-mandated boards, I think I would like to find a compromise between this group to give you some direction to move forward. I'm not sure what that is. Um, council member Reese, you are next in line. Thank you so much, Madam Vice Mayor, and I'm sort of where you are. I think Miss Eert makes a very good point when she says that the non-mandate boards and commissions committees, the most important to her are the neighborhood advisory boards. And I I think that may be very true for all of us. Um and so I suppose if what you're looking for is an understanding of what the financial implications were, which is what your question was, I I don't know the answer to that because I think in the pause that was part of the pause, right? You were going to go back and do a comprehensive evaluation looking at it. looking at not only the financial commitment, the time it takes staff to prepare as part of that, the open meeting law compliance, the review by legal, you know, all these things get touched when these things happen. Um, and so I don't know if if we like picked and chose or if we pick and choose, are you not getting a complete data set from which to base good decisions later? Uh for my part, I'm also concerned that for example the recreations and park commission today we approved, you know, almost $300,000 for uh a a pretty comprehensive engagement proposal and package to go out and and figure out if we're going to be able to do park districts, right? So how would that happen if we don't have a recreation parks commission? So for my part, if what we're looking for is some general um statement of desire, I think NABS are the number one item. And then for me perhaps the compromise is to say that NABS should meet post haste the recreation and parks commission must be uh allowed to do their work and any other board at the discretion of the manager right so that the manager could make uh exent circumstances to acknowledge like for example Miss Der said hey urban forestry is just so close to doing this thing and if they can't meet they can't do the thing um maybe that's where we have to be able to go to the manager and say, "Hey, this board must meet." So, I I suppose if I were trying to uh uh venture a motion, it would be to um go on pause and I'm I'm going to say the motion without anyone. I don't desire a second. I'm doing it for the purpose of trying to uh talk about it with you all. Um, but the motion could be something like the neighborhood advisory boards would be allowed to continue, parks and recreation would be allowed to continue and then other boards and commissions at the discretion of the manager. Something like that. because I fear that if we just all say I love insert board which we all do uh that we won't give you any of the thing which you're trying to do which is an overall analysis of boards and commissions because of course each person who represents one of these as a liaison loves their board and commission right I know Miguel has been working on the youth city council and really revitalizing that uh Miss Eert the senior citizen advisory committee is a very important one not only to her but to everyone so again that's my thoughts thoughts about where we might head and I'm interested in my colleagues thoughts. I think that's an interesting perspective. Council member Derer. Yeah, thank you. Um, I would like to understand Mickey how pausing I understood what Jackie was trying to say when she paused because there was a sort of a budget thing involved which was not as clear to me but because liaison were in neighborhood advisory boards I understood we were down on liaison but all these other boards have different staff that manage them like urban forestry has a a park secretary for example uh manage it and the urban forester gives the reports so it didn't touch liaison ons it doesn't go there but what I would like a different way uh to my colleagueu's question um would be what what let me explain why first one of my challenges is how do I keep the interest of let's say historic resources commission to pick a different one those members staying engaged and interested after a year of not meeting like they've lost their momentum they don't even know who they are they've gotten re-engaged in other things a whole year of not doing this job. I don't think they're there when we're done. So, one a different idea would be to and I'm not really sure how this helps you. That's my primary question. How does this help Mickey do an analysis of the board if the board is not meeting? So, hold that thought. But one idea, different idea other than the NABS, which I think it should keep keep meeting monthly, but bear in mind sometimes we cancel the NAB. If there's no development projects or there's just one item, we push it to the next meeting. We just don't have the meeting. We hold it. There's no work done. So often the NABS in a 12-month period won't have at least two meetings because of just lack of workload. But then the next meeting we have 60, you know, a huge attendance. So one idea would be to keep the NABS, but on the other ones have them meet six times in the year. So every other month, so that we have continuity. the people still think they're on a board. They're still uh following the bouncing ball. Like if it's on parks and wreck, they're still reviewing the documents every other month. But I still want to help understand how does parks not meeting help you? I I think a lot of it is going to go back to the staff time that it takes for us to meet with them, meet with the the internal staff to really get the information that we need from kind of staff members. But so it could be the liaison, it could be Matt Basil, it could be utilizing is what you're saying you need to meet with Matt. So if he didn't have a board for a year, that would make it easier to meet with him. I mean, do you need to meet with him monthly or just one time, twice? It could it could be a variety of things. We're we're looking at a whole bunch of guiding principles here, right? So it's not just one topic. And so the way that I've laid it out for the approaching the questions is that we're going to have to continue talking over a period of time about these different areas of engagement. It's not just one sit down conversation and address everything at one time. It's going to be continuous work. And I think understanding all the areas plus how much staff time plus all of these other things. We're already asking them to do the work for the board and then additionally we're asking them now to to lend more time to me and my staff to do the research. Well, would reducing the meeting frequency help you like instead of monthly go to six times a year um for these boards at least they have their membership they keep meeting and in full transparency I don't have in front of me how frequently every board meets so I don't even know that every board on this list meets once a month right some of them may only meet quarterly or only meet a couple times a year so I'm hesitant to say yes most of them do meet monthly I'm just council member Dur your time is up okay thank you Um, Council Member Eert, do you have comments or questions? No. Um, just listening to the the conversation, I I've kind of said how I feel about, you know, I would like to throw all the resources we can into NABS and the rest. I trust the judgment of staff and their recommendations. So, thank you, Council Member Ree. Well, Madam Vice Mayor, I'm going to hazard a motion then. Um, with Miss Eert's blessing, I'm going to uh, and if you can put the motion up, I'm going to move to direct staff to draft a resolution establishing a temporary pause on non-mandatory boards and commissions and to proceed with the engagement and review process as outlined in the staff report, including direction provided by council today with the proviso that it would not include pauses to the neighborhood advisory board nor recreation and parks commission during that same time and all other commission boards or committees be at the call of the manager. I I will second that. Oh, sorry. I just wanted to ask real quick before the motion's like done, could we include something to Council Member Der's point, some kind of like quarterly update to see if we can say like, okay, we we've reviewed some boards and commissions and we think that we could bring this one back or I So, for my part, um I think the example given by Miss Der about urban forestry's important work that they're doing is something where Miss Der would go to Miss Bryant and say, "My my urban foresters need to get together. Yeah. And Miss Bryant would say I agree with you and I I can't imagine there's going to be a lot of um push back. Of course, I don't know what the staffing requirements are, the legal review, all the work that goes into putting the staff reports together for that. So, I think my motion would in include that because for example, you might say, "Well, senior citizens really need to meet. We're getting ready for an AARP conference in Cincinnati and therefore can we please meet?" Yeah. Well, and you know, older Americans month is May and they want to plan. I don't know. We're not going to have a budget next fiscal year, but if we get donations, contributions to um them to to have some events, I'd like to be able to get together to meet to um you know, decide what they'd like to do. So, is it possible? I mean, I don't know if this is going to say that we just absolutely cannot have any of these board meetings throughout the year. No. My my point would be that at the discretion of the manager. So you and you would ask Miss Bryant, can we meet to plan for older Americans month and it would be the usual board members and ones that are currently appointed. I make an assumption. Yes. Yeah. It's a discretionary thing, right? If the if Miss Bryant believes that the allocation of resources does not impact negatively other things, I I just am going to trust that she will understand the importance of each board and commission to each board member as well as each liaison. So that's my motion. So we have a motion to second. Now we're moving into discussion. Council member Der. Yeah, I guess I'll ask Miss Brian. Is are you comfortable with that? Um, do you think that you generally could say yes if if there's a need for this board to meet or I I'm not really sure what you might think about that? Well, yes. Um, I think I would also need to meet with Miss Huntsman and get a deeper understanding of what it is she's looking for. We haven't had a chance to talk about this. We had um conflicting schedules, so we probably need to shore up expectations a bit, but certainly I trust the body also to be judicious with the request. And also too, can I just ask and maybe that's something that we could do is, you know, have have a in a few months have a process maybe for us to ask about bringing some boards back. Maybe we realize like, hey, we didn't realize how much they did and we need to bring them back. That worked for you. Um, and because, you know, urban forestry is really important to me, too. Like I I'm not on there, but I'm always trying to find more ways to bring in trees. So maybe I I'm also contemplating but don't know but perhaps some of these could be combined. So perhaps we do we'll we'll figure some things out. I don't want to over complicate it right now. Okay. But it would it be possible to just have like a a followup in a few months to just kind of check in and see how things are going with council's expectations and the reality of how how boards are going. Yeah. Absolutely. And that's the direction provided by council today, right? And I and I don't necessarily think we this is where I want us to be cautious. I want you to do the review. So I don't necessarily want to combine before the review is done. Like maybe there's no need for urban forestry. Okay. Period. I I don't happen to agree, but by the time she's done with the review, maybe there needs to be a different committee. And I'm going to just give you an example. Something we don't have any support team on, committee on, ordinance on is sustainability. It is languished in my mind. While there is one person, they have no formal input. There's no push. There's no way for the people to to participate in what the city's doing other than come to council and say, "When are you going to do X?" I mean, it's one that probably should have been set up. I mean, I know it's contrary to the close it down. My other issue is just I don't think if if something's working and all we can do is go on our judgment, I I don't think you break it to fix it. Um, in some cases that might work, but in some cases what what I'm concerned about is losing the passion and interest in continuing to serve and people getting engaged. Well, if you're not going to have urban forestry, you know what? There's another advisory board for the university on on something with trees or there's a horicultural thing with master gardener. So, I think I'll go work on that because you're not meeting and I've lost that knowledge and interest and I don't know how to finish. So those those are some downsides of not meeting for a year is that you lose the momentum and the interest of the people. So I I think as long as we understand that um look I want improvement and I I loved some of your ideas about um you know different ways to to structure these. You made some good suggestions. I thought what if we just have quarterly meetings instead of monthly. So I'm fine with that too frankly. So, I think we're getting a little bit past the discussion part of it. We did have a motion and a second. Um, Council Member Anderson might have some discussion, though. Council member Anderson, did you have discussion, too? I was just going to say I'm prepared to vote. Oh, and support the motion. Okay. Are we ready for a vote? Can I make a quick comment? Yeah. Yeah. I think the only thing I'm ready to support the motion as well. I'm just uh confirming that the list of Reno City Council subcommittees, I think it's slide five, all those items still come to council, correct? And we still have the opportunity to opine on all those. So essentially, we're just removing that middle review. It's just going to come directly here. I just wanted to double check that. We're good. So, uh, madame clerk and madam manager, do you have an idea of where where we're looking at and the concerns of the council? Okay. One question. Yes. There would be a resolution that comes back that we would still voting on because I am worried that the mayor's not here, frankly, and she has some of the strongest opinions about these boards and commissions, and we're not getting her input, but sure. You know, well, the draft resolution will come back. Yeah. Right. That's what I'm just confirming. Okay. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I just want to make sure before I vote that I'm clear because there was a lot. Does this motion include quarterly meetings? No. So the the recommendation is that the NABS, the parks and recreation and then everything is everything else is at the discretion of the manager. That's the motion that I have written down, which could be quarterly, right? If you if that's at your request, that's a negotiation we're going to have to have with the manager. Okay. Okay. All those in favor? I I. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. We need to pull item uh G2 and we will move on to item G3. Thank you, Madame Vice Mayor. Item G3 is an appointment to the Reno City Planning Commission. It is a recommendation made by the city manager. To that end, I have spoken with the representatives for Ward One and five and the uh recommendations are Tina John Fiantini and Jacob Williams. I'll move to appoint Jacob Williams and Miss Gon Fantini. Second. Uh all those in favor. Were they not already on the planning commission? Um Mr. Williams was. He was an filling out the remaining term of a prior person and so this is technically his reappoint. Okay. And Miss Don Fiantini. No, was not not previously. Yeah. So I just have a question. Was he appointed to the Truckucky Meadows Regional Planning before he was on the planning commission? He was on the planning commission but he took the term of somebody else. So now he's starting a full term. Okay. That one of them though was just being appointed for the first time. Yes. But she's not on regional. Tina's Okay. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All those in favor? I I. All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously and we will move on to item H1, which are city council comments. Council member Anderson. No. Council member Martinez. Yeah. This Saturday and Sunday, we're having free pool days at Moana Springs facility. Uh Saturday from 12:30 to 4:30 and then Sunday from 10 to 2. So, the first 125 folks that show up will get free entrance to the parks. I mean, to the pool. So, just wanted to point that out. Council member Reese, uh, can you come back to me? I just want to pull Sure. Um, I have a quick announcement or a request. Can the city manager and team please look at modifying the current requirements for a minor minor conditional use permit for workplace child care facilities? Oh, yes. Thank you. We have been working with representatives um in a couple of different ways to bring that forward for you. So yes, you should see that in the near future. I don't recall the date, but okay. That should be within It won't be before the break. It'll be after the break. Perfect. Council member Dor. Yeah. I would just like to request that um our city manager talk with our police chief. We we do a lot of special um I don't know what they're called, but enforcement actions, whether it's speeding or DUI or driving in school zones. I would like to see one on car registration. Okay. If that's possible, it kind of leads to everything else. It does. Thank you, Council Member Ree. Are we going back to you real quick? Uh sure. Thank you so much. Um thank you so much, colleagues, for giving me the opportunity to speak just briefly. I don't normally speak in this area or in this part of the meeting, but um Pride Month is June and it honors the 1969 Stonewall uprising New York City, a pivotal moment in the LGBTQ rights movement. In the early hours of June 28th, 1969, police raided the Stonewall in a gay bar in Greenwich Village. At that time, LGBTQ people faced widespread discrimination and police raids on queer spaces were common. But that night, patrons fought back. The protest that followed lasted several days and sparked a national movement for equality and dignity. A year later in June 1970, the first Pride marches were held in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago to commemorate Stonewall. And over the decades, Pride Month has grown into a time of celebration, visibility, and protest. A reminder how far we've come and how far we still have to go. As a proud gay member of our city council, I know firsthand how meaningful Pride Month is, not just to our LGBTQ community, but to the heart of our city itself. Pride is a celebration, a protest, and a promise. It began with people standing up against injustice at Stonewall in 1969, and it continues today with every act of visibility, advocacy, and love. During Pride, we honor the activists who paved the way. We celebrate the joy and diversity of our community, and we recommit ourselves to justice, inclusion for all, especially for those still fighting to be seen and heard. I'm certainly proud to be part of that legacy and prouder still to serve in a city that believes in equality, dignity, and love for all. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member Rice. Council member Eert. Yeah. Um I don't know and I don't that was a great comment, Council Member Ree. Um yeah, just again just really frustrated with the the vote on Stonegate. Doesn't directly affect my life. Um, I'm not anywhere near that development, but it's a huge blow to the community out there and I'm um struggling to understand the motivation to not listen to the voices of the community that has to live with these decisions, especially since they were so actively involved and engaged in the PUB process. So, um just kind of disappointed in uh this body's um unwillingness to listen to the community that we we are supposed to represent with our votes. So, um that was it. Thank you. And thank you, Council Member Dur. Yeah, thank you. Um in addition to the car registration, I just wanted to say on our last item, I voted yes to move this forward. I'm going to in the interim, I assume I don't Mickey's still here. I think I'm going to assume you're bringing this back at in the next one or two meetings either soon. Uh so what I'm planning to do is talk to the members of some of the committees that I leaz with and see if I can learn more about their upcoming issues. I I don't want to besiege the manager with requests. Um but on the other hand, if they tell me there's nothing pressing for like the next two months, but then there is something I want to be respectful of that. So, I just I wanted to share my thoughts a little further on this that um if I hear something different or there's big concern about it, I'm going to raise it, you know, hopefully before the next meeting with Mickey and then with the group um so that we maybe we don't just call out parks and recreation, we also call out urban forestry. I really don't know the answer right now until I query with them. So, I just wanted to put that on the record. Okay. Thanks. Motion to adjurnn. I think we have a final Oh, do we have any I mean public comment public comment. Sorry. Somebody on Zoom sent me a note. They were raising their hand, but I don't know if that's true. We do have one public commenter, Alicia Barber, for closing public comment. Hi. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you so much. I was just watching um a lot of the meeting today and just including the last item G1 and I just wanted to state my concerns about this as I think most of you know I put out information prior to the meetings about what will be discussed and the boards and commissions item is a really critical one because that's about not just citizen engagement but you know shared governance I mean there are a lot of decisions that are made that are advisors to the city council but from a position of expertise you know from a position of um longtime experience and there was nothing in the information that was presented by the time, you know, I wrote that brief that said anything about a 12-month pause. Uh I was shocked by that. Um I thought if anything, we're kind of still going on a on a 90-month a 90 day evaluation. And I understand you're going to be formulating a a resolution, so that's something that, you know, could come back, but that's shocking to me. Um and even, you know, you're talking about exempting NABS. I think that's great. I think that's very important. But just each of these boards and commissions has a very important role to play and these issues come up all the time on the items that they discuss. So, I was also interested to see city manager Bryant say she wasn't suggesting these couldn't meet uh when she had her initial suggestion just that staff couldn't support them. If that's the case and these boards and commissions could still be meeting but without staff support, uh, you know, perhaps a lot of resources could be put toward giving these bodies information, how they get in touch with each other. Um, I don't know. But just all of this to be happening after you've stopped having these boards and commissions meetings. So the boards and commissions don't get to have this discussion about how you're going to go about this as a body. I I can't believe why that wouldn't have happened. You know, certainly anything you would have gotten from them to preview what this process might be or even while you were doing it, while they were still meeting could have been given you such valuable information. So, I'm really concerned about this. Um I understand the need for evaluation absolutely support so many great points there. Just the method by which this is happening is is gravely concerning. 12 months far too long I think. Um, lots of these boards and commissions would have ideas, I think, about why their border commission should get the same kind of exemption as the other ones do. So, anyway, I just I'm sorry I wasn't prepared to talk. I'm not a hot take kind of person, as you know. Um, but this was just something I wanted to express my real shock at the 12 month and that there was nothing in the staff report that said anything about that length of time. So, um, please reconsider that when you're thinking about this resolution and giving more information to the members of your boards and commissions now, I think about what is happening because a lot of people don't know what's going on. So, thanks very much. I appreciate all you do. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any other public comment? We do not have any other public commenters registered. Um, for the record, we did receive public comment. Um, under general as 93 letters of support, two letters of opposition, and three letters of concern. Um, those were received after 400 p.m. yesterday. So, they're for a variety of items. They have been distributed to the Reno City Council and are a part of the permanent record. Thank you. Move to adjurnn. All those in favor? I I motion carries. Thank you.