right now. That's okay. The attorneys are prepared to make that statement if you want them to. Okay, that sounds good. That sounds good. All right, let's do this. All right. Good morning, Madame Mayor. Good morning. I um I apologize. I was I thought we were waiting on two council members. It sounds like they are on live video, but we are having problems with video. Is that is that correct? We are having some technical issues this morning with our um cameras. So, we don't have any camera feed at the moment, but we have confirmed that we have audio. Okay. And we're but we are ready to rock and roll. If you're ready to call the meeting to order. Okay. Thank you. I'd like to call this meeting to order. I hope everyone had a great summer break. We are going to start out with the pledge of allegiance to the flag. And I would like to call on Mr. White, Mr. Paul White. Ready. All right. Nice job. All right, Madam Clerk. I'm going to send it right back to you for a roll call. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Calling roll for Wednesday, July 23rd. Vice Mayor Taylor here. Council member Dor is present online. Coun. Thank you. Council member Martinez. Council member Eert here. Council member Reese. Council member Anderson. Mayor Shibi, you do have a quorum of the Reno City Council. Okay. Thank you so much. We're going to head into item A3. That will be proclamations. Parks and Wreck. It's parks and wreck month. And then we also have um Kurt Dietrich. So I'm gonna send it to you, Nathan. Madame Clerk, can you adjust the volume in the chambers? This is not high, nor is yours. Yep. All right. Hello. Welcome. Hey, my name is Nathan Elliott, parks and recreation director. For the record, want to welcome um our park ranger and river ranger staff along with our rolling recreation activation staff and then some of our admin support folks for this proclamation to celebrate parks and recreation month. Um so with that I'll read all the whereases and now therefore whereas parks and recreation is an integral part of our nation's communities in Reno parks and recreation promotes health and wellness improving the physical and mental health of people who live near parks. And whereas parks and recreation promotes time in nature which positively impacts mental health by increasing cognitive performance and well-being and alleviating depression, attention deficit disorders and Alzheimer's. Whereas the city of Reno Parks and Recreation Department is dedicated to enriching our community through excellent services, spaces, and comprehensive programming and aquatics, athletics activation fitness and nature education that are accessible for all. And whereas our urban forestry initiatives maintain and expand green spaces to improve air quality and mitigate urban heat islands. And our inclusive programming ensures equitable access to recreation for all, fostering a sense of belonging and community cohesion. Whereas the city or whereas the US House of Representatives has designated July as Parks and Recreation Month. Now therefore, I Nathan Elliott on behalf of our mayor Hillary Shei uh declare July 2025 Parks and Recreation Month. So get out there and enjoy our green spaces. Go walk, go hike, go run, go swim, go bike, and enjoy our spaces and programs. So with that, thank you everybody. Let's uh get a round of applause for our team here. Nice job. I also uh dual celebration today. If I can get the uh award here. Um our our rolling recreation program which thank you council for supporting up and down and every chance that you get won the uh state award for program of excellence um for the work that happened in Barbara Bennett Park specifically to help reduce um calls for service and crime in that area uh over the the term of of last fall. So, fall, October of 24, we were in that park pretty much every day. Lette and her team and Kayla, who I want to highlight along with all these uh what where are we? Are we cyan? What kind of shirt color is that? We're going teal. We're calling it teal. Teal. Uh in our teal shirts, uh that that take these trailers out. And when we talk about access accessibility for all, getting these to spaces where we don't have facilities. So, Barbara Bennett is our only downtown playground. Um there's not a parks and wreck facility that people can go in and play. Um so that we're taking it to them and we're doing that at other parks too. So want to highlight that along with our river rangers and park rangers who are in the room in the tan um who are doing a great job along our river but then also in our parks responding to concerned citizen requests to make sure those spaces are inviting and accessible for all. So also I'd be remiss to not highlight all the folks who are taking care of our community's kids at our Sierra kids and summer camp programs. um in our aquatics where kids are learning to swim every day and our seniors are breaking their personal best still. Um along with uh the folks out maintaining those spaces with urban forestry and in our park maintenance. Um and going back to uh what y'all helped us fund, which is uh Landon, he's the taller gentleman in the gray or charcoal. Um, Landon's brought in enough money to fund extra positions in our river ranger program and also we're expanding into a temporary uh, river ranger position that will expand our hours and coverage and frequency of patrols. So, want to highlight some of the great things we're doing here at parks and recreation month. So, with that, can we get a picture? All right. Yes, thank you. The clock is important. Thank you. I love that. Thank you. On the count of three. One, two, three. Who's supposed to be making a public comment about All right, madame mayor. Our first item today is opening public comment. Members of the public may hear, observe, and proi provide public comment virtually by registering through the following link which can be found on reno.gov/meings. https colon slash slashl i n ks period ren o period go ov slash c o u n c i l07-23. It should be noted to those in the audience 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 city 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 say 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 council or from audience members like clapping, yelling, whistling, 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. Madame clerk, if I may, I'm going to jump the line because I have a special recognition that I'd like to do at this time if you don't mind. Thank you so much for that. And and Kurt Dietrich, where are you hiding out? There you are. Right in the front row where you belong. Come on up. appreciate you for being here. As many of you uh probably know in the audience who are staffed, today is Mr. Dietrich's final city council meeting, which marks 25 years of dedicated service to the city of the Reno man. Kurt, you began as an intern in the traffic engineering division and worked your way up to become the city's traffic engineer. Your leadership and technical expertise have significantly improved the health, safety, mobility, infrastructure throughout Reno. notable accomplishments, many of which I've gotten to see firsthand. Traffic signal optimization, neighborhood safety enhancements, and you introduced the flashing yellow turn left signal, a major advancement in local traffic control. Uh Kirk, I know you've represented public works at many technical forums across the country, media events over the years, and you are well known for your deep expertise and love for the city of Reno. Obviously there's a life outside of work and you're about ready to explore what all that means. But you've been a dedicated volunteer with Northern Nevada Railway, the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and the American Society of Civil Engineers. Uh truly your career marks the hallmark of respected leadership and exemplifies public service and civic pride. So I want to thank you. I know Madame Mayor would like to say a few words, but we wish you the best, Kurt. It's been really a privilege to work with you these last seven years and I'm so grateful for your well- earned retirement and hope that you have just the best adventure. Thank you so much. Oh Kurt. Wow. Okay. What are you doing next? Um, so I was kind of mentioning to staff um I haven't had a clear calendar since kindergarten. So I'm actually looking forward to uh just kind of relaxing and um enjoying some hobbies for the for the meantime. Bless your heart. Well, we want to thank you so much for your service and it has been an honor and a joy to work alongside of you and thank you for all the wonderful, thoughtful um initiatives that you have brought to the city of Reno. It really has. Um I you know, we get to work with a lot of people, but when you see someone's heart in such a way, it really is so meaningful that you've been so dedicated, but also love this city so much. So, we're going to miss you. Likewise. Yeah, it's uh definitely book ends because um I was hired here uh my junior year of college. What does that look like? So, yeah, it's it's just surreal. Just Wow. Thank you. Well, I'm sure it's hard to see him go home. Go right ahead. Kurt, I just wanted to say how incredibly lucky I have been to work with you. Uh so much of what we've done in our wars has to do with traffic. uh whether it's red curves, flashing yellow lights, pedestrian crossings, fixing traffic lights, a lot of it's about the roads, you know, filling, whatever. And you have been at the forefront of that and I could not have been a successful without your help. You have always been there. You always care about staff, you care about the citizens, and it's just a real hallmark and something to be emulated by everyone. So, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. I think I see a little tear. Yeah. Come on up. Perfect. Yeah, there you go. Thank you so much. No seriously. We don't get to tell you guys enough, but we're okay. Hi, Madame Mayor. Our first public commenter today is Ron Trevor, followed by George Campion, followed by Jerry Myths. Hello. Good morning. Forward to this update. Thank you. Go ahead. My name is Ron Trevor and I'd like to thank the council for allowing me to speak today. I'm a representative of SAVE, which stands for the Senior Auxiliary Volunteer Effort that works for the Reno Police Department. Today, I've got the recaps from second quarter 2025. We currently have 80 active volunteers, and during the second quarter, there was a total of 5,152 hours volunteered by members of SAFE. This represents a savings of $158,991 to the city of Reno. Some of the key areas that were covered during the time was citizen contacts 3,343 48 hour notices on abandoned vehicles uh 1786 school patrols 1,086 handicap violation citations 363 and number of stolen vehicles or fictitious plates located and reported 13. That's it. All right. Well, thank you so much, Ron. We are so appreciative. Um, you guys blow me away everything that you do. It's fantastic. I would also um love to connect with you. Make sure Mickey has your contact. Uh, there is an initiative that I would love to pull you in on because it is in your expertise. Please. So, um, I think you could be incredibly beneficial. So, just make sure Mickey has it because I want to give you a call. Thank you. Thank you so much. George Campion followed by Jerry Myths followed by Paul White. Hi George. Hi. Hi. How are you? How are you? My name is George Campion and that's C A M P A G N O N I. And I'm here uh because of uh the Vintage Adv Sanctuary's management. Let me just read to you. Okay. Basically, I came here in January concerning something I signed in my lease. All right. I was told by the uh senior citizen uh legal aid that if I continued, I would lose. So, I stopped. End of story. All right. But it was not the end of story for the management. They decided to continue on with their emergency accesses. Okay. And it says here, I then went to legal aid, the law does provide does not provide notice in writing. Okay. For emergency access, the law authorizes a landlord access without notice to address the emergency. NRS18A500 section 2 states if a landlord abuses such access quote apprentices parentheses as in your case okay the tenant has a right to request from the court injunctive relief or termination of rental agreement and actual damages now I don't I have no want to terminate my lease okay or rental agreement whatever All right, I will be taking them to court. All right, I have here just a little bit on the 9th of April after they came in on emergency access, I wrote them a little letter, okay, email requesting a 24-hour notice. Not only did they ignore this letter, okay, they sent him right back in on the 10th, which I have video ad evidence, okay? Then on the 12th of May, we get a a an a email from Britney Roland saying, "Oh, the emergency or the uh u 24-hour notices for alarms, uh smoke alarms, whatever." Okay, that's all been cleared up on the 20th. Oh, they show back up my at my door. This time I put it all on a body cam here. All right. And not only did they come in my unit, but they came in to the um unit right across the way from me illegally breaking and entry. I have them on video. Okay. We have two maintenance people. We have two alarm people. And we have both managers, Julie, Sirius, Pullaway, and Patty. That's all the names I can get. Travis is a ma maintenance guy. I've requested names, but they won't give it to me. But I will be filing in court. I have responded to their Mr. Yamposki's letter, okay? Which he has not responded to me. I have sent Dennis Treadway, the CEO, a letter. He did not respond to me. So, we will be seeing him in court. Okay. George, will you make sure you give me any copies to the um clerk? I you know, I have my phone thing here. Okay. I have just a little bit here. And I can leave this USB drive here. Don't leave the USB, but just any paperwork you have copies of. Okay. Okay. Thank you, George. I'll leave this right here. Thank you. Jerry Myths followed by Paul White followed by Ilia Arbitman. Jerry, hi. You got a haircut. I saw you in the back. Okay. A I Woody something or another is trans translating all my words. Jerry is spelled with a G. Number one. Number two. Good morning, city council. Mayor Shivi, you need a step stool, my dear. Um, sitting on three telephone books are not enough. Um, Kevin, nice to see you. I know most of you except I know most of you. Thank you for your help in um in helping me my living quarters. They're watching right now. Wherever this camera is, pay close attention. Stay out of my personal life. I'm warning you now. I used to be um a drug counselor for the boys coming back in Vietnam. I un I'm not a professional now. I've retired, but I help many people out that I live with and live around with drug problems. Some people have interfered with that and are trying to get information out of people in their private lives. Aa the A is anonymous. People want to remain anonymous if they're trying to recover from drugs. And we have a serious drug problem in the whole city with meth and um fentanyl and what have you. Weed. Quit smoking weed for God's sakes, you know. Um thank you again, city council, for your help in intervening. Um the project over there is coming along just fine. We now need to renovate the seniors. They came out there with a groundbreaking with a good mayor. Um, you didn't see a senior. It was all about the construction benefactor. When when that food truck pulled up, the seniors came out. They didn't need an invitation. And I led the charge. I'm very sorry. I apologize. But we need to think of things like service coordinators. I I have three pages, three pages of suggestions that I gave to management ownership of places that senior complexes that I've lived in and I helped initiate. This little old guy did three pages of stuff knowing that seniors need a variety of things. Think about our lives for God's sake. So ask all of you go to your churches and form little groups and go out and find the seniors that are lonely and they're scared and they're forgotten. But we're still here and we're not done yet. How's that? I like that. Woody's doing a good job, man. And so are you. I'm I'm proud to call you my friend. I've used it in every fashion that I could. I received the PTA award one time, pain in the ass award. Anyway, nice to see you all and away I go. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you so much. That's a great message. Thanks a lot. Great message. You're all right. Paul Paul White, followed by Ilia Arbitman, followed by Terry Brooks. Oh hi. do Paul White Education Crusade. Uh all of you should have a copy of this oped from uh the Nevada Globe a couple weeks ago. It tells about uh recent half-day ride along I did with Reno Police just to kind of update myself. Um most biggest thing that stands out on the ride along is what incredible men and women we've got. Uh, the other thing that stands out is the incomprehensible reason why you will not fully fund these cops with what they need. They are so short, every one of them will tell you would make all the difference in the world, it's putting them at risk. And you know, if you could sign up a hundred cops today, they wouldn't even be ready for patrol for the better part of two years by the time they go through academy and training. people. I I I don't know out there in the out there in the audience there's a or in the uh hallway it tells about like priorities for the city. How can a there be a higher priority than something that just in one instant uh a police officer friend of mine just in an instant a few months ago was in a shootout and bam just like that had lost hearing in both ears and is deaf for the rest of his life. How can we shorthand these people? And the other thing that stands out is our catch and releaselease program with the homeless. And this has got to stop. We've got a thing where the laws give them all the chance in the world to warn them, to cite them, to either traditional court or to jail them, but we don't. We rarely even uh cite them, let alone to this uh feckless homeless court that Judge Stevens runs. They need a This is less than 2% of our population, folks. And they're 40% of our crime and we're treating them like Well, we're really not treating them. We're ignoring them. There's a reason some there's some reason behind it. And the captain of the homeless division uh uh is going to dance around it. I talked with him yesterday at length. We simply have got to enforce the law. We've got too many good people out there. The morale is no good. Why wouldn't it be? We went down a shady brush narrow path. Somebody could have been waiting on the side with a machete or a gun like they used to do all the time at Broadhead Park. And then when they get there, what can they do? Go shoo shoe. Uh a little over a week ago there 40 or 50 people homeless. Big camp under the uh Wells overpass. Ton of trash that would cost the city thousands to get rid of. and they had park rangers over there and they abuse them because they won't let them do what they're entitled to do, which is to ticket these people. Please, our our laws don't do any good if we don't enforce them. I I I can't I don't know when last time or first time you did a ride along, but if you haven't, you got to see these people. They want to go home to their kids and wives with their hearing, with their lives. Thank you. Thank you so much, Paul. Um I think you make some some great comments. I do just want to reiterate anytime um our chief or any officer comes to council. Uh we this administration has made sure that we have invested more than any administration in our public safety, our police. Um as you see with our public safety center, I think that was 75 years in the making. But um I want to make it really clear. We want to give them every every tool and opportunity to do their jobs. It's a tough job. It is really hard. I am grateful that you went on uh went on a ride along. That will open anyone's eyes and they're grateful when citizens do it. So, thank you very very much. But please reiterate that to anyone that you know when they come before council. It is our top priority public safety in the city from fire to police to infrastructure. It's just got to be. So, I appreciate you doing that. Um, and then also, if Officer Miller is here, will you please um meet with Mr. White because I want to make sure um you know that we are doing everything we possibly can to get you the resources, but also um if you you know, your department is seeing things, they're holding people accountable. So, go ahead. Absolutely. Uh Oliver Miller, assistant chief of police, Reno Police Department for the record. Uh, mayor, honorable council, thank you for having me today. And yes, you are absolutely right. And just to reiterate, we always appreciate it when men and women of this community come out and learn what we do when we offer ride alongs to any and all because that education piece is so important. Uh, just to reiterate a couple of facts, the men and women of the Reno Police Department are out there doing the work each and every day. This work includes enforcement of ordinances such as any other any nuisance to include camping, loitering, all the crimes they are out there not only doing the enforcement actions but the outreach actions as well. Now, I I can tell you that our officers, our sergeants, our supervisory staff, our command team have not been inhibited, delayed or stopped in any way from conducting these enforcement operations. It is actually happening out there by virtue of the statistical information that we are seeing coming back. Now, I can tell you to the contrary, our chief of police, Katherine Nance, has prioritized training, resources, and the autonomy for our police officers to go out and do just that. What's needed for the community? I just wanted to make that clear. They are doing enforcement actions with our community and outreach what we can and you know okay building those strong partnerships and relationships with our business owners with our visitors with our residents wherever we can to help solve the issues for the long term. Okay. I really appreciate that. I just want to make sure that our message is clear too that if we can do anything, get you tools, resources, whatever those need, whatever those needs are. Um, and Mr. White is right whenever he talks about it takes two years to get an officer. Is it two years? I thought it was a year and a little over a year, a year and a half to get an officer from the academy to fully out on their own, probation and all the things. It's it's brutal and I understand why we do it to keep them safe, but it is so hard because you need that turnaround, especially when you have officers that are retiring. So, it's like this cycle and it's just so hard to catch that in the times when we need it. So, I I appreciate it. We've got Officer Hunter Mccurio out there telling our story, helping us do this. Officer Mccurio. So, if anyone knows a police officer that wants to come and join our team, we're ready. See that? I think that's the message. Anyone knowing, anyone wanting wanting to serve, uh, we need you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ilia Arbitman, followed by Terry Brooks, followed by Craig Bronzen. Ilia Arberman, for the record, um, I have served on the Ward Three NAB for about four years. Um, I'm here on behalf of um my NAB uh fellow NAB members who couldn't make it today to express our um really uh disappointment at the top down dismantling of civic engagement. Um I'm referring to items C3 and C4 by which the city seeks to really reduce opportunities for public participation. Um since the 90-day hiatus was first announced, the messaging around this has been extremely confusing, contradictory, opaque. I don't really have time to go into the individual instances, right? Because it takes a lot of time to do the uh to do the research for that. But basically, it's been very confusing for us. We have no idea are the boards happening or they not happening. The community forums that got started were a great start and now it's totally unclear if they're going to continue. They've been extremely irregularly scheduled, etc. Um the thing about civic engagement and public participation, right, is it has to feel uh inspiring and empowering for the public to come up here and talk to the council um or engage with public process in any way, right? Not everyone is a stubborn jackass like myself who's going to come here basically no matter what, even when I really feel like nobody is listening. Right? People need to feel like they're heard. They need to feel like they're part of the process. um on this side of the day is what it looks like right now is that the city is basically uh stripping everything back to the bare minimum. Right? That does not sound good for the public, right? Talking about what is barely required by NRS, right? Talking about legally what the city can do to still have some form of civic engagement, right? That's not what we want to hear, right? The city should be going above and beyond to engage the public, right? There should be opportunities to talk back to council, not necessarily one-on-one, right? not in these controlled environments even like the meet and greet with council members which are nice but still don't really quite have the same feeling as boards and commissions do right when citizens sit on the deis and get to run the meeting um development projects right because from the current resolution today seems like maybe nabs will still hear development projects honestly those are always the most boring and uninteresting parts of the NAB right we don't care about lighting in the parking lot right or how many trees are going to go up those things are important right but that's not um the mediest items uh at NAB meetings are usually when we have someone make a presentation, right? Whether it's parks and wreck or whether it's the cops or whoever because we get an opportunity to speak with them, right? We get an opportunity to kind of have them um uh in involved in a conversation where they're standing where I am and they feel accountable and they have to give us real answers. Right? So, what's happening today? Um I'm not really sure what happened, right? Council member Ree asked for a discussion. It looks like there's already a resolution on the table. I feel like the process needs to be rolled back. I was never as a NAB member, right? No one on my NAB was really approached. We did not have a conversation with anyone about how do we feel about the civic engagement process, right? That has not happened. And I think until that happens, the city really needs to take a pause until it takes any decisions about what happens with boards and commissions. Thank you very much. All right. Thanks, Ilia. Terry Brooks, followed by Craig Bronzen, followed by M. Crossy. Good morning. It's me, Terry Brooks, again, and today I'd like to share with you my thoughts on senior housing and what seniors go through. When seniors grow older and can no longer take care of their place, whether they own it or rent it, it may be difficult to face. Then they think that it is about time to enter a place where they don't have to do the work, such as a senior housing center. They may just need a small apartment where there's no work for them to have to do, where someone else takes care of the yard and the building maintenance, too. Fortunately, here in this area, there are several places for seniors to stay, even for those who need a place where they accept seniors with low pay. The Nevada Housing Division maintains a lowincome de housing database that makes it easy for seniors who are looking for such a place. And the Nevada Rural Housing Authority provides affordable housing opportunities for lowincome people and moderate families. Housing and Urban Development provides housing rental assistance for those seniors who are in need of such assistance. And the Warso County incomebased senior housing guide has a lot of information and to seniors it will provide. And Moana House has units that are available too for the physically disabled and their pets are allowed too. There are a lot of places in this area that seniors could move into and there's not much there that seniors would have to do. The best things about such places is that seniors will be around each other, get to know each other and have fun with each other. So, not only will they all have a safe place to stay, but they get to enjoy their lives with each other every day. When I read about repealing of the senior citizen advisory committee, I was a bit disappointed until I heard that it may be replaced by representatives that will be appointed. I would like to thank you all for listening to me today and I look forward to coming back when I got a lot more to say. Terry, thank you so much. I think that should be printed and put it up. uh vice mayor over at RHA. I think it's very positive. Put it on the wall. It's all So, I'll send it over to Vice Mayor and Hillary Lopez because I think it's great. It's a great message and it highlights their work. Thanks, Terry. Where are we at? This is chapter 11. And just so you know, I've only got 35. Okay. 35. Thanks so much. Thanks so much. Craig Bronzen, followed by Mac Rossi, followed by Dora Lee Martinez. Hi Craig. Good morning, honorable mayor, members of city council, staff members. Oh, start members of the public. My name is Craig Bronson. Uh, I'm happy to be here today since July is parks recreation month, and that's what I did as a career, and that's what we do for the commission. So good for parks and recck. But I wanted to lend my support for the agenda item C4 related to establishing general rules and procedures for boards and commissions. As chair of the recreation and parks commission, I appreciate the work staff has done and support the recommendations with one exception. I would like to see a tweak considered and that would be it relates to formation of subcommittees. Currently the parks recreation commission cannot set subcommittees to deal with specific issues. In reading the report recommendation is that subcommittees can be formed. As you know, parks recreation is a big tent. Uh we cover programs and facilities that affect our citizens from birth through death. In fact, two months ago, a local Girl Scout troop came in front of city council to ask for permission to consider naming one of our bridges the Rainbow Bridge in remembrance of all the pets who've passed on. So, parks and wreck deals with pets, too, including the dog parks and things we do. This type of of topic is precisely the type of subject that comes in front of our park recreation commission on a monthly basis. Subjects such as this require subject such as require commission board to be nimble and quick and does not always require all nine commissioners to be involved in the discussion. The report allows for formation of subcommittees. However, they have to be approved by city council. They have to follow all public meeting laws. They have to file yearly reports of their activities and they require a lot of staff time because they're public meetings. This is hardly nimble and flexible and having worked in the profession before this is bureaucracy and our public many time come to our commission meeting under public comment like I'm doing and they want to talk to the policy makers or the commission and at the end they say and what are you going to do about it? Well, you can't respond to that. So, they get frustrated and they leave and they don't understand it's going to be an entire month before we get it on agenda to discuss. So I would recommend that boards and commissions have the ability to establish ad hoc committees. They disagree with me, but that's okay. Uh to establish ad hoc committees with city council leaison on approval that are formed for a specific topic by the chair and the vice chair. The ad hoc committee would be less than a quorum. They could meet without all the public meeting requirements and their job would be to bring back a recommendation to the commission related to the item that they're working on. Afterwards, the ad hoc committee is disbanded and goes away so we don't just stay around. This would allow special purpose topics uh to be vetted quickly and still come back to the commission or the board for city council approval. Our commission is blessed with great support from council member Martinez. And I would trust his leadership and support to help us resolve issues quickly so the public does not have to wait for the wheels of government to turn as slow as they do. and I am more than happy to offer my services to staff to help make this happen and hope city council can support this minor tweak. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Great comments. Mac, do you mind if I have Dora go before you so she can take her? Dory Martinez, followed by Mac Rossy, followed by Sam Gtle. Oh. Oh. No. You're fine. You're fine. Look at that. Oh, hello. Good morning, Mayor Shibi, and council members. And you brought a guest. This is Dora Martinez and my granddaughter. Granddaughter. And my dog. And your dog. Yeah, you got a full house today. Um, I just want to thank you, Mayor Shibi, and the council for doing the Wordley app. It's really accessible and usable. Thank you, Great. Um, and thank you for the free trips for the ADA anniversary on this Saturday for all RTC writers. Um, I'm here because I need I need help for my my daughter's mom. Um, my granddaughter's mom for her rent and I don't know where else to go. She she for county she they said that she makes too much and I don't know where else to go and I don't want him getting evicted and I can't take them in because I'm in housing for disabled um people and I can't take her in. Yeah. So, I was wondering maybe there's some assistance that you all know and and please help. Dora, she crushed too much. Absolutely. And I think you are you you're now going to take care of this little one? Or is mom is mom able to help you? Yeah, she is. Okay. We are going to give you every resource um and make sure that you are not stressing about this. It's really really important and I am I know it's been a tough few weeks for you. We've been going back and forth. Yes. On email and so my heart really goes out to you. You're an incredible mom. Thank you. And I know this has got to be tough. It is. So we do have assistance um emergency assistance that we want to be able to make sure that you have access to. So we're going to make sure um I believe JW is going to get you connected. Okay. so that you have what you need. And please don't cry because you'll make me cry. Thank you so much. I appreciate. But um thank you very much and I'm so sorry. It's okay. You know, you're a good grandma. I try. You're a great grandma. I promise I will not use the men's bathroom today. All right, Dora. Thank you so much. Thank you. You're You're fine. No problem. Matt Rossi, followed by Sam Gtle, followed by David Shakar. Good morning. I'm crying, too. I know. I got a few I got a few things that I want to get off my chest. So, again, my name is M Rossy, a resident of the city of Reno. I'm bringing a few points up that have been bothering me. Uh, I received a publication list showing the top 100 paid benefits of the City Arno employees. Uh, I will make one comment. You folks didn't make the list at all. As far as city council, uh, of the 100 city employees, I was surprised to see 1/4 were the city Reno police sergeants with an average of over $325,000 in pay and benefits per year. What second complaint? I drive a gas fuel automobile and pay over 16 cents a gallon for the county taxes to keep the roads up to date while the electric vehicles are paying nothing. I also will note that the electric vehicles weigh more on an average vehicle and wear out more of the roads than our regular cars. I've seen the city officials call for elimination of both the city committees and the commission commissioners with will who that all have volunteer people giving their time to the city. I will repeat volunteers meaning no cost to the city. I have seen the city cut these volunteer commissions and volunteers uh committees to save cost in city budgets for a defect of over $25 million in defest. Excuse me. I don't know what it is, but boy, I really don't see any savings by cutting volunteers. While the city is cutting only eight employees, what have you saved in the volunteers compared to versing city employees? It might appear that the city of eliminating public participation in any of these groups that might see or have input what the city is really doing. The city can go on the way they are without having any citizens really giving any input and that's kind of sad. Thank you. Thanks Mac. Sam Gtle, followed by David Shakar, followed by Alexis Motore. Hi, my name is Sam Gtle. I'm here regarding the Reno Housing Authorities's application to abandon an alley. And I just wanted to and I got this from the city upstairs. I wanted to let in my opinion used to be in the business. This is an incomplete and transparent document. I'll be as quick as I can. This is a picture of Our Lady of the Snows Alley. This is an example of it works about 15 years ago. Um Lander Avenue was um partially given to the to the city or rather to the to the school and they use it as a playyard. So everybody benefits the neighborhood, the yards. Um, during the day, Sam, the microphones can't pick you up if you're not behind the podium. Okay. During the day, ballards come up that close the street off for a street play. So, it's a working situation. This is a cop a picture of the alley that the housing authority wants to abandon. It's next to this the Mount Rose School and it will greatly affect it. Even though the document does not say anything about that. So, it's a detriment to this neighborhood and a detriment to the children. It should be saved. The document the document does not speak that this is what's probably going to go on the site. This is what's currently on um Vine Street at Second. It's a halfacre unit, a halfacre site with about 60 units. This alley in the and our the Reno Housing Authority does have enough land to build probably a 100 units as it is. If it's allowed to have the alley and you add all the benefits of lower housing costs plus the density, it will end up with 300 units possibly with all the part cars on the Reno Avenue and in Arlington. It's and if you notice in the picture, the alley is retained. Very important. This high density project with the alley in here, they discuss that they have to have the alley. They do not have to have it. And lastly, this is a picture of the Renaissance Hotel. There was a Mill Street was abandoned 20 years ago and the council people that were still around for a while regretted every minute of it. Please don't get in a regretful situation. Please don't allow the abandonment for future development and for the neighborhood. Thank you. Thanks Sam. David Shakar, followed by Alexis Motorex, followed by Mark Markel. Good morning, Madame Mayor. Uh, my name is David Shakar. I'm a federal court media sketch artist and independent portrait painter. A couple weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to take advantage of the fact that art is legal in the city of Reno. thanks to you, Mayor Shivy, from uh April 2014 when it became legal. So, I went to Food Truck Friday and that's over in Idawal Park and I decided I was going to do free caricatures. The reason they're free, try to uh use a different technique. I don't want to take away the performance anxiety. Uh anyway, just before I finished setting up my easel, the event promoter named Steve Schroeder came by. He was a nice guy, but he was ignorant about the fact that he felt that because I didn't have a license or permit, which is not required when you're exhibiting and your own self-created artwork in a public form like a park, sidewalk, uh etc. Uh anyway, Steve said that I had to go to the free speech area, but the free speech area was unreasonably isolated. It was way at the other end of the park and there just really wouldn't have been that many people. I tried to explain that to him and when he realized I wasn't going to move, he said, "Well, I'm going to call the cops." At that point, I was not at all worried about RPD. We have an award-winning police department. They are aware of the landmark civil rights of artist case called White versus City of Sparks. Uh the citation is 9th Circuit 2007. Um 500 Federal 3rd 953. Um RPD is aware of that. So I did not want to have a confrontation with the police officers because the logical progression would have been the event promoter would have called the cops. cops would have came and it would have been a complete complete waste of police resources to tell an artist that he's not breaking the law, but to tell the event promoter that he better not insist on relegating an artist to an area of the special event where it's unreasonably isolated. Uh the suggestion, Mayor Shivy, is um if you would be so kind to consider to let the people know when they have a special event that they could have a free speech area. In fact, it's provided for statute, but it should not be unreasonably isolated. I absolutely agree with you. We need to do a better job educating our promoters, and I am so sorry. Um, and I would think you were also providing free services and fun and everyone loves a caricature, right? And I think it enhances obviously the event. So, I'm really really sorry, but I agree with you. We need to do a better job educating our promoters. Um, you know, and also that one's been on the books for a long time. Yeah. More art, more art, more art. So, thank you. Alexis Motorex, followed by Mark Markel, followed by Kendra Costalei. Good morning. Alexis Moto X with the Nevada Chapter Associated General Contractors representing the commercial construction industry in Northern Nevada. Uh we're here today in support of two items on the agenda, C4 and E8. E8 repeals the ordinance that creates the urban forestry commission while section 25 and item C4 creates an urban forestry subcommittee under the to be newly created parks and recreation advisory committee. While we agree that the matters the urban forestry commission currently advises on are important, it makes sense and is a better use of the city's very limited resources to consolidate it under parks and recck. This provides more structure, clearly identifies the duties of the subcommittee, defines members qualifications, and clearly specifies requirements those members must meet, such as residency and the number of terms they're allowed to serve. Broadly speaking, AGC supports the efforts to modernize the city's boards and commissions. Having standards, standard rules, and procedures in place to provide transparency, consistency, accountability, and efficiency is never a bad thing, and we urge your support and passage of this. Thank you. Thank you so much. Mark Markel followed by Kendra Costalei followed by Trey Abney. I'll drive you home tonight. Thank you. Okay. My good morning at my mayor, city council members. My name is Mark Markell. I'm here today to tell you what about what can happen what tell you about what happened to me as a result of transcriving. My brother and I were in the mountains of in the mountains by Mil Creek near Forest Falls, California. We were drinking wine and watching the water as we often did. Sometimes we like to push a cooler into the creek and watch it fall 100 ft into a pool below it. It would then eventually leave that pool and fall another 100 ft into another pool. I wrote this back in 98 when I first moved here. So it it's it's kind it's I I was told not to come here anymore by your by your secretary, the student manager secretary, but I don't care. I I feel it's important that people here want anyways. A little after 400 p.m. we decided we needed to make another beer run. We had been working on four gallons of wine but wanted to sure we didn't we then ran out of alcohol. Our initial Our initial destination was the pawn shop where we could get money for my brother's keyboards. The police report estimated as we we estimate we were traveling at 100 miles an hour. As we cleared a as we cleared the bridge over the freeway, there was a cart in front of us. So we we having trouble. Uhoh. Okay. Well, basically the cart land uh land I got ejected from the car and it landed on my head and put me at a coma for a month and the hospital for five and a half months. And God will me allowed to show you people what could happen to drunk drivers. I know if you drive with a drunk driver and God will be alive and he uses me as an example of what can happen. Thank you. Thank you very much and that's a very very important message. Very Kendra Costalei, followed by Trey Abney, followed by Lauren Weiss. Thank you, Kendra. Thank you. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Good morning, mayor and members of the council. I'm Kendra Costelli, uh the franchise agreement rep for Waste Management. And I'm joined today by our district manager Steve Mccor, our ombbudsman and educator Taylor Kern, and my public sector partner Kim Fleming. Waste management is proud to serve Reno and not just through trash collection, but as an engaged community partner. While our customer satisfaction scores average about 8.5 out of 10, we uh know that we often are only visible to you when something goes wrong. So, I'm hoping to change that with like a briefly a brief monthly update. Right now through September, WM is providing free disposal of up to 50 pounds of household hazardous waste through a partnership with Greyar Environmental. Vouchers are mailed to all residential customers. And this service isn't part of our franchise agreement. It's just something that WM funds uh to support safe disposal and another local vendor, another unrelated uncle uh local vendor. As you know, event season is in full swing and that means more people, more activity, and literally tons of trash. Our drivers are working long hours in extreme heat to keep up with residential, commercial, and event waste. If delays occur, customers will receive a call or email, and your trash account may exist since you had a landline. So, updating that uh contact information is vital to getting timely updates. The city has been exploring green waste solutions for some time, and as requested by Suzanne Grownman, WM recently helped to fund a study to gauge community interest. We've also begun a soft roll out of green waste drop off and composting at Commercial Road Transfer Station and Lockwood Landfill. And as for recycling, your recyclables are not landfilled and we invite members of the public to come and tour our materials recovery facility. Uh sign up at renorreles.com. It is the only MURF in Reno that is open to the public and that offers public education programs. We're also proud to support the city in other ways. Just last week when the Clean and Safe teams truck was down, we delivered two 30-yard bins within 24 hours. And we continue to support local nonprofits and events like Midtown's Dancing in the Streets, Reno Fails Pops on the River, Community Health Alliance vaccination clinics at 10 Wo County School District locations, multiple Northern Nevada Children's Cancer Foundation events, the Reno Rodeo, and the City of Reno's uh River Rangers Patrol. And we are also looking forward to the park's corporate games which are coming up in September. So finally, a quick reminder, our office at 100 Vaster Street is open weekdays from 8:30 to 4:30. Customers can also manage accounts at wm.com or through my w the mywm app. And they can reach us locally at 7753298822. Thank you for your time and your continued partnership. All right, great job, Kendra. Will you please repeat that number? Uh, yeah. 775329882. I love how she's speaking up here. She she knows there are a lot of people on Zoom. Um I want to say thank you so much for your partnership. I don't think we've ever seen this level of engagement from Waste Management. I know we've had a lot of long partnerships but um not to this level and I'm really really grateful. Um thank you. And um if you could just uh reiterate um the program that's free right now that's not the one that we sponsor. Yeah. Could you just do it again please? Uh so uh we are partnered with Greyar Environmental which is another local company. They'll take up to 50 pounds of material with a voucher on WM right now. If you for some reason lost your voucher or didn't get it or didn't get it, you can stop by our office at 100 Ver Street and pick up a new one. Okay. that you can't mail it. We uh No, because sometimes people request more than one one. Oh, got it. Got it. Okay. Well, then go in person to get your voucher. Yes please. Okay. Thank you so much. Great great information. Come on, Trey. Trey Abney, follow Lawrence Weiss, followed by Rquel Deman. Good morning, Madame Mayor, members of council. Uh, madame manager, good to see you. Uh for the record, Trey Abney here today representing NEOP Northern Nevada, the largest commercial real estate advocacy association in the region. Um here today uh early to speak on C3 and C4 and probably connects to others on this agenda, but we appreciate the difficult circumstances that you are in and we appreciate staff bringing forward these innovative solutions. In times like this, you must stand up and make difficult decisions. And this uh this move on boards of commissions is a good first step. The city of Reno can no longer take the time and dollars to do the want to haves and the nice to haves. You must focus on the need to haves, the things that you were required by law to do and the things that serve the direct day-to-day needs of your constituents. To be blunt, you have to stay in your lane. You cannot be the government of last resort anymore. Whether it's horse fences or homeless services, you have to do the things basic government services that you required to do here. Consolidating extra and unneeded boards and commissions and moving forward on things like a regional parks district are a great idea and a great way to do that. Is important to note here that if you are experiencing fiscal turbulence in the public sector, private sector employers and employees, your constituents are experiencing fiscal turbulence as well. Commercial and residential building permits are flat and coming in below the numbers of the last two years, which means you will have more decisions to make uh beyond this agenda item today. So again, this is a first step. But again, I want to thank you for your service to our community. Thank you for your time, for allowing me to speak today, and thank you for will being willing to stand up and make these tough decisions. Thanks. Thanks. Good to see you. Lawrence Weiss, followed by Raquel Dentman, followed by Anna Higgins. Good morning. I'm Dr. Larry Weiss, uh, with the Center for Healthy Aging. Uh, Mayor, nice to see you. Nice to see you. Um, I have a simple message. I'll be very quick. Um on your agenda you have C3 and C4. Uh please suspend judgment uh regarding the senior citizens advisory committee. It's conducted by volunteers and uh has done some really good work in the past and we want to continue. Uh so please suspend so we can get more input from elders uh on this issue. Thank you. Thank you so much. Great to see you. Raquel Deman followed by Anna Higgins followed by Pablo Navadon with the mayor and the council. Thank you for the time. I'm here to address an instance that I had at PAR uh the detention center about my son. uh he was taken in and when he was there I mean I believe they give him certain clothes and then they take whatever they have and put it in a secure place. Uh I feel like the system in in that particular area is not really working for us that are on 70 years old and it's very fast when we call it takes us off. It took me a while to get through and by the time that I found out uh and I went to pick him up, they have disposed his items, his secure items. And the only things that they told me they had were this, which is a paper and uh a piece of gum, three pieces and the bless uh that I gave him. But his good shoes, his uh t-shirt, his cocky pants, they were disposed. I mean, I don't know how long they keep them. When I work in places that we had to secure items by law, we had to keep them uh a year. So, when I went and asked, they said that they had disposed them. My son called me and he says, "Mom, please pick up my items." because I was told by other inmates that they take the items and they disappear them. So, by the time that I that I uh could go, they were gone. So, the reason that I'm here is to give you this information, there must be something going on in those facilities. And unfortunately, our sons don't have any abilities. They I put some money on on their accounts. He didn't know. Right now, he is in in Carson. Every time that I try to put money in his commissary or some places they have a system that they go by number one, two, three, by the time that you figured out which is the one you go, they kick you out. So, uh, what should I do? I went to this place to ask for the information. They gave me a form, which is this. And basically, the questions that they asked for me to fill out do not concern that particular situation. And I'm just here to let you know that it's either I either need an investigation on that or you guys need to do something about it or um what did you suggest? Thank you so much. Um Raquel, right? Yes, Raquel. I'm going to get someone from staff to meet with you and I would also recommend that you um express this over at the Wo County Commission because it's their jurisdiction uh not the city of Reno and um I understand your frustration. Um it's it's very very hard to have a loved one um in those positions because oftentimes their family members um are also sort of arrested as well. Um if anyone you know knows that system it's very very difficult but I want you to um get with uh I don't know uh Jennica thank you so much. I appreciate you. could you get with Raquel and um help her navigate uh you know the um jurisdiction that could be helpful and and we also have some sheriff contacts that we could put you in touch with so that you could get some some answers. So and I am so sorry. Thank you so much. Anna Higgins, followed by Pablo Navadon, followed by John Valto. Good morning, Anna Higgins. Hi. Good morning, Mayor. How are you, council members? Good. Thank you. Um, I am a mother. I'm also a forester and I've called Darina home for the last 14 years. As a forester and a firefighter, I tell people that I witness the impacts of a changing climate on a daily basis. It is no secret Reno is hot and we're getting hotter. Um, we're one of the fastest warming cities in the West, unfortunately. Uh, last week might have been pretty rough for some people. It might not have been bad for some of you. Some of you may sleep in air conditioning houses. Some may drive to work in air conditioned vehicles. Some may work in air conditioned offices. But what about people who have no privilege to get cool in air conditioning? How do they seek relief from the heat? One way people seek relief from the heat is by shade. And I bet you can guess what my answer is and what your answer should be too is what provides the best shade trees. I took part in the process to develop the 2019 city of Reno sustainability and climate action plan. The number six priority was a healthy and equitable community or sorry urban forest. We set two goals to achieve that priority. One was to increase the canopy by 10% by 2036 and another was 100% fair distribution of trees by 2040. We have made some progress in those goals, but we have a lot a lot more work to do. I am here today to comment on agenda item C4 regarding establishing general rules and standards for the city's advisory boards and commissions. I have heard that the city of Reno is proposing to do away with the Reno urban forestry commission and to make it a subcommittee under the recreation and parks commission. As a commissioner of the Reno Urban Forestry Commission, I strongly discourage this council with doing away with the only commission solely dedicated to improving our urban forest. Our urban forest is so much more than trees in parks. The goal of the Reno Urban Forestry Commission is to create and maintain and promote a safe, healthy, and attractive urban forest for the enhancement of the natural environment of Reno. We obviously can't do that if the Reno Urban Forestry Commission ceases to exist. I'm not surprised to hear of some people that are in favor of us going away because we've been very vocal about retaining our large canopy trees. And I don't know how many of you have tried to sit under the shade of a newly planted tiny tree. You can't. Yeah. So, if the city of Reno truly cares about the health and wellbeing being of its citizens and visitors, this council should not get rid of the Reno Urban Forestry Commission as it exists today. Thank you. Good job, Anna. And excellent points. Excellent. Pablo Nava Duron followed by John Valto. Pablo. Hello. Hello guys. Hello guys. My name Paul Natuan and I recently just signed up for Nice board in war three but I realized that that that we have a Jan over there the war the N vice board might go away or maybe temporary for 90 days. Who knows? So I want to talk about why decision why I'm joining a neighborhood advisory board as a volunteers because I do care about central winner area because that that area have been declining over past few years with no tification bar recognation other than west avenue and Midtown Reno and um you know it's very important to this neighborhood need to be prioritized, need to be gentrified with new apartments, a new park, a new playground, all kinds of stuff to to attract people to move here. So to make increase those populations because every day every day don't because if it don't because the school district is already funed to build new bonum hooser high school in any their in their field school building their new new elementary school at the lower campus you know think about it you know if C we know doesn't care about doesn't invest in central we know area guess But and their school their new school will be under uranized and we got to think about how to drive people to move in because school districts doesn't a doesn't do much of development other than school. Talk about the neighborhood demographic all kind of stuff because we know we know we're we know the birth is declining but this is the best we could. So we we got to move forward. We got to move forward to make sure the cent goes up and then before 2030 because when 23rd they're going round and a war three the we could see the war three might lose some residents because of a central window area have be declining. So they have to redist make the war three map bigger. But but we got to think about war three. We want to make sure the that power the minority power especially for the Hispanic community stay strong not weak in power. So thank you. All right. Thanks Pablo. John BTO followed by Angie Rean via Zoom. Hi John. Hey, how are you? Good morning. My name is John Valto. Um, unfortunately, all good things come to an end. We're nearing the expiration of Mayor She's Shivy's term. Uh, she's been a wonderful mayor. Arena's been a wonderful place to live for the last 12 years. Uh, it's Well, that's not what my email says. Well, they're wrong. It's I studied public policy, graduated deans Virginia Tech. This has been a well-run city. Um, it's clean. Uh, we have countless festivals motorsports concerts and events. Uh, that all go off without a hitch. Uh, it's been a very safe city. I've lived in one of the best neighborhoods in several of the worst neighborhoods. And, uh, Mayor Shivy and, uh, Chief Sodto did an excellent job of keeping the city safe. Uh, we were allowed to have virtually unlimited fund. uh those of us that behave, but the criminals uh that cause problems are quickly locked up. Uh we didn't have hardly any problems. Um but uh so I'd like to thank Miss Shibi for her service and hopefully she'll run for state office. Hopefully she'll run for state office. She's been great. No way. In the future, I'm excited about Eddie Lord's candidacy for mayor. We have a lot of big ticket items coming down the road. Uh pension and healthc care obligations are going to go through the roof. as everybody else is. And we're going to need a uh sound uh fiscal money manager to meet those obligations without getting overextended. I'm very excited about Eddie Lawren's campaign for mayor. Um Eddie, if you're out there, I need two yard signs. Uh thank you all for your time today. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for the kind words, but we are a growing city and we have a lot of wonderful things, but we have challenges like every city in in this country, but we got to continue to keep working on it. But thank you for the kind words. All right, madame clerk. Uh, we have no one else signed in. Do you have any um online? Sorry. Yes, we did. Okay. Um, Angie Regan via Zoom. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Oh. Um, so thank you. I'm Angie Regan. I'm a dis disabled disability advocate, physical therapist, and Worster and UNR graduate who grew up here in Reno and now lives in Tahoe. I am also the found volunteer founder of Access Tahoe, a grassroots movement dedicated to creating access in Tahoe for all. We're hoping to expand that vision throughout Reno in our governments, businesses, nonprofits schools events parks trails, beaches, public spaces, as well as changing hearts and minds one by one. Reno has already been a great model for us in Tahoe through Reno Adaptive and the adaptive cycling center, but there's always more we can do to build a more inclusive future for this region and world. That's why I'm here to ask the city of Reno to proclaim July as Disability Pride Month and to honor July 26, 2025 as the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's not too late. Uh recognizing this month and this milestone helps us celebrate our history and our rights and and the contributions of disabled people in our community while reaffirming our commitment to accessibility and equity for the future. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Okay, now there's no one else signed in. Um, let's see. Uh, for the record, we received 24 comments which were general in nature or not directly associated with an agenda item prior to 4 p.m. yesterday, Tuesday, July 22nd. These comments were written correspondence um that have been distributed to the council and they are uh five letters in favor, seven in opposition, and 12 letters of concern. Okay. Thank you so much. Hold on one second. All right. Um, madame clerk, are we heading into a four? Yes. Okay. Thank you so much. Um, before we do that, I'm going to send it to city manager. Do you have any updates or reorganization of your agenda? I do. Thank you, Madam Mayor. plan today is to pull off items of consent and then hear any pulled consent items. After that, we'll move through our C department items starting with item C1. Item C3 and four are related to public engagement and boards and commissions. They'll be opened and heard together. After item C4, we'll move to items E2 through E9 individually, all of which are also related to boards and commission. Once we conclude C3, C4 and E2 through E9, we will continue with the depress the rest of our department items. Items C5 and six will be open together as well as items seven and eight related to flood management. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay. At this time, I'm going to ask um item A for approval of the agenda. Motion to approve. All right. Second. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. All right. A5. Uh, approval of the minutes. Move to approve as written. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. All right. Um, consent agenda. Madame Clerk, uh, I'm gonna start with you, Council Member Anderson, do you have any items you want to pull off this consent? All right. Thank you so much. Councilman Martinez, I don't have any. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh, Vice Mayor Taylor. No, Madam Mayor. Council, nothing, Madam Mayor. Nothing. Okay. Councilwoman Der, nothing today. All right. Um, Councilwoman Eert, are you there? Yeah. Can you hear me? Yeah. Go ahead. Um, B20 B21, please. B20 and B21. All right, madame mayor, I move to approve all items not pulled from consent. Second. All right. Thank you so much. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. All right. We're going to head into item B20. And that is going to be a resolution stating that it is in the best interest of the city of Reno to transfer without compensation 35 acre portion of city- owned property of Teglia's Paradise Park located at 2745 Elementary Drive. Um, and this would be to Wo County School District to be used for public purpose uh pursuant to NRS 277. Hello. Hello again. Take it away. Nathan Oliot, parks and recreation director for the record. Any questions I can answer on this topic? Go ahead, Councilwoman Eert. All you. Yeah. Um I'm sure you don't have a presentation, but do we have a map or anything of this area? There there should be a picture in your st in your staff report. Um this is Yeah, this is just uh it's a disconnected part of Paradise Park that is closer to the Wo uh County School District, Bernice Matthews Elementary School. Um so it's really kind of consolidating those two sites which because of the split um are is not highly highly utilized for positive purposes um as a park. So as they go into Wo County that is school district goes into um the redesign and re um refurbishment of that school site it made sense to work together and and bring that into their site so they can incorporate it into the school. Is that something that the Wo County School District initiated? did they request that or was that something that we were looking to get rid of? So, we we have regular meetings with uh our colleagues in the school district from a facility standpoint um as a part of our JUAS, our joint use agreements. And this came up as one of the topics like, hey, as we get ready to do some of these WC1 type initiatives, how can we work together to um refurbish the spaces uh that we have and combine that? And so, this was one of the things that came up in that discussion. Um, I would say probably the county asked about it as they were getting ready for Bernice Matthews. Okay. Um, and then just one other quick question. I mean, I know we're we're a good partner with with Wo County School District. Is there any um joint use agreements where the city of Reno is using any Wo County School District um property or facilities? Yes. Yes. Yes, the joint use agreements primarily uh benefit the city and uh Reno Youth Sports Association um to provide field access and then also access for our Sierra kids after school programs and vacation vacation stations summer camp programs. Okay. And I know that we've had a couple tours with um some Wo County School District representatives at the Ste Elementary School that's soon to be decommissioned. And I know we've inquired about using that in some kind of joint use agreement. Has there been any kind of um followup with that um from the Wo County School District? Not not specific to this item. Um there's conversations going on. Uh but there's not a a significant update at this point. Okay. Thank you. Um that was it. Um uh I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve unless anybody else has any questions. Second or questions unless there are none. Um I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Okay. Back at you. Councilwoman Eert 21. Yeah. Yeah. So this is for uh maintenance and operations. I was just curious if there's like a dollar amount that triggers anything coming to council. This is giving approval for um maintenance and operations to purchase supplies. But I was just curious um you know if if anything triggers a um an approval from council or city manager on this. Good morning. Um Zack Hafner, acting maintenance and operations director. We we follow all of the uh purchasing guidelines out outlined by finance. There are rules pertaining to what those amounts are and when they're triggered by council. This item is strictly um it's it's a standard operating item. On the next council meeting, you guys will see things coming to you related to paint and sign material, uh snow and ice material, salt and sand, and different things like that. That will be coming next Wednesday for you guys to review and approve. This is strictly just for the maintenance and operations director to sign off on those contracts of which he would be reviewing next week at next week, next council meeting. So, as I understand it, it's basically where you can look at it, move forward, but bring it to council so that you have the autonomy to continue to move the conversation. Exactly. Yeah. So, you guys will give your purchase approval next week with the joiner contracts. Most of those are all on NASPO contracts and different things like that. Stuff that happens every year as part of your normal normal purchasing approval that you guys do. And then this makes it so that the contract can be signed and we can issue the purchase orders and agreements to the different vendors because I think that to the delay when we have council meetings then it's hard for you to move forward. Yeah. What we do is we bring this forward at the beginning of every fiscal year once the budget budget's been approved the budget. So usually it's on the first or the second council meeting so that we can stock up and have the supplies as the year progresses so that we can fill potholes. You are ready. Yes. Exactly. Thanks Zach. Appreciate it. Okay. Council neighbor. Go ahead. I just want to make sure I'm understanding. So, we say, okay, you have the authority to purchase things, but then you don't actually purchase them until council says, okay, that's an okay amount, and we vote on it. I'm I'm sorry, council member, can you repeat that again? Um, I just want to make sure I'm understanding. So, we we give approval for purchase of supplies, but then it comes back to council for the actual approval to purchase. Correct. This is this is the approval. This is the approval for us to approve next week's purchases if that makes sense. The amounts the amounts related to the different joinders and materials will be in separate in separate staff reports next week. Okay. All right. Um Okay. I guess that's uh it for me. Does anybody have any other questions? No. All right. Um I'll make a motion uh to approve. All right. Thank you. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Okay. Um, madame clerk, we are now going to head into, I believe, item C1. That's correct. All right. Thank you so much. At this time, Madam Clerk, do you have any public comment? Madame Mayor, we do not have any public comment registered. Um, and we have not received any correspondence on this item. All right. I'm gonna send it over to Miss Van Beern and uh Miss Bryant. Go ahead. Good morning, Madame Mayor and Council members. Vicky Van Beern, director of finance for the record. Today before you, I have a resolution to reduce the staff of city departments and give authoriz authorization to the city manager to take all necessary and appropriate actions to implement this resolution for the current fiscal year, fiscal year 26. I have 11 slides to kind of walk through this. Um, following my slides. Um, I'll stop where we can do uh questions and have discussion on that information that I presented and then I believe uh Barbara Acriman will be coming up to speak as far as regarding the civil service piece of this. Um, so I just want to give you a heads up on on how this would look. So I'm going to go ahead and roll into this. So this aligns with the strategic plan through fiscal sustainability and governance and organizational effectiveness. So why are we here? Why now? The current financial situation is being driven by both economic and structural challenges. On the economic side, while certain aspects of the economy may feel and appear to be doing well, like the stock market, there's still much uncertainty and we've seen a lot of this uncertainty over the last three to four budget cycles as we've moved out of the pandemic. C consumer confidence remains low and taxable sales in Wo County in April were down 13% year-over-year. For the city of Reno, what we're seeing is our consolidated tax, which is mostly our sales tax. We're down 2% year-over-year compared to last year. We only have data through May at this point. Um, it is a lagging revenue source that we received approximately two months later. There are still concerns from consumers over inflation, tariffs, and other price pressures on everyday items. inflation rose to 2.7% and it's the highest that it's been since February. So today we're looking at we anticipate we anticipate continued slow revenue growth and our costs continue to rise as we've talked about through the budget cycles. We're planning we're proactively planning for fiscal year 27 which would be next budget year even though we've just started this year. We're actively working in three years right now. We're closing out fiscal year 25 which ended June 30. We're operating in fiscal year 26 which started July 1. And we're also planning for the next budget cycle. That's fiscal year 27. And that's really why we're here today. As we plan for the next budget year, if consumer spending doesn't increase, the city does not receive the revenue necessary to sustain operations as they currently exist. And that's because of the compounding costs. On the cost side of this piece, we estimate without changes that a $25 million deficit will be projected between the revenues and expenditures for next fiscal year. So, how did we get here? This question comes up a lot. Um, labor costs are outpacing revenues. You'll notice on the slide I noted on the bottom, this is the exact slide that I presented to you at council back in January. Um, we've seen this, but we don't we don't know what the economy is going to do. We still don't know what the economy is going to do. It has been very uncertain coming out of the pandemic. You'll notice that on here, fiscal year 21 and 22, you'll see that we had a lot of growth in revenues during that time from that money from the pandemic, that excess spending. Following that cycle, what we've seen is a very flattening of revenues. We haven't fallen into a recession and revenues haven't fallen off a cliff like they did back in 2008 during the Great Recession. What has happened is they've flattened and we don't know how much longer that's going to continue. Normal growth is around 4% on revenues, anywhere from 3 to 4% depending on which revenue source it is. We're not seeing that in a lot of spaces. We're seeing flat or even declining a little bit in some spaces. But year-over-year, as this continues, our cost just to do the same services that we're doing continue to go up. I wanted to present this again. This is another slide from that same presentation in January. This one is really important to note on here that um in fiscal year 23, this is consolidated tax. This is the largest revenue source in the general fund. It declined by 1% in 2003. Um that was following the high years that we had of revenue growth in during and right after following the pandemic. In 24 it only grew 3%. In 25 we're estimating it's going to be flat. We haven't closed out that year. As I mentioned we only have through May right now for those results. In 26 what we budgeted for the current year is 2% growth and what we budgeted for 27 is 2.7. And that's what's depicted on this slide for you here. You'll see in the gray bars, the gray bars represent 4% average growth. So if we got normal average growth in this space, which is typically 4%, that's what the gray bars represent. And that would compound year-over-year and continue to grow. As you look at this slide, that kind of center pink piece that's highlighted there, that's the loss in growth in this one particular revenue source, the largest source. And what's really impactful here is if you look at the end in 27, if we were growing normally, we would have $20 million just from this one source in this space. Right now, we're predicting about seven. That's a difference of about 13 million. But if you think about this and you look at really that whole pink piece over this five-year period, and I want to emphasize right now, we're in year four. We're in that fiscal year 26. So we're in year four of this cycle. Over this five-year period, if this plays out like this, that's over $40 million of revenue loss because it's not compounding and growing. What's still happening though is our expenditures are still growing. We know that when you go out and you shop. You know that um through labor force agreements. And we know that um just in the economy, things still grow, but our paycheck basically is not growing. So, not only is this a problem with consolidated tax, which is our largest revenue source, um other major revenue sources are constrained by slow revenue growth as well. And that's what I'm showing you here in this slide. This is this is the same slide that I showed during the budget workshops um this year and it's been updated with fiscal year 27 numbers that we have as you know really early projections right now. Not only has consolidated tax revenue stalled, licenses and permits, which are your business licenses mostly and franchise fees revenues have remained flat or even declining in some cases like franchise fees. These four sources are the largest sources in our general fund. They make up over 80% of the revenues in the general fund. And this is really where we get all the growth that we get in the general fund comes from these four sources. Expenditures are continuing to compound year-over-year and revenues are not keeping pace. This situation, as I mentioned, is different from 2008 because during that time, an immediate and sharp decline in revenues, particularly in property tax and cax occurred. In contrast, right now we're in the fourth year of slow revenue growth. And so while over while overall revenues are not anticipated to decline, the city's fixed and growing cost structure means that flat revenues for the city functions as a recession for the city's operations. So how did we balance the current year budget, the budget that we're in? How did we balance that then if we're still talking about this? Well, we balanced it with a lot of one-time um temporary type fixes because the economy is so uncertain. It's still uncertain trying to weather the storm. But as we look forward, potentially this is potentially the new norm and we have to start preparing being out four years into this cycle that this is really what it's going to look like. Um the current year budget gap was addressed through temporary measures including bridging the revenue gap with $9.5 million in one-time funds. And so that's what you see here in that red piece. The one-time funds included property sales, some excess funds, some capital funds from projects that we're not doing, and fund balance. Uh property tax uh is the only major revenue source right now that is growing. It's growing anywhere from six to 9% a year depending on which years and that is starting to decline because we're seeing that development is um declining and so when development declines you don't have those new properties coming on the rolls. So property tax the structure of it here in Nevada limits the growth with the tax caps and the depreciation. So anything that we see that kind of spikes it even a little bit is from new growth. And right now growth is down. And so that's not a space that's going to continue to see as much growth as we've seen even in the past couple of years. On the expenditure side for the current budget, how is that done? Well, this is the other piece of it. Some one-time revenues to fill the gap and then also $16 million in cuts or reductions to the budget. Um 81% of the expenses are related to personnel right now in the budget. The remaining budget covers operating expenses, the things that they need just just to do their jobs and then uh debt service payments on the debt outstanding. Temporary measures on the expenditure side included operating expense reductions, freezing 20 positions, elimination of contingency, fleet replacement, uh capital programs, and other reductions. Many of these cuts are only temporary and can't be sustained as we move forward, such as replacing vehicles for police, building maintenance, parks maintenance funds. Yes, those were temporary measures, but they can't be sustained long term. So, we have to come up with a better plan. The projected $25 million delta between the revenues and expenses for next year reflects a long-term economic pressure. And it can't be solved by short-term fixes alone. Some of these same fixes we can look at, but it can't be all fixed the same way. So, one of the biggest cost drivers on the expenditure side because as we just mentioned, 81% of the budget is made up of people. One of the biggest cost drivers is PERS, the public employees retirement system. PERS board set the PERS board sets the rates and updates are made every two years. This table shows a change year-over-year in the PERS rates over the last 20 years. So you see 10 cycles on here, which equates to 20 years because it happens every two years. For regular PERS members, the cumulative change over the 20-year period is 17%. So it went from 19.75% in 2006 to the current rate of 36.75. It's kind of let you look at this table. Um for police, fire has a cumulative rate change over the 20-year period of 26.75%. What I found as I look at this table that I really wanted to emphasize here to you at council is um the last two cycles of increases have been very significant. um the highlighted two cycles at the bottom, fiscal year 24 and fiscal year 26 which we just started these increases in these areas just for that one site those two cycles in the regular rate is 7% and for police fire it's 14.75%. So if you look in over a 20-year history here, just in the last two cycles, the increase for regular PERS in cumulative change, half of that has come in the last almost half of it has come in the last two cycles and more than half because it's increased 14.75 of that 26 has come in the last two cycles. So this is putting the additional pressure of not just we don't have the revenue supporting things but costs are going up in ways that are just astronomical when you look at the general fund by function. So, as council, you always um talk about essential operations, public safety, um some of your other priorities are infrastructure, parks, um uh code enforcement. These are a lot of the things that you've talked about as council. Well, 64% of the general fund is already being spent on essential operations. And by that, I mean police, fire, and dispatch. This includes all of their personal personnel costs that you're seeing here plus um supplies for the departments just to run these departments. 64% of the budget goes to that. This doesn't include the necessary associated costs of IT, finance, human resources, civil service, all of the things that support those departments as well. So if you look at essential services, it's actually much much larger than the just the 64% So this is my last slide here and I just want to kind of summarize what we're talking about here today. So today really the real message here today is we're structurally limited. The revenues are flat. Um they've been flat for a while. We're in year four. We were weathering the storm following the pandemic to see how the economy is going to do. Still no one really knows how the economy is going to do. you know, every day you look it's a little different. Um, but right now what seems to be the norm is it's very flat or growing very marginally. Uh, so the revenue growth is structurally limiting us on that side and then the increasing costs on the other side mostly attributed to labor because it's 85 81% of the general fund is the other structural piece that we're really struggling with. Um of that you of the city workforce we have almost 1500 employees over 1,200 about 1,250 of those employees or 84% are represented by collective bargaining agreements. Uh the city cannot unilaterally reopen collective bargaining agreements. Right now we have one bargaining agreement that is open. All of the others had multi-year contracts. Uh what does that mean? we can't um reopen the contracts. Well, per NRS288.150, a labor contract may not be reopened during its term. Well, I'm sorry, a labor contract may only be opened uh during its term if both parties agree. So, the labor group has to agree and the city has to agree to reopen or there's another pro provision in the case of a fiscal emergency. Well, interest 288 goes on to define what an what a fiscal emergency is. And I I'm just going to read that to you so it's real clear. The amount of revenue received by the general fund during the last preceding fiscal year from all sources except non-reoccurring, so if it was one time, not looking at that, declined by 5% or more during the next fiscal year as reflected in the reports of the annual audit. So we would have to wait for each audit of each year to compare back to the ne prior year to see if we declined before you have the opportunity to make decisions for the future. And so right now the city although we have a structural deficit and we know that it we're projecting it for next year, the city does not currently meet this provision. And we know that because flat growth doesn't mean we're declining. It just means we're flat. the costs are still going up, so we don't meet that provision. Revenues, while they're not declining, they aren't growing enough to support current operations and staffing levels. And even if you look at this definition of a fiscal emergency, you know, it's it's not a timely measure. You're going to wait till you get an audit. We're closing out the books. We still don't have all the revenues through June 30. So by the time we close out the books, we have the audit that's done at the end of November and doesn't come back to you as council till your first meeting in December. So if you're using that to do planning, it's really not a timely measure. So what are we doing then? If that's not a measure and what are we doing? Um well, we're doing the things that you see in the next box here. We're continuing to pursue operational efficiency improvements, technology consolidating um shifting things around, reorganizing departments. We're still continuing to do a lot of the things that we've talked about over the last couple of budget cycles, controlling spending across the organization, um, operating expenses were reduced in order to make this current year work. We're continuing to look at every single line as we move forward. We're pursuing revenue enhancement opportunities, although a lot of those are limited because NRS and the legislature dictates most of the revenue sources that we get, the very large ones. Um, it's a limited area, but we're still looking at it. There's still some opportunities, I think, for some things in there that we're discussing. Um, continuing to explore regional collaboration with other agencies, looking to reduce or eliminate fees that other agencies are charging us for potentially services that maybe should be done a different way. Reducing or eliminating subsidies of other organizations. We're looking at that. Um, and we're also looking at reducing or eliminating certain benefits. Um, looking at salaries. We're doing all of the costing and the modeling that goes with looking at everything that we can. Um, with 84% of the workforce represented, only 16% are unrepresented. And that's about 230 employees. We've costed things across the organization. And when you look at the cost for just the unrepresented group which again is like 230 people salary benefits looking at furlows looking at these things across the organization the ones that we could impact um that you would have manager and you would have authority to do without opening collective bargaining agreements. It's such a small group that the impact doesn't really address the deficit and it's not really the long-term fix to this. Um so really realigning the organization to support essential services as we look fiscally to look to be fiscally sustainable moving forward. That's really the scale that we're looking at. The scale of the projected deficit limits what we can realistically achieve outside of personal changes. I mean that's that's where we really are today and that's why I'm here before you. Um the item before you today is part of a much larger piece. All of these things that I just talked about, the item today is just a piece and these other pieces still exist. We are still working in those spaces as well, but it's part of a much larger puzzle to find long-term fiscally sustainable solutions that realign the city operations to support essential functions that support your priorities as council. So, that concludes my presentation. I'm glad to take questions um and discussion and then I think Barbara will come up next. Okay. Thank you very much. I actually um think there is another piece to this puzzle that I think that you need to address. A lot of um our residents don't understand this and not to mention we are the only state um that does this. So it makes it very complicated. I think you should talk a little bit about um the property cap, the depreciation and why this also makes it very very challenging for any municipality um in the state of Nevada. That is a conversation that um the legislature has tried to tackle for a long time because there is this um inequity and it makes it very hard to pay for the services that are needed. So, we're constantly because of the property tax cap, we're always trying to move things around. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is so challenging and we don't talk about that enough so that people understand and that's where we have to be really careful about our priorities. I would love for you to um give us a little education on why that is, what it looks like, and why it's challenging. Absolutely. Thank you for that question. Um, property tax, it is very complicated. Um, but the basics of it are, um, residential units, your residential home, property tax caps limit that growth to 3%. So, you can't your property taxes can't increase more than 3% every year. So, it's limited right there, capped, which is a good thing for a lot of people. It is, and it it's one of the things people like about Nevada. But then whenever you want to continue to provide services in a growing environment, it makes it very challenging when people are saying why don't we have this that or the other. So elaborate. I just want people to understand we all want low taxes. Sure. Not saying we our taxes should go up. Not saying that. I want everyone to know because the next thing will be this big headline right? But I'm I'm trying to help people understand the environment we're in. Sure. And the the tax caps for resident for commercial properties are 8%. So they have different tax caps. Um unique to Nevada, we also have depreciation. So depreciation um once you build a home, it starts depreciating from that point forward. Get depreciates at one and a half% up to 50 years up to 75% of the value of the structure. So the land value is based on market rate, but your building structure is based on replacement value plus the depreciation. So once you have a new home that comes on from that point forward, it will continue to be depreciated up to 75%. And then once you do the calculation, even if your calculation comes in, say your property, the land itself has increased enough in that cycle, but you're you're still depreciating your structure value of it, but it's gone up above, say it's 5% more this year than last year, you're still only going to pay 3%. So that cap the cap still applies. So when I talk about sometimes I talked about property tax is still growing for us here and it grows anywhere from six to nine% over the last few years. That's how it's grown. And you say how how can that be? Because you're telling me the cap is 3% for residential. It's 8% for commercial. So that's going to be some of that difference. But the the main difference in it is the new properties, the new growth. So, as you have new growth and new properties that come on, that's what's creating that extra above and gets gets us up to that six and 8% growth rate every year. And as we start to see um development decline, which we're seeing, we're going to see that go back down to maybe even five, we're at 6% now, maybe 5%. And that's because we don't have that new growth piece of it and we're capped. It's It's really You're not going to see spikes. Okay. Now, I want you to explain what that looks like in another city. Why is Why is it different than ours? And what does that mean? Well, I'm not aware. I I don't think anybody else has the depreciation factor. No, they don't. But my point is I want you to give the difference so people understand if you're living in a different city outside Nevada, what that looks like, what it pays for versus when you're in Nevada, what it doesn't pay for. Well, I lived in California um before I came to the city here. Probably bad example. I did. Everyone's like California. I lived in California right after we don't live there. Right after they did Prop 13. So Prop 13, what that did was allow them to reset values of homes on sale. That's another thing we don't hear do here in Nevada because they were struggling with a lot of the same challenges that we have. um they weren't resetting properties on sale and so they had declining property tax. Basically, you buy a house and declining values of it. They reset the property on sale. You may have bought a house, that house is now 20 years old, but now you're selling it. You bought it for, I don't 400,000, now it's 800,000. It wasn't resetting. We don't have that either. And so we're not unique in that um we have challenges with the structure of it, but we are unique in that we have many multi-layers of challenges with it with depreciation and tax caps and all of these other things not resetting on sale. So we are unique in that way. So let's let's give a an example that I think most people can understand. You might live in a $3 million home, but you're going to pay the same property tax, correct? That someone else that's living in a much um in a brand new home. Correct. You could you could absolutely. I like the example of a $600,000 home. That's kind of the average right now. Um you have a you sell your house today and you sell it for $600,000. um one house is say 20 years old and one house is brand new. You bought a brand new home for 600. You buy a house that's 20 years old for 600,000. The difference between that property tax is about um $1,200 for the older home and it's about $4,500 for the new home. And most young people houses I mean to us most young people are going to they're worth buying newer homes because they can afford that, right? are not I mean it's very difficult to afford but I'm just saying new um younger people are buying um the homes that they can afford but they're also paying much more property tax than someone that owns a you know multi-million dollar home correct yes new homes do pay more but then they start to depreciate anyone I shouldn't use younger people but we tend to see first-time home buyers in those situations yeah yes new home new homes you do pay more but it begins depreciates at that point. So, it's a diminishing, you know, it diminishes from that point that it's built and that is one of the real challenges. All right. Uh I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Okay, Barbara, I think it's your turn. Am I right? Does um we'll do questions right after Barbara speaks because I know we all have them. Go ahead. Well, and Jesse's gonna go right after me and it's kind of a continuation of that topic. So, we might want to wait till the very Okay. end of the whole thing. So, about our our issues or the solution you're proposing are the questions. I don't know what your question. I'm asking I guess. Yeah. Okay. So, thank you very much. So, what we have here is um Miss Van Beern has given a presentation on the economic situation and the proposal for a reduction in force. Miss Arian, who is the director of civil service, is going to explain how the reduction in force is governed. It's governed through civil service if unless you are not in unless your CBA controls instead of the civil service rules. And that's where Jesse comes in. Okay, I got it. I got it. Okay, let me back up here then. I I appreciate you. I understand because you have to come in under um the civil service aspect of it under the law. Okay. Um Vicki, I I want you to come back up here really quick because there's another thing that we didn't touch on since we're talking about the budget in depth is uh we really should talk about CAX and I want you to explain that um for everyone and um you know how much money we get off of CAX, why it's important. A lot of people don't understand the CAX aspect. So please please um help. Sure. Uh CAX is consolidated tax. It consists of several taxes that are grouped into kind of a bucket. They're collected at the state and then they're distributed to the local agencies throughout the state. Um C tax for us uh is mostly and for everyone it's mostly sales tax. It's 80% sales tax. There's some liquor tax, cigarette tax, very small pieces. um part is um real property transfer tax and also vehicle the vehicle fees. And so those are very small pieces of this bucket that we call a consolidated tax. They're collected statewide and then they're distributed based on a formula out to the jurisdictions. Most of the formula for sales tax piece of it is based on population. So, for example, I mentioned during my presentation that um WO County was down 13% in taxable sales for Wo County. We're only showing in our receipts down 2% compared to last year year-over-year. The reason for that is because WO County um is only one piece of that large bucket. So, we collect here, they collect in Clark County, it all goes into the bucket and then is redistri redistributed. So, it's a statewide collection and redistributed. It doesn't necessarily mean that we're tracking exactly as the receipts we're seeing in Wu County. It's more of a statewide tracking. Um the state of Nevada changed their system for reporting and distributing the information reporting and distributing the revenues this year. They changed it in November. So they had one financial system, they switched systems. the new system they have they've had a lot of problems working out the issues with it when obviously when you switch technology um businesses were not able to get in and report their earnings pay their taxes and so in November what we saw is that we were shorted a significant amount of money compared to what we normally get in this revenue source and again this is our largest revenue source in the general fund I was I think it's 30 I wanted to get back to that slide so I could give you the actual numbers. It's 31% of all the money in the general fund. So that's our largest revenue source is cax and it's mostly sales tax. um when they switched their system this year, it's not complicated enough that the economy is has been challenging since the pandemic, but now they've switched their system and we can't even predict really what we're going to get regularly right now. Um I think we'll have good year-over-year comparisons once we get to January because in January then we will have same type of comparisons to the new system that they're on. But up until this point, they're still trying to correct and um fix the system. And so we're seeing some months that are a little more than what we anticipated. And some of that is because they're fixing parts where businesses couldn't pay in during that time frame. So it's real up and down, hard to track right now. That's the basic answer, but right now we're trending 2% below budget. We That's through May. And so, I'm sorry, 2% below prior year, year-over-year. We built this current year budget assuming we were going to end the year flat. So, we didn't think we were going to come in above budget. We just hoped we got the same amount we did last year. Um, I still think we're on track for that. But, we don't have the final numbers yet. And we even don't even know if we're going to get an extra payment to true up some of it, some of the issues that they still have. So, I know we have one more payment coming. There's talk of another payment in August. We don't know yet. Um, so it's it's another big piece of this puzzle, too. And I know Jackie, you're going on tour explaining what that looks like and how that is. Yes. So, one of the cax challenges that we um have been talking about is one how it works, but two, most people don't understand that if you spend $100 in Reno and that equates to about $827 in Wo County in sales tax, Reno gets 69 cents of that. 69 cents out of someone spending $100. Yes. Very low. Um and then there is also something I should throw in here. Um, and I and it's part of the conversation because it's really about the council what they want their priorities to be. And that's where everyone has got to really dial down what it is your priorities are. Um, and we have pretty much a new council from I think it's only Councilwoman Der and I that um have been here, you know, for probably over a decade now. Um, and so it changes with time. It also changes dramatically with the national environment. So, some of that stuff is very, very hard to control. One year, um, I remember we were successful in having a $10 million overage. And that happens. And then when we got here, we were $600 million in debt. We paid it down by 200 million. So, it kind of we see this go up and down and up and down. But one of the things that the city of Reno has done um and has been incredibly generous, there's something out there called the fiscal equity study. And um we want to be good partners. Um, but it also has to be examined because this is where we got to figure out what our priorities are, what's the most important piece to this council because um a lot of those um services the city of Reno has paid for um that really are not in our um under our purview and we wanted to have a great quality of life, but we have to work together with our other jurisdictions to make sure that um they're also taking on the things that we subsidize and um I'm super grateful for the the council to do that because it provides everyone a great quality of life when we go out there and take this on but at the same time it creates a lot of stress and strain on our c or core focus here at the city. So there's tough conversations to be had that we um all have to work together with our our other um counterparts. But those are things to really look at. Some of the things that we have funded that are out of our jurisdiction that um really come down from the state and when they come down to the state, they go into other buckets of money outside our jurisdiction when we're paying for it. Um and so I think we all have to dial down on the priority of what we want um during this time. Is it going to change? Yes. Like I just talked about, we had a $10 million overage. We um paid down the debt by $200 million. We have gone up and down just like we do in economics and in times right in five years it could look very different. Next year it could look very different and this is not not with just municipalities. Go and look at uh big companies right now are making some massive massive changes. So we are not immune to this but I just wanted people to understand this isn't forever. We will get out of it but you go through these these ups and downs. So anyway, thank you so much. I think we should ask you questions because part of the conversation is very different than um the second half of this presentation so we can understand like Jackie mentioned what that why that piece fits in where it does. So with that being said, I'm going to um start with you, Councilwoman Dor. I'll just go down down this way and then I'll I I know everybody has questions on this, so I'll just ask a few and we'll see where we are. Um, I just wanted to make sure I understood something that you said, Vicki, and that was you said we're down 2% for the year. You said Wo County, and I'm not sure if you meant Wo County is down 13%. I don't know if you meant their organization or if you meant the revenues coming in from um CAX or what you meant by that. I meant thank you for the question. If I wasn't clear, it was they're down 13% Wo County and taxable sales. Tax Wo County as far as the county itself because again it doesn't relate necessarily exactly to us because we're down 2% because they collect for the entire state. Right. Okay. So the other question I had was um um you said that you're still trying to um figure out where we are revenue-wise for last year. And usually you you tell us you've told us over and over we're always two months behind. Um, so normally at July 1, June 30, we still need two more months to have all the revenues come in to close out the books, right? Yes, that's correct. But, but when do you think we'll have the revenues to close out the books? This year, we won't officially close out the books until September, October time frame. Um, because we have a lot of accounting type entries that we have to do. I can get very close with reporting back to you at council by the end of August because we will have the majority of everything booked at that point. All of the quarterly um revenue sources which unfortunately are the large revenue sources that we get property tax franchise fees all of those biggies are quarterly and I won't have those until probably mid August. Yeah. Okay. So, but a previous budget meeting you told us we're going to get what we get end of June, like we weren't going to get those other two months of revenue because of this new state accounting system. Is that still true? Well, it doesn't appear to be that way based on what they're giving us. You told us this over and over through the budget that by June 30 that was all the money we were going to have and Right. Go ahead. Well, se tax will always come lagging. It's never going to be cash basis. Exactly. They did switch their system and just as I didn't go into this before, from cash to a from an acrruel system to a cash system, right? But it still doesn't mean that we're going to have everything on June 30. What that means is they're going to take all the money that they've received from June 30 and then divvy it out. So you still have 45 to 60 days where we're still receiving. Two quick since I've run out of time. I just have two quick things. We you posted a $25 million shortfall. That's what you told us. But you showed the PERS slide and what I understand is that and I want to just get this clear on the record. I was told that 13 million was due to the PERS um increase. Is it 13? You only showed us percentages, but of the $25 million shortfall, is 13 million of it the increase in PERS or is 13 million the total PERS? I I was a little confused on that. you know, it's it's hard to put a number and I'll just kind of preface this a little bit because we don't have collective bargaining um agreements in place with IFFF right now, right? They're our second largest group. So, we haven't factor we haven't even factored anything even in with that um because we can't even begin to anticipate what that's going to look we can only factor the things that we currently know at this point in fiscal year 27 if assuming that IFFF does not have a current contract at that point maybe they get one now and they don't have one then um we have two two additional bargaining groups that come open at that point as well so we don't have information We do our best to kind of look at these spaces, but um we have an idea based on the things that we know at this idea of the 13 million came from our city manager. I just want to make sure that uh we're tracking. So Vicki, if you look in the staff report, it indicates where the PERS payments went from it was either 55 or 58 to 60some and then to 71 in FY27. The first jump was a $13 million jump. Council member Der um and that information is in your staff report. Uh the distinction is that as employees salaries increase then their PERS portion will increase. So the the question is of the $13 million difference between FY25 and FY26. How much of that is attributed directly to the increase from PERS and how much of that would have happened anyway because of the percentage increase from a merit or a COLA. I I think it's important for us to understand that because it's important in your presentation. It's important to us because it's the things we can't control. We have staff. We don't control how much PERS goes up or how they do their calculations. We have zero control. And if ver virtually a half of the $25 million shortfalls due to that, it really puts it in perspective what we can and can't do. referencing back in the staff report, it does say $55 million was the cost in 25. So last fiscal year, right? 68 million is for 26 in the current year budget. That will change based on what happens during this year based on this item before you today. It's not, you know, set in stone. That's our budget. But I'm just looking for a rough understanding and that you've provided it. And I just want to make sure not everyone may have read your staff report. This very important to me the things we can control, what we have jurisdiction over and what we can't and how big that number is. Yeah. Okay. Councilman Ree. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, Miss Van Buren, first of all, thank you for the presentation. I I want to say a couple things as sort of preface and then we'll have some questions. But first of all, you've been the director of finance now since June of 2022, so three years. uh but with the city since 2016. So, you've seen a lot of what we've gone through, which means you've seen ups and downs and different kinds of fiscal environments. Uh and what I appreciate about you when you come to council is it's always um we'll say it's bite-sized. It's approachable for us because I think you're talking to two different groups, right? You're talking to the seven of us who are the elected leaders who have to make budget and priority decisions, but you're also talking to the public, right? the people out in uh space who are out there looking. We've got some media partners here today and I appreciate you're balancing some of those competing things because I I have the privilege of sitting with you in lots of deeper dive meetings. We all have the privilege of seeing you in different contexts and having questions answered and it's hard to uh put into perspective the wealth of knowledge that you bring to the discussion but also the experience in this city that you bring to the discussion and then applying that knowledge to the specific facts and circumstance that we find ourselves in in a presentation that happens over the course of an hour. Right. Um and you're doing it every time we ask you to come here. It's like you're restarting the conversation. That's for our benefit of course because you're situating us where we have been. Um as electeds we're tasked with knowing a lot about a little about a lot of things. So one day it's sewer, the next day it's a budget, then it's being experts on police and fire. And so I appreciate your willingness to engage in that process in a way that is accessible. So that's sort of my starting point. Um, we also find ourselves at a time in this country where there is essentially some national reckoning about government efficiency and what it means for governments to be efficient. And so, while I have um tried to avoid it, I cannot help but look at some of the commentary that exists on social media about budgets. And I'm not saying our budget specifically, but first you look at the federal government. And there's this element of the uh world that wants really to um everyday ordinary citizens have very strong opinions about what we should be spending our money on and how it's spent. And that starts to leak into the national conversation about I'm a this party and I'm a that party and I'm mad at this person. And I think that at local government, I've learned that all that stuff is just not relevant. Right? The seven of us up here, each of us represent different uh political walks of life. Each one of us represents different experiences in life. And we really just want to make sure that the lights get turned on, the potholes get filled, the police and fire respond when you need them, right? Uh and so I I appreciate that your approach is the opportunity to bridge those realities. And so thank you so much for a great deal of the presentation. I do have some of the questions and I'll come down back to them in my second round. But I just thought it was important to set the table in how I see the relationship between the presentations, your advocacy uh for our city and really there's a lot of good information that you've shared today and which Madame Mayor has has sort of brought to the table through her questions about the ways in which we're funded because I don't think it's a mismanagement problem. I don't think we've spent like drunken sailors and now we're trying to fix it. We have some structural issues. We have some revenue issues and our costs are increasing. This what everyone faces at their own kitchen table, right? Um and I think we are no different or immune from those things and and I think um each of us brings to it a a way to prioritize what we want to fix and we're just trying to work through it together. So, thank you for that. Thank you so much. All right, Councilman Taylor, thank you for the presentation, Vicki. These are conversations that, like you said, we have been having since January. Um, so I just I just want to confirm a couple things and then I want to work with my colleagues on how I am going to be moving forward through this. Again, in bite-sized bite-sized pieces, FY26, we're down about $24 million. Planning for FY27, we're estimated about $25 million shortfall. our three biggest funding sources are all declining or um broken to some extent. Is that fair to say? Flat or marginally increasing? Yes. So, how much money does the city of Reno have? Because when I look at this, I think we have we're working towards 25 million a negative $25 million. We plugged the budget last time with things that were one-time funding or we cut thing and it wasn't really onetime funding. It was one-time cuts. We were not doing things. Is that true? So, in my mind, when I'm making decisions for Reno and for us and for the city, I'm working from a place of we are negative $25 million going into 20 FY27. That is correct. based on how we are currently staffed and how the services that we currently provide and this may change as mayor said you know maybe something happens maybe we get but that is where I am going to be coming from in my decision making and that's going to require some really tough decisions we heard a lot of people here talk today about senior services about our boards and commissions but what I took from that conversation a couple of them was we have got to do what our core services are in this space and that's going to be very hard and very difficult and for my colleagues it has nothing to do with um personal preferences. I'm coming from a place of financial management and responsibility and you know maybe things will change maybe they won't. My second part of this is on your slide 11. I really want to understand um maybe in a future presentation where we can reduce eliminate fees, reduce eliminate subsidies and reduce and eliminate certain benefits. And from this position, I am willing to do whatever it takes financially to help the city move forward in this position together. And I'm sure all my other colleagues are too. But those are the things that I'm going to be looking for on how we can solve some of this budget problem moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Councilman Martinez, go ahead. Thanks so much, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Director Vampir, for the presentation and information. I think I just want to build on some of the stuff that has already been said specifically on the slide you have up. I know you had talked a little bit about the reduction or elimination of certain benefits, but can you expand that? Is that to benefits for employees or what are we talking about in that specific section? Sure. In that in that specific space we were looking at we were looking at benefits across the board and then based on bargaining groups as well whether you're represented or unrepresented in the current space that we live in. If you choose to if you don't approve this item today, we live in the space that we we can only impact those areas that are unrepresented in benefit space like for employees like deferred comp look maybe looking at changing some of the benefits um for some salary savings or um savings long term. But in that space as I mentioned there's only two about 230 employees that are not represented. And when you cost this out, we've costed out everything across the board, whether they were represented or not, because we need to know what those costs are for different benefits. How much is 1% in salary? How much is deferred comp at 1%? You know, lots of scenarios. We are in the early stages of doing all of the due diligence that we can to give you the best information to make decisions as we start to move in this process. I realize that we're really early on. I mean, we're two weeks into three weeks into this current year, but this is so critical that we start to plan because we don't think it's going to change. These revenues that are just slowly growing are continuing to get out paced by the costs. So, we need to take some more drastic measures to make the costs match the revenues that we actually have. and and the restriction we have and you've all mentioned it. We have a limited amount of resources. We get this amount of resources to do everything that you want to do and right now we're doing these things that cost continue to cost more without even adding anything. Thank you. And I just want to highlight one thing and ask a question at the end with what you included in your staff report. So, even with those unrepresented employees, the 233 that you keep mentioning, it looks like you looked at a 1% salary decrease. And even that uh would only lead to about a 1.6% um savings of the 25 million deficit. And it looks like you also looked at furlows. I'm wondering if you can provide a little bit more context on what you did there and any of the cost savings that could happen with furlows. City manager, wait, hold on. I do you have the spreadsheets in front of you? I don't I'll go ahead and give them the numbers in if that's okay with you. So, Council Member Martinez, I want to make sure that we uh level set on your comments there. So, what uh what Vicki and the team have done is looked at reductions in a variety of spaces. And I'm going to give you a couple of contexts. So, um all the different bargaining groups and the unrepresented employees each have a benefit called a match of deferred comp. And those matches are different depending on the different bargaining groups. Some are 2%, some are 2.5, and some are 5% up to the cap that the federal government allows you to contribute to this for retirement. Um, if we were to reduce by 1% every full-time employee, that would that would be a reduction of $1.6 million in cost that we could then put forward towards solving the $25 million delta. However, because of the number of unrepresented employees is so low, if we only eliminated that reduction for unrepresented employees, it would save us $274,000. We cannot unilaterally affect the rights of anyone who is in a union. It is a negotiated contract between the city and the union and we are not allowed to go in and say, "Hey, we're going to reduce your your amount of match by 1%." We cannot unless it's for unrepresented employees only. But again, 1% would get us 274,000 for UNREPs. Across the organization, it would be the $1.6 million reduction. So that's the challenge is that we can't force open contracts because we have not hit that uh two years of 5% declining audited revenues. Does that make sense? Yes, that does. Thank you. All right, Councilwoman Anderson. Okay. Thank you. Um Vicki, I just want to thank you for your work in this in this area, in this space. Over the time that I've been serving, I've been through reductions in force and terrible economies in the private sector often. We've gone through this in the private sector often. And one thing I want people to keep their eye on here is that in the private sector, you usually go through reductions in force in um in a goal for profit sharing or profit forecasting. And that is not what we're looking at here. We are trying to continue to provide the essential services that the community relies on us for. So any reduction in force is as painful for the entire community as it is for us and for you. And I just want to thank you for your really sober and careful work in this area. Um one I have just a few questions. The pers increases it's a very large part of the story. Can you just tell us who makes the decisions to increase the PERS and how we receive that information and also just talk about how that happens to us. It's not something we can necessarily plan for and even when it we have planned for it in the last two to four years it's been extremely um out of balance from what we planned for in the in the past. Sure. Thank you for that question. um the PERS board, there's actually a board that oversees this and they review it every two years as far as changing um the amounts that come out to us, the table that I showed you. And so it's based on actuarial studies similar to we do for workers comp and other things in that area. Depends on the number of retirees, the number of people paying in because basically the PERS system for us is like social security. um we don't pay into social security but the PERS system is the retirement system. So the actuarial reports dictate how much money they need in order to pay for those retiring. And so over the last few years um you know we've seen substantial amounts of retirements in that space. people from the B baby boomer age retiring and so a lot of the costs have gone up as far as to the agencies paying into it to support the system and those come out every two years. We typically get the information verbally we kind of know in October but I think the memo usually comes out in November and that's for the following July 1. So for example July 1 this year that we just started had a PERS increase. We really knew what that was last octo in October as we were building out the budget. So you don't get a lot of runway to prepare. Okay. So I just want to make it clear that when the PERS increases happen, they go back into service of keeping the PERS system whole. Correct. So that when we have employees retire, they have retirement available to them. Okay, great. I just wanted to make sure people didn't think that The cost to the city of our PERS increase goes directly to the employee immediately. That's not what's happening. It's to the PERS system, the financial system. Correct. It's the retirement system. Great. Thank you. Um I had one more question. I was hoping that you could just expand a little bit more on what reducing and eliminating subsidies or sub subsidies to other organizations. What what could that look like? because I think the community needs to prepare for what that looks like. I'm assuming that a lot of this is, you know, the the city of Reno supports a lot of nonprofits in the community that do really important work and some of that is going to have to go away. Sure. I'd like to defer this one to manager Brian. Um, this is something she's really been working on in that space with other agencies. So while that is uh one area that uh one would consider uh reducing or eliminating, another one could be uh the various fees and payments the city of Reno makes to other organizations. So um the regional partners um with Sparks in Wo County and I have been meeting regularly for the last six months to really drill down into the payments that Reno is making. Some of the contracts or agreements or interlocal agreements they call them have been in place for over a decade or more and have not been reviewed, examined, audited and we've been in the process of doing that to ascertain where Reno has been paying things that maybe we shouldn't be paying. Uh there's a variety out there where we're creating a pretty substantial uh list. Um I can give you a couple of concrete examples. So, for example, INDOT, it I'm sorry, McCarron is not a city of Reno road yet. City of Reno patrols it. Um, the city of Reno pays fees uh for the crime lab and for the jail and uh we are actively looking at auditing those fees that we pay to see whether it is a fee that we should pay. The same thing with the fees we pay to the regional training center. We have police and fire pay those fees. Um, so there's no easy answer today. It it's been a a a conversation that's been going on for quite some time. We've we've sort of had to reset with the departure of the county manager and um just this week we've had two meetings already with Wo and Sparks and we'll be having our third tomorrow on these topics. So, it's it's broad and we'd be happy to come back with a presentation of all the potential subsidies where we should be discussing whether council continues to want to make those payments or not. Okay. Uh, Council No, I'm so sorry. Um, Councilwoman Eert. Yeah, I had some questions on um and I'm sorry this is just a lot of information but um what um accounts we're looking at like where people are being paid out of um versus you know what um positions are potentially um subject to layoffs um and what account has um the debt. So um you know is is all the debt in the general fund and are all the positions that um are potentially subject to layoff um paid from the general fund as well. Thank you for the question. Um today's presentation is really regarding the general fund um what this looks like as we go forward. You know that's something that manager Bryant will be working out. Maybe she wants to comment on that. But right now today we were discussing the general fund. If you move forward with this and and some you know some of these reductions occur there could be potential impacts to other funds due to the bumping rights and some of the things that um civil service and um HR going to talk about. So there may be some impacts but really today the talk is really the general fund. Okay. So they could potentially be in from other funds. Council member, this is um Jackie Bryant. So I just want to let you know that yes, um Barbara and Jesse will be explaining how it actually works. Um we do not have the ability according to the current contract language in the CBAs to limit potential layoffs to a particular fund. Uh generally the short answer is they're generally based on seniority um and some other criteria. They'll go through that in more detail. Is there any kind of look into like what work is done by these positions too? Like we talk about um code enforcement officers like paying for themselves. Are these positions where we've looked at you know what what kind of need we have. Is that also a factor? It is. Yes. We look on a regular basis. Um we actually started this work last fall when we were building out this budget and identifying the costs associated with each department, the revenue generated by each department, um where we can improve. Um we're constantly looking at um improving and analyzing what opportunities for increased efficiencies there are. So all of that work is something that is done on a regular basis and we will continue to do that. Okay. Um, that's all I have for right now. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much, Councilwoman Door. Go ahead. Thank you. Um, so I know we're looking for immediate savings and I understand why that's important because the earlier you take cuts, the longer you have to aggregate the savings and the greater impact it can have. Um, did you I know you said, but could you repeat so there's a proposal to I think it is cut eight positions. Did you calculate what those savings are? I'll take that. Council member Derer. So there's So let me um back up. So the reduction in force is the authority to implement uh the layoff process. There are eight positions identified today. Okay. The equivalent of which is $1.6 million. But I thought I heard I just wanted to confirm. Okay. Um so my question is it's been said numerous times both from you and you that we can't open up the labor contracts. Um, and I think you mean forcibly open up. Forcibly do pay cuts without opening up, right? As an example, like let's say we said we'd rather do 5% across the board than start laying off staff, you know, to get some immediate savings. But you've said to us today that we can't do that because that would be a negotiation with each of the labor contracts. We can't do it unless we trigger this thing in NRS, right? The 5% year-over-year decline in revenues, right? Correct. And in order to reopen those contracts, both parties would have to agree to reopen. So my question is, um, is it possible to start a conversation where both parties could agree? Because I have to believe that the labor groups will not want the city manager making all the decisions here on what needs to be cut in a riff. Um, they will want to be at the table having that conversation with us. And so I would think it would be in their interest to be participating with us. I mean, is that something that we could offer to them to to have them be our partners in this? Let me take that. Yes. So, um, Council Der, unfortunately, the labor laws really don't allow us to say, "Hey, would you like to open up your contract so that we can negotiate the benefits?" Um, they can approach us with that and we can have those conversations. We've been meeting with labor for about eight months now, once a week, explaining where we are and the benefit is and um we're giving them all the information. So, uh certainly everyone has the information should Okay. something like that. We have to be really careful careful not to do regressive bargaining and things like that. Right. But I I'm looking at it more as a positive that if if I'm in their position, I'm wanting to be part of the conversation and the solution rather than have you or the assistant city managers or even us just say, you know what, unilaterally, this is what we need to do on a riff basis. So, I'm just putting it out there. And my other thing I wanted to mention is I'm very concerned about this change at the state from acrruel basis to to a um is it a cost basis? Cash basis. Cash basis. Uh I'm very concerned with all this changes with the programming because it's like look here, look here, and it's very hard to track. You've mentioned this several times. So my request, this is a longer term thing, but I really think we have to team up with other local governments and when this settles, do some kind of audit to make sure we got the money that is owed to us. Do you see what I'm saying? I do. Absolutely. Okay. Is that something that's possible? We are all talking all the time. um Wu County Sparks, we are talking all the time because it's making it very challenging for all of us. When you're doing all this, it's like look here, don't look there, and where's where's the money that we can identify through a forensic type audit. I just want to make sure we get what's owed. Not too much, not too little. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um this may be for you, Miss Vanera, or to our manager. I'm not sure. Um, but often because there's been a number of recent news articles about salary pay benefits related to top earning city employees. We even had a person in public comment expressed some displeasure about who they believe was being overpaid. Um, I have to really think about how did we get there? Your first slide was how did we get here? And um we we don't pick the salaries of our employees out of a hat just because I like a position or a person, right? We we do that based on studies about what comparable jurisdictions pay for similar and situated jobs. We look at a person's skill background expertise the education, training that they've had to get to get to that position, their experience in other local governments. Right. So I are we is our pay scale of our employees out of line with other local jurisdictions and governments? Are we um somehow grossly out of line? It is hard because of course the average American earns a significantly lower salary uh working maybe a teacher, my daughter is a teacher, earns like $50,000 a year for the most noble of professions, right? So it's hard when that person says, "Well, I don't understand why insert this level person is earning a larger salary than that." So help me understand that because you've identified in slide number eight that salaries and benefits are 81% of our expenses. So I'm trying to square all this up and in part because I understand it, but the public might not. And you know, Dan Morgan might be sitting in the audience and he understands it, but someone else who's listening online doesn't understand it. So, what they see is something that they don't um they it doesn't equate with their life experience. And so, then they get very negative about it or react negatively to it. Even the number that was posted today or that was discussed in public comment by Mr. Rossi, I think is not accurate. Right? when you talk about what NPRI gathers from public data and puts into a chart, I'm not sure it really is reflective of what a person actually earns at the city of Reno. Um, but can you speak to that a little bit because it does seem that um and and even Vice Mayor Taylor has made a very good point about what we have to do with the information we have and of course Miss Madame Mayor said our priorities are going to be identified through this process. I can tell you right now my priorities are public safety. They always have been. It's always the starting point. A safe city is an important component of a thriving city. Uh and we have done everything we can to make sure that our police officers and firefighters are very well paid. But you even had another public commenter today who came and said, "We don't have enough." And I'm trying to figure out how he thinks we can have more police officers with our $25 million deficit, but yet we shouldn't pay him a wage that is commensurate with the the scary job that they do every day. And he wants them to come home. I can tell you that public commenter doesn't want to see taxes raised, doesn't want to pay more for the services. He thinks we're going to magically wand through it. So, what can you say about that? Just our employees who are the most important part of this organization, right? Absolutely. Um, I just have, you know, some brief comments and then I'm sure manager Bryant has some things to say on this, but you know, obviously our HR team, they look at various other agencies. We do class and comp studies to make sure that we're paying within the right range for the right jobs. we're competitive within the market. Um we want to make sure that the employees are paid um competitive with the wage they can get somewhere else. And so we are well within the range of all of our local, you know, agencies that represent around us. And we want to make sure that we stay in that same area because otherwise you're not going to be able to recruit. You're not going to be able to get people to do those tough jobs and things as well. And I'm sure manager Bryant has Well, let me just interject though because you've raised the important part of this conversation I think is important for all of us to think about. It's about attracting qualified persons and keeping them, right? Because by the time you attract them, if you let them go after two years and they just go to another agency where they can make more, we spend all the money to train them and all the knowledge that they have and they take it with them out the door. We want to be the premier place to work because when we have that, we provide better services across all of our departments. we have happier employees uh doing greater work, right? So, I I think it's important that people understand we can't just go slash and burn all of our employees salaries. I I don't think that's the answer. Yes, I believe there's a space to have conversations with represented groups about what's going on fiscally for us, but the answer is not to just say, and I I'll just pick on Bob Smith, you're taking a 25% haircut. I I don't think that's the right answer. So, and and Miss Bryant, did you have something you I do. I just want to put a few things in context. Thank you very much, uh, for the question. So, uh, police officers get shot, firefighters run into buildings that are on fire. Um, we need to pay them an amount of money that make them want to do that job. Now, the salaries referenced uh by the public commenter earlier is is not quite accurate. That may have been an annual payment, but it likely and probably guarantee you that it includes a certain amount of overtime which accounts for that. It might also have been paid out across paid out retirement sick leave. Exactly. There's a variety of factors that go into that, but yes, our salaries are across the board or consistent with our regional partners. We did a class and compensation study about three years ago. we're still fine-tuning some elements of that and it and we want to be within the market. We want to be within the range. Um, additionally, we don't have the same number of police officers today that we did in 2008. We still haven't recovered and that doesn't account for the population growth. So there are a significant number of challenges um that as Vicki has pointed out time and time again truly are structural and economic and the only thing we can do with that is respond because the structural component is governed by um the state the legislature or in this case PERS and the economic is governed by how much we receive in property tax sees and business licenses. So our our limited ability to adjust is simply to respond to the staffing element. I also want you to make it very clear because you just said that um we have not recovered from bringing on our officers. I I I really want to stress that this council has done everything um humanly possible to exceed the numbers that we need. We have and we have put the money towards that. But because of the way the cycle works um and the system of when people um retire out, yes, I can answer that. It's really difficult to catch up there. So, I don't want anyone to take away from this conversation that the council didn't fund it. That was always my priority when I got into office. I was very clear about that. Um that our officers and firefighters were num still are number one. And um again, we put in record investments. There are no there is not another body um that can claim that into our public safety infrastructure and the men and women that work in our departments. That's 100% accurate. So, um council con repeatedly emphasizes public safety is number one. Please dispatch fire. Sorry. I just wanted to say as much as all you conspiracy theorists out there want to say that um that oh yeah may or she be defunded the police so you know you know where to go when I tell you this and this council not only you increase the number of police officers but given the cost so upset of people it's very difficult to keep up in an environment where our revenues are declining. Um, so 64% of our general fund budget is for police, fire, and dispatch. That tells you right there what council's priority is. Yeah, definitely. Um, so one of the things I do want to bring up, I think this is important. Uh, Council Me Councilman Ree brought up the conversation. Um, and I've been through it, uh, many times, many, many times. Um different uh times um constitute different measures, I think that we always say. Um, and we go up and down. And also organizations change, businesses change. The things that we needed um a decade ago we may not need uh today. AI changes things, technology changes things, innovation changes things, science changes things every single day. Um and so we we are definitely evolving. But one of the only things you there are the cost controllable um in private business and it it's no different is in your labor, right? that is one cost controllable and that's sort of uh where we where we sit um today and again it really comes down to the council priorities and they really are um what I do know for a fact it's public safety infrastructure and cleanliness economy and housing um responsiveness and community engagement transparency these are the top five and environmental impacts. So this is what um people really want to see and we need to hone down on and focus on that. But I also um once those are completely identified um I also think that we need to understand what those goals are and it does start when you see I think there was some very poor messaging whenever it was that we are laying off people in that sense because I look at a lot of it is restructuring. Those are things that we might not have needed. um moving forward because we things adapt, they change, we have to change with them and we're going to have to continue to look those things that make sense that we keep or those things that don't make sense. There are some things that I think are antiquated that we need to do a better job. Um, but part of that is looking at those salaries. And I know it's a difficult conversation to have, and I'm not going to be a very popular person in this building, but it does need to be looked at what those salaries and wages are. And what I'd say is, um, I think it's difficult for us to decide that and we need an outside audit firm to say, are those in line that what we're seeing across a national average? Because if not, then we we erode the trust of the public. And now more than ever, it's hard to be an elected official. I don't care what you do, you cannot get it right. You will never get it right. Even when you you are getting it right. Um, you know, if it's black, it's white. If it's white, it's black. You cannot win. But there are certain things that I think that we step into ourselves by the way that we talk about, you know, laying off people. We might get there. But let me tell you something. The previous council before us was in a much worse position and laid off how many employees? I think they they laid off few hundred employees. We are not there. We are we fortunate. But I also want to be good stewards. I think everyone up here of the money that we spend. And it's very hard to justify when you see very inflated. It looks to be inflated. And I get that they have experience and they've been doing it a long time and we might not attract, you know, the best people. Well, there are a lot of people out there that will do the the job. There really are now more than ever because we are seeing a decline in jobs. And I do think that we need to look at what does the future look like in that capacity. And um and again I think we need to look at an outside audit firm because inside city hall there are you know people perceive relationships or whatever again you know you're an elected or you work in the government you um you know it's a very negative um connotation in the public uh view. Um it's really tough. I've never seen it so tough and so stressful to sit in these seats. Whether you are in finance or you are at the executive level, you're in parks and wreck, doesn't matter. Or here, it is stressful. It keeps me up at night and I know it keeps you guys up at night. So, I think that's where we need to look at the future and the change and what an outside independent audit looks like. and we might have to make some really tough decisions, but we got to start at the top. And that even means council members if we do furlows or pay cuts or what whatever that looks like. And then someone also mentioned selling properties. I don't know if it was I can't remember on this body. Um it's certainly something to look at. Um, but that also when you have that much debt, which this this council did not go into those contracts, none of us stepped into those challenging properties and then other uh agencies left the city holding the bag and said, "Sorry." And let me tell you something, the city of Reno has been the one that's like, "Okay, don't worry. We'll come in. We'll fix it." I mean, I love the heart of our city. I love it. But it hasn't been sustainable and other partners and agencies need to understand that. But they saddled us with those very challenging um properties and situations and other uh services throughout this entire city that really were not under the purview of the city of Reno. They weren't. But we stepped in and did it anyway because we want to provide a great quality of life for everyone. I I I do think the city of Reno has one of the biggest hearts I've ever seen and I love that about our city. It's why it made me want to run for office and I think all of you up here wanted the same. But as we move forward, we're going to have to change the way that we see the dynamic and how we come to the table. Um you know, because it's challenging, but I do think people need to realize the sky is not falling. We've been here before. Um and we will get through it again. and we'll get through it together. But we also need to ensure the trust of the public. Um because when you see those numbers, I also go, you know, it's that's hard, but it's going to it's got to be here at the top and then you can look and say, okay, now we're going to go into laying people off. And quite honestly, there's a lot of restructuring to do. Um Jackie, we've had this conversation because times have changed for our needs and technology. Things are changing. So, we do have to keep up with those um recent times economically, too. So, all right. Sorry. I just get very passionate about this because there are people that love their conspiracies and love to tell um very halftruths, I guess, out there that um really have no idea what or they just love the narrative. I think anyway um council or uh city manager Bryant so mayor at this point um Barbara has a fairly lengthy presentation on a process and we need to go into um attorney client. We do and and that information was in your staff report. So I'm not sure whether um the body is interested in that presentation or not. I just wanted to kind of tee that up for you. I I I guess I'm trying to figure out where where that fits in, I guess. Can you help me? Sure. It's more of informative. So, if council votes to implement a reduction in force, there's there's a process that civil service follows and the CBAs are follow um that must be followed. That's just the way it is. It's a law. So, I feel like we're premature at this point. And and I'll tell you why. Because again, I want to see what that looks like at the top because I think it sends this message that um again I think the messaging was not accurate to the restructuring, but I think we have to be prepared that if we have to go there, we we're going to have to go there. And so I think her presentation is warranted, but at the same time, the council needs to have a discussion on what does it look like? What are your priorities? Do you guys want to start laying off people? Do you want to start maybe talking about furls? Where are we at? Because I feel like this is not the conversation that we have had um at this body and we need to have it because I don't know what any of you think. I really don't know. And I think that that's important to be transparent with the public and we owe it to um the people that come to work every single day. Um they they need to know so they're not coming here feeling uneasy. I think that's fair. So, um I'm going to start with you, Councilman Reef. Well, Madame Manager, um is it the case that we can take our break that we need to take for our legal briefing and then come back and have the presentation? I'm I'm willing to hear the presentation and I would love to hear a presentation, too. Just I think it's probably good, but um I think we that should be the second half. Yeah, I'm possible. I think we can hear that. Can we take our break, come back for the second piece, and then we'll be prepared to engage in that question that Miss Madame Mayor has asked about. Yes. I I'm also uh council member Eert here. Um I had a couple more questions. I don't know if we have time to do this now. Yeah. I I would Sorry, I'd like to weigh you in weigh in because I think I skipped over you. I'm sorry. That's okay. Um, I just wanted to kind of piggy back off of what you'd said regarding like just what what are our priorities and I know that the population has grown significantly since 2008 and I know the um cost of houses has gone up significantly since 2008. So I know that our property tax um revenue is probably the highest it's ever been. So, I think it would be very um beneficial if the council could have a comparison of what was happening pre208 when we were able to have more police force than we do currently and just see where are those discrepancies for what we could afford then versus what we have now. And I know that there's costs that have increased, but I'd like to know what those are, if we can find ways to reduce those or if there's expenses that we just don't really need. Um, and try and find a way back to where we had that number of officers. Um, I just I know there's tariffs and things like that happening. I know the horse fencing went up significantly just because of of tariffs, but um I think we really need to take a hard look at what's different from then. Um and I know we're not in the same position. We're doing a lot of layoffs, but how how did we afford more officers in 2008 with less revenue coming in? So, I don't know if that's possible, but I think it would be really good for the council to see and also for the public to see, you know, where where um where the money is going literally and it gives council an opportunity to say where we would like to continue um funding things. So, um those are my comments. Thank you, Madame Mayor, for giving me an extra um time to speak. I I can speak to it a little bit. Um, we've I've had the I have these slides. We've talked about them in previous presentations, not this year, but I think last year, even the year before. Um, when you look at the history of 2008, that time frame where we actually had a recession, we had sharp declines, and I even talked about that today. Today is different than back then we had a sharp decline and a quick decline. first in in uh consolidated taxes and then there's a two-year lag and then property tax decline as well. I don't mean to interrupt. Yeah. But I'm just saying when we say we don't have our officers up to the numbers that we had pre208. So I'm not I'm not necessarily talking about the recession that happened. I'm talking about pre-recession when we had more police officers. How did we manage that? I'm trying to because we did not have as much property tax revenue coming in at that time. Correct. And so what I'm trying to explain to you is it took us 10 years that decline from those two revenue sources, the two largest ones, took us 10 years to get back to the same dollars, same dollars in that space. That's not inflation adjusted. So the same police officer 10 years earlier does not cost the same 10 years later. And you saw the PERS charts. you see all of these things. That's how we can't get back. We are working toward and we've been working toward getting back to those numbers, but the costs again continued to increase and we didn't even have inflation um adjusted dollars. We got back to the same dollar amount 10 years after that occurred. So even with the population increase and the increased number of houses, our property tax revenue didn't increase to the 2008 levels for 10 years. 10 years. Yes. Because all of those properties were readjusted based on the new rates. And so property tax was paid on that. And this is part of one of the problems here too. It's tax capped at that 3%. So your house was was worth 500,000. Now it's only worth 250,000. Now you're tax capped at 3% to grow out of that again. So it resets at that point and it takes forever to even get back to the same dollars again. Yes. But I'm talking about new development. So the new development is new. It's it's added to the tax roles and there's a lot of new development. So I understand the depreciation of existing development but the addition of the development should have also increased our tax base. Yes. I mean new development does increase it but your total tax base is really where our revenues come from. New development is going to fluctuate year-over-year. Okay. I I think that's what I'm I'm talking about is that piece of new development should have increased our property tax revenue. Like what what has that been? Madame Mayor, is this goes back to what you said earlier, which is that property tax also depreciates on the older homes, right? So, while you're increasing on new homes, it's constantly decreasing on older homes. Today, a cheeseburger is $8. last, you know, 20 years ago was 25 cents. I I don't understand. Is that part of the answer? Yeah. When you build a thousand houses though in a neighborhood, those thousand houses are just now in the tax role. They're not depreciating yet, you know, and even if um you know there's depreciation, if the property values go up, then the tax rate can go up, you know, 3%. There's that cap. So there should be an increase in revenue. I mean there's I'm surrounded by new development. Maybe it's different in the other wards because it's not as apparent. It's more infill, but there's a significant amount of new development that's happened since 2008. If I could just hop in with some additional context. Um getting staffing back up to the pre208 levels isn't just a form of being able to afford it. It's also a form of being able to hire, train, and staff to a level that outpaces retirements. And so when you're talking about number of officers in 2025 compared to number of officers in 2008, there are a variety of factors that go into the volume of talent that we can actually bring on at any said time. I think it was, this could be wrong, but the number that's in my head is that we lost 60 police officers through layoffs during the recession. We can only hire and train, is it 20 per academy? 25. 25 per academy. And you very rarely get 25 officers through an academy because there's attrition. So, it's not just about the budget. It's about the ability to get that critical and expensive 18 months worth of time, 25 officers at a time. So, it's you're always running against a clock that's retiring. Okay. Are we having 25ish retirements a year? I think we actually average around 40. We average around 40. Okay. Yeah. So, it's a big big number and it's a big fallout for us. Okay. All right. Well, that that's helpful to know, too. Okay. I'm going to hand it over to um Vice Mayor Tyler. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I I just I'm going to take this in a different direction really briefly. I know we're we need to close up and go to break. Um the one of the joys of serving on this board is we all have solutions. We all have ideas. So when we hear a problem like this, we're all coming and saying, "Jackie, have you thought about this? Um Vicki, have you thought about this? What if we don't buy yellow pencils for 10 years or something? Can we save the money? Where can we find the money?" And I go back to a couple months ago when we had the review of the city manager. This does, as much as it impacts us, I know it impacts you and your team every single day, every single night. So my commitment is I am going to get behind our city manager and I know that she is doing everything that she can with her team to keep people here to keep people employed and to keep the city running and I know that because I I meet with her every single week and she's gone over all of the lines all of the furls how do we reduce here how do we do that they are doing their job you guys are doing your job and I have a confidence in that so for me as much as I want to be a solutionoriented person and I call her all the time, Jackie, what can we do here? What about She's like, "I'm already doing it. What about AI? I'm already doing it. This is the city manager that we hired and this is the job that she's doing. So, I will support you in what you need to do to carry this." I understand and I think that's an important part. Um, and I want you to understand that this is in no way um matter of fact, Jackie just got here and I say, "Jackie, are you glad that we put you in this position?" because she walked into some tough circumstance and thank God she did and she's incredibly talented, incredibly talented. Um, but I do want people to remember because I've sat here for a long time that sometimes um and it and it would make sense um our agenda can be very different than staff's agenda and we might not understand what their what their responsibilities and roles have to be. So we walk in too sometimes um not understanding the full scope of why we might need something right. I can't tell you what uh maintenance and operations might need. I'm not an expert in that field and so we have to lean into a lot of your expertise and the department's expertise. So but I also want um everyone to understand sometimes our role up here it looks very different than what you guys see on the other end. So, it really takes understanding on both sides. Um, but it has to work both ways because I've also been uh many years ago where it was really a staff-driven budget and um at the end of the day, we all have to answer to our constituents and say, "Why did you make those decisions?" Like you just said, you're going to make those decisions based on what Jackie recommends, right? And the data that's presented in the research for sure. Okay. And so I just want to clarify that. Okay. I think we should um go into our attorney client because it's um and then how long do you think? 45. Okay. So then let's come back at 2 o'clock and that gives everyone time to get something and get up and walk around. All right. We will be back. Thank you, Madam Clerk. All right, madame clerk, uh we are back on the record. I appreciate everyone's patience during our attorney client meeting. So, thank you. Um because I thought we were going to be back. No problem. So, we're reconvening at 2:41 and all members are present with council member Eert present online. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Um I think I was at maybe your um I think you were the one that wanted to ask a question and I cut you off. So, I apologize. So, I'm going to pick up where I left off and uh Councilman Ree, go ahead. Well, thank you, Madam Mayor. I think uh Miss Acriman, were you the next part of the presentation? I think so. So, I I think I was getting really excited for that part and so maybe just come forward and I'll maybe tee up my thought process for you. Um you you understand the difficult place we are in today. We just had the table set um by Miss Van Burren about our financial picture, right? some reality checks that we need to be having probably on a monthly basis I'm guessing. But I know that the next parts of the presentation are quite long and I was trying to figure out a way to tee up the question in order that we could get the answer which I think we understand and having looked at the presentation and staff report outstanding work. But my understanding is the whole concept of the agenda item is related to where we get to financially that may lead us then to do things like reductions in force, right? Right. And I know that some are governed by civil service rules, very complex, and some are governed by collective bargaining agreements, also equally complex and varied. Right. So, it's more like can you just give us an overview of why that happens and how that implicates sort of our voting decision which we have to make about whether or not the manager should have the authority to do a thing when the financial position or picture is what it is. Does that make sense? because I'm just trying to figure out how we we cannot all of us understand the complexity of civil service, not in this forum. Um, and I obviously know a bit more about it because of the nature of my private life, but I just thought for our benefit, maybe that could be the way that you explained why we're here today. Does it make sense? Yeah. Really going to focus on the mechanics of the process. And so, um, that would follow decisions made here today. Obviously, why we're here is because the city has a lack of funds. Um, and so that being identified, it's up to the the city council to do a formal authorization of the city manager at that point to then create a plan. So, those are the two parts of the puzzle that city council and city manager play. So the city council really only authorizes the reduction to occur and the city manager then role would be just to design the plan that would lay out the reduction in force based on council priorities on operational needs and those types of things. um that once that occurs then it really gets handed over to HR and civil service and the processes are implemented and those processes are governed by civil service rules and collective bargaining agreements and they're very specific in how that works and so there's not uh we can do this and we can do that. It's a this is how you do it and this is how it gets implemented and it is very structured. It is also very complicated and complex like you had stated. Well, and and I guess not because I'm trying to short circuit any of theformational part, but you said something there that really strikes me as important and that is the council has some obligations at a budgetary and priority setting role to identify our priorities. Right? If my priority is public safety, for example, then it is incumbent upon the manager to carry out that in various ways. Right. You're saying that when the economic situation presents itself that we find ourselves in today, that then has a specific set of obligations that our manager translates into what she would or he would have to do on the civil service and on the collective bargaining side through HR, right? So I that makes sense to me. Um may I ask one other kind of related question and that is um civil service has the role to play and why is that? What what is it about civil service that makes it the lynch pin for that moment between budget manager strong manager form of government the council and then into that civil service side. So the reason why well so initially the civil service commission we don't make any decisions to lay off employees like you said that happens at this other level. Um, but the city charter provides the authority to the civil service commission to create processes and procedures regarding how that's implemented. Because the civil service commission is a neutral third party, they don't have really any skin in the game of who's getting laid off and why they're getting laid off. They just are told we're reducing this number of classifi this classification in this department and this number of positions. Now you figure out using your rules, working with HR to work with the collective bargaining agreement procedures to then identify the individuals who would be impacted. Madame Mayor, if I just may one last thought and that is to say that so Miss Acriman, it is not your role as civil service um or even HR's role to say um what the budget is or where we are financially, right? That is Miss Vanurren and then and then in a strong manager form of government, then Miss Bryant has to make some decisions trying to implement what we voted on as our priorities through the budgetary process. And we are today called upon to to essentially authorize that reduction in force language to be able to be applied as needed. Is that correct? Correct. But would we would if a reduction in force would be required in the future, and I'm not saying it will be, but it could be given the financial picture that's been presented, we would have to come back each time for that or no, we're saying authorization today would carry out for the year. So I think that's what the item says, but I'll defer that to J. Uh, that's correct. And it looks like we have an attorney here with us who if she wants to come to the podium. Thank you. For Miss Arian, if you could do name and title for the record, please. Barbara Acriman, Chief Examiner with Civil Service. Thank you. Deputy City Attorney Susan Bro that everything she said is correct. The Civil Service Commission has absolutely nothing to do with what goes on with your determination by city charter. city charter empowers this body your body and that's why we have to take the vote affirmatively today if that's our vote so it would just be one resolution if approved and it would not come back each time you we're given the blanket authority now it makes sense to me now I'm understanding fully the picture that was presented are we doing and wouldn't and and I'm just curious to the city manager and wouldn't it be something I would think we should do based on you know what we need as we move forward whether you have to or you don't have to but something that puts something in place where we can make decisions quickly. Yes. And I think that that's exactly uh what it authorizes given the challenges that we have currently with the revenues coming in where we really don't it's very difficult to predict on a day-by-day basis. Um, and the whole goal of starting early is in order to minimize the impact to the organization in the future. Um, I would recommend that Vicki comes back every month. You know, this is our first meeting back from break. It's a tough re-entry. I apologize for that, but it it's we have to address this now um to avoid greater implications in the future. So, but I would recommend that Vicki come back on a monthly basis to give us a a public presentation on where we are because the the revenues are just so difficult to predict right now. We really need to be monitoring it on a month-to-month basis. Vicki monitors it every day. Uh we chat multiple times a week, but I think it'd be prudent to come back so that everybody can see where we are. Okay. Thank you. I it no that makes a lot more sense. I understand. Okay. U go ahead council door. And I think I had a question along the same lines which is just um um I'm willing to support you and what you need to do to get us on on the path to sustainability. What I'm uh not as comfortable doing is a cart blanch blanket approval because I think we need to take responsibility and ownership for if we're laying off people, we need to know we're laying off people and not have it a decision just you're making with your team. And um I like the idea that you would be having Vicki come back monthly and that might just be um each month you tell us what you need and we do that thing. I'd be very comfortable with that. But just saying that right now I don't know if it's 830 or 200. I'm not comfortable with that level of um a plan. So do you have a thought? Yes, I can I can address that. Um so what we're looking at right now is eight individuals. Six are in development services. Um two one is in public works and one is in auditing. Um the perspective is you know where do you identify the need first? How do you not wreck the organization? it's exceedingly difficult to identify humans that you know you're going to impact their life negatively. Um so the basis for this round is that the workload is not there or we can outsource the work. Now to be clear we cannot outsource work that belongs to a bargaining unit but we can if it's an unrepresented individual. Um I I can't promise that we won't have more. I I really don't know what the future holds. I didn't think we would be here, but it it's just where we are. So, I guess you some context that it's a shared burden, if you will, because nobody wants to do this and we have the ultimate responsibility for the city's budget um and for these kind of decisions per the charter, etc. And you have the uh role of doing the analysis and making recommendations to us. So, I would just like to retain our roles and um I if I understood what Miss Acriman was saying and sort of what you were saying and how this reads the proposed motion uh to reduce staff to take all necessary steps for fiscal year. That's the part even if you did it quarterly um you know so in blocks to where we could understand what's happening but we've already received a lot of push back because we don't know exactly the details you're doing and but we do own it it is our job to be responsible for it so I think we have to kind of do some shared decision you need to propose and we need to approve each time um just for the to for clarity then are you proposing that I come to you with an identification of particular individuals and you agree or don't agree. No, just as you've done it now. You said I'm have eight individuals and I expect to save I think you said 1.7 million earlier. I just think we need to know that at the same time so that when we get the calls whether it's from our own staff, the public media, we're in the loop and we know what we're doing. I understand. So that would be my motion is just uh and I'm willing to say uh quarterly, but I I really think we need to know as we go. So if you have comfortable with that quarterly I'm comfortable with that. Yeah. Does that make sense? I'll second the motion. Does that make sense? I mean, okay. Quarterly would start July one, you know to and and not retroactively. I'm talking about proactively. Okay. Does that make sense? You're you're still going to have her come monthly. Correct. Okay. But proactively is what I'm suggesting. Okay. I have a motion. I have a second. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. All those opposed? Motion carries. Okay. Okay. So, just to be clear, this this Carl, just to be clear, the motion was to approve the resolution with regular um reports back from the city manager and it wasn't for fiscal year 2025 26. It was for quarter 1. Okay. I just want to make sure we're clear on the record. Thank you. And if you have to do it in between a quarter, well, you come when you need to, you know. Sorry. Um, city attorney hall. So, if the resolution is drafted and attached, are they how are they approving the resolution that's attached? As amended. Approve it as amended. Thank you. Okay, Madame Clerk. Item C2. Do you have any public comment? We do have public comment on item C2. We received one letter of correspondence in opposition. We do not have any um live public comment for item C2. Okay. Thank you so much. That's crazy. No. Wow. Hi. Good afternoon. How are you? Go go go go go right ahead. Well, thank you Jump in Madame Mayor, members of the council. For the record, John Flansburg, Regional Infrastructure Administrator. Um this item is um a request to reallocate state and local fiscal recovery funds through the ARPA program from the Truckucky Meadows Park Foundation to the Virginia Range Horse Protection Project. Um this item is along in alignment with uh public safety. I just want to give an update on the horse fencing project. To date, the north phase is or the uh this portion is completed. Um we are connected all the way from Miraloma Drive down to Veterans Parkway. In addition, uh there's a small section that was take that was um fenced uh north of Deonti High School and then the section from Deonti High School around the Rylight Pit. Um and that completed our north phase project. So um that work is is all completed. Uh we're currently at in the south phase. Um we are have we had a few problems with some easements uh to finalize our fence project. But on this pa on this picture I want to show the green line. So on the south in center of the of the photo towards south you'll see where the green is. That is where the Nevada department of a actually has placed their fence. So, we now have a fence from the south. We have a fence from the north down. Uh the section in the middle, that south phase that has a little bit of red and then has the blue going up Geiger grade and back down. Um that is the piece that we're talking about uh to complete um with our project. This is um very important because with those two sections done, we actually uh create a funnel uh that would bring the horses down Geiger grade or toll road. So that's the reason for the the need of this project. Um as you recall, the purpose of the project to begin with was because of the horse vehicle accidents that we were seeing down in the um off of Veterans Parkway in that in that part of our city, W six as it is today. Um just as a recap all the funding that has gone into this project, we have had um 500,000 of ARPA funds previously allocated to this project. The Reno City Council has allocated 410,000 total um to this project. Uh INDOT agreement for 280,000. A wild horse connection. Uh donations to council 47,500. Regional transportation commission a total of 40,000. uh Wo County 30,000 and then a private donation through the community foundation of 10,000 for a total of 1.3 uh 1,317,500. The expenditures for the project to date, everything in black on the on the table has been expended. The piece that we are not yet is the 600 up to $660,000 for the finalization construction of that um portion of fence that we showed earlier. Um, as you can see, the total would be higher than the revenue or the um, funding that's been identified. And this is the shortfall. So, approximately $33,000 deficit. This item is being brought to you today because these funds um the um state and local fiscal recovery funds uh remaining from a project that was uh uh sponsored with Truckucky Meadows Park Foundation for uh Virginia uh Range Trails Plan in amount of $50,000. It was a reimbursement agreement. So the work that they had completed to date and submitted was a little over 12. So the remaining amount in that budget is 30,000 37,21087. Council member Derer had asked that this um item come before you today as it relates to this project uh if we could use this for the shortfall. We've just had a very difficult conversation about finances. I'm not oblivious to that. Um, I want to be clear that these funds had to be um designated for projects prior to December 31st, 2024. Um, and uh, they have to be spent by December 31st 2026. Um, there are projects that have been identified certainly the two projects before you today, the horse protection project was one of the projects that had been identified. The trails uh, plan for Virginia range had also been identified. Um, and this is the item. Great. Yes. I'm going to hand it over to Councilwoman Der. Go ahead. Well, just a little more background. So, um, everyone on council that was here at the time, um, was allocated $70,000 of ARPA monies to direct as they saw fit. Each of us selected a different project. I actually divided my money. Some of it went for cleanups, 20,000, and I put 50,000 into a planning project for a Virginia range trail. um we selected the vendor to be the Truckucky Meadows Parks Foundation and now we all know recently um they are going out of business. So uh what happened is that um as John said just to recap due to tariffs and other issues the um bid came in much higher than expected. So there is a shortfall and um I had asked this was my money to allocate to the parks. Um I asked for it to be reallocated to this project for for a couple basic reasons. One, we're in process in a capital project that is a public safety project that is halfway done. If we don't finish it, we will have actually created a bigger problem than we started out with because we will now funnel all horses down Geer grade and toll road where they will be at great risk. Um, number two, we had 50 cars um totaled before we started this project in a short period of time and 50 horses died and that's the nature of the public safety aspect. Um, and on the other side, I'm still committed to the uh trail project, but we're finding a new home. It isn't settled. Um, it looks like Truckucky Meadows uh regional planning may be able to step up, but that isn't settled. Um, but I'm committed to continuing to find funds. And just as example of my commitment, not only did I allocate the um ARPA money to that project, I also gave $10,000 of my council funds to Chucky Meadows Parks Foundation. So, I'm very disappointed with how things have gone over there. They're still sorting out their world, but we we have the money. Um capital projects are important to finish. Planning projects have a a little bit more flexible timeline, and I'm pretty confident. And I've already talked to several groups about helping them not just get the money that um this 37,000 but more money. You know, it was my intention always to find more money whether I'm on council or off council. So, I would just ask that um you know, this portion of my ARPA funds be dedicated to um the same progress. Thank you so much. Um so, with that being said, because it is your allocation and we all got our own separate allocations, give me a motion, please. Okay. Well, do we get any discussion or questions? Can I ask a question? Really? It's her. It's not her money. I disagree. It is the people's money. I asked her for a motion. Well, I'd like to ask a question on the presentation. Okay, then I'll ask Discuss. That's exactly right. Okay. Do I need to go into recess? No, we can go into recess. No, I I moved Okay, go ahead. All right. Well, I would move to reallocate um the Corona virus state and local fiscal recovery fund slurf received through the ARPA um from the Trekky Meadows Parks Foundation to the Virginia Range Horse Protection Project in the amount of $37,210.87. Second. Thank you. So, I have a motion, a second. The process is discussion. Councilwoman Taylor, go ahead. Thank you so much, John. On one of your slides, you said there was $660,000 sitting someplace that hasn't been used for this project. Is that accurate? Where is this money and why isn't it being used? The difference between the the expenditure that has been taken place to date, we have a bid out there right now. Um we have a couple easements that we still need to acquire. What easements do we need to acquire? So the initial alignment that we had set up on this project um we uh in the attainment of the easements there we got some opposition so we needed to look at a different route so we're looking who gave us opposition on the easements what I'm trying to understand is where is the holdup in this project moving forward with our partners because we were supposed to have an endot easement right yes endot is fine we have a couple private property owners um that we expected to easements from. We did not obtain those easements. So, we are looking at a different alignment and that is where we're trying to obtain the easements now, but they're with a couple property private um private property uh owners. So, there's 600,000 plus money that still hasn't been used for this project. What What is the confidence that you're going to get these easements? And I I'd like to say I supported my colleague through this. I I support the horses. I support the safety efforts, but we just heard we have zero dollars. We have less than zero dollars. So, again, making my decisions from a financial standpoint, I'm having a really hard time supporting this and I'm I'm trying to understand where we're at. So, so we have a bid that's out. We are in the 90 days uh to award the bid. Um but we will not award the bid till we have the easements in place. And you will not award the bid until you have the easements in place. That is correct. Okay. Um, again, I I want to support my colleagues where I absolutely can. I have supported for most of this, but I will not be able to support this item. Thank you. Madame Mayor, do I need to call the elephant out in the room? No. I I eat the elephant one bite at a time, but um I can make this very uncomfortable. No, I understand. Um I don't I for my part uh Mr. Flandsburg, I understood the presentation um to be about the reallocation. And so I'll first say it is certainly painful that Truckucky Meadows Parks Foundation has collapsed in the way they have. I I've seen it over the years in other kinds of nonprofit foundational work and it happens and it's always difficult because people were laid off, projects that were planned got dis uh dismantled. um at the truck at the Reno tennis center they were using um Truckucky Meadows Parks Foundation as their fiscal agent and so people were making donations through them for the benefit of the tennis center and those are lost. So for my part I I sort of want to first acknowledge that they did great work uh Americaore volunteers were run through there we really have a lot to be grateful for for the work that they did and so sort of just that's the first observational thing I'll say. The second thing is is that um the vice mayor is right. We all have been very supportive of each of the council colleagues uh interest in the various things which they you know we there was this once in a-lifetime intergenerational funds that came out of the federal government to help us get through the pandemic. Um most of my funds went to um public health to the tennis center different things. Miss Der um used her funds to direct them at this particular project. And Miss Der has been incredibly uh strong advocate for our horses and for the Virginia range even when it moved out of her ward, right? Um and because it was never about that for her, but it was about safety. It was about protecting these beautiful creatures. And so for my part, it's sort of a no-brainer. We're not taking money out of the general fund that we could otherwise pay a police officer for with this $37,000. It's really just the money that's unallocated. We're just moving it to a different way to have spent it. Um if we didn't reallocate the um the slurfra funds, sorry, I can't say the acronym. We would lose them, right? Um those funds would just go back to the federal government. Yeah. If I mean if we reallocate here um it could be something else that was already approved by the ARPA funding previously. Yeah. If we had another project but but we don't but without Yes. They would return. Yeah. So it's not the choice between like reallocating it to some other worthwhile thing meaning a police officer salary or something like that. So for my part I'm happy to support and was the reason why I seconded it. um and know that my hope is of course that this will be really the last time we have to talk about this particular fencing project. Um and so my hope is that the funds that you've allocated and identified the easements will happen uh and that we get to move forward to conclusion and it does save lives and saves these magnificent creatures. Thank you so much, Mr. Blindsburg. Madame Mayor, go right ahead. I think it's important too to recognize that we have money and the reason we have money is we went out for bid and the bid came in high. So I mean that isn't anything to do with me or anybody here at the city or the city council. That has to do with the public bidding process and the costs. And if we don't allocate it, we're what did you say, John? $33,000 short. So we don't spend our 660,000 that we've collected from all over um our community. we don't even do the project and we've made things worse than if we never done the project. So that's all our I mean we either do it or we don't have the funds to move forward and that date is next week. So we either do it or don't do it. Okay, any further questions? Go ahead, Councilman Martinez. Thanks so much, Madame Mayor. I also like to just state that I want to be, you know, supportive of the council member and using their sort of discretionary funds through slur, would you say? Yeah. Through those funds um and making sure that we are good colleagues. I am a little worried just with what you talked about in terms of the easements and making sure that we're able to spend um the money and time and making sure that we can do that. So, I don't know if there's a way to get I know no one maybe wants to talk about the horse protection project again in the future, but if there is any concerns like that, if you could maybe bring that back up um in the future if there's a possibility of that happening and even if we talk about what sort of projects could get funded, there's always the possibility of doing revenue replacement uh with some of these funds as well. So, I just wanted to put that on the record. All right. Thank you so much, Councilwoman Eert. Is she there? Yeah, I'm sorry. Having an issue with the mute button. So, I just want to clarify, you know, go ahead. Could these funds be used for salaries? The answer is no. It it had it had to be a project that was previously identified by that December 31st, 2024 date. Okay. And could it be used for a new project that hasn't been uh voted on or allocated for in the past? It could not be used for a new project unless it was one of those projects that council had previously uh reviewed under the ARPA funding um that was approved by that December 31st, 2024 date. Yeah. Okay. So, we've already kind of decided where everything needs to go and if we don't allocate this, it's already been brought up that we just kind of forfeit this money, right? We can't we can't use it to um fill our our budget gap or anything like that. Correct. That is correct. Okay. That that was all my questions. Okay. All right. Any further questions? So, I have a motion. I had a second and we were in discussion. Um, and I would just like to add I want to thank my colleagues for being very supportive of this. I know that it's this is always one that is tough because you see the need for it, but you you also see the other jurisdictions that have some responsibility in this. Again, the city steps up with a big heart. But I want to say thank you to my colleagues um who are being very supportive. um you know even even though you might have strong feelings about it versus you know holding some of these allocations um hostage when we all had priorities we wanted to see that it be spent on. So I I want to just say thank you to everyone regardless of how you feel. I think that is um I think that that is incredibly important. So thank you so much. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Yeah. Sad. Sad. Yep. We're going to go into recess and we will be back. Oh, I had a question just because I'm having a little trouble here. Did that motion pass? Yep. It it passed. Thank you everyone. Yes, we're going to take a recess. on. She is okay. Council, hi. You there? Council member Eert, can you hear us? Yes. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you. So, we do have a quorum. So, I'm going to um start. All right. So, we're reconvening at 3:24 at this time. Council member Anderson, Reese, and Der are absent and council member Eert is present online. Okay. Thank you so much. Uh with that being said, uh before we go into this item, do you have any public comment, Madam Clerk? Madame Mayor, we did receive public comment on this item as four letters of correspondence, one in favor, three in opposition. We did have a few people that were registered to speak earlier today, but I don't believe they have returned. So, no live public comment. Okay. Thank you so much. All right, Cynthia. Oh, sorry. Pablo Navo Duron wants to make a public comment. Go ahead. Come on up. I did not realize that we do have a public engagement review on boards commission change. So I thought I'm going to have to wait for a little bit. It's going to be tonight, but no, it's here. So here we go. C3. Okay, here we go. I love it. Here you go. So my name is Paul Natuan. Um I did the pipe for never visible on war three. So if you know it's something like the the board commissioning chains like I you know I work I do volunteer for for nap but I have not Oh you're the best. Yep. Have not set up. So so this nap this uh this agenda about to change the nap. So either 90day pause um no naps currently or stay same. So So you hopefully you make a good choice. Thanks Pablo. Good job. Thank you Pablo. Well I will get started. Good afternoon, Madame Mayor, City Council Manager Bryant Cynthia as far as the director of community engagement and services. For the record, the presentation today is for items C3, C4, E2 through E9. These uh include an update and of course a resolution for you all to decide upon after you hear this presentation. And this discussion aligns with our governor governance and organizational effectiveness priority. Over the past couple months, there have been a series of actions and updates that led to today's presentation. This started in November of 2024 when council requested boards and commissions to be evaluated. Following November and May, I provided a presentation on a public engagement review process that we were commencing and and the why behind that. Followed by that, in June, there was a presentation on a phase board and commission reform strategy presented to council. Similarly, in June of 25, we started the public engagement review process and began evaluating our current practices, what's working and what's not working. I'm very excited to show uh the the data that we received from the community and the engagement level as well. And last before you the two items that we are discussing, one is the engagement updates and recommendations followed by a resolution and ordinances to codify engagement recommendations. So these are all the pieces that led to today. I would also like to emphasize that we are specifically talking about the boards and commissions today that were placed on a pause what we are calling phase one and the recommendations pertain to those. The full list of impacted boards and commissions can be found on the staff report for item C4. Like I mentioned, the review process was really started to enhance what we currently do related to public engagement, elevate the work, meet the community where they're at, but also identify gaps that we may not be aware of. We know communities thrive when everyone is informed, they're aware, and have the opportunity to actively engage and work together, which is an advantage of city government because we are so close to communities. Through this process, we sought to get a better sense of our community needs, which included a stronger understanding of the fundamentals, the who, the what, why, where, how. Uh, also to improve our transparency and elevate our current practices and determine what tools we may be missing uh that perhaps are being used in other communities that we have not explored here. Most importantly, we want to make sure that we're doing this in an effective way, being efficient with everyone's time, including our volunteers, staff time, and the limited resources we have, and again, meeting today's needs. Before I go into the findings, I do want to provide an overview of this menu of engagement practices that we currently have in place. These were all the options that were shared at the May meeting. Boards and commissions are one of the many ways the public can engage, provide input, be informed, and create community. And we look forward to refining our options based on the feedback received through this process. So in June, we started this process and throughout that time period, we were able to have over 700 contacts with the community. that was via in-person meetings, in-person drop-in sessions, virtual meetings, and also outreach at uh two community events. As efforts were consolidated, this provides an opportunity to do targeted board and commission stakeholder outreach. As previously previously shared, there were multiple pieces that led to today. As a team, we consolidated everything for two purposes. There was certainly confusion. Uh the community highlighted that today and also to create a transparent process that connected the two changes that are being proposed. I would also like to acknowledge that uh there were board and commission stakeholder meetings that took place and would like to thank those that participated in that process. In regards to connecting with the 300 people, I I want to highlight something that I thought was very telling. We were able to connect with 300 people through the multiple meetings that we had, but we also were present at two of the community cleanups that happened. And having the opportunity to connect with people where they're at at another city function, it's really maximizing our efforts and also ensuring that we have a presence when there are functions happening citywide. This stands in sharp contrast which I also thought was telling uh to the attendance that we saw at the general meetings. Uh there were a total of 11 people that attended collectively uh and that of course was virtually and in person. Additionally, we had a survey happening at the same time concurrently and that garnered 358 submissions. I would also like to highlight that of the submissions 48 submissions came from board and commission appointees who self- selected that option. A clear understanding of the basics guided this review. The assessed categories are before you today and I will go into a couple of the findings and focus on location structure content and feedback. In regards to locations, preferences show people want to engage in familiar, accessible public spaces, but there's also a connection to the formality of the engagement. For example, one of the things that came up frequently were the council connects. So, connecting with their elected representative in a uh community space in their neighborhood. people specifically enjoyed connecting in that space and also being introduced to a new business safe within their ward. On the flip side, more technical or often contentious conversations are preferred in city facilities such as city hall for decorum space. The space itself presents that decorum uh but also for overall safety of the public and the ability to share one's thoughts. When we talk about structure, the community enjoys more informal, interactive, and semistructured approaches. As you could see, collectively those three were uh 79% of the survey responses. I would also highlight that the the data presented here certainly correlates with the survey, but we also incorporated the themes from the in-person interactions as well. These interactions and the structures could be a workshop, town halls, and again coffee with the council member. Based on feedback received from the community, less structured meetings are the second form of preferred method. And I think it's also important to mention that structured when meetings are more structured, there's certainly more guidelines and it it could prevent open dialogue and that was something that was echoed by the community. At the same time, in looking at the data, responses from the 48 board and commission appointees, 58 prefer formal structures, which certainly aligns with current practices for boards and commissions that would not be interrupted through this review process and resolution you'll hear about shortly. In regards to content, uh, a telling preference was a desire to have more indepth one-topic meetings. Nearly uh 50% of the respondents uh provided that input as well as uh board and commission appointees, 60% of them prefer that as well. Given that community members and volunteers have limited time available, this is a valuable recommendation to help us make the most of their time and ensure we have meaningful engagement. And last but not least, I'd like to highlight feedback, which I think will guide us to the next steps. When we talk about feedback, people like to use online tools. That could be a survey, that could be a form online or some some other way to connect virtually. And uh as we move through this process, again, I think that is something that we will uh explore and see what we can implement as an organization. In regards to what we do, well, we received uh multiple responses, which is great to see, and these were the items that were highlighted for uh this section. There was two open-ended ended questions. So, starting with what we do well, uh Reno direct and engagement options. I'll couple those together because those are very similar. There's an appreciation for the ability to access government whether it's via Reno direct or one of the meetings that is accessible coming into city hall. They're seen as low barrier, accessible and userfriendly. I would also highlight that there was feedback provided in regards to a service request having the ability to track your concern as it moves through a process. that is something that's a result of recent technology that was implemented uh with Reno Durac. So, we're very happy to see that people are enjoying that new way to connect. And to include a community quote uh from a participant, the city of Reno is making significant strides in public engagement through several initiatives. These practices help foster a sense of community and ensure that residents feel heard and are involved in the governance of their city. Moving on to community connections. This more or less centers on visibility. The community highlighted that they enjoy having that one-on-one interaction, whether it's with a council member or staff. It's it makes it more relatable and real when you're able to connect with the person one-on-one and have those conversations. Similarly, the Reno Constituents Institute community meetings and popups were seen as trusted ways that we are interacting with the community. So, I thought that was great feedback as we continue to elevate this work. And the last two areas that I'd like to highlight, excuse me, are responsiveness. When it comes to staff, council, and community input, uh there is a sense that we are approachable and supportive in communication. Uh and there is also a sense that there is a strong desire to keep the community informed and engaged on a variety of topics. And we know that there's quite a bit happening all the time. When we talk about opportunities for improvement, I'll go into these uh a couple of them are certainly interconnected. Follow through and transparency. The public input impact is not always visible. There's a sense of we go to a meeting, we're providing input. Where is it going? So that is something that we will look into how we could close that loop. How could we ensure that we are communicating post a meeting with a community group to share outcomes? Similarly, a respondent said, "Information is shared, but it often feels like a one-way conversation. To make engagement truly meaningful, the city should focus more on showing how public input shapes these decisions. So taking these pointers, we'll be able to adjust some of our practices internally. In regards to accessibility, there was a sense uh of physical accessibility, having it in a place where you are familiar, having it in a location that is accessible physically, a location that you can access public transit. At the same time, there was also quite a bit of commentary on the content and material that's being delivered not as accessible because it could be very technical and complex. Uh to quote one of the community members, the city tries to get engagement. However, the process and language feels too heavy. So as we go through this process and see where we can adjust practices, I think this again is highlighting something that we could change internally as we deliver information to make it a little bit more observable. And last but not least, civic engagement and welcoming culture. Residents want simpler explanations for government processes. We have similar pro projects that help with this whether it's a workshop uh rci but again this is something that came through in multiple comments. So we'll look at seeing how we can further share information and get people engaged. I this is the last uh quote I will read but I thought it was very telling. uh the city seems to assume the general public has a knowledge and depth of staff the who, what, why, when and how of an issue. So again, those are the core questions we asked and I think the public has similar questions when we talk about our processes. In summary, the key takeaways were bucketed into three categories. reflecting community interest and priorities. Again, looking at digital engagement tools and what we could implement, adjusting engagement formats based on the topic, the need to have dialogue and two-way dialogue, and also there's certainly a strong interest in development, parks, and planning. Secondly, ensure inclusive, accessible, and meaningful engagement. There was an emphasis on feeling welcomed but also having a space where you can engage in the conversation in the content and provide uh meaningful input with a better understanding of the information being shared. And of course this also includes just being mindful of all voices within the community. And last but not least, aligning boards and commissions with how residents prefer to engage. There certainly was a preference for single topic discussions with more of a focus. Uh we also ensuring that we are valuing the volunteers that are showing up to meetings as appointees and the public as well. And again a desired for simplified structures and fewer silos. So what I will present next is an overview of the recommendations for the boards that were put on pause based on recommendations from the review process. When we looked at the boards that were placed on pause, these were the multiple categories and these are the recommendations before you all to make a decision upon. NABS certainly there is a a desire to provide input on development. The refocus would prioritize planning and development topics at NAV meetings and have the ability to really n hone in on whatever the topic at hand is provide input and also create a consistent way for input to be relayed to other impacting bodies. This feedback uh aligns with what was shared by the majority of board and commissioners as well. Single topics with in-depth conversations and ward centric topics. The second bucket relates to the arts and culture commission and the public arts subcommittee. These two boards have very similar or parallel topics. There's a lot of overlapping. The recommendation is to have the public arts subcommittee be absorbed with the Reno Arts and Culture Commission. This not only streams lines the processes internally and maximizes staff time, but it's also a recommendation that was put forth with the arts master plan and those recommendations came to council last fall. So, this is something that was already in the works. uh certainly part of this process and this is a recommendation. The third category uh the recreation and parks commission and the urban forestry commission staff wavered on the best recommendation for this one. We heard public comment today and whether it's it stays as a standalone commission, the urban forestry commission or becomes a subcommittee. Similar to arts and culture, merging the two would certainly help streamline the process, reduce staff time. There would be one staff meeting for both bodies and would also avoid delays in discussions. Ultimately, the goal is to reduce those silos for bodies that are interconnected and have complimentary scopes. I also want to highlight that this change does not impact the city's tree uh city designation. It does not impact the overall tree canopy goals and of course urban forestry is within the parks and recreation department. So those pieces align nicely. And last but not least, we are looking at integrating the human rights access and senior issues into other boards. We have volunteers that are very passionate and want to stay engaged. By doing this, we would not eliminate their opportunity to engage with boards and commissions. This would foster shared responsibility to ensure that policy input and programs serve all residents, including marginalized and older populations and people with disabilities. By doing this, we would integrate lenses into the boards that remain by creating seats that would be part of the resolution process. So we wouldn't lose that experience or the volunteers that have dedicated time to this but rather expand their scope, their impact and influence across all boards. Uh which would truly inform a wider range of city decisions such as planning, park projects, and the arts and reinforces that access and inclusion are not just special topics. It's something that we do uh throughout the multiple boards as they talk about policies, programs, and provide that input. Overall, these changes would reduce redundancy as several boards already advise on overlapping topics, support staff capacity uh by combining efforts for better support, fewer silos of course, and more consistent follow-through. As an example, an average neighborhood advisory board meeting takes an estimated 30 hours from pre uh planning, scheduling the meeting, agendaizing, meeting facilitation, and postmeating deliverables. That scope, I mean, is pretty parallel to remaining boards and commissions. Um, and lastly, I want to highlight that these issues and communities are not standalone. They they're all intersecting. And so by this conducting this cleanup, we're taking a holistic approach to meaningful engagement citywide. And in order for this to effectuate, I will now pass it over to Tyler Shaw, agenda manager, who will go over the boards and commissions structural changes and the proposed resolution. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Tyler Shaw, agenda manager for the record. Um, I'm going to be finishing out today's presentation by talking in greater detail about the board and commission resolution and ordinances on today's agenda. This is items C4 and E2 through E9. All of which make some structural changes to our board and commission program in response to both the community feedback which Cynthia just presented and previous council direction in November of 2024 and June of this year. So, I want to start by very clearly making the link between what we heard from the community and today's council items. As you heard from Cynthia, community feedback didn't just inform how we engage. It highlighted the need for deeper structural change. We heard that residents want more inclusive, accessible, and meaningful engagement. But when we looked under the hood at our boards and commissions program, it became clear that fragmented governance was getting in the way of all of those things. And that's what led to council direction in June to initiate a full structural reform, which is what we're bringing forward today via council resolution in a series of ordinances to advance both public engagement and modernization of the boards and commissions program. So what are the structural issues with our board program? Well, the root of the issue is fragmentation. Our boards were created one by one over the course of many decades with different ordinances, resolutions, and bylaws, some of which conflict with Nevada Open Meeting Law, other sections of Reno Municipal Code, or each other. These conflicts have created a system that's very difficult to administer and which has gaps in expectations for membership, attendance, and reporting for both board members as well as members of the public. For example, the current system splits responsibility for board and commission appointments between individual department staff liaison, the city clerk's office, agenda management, and scheduling. As a result, board members very frequently turn them off of their boards with no notice. and due to the complexity of our system either cannot be reappointed for several months or are erroneously included as board members past the end of their terms. These disruptions often result in confusions for the board members as well as stalls in board work. We also found that public input lacks clear pathways to council decision-m which was a theme reflected heavily in the community engagement feedback. People feel like their comments and recommendations to our boards do not translate into council action and the result is a fragmented and siloed system disconnected from its purpose. The resolution and ordinances before you today are the foundation for all of the structural changes we're recommending in the first phase of this process. I want to reiterate that these are community feedback and researchinformed staff recommendations which have been brought before you as a result of previous council direction. As always, you council have the option to adopt, modify, or give alternative direction related to boards and commissions during today's meeting. With that out of the way, I want to talk through what today's items accomplish and how they address the goals we've identified through public engagement and internal review. So the first goal is to create consistent and transparent meeting structures. The resolution and ordinances accomplish this goal by removing the boards from Reno municipal code and reestablishing or reintegrating them under a unified governance model with centralized program oversight within the city manager's office. By having all of these boards established in a single document, which can be easily accessed by board members and members of the public, our board and commission system becomes more transparent and easier to understand for all stakeholders involved. As a personal aside, it took me a staff member with access to all internal documents and a background in municipal government an entire week to locate, research, and compare all of the different mechanisms by which our current boards are established. Imagine if a member of the public wanted to do the same thing. This resolution will solve that because it creates a unified governance model by including a new section of general governance provisions that apply to all of the newly reestablished boards. These general provisions do some pretty important things in helping us meet our other goals. For example, they make participation easier and more meaningful by simplifying meeting procedures and redefining eligibility criteria to reduce barriers for public volunteers and participants. Specifically, the resolution accomplishes this goal by requiring boards to adopt bylaw templates, standardizing previously confusing and conflicting meeting procedures, and by creating new eligibility criteria for perspectives the city is seeking to integrate into the larger board and commission system membership. Next, these general governance provisions ensure public input connects to council action by establishing annual reporting requirements for all included boards. This reporting requirement is the formal mechanism by which board input and recommendations will be shared with council, thereby closing the feedback loop between community input and council action. Another way this resolution ensures public input is connected to council action is by requiring development projects to come to NAB meetings where previously NAB attendance was optional as a whole. This resolution establishes a flexible system that can and will evolve over time. By establishing boards and commissions through a single resolution rather than multiple ordinances, council is empowered to make updates more easily as community needs change without having to rewrite the municipal code and undertake the extensive ordinance revision process every single time. That being said, I think it's still important to note that since resolutions can only be amended by council during council meetings, any future changes would still require noticing and affirmative council action at a public meeting, ensuring residents have a continued opportunity to weigh in whenever adjustments are considered. This allows the system to stay responsive, transparent, and aligned with evolving priorities. Today's presentation is just the first step of an iterative process. So I want to take a moment to highlight some of the next steps which would come after today's meeting. Starting in August and September, we are anticipating that all boards and commissions, including those reestablished by this resolution, will be able to resume their regular meeting schedule. To be clear, we are not recommending a 12-month pause. Looking further ahead in September of this year, agenda management is planning to roll out a new board and commission training program which will cover Nevada open meeting law, public records, and board specific topics of interest. In October, council will have a strategic planning workshop which will further inform the priorities which the boards and commissions should be seeking to address. And in December of this year, Cynthia is planning to roll out a citywide public engagement framework. Then based on changes identified by council in their strategic planning workshop, by the community as part of the engagement framework roll out, and by board members during the course of regular board meetings, we're planning to be back before you with any necessary updates to this resolution in May of 2026. Finally, looking at July of 2026, the first annual reports for all of the boards and commissions will come forward to council, and council will start the 5-year review process for individual boards. To wrap up this slide, I just want to add that this resolution and ordinances give us the administrative structure we need to move forward today. But every piece of training, evaluation, and prioritization you see on this timeline still depends on council and community input over the course of the next year. I want to end by thanking council for your ongoing leadership in helping us modernize this program. The resolution and ordinance are the first critical step in the process. The recommended motions are in the following slides and Cynthia and I are available for questions. All right. Fantastic job. I Is this your first time? I can't remember. I presented very briefly on a donation to community cats and talked about That's right. You did a great job. But um congratulations. Thank you. Excellent. Okay. Uh I'm going to hand it over to you, uh Councilman Ree, and then uh you had your light on first, so go ahead. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for the excellent presentation. Both of the presentations I think are very informative. A a couple of things um that sort of I'm grappling with and it help maybe help frame the conversations today. Uh first, I think there are um lots of good things in both presentations about the work that's been done to evaluate the NABS, the commissions, the boards. Each one kind of has its own unique flavor, right? It's hard for me to have an opinion strongly that applies to every one of those structural things because each one of those perhaps serves a different function. And so in that regard, um I think each one of us might make the case for certain boards or commissions or navs being more important than others. Certainly people who serve on various boards and commissions believe that their board or commission is critically important. Uh and I understand that. At the end of the day, what I was hoping that this process would do was help us identify how people best communicate with one another in 2025. Do people still like the formalities of coming to city hall, sitting up here, following Robert's rules of order, or do they like other types of forums? And so, for part of what my concern is is I I am not sure I yet have all the answers to that piece of this puzzle. Uh, and so that's one thing. the the sort of overarching thing too is um the language that I've seen other folks in the community use to describe this process is um I think anathema to what you've actually tried to accomplish especially you Mrs. Sparza, you are all about community engagement. You want to make more people in the room in the decision-making process. And I think your effort to go out and do that community engagement is evidence of that. That is though the case that some people still haven't heard about it or maybe they heard about it just last night or maybe they read the Barber brief and that was the first time they thought about it. Right? And those people who are now late to the party have strong opinions. And so I want to make sure that people understand that when something arrives on a council agenda, it is not fully baked in every case, right? It oftent times the directional impetus for us to have the conversation here at this dis so that we may then have those deep conversations. I am not expecting and I don't believe that we're prepared to vote on something today. Right? There's a lot of information here. U maybe with our council's help and colleagues uh direction we would get somewhere. But um one uh writer said that this was alarming. It was shocking. They were a gasast by it all. All of that is not helpful. Right. I I think we're all trying to just do the best we can. Um and describing it as premature. I might agree with right. I don't think you came to us saying I want you to adopt every single thing in here as I have written it. If you're not prepared to do that today, you know, it's a deal breakaker. Um I think and I'll leave with one other thought and then give time to my council colleagues. I am s uh very s uh concerned about the senior citizen advisory group. I I do think seniors are oftentimes the most isolated community and so the opportunity for them to come together and discuss issues that affect them. I worry that by dividing them up onto each of the other bodies that they will have lost the opportunity to connect with each other and so I don't know I I love the idea that they would give their senior focus lens or input to whatever board they sit on right but I am worried that the part of the issue is to allow them the space to have their unique issues vetted heard discussed uh planned for it's odd because the city of Reno doesn't offer senior programming right like that's the county function. So, I've never totally understood what the role was um other than we give them a space to be able to talk about it. So, I'm I'm just all over the place about how I feel about seniors. They're our most uh important like subgroup of people who are are we want to make sure they're healthy and well and actively engaged and getting their needs met. Um and so I am a little worried about them as a group at large. Does that make sense? again, first pass at some comments. I I like where we're going. I don't I'm not sure we're there yet, but great work, Yeah. Thank you. Um I too want to commend the effort. Um I know you put a lot of time in. You designed a survey. You took input on how to work that survey. I think you held an extra meeting or two to meet with people who felt they missed the boat a couple weeks ago on on which I appreciated. I don't know if you actually got to meet with anybody because I didn't get that follow-up, but my thing is I think I talked to Jackie in advance of this and she said, "This is really a starting point and you like to see recommendations." They said, "Yes, we do." Um, but she said, "It's really up to council how you want us to parse this decisions you want us to make." And so I really appreciate that attitude that you guys have done the hard work at this point. But like my colleague, I think we're about I'll put it at about maybe 75% there. In other words, a lot of work's been done. You've created a lot of materials, resolutions, more resolutions, more detail. You've thought through things, but this is the first time we're seeing it. And on a lot of regulation like ordinance work, we usually have the initiation. And I'd call that that happened in November where we said we'd like to talk about boards. Um, and there's been some other meetings, but this is the first time usually in a regulation, which you want to repeal the regulations and insert in their place of resolution. Usually in that process, we get an opportunity to get the thing aired, understand all the moving parts, the details. And I'm thinking about like title 18 or the the ADUs signs ones we've been through recently. We have to have time to work through the material with you and understand your thinking. And I I think that's the beginning of what's happened today. But I don't think we get to finish given of the lateness of the hour and how much we've already covered and how much we remains to cover. I'm not sure we can be as productive as we might want to be. We might need some briefings offline on the details and I can go over a couple of those with you. But um and and I also want to be additive. So for example, you mentioned the seniors. I don't want us to take something away that is actually getting input from seniors and then say, "Hey, here's a way we'll put seniors on four different boards, one each, and that somehow that's an equal replacement or even a betterment." I think we keep it and we add to it. And I'll make the same point for my nap. The fact that I have 45 or 65 people coming to talk about a variety of issues that are of on their mind. Um we don't want to in my opinion take that away with the hope that we well maybe council connect like I'm going to have coffee this Friday. I expect maybe 10 people to show up not 65. Okay? and I will talk to them for an hour which I love to do by the way. Um but uh or I might have a town hall all at my discretion. Now I know that monthly I'm going to see some group of people not necessarily the same group. The NAB members will be the same but the attendees are always shifting based on what topics are on the agenda and I get to talk aesh with those people about what's on council's agenda and so on. Um, I I know I only have a few seconds left. So, I have some very specifics, but I don't want to blog u uh what do I want to say? Drag this meeting down by going through my specifics or concerns or questions. I would almost rather write them to you and say, "I don't understand. You don't want council members to talk at their own nab. Do they have to sign up for public comment?" I mean, that's what it says. It says council member liaison should not participate in discussion. But what I my experience and I'll just take another 20 seconds. My experience has been that often with especially you only have a two-year term maybe renewed. So these are primarily new people coming on NABS. They're learning about city. It's kind of like the citizen institute. They're not pros. Many of them they're new to the process. Many times I'm asked questions about process. How do we get involved? What about this issue? What's the timeline on this issue? When should we get involved in this other issue? what you know on and on and on and so I'm having a dialogue back and forth with them and I would hate to lose that um it takes about 20 minutes of each NAB meeting um we have a staff liaison report we have a council report and then there are questions um and there I've heard a comment about the NABS that well they've only given three minutes not in my NAB I give them three minutes but soon as everybody's talked they get another three minutes and if they want another three minutes they get that too it is not as it's not uh it's meant to be more informal and less rigid. That's the whole point. So, I'll come back with some other points, but I'm prepared to spend more time on this. Okay. Counciloman Taylor. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I guess I'm of a different opinion. I believe that we've had several conversations over this and maybe I just reach out more or ask more questions or I I don't know, but I feel that you've definitely put the work into this. I understand your methodology um the research and I'm absolutely supportive of where we want to go but more importantly I think where we need to go as an organization. I don't see it as taking anything away. Um I think um you know Madame Mayor mentioned earlier we're always changing and things are changing. This is a good opportunity to look at where we can move forward to get more engagement in a different way. And sometimes change is a a little bit uncomfortable, but again, the conversations I've had with you and your team and and throughout the last two months, I feel very confident of the effort that you've put in this and I I'm happy to support in any way I can. Thank you. Oh, one quick thing I was thinking though, um this is just a an added thing. when maybe when we're sending out the announcements for these instead of we've done it ward specifically before I think maybe all the announcements should go to all of the lists so everybody in the community is getting all of the information so maybe there's something that they're interested in W four or W six it shouldn't just go to the word one people so I would say maybe we put more information out there to everybody instead of just siloing it thank you Councilman Martinez Thanks so much Madame Mayor and thank you uh Cynthia and Tyler for the presentation. I think you really gave us a good understanding of where we have been. I appreciated the timeline that you provided at the beginning with uh the kickoff in November and kind of looking at ways to restructure public engagement opportunities. um through your role, you know really well how important that is for the city to be engaged with our community and making sure that we're making the decisions that reflect what's best for our community members and making sure that their voices are heard along the way. Um I I do think that we are at a point where we can start putting some of these things into practice. Um, I think that the NAB members and some of the other boards and commission members want to continue to reconvene and um, I just worry that if we continue to delay this conversation and don't take um, action, we'll continue to delay that process um, and delay the public engagement that we have had. Um, I don't have any questions at this point. I'll just say that I appreciate uh it might be a minor thing, but changing the recreation and parks commission to the parks and recreation advisory commission, which makes sense. I always question why that was from the beginning that I got appointed to the lison role. Um so, thank you so much for making that name change there. All right, Councilman Anderson. Yes, I I just want to echo um Vice Mayor Taylor's comments. I feel like I've been read into this process um exceptionally well um and my questions have been answered. So, thank you all for the work that you've done. I'm also um concerned about the time frame about delaying this any longer. Um when we met about this in June, there was a lot of uproar about it was going to take too long. You guys got together, you pulled this work together, you pulled the analysis together, you put an incredible new position and plan together for us, which I support and I'm willing to, you know, put into place today and continue to make evolutions as they become necessary. I just have a couple of questions. Um, well, comment first. I think the arts and culture and the commission rolling up into one makes perfect sense. much of what we do there is redundant and I just know that in the short amount of time that I've been serving there. I love the suggestion of access advisory members being put on all of the boards. I think that that is a brilliant addition to those boards. Um, the one thing I would be um, in support of is making sure that people that get put on those boards, they have a cross reference of what the different um, abilities and how they cross over and so that they can represent more than just maybe what they're the subject matter expert on. That would be great. Um, and the last thing I just had a question about the urban forestry. um our public commenter earlier was she was very very passionate and um it I guess I want to know what is the if we were to roll the urban forestry um board up under parks and wreck what is the form and function how does that change their form and function in the business that they do it how does that harm the harm the process or help it thank you thank you council member great question. Tyler Shaw, agenda manager for the record. Um, as far as establishing the urban forestry commission as a subcommittee of parks and recreation, it's not going to change any of the functionality of the board. They still have to comply with open meeting law. They still have to post agendas. Um, it just changes the reporting structure to better align with reality and better align with the structure of the department. Right now, urban forestry is part of our parks and recreation department. So, by adding the urban forestry subcommittee under the parks and recreation advisory board, um it makes a little bit more sense because they can vet their proposals through parks and wreck who are also subject matter experts. But the subcommittee would also be creating an annual report that would go to council by memo. So, the council will still be able to see everything that the subcommittee is doing. The only change is in name. It's functional. Okay. Go ahead, Councilwoman Eubert. I had some questions about the outreach. I know it was mentioned that there was some feedback given at community cleanups. Did you go to each community cleanup to get feedback? We went to the two that were held in June. I believe it was one was Miraloma and the second one I can't recall the location but I could Okay, so it didn't happen at all of the community cleanups. No, they it happened during the window that we were doing outreach and it was also in alignment with the survey. So people were able to provide input on public engagement, how they like to stay involved. Uh the community loves the cleanups, by the way. And they were also provided with the flyer with information on the survey, how to get information and uh where to take the survey as well. Yeah, those are a really great way to get community feedback because so many people show up and that's why I'm concerned that we didn't provide that same opportunity to everyone. Um how many like touch points did you have for Ward 4 specifically? Ward four, we did have one drop in session uh at the North Valley's library, uh the one that's next to uh there was not uh we didn't track, we didn't have people check in and say, you know, which ward you live in, but we were very mindful of having a drop in session within each ward or at least right next to okay. So, I'm concerned that we don't have enough feedback specifically from my ward. I know that I have a lot of feedback from my constituents that it's difficult for them to make it to meetings. Um it's difficult for them to find out about meetings. Um I think it would have been a fantastic opportunity to get feedback from them at a community cleanup. Um so with that in mind, I would like to take a brief pause on this if we could wait until the fall community cleanup happens in my ward. believe it's going to happen sometime in September just because I know it is it is kind of a struggle to get engagement with my ward are often called the workingclass ward. People um can't take time off work to come to council meetings and we're often stuck in traffic to get home and can't make evening meetings on time. So, um I really just want to make sure that um we're providing equal opportunity um especially for Ward 4 um community members um to provide feedback. Um I also wanted to ask did you meet with all the boards and commissions and just present to them what you're what you were working on? Was this an agenda item for all the boards and commissions? So, we had two specific board and commission stakeholder meetings. I personally emailed every single board and commission that was impacted uh through a roster verification process. We got all the correct email addresses and reached out individually to the boards and commission. We also shared information via our newsletters that we have for ward. So there were multiple uh communication touch points throughout the process. I also just to go back on the demographics and and ward specific uh data. I do want to highlight that the survey that's attached to the staff report has information available for the individuals that chose to provide demographic data. So you could certainly see if uh what the award for participation was. Okay. I I would also like to see if we could have something regarding this process presented at each of the boards and commissions. I think it would be a great opportunity for the existing board members to maybe provide some suggestions since they're the subject matter experts and also give the people that come to the meetings an opportunity to kind of understand what's happening happening just in the interest of transparency. I know that's very important to you. So my time is up right now. I do have another round if it's possible we're going to do too. Okay. Thank you. Thanks so much. Um, first of all, I want to say thank you so much to Jackie because it was a conversation that we really had where we're trying to reimagine what the boards and commissions look like because honestly, some are much better attended than others, right? Um, and you know, what does that look like, but how do we be a little more efficient and also actually engage more? Um because there are a lot of people there was um a lot of feedback into my office that they wanted to engage more and we talked about that in length, Jackie and I did um about you know they might not be able to attend but maybe there is some way for them to attend or have feedback not wanting to attend necessarily but feedback in a certain way like online or just other ways we can be a lot more efficient. We I want to make it clear, we have not looked at boards and commissions since um since I was elected and so it really needed to be an overhaul. And bless Jackie's heart with everything else going on. She said, "I I want to go and engage." And I and I'm pretty sure Did you not go to every NAB? Am I right? Didn't you go to NABS? and a lot she went to a lot of meetings because she said she wanted to um engage with the public which I loved but for for about 12 years over a decade we have not looked at them and how they could be more efficient or maybe there should be a board that we need that we don't have um you know just different opportunities and priorities plus with technology I think we can engage more I really believe that and to hear you say Tyler, that you it took you over a week to find that is I think sets the point exactly of why we needed to look at. Um I always do cringe whenever people say, "Oh, I didn't get to um put in my feedback." Right. That one's always hard to hear because I always think that we do a great job, but maybe, you know, there are times that we don't do the best job we can and sometimes it's just sort of the process and we have to look at different process to make sure we're reaching people in a different capacity. It's just it's tough because today there's a lot of different ways to communicate. So, you might not have the best um I guess path for someone uh based on the way they communicate. Some people say, "Send me an email." Some people say call me. You know, everyone is very different and I I'm not sure how to navigate that. So, I know like you guys, it's hard on you whenever you think that you do the best job reaching out and then there are people that say, "I didn't get it. I didn't get it." So, I don't think that that's deliberate in any way. I just think there's a lot of different ways to communicate and I don't know I don't have the answer and I don't know what the best way um that you guys might recommend because everyone's different. Um I do think that there are certain boards particularly seniors um I think for them they you know we're living in a time where they are showing much more isolation and loneliness and um it's also just good for them to be together in a room and talk about you know what maybe senior affordable housing looks like what what does senior meals look like those kinds of things. So, but I also think there are some that really should not probably exist because the level of engagement does not warrant that. But merging them into other boards makes um a lot of sense. And then we have to be aware I think of we all feel this way um respectfully with the the amount of staff that we have and we're trying to be so much more efficient and maybe with less. And so, uh, it's just one of those things that it's it's a balance. And, you know, I've just found that oftenimes we can't do anything right. And so, I don't know how to please everyone all the time. And also, we got to make sure that we're bringing services, but be transparent because I then think the conversation gets off the rails. But I want to thank Jackie immensely for actually wanting to dig in after over a decade. We had not even touched our boards and commissions and they really needed to be efficient. And so Tyler, I'm sorry the week that you lost. It was worth every second. I love that. But um anyway, okay, I'm gonna bring it back to my council members to weigh in and and Jackie, I don't know if you have any thoughts or ideas or just something that you learned out of this process that you felt was beneficial or um anything like that. Well, I I think Thank you for that question. Um Mr. Sparza, will you please move forward to slide 16, please? Oh, nope. Go back. Sorry. I was looking for the one with all the stats. I thought it was fascinating um what the community overwhelmingly preferred in a variety of areas and and I think it's you know it's incumbent on us to listen and to respond and offer you know more opportunities and the variety of ways that the community wants to hear from us. Um I thought that was some of the information I did not expect to see that answer. Yeah, I think this was really helpful and it was surprising. So, um, okay, I'm going to start with Councilman Ree and then I'll just go I'll go down to you, Councilwoman Eert, and then go back. Okay, go ahead, Councilman Ree. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, again, I think we're having a great and robust discussion. I just am not sure that I know what I can support today. So, I want to focus on the things that I know that I'm interested in. Uh the first is it looks like on Charlie 4 it's about fixing inconsistent ordinances outdated bylaws. It's related to fixing gaps about membership attendance and reporting. Those things absolutely have got to be done. Right. I I appreciate that very much. But I don't know then how to take it board by board, commission by commission. Right? Even that great slide that was just shown here about the different percentages of responses. I don't know what that is supposed to do for me when I just say in a vacuum evaluate access advisory. What do you two believe is best to do with access advisory? And I'm only using that as an example because Mr. Jimenez reached out to me about it via Twitter today and I'm trying to be responsive. What What is the appropriate thing to do with this board and commission specifically? Our recommendation for the access advisory board is as the resolution process if it moves forward create a space for someone with that expertise that knowledge so they are embedded in all our boards and commissions. So regardless if we're talking about arts or parks, we have someone that has that experience that could provide input and then could impact not just the access advisory board, but projects citywide or policies that are coming forth for input citywide, program citywide. So it's really spreading that. But I almost see that as a a plus, not a minus. I don't understand entirely why access advisory should go away and we should have access advisory spots on each other board commission. That's what I'm trying to understand. The the other part of that, of course, is did you ask the access advisory folks what they believed about it? because this is a very specific body that was designed and created and had has had considerable support from Madame Mayor over the years to be be able to figure out the ways in which um different abled persons interact with governance and city related functions. Right? So out of it has come a lot of wealth of information and I just don't know if we're going to be able to replicate that if they're on an individual board where perhaps they are not the loudest person in the room or maybe they're on now a 14 person board but their issue is so very specific but they're not feeling comfortable in the outside the confines of access advisory to have those conversations. Does that make sense? And again, I'm only giving this as an example because there's so much to unpack in this um series of things that I don't want to make a mistake with a specific board in the movement to do the broader thing which I think is a good discussion. Similarly, Miss Der points out with NABS for example like is it true that at a NAB the council member cannot speak that that I didn't understand. So no Tyler Shaw, agenda manager for the record. So the reference that council member Derer is talking about is the definition of the council liaison role in my research into the boards it came about that the council liaison role isn't defined anywhere it's not a real thing it's kind of a tradition of the council so this would define that role and make it a real thing and in the neighborhood advisory board specifically there will still be an item for council member updates just as there has always been. So council will still have the opportunity to talk to their community and let them know what's happening in council um and make sure everyone's on the same page. Okay. And and I'm so sorry, Mrs. Parzo, you wanted to answer about access or what did you want to answer my concern about access? I again I I don't want to change something. I'm trying to not to break something or fix something that isn't broken, right? But I also think we should fix what is broken. Yeah. Yeah, I think what you utilizing the Reno Access Advisory Board as the the model you're talking about really the intent is again spreading that out that knowledge base throughout the city of Reno. Um and it's also ensuring that we don't have silos uh where only matters that relate to access are discussed at this board. that should really be part of conversations citywide especially I mean as an example parks if a park is being designed that is a great space to have that lens currently if a there's something that comes forward it may go to access advisory board it may not go there so we don't want to create gaps in the processes we have it's more of an approach to unify I see uh multiple bodies eliminate silos and ensure that these values are embedded citywide. Does that help? Council member Rice, if I may, just when I was on access advisory, we were completing the Moana pool and like Cynthia said, they came and gave a presentation to access advisory, but not all the projects went to access advisory. So I think and there was a lot of good input received from that board and I think there is value in having that representation on all the boards just in case that presentation doesn't get brought to that board and and do some projects then not and I've never represented access so a lot of projects do not go there because they are over I don't think it's on I think it just maybe falls through the cracks at some point so I don't I don't think it's anything intentional but I think this is a way to ensure that access advisory and some of these other um boards and commissions have representation throughout all of our our boards and commissions. But correct me if I'm wrong. I was just going to add on to another concern that you had which I hadn't thought about was um the comfort level in the in the small, you know, in the very detailed information they may have to share. It might be something that we want to do is put an agenda item on there for a um access advisory report so that it is their time and they you know can prepare what they want to present and discuss it. So we make sure that we protect that time. I don't know it's just a suggestion. Well, especially when you're looking at um projects that are very very significant. I've also thought, you know, whether you guys agree with me or not, but I also thought that this body should have someone represented from the school district whenever we make those decisions on our projects close to schools or where we need to put more schools, those types of things. I think, you know, it keeps them very disconnected. So, I think to I think Randy, you just brought this up or Council Anderson um the reason why it makes sense, right? So, okay. All right. Um, my turn. I'm sorry. Are you done? Okay. Yeah, I think he's I think we're four minutes over on Mr. Reese. Council, are you done? Oh, I I was finished. Okay, sure. Um, so um I'm on my second comment period and um I'd like to address the urban forestry, but I want to make sure if we actually go into a resolution, there are I have a number of questions about the resolution, how it work. For example, you just said Tyler, the council member would still have a time to speak. That's not mentioned here. In fact, the council leaison role says it shall not interfere with participate in the work, discussions, deliberations, or recommendations of the board, commissioner, committee. And I got to tell you that is so broad. You've been at mine. These are new people. Often they have many questions about process and I help them out. I don't tell them what to talk about or what to think, but to say to to legislate away our ability to interact with what was supposed to be an advisory board to us, I I think is very problematic. So, I think that that's like putting some kind of handcuffs on um a council liaison person. You know, I'm sure the mayor spoke to access advisory. She's not sitting there silently and just going to make a report back to council. She's engaged with them. That's why she's their liaison. That's why I'm the liazison with historic resources. They ask me, "What do you think about this? Can we go in this direction? What's the best way to approach this?" Those are the kind of comments that they ask for input on. So, it's not an interference. It's a participary part. So, I can't support that. For example, but I want to I only have a minute and a half, but I want to talk about trees. Um, why do we have an urban forestry commission? It's one of the oldest commissions at the city. Trees were recognized over 40 years ago as very important. Um, having a board obviously was required to be a tree city. Um, uh, Mrs. Sparza says, "Well, we can get there another way." I don't quite agree, but it technically probably So, um, we are the fastest warming city. One thing I think that folks missed is that, um, urban forestry actually has a regulatory role. They're an appeal body for the urban forester. You say in your document that that should be a commission. A commission has a regulatory role. So to not only recognize their their commission role, but to make them a subcommittee that has all of the same cost. You have to post an agenda, uh do the minutes, have open meeting law. You can't get away from any of that. I don't see where the savings are. So my question both to our manager and to you is how is this improving the process? How are we making it better? So before you answer, um I want to point out that we've often talked about moving trees out of parks. They've talked about moving them over to um O and M. Um and that's because me most of the city's trees are not in parks. They're on our rightways on every street has public trees and the focus of the group is not just on parks. It is on educating the entire populace. That's why we have a tree giveaway for example. Um the uh it implies by making it a subcommittee that we're lessening its uh focus and importance. It would be advisory to the parks department to parks commission, not to the council. Like they're supposed to write a report to the parks commission. Whether that report ever sees the light of day, I don't know. In the parks section, you don't even have any mention of trees. And this is new. You just wrote it. So, I'm struggling to understand how trees even fit in there. Um, so I think it's actually the opposite of what needs to be happening. And to the point that we had the vice chair of part of urban forestry come here today and I saw a letter from the chair. Uh neither of them agree with this approach. I don't as the liaison. So we've missed the boat somewhere. What we want to do is make it better not devalue it. We want to make it actually more important. And talking to Jackie she said more people should care about trees. I 100% agree. But I think that takes some thoughtful discussion with the board to to my council member's suggestion with that board on how can we improve the process. What in their opinion they've spent years on this. What could we fix from them as a board? So I I really don't support this. I think that it's just devaluing. It's the same cost. I don't see where the gains are. So Okay. Thank you. That's all right. But if we get into the resolution, there are many little issues here that are problematic. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. Yeah, I got a lot to say, but I'll try and be quick. Um, first of all, I just want to thank um, Clerk Huntsman for helping me when I first got on council and I had my NAB and I had new NAB members and um, I reached out to um, get training for my new NAB members and she was great with helping my my NAB members get up to speed with how to just be on the board. So, I just want to say thank you for the support that I've had for my NAB. And I know that my NAB went from, you know, not not having very many people on it to being full right when we, you know, stopped. But, um, I think that just shows that people want to be engaged. They want to get information. They want to provide feedback, you know, for all topics, not just development. Um, anything that comes through just sometimes it's just information from N. RTC if I can get them. But, um, it's just really important and I I really appreciate the support we've gotten. Um, and I I would like to see that keep going as much as possible. Um, the other thing I want to say is I am really happy to hear so many other council members um, speak about our seniors. It's so important to me that um, we continue to support them. I mean, we do do things for them. I know most of it is funded by ARPA dollars. Um, we have older Americans month. We do pickle ball. We do walks at the park. We do senior resource fairs. We do uh technology trainings. Um we I personally use my discretionary funds to pay for some cooking classes, but um there was also some other cooking classes with Reno Food Systems. Um there's a lot of things that the city of Reno does to support that group of people and I think right now that there's a lot of uncertainty for them with um things happening maybe at the federal level. Also, I just want to make sure that we um continue to support them the best way that we we can. And I know that it's very important to my seniors that they they keep their board. And I know I've asked um several times to get um something going similar to Relief Reno, but um specifically for seniors where we can get donations and use that money for senior related program. and I would love to have that board be the people that decide how to use that funding for activities. So, it's really near and dear to my heart. I hope that um I can get the support of council to retain that board. Um I know there was some um debate about me staying as a liaison last December regardless of whether or not I remain. I think that that is an extremely important board and I think it should continue. Um the last thing I want to say is I completely support council member Derer on the relief Reno um section. Um you know our master plan says that we're supposed to be working towards uh sustainability. We are the fastest warming city in the country. Um we are working on our council strategic goals. We should be incorporating um any way possible to um plant more trees. Um, so I I just think that that's a really important one to keep. So just wanted to kind of echo that. Um, I know we're talking about all of them, but those ones in particular, NAB, Seniors, and Relief Reno are extremely important to me. Okay. Urban forestry. Yeah, urban forestry. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. And by the way, did you see the oned station over um at the senior center? It's AI technology. So you can go in there and um have like medical assistance immediately. Yeah. Well, also too, we I know that's not part of this, but I just wanted you to know. But I wanted to say too, we did ice cream socials where we also had a document shredder service available so people could bring their their like old bank statements, whatever, get shredded. And they also had a vaccine clinic at the same time. So people were getting their their flu shots, their COVID vaccines. I mean, these things are important. So, it's a social activity, but it's also getting people to do those things that they should to stay healthy. So, all right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Um, part of I think where there is a little confusion, um, maybe you can help us through this, Jackie. I'm not sure. There seems to be different sort of parts of maybe where we can give you direction or maybe where we're a little uneasy. I would say the liaison aspect, but I want Jackie to weigh in on that because she had a very good reason about the liaison and had to think about that. So, I just wanted to clarify for the record, Council Member Dor, you um indicated some concern with the language that Mr. Shaw had identified after researching a variety of different boards and commissions. That particular board is a board that reviews development projects before they come to council. And if a council member were to opine and make suggestions or things about a project, then it might preclude you from voting when it actually gets to you. So that was the purpose, the intent behind that language. But I just don't do that just to assure you. Oh, I understand you would never. questions are more about um process or um there were questions and and let's say the developer didn't four people asked about transportation but the developer didn't answer it. I say do you want to address the transportation question that came up that's the kind of facilitation I never opine about a project there or anywhere till we get to council. Sure. So I just wanted you to understand the purpose of the language. Yeah. The the other thing I do worry a little bit about um Jackie is very easy to work with and you know if you ask her she'll bend over backwards for you. I do worry just a little bit if let's just say you weren't here you know in six months or whatever that looks like bring in a new city manager. Does this bind us when you look at that um you know to a certain level? No. So, in my opinion, the resolution makes it easier for council to make adjustments to this system. So, instead of having to undergo an ordinance change, the resolution can be brought forward to a meeting and changed as frequently as council decides it needs to change. So, if you like that identify something you don't like, you can let the manager know and we'll get it on an agenda. Okay, that's perfect. And then one thing is um with human rights um does is it because I know we have to get a certain score. Um can we still achieve that? Um yes I I reviewed the scorecard that is issued every year. Our our raw score is 107 points. Uh having a human rights commission it's five points. So we would still get above 100. We would still have a perfect score. And I've also uh been in touch with uh the group to see if if there's any impacts if we spread uh I don't want to say spread if we reassign human rights commissioners to other boards if there's an impact there as well. But the other thing is I'll sort of reimagine that too. Yeah. Um I now that we're back um I think there's a lot you know more that we can engage in because now that we're we're back but we also are doing a lot of other things that we never did before which is the work of you guys that's you know care about that and so thank you and that's great to see it's not minimized that's good job. All right um Councilwoman Taylor. Yeah I guess I just um had a comment on the urban forestry and the seniors. I don't think that from my point of view we are getting rid of or not engaging. We are trying to consolidate and be more efficient in the going back to the discussion that we had earlier today with our constraints as a city and as Reno. And you know uh I I wasn't going to say anything about urban forestry but council member Der we were at a meeting and the chair of the urban forestry said I've been on urban forestry for seven years and I've got nothing done. Those were her words. So, I'm I'm wondering if there's maybe something we can do a little bit different different and change it up and try and get something done and if they have the support of that other other board. I don't think we're trying to um eliminate anybody. I think we're trying to be more efficient with the resources that we have. Thank you. And if I could just respond, I think her frustration was about ordinances, but when you look at what they actually got done in terms of starting a tree giveaway program, planting trees all over the community, her particular frustration was about the ordinance. And that's what she said. I I haven't gotten anything done because we haven't in 10 years addressed the ordinance. We are now, but we haven't. So, all right. Anyone else? Madame Mayor, I'll use my last minute. Um, I I continue to believe that we can fix the structural things that are problematic. The inconsistency between boards and commissions, a variety of those, bringing them into resolutionbased versus ordinance-based is all good. Uh, it sounds like there are rational reasons to continue having the urban forestry folks meet in order to meet these very important uh environmental aspirational goals. Um, I I believe seniors are a group that may need to have their own space. So, again, I'm just saying that for me, I I would like to see them remain as their own standalone group, whether they have funds or not. Um, I think a lot of the things that Miss Eert mentions that they do are functions of like parks and wreck, right? They're like we're doing these different programming through parks and wreck. So, I don't know why it couldn't have a lot of those things be done in it. And then the last thing I'll say is I think NABS can cover any topic of concern. I didn't totally understand this idea that they can only speak on development issues. I think it's important that that be one of them, but I think the NABS have the space for like updates from police um different kinds of engagement things. I just I worry that making it be only one topic. Um and I know you had that slide that said people like one topic items. Um, but I heard other people today say, "We like to have all the items." I don't know. Great. Yeah. All right. I'll use the last minute, too. Um, on that, um, I agree that this is I actually wrote that down, but I had run out of time, but they love getting the police update. I don't know where else they get it about their neighborhood. So, it's an important component. When it didn't they police would show up, they would be very upset. Where are the police? We want to hear what's going on with crime um and how we can be more effective. The other thing is that there was this statement in here about only meeting at city hall for the NABS. That doesn't work for my NAB and I don't think it probably works for yours. Um they want to meet in their neighborhood. It's a neighborhood advisory board and that's where they're comfortable. It's informal to to get to the point. That's where they're comfortable letting it all hang out versus coming to a more formal space. So I often have met at a library. that's fine. Whether it's Moana Nursery, a library, whatever. But I just th that is why I want to make sure that when we get into the particulars of this resolution, we really think through what we're trying to achieve. And I appreciate your comment about all things because I think it's shortsighted to say you can only do this one thing. It may be that the manager has a crisis come up. It could be on fire. It could be on anything that you quickly want to get sort of a neighborhood feel that you could put it on the agenda. But I think the words focused on development get get us there, you know, and I that's where they've been. Anyway, I uh brought this slide up because I think this really highlights the multiple ways to connect with the community. If there is an urgent matter related to fire, for example, we could quickly schedule a forum, a town hall, we could have a special, you know, workshop as needed. So there are multiple tools we have available and platforms to connect with the community. Uh, so again, just wanted to bring this up again. Well, anyway, if we could just sort of get some general principles out to Council Member Reese's point about the direction we're going. I'm not prepared to adopt a resolution that lays all this out. I do want to begin meeting. I mean, we are on a 90-day pause. I have four very controversial projects pending in W 2. I need to be able to meet and have the public opine. So, I just want to get back to regular order. I would hope in any motion that we say we go back to doing our business. If you want to come forward, let's say um I'll pick it access advisory. Um you actually meet with those people and you come forward with a specific set. You fill in the blanks about this about what should change. And I really gonna challenge you try to figure out what's broken and what you're trying to fix before you do that. You know, like when you talk to them, ask them, "What do you want to fix? What could work better?" In that setting, I think you had a great idea. Go to the meeting and ask them at their meeting what put it on their agenda. But I don't want to hold up starting to meet and I don't think we need to. I mean, the 90-day pause is over July 31. um you know, we need to meet and and I'm not comfortable with this set of uh NAB rules um to to council member Reese's point about talk about more things than development and have police reports and so on. So, thank you. Yeah. Um I I touched on this on my first uh round, but I think that um W 4 specifically needs more engagement. I think one drop in meeting is just not adequate. Um, I would like to see engagement at each board meeting. Have you be an agendaized item, discuss what's happening, what your goals are, get feedback from the different boards and commissions. I'm talking about all the boards and the commissions like Oh, yeah. But I'm saying also specifically in my ward, I would like to see more engagement in this process because they did one drop in session in the North Hills library for feedback. Um, if we could also have, you know, outreach at a community cleanup or something where I know there's going to be lines and lines and lines of people there to get their feedback, that would be great. So, I'd like to see that happen to get more engagement. And um you know there's just some things that are important like the youth city council is very important that's you know our youth that's our future but I think we also need to keep in mind our seniors you know that we should not forget about them as well. That's my point if youth is staying we should also keep the seniors Um I actually ran on bring the nabs back. they were gone uh 12 years ago and it was really really important for me um to make sure that on day one that we brought them back and we did and I think they're very beneficial. I would also say um how whatever the level of engagement is from that council member now that we are in ward only voting before it was very very different because everyone had a vested interest in the entire city. This everyone knows this is one of my my big pet peeves, right? And so we had a lot of engagement because of that because of word only voting. We are incredibly fractured now. And it makes it um really damaging for more community input. You're going to get a lot less now. And I hope the people that implemented that are happy because what they did is made everyone territorial of and I don't think we're a big enough city where we should be fighting over um you know that's not my ward. I could care less about downtown. I could care less about Verdi whatever. It's wrong. It's absolutely wrong um on every level. But that here we are and uh we can't change that. And I want to point out the voters, the voters voted against that. So you can thank the people again that wanted to implement that great idea. Um because I'm lucky if I get uh you know I'm lucky if I get maybe two people at a, you know, ribbon cutting or a celebration or whatever that looks like. And it's wrong. We should all have invested interest. So going back to the NABS, it was one of the things that I did on day one whenever I was elected. I was very passionate about it. It's very different today. It's ward centric. And I, you know, I would say it's a reflection on how each council member wants to engage with the ward that elected them and that should be allowed. Maybe some want to have you could have a nab every other week or you could have none at all. Right. And so I think, you know, that should be up to the council member how they want to interact um in their neighborhood because that's why word only voting is now in place because it's supposedly reflective of the area in which you represent. Now, I don't know what that looks like for you or for anyone else, but I do think it's a style of um that reflection of who was elected and and how you want to communicate with the people that elected you. I like that idea a lot, Mayor. I just wanted to give I don't know what that looks like, but my thought Yeah. Well, let me give you one example. So, it says in here that the NAB should only review these kind of certain developments but not others. So going to give you an example that doesn't fit this box. Recently we had a project called Jiffy Lube that came in got more comments letters than any project in my entire tenure of 11 years. Even the biggest projects got over 450 letters. What we did was we had them come to the NAB. They there wasn't a NAB, right? Because it was just a staff issued permit. We had them come to the nab and I held it here on purpose because this is a bigger room and we had a lively nab discussion and that input was provided to the staff because they were actually listened and the developer and in the end the staff decided no we're not comfortable issuing this now it normally would ne this would be forbidden from coming under the the way this is written it couldn't have come it says only these certain ones not one like I just described and that's where I think we kind of maybe miss the boat that it should be more flexible and that's why I guess I support what you say, Madame Mayor. Go ahead. Just want to make sure for the record that currently there's no legal obligation at all for any development project to come to any NAB and the effort by identifying them was to require them to come. I I like it. I mean, I'm supportive of a lot in here. I think it just needs to be fine-tuned. And I'm giving you an example, Jackie, where words that are written on this page, we we already have exceptions that exist. the the the police reports that they've asked for that that's not scheduled anywhere. There's no special police thing that talks about crime in each neighborhood or some anticipation. So, I I like what the mayor's saying. I like couldn't that be up to you as a if if it is up to me, I'm totally fine with that. Yeah. And I do not That's what I'm saying. You're I do not want to prescribe how anybody else does their nab or how they engage with their residents or whether they have coffee clutches or town halls or nabs. I just don't want to. What's is it? Tele Town. Telety Towns. I suggested that because that worked for me. I like that. I had great response on a telet town hall. Fantastic. So, I'm just saying I think it's the creativity, the marketing, um the the way you want to engage in your residence. And I I really appreciate the effort and I appreciated Jackie coming. She didn't come to a NAB because we weren't having nabs then and I had very low attendance because of it, frankly. I mean, I had like 20 people there, not 60. And the NAV members didn't even know they were invited, so they didn't come to mine. They came to Miguel, he told me. But my point here is just that um she there were many comments made at the NAB, but I don't see them reflected here. That's they they you came to solicit their input. Minutes were taken, but I don't see that reflected in where we came out. So, okay. Um, I think Counciloman Eert, are you done? I think I got my points across. Cynthia, how how do we get there? What's the best way? I want each council member to have the flexibility. Some might not choose Some might choose to never have an a neighborhood advisory board meeting. And I think what happens then is probably very hard to um do a good job as a council member if that's the way they choose. But that's again I you know they were elected by that that ward. It should be reflective of what that looks like. So Jackie, what do you think? So So is it am I hearing that the does the body I'm not quite sure. Um I've heard a lot of different things. Yeah. But I think what I'm hearing is that a couple of individuals are not prepared to vote on a resolution today. I I think that's a good idea. What I would say, and I know there the people that are watching this meeting right now today are people that care about these boards and commissions greatly and I would say it's important that we that everyone weighs in and we bring something back to the next council meeting or the one after because I think we have another one right after on a week from today, right? which gives you time I think to look at what that structure looks like. Obviously there are some boards we think absolutely they're they're engaged they're important uh representation of the community and population and then there are some to be honest with you there really isn't any reason to have them. So we we got to we got to just and maybe there is later on down the road but not today. they're just people are not engaged in them and I think we can do a lot better job and you know it's just kind of restructuring all over the board. So, so the feedback you know council received a briefing the feedback was provided at this point there's a detailed resolution and a presentation does the body just need more time to reflect and then you want to come back in two weeks with and you can have an opportunity to gather your thoughts. Yeah, I just I wish there was a more clear path so that we all feel comfortable about voting. I think we're saying the same thing, but how do we get there? Are I'm sorry. Are you saying to do the same resolution in two weeks? So, the next meeting? Oh, no. Come back with other opportunities of what we were just talking about. There will be certain boards. Yeah. I think more engagement from the public. I also think what boards have we identified like you just identified um seniors um those things right I think there are some other boards that we probably don't need to have so you pull up the list of boards and let's talk through maybe council mayor perhaps you move I'm just trying to get us here these other items that are in on this agenda so uh is there any agreement on any of the proposals that one might want to make a motion on in a limited fashion. Um I think it's a great idea to integrate the access advisory board into the other boards. So perhaps you can make a motion on that and see if your colleagues agree and we can take a couple of them at a time just to kind of clear the deck and then come back. Um what the mayor wants. How would you feel about that? Um, sorry, what did you say? Sorry Megan. It's okay. Manager Bryant was asking if there was any any motion that could be made to just kind of inch forward. Um, and I um recommended maybe taking the access advisory board and putting one of those people on each of the boards. I think that was a great idea. Um, all right. What about I'll try um how about we keep um we move forward. Okay, so we move forward with more public engagement. Currently right now I I think um every I've heard everyone loud and clear. We absolutely should keep our senior boards, our youth city council board, um urban forestry, um urban forestry, um and and yeah, we said seniors and move forward with that resolution today. Okay. To keep them. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, that's the the motion that I will make and then um so just go over it. seniors um urban forestry and what was the third one? It was uh you city you city council Miguel already being kept but that one you city council already being okay so and do you want to combine arts and the public art committee is that something agree on I think so I do so uh council member you're not willing to work with urban forestry in this other place you we can't combine that is that what I'm hearing correct I'd like it's the same cost and so what I'd like to do is for this team to come to urban forestry, meet with the urban forestry commissions. What Jackie told me is that she wants to make it um even a a higher priority. And so putting that question to the board would be elicit an answer. And what was the original reason for requesting that we combine these two? It was a functional change to better align the structure of the boards with the structure of the departments. Currently, urban forestry is a function of parks. So the recommendation was to create a subcommittee which would report to the parks committee. Council member Der's correct that they would be functionally the same. They would have to comply with Nevada open meeting laws. So what is I guess I don't understand what's the difference between what was in the resolution and and what you're proposing if it's the same thing functionally. I'm I'm thinking of semantics as far as getting to a resolution. The the function is the same. The outcome is the same. You still have urban forestry within this. Is that correct? you still have urban forestry. So the difference from my perspective is that the urb the urban forestry according to what I read here would now provide a report to the parks commission not a report to the council. So it would have to be filtered with another committee. Number two half more than half the trees are not this is a no this is a deal breaker for you. I I think it's not good. Now now I am not saying I'm opposed to any change. I would like them to come and discuss it and see if there's some improvements. I just don't know what we're fixing. That's what I'm trying to figure out. I think we're since it's a cost neutral. It's just that we have a loss of communication with the council if we're going to do reports. I mean, anybody will tell you is there a difference between a department head and a division head like in terms of reporting relationships like one reports to the other or it's just a prof higher profile thing? But from my understanding, the parks commission would still come to the city council and give that yearly update, right? So that would include the urban forestry. Well they annual report as well. They're not tree experts. There's no change here to create or purpose in the purpose. It does not mention trees. It just talks about park facilities, maintenance, development. But I think we can all get on board with seniors and that's something we can all work on to get towards the resolution to move forward in the agenda today. Did we say uh NABS as well? Was that part of We were going to look at the NABS as far as you can bring anything to the NABS or whatever that is as far as open discussion. We're not going to limit it to development projects. All right. I want to make a motion. We're going to um continue with urban forestry. We're going to continue with um seniors and I combine arts and culture. We're going to combine arts and culture and um we where where else the access advisor human rights? Do you want to still have a access advisory? I love I I do love the process of putting an access member on those boards and commissions. I think that's super helpful. So, I do think integrating that. And here's what I'd say. It would be nice to see what the outcome is and then we can assess people. We don't have to get, oh my gosh, we're losing everything. Let's like assess some of this and see is that a positive outcome, Jackie? and you'll be able to tell us. We're seeing it. Yeah, we're seeing a positive outcome. This is working. This isn't working. I think that is a better approach. But just in doing that, mayor, just to be clear, do you still want to have an access advisory board or do you just want to disseminate the focus to other boards? Um, well, you I don't want to create redundancy. That's why I was saying I'd like to hear more feedback from you know some people that So do you want to keep it on the inter right now? I want to let's keep it right now and then Okay. Yeah. And also I'd like to hear their thoughts about going on other boards. Yeah. Right. Because again that's another population that is very misrepresented. So I want to be very so to be respectful of what they what helps them the most. The way the resolution is drafted, it adds new eligibility criteria for senior service perspectives on all of the affected boards, for access advisory perspectives on all of the affected boards, and human right perspectives on all of the affected boards. The direction would be to maintain the senior and access board and also maintain the new eligibility criteria for the other boards and see if spreading out the and reintegrating the boards across the spectrum is a net positive and get feedback from those specific committees on the impacts. To have both. Yeah. The additive concept. Yeah. Try them both and see what's working. Yeah. I would like to hear what's working and how it's going. And if it's not, then we're going to go in a different direction. And what about human rights? Did you have an opinion there? I I Well, I'm comfortable because we're still meeting a lot of criteria there. So, I think that that's not necessary and we're doing a lot of things that where we're meeting those benchmarks. It's pretty um incredible what you guys are accomplishing. So, I don't think I don't think we need it. Okay. So anyway, do you think that you do you have a clear direction, Cynthia? I think so. So the access uh human rights, they would still remain with the process that is proposed in the resolution, but the board itself would be eliminated. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think so. Okay. But I want to be clear, we're not adopting the resolution. This is a new motion. Correct. Yeah. Okay. So, keeping urban forestry, keeping seniors, keeping youth council, access advisory, access advisory, and combining what was it? The arts and culture. Okay. And integrating access, human rights, and seniors into other boards. Okay. I also think it's a great way for other people to serve on different boards, but I don't want to do both because that creates more redundancy and it I think defeats the purpose. So, right now, that's where we're at, but that I think is going to change once we longer term. All right, I'll second. Okay. Does that make sense, Madame Mayor? For my part, um, and I'll direct this to Mr. Hall. I I don't know what we're voting. Moving on. There were many motions that were proposed, resolutions to be adopted, ordinances to be advanced. So, I'm trying to figure out if the better part of Valor is for us to say, "We've made a bunch of recommendations. Now, staff, you've got to go back and bring them back to us when they're ready for prime time." Because I I don't know what the motion would be at this point in time. Well, and here's here's where I think I'm I I think where we're a little sideways is that we haven't had this conversation of what was important to the council, what was important to the community, and um you know, we needed to have this so that we can I guess move forward in the best way that um that it makes sense. um we needed to get Jackie's feedback because she went on a full-blown tour and now knowing that we have um better information, but we also know with Jackie's feedback and her tour, we know that we need to make changes and I think that that's pretty clear. So, would we call this council direction versus a motion? Is that what you're getting at, Mr.? Yeah. So my motion, a formal motion at this time would be to continue this item to a future agenda in inviting staff to understand the recommendations provided by council direction. Second. So I question I'm seeing you confused. I also wanted to make sure we had some clarity on the neighborhood advisory boards and the changes there. I just want to restart them um as they are, but I am happy to work through this language just to make sure that it's reflective of what we've talked about here today because I it isn't written. It's not something we can vote on today because it doesn't match up with what council member Reese or anyone else said. Makes sense. When would you like this item brought back? Uh not the next meeting, but the meeting after that. Next meeting in August. August 13th. Okay. August 13th. And then if we're asking for more feedback from the community, is that long enough? I don't think so. You don't? Okay. I mean, that was like a major request here. Correct. Yeah. Is that what you want to see? Oh, it's not me. I'm ready to approve what they have um presented today. So, what I'm saying is a major piece of this was that there wasn't enough community feedback. So, just bringing it back in two weeks might not be enough time. Miss Anderson, what I heard was that the things that needed feedback would be developed if we allowed the things to continue uh uh seniors to continue on its path, urban forestry to continue on its current path. That was where I know Miss Eert was asking for very specific additional uh information from Ward 4, but as I understood the mayor's comment, it was directed more at um allowing the existing structures to play out moving forward, develop feedback through that process because then we have a resolution, an ordinance process that we can change very discreetly in the future. And Miss Eert advises that her cleanup's in six weeks, so it's midepptember. So perhaps instead of in August, it could come back in September after you've actually had a chance to meet with some of these boards. I invite you to come meet with the urban forestry and even the NAB and um see if there's some improvements to be made and go to this cleanup. I do I want to bring council back to this slide. This is our next steps and it lays out a one-year process for community engagement. I think it would be beneficial to bring the resolution back sooner rather than later with the recommendations that you have all made and then spend the year testing that resolution and going to the boards and seeing what they think and then come back the following year with any changes or recommendations from there. Um because we can adopt a resolution that makes the administrative changes and then talk to people at cleanups and say what do you think about eliminating seniors and integrating them into our other boards like what's your feedback on that and then we can come back to council in a year. So Mr. Miss Anderson Mr. Shaw's position is my position, right? It's that we can exist in the current framework, go out and gather some of that for additional tinkering in the future, but I that sort of forecloses the necessity to do anything before we make that vote in uh two or three weeks. So, Council Member Ree, do I understand um your request that there be no changes? We restart everything in August, do outreach for another year, and then report back. No, that that was not that was not what I was saying. I I am prepared to get to the majority of things outlined by staff recommendations. Um there are things that we have now said as a body that we do desire to see continue under the status quo. That was seniors having their own uh that was keeping urban forestry unmerged and everything else on here is correct. Uh access was going to have both. It was going to have a parallel path. Right. So it's like looking at this I I think there are parts of this that do not need to happen and that would remain the status quo. the other parts about changing it into ordinance uh related issues, cleaning up the the various things. That's all would go forward, but also you mentioned the NAB, so that's not I'm just looking for direction on in August, do we restart the human rights committee? No. Okay. We said no. Okay. I just want to make that clear. So today I guess what we if we want to just keep it simple and everything else moves forward we could say okay um senior stay um thank you then I mean this is just how I'm seeing it senior stay um human rights does not um um youth youth city council stays it's not even on here I'm urban forestry stays access advisory. It sounded like you wanted it to stay. So I think what we want to do I think we want to restart the boards we can and if you want a motion to no longer have a human rights commission if that would make it simpler and if you want a motion to merge arts and culture why don't we do those motions and just get that done. Council member Dor I I'm going to defer to city attorney hall but I don't think we're agendaized to do that today. So the continuence is necessary so that we can make sure that staff can make the changes. Well, why the recommendation is we're not agendaized to make those changes. So the motion was to continue this and then bring back um an item that would address council's changes that they want to make. So I think that would be the best path forward. Okay. All right. Then um that will be the motion. Okay. That would So I um I just made the motion. I'll second that motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. What What is the motion now? Just to continue it. Don't kill me. I just want to make sure I know what's happening. What? There's just been a lot. Uh so what is the motion? Motion is is to continue. Well, the mayor also made a motion. It's been like three motions and she had a second, too. Councilman Ree, would you be willing to withdraw your motion? Yes, I have withdrawn it. I think it was the same motion. The ever so famous Carl Hall, go ahead. Okay. So, I understand that the motion is continued. Bring this item back with direction that has been given to staff to address those issues that you brought up during the discussion in the resolution. Right. In the right. Yes. What? Madame Mayor, can I ask a quick question? Go ahead. Um I I know that we are think specifically just talking about C3, but from my count there are about 10 items related to this. Do we need to make a continuation on each or is that is this involving all of them? D3 was for discussion only and then E what is it? Two through nine. Two through nine. Those would also be continued. Okay. I just want to make sure that's clear. And yeah, but we can make changes to this resolution. I mean, would do you want us to move forward? What what would help you, Carl? Make make this make a motion to continue. So C3 was for discussion only. So you don't need a motion on that. C4 is what we're talking about now. So motion to continue that with direction to staff to bring it back with your recommendations. Okay. All right. Motion is to bring it back um with council recommendation. Okay. So that is my motion. Second. You move a second discussion. I'll do a one minute. Um I just you to that fine right now. It's okay. when you bring back I want to make sure that we understand that you're going to have to do some work on NABS to conform with the direction that three of us have given you um and so on and I will send you some comments that might help be helpful. Okay. Okay. So, all those in favor say I. All those opposed. Motion carries. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry it's so confusing. I just think there's a lot in there that we need to parse out, but we'll get there. Good job. I think you both did a good job, Tyler and um Cynthia. Good job. Thank you. worry. Okay, don't worry. No. So, all right, Madame Clerk. All right, Madame Mayor, we're moving on to items C5 and C6, regional fire board interlocal and appointments. All right, Chief Cochran, give us the lowdown. Good afternoon, Madam Madame Mayor, council members and manager Bryant. I hope to give you an easy make it I mean we a drag something out too long. So help us be more efficient. All right. Uh Madame Mayor, excuse me. Can I interrupt for one second? I just want to make it clear for the record that uh in light of the continuence there will be no action taken on E2 through E9. just so that we're clear on the record there. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon. Um I'm here on item C5 and six. We're going to do one presentation because although they are discreet items and will require two motions, they are definitely intertwined. So we'll just roll one right into the next. This is in alignment with strategic plan, which we've been discussing a lot today. Public safety being the number one priority of this council. As you're aware, we were back here, I think it was in June, talking about SB 319, which was a bill introduced to drive the discussion toward a regional fire service. The bill that was passed came down to a study, a study of regional, how what regional fire service would look like um not only operationally, but primarily the important parts governance and financing. Um the scope of the study like I said our focus staff has spent a lot of time on this. Our focus is really what the governance model might look like, what the fiscal model might look like. Um and what the bill directed was to have the three jurisdictions juris jurisdictions say that three times fast. um sparks Reno and the county come together um reach an agreement which is the first which is C5 that's the first part of this on how to approach this do a study on regional fire and then come back with that study and it would be up to the various bodies to take action on that as they deem fit when the study comes back the due date for the study is December 31st 2026 the interlocal agreement which we are proposing provides for the creation of a committee which includes two members from each jurisdiction. Two from Sparks, two from the county, and two from the city. There there is an even number of people on that board, which might lead you to ask the question, could there be a tie? What will we do? But the way it's framed is that for any vote, there has to be one member from each jurisdiction who votes for in favor of an action. So effectively, no jurisdiction could be ganged up on and be forced to do something by the other two jurisdictions. Wo County will represent the administrative lead. Uh just by way of a little background, Sparks has already voted on this. They've approved the ILA and appointed their two members. The county has approved the ILA. They have yet to appoint their two members. I believe that will happen next week. And what we have here today is a um ask for you to approve the ILA and appoint two members from this body to serve on that committee. So like I said, two discrete motions. one to approve the ILA and then a second separate motion to appoint two members from this body to serve on the committee which will conduct the study. And when I say conduct the study are the expectation is that you would commission somebody to do the study through an RFP. Staff has worked very hard and actually has a draft RFP in place that the committee could start with and then it would be up to them as to what actually goes out into the world for that proposal. So with that I will take any questions or directed from you. I move. Okay. Thank you so much. Um I guess these are two different motions, correct? Yes. The top one is C5. Okay. Second one C6. I move to approve the interlocal agreement between Wo County, the city of Reno, and the city of Sparks to establish a board to study regional fire and emergency services options. Um pursuant to Senate Bill 319, second 319. Uh I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries. Um and then this is I move to a point we're go going to need um two people from the body. Um I want everyone to have an opportunity unfortunately um or whatever that looks like. I know Councilwoman Anderson and I have been at the table from the very beginning. Um, and so I would just I think because we can probably sit day one and understand the the complexities. Um, I this is just my recommendation. My feelings won't be hurt if if you guys want to make other recommendations, but I was thinking myself and Councilwoman Anderson. Second. You say second. Okay. So, I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. easiest thing you did all day. True. True. Which is unbelievable because it's very usually a controversial topic. That's right. And now we're gonna move forward. Thanks so much, Chief Cochran. I was going to say, yeah. Uh, are we moving on to C7? Yes. Yes. I'd like to make a motion uh to um approve the resolution uh approving the Riverside Drive interlocal funding agreement with Truckucky River Flood Management Authority, Carson Truckucky Water Conservation District and City of Reno for repair and improvements to the existing BMS on the north bank of the Truckucky River along Riverside Drive. Second. So, are you running the meeting? I I guess I am. I just noticed the mayor left. Well, okay. Um, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I. Motion carries unanimously. Moving on to um C8. Is that what C8 C8? Okay. I'm I'm happy to make a motion. This is a resolution approving Riverside Drive inter local funding agreement with Truckucky River Flood Management Authority, Carson Truckucky Water Conservation District, and City of Reno for construction of a flood wall in the north bank of the Truckucky River along Riverside Drive. And just to be clear, these are two different parts of the project um on C7 and C8, which is why we needed two separate resolutions. Correct. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I I Motion carries unanimously. Okay, Madam Clerk, we're going to move on to item C9, please. Do we have any public comment on this item? And do we want a presentation? Madam Vice Mayor, I don't require a presentation and I'm happy to make a motion. Any council members require a presentation? I would just like to know was this initiated by anyone in particular here or Yes, it was initiated by me. Oh, by you. Okay. And I just want to understand what um since it's you, what what are we trying to address? I know how desperately important it is for child care, but is there something that we're asking staff to look at or do? I think um Grace can help us out if we need more clarification. It's all in the staff report and it was based on a recommendation or a request that I had made at a council meeting about a month ago. Yeah. And madam vice mayor, sorry, before we go into discussion, there was um eight comments that were distributed to the council in favor of this item. Good. So, can you just quickly highlight what has to be changed? What what's not working? Sure. Um there's very little we can do in title 18 to make it easier for childcare providers. Um but we did identify a few barriers that um are there for childcare providers when they go to open up a childare setting. Is it in terms of our planning department and any correct specific to planning in title 18 um we require additional entitlements for those childare providers and so we're going to look at can we streamline that process? Is there anything else we can do to make it easier maybe less expensive for those providers? Right. That's great. And then let me ask you this. I know at um the legislature that they considered a bill to help us with this process, too. I don't believe that bill passed. So, are we looking to incorporate some of those elements in here or are those outside the Just to clarify, council member Der, I had a constituent come to me and say, "We need more child care." And I said, "Oh, that's great. We don't really do childcare at the city of Reno, but I went to Jackie and said, "Hey, what can we do within the confines of what the city does?" And then she said we can do some zoning or some revisions here. So this is what this is going to do. It doesn't include anything else. It is within what the city can do. All right. Thank you. Thank you. So I'll move to accept staff recommendations to initiate. I'd still like to know what it is. I mean if we could just talk a little further about it. Why don't I just quickly run through my presentation? I'll do like a very quick Yeah. And that's okay. Um so again, Grace McAdin, senior management analyst for the record. Um, and I'm here to discuss child care facilities and potential initiation to title 18 regarding childcare facilities. Um, so just to set the stage a little bit, um, as you've all said, you kind of understand that this is a need. Um, 72% of Neadans live in a childare desert. Nevada experienced a 55% decline in child care from 2018 to 2024. And we're the eighth least affordable state for infant care. So there's a definite need um, for support there. So on June 4th, council member Taylor requested a text amendment related to child care. And so we're here today um to allow this council uh to initiate or formally initiate a text amendment related to child care specifically in title 18. Um so today in RMC we have three uses. We have inhome child care, workplace childare, and then the child care center. So inhome is typically five to 5 to 12 children. Um it's accessory to a residential home. Um and so you have to live there and you can have an accessory child care uh at that location. For workplace again it's accessory to a primary business. So this is where you have maybe IGT or workers where they have um a lot of workers with children and they can bring their kids to their workplace and have childare there. And then child care center is everything that that's not incorporated in those two uses. So they're those larger child care centers that people come and the primary use is childare. And so, like I said, we've identified a few barriers for providers in our zoning code. Um, all of these uses have additional standards. Um, workplace and inhome require a minor conditional use permit in all zoning districts. And then the child care center requires a conditional use permit in residential zoning districts. And so, what do those barriers look like? For inhome child care and workplace since they have to go through that minor conditional use permit, it's a staff review. It typically takes about 30 uh 30 days. And then the cost is about $4,500. Um, and and something we don't often talk about as a barrier, but that's a risk for the childcare providers because they're investing that time, investing that money, not knowing if they'll get approval. So, can we just put standards into code so they know if we follow these standards, we know that we'll get approval. Um, and then similar for childcare center, but that's a 65day process. Has to go to planning commission. It's about a $5,000 cost. Um, and again, there's that risk of not getting approval. So, should council approve this or initiate this text amendment today, we'll kind of go forward into our typical text amendment process. Staff will do research on best practices, some other jurisdictions for what they do for childcare centers and and other childcare uses. Um, we will then draft an ordinance, go out for public feedback, um, then go to planning commission for their feedback and input. Um, come to council, and then hopefully some sort of adoption after that. And that's the recommended m motion and then I can answer any additional questions questions. So you showed what the the cost and everything was. So what are the recommended changes? Right now there are no recommended changes. We're just kind of uh identifying the problem or the barriers and so we can look at those and um look at some other jurisdictions to see what they do. Um but right now we're not making any recommendations. Okay. And I have a question my mayor. Um when you show the cost I missed the point. Was it the cost to do the work here on the ordinance? No, it's just the cost for the correct permit. Okay. I just wanted to confirm. And then lastly, I know that you have a number of other things in the queue just like council member Taylor. All of us a number of us have asked for other ordinances as well. So, and I think you were putting a list together in our board folder in our council packet. I don't know. Yes, I think we have identified a list of things that have been um brought to us as staff as things that we, you know, should be working on. Um, and so we kind of will look at those and I'm not sure where they're at. Well, okay. But I had asked for that because I didn't want to overload our staff and those things are in the queue. So, it's just we all need to be mindful that there's things in front of this. There still may be sign cleanup for all I know, ADUs that you're still working on, etc. So, I just wanted I am supportive of this item. I just want to be mindful of your workload as well. Okay. Thank you so much. Do we have a motion? Do we have a second? Second. Although, do we have any discussion? Okay. All those in favor? I motion carries unanimously. Council, if it's okay, I know we have some people here for D3. Madame Clerk, can we move into D3 if you're okay with it? No objections. Okay, we will um let the record reflect that council is going to open the public hearing on item D3. Madame Clerk, was proper notice given and any correspondence received? Madam Vice Mayor, proper notice was given on this item and no correspondence was received. We do have two commenters in the audience for your um awareness. Okay. Do um we have any council members that need to make disclosures? I just have a question. Um I think they're here for D1 as well. Is that correct? Just D3. Gotcha. No disc. Um do you will move into a staff presentation please? Good evening. For the record, Angela Fouse, assistant director with development services. Uh, fire chief Cochran is also here. We're going to kind of jointly do this. A little bit of background on this. The Santara development, which is in Verdi, was approved about four years ago. It's over 1,200 units, but it was approved as a tentative map, not a planned unit development. So, just a yes or no vote with conditions. At that time, council added a condition that required that the developer temporarily let the city use one of their homes to be used as a call it residential fire station. This the intent was to allow a twoperson fire crew which would just serve for medical purposes. They would not respond to 911 calls for fire. They would only respond to medical. We don't currently do this now. um but it was a concept that was thrown out when Stonegate was first thrown out. So um that's where the idea came from. But just to be clear, this is not something we currently do. So then moving fast forward then and three years later back in 2024, so that was a year ago, we came back to council and we said we'd like to amend that condition. One of the concerns was staffing. While we have a a house that we could use, we don't we at that time anyway, we were concerned about being able to staff it. You have to be able to staff these things on a 24-hour basis, seven days a week. So, it's not just two people. You're talking a whole crew of people. We would also need to provide some kind of apparatus for them to drive. And again, from a funding perspective a year ago, these were concerns that we had. So, we came forward and we said, well, what would be a comparable condition amendment? And so at that time we proposed that instead of donating this temporary house which was not ours to keep. It was just ours to use on a temporary basis. We would say let's change this and say instead Toll Brothers donate $300,000 so that the city can use that money and go buy an ambulance. We would use that ambulance wherever we needed it so it could rotate around the city. At that time council continued the item. This was a year ago and there was two main reasons the item was continued. One was related to questions on automatic aid. At that time we had a lot of questions of what's mutual aid? What's automatic aid? How do we guarantee that you know this area is still going to be served? The second question was REMA. If if REMA has a franchise agreement with the city and their job is to provide medical service, how do we guarantee that they're going to do that? So move forward to where we're at now. A lot of things have happened in the last year. The most important thing for this discussion was last October we worked with Truckucky Meadows Fire and we adopted a new automatic aid agreement. This is I would say probably the most instrumental thing that we've done. So now we know for sure we have something lined out. Here's the fire stations that serve automatic aid and here's what that means. Secondly, to address council's concerns, we've included a letter from REMA that acknowledges this is within their service territory. And yes, when you call 911, Remza is required to show up with an ambulance. So, the question we're getting is, well, what happens right now if I call 911? Number one, REMA response, medical response. Second, we have three fire stations within the area. Station 40 is a Truckucky Meadows fire station. That's in the Mogul area. It's about a six minute response from this location. Secondly, we have that Reno station off of Mayan. That's station 11. That's about an 8 minute response time. And then of course third is the Somerset station number 19, closer to 13 minutes. So when you call 911 today, do we have the ability to provide medical and fire service? The answer is yes. So, what we'd like to do is amend that condition again, still have them donate $300,000 to the city and to address the concerns from the residents that said, "Well, don't put it towards an ambulance that wouldn't be focused in the Verdai area." So, now we've changed it to say, "Okay, let's apply that to a future capital improvement for fire facilities to serve this area." We don't know what fire is going to look like a year from now. If we are going to regionalize, then maybe we don't need another fire station out here. If we are going to regionalize, maybe we say maybe we do need a fire station out here, but not at the location that's planned right now. Maybe we want it somewhere else in Verdai to serve again kind of a broader need. So, by putting this language in, we would have $300,000 donated that we could sit in an account and when we're ready to actually come up with a long-term plan for fire for the Verdai area, we could use that money to apply it. The other thing I think that's worth important mentioning is that this project is also required to donate money per house that goes to that same purpose. So, every house that they build, and there's about a little over 1,200 homes that are coming in, they have to donate $1,600. We take that money, again, a contribution. It sits in an account and we're ready to do something with fire, whether that's to add on to a Truckucky Meadow station because we've regionalized or maybe expand one of our Reno stations, we have money in an account to be able to do that. So, by the time they're done building, we'll have about $2 million just within that contribution amount that we can use to do whatever we choose for future fire service. So, the recommended motion is before you and Chief Cochran and I are available if you have questions. Okay, Madam Clerk, do we have any public comment on this item? Uh, Madame Vice Mayor, our first public commenter is D. Anne Radcliffe. Will I use the mouse or the remote? The PowerPoint. Oh, will I? Okay. Thanks. Appreciate that. Am I good to go? Great. Hello, members of the Reno City Council. My name is Deian Radcliffe and I'm a resident of Verdi. Please lodge my comments and PowerPoint on the public record. It didn't go. I will try the mouse. Ah, my time's winged. It should just be this way. Yeah, it didn't go for me. Can you pause the time, please? That's okay. It's great. Oh, are we going to go? Okay, we'll just use the mouse. Thank you. Um, I want to share my gra background with everyone. I've worked as a registered nurse for 27 years and have taught American Heart Association life support classes for over 20 years. I currently coordinate and teach our the H8 classes at my um hospital. I want to clarify that my comments today are as a private individual. I am not representing the American Heart Association or speaking on their behalf and I'm not speaking on behalf of my employer. So when someone experiences a cardiac arrest, every second counts. The brain loses oxygen stores within 20 seconds. And you can see that survival and a positive outcome are determined by the timing and quality of CPR and early defibrillation. This is why fire departments employ EMS personnel and why there is a defibrillator outside this um those doors on the left hand side. Oh shoot, sorry. To put it simply, during cardiac arrest, if the heart is not receiving CPR and a profusing rhythm restored, it will not survive. Dead meat don't beat. I'm sorry, guys. This is really not happy there. Okay. Why Why doesn't all of the city of Reno residents that currently live in Verdi and will be moving to Verdi deserve the services that they are paying for? REMA does an excellent job and has done great work for decades, but solely relying on them to serve residents is not a best practice. If this scenario is acceptable, it should be used throughout the city of Reno. You will also note that REMA's response time will be no more than 15 minutes and 59 seconds for a lifethreatening emergency. Every second counts in cardiac arrest, stroke, and other emergencies. The fiscal impact analysis notes that this project alone generates $24.2 million. The fire department budget and the 3 $300,000 contribution um percent are noted below. I can't even actually tell you that percent of that budget it would be because it's such a small percent there. No one can predict the future, but Central was demolished in 2008 and is still waiting to be rebuilt 17 years later to this day. So, the Reno City Council got this right by ensuring that life safety was addressed when this development was approved. Please don't get this wrong and remove the requirement for a residential fire station. and elimination of that requirement also does not support the Reno Fire Department strategic plan of having a six-minute response time to calls. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Addie arerus. Um, Addy Arus, I want to point out Toll Brothers initiated and added condition 20, not the city. They added it to get approval by committing to onsite public safety protection for fire police REMA. The March 24th, 2021 video starting at 9:32, Tol's attorney says, quote, Tol has agreed to additional conditions to enable approval to move forward tonight. After planning commission toll re-examined the project and decided to offer a number of additional enhancements to further public safety. Additionally, this is new. Toll has agreed to convert a home to serve as a temporary fire and public safety station. This will ensure onsite public safety protection for residents. End quote. Tol added the condition. The city merely accepted it. How can the city substantially change the condition when it was specifically added by the developer to get approval? The condition influenced council member Jordan who at 950 said quote the concessions especially the interim station are huge end quote tools intent for condition 20 is fire and public safety being on site. Cashing it out ignores the intent of onsite and ignores police and REMA. And why would you cash it out for only 300,000? Reno fire benefits, but what about Reno police and REMA? Both are part of this condition. If told once out of their condition that they added, let them stand here and explain to their future residents why they no longer need on-site safety of fire police REMA. Now, developers in this area have gone to great lengths to prove REMA is the EMS provider. They use it in their applications every time EMS is questioned. So, this temporary EMS house is for REMA who will love it when the numbers are there and they have the staff and they have the equipment to be there. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have additional public comment? Madame Vice Mayor, we have no additional public comment. Okay, we'll bring it back to the body for questions. Comm Councilwoman Dur. Yeah, thank you. Um I was here uh during this discussion and I was very um impressed and moved by the offer from the developer. Um this is a far away place. This is far from lots of things. We just heard the response times. Six minutes from one place, eight minutes from another, 13 minutes from another. I didn't support a year ago the $300,000 for an ambulance in South Reno, even though it was my ward. And I'd love to have another ambulance. But what was important was it was a key condition that swayed council to support the development and to to change that um to either put $300,000 to a fire station, a future fire station. I guess I don't understand the timing of that. That would go in an account and sit there. Um what we need and we don't even know if there'll be a station. I don't understand the timing of this. So, it's no longer to buy an ambulance. And that's what set the price. Our staff told us that $300,000 would buy an ambulance in South Reno. And so, that's where they came up with the price. I said, "Well, we don't know what the cost of a house is, but we can guess it's probably around 7 $800,000 in this area. And they're going to use it for a period of time. Probably not one year. In fact, a fire station, if there was to be a new fire station, wouldn't be built for many years. Probably 10, 15 at least." Um so it was very important to the whole council that we provide u fire protection. Now I want to share another aspect. Years ago myself, Chief Cochran and Makabe Arms did a public safety announcement out on this site. There were about six fires that had started out here and um we were trying to get people to stop doing target practice um to be aware that embers can fly. This is in a um wind driven corridor of the river. It makes an S-curve and so it tends to accelerate fires because wind whips through that section. Again, it's a S-curve right where the Chucky River goes from being east west to north south. So I I don't understand the timing. In other words, I would rather leave the condition as it is so that when and if houses are built and it was to be put into service at a certain point. I don't think I heard that from our staff, but why not just leave the condition and let it run and provide the fire or emergency response at the time in the place that's needed. Further, we don't know what the outcome is going to be on the study that we've just appointed the mayor and council member Anderson. We don't know. So, why wouldn't we just wait and see? And if there is a study consolidation and there doesn't need to be even a temporary station, that goes away. But if there isn't uh provision for that, it should stay. So that's my perspective. It's a very firerprone area. I don't I I believe they do deserve the service that the rest of Reno gets and the timeliness the rest of Reno gets. So that's my perspective. Uh thank you, Council Member Anderson. Thank you. I had um a lot of concerns about this in the beginning and so I'm just going to share the process that I went through because I was building fire stations with money that I didn't have. I was very freaked out about this. But I feel much better because there's a major change that has happened between 2020 or 21 has happened in this area compared to now and that is we have an automatic aid agreement. So we have a fire department that is rolling on 100% of these calls. We have REMA and Reno. So, we have TM, Reno, and REMA, which I think we can all agree is overly re redundant, but we need it because we don't have, you know, we don't have a dispatch that speaks to itself or speaks across lines yet where we can see whether or not somebody is rolled or not. So, um, I don't have an opinion whether or not the condition stays in place. I I do have a question. Was this house was it going to be provided for REMA? I don't believe so. I believe that the house was being provided for a Reno fire crew that we don't have hired or staffed, which would be six people. Correct. This would be a twoerson crew. What? But it's six when you have three shifts. Correct. Right. Okay. So, my comfort level got greatly increased knowing that we have automatic aid in this area now. So we have TM, Reno Fire, and REMA. So I'd like some feedback from my colleagues about how you feel about that. So I think that's a great point. And when we had our fire round table, my understanding was that auto aid had been planned to be implemented in September and we heard from the staff that that would be highly delayed because they were having all kind of problems with the dispatch as you just brought up. So maybe once all of that's in place, but maybe the chief wants to speak to it. Maybe it's fully in place now. We have the UVLs. We have um dispatch and it is full auto aid. Could you address it? Absolutely. Dave Cochran, Reno Fire Chief, I think you're referring to the new CAD system which was targeted for September, but it's delayed, right? We actually have auto aid in place. It's been in place since October. The new CAD system is going to improve that even more. Last October or coming October? Last. Okay. So, you're saying today, as we s as we stand here today, it is in place and operational. In fact, we used it last night on a fire in Council Member Eert's ward. Right. But in this area, you're saying that all of these stations get the same alert and the closest one responds or what does auto aid mean in this case? Well, we I think Council Member Anderson mentioned the two different dispatch systems. So, we still have that. So dispatched separately, but when that call comes in, the primary uh responding agency, Reno or TM responds, the call is sent to the other dispatch center and they send their units. So they're all going. So if a if a fire even today, not at a house, but just in this area broke out, it's an annexed Reno. And are who would respond? Reno first? It depends on where the fire is. If there if it's a Reno jurisdiction, let me explain it this way. If it's a Reno jurisdiction, but there is a county station, a TM station that's closer, they're going to go. And conversely, if it's a fire in the county, but we have a Reno station closer, Reno's going to go. And that's what happened last night. There the fire that came that occurred happened in a little county pocket up instead. We sent a full first alarm from Reno. So, we had nearly 10 units there plus the county coming behind because that's their jurisdiction. So we had everybody going to that fire. But this is not in county anymore. This has been annexed into the but Oh, let me clarify. The county station is the closest though. So that's why they would be going and then a full rein. But the first call real quick. I'm going to jump in. Council member Anderson, did you get your question answered at this point? Yes. Okay. So, Council Member Reese, did you have a question? Thank you so much. Uh, this is my ward, so I have some thoughts. The first thing is is Chief Cochran. Um this condition when originally passed um was related to the conditions in auto and mutual aid at the time. The concern of course that anyone has sitting at this dis is that when Santara Quulys builds their homes that the people who live there are able to access emergency response services. Right? So it's not a fire station that was offered. What this was about was whether or not someone having a cardiac event primarily would have access to the resources they need to best hope to survive that cardiac event. Is that a fair assessment? Yes, it is. And the slide that Miss Fouse offered, but I'll now ask you about was what happens when you call 911? Who is going to respond to the person living in the Santara Quilys project to their 911 call? So the closest station which in this case is a county station 6 minutes away is going to respond. We will also we Reno will also respond. So there'll be some redundancy but you will get the closest station responding. And also REMA has provided information about their response time. Correct. Right. So do you have any concern that a person living in the Santara development when it comes into existence will be denied services or receive lesser services than people in other parts of Reno? I do not. Then there is no issue that we should be debating tonight. The the condition when it was put on this originally happened at like 10:00 at night after an exhausted council had already sat here for 14 hours and Miss Jordan at the time was just looking for ways to make sure that the people in this community were safe. It was not well thought out because of course no one contemplated that when you gave this emergency response home that somehow that would be done a forever right in perpetuity. The condition doesn't say when it would end or start. This is a project that will take 20 to 25 years to build out. And certainly I don't believe that anyone thought that we would have some home in the Santara Quilys development locked up for 25 years. On top of that, you now know because if you've been sitting here all day, you know what our budget is like. There is not a budget coming anytime soon to build a fire station in this area. There's also not a budget to have a sixperson crew sitting in a house in the Santara Quilys development. We don't have the ability to fund the firefighters we need citywide, let alone to say that we're going to have one in a house offered by Toll Brothers as a condition of approval. At the end of the day, what we should be concerned about is public safety. And your statement to me is that people who live in Santero Quily will be well served by automatic and mutual aid agreements and REMA that lots of resources will be directed at a person. That's enough for me. We've taken the best advantage of all the resource resources that are available to provide service. And I would just add, Miss Flouse mentioned it, the long-term goal is to have a permanent station out in that area staffed with a fully equipped, fully trained fourperson crew. Our our goal is always that, Chief. But whether or not we'll have the money to build a fire station, we're struggling now to build a central station downtown. We have a budget issue that tells you that we aren't going to be adding people. So the idea that we're going to have six people sitting in a house for some indefinite period of time while we wait to have a fire station built is just not realistic. So the the condition was a a good idea in thought, but no one thought about the practical implications of that condition. This is a practical resolution that allows for us to have a future fire station built in that area and the design money go towards it. We put a pause on this when it first came back because we wanted to find out what was going to happen with mutual and auto aid. That's now been resolved. We also now know from REMA that they can fully service the area. So, I have no concerns that someone will have a cardiac event. Uh again, I live with a nurse of 50 years. I I think important that we get to people when they are having those events, but we'll be well served by the resources that we have in this community. Well said. Council member Martinez, did you have a question? Thank you. I was just curious if that 300,000 was something that was approved originally or is this a new number that we were looking at. How did that amount come to be? That amount was proposed by the developer. I believe Miss Fouse might have some more information on where that came from. The history that was in her presentation, I think kind of drives where initially we tied it to an ambulance. The number really hasn't changed, but we committed it to a capital um a capital improvement, right? Maybe on that. Angela, for the record, what what we didn't want was us to randomly throw out an arbitrary number. And let me be clear on that. When when staff or council says $1 million, $800,000, one, whatever, that is arbitrary and that is what gets us into trouble. In this particular case, we said the purpose of this condition was to provide a medical response. So, what can we equate that to? We said, 'Well, what's the cost of an ambulance? And chief said, 'Well, it's about $300,000. And they said, 'Okay, I can follow that logic that that was the intent to provide medical. So, $300,000 gives us a rationale as to where we came up with that contribution amount. Now, I understand people have said, well, they were going to donate a house, so let's look at the cost of the house. That was never discussed. They are not donating a house. We don't get to keep a house. they get that house back and then they can sell it. So that was never the intent. So if I'm trying to not be arbitrary, our logic was for medical purposes, how can we come up with a number $300,000 is the cost of an ambulance. Thank you. And then just to reiterate, condition number five also stipulates that they have to contribute $1,68 per house for future fire stations. They do and that has not changed. So, they will be donating really $2 million as part of condition number five plus $300,000 as part of this condition. And I tried to do the math real quickly. It's about 2.5 from what I calculated roughly. Um, so those are all the questions I had. Thank you. Council member Eert, do you have any questions? Um, I'm sorry. I was I was out for a minute. So, I just want to make sure I understand with the is it the mutual aid or is an automatic aid because I know there's like a difference in those terms. If you could just go through that again. Absolutely. Dave Cochman, Marino, fire chief. This is in an automatic aid area. Okay. Which means nobody has to request. It's automatically programmed into dispatch. If an incident, any incident is reported in this area, we're going to send the closest engine station, which in this case is Truck Meadow station 40. Okay. So, it just goes to that station. And it's not looking for the closest fire truck or anything like that. Just goes to that station. I didn't There happens to be an engine in that station, but I was talking about whatever apparatus they staff with in that station. In this case, it's an engine. So, yes, you would get a fourperson engine from Treky Meadow station 40. Okay. So, it would always be from that station because that's the closest. It wouldn't be from anywhere else. Reno would go as well depending on the nature of the incident. Okay. But Treky Meadows 40 would be the first one dispatched because they are the closest. Okay. Yeah. I don't really have any other questions right now. I assume the ward representative met with constituents and addressed any concerns people have. Council member Der. Yeah. Thank you. Um my second point that I brought up a year ago and I'm bringing up now is this choice of $300,000. Now a year ago you said it was $300,000. We know that prices have escalated on everything, including due to tariffs. I'm not Do you feel confident that an ambulance cost 300,000 a year ago and still cost 300,000 today? Well, I think Angela's description of the Nexus is appropriate. It's more of the EMS. It's driven by an a need for EMS. We were equating that to an ambulance, but we're not buying an ambulance. That's not the intention, right? But we're setting a price. She said there she's looking for a nexus. My my nexus was there's a cost to use a home, a rental. I didn't figure the city was getting that home, but for a period of time, and we've already talked about it, and I'm estimating probably be 15 years before any kind of new station would be built, there's a rental cost for a house that has a value. It's a different nexus. I asked at my briefing for you to look at that. I don't know if you did, Miss Fouse. No, I've given my response. I have not provided any additional information other than what's proposed in the staff report. Okay. Well, anyway, I did bring it up about 10 days ago um so that people would know my thought process. I'm trying to look for a nexus as well and I want to make sure that they have a response. I think 300,000 is just a also not a very good number. I think it should be higher. And why would I say that? Because 300,000 sitting in account when we already know that a fire station 20 years ago cost 5 million. uh station 12 uh 3.1 million plus the land cost. Um and we know that that fire station, we've heard from Wo County, they're just built one for 15 million. And I'm trying to look at the cost this 300,000 how far it will get us even with the extra 2 million that would be paid over time, right? Because it's on each resident moving in. So, and and Mr. Ree said it would take 25 years to do this development. Maybe it's only takes 10, 15, or 20 years to do the development. But anyway, it comes in per home is my understanding, the $1,600 per home. And so I guess um you know, I'm I'm struggling that 300,000 sitting in the county even earning interest at 5% or whatever is not going to get us very far in comparison to what I think we might get. So I'm I'm um I'm I'm not convinced. I appreciate the work Miss Anderson has done to look at auto aid, but I don't know that we're there yet, and I think there's a lot more work that she and our mayor are going to do. I don't understand the time pressure here for It's a question I have for you both. Why now? Why not wait until this work is done? The condition is written that when they come in with house number 25, yeah, this house has to be donated. So they are starting to build houses and those houses will be on the market within the next probably two months. All right. So we'll be hitting that that magic number of house 25 in which case this condition will either have to have them donate a house or we come up with an alternative. All right. Thank you. Council member Reese, this is your word. Are you ready for a motion? I am. I move to approve the revision to condition of approval number 20 as listed in the staff report. Second. We have a motion to second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? I I. All those opposed? I'm opposed. Okay. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. We will move on to item D1. What's that? No, she said she got my opposed. What? You Yeah, you sorry. She thought you said unanimous. No. Motion carries. Okay. Okay. We are moving on to item D1. Um, Madame Clerk, let the record reflect the council is opening the public hearing on D1. Did was proper notice given and any correspondence received? Madam Vice Mayor, proper notice was given um and we did receive three comments, two opposition and one letter of concern. Okay. Council members, do you have any disclosures to make? Okay. Um we will now move to a staff presentation. Welcome Jeff. Madame Vice Mayor, while Mr. Foster is coming forward, does anyone require a staff presentation? I do not require one, but it is your word. I do not require one. It's a very straightforward condition which is required by us to approve. Would you like to move into a motion? I'm happy to, but I want to make sure I haven't truncated my colleagues conversation. Okay. It doesn't look like we have any. So, I'll um move to approve staff recommendations. I can make all the uh findings that no material adverse impacts will be uh made to the public and the proposed vacation approved abandonment subject to conditions as identified by the staff report. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Motion carries unanimously. Thanks, Jeff. Great presentation. Okay, we'll move on to item I believe we're on D2. Same thing. Let the record reflect the council is opening the public hearing on item D2. Was proper notice given and correspondence received. Madame Vice Mayor, proper notice was given. We did receive one letter of correspondence as concerned that has been distributed to the Reno City Council. And do any council members have disclosures? Okay. Do we require a staff presentation? Madam Vice Mayor, I do not require a staff presentation. D2. Would you like to move into a motion, Council Member Reese? I usually need the city attorney to read the bill. Sorry. Sorry, Carl. Oh, thank you, Madam Vice Mayor. Ordinance introduction. Ordinance number 7305, case number LDC25-000046, Milness Family Zoning Map Amendment, Ordinance to amend Title 18, Chapter 18.02 of the Reno Municipal Code Entitled Zoning Reszoning 132.2 two acres located 650 ft northwest of the terminus of Sandeston Drive, 450 ft north of the Peine Pines Court extending north to the northern city limits from Ventana Point specific plan district to 38.5 acres of large lot residential 1 acre and 93.7 acres of parks, greenways, and open space together with matters which pertain to or are necessarily connected there with W five. Madame Vice Mayor, I move to uphold the recommendation of the planning commission and refer this bill for a second reading and adoption. Second. We have a motion to second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And I believe we are on item F1. Is that correct? E1. Edward one. Oh, this is another E. Yeah, I'll go ahead and read. Ordinance introduction bill number 7306, an ordinance to repeal title 6, chapter 6.16 of the Reno Municipal Code titled operation of aircraft section 6.16.040 altitude and other matters relating there too. Okay. Do we have any questions for council? from council. A motion. E1. Oh, here it is. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Wait wait. E1. Okay. Any discussion? Can we just, you know, have a brief uh discussion of what this means? Thank you. Thank you. Brian Sudi, deputy city attorney. For the record, this is a ordinance that dates back to 1979 when the city of Reno ran the airport. Um, it is outdated. It puts us in violation of federal FAA uh regulations and so we need to have it removed off the books. Only the feds can regulate uh air traffic which includes their flight flight pass as well as how high or low airplanes can fly. So this is in conflict with the federal rules and so it just needs to be removed. Okay. So just taking it out, not modifying it at all or anything. We have no jurisdiction anymore. Lot's changed since 1979. All right. Thank you. Hey, we're looking for a motion. Think there was a motion. Second. Second. Motion and second. All those in favor? I I uh all those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Now we are on F1 the second reading. So um do we have any public comments on this item? Madame clerk. Madame Vice Mayor, we do not have any public comment registered and have not received any correspondence. adoption. I think it's four. Ordinance number 6713, case number LDC25-000048 7720 security circle zone change ordinance to amend title 18 chapter 18.02 of the Reno Municipal Code entitled zoning reszoning a 1.55 acre site is compi composed of three acres of three parcels generally located southeast of the intersection of Security Circle and North Virginia Street. Two of the parcels are located east of North Virginia Street, 289 ft south of its intersection with Security Circle. And the third is south of Security Circle, 177 ft east of its North Virginia Street from mixed use suburban to mixed employment together with matters which pertain to or are necessarily connected there with word for. Just real quick, I want to get on the record that this change was to bring these parcels into conformance with the master plan. So, just want that on the record. Is that a second? Sure. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I I. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously and we are on to um council comments. Council member Anderson. Um the only thing I wanted to look into or ask um city manager's office to look into is in when we had the fire over on Rattlesnake Mountain a couple of weeks ago. There were some reports that drones were being flown in the area which grounded the aircraft. And I was just wondering if we could get a followup on that and what we can potentially do to um educate the community that that is critical that they don't fly drones during wildfire emergencies. I got it. Thank you, Council Member Martinez. Yeah, just a quick comment. I didn't want to pull the item, but I wanted to give thank you to uh the county for uh supporting our uh pros plan with $100,000. Thank you. Thank you for that comment, Council Member Ree. Council member Dur. Not today. Thank you, Council Member. Yeah, I just wanted to share feedback that I've received. I've had some requests that we would have council meetings in the evening that there's a lot of difficulty for people in my ward to go to meetings during the day. So, just passing along that information that there's been a request that we have at least some council meetings in the evening so people can attend that can't miss time from work. So, just passing that along. Okay. And we're moving on to our last public um item of public comment. Madame Vice Mayor, we do have one public commenter and we have someone on Zoom. Paula McD McDow McDana Mcdana. Hi. I um I guess I stand over here. Okay. Sorry. Excuse me. Um, I live downtown and um, I understand that um, uh, somebody who owns the um, northwest corner of North Virginia Street and Second was planning to put in a grocery store there and that uh, the city is against it for some reason. This is what I heard. I don't know how much of that is true. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. No, I I did a study on it about 15 years ago and and uh that's what that box is full of with the help of the Small Business Development Center up at the university. And we definitely need a g a grocery store downtown, not one of these little markets that mostly sells liquor and stuff like that. So, uh, anyway, um, I I just came to, as I say, I heard that, uh, the city was against opening a grocery store there, and that's not the case because that would be a a really good location. It has an alleyway behind it so that trucks can deliver, and it's a good size. Um, so, um, I think that would be a perfect location. Can you say the location again? I believe it's the Bodega, Ashley. Is that correct? Yeah, it's called Bodega. Yeah. Uh, that's what they're calling it. Um, but I hope it's, you know, just a a regular grocery store. I know bodega means grocery store. Um, but I mean, what was the location again? The northwest corner of Second and North Virginia. Okay. And it's it's a store and then there are some other stores behind it, but I think it's supposed to be all one thing, but it'll be um um because that the stores behind that location going west um are what uh uh open up to the alleyway, which is where trucks could make their deliveries, things like that. But anyway, as we do need a grocery store downtown and um I I hope that the city will be behind it. Um be you know it's um it would my first choice of a location would have been the um northeast corner of second and center or university away I think it's called by then. Um but I don't think that's going to happen but that would have been a good location too. Um but uh there the the um I I live downtown and I see people walking with bags of groceries and they they're over on the east side of town which has a lot of lowincome housing and there's no grocery store over there and they have to walk all the way to SaveMart, most inaptly named store ever and uh buy groceries and and then walk all the way home with them. So having something in the neighborhood I'm sure would be a huge success for that store. And that's all I really want to say. Thanks, Paul. I don't think we're against that. As a matter of fact, I think we've provided restore money to that that own that um business owner. Oh, good. Oh, good. Well, I'm glad that that I what I heard was wrong. I look forward I look forward to it opening. Madame clerk. Thanks, Madam Vice Mayor. For the record, we did receive six comments which were general in nature or not directly associated with an agenda item after 4 p.m. yesterday, Tuesday, July 22nd. These have been distributed to the Reno City Council and are lodged as three letters of opposition and three letters of concern. With that, we have no additional public comment. We're looking for a motion to adjurnn. Did you have one on Zoom? I thought you said you had somebody. Okay, they left. Okay. Motion to adjurnn. Second. All those in favor? I. Motion carries. Thank you.