All right. Good morning, Madame Vice Mayor. >> Good morning, Madame Clerk. We will get started and we will um open the special meeting of the Reno City Council. Today is Wednesday, October 29th, 2025. And I was going to ask Pete Larson if you could please lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Yes you. of the United States of America and to the republic for indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you, sir. I caught you off guard. >> Very welcome. >> Um, okay. We will move into roll call. >> Thank you, Madam Vice Mayor. Calling role for the special meeting of the Reno City Council on Wednesday, October 29th. Vice Mayor Taylor >> here. >> Council member Dor >> here. >> Martinez absent at this time. Eert >> here. >> Reese >> here. >> Anderson >> here. >> Shivy absent at this time. Madame Vice Mayor, you do have a quorum of the Reno City Council. >> Okay. Thank you very much. Um, do we have any public comment? >> Uh, madame vice mayor, we do not have any public comment registered. Additionally, we do not have any hands raised in Zoom. However, we did receive correspondence for this item as two uh two letters of neutral or concern. Those have been distributed to the Reno City Council and are a part of the permanent record. >> Okay, thank you. We'll move on to >> I apologize. We do have one hand raised in Zoom. It is Art Rangel. >> Morning, Art. >> Good morning. Can you hear me? >> We can go ahead and state your name and begin speaking. I will. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for the record, Art Rangel. Um, as a resident u certified city planner and retired redevelopment and economic development specialists, I'm very concerned about the lack of revenue the city is receiving as evidenced by our serious budget deficit. I don't see that deficit going away in future years if the city continues with its 1950s economic model of relying on gambling to pay the bills. Over 20 casinos have closed in Reno since 1990 to 2020. In addition, 30 United States state uh states have legalized online sports gambling. No longer do you have to go into a smokefilled casino to place a bet. Demographic changes have also negatively impact bricks and mortar casinos. Many millennials and genzers are engaged in online sports betting, not table games. If California approves online sports betting, which could happen within two years, it'll be an even bigger negative impact on Northern Nevada casinos. A strategic plan should include specific actions needed to achieve the long-term goals and priorities of that plan. The current strategic plan provides for the prioritization of areas of focus for the city. As an ultimate outcome of the Reno strategic plan, I'd like to see specific steps taken by the city of Reno and the Reno Redevelopment Agency to create new revenue sources for the future health and prosperity of our community. Fiscal sustainability should be the number one priority because it is paramount to achieving the other strategic plan goals. Redevelopment agencies are given an excellent economic development tool through the use of tax increment. Removing blight is only one redevelopment objective. The other is to transform the formerly blighted project area into a vibrant economic machine, enhancing the quality of life for all within the project area and the community at large. Properties within our two redevelopment project areas need to be developed with maximum density and intensity. This means developing these properties with high Florida to area ratio to maximize tax increment. Good examples in Reno of high Florida area ratios are the fivestory ballpark apartments in re redevelopment project area 1 and the upscale buildings in the Reno Experience District and project area 2. The highquality apartments in Reno Experience District are hurting for residents because the city of Reno has not attracted enough high-paying jobs. We need to diversify our economy sectors to include attracting high-paying jobs. These job jobs uh help decrease the need for subsidized housing because high paying high paid employees will be able to afford market rate housing and have enough discretionary income to help develop the critical mass needed to revitalize the area. This should also be a high priority. If >> Thank you. The revised strategic plan does not include specific actions to increase new revenue sources. >> We are >> appreciate that public comment. Okay, >> Madam Vice Mayor. Yeah. No additional public comment. >> Okay, we're going to close public comment and I'll ask >> Sorry, there I did sign up online. Um >> if you come on up. >> Sorry, >> it was online. I wasn't sure if I had to do it. you can fill out a form afterwards. Thank you. >> Hi. So, good morning. First, I wanted to um say thank you for for letting me kind of squeeze in. Um I wanted to make sure that I wanted to >> Could you tell us your name for the >> My name is Tony Gabriola. I am a the secretary with Valorico PBlo and I wanted to pass out these uh I was sent to um hand deliver these invitations to the council today and if I can have somebody either >> yeah give them to the clerk she can pass them out for us. Thank you. What are the invitations for? So the invitations are for um our um state sponsored u from the department of education. We're having an event of uh we're promoting the education for for our children um that are dancers. So, they're going to be um doing a a theater show um on November 22nd and they are going to be promoting like showing the Mexican Revolution. So we would love to um invite you all to to join us um on this special day because it's uh going to be the first time our group which is has just become a nonprofit and on in September you guys were um invited us over to do that proclamation. So we would love to invite you guys as well to that event which is um like the first time um they're going to be presenting something like this in in in uh in a theater um itself. So, um that's one of the reasons I did add on there our um next two events which are this weekend. Um I'm not sure if you guys are aware that it's Day of the Dead. Um celebrations are are going all across um uh Reno and Sparks. So, there is one at the UNR um this weekend. Um so, that's also the flyer is in there as well. And there's one at the O'Brien uh cultural center uh or their school um in instead. So that's also available. We're going to be presenting there as well. The kids are going to be in all Katrina um attire and they're going to be presenting their dances, folk dances. So, it's a community event and we would love to have you guys there and to be able to whoever is watching the the council meeting today, of course, um being able to have them and and and and join in the cultural experience that um full clar dancing brings. Yeah. And that's it. >> Perfect. And from the flyer, it looks like it's uh no, one of the Day of the Dead is November 2nd from 2:00 to 5:00 and then the other event is November Saturday, November 22nd. >> 22nd and it starts at at noon. and we would um if it's a public event so you guys are all welcome to be there. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Do we have any other public comment? >> We do not have any other public comment registered. >> Okay, we'll close public comment and I will ask madame uh manager if we have any changes to the agenda. >> None. Thank you. >> Move to approve. >> Second. >> We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? >> I motion carries unanimously. Okay. I believe Madame Manager would like to start us off before we move into our guest presentation. >> Yes, thank you very much, Vice Mayor Taylor. I just want to kind of set the stage for what's going to happen today because this is the first time council has uh been together to have a strategic workshop since 2019. The last strategic uh plan was adopted in early 2020. Since then, we've had a global pandemic. We've had significant ex economic volatility. We've had multiple city managers and turnover on this body. Despite these challenges, this body has done some significant things. Uh dispatch is in the process of being consolidated and when complete, the city of Reno, Sparks, Wo County, and Rimza will all be on the same platform for the first time ever. This body's opened two facilities that represent generational investments in the safety and well-being of Reno residents. The Reno Public Safety Center and the Moana Springs Community Aquatics and Fitness Center. The housing leadership has been spectacular. More than 11 million in sewer connection and building permit fees has been provided to support more than 2,000 affordable units in this community. And the body has prioritized housing projects with federal funding allocations such as Village on Sage Street and Dick Scott Manor. Also, the council has provided uh balanced budgets for both FY25, FY26, and I have no doubt we'll do so for FY27 despite loss in revenue and significant increases to cost. You will hear from Jeremy Aguero that we are going to continue to have some economic challenges for a while. However, not all is lost. There are opportunities in this space to be focused, to be disciplined, and to be intentional with council's identified goals so that when we come out of this economic instability, and we will that we will all be in a better place to serve the citizens of Reno. So, I want to thank you very much for participating in this workshop today. And I'd like to turn it over to Jeremy Aguero. Thank you, Madame Manager, and thank you, Mr. Agro. What good news do you have for us today? [laughter] >> Um, madame vice mayor, uh, members of the city council, it's all it's all good news. Um, I think we're very lucky to live in this state and I think this community does any number of remarkable things. And while my presentation today is not designed to be some type of report card everybody wants to assign either credit or blame for everything that seems to take place, but nonetheless um we have a lot to talk about and the world is moving relatively quickly today. And what my presentation in accordance with uh the city manager's direction is designed to do is lay a foundation for some of the work that you're going to do uh for the balance of the day. I've broken my presentation into three component parts. The first is pretty much a basic economic overview. Um there's a lot of misinformation uh that's out there relative to the economy. Our economy across the United States is doing some remarkable things, but there are some clouds on the horizon. And more so than I think at any point in any of our lifetimes, the divide between the halves and the have nots has gotten really wide and the challenges that we're dealing with. Again, this is not a an immediate issue. This is not a city of Reno issue. This is not a Wo County issue or a Nevada issue. It is an issue that almost every community across the United States is dealing with. We'll talk about some challenges and recommendations and then we'll look forward relative to what uh you might be able to expect. And so looking at it from just an economic overview standpoint, again I mentioned previously the idea of of where the economy is overall. There's a lot of concern at the beginning of the year relative to the fact that the United States was seeing slower growth. Matter of fact, we had negative growth during the first quarter, which we'll talk about should there was also a lot of concern about the fact that tariffs or some of those things were going to lead to uh inflation. And a matter of fact, inflation has actually ticked down, not ticked up during that period. So, these are better things. And I'm not going to try to go through every one of these indicators. That would be long for you and painful for those that are watching. But what is important is if you look on the far right hand side at the little arrows that are green versus the little arrows that are red, what it suggests to us is that there's more that's trending in a positive direction relative to than a negative direction. For those that have that opine relative to the United States economy and suggest that we are sort of heading toward an economic apocalypse, one article was written and said that we're moving toward economic nuclear winter. I think not right. The United States has a fair amount of growth still to do, but that isn't to suggest for even a moment that there's not real challenges. Debt at the at the federal level, debt at the individual household level, the challenges that we're seeing in terms of income and growth, these are really formidable. And while economies grow for very similar reasons, they decline for very different ones. Again, everyone wants to ascribe blame or something along those lines. No one foresaw the Great Recession, no matter what people say. No one predicted that we were going to go into a pandemic. And if you want to go back to the 70s and 80s, no one was ascribing the fact that we were going to have an energy shock or something like that. It just doesn't take place that way. What we do know is that growth happens because investment takes place because we grow and we innovate and we make changes. If we look at some of these statistics and we just sort of jump in to a few of them for a moment. I want to compare not just where we were previously but where we were during the prior year and you'll see that there is some increased instability in the trailing 12 month issues here. So we are keeping a close eye on that. And if we jump in to some of the statistics, some of the overarching statistics of United States growth, you see that the US is at the highest level of gross product that it has ever had in our history. Now, you can adjust that for inflation and do all kinds of different things, but long story short, we are producing more than we ever have as a country. And the shock that we had during that first quarter where folks were concerned that we were heading into a recession. Just so that we're all clear, recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. Sort of bounced back pretty well in the second quarter. And neither the first quarter nor the second quarter are actually instructive. And I'll show you why that is. Because if we look at the first quarter, what you see is that investment, these are the things that make up gross domestic product, the big ones, right? We look at what happened with investment was actually up. Even though the economy shrank, we invested more in the public and private sector than we had the year before. And that pushed the economy forward. And consumers, they continue to spend even though they continue to tell us that they're scared about continuing to spend. They continued to do it. And at the far right hand side, you see that imports went down. And we know what happened. The tariffs were announced. Everybody did what everybody has continued to do and that is take a wait and see attitude. Let's see how it all shakes out his households, his businesses, and even his governments. And let's take take a look at that that growth we had that bounce back that was somehow, you know, this this miraculous economic growth, which it was not at all. In the second quarter of this year, what we saw is a decrease in investment, which actually keeps folks like me up at night. And we saw an increase in imports. And why might we see an increase in imports? The reason that we saw that is because during this period we saw was businesses went out and bought everything that they could in under the expectation that things may be more difficult to get. So neither the decline in the first quarter nor the growth in the second quarter is ultimately instructive. But what we do know is that the economy continues to grow. What we do know is that the labor market continues to grow in terms of job formation even though it's getting harder and harder to find more people to employ. And what we do know is that inflation and consumer spending are held in check. Today, roughly 70% of the United States economy is dependent upon consumer decisions. And if we look at that consumer confidence, this is where it is, which the number probably doesn't mean a whole lot to most people. But what it does mean is that it's really, really low. Consumers today feel about the same level of trepidation that they have they felt during the Great Recession. As a matter of fact, we're about as low as we were during the pandemic, which is really odd because things are not nearly as bad, but we're worried about it. And we can make all kinds of commentary about a social media world and all of those type of things where negativity gets force-fed to us. But nonetheless, this is how consumers are feeling. Now, you'll also notice on the far right hand side of my chart that it has started to tick up a little bit. And that is really good news for us. We'd like to see that trend continue and consumers feel better. Now, this is the Michigan sent uh survey of consumer sentiment. Um the consumer confidence board also does something similar. And while consumer confidence in and of itself does not like uh uh it's not a great forecasting tool relative to what's going to happen tomorrow, when we separate it into these two component parts, your present situation, are you better off today than you were a year ago? And then expectations. Do you expect to be better off 6 months from today than you are now? Are you going to take a vacation? You're going to buy a car, you're going to buy an appliance, something along those lines. This is the present situation. And when you ask people, are you better off today than you were a year ago? They're feeling pretty okay. Now, it's started to have a negative trend a little bit to it. People are starting to be a little concerned about the sustainability of their condition, but nonetheless, it's relatively high. Let's compare that against the consumer confidence. are do you expect to be better one year from today 6 months uh from today than you are now and what you can see is those numbers are low and have been low for the better part of the past 2 years. We've got an entire society that is like waiting for the other shoe to drop and it hasn't. And what we found is that surprisingly enough our way of government our way of life our economy has continued to foster prosperity. Is it prosperity for all? Is it prosperity even? Of course, it's not. But it does foster a fair amount of prosperity. And we'd like to see these two lines start to come a little closer together. Actually, we'd like to see them both start to trend up. Now, why is it that consumers have this concern? When we ask them, what they tell us is the number one thing is the cost of living. You all probably hear it all the time. The cost of housing, the cost of groceries, the cost of all of these things that we see. And while I said earlier that inflation actually is lower than what folks expected in a a post uh uh tariff uh concern environment, it does not mean that the costs have not gone up. This is the consumer price index since December of 2018 in the post-pandemic or pandemic and post-pandemic period. You can see that the cost of living has risen and you see it kind of in the middle of our chart that sharp increase that we had during 2022. By no means has price come down. And in a strange sort of way, what we see is that, well, I guess it's not so strange. At the end of the day, right, inflation is a regressionary tax. The less money you make, the more it affects you. We know that it's affecting younger uh folks uh these days. We know it's a shift relative to that. But between 2019 and where we are today, consumers overall have experienced an increase of 29%. This is the co relative cost of living in the Reno metropolitan statistical area. And there are six components of that. Again, we don't have time to go through each one of those, but if you take a look at them, I I would be surprised if this was very surprising to many of the folks that are sitting in here either in the audience or watching or uh certainly the city council. But the cost of housing, the cost of transportation are higher than the national average. [snorts] But overall, I think it's important to kind of note that it's not that far away from the national average overall. As a matter of fact, the city of Reno's cost of living relative to other metropolitan areas is about 384 of them across the country is 3% higher than that average. There are some areas that it's lower, things like healthcare and miscellaneous goods. There are places utilities, there are places where it's higher, housing and transportation. As a matter of fact, when we look at things like transportation, it's higher than places like New York and Chicago in some cases, which have to do with the fact that our insurance is relatively high. The cost of gasoline is relatively high. But as much as important as anything is public transit gets taken a lot less here than it does in those other areas, and there's not as many uh relative options. But if we look at comparative markets around the United States relative to this cost of living, we see that you know many of the Seattle western states, places like Denver, even places like Boise actually have a higher relative cost of living than exists here. Now is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it a thing that you all created or that somehow you're going to snap your fingers or wave your magic wand and somehow make go away? No. Like almost everything we're going to talk about today, the results of what we're seeing today are the results of generations that came before you and laid the foundation. But what you do have the opportunity to do is put in place the right policies. Think about the things that you're going to do that can set that trajectory for the next 20 years and find ways um to help uh stabilize this. Again, housing and transportation. I do want to at least mention some of the stress that's going on on individual households, right? This is the chart that would keep my grandmother up at night. The fact that the United States savings rate is now roughly 5%. As a matter of fact, it dropped below 5% and has sort of hovered around that area. We in the United States are not saving enough for a rainy day. And by some estimates, only 40% of people in the United States today could put their hands on $1,000 in the event of an emergency tomorrow if they needed to do it. That's pretty scary. And when you think about folks, kids that are aging in to the workforce and the challenges they're doing and some of the disparities in income that we have, those are really challenging things. But whether it's the United States at the highest level of debt it has ever had or some of the other debt we're going to talk about today, those are really challenging issues. And what we've seen is that some of the results of this have started to show some signs of instability. And so it certainly has us concerned. This is the the delinquency rate in mortgages. This is the delinquency rate in auto loans. This is what it looks like in student loans. And this is what it looks like for credit cards. Um, mortgages have trended up a little bit. Some pre-foreclosure activity even including in this market that we're keeping a close eye on. There have been a handful of articles that have been written about shorter term loans on things like autos that certainly have us concerned. Student loans, that spike that you see is what happens when people actually have to pay back their loans. So, we're not going to read too much in to that one. and the increase in credit card debt also very concerning. So while we take took a look at the beginning at all of this economic prosperity that was out there, we cannot forget about the fact that so much of it was predicated on 5.3 trillion worth of stimulus that was pumped into the economy which really does a lot of things to push consumer activity forward. And now what we're seeing is a lot of households that are trying to hold on to that level of prosperity by spending more money than they have and increasing the amount of credit. There's some wonderful statistics. I didn't have enough time or I would have put them in in terms of like all these Google searches that people are starting to do about what happens if I don't pay my credit card or what exactly is debt and some of those type of things. This is the chart that that sort of brings this all home. I think on the left hand side is household wealth. Um there's about $ 160 trillion dollars in wealth that has been accumulated. We are the wealthiest society in the United States that we have ever seen. It is tremendous. And you can see how much wealth has grown. If anybody wants to understand why our prosperity has gotten to where it is, it is the chart on the left hand side. Even during a period of pandemic, we continued to grow and expand and become wealthier. But you'll also notice that the top 10% of households uh they control 110 of that 160 billion. And while we could have created 50 charts on this specific topic itself, you look at the one on the right hand side and you can compare and contrast credit card liability against where the household wealth is. And whether we look at equities, who owns the stocks, or whether we look at mortgage debt, where is it and how much is being held? And of course things like like school debt you see the disparity that we have overall where the household wealth in the bottom 50% of households is so different than where the debt is. So as you're looking and analyzing some of these things these are the macro trends that are driving some of the challenges that we're see seeing. It is also the reason why I am guessing so often you hear these wildly different stories, these wildly different experiences that people are having in this community and across the United States. Uh overall, we also of course have the advent of artificial intelligence and data centers and driving technology and all of those things. This is capital spending overall relative to just the major companies that are out there. It is phenomenal relative uh to the level of of of of the amount of spending. I mean these guys are all spending the amount of the Apollo project like every single year relative to that. Those top seven companies that are out there represent a third of the S&P 500. Seven companies represent a third of the value in the S&P 500. These are companies that are defining the trajectory of what we have. And I've said it to you before. I will say it to you again, right? My expectation is that AI is going to cure cancer. It is also going to result in a 20% unemployment rate. Right? I would love to believe that I'm right on the first one and terribly wrong on the second one, but we see it happening all the time in terms of the changeover. Our world is changing in ways we can only imagine today. Again, about a third of GDP growth in the first half of 2025 is attributable to these companies. investment is outpacing revenue by a factor of six which has a many people concerned that there's a bubble that's being created in this area. How do you insulate yourself against a bubble along those lines and of course economic bubbles in the past have also led to correction? And this is the other piece that I want to see. I I think we are heading toward recession in one way or another. As a matter of fact, I think in some ways we've already been in recession. the result of not having $5.3 trillion and the economy having to find a place that it can settle. But all of that having been said, recessions are natural things. You're going to have to deal with those. You want to bring the fire trucks up to the front. Be as prepared as you can. Good foundational fiscal policy in terms of having healthy reserves and making sure that you're not getting out over your skis so you're in a position to help and not exacerbate a problem. the old most fundamentals in terms of Keynesian economics that we save money when things are good and we spend money when things are bad as governments those are good things but even the inevitable downturns that are going to occur are going to result in innovation the last ones that we had who created things like railroads and the internet that we have today during the pandemic we got things like Airbnb and things like that which may be good and maybe bad and I'm not here to make any commentary relative to that but this is the way it works. Economic cycles happen and we need to be prepared for them. But AI is going to change the way we do almost everything that we do. This is the same set of economic indicators. They are slightly different in some ways, but you get the idea. A set of indicators, but instead of the nation as a whole, these are the indicators for northern Nevada pre- pandemic to where you are today. Almost green across the board overall. and not to overly emphasize the good things that are happening in the community and certainly not to ascribe credit or blame in anything that's happening. But if we look at the prior year versus where you are today, every single major indicator that we look at for Northern Nevada showing signs of improvement. And I know that some people are going to say, "Oh, look, things are great. We don't have to worry about generating revenue." These are all lagging indicators. Let's be clear, [snorts] right? We know that there are things like taxable retail sales, which I've looked at here in trailing 12 months, that are already showing signs of decline. We know that households are dealing with an exorbitant amount of debt that is putting stress on them. We know that the distribution of population growth and those type of things are real challenges for the community. So, I don't hope anyone doesn't look at this and ascribe that everything is somehow roses and sunshine in the city of Reno. I also don't want anyone to take a look at this and essentially suggest even for a moment that there aren't real challenges that are going to create fiscal concerns that we've had a conversation before and we'll talk about more as we continue to go through here. We also need to at least acknowledge the fact that housing prices are relatively high. It would be doing a disservice if we didn't put this on here. But remember what we looked at previously. These are high, but they're not higher than many comparable markets around the United States. And let's not forget that this is not just a Reno issue, right? There is not a single major metropolitan area in the United States today where a median household can afford a median price home. Not one. This is a national problem. And while the city manager talked about some of the remarkable things that you've done, $1 million in terms of offsetting sewer charges. Oh, and by the way, in the legislature in working through some of the legislation that it did took lessons from what this jurisdiction and other jurisdictions have done relative to those type of things and built them in and was a partnership with the city of Reno and passing what I think the legislature and governor did as being policy that's going to help drive housing that's working for us. I think the trend on the far right hand side of the chart is also worthy of at least some discussion. The fact that housing prices have shown some degree of stabilization, the fact that you have found ways to grow and advance attainable housing, that having been said, across the United States and in this community, there are real challenges. How is it that a young family is able to get into a home? It's hard today, right? The concept of entry-level housing just doesn't exist the same way it did when when I was younger. I'm older than many of you. I get that. But, you know, it just doesn't exist the same way. And everybody also would love to ascribe a bunch of blame to the homebuilders as though they don't want to build homes. Of course, they want to build homes. They are also going to do, but they they like you do not control the interest rate. They like you do not control the cost of labor or the cost of materials or any of those type of things. But in in 1990, you had to save for 8 years in order to be able to afford a home given the savings rate and interest rates and all the variables. By the time we got to 2015, right, um, uh, it was it was 10 years and 14 years. This is what it looks like today, right? For that family coming in to be able to afford a home, they would have to save for 33 years at the current savings rate, which means that by the time you're I don't know, by the time you're able to buy a house, your kid is like well should have moved out. I assume some of us have someone that's 33 years old still living with us, but you know what I'm trying to say, right? And and you know, look, I I realize there's assistance programs and all these things that are working toward that. But I would also suggest to you that in a weird sort of shift in ter terms how changed. 200 years ago, we were having children to help us when we got old. Today, we're needing to help those folks that are trying to age in. Because the baby boomers have accumulated such a remarkable amount of wealth, the room for some of those younger folks to move in is difficult. And one of the most telling statistics that I have seen recently is when we look at the unemployment rate of recent graduates, the unemployment rate of recent graduates. Among the highest unemployment rates of recent graduates are computer science degrees. We told all these kids, go to school, learn how to code, you'll be able to have a job, great paying job for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, those jobs don't exist the same way that they did before. And so you have this large unemployment. Dealing with those shifts is going to be important. I think we can also not turn a blind eye in terms of the real challenges associated with affordability. And again, I want to be very clear. This is not something of the city council's doing or those that even came before you doing. This is the reality of the economy that we have all bought into for the past 50 years. And the result of where we are, the best we have the opportunity to do as we look at it is think about where the policies are, establish the foundations associated with those and try to address uh both the virus and the symptoms. Right? In order to be able to afford that price, it is um uh you would have to earn $7460 uh cents to be able to do that. only 9% excuse me 1% a 0.9% of occupations in northern Nevada that have average earning meet that requirement and I could go to any metropolitan area major metropolitan area in the United States and show them the same thing right if we look at that minimum wage and how many hours you would have to work just to be able to get there right and we all know the silliness of my slide there are not 196 hours in an entire week right you would need to create a new thing called uh after day and you'd have to just continue to work even after those 24 hours and so while I suggest you that this is this is there's a spectrum associated with this right there is such importance across the totality of the board and it's not one area but it's all of them that require time and attention overall as you move forward again you get my ideas in terms of what I'm doing here if you look at the housing units that have been permitted and you look at the projects that are coming through the pipeline, right? What this city council has done is made it clear that this is a priority uh for the city council. It's done things to actually bring projects online. But again, regulatory difference is not going to change interest rates. It is not going to change the fact that the federal government owns almost all the land in the state of Nevada. It's not going to change the inflation that makes it more difficult for a home builder to build a home. That's just not going to happen overall. In addition to that, markets matter. Home builders will build homes that they have the ability to sell. And at the end of the day, the asking rent, yes, has come up, but it is stabilized. And a 2.6% increase is almost exactly the rate of inflation. As a matter of fact, we've actually seen incomes outstrip the rate of inflation during the past two years. Again, if you look at the state of Nevada in terms of the federal ownership of property, it always strikes me as remarkable that they own more of Nevada than they do of like Alaska, right? Uh it's just incredible uh to me relative to that. But nonetheless, you get the idea in terms of where we stand, right? If we look at the acres developed in Wo County, we look at the acres developed by decade, you've become increasingly efficient. 71,000 acres overall. In studies by the Truckucky Meadow Regional Planning Association and RCG Economics, they raised concern about residential, commercial, and led to a lesser extent industrial space not having enough. I don't know whether I agree with these or I necessarily disagree with these, but the footprint of development and the jobs housing balance is critical both from an economic perspective and a fiscal perspective. I asked my staff to pull the development land map for the pre-1970s for the region. 111,000 residents, 41,000 housing units. And then I asked them to do the same thing for 2024. What a remarkable amount of growth between 1970 and where we are in 2024 today. Incredible. on so many remarkable levels. You've created a community that people want to live in and they want to stay in. It has fostered both economic development and frankly wonderful households and families that have laid roots for generations upon generations. The ability to be able to do that going forward obviously is always critical. The second of those higher cost areas is transportation. But I also wanted to mention the importance of infrastructure and the things that are being built. a billion dollars being invested in expansion, renovation of the airport. Um $20.4 million in upgrades to that mass transit that is so important to so many people. And we talk about just some of the other, you know, major transportation freeway highway investments that are taking place. Overall, these are important because they lay that foundation for long-term growth overall. We think about that and we put that all of the economic pieces into a bucket and we think about it in terms of the challenges and what lays ahead of you um going forward. I'll offer a handful here. I would say that talent development and growth is absolutely critical to the city's ability to go forward. Talent is hard to find and even harder to keep these days. You have a remarkable group. the realities of AI and automation in government services. It may be the single hottest topic in terms of government services overall in terms of reducing costs. And of course, what everyone seems to spend time on is thinking about the balance between technology and touch. How do you do both without losing the humanity that is so important in terms of that government? I would be remiss if I didn't bring up the PERS challenge. You all see it. It has a real risk of essentially gobbling up so many of the other services that you want. How are you going to grow government? How is it going to make sense? How can you continue to deal with increasing contribution ratios? Again, you did not create this problem. you are not going to snap your fingers and fix this problem. But at the end of the day, recognizing that the problem does exist and finding a way to ensure that the city of Reno and more broadly the state of Nevada has the ability to keep the promises that it's made to its public workers, I think, is critically important. Linking economic diversification to fiscal diversification. We've had this conversation a bit, right? If you diversify your economy but do not diversify your fiscal system, you have a problem. Right? We have historically been heavily dependent on tourism. That's wonderful. Right? As my my daughter was a Girl Scout and she always told me that the Girl Scout motto was that the goal was to keep your old friends and make some new ones. And I think economic development should take exactly the same motto. Right? The idea is that your best opportunity for economic growth and prosperity is not the next business that moves in. It is the businesses that are here today. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. We talked a little bit a moment ago about infrastructure. It is so easy to create a tradeoff between making investments, capital, maintenance, all of those type of things. The infrastructure of the city of Reno is what makes it work today. And as I said before, I can stand up here and tell you, oh, look at all these great economic indicators and all these great things that are happening. It's not the result of this city council or this legislature or this group of business owners and operators. It is all of those that laid the foundation before they ever came. That is what we are all benefiting in the state of Nevada today. Scaling attainable housing across the board. You have done some remarkable things. You've demonstrated that things can work in a remarkable way. You're not going to build a 100,000 units by snapping your finger. You're not going to do that. But what you are doing is pretty smart and pretty thoughtful and pretty engaged in terms of a public private partnership and having a way to work together which I think is incredibly impressive. Energy is a massive issue for us in the state of Nevada and I know we have some great uh utilities that are working really hard to try and solve some of these problems. But when economic development is slowed by the result of the fact that energy is not available, we start to get some of those challenges and frankly an aging infrastructure that we have is something that's going to be critically important in your planning horizon right across the United States. And I would say certainly here in Reno, you all hear it all the time. We've had conversations about it is the fundamental question of does growth pay for growth? And I'll answer the punchline here, which I think is very simple. The act of growth does pay for growth. Matter of fact, generates a ton of revenue. The fact that retail sales and use taxes is applied to construction materials and all that labor that takes place is phenomenal. Generates a ton of revenue for the state and for local governments. But over the long term, the fact that when I occupy that house and I've got to make sure that the police show up when I call and my kids are going to go into schools, that's where it gets a lot more difficult. And when that growth slows, so too do the deficits that we're seeing. That challenge is going to matter, right? Um [snorts] getting in front of it is really important. And as optimal as anything, I would suggest protecting the quality of life. That growth that we saw between 1970 and 2024. And I know there's some folks that are like, "Boy, I wish I could just roll down back the clock to 1970s." And I bet you, I'm willing to bet you there's a few folks, I won't look at anybody that that that moved here 5 years ago and would love just to close the door behind them, right? That's it. It's great for me. Nobody else needs to be here. But the reality is that people have voted with their feet. This is a remarkable community. It creates a lot of prosperity and that's prot that's worth protecting overall. I also want to at least mention navigating the state local power shift. There is there's a different dynamic. We're a Dylan's rule state, which means the state has the ability to dictate things. They meet every couple of years. You all meet all the time and have to deal with all of these issues, right? The reality of how the state dictates things. Local government's ability to find their ways to work together are going to be critically important relative to how close all of that is. And closely related to that, I would suggest is governance between intercount and intracounty issues. There are real asymmetries. There are real problems. If local governments at the state of Nevada cannot find a way to build the solutions themselves, they are going to get a suboptimal solution from the state of Nevada. That is what is going to happen. And if the state of Nevada can't work with its partners in other states, it's going to get a sub optimal solution from the federal government. We have a long history of that happening. And this is not me being uh porative toward our state legislators or those folks in Congress. I think they do a remarkable job. You're just closer to it than anybody else is. And if there's imbalances, they need to be fixed through compromise. Um not through um u mandate. Um regional alignment certainly the same thing. Obviously challenges in uh this community and others relative to finding the way. And I I will say it this way. What got you here is not going to get you there. Right? so many of the systems and programs and processes you have in place is what existed in that 1970s example. You don't look like that at all anymore. And I would at least suggest that with the advent of technology moving as quickly as it is, that's going to be um uh more of a problem moving forward. I will conclude with sort of my looking forward. I probably shouldn't have jumped past that before saying it. And this is sort of the recommendation that I would offer and that is the fundamentals and making sure that the things you have to do you do as well as you can before you step into the things that's the next thing because the challenges associated with that is so incredibly difficult and I've broken this up into what are the fundamentals of good government and good economic policy and good fiscal policy. So let's start with the fundamentals of good government. What are those right? efficient, responsive core services. What are the things that every person expects this city to be able to do? Can you do those good? Can you continue to be able to do them into the foreseeable future? Are they things that you're going to have to cut? Right? Number two, I would suggest that a strategic vision and collaboration, right? The old Lewis Carol adage that if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. having a strategic vision and frankly the exercise that you're going to through for the first time since 2019 you said right very important I would suggest number three on that list is fiscal responsibility right the idea of not using one-time dollars to pay for ongoing expenses making sure that you're sustainable living within your means transparency I think [snorts] folks should be able to understand both the what and the why and then the final one that I would put under the concept of good government is deliver on the promise promises that you have made. Whether that's the fact that the bus shows up to get me to work every day or that somebody's purr continues to get paid into perpetuity or when I pick up the phone and I call for emergency response that someone shows up. I would be careful about ensuring and making certain that those core services remain sustainable. We talked a little bit about economic policy. I would offer this from an analysis perspective in terms of what is foundational economic policy. Um I would suggest that supporting local businesses first, right? Making the city of Reno and Wo County more broadly the best place for the businesses that are here is the best way to attract the next businesses that are going to move in. I would suggest that encouraging entrepreneurship wherever you can. some crazy amount of Gen Z believes that they are going to be an entrepreneur, some higher than any generation that has come before them. How can we facilitate their ability to enter in and use some of the remarkable skills that they have to do that? I would suggest that public private partnerships, job creation partnerships, right? What we've seen in the health care sector overall, the ability to pair up and find ways to do that has been critical. I would suggest that focusing on resiliency in terms of the economy. Making sure that business starts are always greater than business failures. Listen to those businesses. They're smart. And you can, you know, look, three economists can agree if two of them are dead. Okay? That's the way it works in my line of this this sort of realm that we're talking about here. You want to know what's really happening in the economy? Talk to a small business owner. They see the front lines of it every day. That resiliency matters. And I would offer the fifth in this one would be smart and savvy diversification. It needs to benefit the people of Reno. The idea that we're going to move someone in in order to bolster the economy was great during the 90s and 2000s and even in to the 2010s. It's a different world today. That balance matters even more to the state of Nevada than it ever has before. And I'll end on the principles of good fiscal policy taught to me by uh Carol Valardo who I miss every single day. Right. Number one is a balanced budget. Not that you actually have a choice. You have to have a balanced budget which I appreciate. But I think every financial person that's sitting in this room knows that there are games that can be played that make it very difficult for that financial balance to be kept into the future. I would encourage you at every single step of the way to make sure that you have a strong financial balance that you are not dealing with deficits because structural deficits just make everything harder. The second and sort of sister one to this that uh uh Carol always talked about was maintaining a strong bond rating. Right? You look at that, you talk to the folks that are out there. Being able to borrow money responsibly but at as low of a possible cost allows you to do some of the remarkable development that you've been able to do recently that they shared with me and all those other things which I just think is is great the type of things that you've been building. You're going to want the ability to do those more because you're not going to benefit from them tomorrow other than maybe a ribbon cutting but people for 20 or 30 or 40 years will benefit from those. I would suggest that maintaining healthy reserves always going to be critically important. I know we have all found ways to squirrel money away in different ways. That's really important because I believe in the next few years you're going to need those dollars. Hell, in some ways you need them today, right? And I understand that too. But those reserves matter. Make sure that if you are going to spend them down, you do it responsibly. Finally, the idea of community ROI, right? In every decision that you make, there is a return on investment. Sometimes those are economic, sometimes those are fiscal, sometimes they are social. But as Marvin Levit once told me, um the unfortunate reality is that every dollar can only be spent one time and that every one of those choices really does matter. And I suppose that's exactly why you're going through this retreat to make sure that you're focused on those fundamentals, that you're able to deliver on the promises that are there. And if there are aspirational elements for the city, there's ones that you can make sure that they're not putting those other elements at risk. With that, um, madame vice mayor, uh, city manager, I'm so honored for the opportunity to be here. If there are questions, I'm happy to make every effort to try and answer them or any followup that you may ultimately require. Again, the whole idea here is have a plan, work the plan, move it forward. That's it. That's all I got. Happy to answer any questions. >> Fantastic presentation as always. Thank you very much. I'll ask the council if they have questions or comments and I will start with my left, Councilwoman Der. >> Yeah. Thank you. Um, yes, extremely informative. You hit on all the the things that we've heard about and things we don't know about. Um, you did a deep dive, you know, to help us understand. Um, what I want to ask you about is, so now here we're in strategic planning and, um, obviously we want to do the things that you ended with, focus on the fundamentals and so on, but there are a lot of external factors and I just wanted to ask you about two. >> Um, one is about energy. So recently MV Energy proposed a rate increase. You said we have low energy costs, but this rate increase would have put us in the top investorowned utilities, the highest rate in the country >> uh as a base rate from $15 to 45. At the same time, they asked for an increase in their return. So I think they were wanting to go from 8 to 10% on earnings. And the second thing I wanted to ask you about was food. So, just today um and over the overnight, I've got a very worried person, very concerned about the um SNAP benefits. What are we going to do? I also was reached out by the food bank um talking to me. They're going to have a big event over at Kitsky and over at uh the Walmart uh area. And so, that's delivering food versus money. But I guess what I'm wondering is we have very little control over these things, you know, that are affecting our residents in terms of cost of living that you focused on in the beginning. And I guess what can we do, you know, to make sure it's not we we've been focusing on housing, the critical element of a roof over your head, but how do we help them deal with these energy costs? Because I know MB Energy is coming back. They already said we're coming back. We didn't get it the first time. We want it. We want it. and um the food situation. Do you have thoughts? >> Um I'm happy to at least offer you what I can. Um if I can offer very respectfully, I think one of the most important things you can do is exactly what you did just did. Raise awareness about the issues. Make sure that people are hearing and understanding and frankly no one can convene a community like a city council can. You can sort of force people to the table and force part of their conversations which I think is important. Look, I don't know that I can opine relative to everything that Envy Energy is working on because there's really sort of two pieces to that. One, none of us, me including everybody else, does not want to pay more. And the reason we have a public utilities commission is to ensure that the public interest is served. But the other side of that equation is what are we going to get for the amount of money that's there? If they're going to modernize our system, if they're going to increase capacity, if they're going to ensure that there's redundancy in our system, sign me up. >> I'm more than happy to pay, right? And maybe we need to make some differential rates for some folks, some of those type of things. I'll grant you any of that. >> But I want to understand what I'm getting in terms of that return on investment. Okay. >> The second one that you talked about is food. And I'll be honest with you, I'm super worried about food because it is the most >> Oh, am I allowed to continue? Yeah. um it is the most um fundamental to use my term again of the the things I mean if we're gonna have the hierarchy of needs you don't have food what the hell do you have right I mean and and and I think it hurts our hearts to see folks that don't have enough and let's be and I hope I can say this respectfully I I don't mean it in any way but the shutdown of the federal government is largely an unforced error right on both sides I'm not here to make any political commentary whatsoever but the fact that that has the potential of putting supplemental nutrition assistance at risk or something along those lines. So, we have to have conversations about expanding funding to ensure that people can go to food banks is just not okay, right? Like it's not hard enough that the cost of groceries have gone up so significant on households, but now we're also going to make the difference between you being able to have enough meals and to not is not okay. >> Well, the food bank's saying they can't cope with with they can't make up the uh apparently Nevada has one of the largest uses of SNAP and they can't make up. So, I just asked this as setting the foundation so when we put our policies forward, whatever we're going to do today in strategic planning, we're we're staying cognizant of some of the things are affecting our residents. >> Yeah. If I can just just one additional element that's going to pass, right? And we have we have the ability to hopefully mitigate some of it in the short term. And I think encouraging all of our colleagues, your colleagues, my elected officials in Washington DC to find a resolution faster than you is critically important because that should solve so much of the problem that is immediately in our headlights. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you, ma'am. >> Thank you, Council Member Eert. I see that your hand is raised. >> Yes. Thank you. Um, so just to kind of piggyback a little bit off of what council member Derer said, um, you know, we have a lot of people struggling. I'm going to just talk specifically about my ward because that's why I present, but I know this happens throughout the city. So, just that's my preface. Um, and also, thank you so much for this presentation. um I kind of feel like some data might be um valuable to include in this presentation in the future and that would be salary information. Um, so we're seeing a lot of different parts of the economy, but I think it's really relevant to show um, you know, are salaries kind of stagnant? Are they keeping pace with um, what's going on? And also, you know, what kind of public transportation do we have relative to um other cities um that are close in population size, things like that to just kind of see like, okay, do we stack up in what we offer? Do we stack up in what our salaries are even if our house prices are are similar? Um so that's something I'm really curious about. And also just to kind of call out that we as a council as we talk about planning things strategically, I know that I've really wanted to have some kind of more indepth planning for future development. And I think that part of that is to hopefully come up with um ways to bring higher paying jobs here. Maybe it's with partnerships with Edon. Um, so that there there's higher paying jobs and people that um I'm not going to try and bag on any companies, but they're lower paying jobs and they rely on food banks, you know, for um supplementing their groceries or they rely on SNAP. Um it's um or you know, just food assistance in any capacity. So, we as a council can't directly control those kinds of things, but we can kind of say we would like um you know an office park here or something and try and work with Edon to bring people in that would like to develop those kinds of things so it's higher paying jobs. Um so that's something I just kind of want to say out loud. Um and you know the food insecurity thing is just it's so real. my children's school that I volunteer at, they provide breakfast and lunch and it's just um such a basic necessity. Um and I don't want anybody to have to struggle for that. Um that that should just be something that we we can all do without a second thought. Um so I really want us as a council to think of ways to help bring more of these jobs that that are better paying. Um so you know, if people come here from out of the area, so be it. or people that live in Reno can move into these these um higher paying jobs. We've kind of turned into a a logistics hub for a lot of distribution companies that are kind of sometimes um not known for the best pay packages or compensation packages. Um and uh there was something else I wanted to ask about. Um I've kind of lost it. It was about housing development. it I would >> council member Ira I'm wondering if we can let um Mr. where I'll answer a couple of your questions if Okay. Yeah, sure. >> or thoughts and then we can move on to Council Member Ree. This is our first >> Am I over? I'm so sorry. I didn't hear I didn't hear anything. Thank you. >> Madame Vice Mayor, I I don't know that I have a whole lot uh to add that and then I agree with most of it. Um in terms of being able to provide information on salaries, I probably owe the city manager an apology because I narrowed my presentation to try and make it not so long and took some of that information out. So, we will get that over uh to the city council so that you'll have that including the trend for how salaries are either keeping pace with or not keeping pace with inflation. Uh in terms of some of the other pieces, to the extent we can be helpful, I'm happy to try to do that. And in in terms of the counciloman's uh comments about um focusing on quality as opposed to quantity, I don't think I could agree more. So, happy to if there's anything we can do to follow up, I'm pleased to do it. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh, Council Member Eert, I'm going to go to Council Member Ree um because and then we'll go for a second round too. >> Great. Absolutely. Thank you, >> Mr. Aguero. Thank you so much for the presentation. Uh certainly uh very timely and lots of information there to unpack. Um obviously today our focus is on the strategic planning aspect of the work that we do and the policy decisions that we make. I think at times the disconnect for me comes in the fact that each one of us are human beings and when we see a thing happening in the community whether it's food insecurity, wages not keeping pace with inflation, the numbers you shared about housing insecurity and and how uh long it takes for people to save up for that. We all have an immediate kind of a visceral reaction because we're people who want to do things. We want to help people. We want to accomplish the goals. And I think the difficulty comes at times in understanding the limitations on government and what our role is. Uh what the role of the private sector is. Each one of us I think does what we can in the roles that we have whether it's my service on Edon or the mayor's service at the RSCVA or serving on Tamwa to impact the people in the places where they are. Um the hard part of course is that it's probably never enough, right? And the things that we want to accomplish sometimes take 10 and 15 years and it's the conditions you create for yourselves. I think my takeaways from your presentation so far this morning are about those things that we can do as a council in a policy way that would economically benefit the region. Right. It's I I don't think we're going to uh suddenly become uh an an arm of Edon, right? Edon has its own work. It does. It goes out and makes these connections. It tries to bring teams of companies here. But I do think we play a role in Edon in as much as we support them. The financial aspirations of Edon, we serve on their board and we support the mission. Right. Um for my part, I'm interested to know the core things that the city can be doing. Um and and really not it's real easy for people to point the finger or place blame as you said in the presentation, but the question is what are you actually doing to create the conditions? And I think the mayor was quick to point out that we've created more jobs here locally than Las Vegas has, right? And so somehow we're doing something right, but it will not be enough for the folks who are being left out of an emerging economy. So for my purposes today, I'm hoping that you'll just share with me your sort of greater knowledge about the kinds of levers that we can pull here, whether it's the convening that you mentioned with Miss Der, whether it's about being focused on something particular um that we'll be able to do. Um because like you, I think there are lots of problems, but not always the right levers are being pulled. >> Um Councilman, there's so much to unpack there. Um, yeah. Uh, you know, I I first of all, I agree with the premise, right? I mean, the idea that you can be everything to everyone is just it's a silly it's it's a silly proposition. You drive yourself crazy trying to do it, right? And I imagine in the the you know um sort of believe on being where your feet are you know and and and at the end of the day right you have constituents that come up to you every day to have a conversation about the thing that is affecting them the thing that they see immediate and that you know in in some ways you know we've all become single subject in some ways right and I and I get that and I understand it and I appreciate it the what I would offer is that the best in my mind that you can do is segment the symptoms from the virus, right? The the strategic plan has got to be about making sure that everything that you're setting up can put the community in the right direction, you have the opportunity to do things here or there to help with food insecurity or housing, you take the opportunity to do that. But [snorts] if they take you away from the fundamentals, if they make it more difficult to do business, if they make it so you're going to have fiscal instability, if they're going to make it so government is somehow less transparent and it's the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And what I would offer in terms of all of that is making sure that you can sustain the fundamental services that exist because when right now things are good, right? when things go really bad, like a serious recession, when you're not beating Las Vegas in terms of creating jobs, when you're not having the level of investment that you're seeing, when the the concerns that you're seeing are more widespread, maybe a better way to say that, the city of Reno is going to have to be the rock that helps people get through those challenges and fiscal responsibility and good government and transparency and all the things that you said and I tried to mention during my presentation. I think in absence of those, you're going to make the problem worse, not make it better. >> Well, and I'll just say one other thing based on what you've said, and that is, you know, oftentimes a problem presents it to our to our council, and I'll pick um, you know, cold weather resulting in folks being outside and we say, "What can we do?" And we go out and we do a thing, but sometimes it's not sustainable for the lifetime of a program. Sometimes the resources are one-time money. And so what happens is we do a thing because we believe fundamentally that we want to make sure that people are for example not cold or they're not hungry. But I I for example don't know that we'll be able to stop food insecurity in the absence of some larger systemic change at the federal government level. But if we divert our attention to it in a way that is not sustainable, then we create the conditions of our own demise. And that's my worry. I I don't believe any of us at this council want to see people hungry, but I don't know what measurable things we will do in that space today that will change that. So, I want us to be somewhat realistic about it, but also have a compassion for the people who live here. >> Look, I hope the city council never loses its humanity. So, to your point, >> Council Member Anderson. >> Hi. >> Hi. >> I'm the newest here. So, every time >> No, I'm the newest here. >> Not up there. Every time you come to council, I learn a lot. So, if you're ever looking for a super chatty sidekick, call me and I'll follow you around and just keep >> I will take you up on that. >> Um, for our part here, I'm very interested in the opportunities and the nec like necessary focus and investments in the workforce development in our talent attraction and keeping them here. One of the biggest problems we have is a lot of us keep our kids here >> to educate because of course we don't want to send them to Las Vegas, right? We can all agree with that. But in Northern Nevada, they get their degrees here and then a lot of times they can't afford to stay and that is just us sending our own homegrown talent to other communities. >> Um, so what I'm interested in from your opinion, what sectors are the most critical for Nevada to be developing that talent? Is it allied health? Is it is it mining? Is it um the trades? >> What can we be doing? Which businesses can we be supporting the most in that area? >> Councilman, there there again, this is a complicated question with a lot of answers, but I'll give you the brief answer. Number one is healthcare. In the state of Nevada and in Northern Nevada, we remain under healthcare. Um there's a transformational shift that's taking place relative to healthcare. You have an aging population, which is sad of a thing to say. um that population also has acquired more income than almost any other population in the history of the world and as a result of that they are going to try to live longer and live be better than they have before. The the pathway to saying we are underhealthcared as an economy and that is the area that's going to grow at the end um just it just glares at us in terms of opportunity. Beyond that I would look as hard as you can at public private partnerships. find the way that you have a business. It's a hospital. It's a manufacturing firm. It's a technology company. They want to partner with um the the the the university. They want to partner with a community college. They want to introduce a new technology and they want to find a way to bring teleaalth to some remote area of the state of Nevada and they want to site it here. Find a way to be a partner with them. I think there are some jurisdictions that have done remarkable things about creating catalyst programs for new degrees that are coming out but mostly in healthcare where they may not be available otherwise. I think those have been very successful uh in terms of what is ultimately being done. Beyond that, right, we spent a lot of time uh telling young people go to college, go to college, go to college. I'm a big believer in higher education. I think it's the silver bullet that equalizes things for everybody. But we also have a huge deficit in the trades. And oh, by the way, they're paying a lot more than they used to, and we don't have enough of them. I had a a client come to me and tell me about the fact of how many electricians they were going to need over the next 20 years and it was like there was just no physical way you could bring that many people in. You combine that with a mining industry. Now granted the price of gold ridiculously high so let's hold the side there but it's become remarkably um technologyoriented. It's a whole new opportunity and frankly the single highest paying jobs in the state of Nevada are in our mining industry and they need more people. You if we look frankly at where those opportunities exist, they are here and they are I think almost everywhere that we look at. But if you're going to ask me if there was a place that I would focus 100% it would be healthcare and it would be the trades because I think that when those kids are coming out particularly of high school if they don't have some type of special training during high school we cannot let them get into that cycle of not getting a job not finding having a skill not being able to be contributing they will be able to do that and I think ultimately the housing market will find a way to correct because it's hard but it's going to be a lot harder for every one of those young people if they don't have a job. >> That's incredible feedback. Um, Councilman Martinez and I are going to be at an event tonight honoring the JAG students, the high school students that are really, you know, focusing on their career technical training in high school and so we can deliver that message that those are the two areas that are going to have the most growth. Thanks. >> You bet. >> Perfect segue into Councilman Martinez. >> Thanks so much. Thanks so much, Mr. and for always being in chambers and being willing to provide your expertise and insights uh into our processes. I think for me a lot of what you said is obviously um not doom and gloom, but there's a lot of clouds as you mentioned on the horizon that we need to make sure we look out for. And so, uh, despite some of the national averages and what we're seeing statistically there, I sort of want to, uh, filter in and narrow on what's happening in Northern Nevada and centering what our conversations are for the strategic planning process that's going to take place after this presentation. And so, um, I think your presentation and a lot of statistics that you provide and this may have been just part of your filter system to try to shorten up your presentation. And so I want to get some more additional information out of you when it comes to uh rental prices and folks living in uh those those types of housing. A lot of your indicators that you mentioned and I think in the news and others statistics tend to focus on those single family median home prices um and some of those things. But I'm curious to hear from you about those rental prices. I think there was one slide that sort of had some information on there and I think the American dream obviously is to have the white picket fans with the single family home but that's not the reality for about 50% of the residents here in our city and so how do we attune our priorities and our platforms to the reality that people are currently living in and not to something that's akin to the self-actualization that they can reach. So, how do we sort of lay the groundwork? As you're saying, the decisions that we make today aren't going to be the keys to flipping everything, but it can be the start or the catalyst to get us to a different place. And so, I guess what would you add to any of that? >> Sure. First of all, we'll get you whatever information you need relative to the rental market. I think there's also a bit of a shadow rental market, which is in single family residential homes. It's probably worth you spending a little bit of time looking at that sort of submarket as well. So, we'll try to get you some information that we've been able to pull on that as well. Um, what's the starting point here? I'm going to go back to what uh Councilwoman Dur and I had in terms of that that conversation and that is there are programs that exist at the federal state uh level um that are available to help home builders build houses. They are available to help with infrastructure. They are available to help um new home buyers be able to do some of these type of things. I think if there's the very first thing I would do, it is make sure that everyone is aware of the programs that exist to help them with the assistance that they may need. Now, that's not going to be a panacea. It's not going to help everybody, but then I I look at the other things that you've done and try to emulate those. I mean, offsetting some of the cost for sewer charges is a way to lower the cost that is directly making an attainable housing development possible that wouldn't otherwise have been possible. you're looking for partnerships and ways to be able to develop those uh attainable housing developments in order to make it happen. But you're right. I mean, not everybody's going to be able to be in a single family residential home, right? Some more attached, more, you know, living in a different way. That's just the way the world is going to naturally develop. I'm a little worried about what happens about 20 years from now when we have this baby boomer generation that is living in all these homes and exits out of those. And so perhaps if we're all still here and that I'm I I don't know, probably not me, but you know, we're still here. I suppose we're going to have a different issue uh at some point to deal with. But the immediate issue is exactly what you said and we'll get you as much information as we can on it. >> You bet. >> I'm just fascinated with the presentation. We could just go on in the in the the amount of resource research and resources that you put into this and I I'm going to use your words and um boil it down to what I kind of heard as far as where we're at. We have created a community that people want to live in for generations. And that's not just the people that are here today, but we've done that over generations of time. So that's a fantastic thing. Um we are not unique. We're seeing this all over um every metropolitan city you said is dealing with housing. They're dealing with um economic growth of diversification and trying to get highpaying jobs. So that gives me a little comfort. And then the third thing which I think is really going to frame my process moving forward today is focusing on right policies for the next 20 years. So not just making decisions for today or tomorrow. And where the book end is for this is uh focusing on our fundamentals, the back to basics of how we're doing business. And I imagine that we're going to get seven different answers here on what are the fundamentals and what are back to basics and what are the things our core services that we need to be delivering so we can keep the promises that we have made to our constituents and the people that we serve. So do you have any sort of ideas on what you know you mentioned good government, good economic policy and good fiscal pol policy as as the fundamentals moving forward. Do you have any more details on that? That's my first question. And then my second question was um to follow up on Councilwoman Anderson's I've heard a lot of interest in advanced manufacturing as things one of the things that we might be wanting to work on with Edon in addition to healthcare and private public partnerships. Thank you. >> Sure. So let me go through the first one first and then I'll jump into advanced manufacturing which is probably an easier answer. Um perhaps there will be a debate relative to the fund what the fundamentals are. Um I would hope that you'll agree on 80% and maybe disagree on 20%. Right. From the standpoint of making sure that you deliver core services that the city has to deliver. I would hope that's a fundamental to the extent that you look through things through the lens of does this create a fiscal challenge for us in the future or does it is it sustainable in the future? sort of what uh uh Councilman Ree talked about. I from my perspective that's, you know, fundamental. I tried to walk through them. I think things like transparency ought to be a fundamental. I think making sure that you're not putting your your bond rating at risk is a fundamental, right? I mean, these are things that as you as is you either make sure that your fiscal sustainability or you're not entering into, you know, legal arrangements that are going to put the city in harm's way or you're not making promises you can't keep are the fundamentals of what's there. So, I I would imagine that frankly, you know, reasonable minds can differ and there's going to be some differences, but I would really hope that the the that the basic elements that are so critical to the functionality of what you do as a city council are are very similar. The second one in terms of advanced manufacturing, everybody's talking about it right now, right? And I think the stuff that Edon is doing is nationleading relative uh to getting the word out about what is possible and why this is such a great place to do business. The only thing that I would offer is that not all advanced manufacturing is the same, right? Some of it has very large energy requirements. Some of them have very large water requirements. Some of them employ a lot of people. Some of them don't employ a lot of people. All of them may have merits, but for different ways. And if I can sort of leave you with one small challenge toward the end of my response to your question, it is that economic development is not always about how many jobs you create. If you're able to generate a ton of tax revenue with very few jobs as you think about what you want to be 20 years from now, you might want to think about whether there's a lane for economic development that creates revenue but doesn't create a bunch of demand for services. So, I realize that's a little outside of where you are today, but I I didn't want to answer the question about advanced manufacturing without at least putting it on the table. >> Thank you. And Madame Mayor, we've each had a round if you want to take over and or if you have questions or I'm have Yeah. First of all, always >> to you. Thank you so much. Um, a couple things come to mind and I think you were um explaining this to Devon about um some of the things that would be the most important like cutting red tape for businesses, those types of things. Um, you know, here's here's the reality is that we get to set policy, but our team does the work. They have to do all the the heavy lifting. I mean, we don't just come into work and start like, hey, do this, do that. It's Jackie, her team, everyone that shows up to work. Um, they are doing massive, massive heavy lifting. So, they have the really, really difficult job, the tough job. you guys are in it day in and day out. Where our job is tough is we are the we're forward facing and so then we tend to interact with the public um hear their wants and desires which which is really great but we also take a lot of scrutiny um for some of those things. That's where I think our job is is tough um to but we knew that whenever uh we took these seats. Um, so I I also think I I love this messaging for us. I think it's important. However, we might not be here in four years and they might be here for 20 years. And so this is where what can we do to give them the long-term goals and tools um to make them successful because I think they are left out of a lot of these conversations because they have a lot of um the ability to make the biggest change. We can say it all day long, but they also have to believe that this is the right thing to do. This is the best thing to do for our community. They're also in community service like we are, but it is a different capacity for them where they really are doing um making the biggest change for our citizens because I think sometimes they don't get to see we get to see how how it's done by how it impacts them again forward facing. They don't necessarily get to see that. So I do think that the biggest power is in our team in Jackie in what they do and how they deliver it. uh we can like I said get up here and say these things all day long um but unless they believe that this is the path then um it's much more challenging. So what are your thoughts there? Look, mayor I mean I what she said right I mean that it's it's right right I mean it wasn't by her circumstance or happen stance that the first sort of one that I had in terms of challenges and opportunities was the team right hire the right people right the greatest legacy that you can leave is people that are going to be here for 20 years doing what you're doing the second piece that I would offer is don't leave them a landmine right it's so easy to do and And we see it all the time and sometimes it's just unintentional, mayor, right? I mean, you and I have seen it throughout our career where somebody says, "I've got to fix this problem today. Let's just spend that money, get it done today. Somebody will worry about it 20 years from now." Well, I mean, some ways we're dealing with some of those things that were left, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago. So, we see it. So, I look, everything you said, I think, is dead on. I don't know that I have a whole lot to contribute. I do think you have a remarkable team. I've enjoyed working with them beyond measure. I think they are professionals in every sense of the word and they really do care about what happens in this community. It's their home and that you can tell it comes through in everything that they do. Your ability to hire well, not leave them a land mine and be able to recognize that going forward, I think is, you know, best opportunity you have for the to leave that true legacy. >> Well, I'm I'm fortunate enough because I've got this one over here, so I don't have to do all that. [laughter] Um, but the other thing I I would say the biggest thing that if I could go back and and tell someone coming into this because some of the suggestions you had, they're they're absolutely fantastic. That's exactly right. The direction we need to go. We are living in times where um those can be controversial when you say private and he's laughing when you say private and public partnerships and >> and these things. Um, I really want to commend Councilman Martinez because I think he gives a view that, uh, typically gets forgotten about, but I also think on the other side of that, um, it's really important, I think, for our team and for us up here to realize what makes the biggest impact in people's lives, um, directly every single day. I always marvel at how people are so, and I get it now. Today is a different time. They're they're really focused on what's happening, you know, in Washington where we can really make your life terrible if we put in a street light, right? I mean, so we can have big impacts um in good ways and in bad ways. And all I would say, it's so easy, especially with social media now, to be um criticized for everything you do. Even when you're getting it right, you're getting it wrong. but just stay so focused on what that mission is, what really does um have the purpose. I I think you're right with fundamentals, it can drastically change from um someone's opinion what they are. I will say everyone should be so proud about the data that has come out because we've really worked on that for about 10 years about diversifying our economy with our jobs. Mike Kasmirki actually started that messaging and really pushed it. I I was skeptical, but it goes to show you what we're seeing today in the media that um it's having an effect on us. So, I I think we have also remember we're a medium-sized city. People forget that. The census just uh told us so. Um which is always hard to take, but that means it's very hard to be basic, right? We're past basics. We are now in this next level where we have to think broader, bigger, more innovatively. So, um, you know, I I just I want to commend you because it always gives us a different perspective, right? And, you know, we hear people day in and day out, but I think when you get a a fresh perspective and also you you have your finger on the pulse in the south that it it really helps us identify the things that we can take advantage of. >> Thank you, ma'am. I'm honored to be here. >> Thank you so so much. Okay, I think we're going to move on except for Councilman Ree. Um, we did we have we had two rounds. No, just one. >> Just one. Just one. Okay. Go ahead. Um, I I'm so sorry. I thought we had but we finished one. That was one. Yeah. Okay. Go right ahead. Councilman Ree. >> Thank you, Madam Mayor. And and I'll try to be brief. I I want to make sure that I am clear with you, Mr. Aguero. Um, I don't think it's a mystery of what our roles are, right? Um, we have a charter. The charter defines the responsibilities of the city. Those are pretty easy. First and foremost is public safety. That means we have to take care of our public safety. Firefighters, police officers, our dispatch folks, and in some ways public works are also public safety. Um, we have a public's work team that is involved in making sure that our roadways and sewers and our buildings that we own are maintained. Uh, we have a department responsible building, construction, permitting, all of that sort of thing. Uh, our fourth charter responsibility is our business licensing. That involves a number of different things. And then last is parks and recreation. Right? That's not a very exhaustive list, right? So there's no I I don't think um where I may diverge from the vice mayor is um we already focus on the basics. There's no getting back to the basics. What happens is sometimes we get dragged away from those things because there are important things to the community and it might be unhoused residents. It might be an environmental related issue along the river. It might be art related issues. our core stuff, we know what it is because the charter tells us what it is. So, I'm not sure we have to like figure out who we are or what we're going to be like reinventing the wheel in some way. The question for me is how to take the information you possess which is um about data and analytics and economics and make sure that we're using that to form the basis for our and I think we're going to use a pyramid today um this idea of what are our core functions because when times are good it's pretty easy to get a little bit further out over those core functions because there seems to be both a general um good naturaturedness of it and there seems to be extra dollars when we're fewer dollars and the economy is challenging then we really get shrunk down into what are our core purposes. So again I don't think that we have ever strayed from our basic principles. I think the leadership of this body um and especially under the direction of mayor has been quite excellent in that area and it's created the current conditions which you have already indicated are driving some of those economic outcomes. So I'll be interested to hear about that throughout the day and you sort of layering on that and then I had just one question. I I certainly think you'll have some response, but I also you said something in the presentation. There was a slide about the average uh cost of a home and you said there is no country in America where the basic single uh person with a decent wage can buy a home. And so I but that slide didn't exactly correlate to that topic. Is there some um dollar or is there some information you might provide or impart that's about that specific topic? I have the slide, Councilman. I'm happy to send it over to you. >> Yeah, that would be great. >> Yeah. And on the first half, I I understand exactly what you're saying. I I guess I'm looking forward to seeing what your little hierarchy pyramid kind of ultimately looks like because I suppose that'll be really important, too. But at the end of the day, I I don't disagree with what you said. I just hope that as you seek whatever the thing is that becomes immediate that it doesn't stop those fundamentals that you just talked about as being able to deliver on those. >> Well, I think you raised this issue last time, right? All of us probably care about, for example, the quality of our education system. Yeah. Right. But we are not the body which deals with that particular issue. Council member Martinez and I do have the privilege of serving on one smaller subcommittee that tangentially relates to that. Um, but sometimes when people come to you, they don't know the mechanics of which government deals with which thing. They just know they have a live person in front of them that will hear their complaint and we try to be responsive to that as the need arises. >> Yes, sir. >> Yeah. Thank you so much. Of course. >> Yeah. Um gosh, I have so many areas that I have noted questions, so I'm going to try to prioritize here. But first, I wanted to just do a shout out to Brandy and Miguel about the thing event you're going to go to tonight. And you mentioned healthcare and you mentioned um the trades and you mentioned uh council member Anderson about mining. And I just wanted to share that in the last six months in my private life, I've become chair of the um Mackie School of Mines advisory board. So, this is advising the school of how to better prepare the kids for the future economy uh and their jobs. And you made a point earlier about uh mining paying the highest wages. It's totally true. Um and it's so important out in the rurals. I mean, this is what makes their whole economy go, most of our counties in Nevada. So, I I'd love for you both to add that to your list. Um keep it on your list. Um but I wanted to go over your challenges, if I may, and end with two questions for you. So you said challenges and recommendations. I can't go I don't have time to touch them all but um I did want to touch you said AI. So the the way that we can capitalize on that it sounds like is help make use AI to help make government more efficient. It it sounds like or creative. I'm not sure. So I'm going to plant these and I'm hoping you'll say what you meant. Um infrastructure. So you said why what's great about now and that we have this um investing in infrastructure but that costs money. We're looking at huge sewer bills, you know, increases for our residents. We're looking at undergrounding power lines. We're looking at um this very heavy cost for new water, creating new water. My main point here is I'm all about infrastructure, but it costs a lot of money. Is it in what you consider our bucket of fundamentals? So that's a question and quality of life. Again, you listed this, but and it's what a lot of people want to move here because of our quality of life, but it costs money. And in terms of the things that just this week when we're only three days in, I've had numerous correspondents from my residents on rats, speeding, parks, you know, these ball fields, those ball fields, food. So, none of them really line up with what um would be in our fundamentals, right? We're not dealing with rats. I've sent them over to district health. Um speed, but not crime. They haven't written to me about crime, but our police are on the front lines of speed. It really, really, really bothers our residents. Um, this regional alignment, this is a great area for savings potentially and I personally think it should be in our strategic plan as much as possible is how to combine services with our local government, other governments till we can get a more efficient product for less cost or at least do the same if not better. Um, and then you mentioned one of the things I want to ask you about is growing our re our revenues. So the the really the key things I want to ask you about you've mentioned private public partnerships. So, I've been in government a very long time and these are always come up, but I want to know if you can specifically what do you mean? Because I don't think most people would think that is our fundamental job. It's a way to grow the economy. But that's my question. Where does it fit in the fundamentals priv private public partnerships paying for infrastructure at a heavy cost and how do we develop other revenues really to help us through >> okay >> these challenges? Yeah, >> let me take a shot at all that >> some of them. Okay, good. >> At least I'll I'll make an effort at >> all. In terms of your first question, relative to AI, I don't think we know what the full potential of AI is, but it ought to be able to lower the cost of delivering government and bring it closer and make it more immediate. I agree for people, >> but we have to buy. >> I think the best you're going to do immediate is embrace the technology and turn it into a research and development exercise for the city. Find every opportunity to find ways to exploit it, but not let it substitute the judgment. It needs to be a tool, not a crutch for government. And I think oftentimes that could be a challenge. Okay. You asked the question about infrastructure. I think infrastructure, everything you laid out does include does count as part of that investment. To me, um everything from water to sewer to curbs and gutters to everything that's being constructed. From my perspective, the reality is you're only going to have so much money. How do you prioritize those dollars? And from I believe that the prioritization of those dollars ought to be based on the community's return on investment. what are you getting for it? And I think the prioritization of that the se the first piece of it is can we continue to maintain the level of service that we have today because fulfilling the promises that you've already made is what is the I would say the fundamental that we talked about previously >> quality of life your point is an excellent one. I don't know about you, but you know, people complain to me a lot, right? And and and I and I I I hear it and I respect it and I understand that oftentimes, most times I would say it comes because they care about their community and they're like, "Hey, you know, we shouldn't have rats here." I had a nice lady that was talking about pigeons earlier, that kind of thing, right? I mean, I get it and we all want that. And if there is a solution, then we find the solution and we work the solution. If there's not a solution, I don't know. We buy traps and we try to get rid of it any way that we can. Right. The idea that somehow this city council can be a senator. You didn't create the right, you know, like the pipe piper of Hamlin. You didn't like go out and start to >> I told him I have rats, too. And it's up to us individually, but >> you know, my I have rats that we got rid of them. My daughter lives in New York. She sends me a picture and says, "Hey, look, it's ratatouille in my apartment." Right? I mean, this is part of the world that we live in today. And as much as you know I my heart goes out to the people that are experiencing some of these problems but also the city council folks they're somehow able to solve every problem that everybody has and quality of life is always in the eye of the beholder. What I am concerned about is as the economy starts to erode the number of people that are struggling is going to get greater and that's when the demand for services and I would suggest what what Councilman Ree was talking about those those pieces of your charter that are so fundamental they cannot be put at risk as a result of anything else that's out there. Right. You asked about regional alignment, right? We had that conversation the last time we were together. I think it's about services. I think it's about revenue. Right? It's not us or them. It's us and them. And I would suggest that that's also the way I would think about it in terms of public private partnerships. Right? This state has done some pretty remarkable things from a public private partnership standpoint. Examples. A few examples. Uh, we brought an NFL football team into the state of Nevada by putting $750 million, which by the way was the largest amount of money we have ever put in to a stadium along those lines. I had a an economist from a very notable school who told me it was the worst I think he actually didn't tell me, he said it to a reporter who put it in a thing. It was the worst economic development investment in the history of economic development investments or something along those lines. Why? It was because only between about 8% of the people, I forget the exact number. It was some low percentage were going to be people from out of town that were going to be going in there. Last year, Allegiance Stadium had 53% of the people that were butts and seats in that stadium. By itself, the cost of the debt to repay the 750 is roughly 35 $36 million a year. It probably threw off $80 million a year in net new revenue. You think about Tesla, and I understand that it has externalities. I understand it's a hot button issue uh for this community, but you want to talk about creating high-paying jobs and creating a catalyst for so many innovative businesses that said if it's good enough for Tesla, it's good enough for me and I want to be close to that. And what Trick has done out there has been nothing short of remarkably impressive. Would that have happened without USA Parkway? Would it have happened without the legislation that went through? Absolutely not. It would have happened. Now, let's imagine that we're doing the same thing, but we're doing it not for the next business that's moving in or a football team or a baseball team, but let's imagine we're doing the exact same thing, but for things that that fill the gap that we talked about before in terms of health care. What if we had matching funds that existed for healthare? What if we did the same thing that we were working on for the campus for hope down in southern Nevada where we created a hund00 million of private sector money if the if the the excuse me the hundred million of public sector money if the pi private sector raised a matching hundred million they did a $200 million facility that is designed to help people that are experiencing or or at risk of homelessness. I don't know that any of those are gerine to exactly the things that are presented to you today. But what I would suggest is that the idea that no one in our community today, this community, the state of Nevada, can go it alone. If you think you're going to go out there and do something alone, I I think good luck to you. Right? There are all kinds of businesses, at least in my world, that are asking the same kind of questions. Why is this hard? Those type of things. We're not going to agree on everything. You all are not going to agree on everything. But I think what people do agree on is that the future of this community matters and they want to be a part of grow in revenues if you wouldn't mind. >> Oh, sorry. Growing revenues, uh, growing revenues can be tough. Um, the reality of growing revenues is largely because we're Dylan's rule state, your ability to generate revenues is relatively limited. So, you're going to have to live inside the means. Two things I think matter relative to that thing. Number one is understanding what the source of those revenues are and where your economy needs to exist or your development pattern needs to exist because there is a very different profile for the demand for services on one type of development versus a different type of development and that balance is ultimately going to matter. That economic growth will continue to generate that revenue. But I think the decision points have to start today. How do we start having a dialogue not just with the city of Reno but all local governments around the state of Nevada about how we start thinking about what revenues need to be 10 years from now, 20 years from now, for 30 years from now. Because if local governments across the state all get together and say we have a problem and that problem is our sources of revenue, sales tax and property tax primarily are eroding. Why sales tax? Because people are spending money differently than they did before. and property tax because we designed a property tax system that's designed to erode. Right? So the combination of those two things when growth slows local governments are going to feel it in a tremendous way overall. If the city of Reno tries to go it alone, I would suggest it's going to be remarkably difficult. But you are not alone in the challenges that you are dealing with. Every jurisdiction has it in one way or another. Maybe it's a little bit different order of magnitude. Maybe the allocations are a little different. But finding a way to to to build strength and unity in terms of local governments that are all have to deal with all these revenue sources. That is going to be your opportunity. Not necessarily to generate new revenue with the sources that exist, but to have [snorts] a meaningful dialogue about how we might change those even in a revenue neutral way that will position you for growth in the future. >> Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah. >> Wow. And you didn't even mention the lottery. [laughter] I love >> I'll just sidestep that one if that's okay. >> We didn't even go with our lottery. >> Oh. Uh, Councilwoman Eert, I believe you have your hand up. Go ahead. Sorry. Um, Councilwoman, I'll come back to you. >> Yeah, that's all right. So, I have kind of a a lot. Again, I'm so sorry. And and not all of it needs like a direct answer. It's just kind of, you know, it's just kind of a workshop. So, um I know that I mentioned Edon earlier and I don't expect um Edon to be like an arm of the city of Reno, but I think that um you know, we've talked about this with other um entities in Reno like the RSCVA, it's Reno and Sparks, but how could we work um more closely with them as a as a city of Reno? I would like to figure out how we could work with Edon and developers, builders, all the stakeholders um to come up with a a plan to um create some type of, you know, um campus for um tech jobs, not just data centers, but like a really awesome place to work. You know, we have Silicon Valley not that far from us. We have two airports where people can come here from there, uh commute back and forth. I'd like to find a way to come up with um you know business areas that rival that like that that is something I think we should be striving for to bring these higher paying jobs because we don't have state income tax. I know that's desirable for people and I mean you know uh income tax or the the people you know um you solve property taxes but um I know that's attractive to people. were very tax favorable. So I think we're kind of we should be working more in that space um to in you know inspire development for for those higher paying jobs. We should be more actively engaged in that. Um so you know we could get more of the like Teslas and Panasonic. We have all this lithium in this state. we should be really trying to figure out how to incorporate um those types of products into into uh our workforce with higher paying jobs. So anyways, that's kind of just a statement, but also the housing. Do you have information on like the percentage of housing that's rentals and like what are the trends on rental homes that were built strictly to be rental homes and homes that were built to be bought? Like is that is that shift starting to happen more where developers are solely building homes to be rented as like an investment? Um >> Sure. >> Um you know a way to make money long term and not sell the homes. >> Yeah. Um so I I will try to respond to both of those. The first one as you said was something of a statement. So I'll just offer that I do believe that Edon is bestin-class and I said it earlier I will say it again. Uh I think what Colonel Kazmmerski did in terms of foundation laying for this community was transformational and I think it continues to be carried forward with remarkable leadership still today. I would also offer that as you think about trying to innovate and develop that you have one of the most remarkable and I would argue um the state's greatest in some ways um uh incubator right in your own backyard with uh the University of Nevada. I think what uh President Sandival has done there uh and his emphasis on uh transformational economic activity uh has been uh also uh remarkable and is valuable. Uh your second question uh relative to housing and more specifically uh the percentage we do have the percentage of homes that are not owner occupied uh and so this gives us a a uh a good indication uh relative to those that are rentals. we can provide that to you and I think we should be able to provide you some of the trend related data that you're asking for. Now obviously there are also um a number of either hedge fund investment funds or there are companies that were designed specifically to either acquire and rent or develop homes uh homes for rent. Um that is a little bit more difficult to uh specifically um aggregate but I will look into it and see what we can do. I did have u a couple things. Uh if you can just give me a little bit more. Um do you have information on the impact of the tax abatements that are given to businesses that come here? Like I know this is something that's happening at the state level, but we keep talking about like how our property tax system has, you know, flaws in it. So, our revenue, you know, is not keeping up with our expenses and all that, but is there any discussion going on about the tax abatements that we're offering and how that's affecting our our um um funding resources and maybe we should reduce the amount of abatements they get or shorten the amount of time we offer them. Is there is there any discussion like that happening? Yeah, I I think you're focusing on the economic development incentives as opposed to just abatements because the largest abatement in the state of Nevada doesn't go to any business. It goes to every individual taxpayer in the form of the property tax abatement. So, we talked about that previously. I'm going to hold that to the side for a moment. um without offering commentary relative to good or bad economic development incentives because I think that there's reasonable arguments on both sides of that. There are some reports that have been prepared by GOED and others that look at the economic implications associated with the investments that the state of Nevada has made. And so I can look to get those reports and perhaps prepare some kind of summary uh for the city council uh that you could take a look at and and and get some of that. And then you probably have some follow-up questions after that and I'm happy to follow up on those as well. But at least I can get you what exists today in the market relative to the the cost and benefit associated with uh the economic development incentives we've made. >> All right. Okay. And then one last thing I forgot to mention previously. Um you know I'm interested in all kinds of housing in my ward. We have this whole area that's duplexes. It was built by the military years ago when airport was a military um base essentially and it was built to house the members of the military and their family. And I'm not saying that city of Reno should build um duplexes, but is there any examples of cities um helping with Habitat for Humanity, per se, or um donating land to put a mobile home park in that's going to have a fixed space rental cost or uh things like that to help with um controlling the cost of living increase that people that just can't afford it are dealing with. >> Yeah. I mean the last part you had me until the last part of the question. I mean the idea that government is sort of going to regulate out of price increases. Um again I think that's a that that's a very heavy lift just because you don't control some incredible factors like accessibility to land uh generally or the cost of the interest rate or the cost of lumber those type of things. So I want to hold the side out that government can somehow mitigate uh or alleviate uh those challenges. To the first half of your question, I'm not aware of a lot of relationships with Habitat for Humanity only because I've worked with the organization but not in that capacity. So I don't know that I can opine relative to that. But I can tell you that there are a number of examples of public private partnerships where things like land trusts are used to essentially identify land at low cost that must be passed on uh to consumers uh that are the purchasers of those house. I mean those public private partnerships I think exist all over the United States and there's certainly examples of them here in the state of Nevada. >> Yeah. And I didn't clear on on my comments about the mobile home parks. I I did not mean that we would tell people how much they you know charge for the mobile home, but maybe the city of Reno maintains ownership of the land and says this is how much the space is going to cost and we don't raise it. Um and maybe we let somebody lease it from us to to manage it and they could charge a certain fee. Uh but we we maintain ownership of the land or you know maybe we sell it and it it has some kind of deed restriction that it has to remain an affordable housing um you know mobile home park. We have apartments that that um are affordable housing uh apartments. So I was just curious to see if any of that um has been explored. I know um there there's um several mobile home parks in um um different areas in Wo County. Um but we don't have like new ones. So I was just curious if if any um anywhere in Nevada was kind of exploring that at all. >> Uh I I'll have to look into it. I'm not aware. I just haven't studied mobile home parks uh recently. But you know, look, happy to share with you whatever we can. just, you know, the devil's always in the details, right? I mean, >> just trying to think of of different types of housing. There's there's manufactured homes. I think people prefer that term now beside uh over mobile homes, but there's a lot of really nice manufactured homes and um people that are currently living in um that their space rentals keep going up because some investment firm, you know, purchased the um the mobile home park and they're getting priced out. So just um looking for for places that maybe seniors can live um maybe disabled veterans that are living on a fixed income. So just trying to explore all the possibilities in regard to housing. So that was all I totally get it if you haven't looked into that. It's kind of like um off the cuff, but thank you so much for for all your information. >> Thank you, Councilwoman Eert. Appreciate it. I'm I'm gonna move on over uh to Councilwoman Anderson. Um, I do want to point out, Councilwoman Eert, um, it would be a great opportunity for you to take a tour with the Reno Housing Authority. And then not to mention when you talk about innovative housing, I think Reno has done it phenomenal with um, examples such as Sage Street, then you talk about >> Oh, yeah. I've been there. >> Yeah. I've taken I've taken several tours with Reno Housing Authority and I've been to Sage Street. I I know that we are doing good things, but I know that we also have, you know, a huge waiting list for um housing assistance and, you know, just a a tremendous need for more affordable housing. So, that was not at all to say we aren't doing things, but I just am looking for more ways. >> All right. I I I appreciate that very much. And then also, you talked about private and public partnerships. We did something called a thousand homes in a 100 days, uh to your point, and that really helped. Uh, so there's a lot of different level levers. Then I also want to commend Miss Jackie over here because um, another good example of innovative housing is what you did with the Motel for veterans and mental health. >> So, >> so anyway, we're just I'm just bragging a little bit. So, you can go back to Las Vegas and tell them what we're doing. >> Well, we already do. [laughter] We have used both of those as examples of projects that folks >> Okay. Um, go ahead. Councilwoman Anderson. >> Okay, I'm not going to disparrage Las Vegas in my comments [laughter] this time. It's it it pains me. >> Now I'm going to get in trouble by all my friends. So, but we have a lot to learn from the community return on investment that Las Vegas has seen with recent developments, not only with teams coming into the area, but other businesses. So, I was wondering if you could give this council a pep talk on different ways that we can encourage um the return on investment for the different partnerships that we have coming into Northern Nevada and the different ways that we can measure them >> and really be able to engage our community in the discussion about the return on investment that we are we're looking for um with different public private partnerships. And I guess the easiest one off the top of my head is the Las Vegas Raiders and how that team just brought in so much to the community that was above and beyond what anything was expected. >> You know, Councilwoman Anderson, the funny thing is I I think people look at how that deal was structured and they think about the $750 million and they completely forget about the risk that Mark Davis took to bring that team over. I mean, he put it all on the line. if it didn't work out, and let's not forget he constructed it into a pandemic, right? Um, you know, if it didn't work out, he loses everything. I mean, he put it all on the line. And look, I I've been doing this almost 30 years now, which is also painful for me to say. Um, and it it strikes me that the vast almost everything that I've ever worked on hasn't been because I had some brilliant idea in terms of how to get it done. It's been because an opportunity presented itself. Because someone came in and said, "I have an idea." and I'd like to figure out a way to do it together. And we figured out a way to go do it together. When we were working on the Raiders deal in particular, right, the whole idea at the outset of that was to take 1% of a room tax and use it to expand the convention center. Expand it. We found a way to bring everybody together, get 0 87% or something like that of the room tax, build a Legion Stadium, not have to build a UNLV uh football facility, and get the expansion to the convention center. That's the community coming together and figuring it out. So, look, I I I would love to tell you what the secret sauce is, but I I think that would be me being disingenuous relative to the fact that there is no secret sauce. I think that what it is is having a default position of yes, how do we someone comes in with an idea, they have a concept. And don't get me wrong, there going to be a lot of bad ones too, right? And you have to be something of an arbiter of that, but empowering your team to to have those conversations to dig in to make sure that it's good for the city, but find a way to Yes. And I think if you can have that default position be that way, that's where you're going to find the greatest opportunity. Because the idea that it's going to necessarily come from right in this room, probably not. But my guess is there's a lot of smart people out there that have a lot of smart ideas that if they could just have this thing, then maybe they could build that other housing development or they just had access to that then they could make this additional investment. And don't look again, I don't want to suggest that folks won't try to take advantage because of course they will. But if you start with a position of how can we find a way to do it together and your city manager and others are empowered to have that dialogue, I think it puts you in the position to find success when it presents itself. >> All right. Thanks. >> You bet. >> Thanks so much, Madam Mayor, and thanks again for continuing to indulge us with all these barrage of questions. I think for me, um, I want to focus this last round on two things. One is how do we one of the things you mentioned during your presentation was um capitalizing on our regional partners and making sure that we work together with our neighbors to solve some of our issues and not necessarily look for outside agencies to sort of control that narrative in the decision-m process. And so any insights you have for us there whether it's about regionalization or uh reducing redundancy in core services that are provided in each jurisdiction. And the second piece uh of my question is about um transit. You mentioned that that along with housing is one of the things that are keeping costs of living high in our region. um and seeing if there are any suggestions that you have based there and it could be tied into regionalization that's why I sort of coupled both of them since the regional transit RTC is sort of a board that is has membership from all the local jurisdictions. So I think in its essence it is a regional effort that we have to sort of take on and not something necessarily that the city council on itself is entirely in control of. So just wanted to put all that into perspective and get your thoughts on that. Great questions, uh, Councilman. So, I'll start with the first piece, which is regionalism and and finding a way to leverage it. The the only sort of piece of advice that I have here to the extent that it's helpful is make two lists. One are all the community assets. What are all the things that we have that are super valuable that we ought to be sharing in? And number two, what are all the services that exist that everyone is providing? And where there are assets that can be shared and services that are redundant to use your word, which I think is the exact right way to think about it, every one of those is an opportunity, right? Some of them are going to present themselves because legacy ways of doing things, legacy agreements, legacy tax structures, those type of things are either going to create inefficiency or they're going to create inequity. And so you're always going to have to deal with some of that. But when you think about it from a regionalism standpoint, I always think about it as terms of two lists, assets and services. And if you can go through those two, those are things that ought to be shared and ought to be um maximized or reduced in terms of their cost. And I think opportunities exist in this community just like they do in every community across the state of Nevada. There's just no doubt about that. And we probably all know which ones those are. When you talk about transit, you know, this is always a hard one for me because I'm going to go back to the conversation I had with Councilman Ree earlier about the sustainability part of that, right? What we don't want is to lose bus service. We don't want to lose transit service. We don't want I believe that that's just like a promise that's been made that people have selected their home. And you look at the disproportionate share that are seniors, that are veterans, that are students that are us utilizing those bus systems. I think being able to maintain that is absolutely critical overall, right? But I don't think you're going to get people out of their cars, right? The chance of that, I think, is very, very slim. So, how do you work on developing it? And again, I know mayor talked about some of the partnerships that have been in housing and those things. Transit oriented development is a big part of that. And how do we think about transit oriented development? How do we think about where something can connect two pieces to that transit system that can give people the opportunity to be able to grow and develop? Again, I am far from an expert in your transportation system. My knowledge is um somewhat limited, but we know that the cost of owning a car and a cost of transportation is higher here than it is in most places around the United States. And so that means for a lot of people they don't have that option and your car breaks down or something along those lines. What do you do then? It's pretty hard. It's pretty hard. Like I don't think we're going to, you know, all of a sudden turn the Reno area into like New York City or something along those lines. I mean that's just not realistic. But what are the incremental higher order transit elements that can be done to link people to where they live to where they ultimately need to go? That's going to be that's going to be the opportunity. And I guess I should also say going back to the question about AI, right? I mean, the most efficient use of all roadways is going to be when there's no accidents. So that's going to be more autonomous vehicles on our roads. And I think that's an inevitability. >> Okay. I would love uh for you to talk a little bit about TIFF. Uh recently we um you know we approved a a project um recently and you know I believe those projects um certainly create jobs obviously it makes uh Reno still extremely attractive, innovative tourism um there's a lot of different aspects. >> Bless you. Uh, bless you. I keep hearing sneezes over there. >> Oh, that was you. >> The snack. >> Oh, okay. Um, and so I want you to talk about how the council weighs because here's what I'd say. Not one project fits all, right? It all of them will not identify or check all the boxes. what is your best um advice to give to the council so when they look at uh specific projects what what are the things that they can look for? I do think you know having an outside firm come in and and assess um some of the >> the highs and lows and risks uh associated with um these partnerships. They're still considered highly effective partnerships, but again, not all of them are going to be the same based on um you know what the proposition is and what the partnership is. >> Sure. >> But I think we have a real opportunity when they do come in to have benchmarks or have things that meet the council's criteria such as affordable housing, those types of initiatives. So maybe you can talk a little bit about what in your experience um and I haven't followed maybe what the South has done in any of um TIFF capacity, but maybe you could talk a little bit about what's the best way for council to continue to move forward and identify them so they they are effective. Um there's not a whole lot of tools in our tool belt that we can use the city and I that sounds very presumptive that the city council can use or your team can use to be able to um >> incentivize economic development. TIFF, Starbond, some of those type of things are the ones that are kind of in your tool belt. Um you're right that they're not all made the same way. The lens that we have a tendency to look at all of those things through is three-fold. Number one, economic impacts, jobs, wages and salaries, economic output. The comment that was made earlier, trading quantity for quality, I think matters, right? Those jobs created, are they the right jobs? Are they the right industry? Those type of things. From an economic impact, there's also two other pieces that people commonly just don't even think about. One is the construction related impact. Yeah, >> these are real high-paying good jobs in a community that are made possible by billions of dollars of investment that flow in. That is rarely, if ever, in my experience, I don't know that I could point to one where the construction was ever a bad thing associated with that. And mayor, you mentioned the third piece, which in most communities, they don't even get to have a conversation about it. And that is, does it bring people in from outside the community to come here and go to a concert or go to a sporting event or do something along those lines. This is an opportunity that other communities would give their IT teeth to be able to have, right? And that is >> Say that again. [laughter] >> Repeat that sentence. >> Yeah, you get in there. [clears throat] I mean, the the idea is that if you're bringing people in from outside the community, they're not going to our schools. They're very likely to demand public services. And almost every single thing they do is subject to some form of taxation. You get off the plane and you get in a cab, we tax you. You check into the hotel, you pay room tax. You pay gaming tax. Retail sales and use tax. You go out to eat, you pay retail sales and use tax. You go to the event, live entertainment tax, right? It's over and over and over again. It is the ability for us to export our tax liability to people that don't actually live in the community. And it's a great thing. Now, what you don't want to do is overestimate it, right? but jobs, wages and salaries, economic output. And the second of those tanches is the fiscal impact associated with that and the those revenues coming in versus what it's going to cost you. That ought to have a positive return on investment. If you're getting less out of it than what you're putting in, then you either making a decision that you're buying the jobs, which is some communities have done, or number two, you're making a bad investment. So, I think from a fiscal standpoint, right, best in the entire state of Nevada is Guy Hobbs. Nobody knows it better than him. his ability to sort of see all of those angles and all those type of things just absolutely remarkable. But he's looked at so many of them over the years and sort of has this ability to sort of balance out each one of those and I think the techniques that he utilizes are ones that we try to emulate in every project that we look at and I have the benefit of having him as a mentor and so it's meant the world to me. But that fiscal piece matters and oftentimes we spend time thinking about the fiscal piece in terms of the revenues that are generated less so about the expenses that are generated. But if it's going to cost you something in terms of infrastructure, you ought to know that fiscal piece ought to balance and it ought to be in the interest of the city, I think. And so getting an outside source to help with that, I think, is always a good idea just because, well, you have tremendous staff. Maybe they can go through that exercise, maybe not, but it matters. And then there's a third component, and that is the social piece. So many of the projects that we've worked on have turned on the existence of a community benefit plan or a community benefit agreement. And you can take this too far. There are folks that want to believe that when you know a sports team moves in or this big development is going to happen that it's somehow going to be a panacea for all the problems of a community. It never is that way but the community benefit can really matter and you can direct things to things that really matter maybe in the shorter term or maybe just something else that you want to involve with. What we found is that those community benefit plans they they develop a public private partnership like nothing else does because it connects you with the community in an important way. And so I think if you have the economics, you have the fiscal side and you have the social, the community benefit side, you have a win, right? Often times the other piece that I would offer is don't kill it. Right? I mean what we find is time and time and time again and I'm talking about my experience with I don't know whatever 50 projects I've worked on from time to time, there's always somebody that says one more thing. If you could just do this then we could make it work. If you could just do that then you could make it work. they always want to kind of hang one more thing on it without always an understanding of what the cost is associated with that and at some point the cost of the project no longer makes it the opportunity that was presented to you in the first place. So again, probably a very long-winded answer to a very direct question, but I would offer economics, fiscal, and social implications. Return on investment should be positive. And what I talked to uh Councilman or the conversation I had councilwoman, excuse me, Anderson about having a default position of yes, because at least in my experience, the benefits outweigh the risks in almost every single one of those projects I have ever worked on. >> So, [clears throat] >> well, thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Uh, Councilman Ree, are we done? >> Nothing. >> Okay. Um, that being said, I don't think we have any more questions. We've been through our two rounds. So, we are going to break for lunch and, um, really appreciate you, Mr. Aguero, as always. Um, I think you will go down in history as one of the best and most dynamic that we have ever seen. So, it's it really is always um wonderful to have you and we brought you great sunshine today. >> Okay. Um so, let's see. >> 30 minutes. 12:40. >> Okay. We're going to come back at 12:40. Sound good. And you are going to give us a presentation. Okay. That's fantastic. We're excited to uh see what you guys have in store. All right, everyone. We'll we'll break uh Madame Clerk, just for the record. Thanks. It's it's [music] very it's very hard living at the shelter. Um it's kind of it's kind of survive if you can [music] uh until you can get out. And and and the thing about uh my situation was getting [music] out was was a was a conduit for me to thrive. You know, once I was once I got out of there, as you can see, I'm I'm doing pretty well. >> Reno Works is a joint partnership [music] with Volunteers of America in the city of Reno. And he was one of the participants that had applied for the program. He was going through some medical issues at the time and [music] staying in the shelter. So, he had a big decision. He wasn't working as much. Um, he's [music] staying here at Marvel Way and when he was getting approved for the housing piece, [music] they were approving him at 60% AMI for the community and he wouldn't be able to afford that. [music] So we had um facilitated some conversation with Marvel way and you know getting him something he [music] can afford and he ended up I believe qualifying for the 40% unit or 30% unit and then um he was still [music] making kind of a decision on whether he would be able to work and you know like maintain [music] housing and I was kind of instrumental in hey you know you need to take this jump you're going to medically you [music] know heal in your own place where you're not surrounded. And there was a point to where he was in the hospital and um he didn't know if [music] he was going to have a bed when he went back. So I'm like, Renie, we can't keep doing this and we need to get into housing. >> It's it's been it's been a it's been quite a journey. And I I think I think if [music] anyone anyone that sees me now that they're [music] like they're like you were you were there last year and now you're here. It's it's it's kind of amazing. I graduated in November. Raies ended up hiring me and they were one of the partners. So I got a job at Arley's and I'm working as a [music] courtesy clerk over there. Uh I I beg groceries and push carts. >> The partnership with Reno Works and Raies is amazing. It gives the community a chance to get those unfortunate people a chance to get back on their feet and get their life back together. Rainey builds relationships and that's uh big here at um especially with our customers and the team members. Uh once you build a relationship, [music] you build the trust and that puts everything together. >> The ultimate the ultimate was to get me in here and get me out of the shelter so so that I could thrive, you know. Uh and and I have honestly uh I'm doing a lot of raies and I'm I'm working really hard and uh people see that for individuals that are thinking about applying to Reno Works [music] or go for it cuz cuz honestly it'll help you move forward. Renie was one of the best participants. Always showed up with a smile on his face despite what he was going through. He um still supports the program to [music] this day. Comes to graduations. He was amazing. >> [music] >> Do you know how to survive a fire in your home? I'm John. This is Katie with the Reno Fire Department. And today we want to share some important information with you. >> To survive, you need to know the basics [music] of fire behavior. A fire needs three things to exist. Fuel, heat, and oxygen. [music] >> The best way to do this is to keep the fuel side of the triangle away from the heat side. The easiest way to survive a fire is to prevent it from happening [music] in the first place. Today, we'll show you some ways to prevent fires from happening. And if they do start, how to evacuate safely. Cooking is the main cause of home fires and fire injuries, [music] and you can prevent them. Here's how. First, stand by your pan. If you leave the kitchen, turn the burner off. Then, watch what you're cooking. Fires start when the heat is too high. If you see any smoke or the grease start to [music] boil, turn the burner off. Another thing to keep in mind is to turn pot handles [music] toward the back of the stove. Then no one can bump them or pull them. Finally, keep combustables away from the burners. Believe it or not, dogs have turned on burners accidentally [music] while trying to get food stored on top of ranges. In our modern world, lithium ion batteries are everywhere. These types of batteries can be dangerous. So, here's some things to keep in mind. Stop using them if you notice an odor, a change in color, too much heat, change in shape, leaking, or odd noises. Charge and store spare lithium-ion batteries away from anything that can burn. Don't put lithium-ion batteries in direct sunlight or keep them in hot cars. This is a fire risk. >> Here are some other things around the [music] house to remember. Keep anything that can burn at least 3 f feet from the furnace. oil burner, wood stoves, water heaters, and other [music] heat generating equipment. When it comes to cooking appliances, space heaters, washers, and dryers, [music] they should be plugged directly into wall outlets. Clean lint filters every time you use the dryer and never leave a burning [music] candle alone. Looking at the triangle again, the third component is oxygen. Fire needs oxygen to survive. Progression of fire can be slowed by compartmentalizing your home. The easiest way to do this is to keep room doors and windows closed. The garage typically houses many potential ignition sources and heavy fuel loads. So, make sure the man door between the garage and living space is a solid core door with a fire rating of no [music] less than 20 minutes. Any alterations to this door, including pet door installs, will allow a fire that starts in the garage, to quickly progress into the living space. Many home fires can start outside and spread into your home. So, don't store garbage or combustibles under windows or next to doors. Remove vegetation that is against your exterior walls, especially if it is dead and dying. Juniper brush may look green on the outside, but under the green hides dead needles that can easily ignite. Even with our best intentions, [music] accidents can occur. Always be prepared to escape. On average, you only have about 2 minutes to escape a fire once a smoke alarm sounds. [music] Working smoke alarms are critical. Install and maintain them in every sleeping room and every floor. Test the battery monthly and [music] replace it if over 10 years old. Know two ways out of every room and make a meeting space. If you have children in the house, take time to draw a plan and explain [music] it to them in a way that makes sense to them. The biggest takeaway is to make a plan and practice it. One common mistake we see after fires [music] is that residents will open doors and windows thinking this will let the heat and smoke out of the house. Remember, fire seeks oxygen. Adding air to fire only makes it bigger and spread to those openings. When exiting, close the doors and windows behind you. For more information on fire survival, please visit our website at reno.gov/fire. Thank you. Be safe. Hi boys and girls. My name is John, fire marshal for the city of Reno. Did you know a fire occurs in a house every 65 seconds in our country? That's like every minute. Sadly, this also means many people get hurt. Your ability to get out of your home during the fire depends on early warning from fire and [music] knowing how to escape if a fire happens. Fires can happen anywhere. The question is, are you prepared? Our extreme team [music] is going to help you make a home escape plan. When you are done with that home escape plan, teach it to your family and other members in your household so they can escape fire as well. If you do that, you can be part of the Reno Fire Department. >> Extreme. This is Boston, our fire dog. He's going to introduce you to our fire extreme team. >> Thanks, John. Meet the extreme team. Together, we're making a fire escape plan. This is Sean. He takes care of me every day, and he'll talk about fire alarms. Shel's here, too. Shel will teach us how to get out and stay out. This is Katie, and she'll talk [music] about finding a safe meeting place. And finally, Tina is really excited to talk about why we need to practice our plan. The first part of a home escape plan is a working smoke alarm. Fire produces smoke. [music] Smoke and hot gases move upward towards the ceiling. As a fire gets bigger, the smoke and hot gases move downward towards the floor and superheat the room until everything in the room catches fire. That's why smoke alarms are so important. [music] They detect fire and warn you before the fire gets too big and you can't escape. Because smoke goes up, smoke alarms should be installed on the ceiling or high point of the wall. >> [music] >> They should be in every sleeping room, hallway outside the sleeping room, and every floor. Smoke alarms should be tested every month to make sure they work. Have your parents or older brother and sister help you with this as you may need a ladder. To test the smoke alarm, push and hold the test [music] button for 3 seconds. It should make a loud beeping noise. If it does not make a loud beeping [music] noise, then have your mom or dad replace the battery or install a new alarm. >> Thanks, Sean. [music] Smoke alarms can be loud and scary, especially if it goes off when you're sleeping and dreaming of chasing rabbits. If I heard an alarm, I will wake up immediately and run [music] outside. But I have four legs and I'm low to the ground. You're human, so you need to be more careful when getting outside. Right, Shel? >> That's right, Boston. Remember, fire [music] produces heat and smoke that travels up. Have you ever tried to breathe in smoke? Smoke can hurt your lungs, especially if it's superheated. If you smell or see smoke, [music] you want to stay under the smoke. If you are in bed, when the smoke alarm activates, [music] don't stand up. Roll out of bed onto your hands and knees. Stay low and go. Always know two ways out of any room. For [music] most people, the first way out is the door they came into the room. That should be your first way out. Remember to stay low. Crawl to the door and feel the door for heat before opening it. The best way to do this is to feel the door knob in face of the door with [music] the backside of your hand. If it is cool, then open the door slightly and look for smoke. If you do not see smoke, go outside to your safe meeting place. If you do see smoke, close the door and go to your second [music] way out. Usually, the second way out is the window. Don't break the window. Broken glass can cut you. Practice [music] opening the window in your room when you get home. If you have a screen, practice popping out the [music] screen with your parents. It's usually pretty easy. If you live on an upper floor, talk to your mom or dad about getting a fire escape [music] ladder and learn how to use it. >> Thanks, Shel. So, if you hear an alarm, don't hide. Get outside. If there is smoke, stay low and go. But once [music] you're outside, where do you go? >> That is a great question, Boston. Everyone in your household needs to know where to go. So, when firefighters arrive, they know who [music] is safe and who needs to be rescued. A meeting place should be a safe distance from the building. A tree, mailbox, [music] or even a neighbor's house is a good safe meeting place because they don't move. A par, garbage [music] can, or traffic cone is not because they may not be there when the fire actually happens. Once you're out, call 911 if you have a phone. Now, [music] let's go back inside and answer some questions. >> Thanks, Katie. My first question is, should a person go back inside a burning [music] house to rescue somebody else? >> Once you are out, stay out. Never go back in for anyone or anything. [music] Once firefighters arrive, they are trained and have the tools to rescue anyone still in the building. >> What if I live on the third floor and [music] I cannot get out? >> That is a great question. If you're stuck in your room and cannot get out, make sure your [music] room door is closed. Hang a towel or sheet outside your window. This acts as a signal to the firefighters outside that someone is still in the building. We will come get you. [music] When firefighters enter the home, they will be dressed in turnouts and be wearing a mask, helmet, and a tank. This can make them look very scary. >> [music] >> The mask they will wear will make a noise like Darth Vader. Remember, they are here to rescue you. Fire can make a lot of noise, so you need [music] to say loud words over the noise to help firefighters find you. Help is always a good choice. >> Now, that's a lot of good [music] information, but now what? >> Well, Boston, now we draw and practice our plan. Pretend you're a superhero flying over your house. From this view, draw a map of your home. Include the rooms and all windows and doors. Now [music] identify which rooms are used for sleeping and draw a green arrow showing your first way out and a red arrow showing your second [music] way out. Draw your safe meeting place and circle it with both colors. Now the important part, [music] practice. Sit down with all the family in your household. Identify where all the smoke alarms are and [music] test them. Practice rolling out of bed and crawling to the door and then the window. Practice escaping from your door and out your window and meeting at your [music] safe meeting place. That's great. So, to make a great escape plan, start with a working smoke alarm. Have at [music] least two ways out of every room and meet at your safe meeting place. That's right, Boston. Now you have the knowledge to join our team. Let's get to [music] work. [music] Hello, I'm Chris Payne and it's time for the Reno Minute. It's back to school [music] time and we're here with Officer Johnson from the Reno Police Department to discuss some great reminders on how to keep [music] our students safe. >> Hey, thanks Chris. Here at the Reno Police Department, we want to ensure a safe school year for every child in our community. And so we have some important tips and reminders for drivers. Slow down in school zones. Always adhere to posted speed limits. Stop for school buses. It's illegal to pass a school bus that is stopped to unload or load children. Yield to pedestrians, especially in school zones and residential areas. Avoid distractions such as using your phone while driving. The Reno Police Department will be increasing enforcement in and around schools this summer and fall to help keep all of our students and pedestrians safe. Thank you, Officer [music] Johnson. And don't forget to follow City of Reno and RPD on all of your favorite social media platforms. So now you [music] know we're with Reno. Thank you for watching the Reno Minute. Hello, I'm Chris Payne and it's time for the Reno Minute. [music] Today, we're excited to spotlight the city's new rolling recreation center, a mobile recreation center designed to bring fun [music] and activities to communities across the city. Here's Kayla Snow to tell us more. >> Thanks, Chris. Our rolling recreation center is all about making accessible recreation for everyone in our community. Our mobile recreation center travels to various parks following the schedule of the Food Bank of Northern Nevada Kids Cafe summer meals program. This means that not only do kids get free recreational activities, but also a free meal. Our program offers a wide range of activities for people of all ages, including sports, games, arts and crafts, and so much more. The Rolling Recreation Center is free and open to the public. We welcome everyone of all ages to come out, have fun, and enjoy our city parks. >> Thank you, Kayla. Visit reno.gov/parksre [music] to find out when the rolling recreation trailer rolls through a park near you. So now [music] you know with Reno. Thank you for watching the Reno Minute. Hello, I'm Chris Payne and it's time for the Reno Minute. If you're looking for a career in a fast-paced [music] environment, perhaps becoming a Reno Police Officer could be for you. Let's go inside and [music] speak with Officer Hunter Mccurio and find out more. Thanks, Chris. The Reno Police Department is on a continuous hiring basis. If you're interested in finding a career in law enforcement and finding a job with purpose, come join us today. Also, being a Reno Police Officer in Reno makes my city not just livable, but lovable. Every day looks completely different and you're normally going to somebody's worst day, but you get to be that opportunity to make a change in their life and hopefully better their day. If you're interested in becoming a police officer, go to the city of Reno jobs page and apply for the police officer recruit position. If you have any questions about [music] becoming a police officer, want to come do a ride along with us, you can reach me at recruiter reno.gov or you can reach me at my phone number 775-4370043. [music] Thanks. Hello, I'm Chris Payne and it's time for the Reno Minute. Today we turn our attention to motorcycle safety, a crucial topic for our roads. Joining [music] us is Officer Chris Johnson from the Reno Police Department. Thanks, Chris. One concerning trend that we're observing is an increase in speed related incidents involving motorcycles. Another issue we're facing is lane splitting, which is illegal in Nevada, but unfortunately still occurs frequently. Speeding reduces the rers's ability to react to unexpected situations. Increasing the likelihood of accidents and the severity of injuries. Lane splitting, besides being against the law here, is dangerous because it puts motorcyclists in a close proximity to other vehicles, increasing the risk of a collision. We also urge vehicle drivers to be aware of their surroundings, including motorcycles. Check your mirrors and blind spots often, especially before changing lanes or making turns. And remember, always give motorcyclist plenty of space on the road. [music] Thank you, Officer Johnson, for sharing these important insights. So now you know with Reno. I'm Chris Payne for the Reno Minute. Hello, I'm Chris Payne and it's time for the [music] Reno Minute. We're here today with Reno Fire Inspector Telina Sky to discuss wildland urban [music] interface or WOOI and how you can protect your home from wildfires. Thanks Chris. [music] The wildland urban interface or WOOI is the area where urban development meets wildland. These areas are at increased risk of wildfires. The city of Reno has implemented several initiatives to help residents mitigate wildfire risks, such as creating a community wildfire protection plan, which outlines strategies for reducing wildfire hazards, fuel mitigation projects such as goats and Rosewood Canyon, and residents can also participate in our dumpster program where they can dispose of green waste to enhance their defensible space. Residents should keep their home in the first 5 ft non-combustible and ember resistant. >> Thank you, Tina. [music] For more information from the Reno Fire Department, visit reno.gov/fire and follow RFD on all of your favorite social media platforms. [music] So now you know with Reno. I'm Chris Payne for the Reno Minute. >> I'm Jamie Peak with the city of Reno. I'm a housing and neighborhood development and I'm a housing coordinator. And I met Michael um with the clean and safe [music] team. They were really instrumental in getting Michael into kind of like in contact with us. but we've helped him uh with some rental and deposit assistance [music] and some private funding for a motel stay while we're trying to figure out his next moves. >> My name is Michael Jean St. Clair. I'm a Reno residents here in Reno, Nevada. I'm sharing my story about how outreach helped uh me and my family out over the last year. U my wife passed away about a month ago. So >> sorry. >> It's hard. >> It's really hard. >> This is uh my wife and my three kids, Michael, Tish, and Reeba. My kids, they're they're my life. And I guess it was them that kind of made me help me realize that I needed to get out of this one situation about being in living in the RV and getting a place of our own. Well, we were staying with some friends and then uh this landlord found out they were staying there. So, I got my RV out of storage and uh we me and my family, we stayed in it for about 3 years, I believe. Three, maybe four. And living in the RV, it was rough, you know, five people in a small area. And then my RV broke down. They put a sticker on it for to be towed. And one morning I woke up and the tow truck was there and said that we [music] had they're going to tow my vehicle. They wanted to give me a chance to move it. They notified these people from the state and they helped me get into, you know, put me in put me and my family in a motel until they found this this apartment. It's good to have family [music] and friends and people like outreach to help out. I I'm glad there's people like them out there to help. Just don't give up. You know, there's [music] people out there that can help and if they offer to help, take the help. Rise. Well, especially the outreach [music] is mostly compiled of lived experience outreach specialists like myself. if [music] I was in a tent 3 years ago. So, we understand what it's like to have that desperation and we just try to meet people where they're at. >> Just got tired of living the [music] way we were living. I mean, we only had my wife's check and my daughter's check and we're trying to find a place, but you know, it's it's hard trying to find a place when everybody kind of looks down on you, you know. I appreciate the outreaches, you know, and my goal is just just uh stay here um provide for [music] my I made a promise to my wife that I make sure the kids were always had a roof over their heads. So, [snorts] that's my goal. >> Well, outreach, we like to do anything we could to assist you in doing so. >> Yes. And like I said, I appreciate all your guys' help and and >> it's all good, brother. >> Yeah. >> Glad we could help. >> And I appreciate it. >> Oh, yeah. [music] >> [music] >> Hi, I'm Reno Fire Chief Dave Cochran. It's an honor to connect with you as we look back on 2024, a year of innovation, strong work, and unwavering [music] dedication to protecting our community. The Rena Fire Department reached incredible milestones, overcame challenges, and made a real impact on the biggest little city. Let's look back at 2024 [music] and the achievements and highlights of the Reno Fire Department. 2024's wildland season tested our region with incidents like the Gold Ranch, Davis, and Callahan fires straining resources [music] from across the West. Although these fires happened just outside Reno city limits, our firefighters stepped up to assist [music] while ensuring our Reno community remained well protected. In 2024, RFD [music] deployed 264 resources to more than 100 wildland fires, contributing over 65,000 [music] hours of work. These efforts brought nearly $2 million in reimbursements [music] back to the department. Right here at home, we responded to 51,737 calls [music] for service, an increase of over 2,000 from the previous year. Our commitment to service continues to grow [music] along with our community. The safety and training division saw impressive growth in 2024, paving the way for a stronger, more skilled team. [music] We proudly promoted 11 captains and eight operators, hired 25 new firefighters, and welcome five single roll EMS personnel. [music] This year we ran two 3-week fire equipment operator enginemies, one two-eek fire equipment operator truck academy, and a two-week acting [music] captain's academy. These intensive programs help sharpen our skills and prepare our teams [music] for any situation. We also expanded our monthly company level training sessions, introducing specialized active [music] shooter training and wide area search exercises. And through partnerships with surrounding fire departments, we enhanced our response capabilities for wildland fires and hazmat operations. Additionally, we upgraded [music] the training facilities at station 11 with new technology to improve the delivery of our programs, ensuring our team is always ready to meet [music] the demands of our city. The Reno Fire Prevention Bureau experienced significant strides this year in 2024, starting with the appointment of [music] a new fire marshal, three fire captains, and three new fire inspectors. Our team saw great success in our arson investigations [music] achieving an impressive 80% conviction rate, and completed over 6,000 building inspections to help keep Reno safe. For the fourth consecutive [music] year, we hosted our dumpster program thanks to a grant from State Farm. This program helps neighborhoods [music] in the wildland urban interface clear dry vegetation and debris, creating defensible space. Thank you to everyone who participated and helped reduce wildfire risk in our community. In 2024, we were also thrilled to receive nearly 245,000 from FEMA's fire prevention and safety grant to develop a community wildfire protection plan. This comprehensive framework will prioritize wildfire mitigation efforts, [music] improve emergency preparedness, and ensure long-term safety for Reno's residents and infrastructure. Keep an eye out in the coming months for ways to get involved. We're excited to collaborate with you in 2024. [music] We work closely with our community partners to update the regional hazard mitigation plan. The plan assesses the potential impact of all prioritized hazards to the region and [music] provides mitigation strategies and actions to reduce such risks. The update ensures the plan remains effective [music] in addressing the evolving needs of our communities. We also prioritized firefighter health with initiatives [music] like our fourth annual cancer screenings and the introduction of the coronary calcium scan. These proactive prevention programs are vital in detecting early markers [music] of heart disease and cancer. Critical steps for firefighters facing heightened risks associated with their profession. Additionally, [music] we launched a groundbreaking pilot program with the Epic Brain Center, exploring enhanced [music] mindbody performance treatments. This innovative approach supports firefighters dealing [music] with PTSD and other mental health challenges while empowering them with improved [music] executive function to perform at their best. >> 2024 was a landmark year for the Reno Fire Department Emergency Medical Services Division with 30,649 calls for [music] service. Collaboration played a key role in 2024 as we joined forces with regional partners to strengthen [music] our unified response to medical emergencies. We were excited to welcome our new EMS management assistant and expand our specialized training for our single role program. Ensuring our EMS team is always prepared to meet our community's high demand for advanced emergency medical services. We conducted division level training on new medical equipment, including cuttingedge video luringoscope blades [music] that are vital and life-saving situations and new medications that can be used to treat various patient presentations by our mid and advanced level providers. We also implemented a new medical charting platform, further enhancing patient care. >> Reno Fire Department's support services division achieved significant milestones in 2024. enhanced vehicle maintenance and repair, increased apparatus safety, and equipment modernization. Through our apparatus replacement program, we added two new brush trucks designed for firefighting and rugged terrain and a state-of-the-art ambulance, ensuring our fleet meets the diverse needs of our community. We also enhanced operations by refining the use of fleet cameras throughout our vehicles. [music] These systems capture critical moments during incidents, training, and daily operations, providing insights that improve safety and support crew [music] education. Our logistics team continues to push innovation forward, adopting advanced [music] battery powered tools on our fire engines and ladder trucks, and improve personal protective equipment. These enhancements extend equipment [music] lifespan, improve functionality, and prioritize firefighter safety. Looking ahead, we're excited [music] to introduce a new heavy rescue apparatus in 2025. The first of its kind for our department since 1986. As an all-risk [music] fire department supporting many different types of incidents, this addition ensures our crews are ready to respond to any emergency, no matter the challenge. >> As [music] we reflect on 2024, Reno Fire Department has much to celebrate. from our interlocal agreement with the Reno Tahoe airport Authority enabling us to assume [music] firefighting services across all airport properties and our partnership with Truckucky Meadows Fire [music] and Rescue which now provides automatic aid to ensure the closest resource response to emergencies no matter the jurisdiction. We're building the foundation for [music] continued growth and excellence. I'm pleased to share that we also received the keys to 455 East Second Street, our future central [music] fire station. We're excited to begin serving you from this state-of-the-art facility in 2027. At RFD, [music] we believe that being part of the community is just as important as responding to emergencies. Whether it's hosting fire safety programs, participating in local events, or building relationships with residents, we strive to be more than the first responders. [music] We're your neighbors, partners, and advocates for a safer region. None of our work would be possible without the dedication of [music] our team and the unwavering support of our Reno City Council, state, and federal representatives. Their commitment ensures RFD is always ready to serve and protect our community. On behalf of the Reno Fire Department, thank you for your trust [music] and support. Together, we accomplished so much in 2024, and we look forward to an even brighter [music] and safer year ahead. Thank you for standing with us. My name is Robert DS. I'm a field specialist with Rise. And this experience with Bonnie Pace and the Pathway Pilot has been awesome and tremendous. And I'll never forget it. >> [music] >> I'm free. Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] I see. [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music] Heat. [music] [music] Heat. [music] >> [music] >> As we move into the [music] next budget year, we're excited to share some of the key accomplishments this past year in the biggest little city. Whether working to ensure a safe [music] and welcoming community, planning for responsible growth, or maintaining strong fiscal accountability to our residents, [music] our team is dedicated to building a community that people are proud to call home. >> Running a city is no small feat. It takes seven dedicated council members and over 1,700 committed employees to make this city [music] thrive. While you see some of them every day, many are behind the scenes. >> But we all have one thing in common. We make Reno more than just livable. >> We make it loable. Ensuring the infrastructure in our community [music] stands the test of time is critical to obtaining a vibrant and resilient city. >> The utility services team oversees storm water, waste water, and recycled water throughout the city, including the sanitary sewer system. I know sewer is one of those things that people don't often talk about, but sewer systems play a crucial role in protecting public health and our environment. One important element in the sanitary sewer system is lift stations, which are needed in low-lying areas to pump sewage up to a gravity sewer line. All of our sewer lines convey sewage and ultimately end up at our wastewater [music] treatment facilities. Over the last 5 years, our team evaluated 27 public lift stations in our community and determined that some needed major rehabilitation. Since the evaluation, the city has successfully [music] rehabilitated five lift stations and completed the design improvements for those seven remaining stations [music] in need of rehabilitation. >> Thank you so much, Madam Clerk. We're going to >> These remaining lift stations will be constructed in the next two years to ensure the sustainability of the system. >> Yes, madame mayor. I'm here. >> Thank you so much. >> Okay, Madame Mayor, we're going to re reconvene at 12:47. At this time we have council members Dor, council member Reese, and council member Martinez absent. >> Okay, perfect. Um, I'm going to ask you, Madam Cler, do you have any public comment on this item? >> Uh, madame mayor, we do not have any public comment registered. However, for item B2, we did receive one letter of correspondence um, as a neutral comment and that has been distributed to the Reno City Council. >> Okay. Thank you so much. At this time, I'm going to give you the floor. We're excited to see your presentation. How are you feeling? Don't be nervous. Are you nervous? >> Always. >> Don't you hate that one? You're going to be great. We're rooting you on. >> You know, even Jer probably. >> Of course. Listen, I was just telling someone that the other day. I said, I do this for a living and I get horrible stage fright. is probably something people have no idea about me, but I I literally physically feel like I'm going to get sick before I have to um give a speech or remarks. It doesn't matter what it is. So, I'm glad we grabbed some. >> So, you're not alone. You're not alone, but you're going to be amazing. So, >> the floor is yours. >> Perfect. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh good afternoon. I had practiced a little bit with the morning, but I'm glad that we had such an engaging introductory workshop this morning with Jeremy Aguero. I want to say thank you to him wherever he went for this afternoon. But uh again, for the record, my name is Carissa Bradley Cusack. I'm the strategic initiatives manager for the city of Reno. And today, we're kicking off the refresh to our city's strategic plan. Our strategic planning team has been hard at work working with you all individually, our city and leadership team in our community to better understand sort of uh how we should frame today's conversation and making sure that we are building a plan for the next couple of years. Uh with all of those things in mind, I'm excited to share with you our proposed framework for how the city can continue to live our mission of creating a community that people are proud to call home. So today's agenda for my presentation is is twofold. One, I want to summarize the insights from the past few months. So all of the different interviews that we did, the surveys, the uh extensive research we did into cities uh our our operational and community data trends, just kind of tell you where we've where we at. The second piece I want to uh achieve with this group today is to select and build consensus around our our city of Reno strategic focus areas. And I'll go over a little bit more about the framework we're proposing and how that might look. When I came to this body in March to initiate this re refresh process, there was a couple of pieces of direction that this body gave to us. Uh first, there wasn't a lot of expectation that there would be these massive changes to workload or massive changes or new programs. Uh that's just really not the area we were in at the time. And I think that holds true and is what we've been sort of building towards today. There was also a comment from Councilwoman Anderson actually about focus on root causes. How do we know that the solutions that this body is pursuing are solving root causes to the issues that the city of Reno and our community are facing? And be more measurable. In the two years that I've been here at the city of Reno, this has been an enormous emphasis uh both in my work and the work of our teams to better understand how to utilize our data more effectively to really drive the decisions that this body makes every single uh council meeting. And the last two points here are to use the plan more actively. So beyond just having our staff reports say that they're in alignment with the strategic plan, how do we understand from a day-to-day operational perspective, how this strategic plan is guiding our resource allocations, our our day-to-day decision-m and how we are making progress on those things within the plan. So that's where this report regularly on the status piece came in. And I feel that we have accomplished this uh and I hope that you agree based on the framework we're going to go over in a few slides. But here these were some of the expectations that we heard when we came to you in March. Now strategic planning gets used as a term quite regularly. Organizations big and small uh do strategic planning for one reason or another. The city of Reno has done strategic planning for many many years for a variety of reasons. U many of those are here on the screen. you always kind of take a little bit of a different approach depending on where you're at as an organization. And for this year's strategic plan, what's really driving our need to do a strategic plan refresh? First and foremost, as I think Jeremy really laid out nicely this morning, there's been a a renewed focus and core service delivery here at the city of Reno. really understanding what are our basic functions that we want to understand the foundation and making our financial stewardship and regional collaboration hit those pieces. Also, as Jeremy talked about a little bit earlier, economic volatility and the growth pressures in our community require our organization to be more focused and adaptable to change as it's come. We also have discussed that maybe a shared framework for decision-m and prioritization is something that we would benefit from. And then now more than ever, this body has led immensely in the past 5 years about setting the groundwork for really transformational projects in the way we do our work. Uh so this plan really helps more as an organizational tool to make sure that the things that we've already set in motion really get done. So orienting our approach a little bit, what are we building towards? So here's sort of the basic formula of our proposed strategic plan. So the mission and vision. This really answers the question of who are we, what do we do, and where are we headed. Uh below that are the priorities. These are the big buckets of the work that the city of Reno does to achieve its mission and vision. Below that is a 36-month strategic focus areas, which I'll go over a little bit more in depth what that means today. But these are the spaces where we've identified or I've identified through the last couple of months that really need focus andor um leadership from this body about what we are working on and what is going to have the biggest impact in our service delivery. And then below that are major opportunities and measures. Today's workshop is going to be primarily focused on these priorities and 36-month strategic focus area sections of the plan. The major opportunities and measures will be determined in in future one-on-one conversations with you all just to make sure that we're really uh honing in on what those opportunities are. But I'll give some examples to sort of get your brain running and and and whatnot. When I came to this body in March, uh we laid out a five-phased approach to update the strategic plan. Since March, we've been in our gaining insights phase. So again, the interviews, the data research, all of that, all culminating into today's workshop where we're asking that this body consider um agreeing to the areas of focus. And then once this workshop hopefully, fingers crossed, goes well, our team would go back to draft the plan, refine the plan, and adopt and share with our community uh in that spring 2026 time frame. The plan that we're building today would go into effect July 1 of 2026. So I have been alluding to it but what was our insights process? We've done a lot of work since since March in order to better understand kind of where our organization is presently so that we understand where we can kind of chart our path forward. We held interviews with each of you you thank you so much for that collaboration and and um just really candid conversations about where your priorities are, where your wards uh kind of concerns and challenges exist. And we also held what we called uh community dropins. They were drop-in style. Community members could come and we asked pretty simple questions. What are we doing well and how can we improve? And we had a whole slew of feedback as I'm sure that you could imagine with those pretty open-ended conversation starters, but we got some really rich um insight from our community and we also replicated that with our staff. So, we made sure that this strategic plan refresh did take into consideration the people to your point earlier, Madame Mayor, the people who are um implementing some of these programs and projects day-to-day to better understand what are some of the hiccups that that we can better account for on the front end. We also assessed uh operational and community data. So, we looked at various um hard data trends like response times or deferred maintenance backlog or um our previously adopted plans. Right? This council has adopted some really uh amazing transformational plans that really set the foundation and vision uh and we wanted to make sure that those were better those were accounted for in our analysis. And then again I came to this body a couple of weeks ago to share the community survey data and I'll pepper in some insights from that today. uh but I want to make sure that you see that there's a lot of different inputs here that we are taking into consideration and holding context for before I summarize them in the coming slides. Now without further ado this is our best shot at summarizing these things. As you can imagine there was a lot of feedback and a lot of things pulling us everywhere the whole spectrum of people's opinions on things. So you all have been in strategic planning uh workshops and various presentations in your roles in other boards and your own businesses I'm sure. So this won't be new but we have organized it into a SWAT analysis. So strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and I'll go over each one of them a little bit some highle things that we found through our research and I'll also talk a little bit about how to interpret this data. So on the strengths, strengths are things that uh through our conversations with people or through the data or through the current initiatives that this council is working through are areas where we've been recognized as this is really good. It's working well. Uh we want to maintain and build those things up through our strategic plan. Some things that came up, people love our arts and culture programming. They have recognized that the city of Reno has stepped up in this space is a great leader, great partner and great uh at making sure that that is something that is unique arguably to the city of Reno. >> Before you go on, who is answering? >> Oh yes. So uh previously so the interviews so this this slide is the summary of these different inputs. So the interviews we did with council, >> it's a little bit of all. Yes. And so the council interviews that we did with each of you um community dropins and then some staff as well and then just some some pieces that it might not have come up directly in a conversation with somebody but we know from these meetings and various times that we hear that. Okay. Yeah. >> Thank you for the question. >> Uh back to the strength. So we also heard uh from our from this insights phase that our city staff is really friendly, customer serviceoriented and specifically in the public safety space there was a lot of sentiment around really well trained. They love our public safety teams and their their training abilities were noted. Uh city manager Bryant brought up the housing support and development activities. This was also recognized within the interviews with you all and within um community dropins about the support that this council has provided to help streamline the process to develop more housing in our community. And then the last thing I'll mention here is that although and you'll I'm kind of getting ahead of myself, but although downtown is here in this weaknesses section below, those same people would say, but we've recognized that there's been a lot of active investment in this space and that there's been really strategic partnerships that the city council has taken in order to uh address that. So again, thank you to our partners with the Downtown Reno Partnership, RSCVA, RTC, the whole laundry list of of our partners. Right now, pivoting a little bit to the weaknesses. So weaknesses can be difficult to think about. Um, nobody wants to dwell on them, right? But they're important when you're charting your path forward for a strategic planning session. And weaknesses should be thought of as things in our organization that we want to shore up and or address through this plan. One thing that came up a lot was the condition of some facilities and condition of maybe some basic infrastructure across the community. And that led our team to kind of think a little bit more like well what is the deferred maintenance um look like at the city of Reno. So I worked with our maintenance and operations team to get a more full picture of what that looks like. Uh we also heard things around um the structural budget deficit which we're also working actively to identify um creative ways to address that. Shifting now to opportunities. Opportunities are the places for the strategic plan at least that you want to be able to invest and maximize. These are the places where and this is just a summarized view. I will tell you all right now that there were ideas abound through all of these conversations that we had. There's no shortage of ideas when it comes to how we can improve um both the city of Reno, our community, and the way we do our work every day. That is not our issue. Figuring out which one of these are the ones that we spend our time on is the what I will suppose to this body today. But regional collaboration came up a lot. Um I I call out here with fire dispatch and parks and this body has already set in motion a lot of those pieces to better regionalize those services and work with our partners more effectively. Um think park district, think re the CAD system, those types of things. Those are being recognized as regional collaborations where it makes sense. Um there's also some opportunities in this space to focus more on investing in technology and modernizing our systems. I think sometimes those are oftentimes the forgotten pieces of making sure a high functioning city can occur. Um, and those are some of the areas where it will also lead to that last bullet which is continuing to increase transparency and trust with our community. And the last piece I'll highlight here are threats. So these are things that are external to the organization that are oftentimes happening to us. Um, and during the strategic plan, we want to make sure that we are mitigating and or monitoring them where appropriate. Jeremy did a great job and and city manager Bryant also did a great job of laying out some of the economic volatility issues that we face as an organization given that seax, which is by definition a volatile revenue source, is our highest largest share of our general fund. That in it of itself in it of itself relies on people spending money to make sure that we have the revenue to provide the services that we do every day. Unfunded mandates also highlight a threat to our organization in ways that we have to always be kind of agile and ready to adapt to anything that the state legislature might hand to us or various boards um that come to to provide us direction at the local level. I'm also going to highlight here that there's a growing expectation and demand on city services that was really evident through our our um time over the past couple of months and hearing people's concerns and there's a higher level of expectation both from people who have lived in Reno for a long time and that from people who might have come here from other cities or other places and they want that same level of expectation. These are all things that that pose to potentially threaten our our strategic planning and our ability to execute. So that was a lot. At a high level though, these are these are some of our major findings. There's a high level of need in our community, but there's also a high level of want. And being able to balance those two things is going to be paramount for our strategic plan uh that we're building today. There's also an increasing level of expectation and demand on our resources that really um threatens our teams and their ability to deliver uh on things like public safety, on infrastructure, on um access to parks. And then some of the foundational services of government might need a little TLC, maybe some attention on those. Um and I think Jeremy also kind of highlighted that really well for me. I'm like, I don't even need to go up here. But and then the last thing I'll say here is that there's some external factors that are having a really outsized effect on the way that the city does its business. But all that to say, the city of Reno and this body has really laid the foundation for us and we're not starting from scratch. Um there's some major projects that are already underway and that are guiding the solution to many of these problems. It's just going to take a little time, but it's going to also take us some focus and uh all moving in that direction to get these things done. Okay. Now, I'm going to transition and do a little world building for you of kind of our proposed framework of how we might prioritize our strategic plan. Um, thinking about the city as a whole. Um, and I'm excited to share this with you. We've worked on it for a couple of months and excited that hopefully hits the mark for you all. So, as a reminder, this is the city's mission and vision. As I mentioned earlier, we're not recommending I'm not recommending that we change this. I think this still hits all of the points that we all work towards and that this body has been actively investing in. But how do we make sure that we're living our mission and vision every day? Our city services, they're instrumental to reaching the pinnacle of our mission. And and this is just sort of a high level of which ones they are. um this is not all of our services here at the city but that question how do we achieve our mission and vision well I would say that based off of the research that we've done over the last couple of months I'm going to introduce our pyramid our framework and at the base of that pyramid is fiscal stewardship and how fiscal stewardship plays into this is that at the end of the day we are all stewards of taxpayer dollars and living within our means to deliver the services that our community relies on is paramount to be able to build towards a high functioning city. The second here is legal obligations. Legal obligations are things like making sure that we're following all the rules given to us through the state legislature, through local agencies, through the federal government. That's the second layer here. And then the third level of what the city provides to live our mission and vision is to provide a safe community. think police, fire, the services that we do every day to do uh to have a safe community. Building upon that is well-maintained city infrastructure. That's things like the roads, the sidewalks, um the buildings that we own and have open to the public dayto day. And the the fifth area is access to natural spaces. of parks, open space, our really unique um element here in Reno being the Truckucky River and having government really step up in those spaces to be able to provide that for our community. I would characterize these three in the middle here as these are the the meat and potato of government. These are the things that the private sector cannot provide that the public sector does really well at doing and this is what people look to us um and you all every day to to help deliver. And then at the top here is quality of life. These are things like arts and culture and special events and all of the beautiful things that make us all love living here. I had a really great conversation with you, Councilwoman Der. You're like, people don't move here because of uh our fiscal stewardship. And I I agree, right? People move here because they love the events. They love that they have access to um arts and culture and different things. Uh, and I agree this is this is where we all have our our wants to be at all times. And that's a section that I'll call is like we want to go from good, we get to great. And here on the lefth hand side is government effectiveness. So these are all of the things that surround all those services that we provide. Those are everything from the way we train our staff, the policies that we implement, the procedures, the SOPs, all the the things that I get nerdy about but the general public could care less about. But these are all the things that kind of wave in and out of all of these various levels. Now, I want to go over some kind of precautions of interpreting this pyramid. One, it's not perfect. We recognize that. We know that there's some areas that we could improve it and we're happy to have that conversation. But we wanted to help kind of showcase the city of Reno and our services as a whole. So, think of it really as a the city as a whole. And unlike other hierarchical models that you might be aware of and might be drawing similarities to, these levels don't have to be fully accomplished in order to move to the next one. So levels can interact with one another. They all kind of are working simultaneously. And what I'll say here though is that investments that are done at the lower levels of this pyramid act as a force multiplier for the investments that are above it. And each one of these helps us to get to the pinnacle of our mission, to the top of that pyramid. Now, without further ado, I'm going to go over a little bit about our FY27 through 29 strategic plan and how it relates to that framework I just laid out. So, the scope of this strategic plan are a couple of things here. First, when we're thinking about the next few slides, think about them from a sense of general government funds and general government services. We're also recommending or I'm recommending a 36-month implementation cycle in order to really accelerate the work and um get things done. That that's been my whole thing. Let's get things done. There's things in already in the hopper that are this council has been leaders in and we want to make sure we can execute within that 36-month uh cycle. And the type of work that belongs in this plan, I would say, is things that prioritize the limited resources that we currently have. It transforms the way that we do our work or how we do it in a major way. It minimizes risk to the city and it makes a meaningful dent in those priorities and really living out our mission and vision. What's not included or we're recommending not to include or I'm recommending not to uh the RDA not included in this plan. That's a separate agency. We want you to think about them as separate beings for the for the day. Also not including the sewer fund in this. Um there's a separate strategy conversation scheduled or hoping to be scheduled for the sewer fund because it has a little bit of a different flavor if you will than some of the things we're going to talk about today. And then services or projects where our regional partners are the lead are not being um recommended for inclusion in this plan. So caveat here is lead. That doesn't mean we're we're stepping away from regional things but things where we we aren't the lead on. And then department level operations are not being recommended for this plan as it either. So those are the day-to-day >> um >> department >> department level >> what do you mean it's not included >> not included? So the the plan that we're hoping to build today would be more crossunctional like multiple departments working towards one thing or but isn't in the the weeds of how to operate that department daytoday. Does that help? >> Okay. Thank you. >> Or maybe a part like the parks plan pros plan that's its own planning thoughtful process right? >> Council, if I I I may I think it also what we're trying to indicate here is not included is the the work that we do every day is going to be ongoing. So So just because we don't say um like we're still going to maintain our streets even though that may not be like a particular line. So like the department level work is still ongoing and we don't want to indicate unless you are trying to identify a service that needs a major overhaul. You don't have to list all of the services particularly in your strategic plan. It's a it's just a messaging piece. It's intended to be that all of our work is still ongoing. I just got nervous. >> Conversation we had before was all about foundation and basics and it but you're saying we're not going to re-evaluate the basics. We're going to assume they're still there and we're just talking about more exceptions. >> Okay. >> Cali, can you do name and title for the record? >> Sorry, Madam Cler. Calli Wily, director of policy and strategy. >> You're so official. >> I know. >> Okay, go ahead. >> Well, >> sorry. >> No, you're good. You're good. >> Okay. Um, I know it's quite a few slides, so I want to get through the rest of these and then we'll open it up to conversation and questions and just kind of teasing it out. So, now that I've kind of laid out the framework and I've asked the question about how do we get to our mission and vision, now I pose the question of where and how should we focus with this strategic plan. Um based off of the feedback that we gathered from you all through your interviews and the various data pieces um I'm recommending that council consider focusing on these five levels. So that is a hyper focus on executing on the city's vision. Uh, and one thing I want to say here is that in order to really maintain a high quality of life for the city of Reno, we have to shore up our foundation and shore up our base so that we can uh deliver that every day. Looking here, I want to kind of explain why. Right. So, 36 month strategic sprint, these two layers here in green, these are the things that we we've identified are let's work on stabilizing them. Let's talk about our revenue issues a little bit more. Let's talk about that with our regional partners. Let's talk about it with the legislature. Maybe we want to stabilize that and make that a strategic focus. Um, and in the legal obligation space, really making sure that we're mitigating risk. And here in this the middle part of the pyramid, this is where the strategic planning team has sort of looked at it as like these are transformational opportunities to to fundamentally improve the way that we execute on these these areas and and provide services. So you might get to get to there easily of you know fire regionalization or consolidation would be an fundamentally changing the way we do our work. Um so that's why we've included here down. Let's go into each one one by one though. So fiscal stewardship. So what would that look like to to do? Um achieve financial stability through revenue reform, diversification, strategic planning, um or strategic budgeting, long-term planning. Um but really at the end of the day, be excellent stewards of taxpayer dollars. And why am I recommending this as a strategic priority? the feedback that we gathered and through all of our various interviews and conversations with folks really had some great ideas around exploring new revenue sources, uh, process improvements, leveraging technology, maybe finally fixing our our revenues here, right? Maybe let's go go big potentially. Uh, it's also just been a dominant point of conversation for this body and with conversations that you've had with staff over the past um, year and a half or so. And we all know at the end of the day that structurally balanced budget is the goal. We we can all agree that that is our goal. But what are some of the unique challenges in the fiscal stewardship space that I want to highlight that came up through um this process? So Nevada's antiquated tax formula. I think Jeremy said it a little nicer earlier that it's it's unique. I call it antiquated. It's quite odd. Um some of the things that we've put into our state uh tax formulas. Um, and hopefully we can maybe work through some of these. And we know that our expenses are currently outpacing our revenues, which is some something that we're going to need to really strategically focus on um due to the compounding impacts of minimal growth and our major government sources. The next two slides um will be familiar to you through presentations that you've uh heard through director vanurren's presentations through the budget workshops. Um but here you'll see this is the seax specific one. And I bring this in because again CAX is our largest revenue source in in the general fund. And because of that loss revenue, we're seeing uh compounding revenue growth loss and fiscal erosion that really puts our service delivery at at um at some risk. The second one I'll allude to or not allude to, show you right out is uh our property tax revenue per capita. Uh this was from Jeremy's presentation that you received a few minutes ago and I just think that this one really captures some of the real issues that we're facing that you know if you adjust for inflation from 2011 to present day we're 8% lower than we were then and that we know with certainty that the services that we're providing today are much more expensive than they were in 2011. >> Isn't that the >> Yes. And this slide, this will come up in the next couple for you. And these are just examples. So these are no by no means set in stone as I mentioned earlier that that final layer of the strategic plan for major opportunities and measures will be determined in the coming weeks. But these are some ideas and things that came up through the process that I just wanted to use as examples to kind of get your eye your your head in that area. Moving on to legal obligations. So, this is the space where you might be saying, "Carissa, why are you asking me to focus on legal obligations? That sounds odd." However, um given our unique nature in the state of Nevada, it's really important to understand the context of of how we do our work and what factors are external to us that are maybe pulling us in different directions at times. Um the challenge is here we have that we're a Dillan's rule state. um which means that this body has limited government power to increase taxes or create new laws. Um we're we're fairly limited in that space. In your packet, there's also a drafted report that goes over the city's duties and responsibilities a little bit more in depth. Um our government affairs manager uh Sakone has been working on that to be a little bit more robust in how we think about our um legal framework and obligations here. and then implementing unfunded mandates. While there are unfunded mandates that our teams and you all would agree are are good policy, are good things um for our organization and for our community, but they do pose a significant threat into taking teams away from their their day-to-day jobs or what this body wants to focus on. One of those I'll I'll I'll include here is the language access plan. We we agree I agree you all I I know agree that expanding our accessibility to various languages for our community is a good thing. But the operational reality of implementing that unfunded mandate meant immense amounts of staff time, immense amount of working with consultants to help understand what our languages were here in our our region. And it requires ongoing annual reporting. So while it's a really great thing, we have to be able to remember that um here and the elephant in the room, the PERS increase also is an unfunded mandate that I think all of us can recognize really threw us into a tizzy this fiscal fiscal year. Some major opportunities here um came up a few times in the interview process, but thinking about maybe uh focusing on our enterprise resource planning software um think payroll, HR, that kind of stuff. But again, those major opportunities will be defined by council in the coming weeks. Now moving up into the safe community space. So safe communities um this is where I was mentioning before. This is a space where we have the opportunity to really have a transformational change, an opportunity to really fundamentally change the way we do our services here, which is why we're recommending it to be one of our uh 36-month focus areas. But what was the community saying? What were the interviews talking about when I met with you all? Well, here's some of the themes. I heard a lot about proactive, visible law enforcement policing. heard a lot about nuisance crimes. I heard a lot about modernizing our dispatch services, you know, calling transfers, that sort of stuff. We also heard a lot about um emergency planning and and better protocols and better coordination just from among the region. I think this is a space where people there's no short of ideas. And this is where I'm going to bring in a little bit from our community survey just to kind of highlight a little bit more what the community said um through that. We asked a question that said, "What is your what are the top three government services that local government provides? Choose your top three." The number one was providing emergency response services like fire, dispatch, and ambulance. The number two was providing a police presence to prevent local crime and improve neighborhood safety. That's why we're putting it on that layer of the of the the pyramid. Some of the challenges that our teams face though are really rooted in keeping up with growth both in a population uh sense and in a um financial sense. Making sure that we have the resources to staff those teams. Um our teams are also uh our our public safety teams I should say really work from a limited staff capacity to be proactive. Right? When we talk about proactive sometimes that means taking them off of an emergency call. I will not even attempt to try to understand or uh say all of the things that our wonderful public safety staff in the room could much better articulate. But just as a key challenge here and then geography, this is one thing I think we sometimes we forget is that response times are really dependent on the proximity you are to the call, right? and geograph geography here with Reno being such a funky fun uh shape and the fact that we have mountains causes some real challenges for our teams. And the last piece and Councilman Martinez talked about this a little bit earlier, but the regional redundancies in our service delivery. Those are some of the challenges that our our teams are facing um every day and your your public safety teams face. So, a couple of major opportunities here. Think regional uh fire, regional dispatch. these two are already in in process and then finding ways that our law enforcement teams can u work more proactively. What are what might those solutions be? Next is well-maintained city infrastructure. Um simply put, I heard this from a few of you. We got to take care of what we have. We got to make sure that we are keeping our our own things at the highest quality that we can take them. This also came up in the interviews with both the community and with staff around um condition or the quantity of our facilities or the quantity of um various amenities in the the community. Road conditions and traffic came up a few times as well. Um and while we don't have a direct oversight of traffic, so to speak, it did come up a lot as as an issue. So, I wanted to make sure to include it. Um and then the piece that is really hard to have a conversation about all the time, which is long-term funding. um making sure that we can fund these things long term and then green infrastructure investments also came up a lot. So again to the community survey number three most important that people selected was around maintaining and improving our public infrastructure and number five was managing t traffic flow but what are some of the unique challenges? So I talked a little bit about perceptions and what we heard but here are some of the real day-to-day challenges that uh the city is facing. So, aging infrastructure of our facilities um that's going to be happening regardless, right? Time continues every single day. And then deferred maintenance. Um I talked with our maintenance and operations team. I wanted to better understand what what is the deferred maintenance here at the city of Reno. What does that look like? And when you look at the facility condition assessment that that team produces um and you look at each of one of our 56 Where's Frank? 56 um high use buildings. We have an average condition uh of poor. That doesn't mean that all of them are, but there's some areas where we might want to strategically prioritize or understand better ways to fund. And in a good year, we only are able to allocate about 1% of the general fund to deferred maintenance. But our backlog is over $59 million. So this the deferred maintenance issue really does start to become more real um when you look at those numbers. And again with the sustainable funding sources um that's going to be a really fun if I may conversation to think about and then projected condition of our local roads. So I know I talked with our public works team our current PCI is 74 but over the next 5 to seven years our local road PCI is projected to reduce to about 70. Um best practice would be to keep that over 70. So it's projected to decline. major opportunities in this space. I'll just kind of share a couple on the screen here, but I'll move to my our next one, which is access to natural spaces. Um, which as Councilwoman Der talked a little bit about in my last presentation this month around the community survey, our community really loves our parks. They really love the access to the outdoors. They um are very passionate about the environment. And that came through in a lot of our conversations with you all and with our staff and community members. And so a lot of the themes that came up here were around maintaining and increasing the number of parks we have um the cleanliness the safety in those parks um or open spaces and then really this was a interesting idea that I just put in here but the integration with tourism and some of the economic benefits we might see with um the addition of more access and then back to that survey it was the number four most important and what are our challenges so the pros plan really outlined more in depth what our our current challenges are from a parks wreck and open space perspective. But here are some of the highlights which were park condition. When you look at that same condition assessment um from the parks perspective, we also have that poor condition. We also know that there's not a sustainable funding source to make sure that we can make those parks to a higher condition each year. And then flatfields, this feels like I've heard the word flatfields like a million times in the last month. Um but we do know that city uh the city of Reno and Reno Nevada just in general that is our most efficient amenity for our community. We know that youth sports and um non youth I guess all spectrums of life want to utilize flatfields and we have a deficiency in that space. So these are some areas where we have some major challenges. And then as examples of things we might want to consider focusing on in the strategic plan would be the parks district which this is already set in motion um through the service plan and then identifying new ways for flat fields. I want to highlight a little bit about our implementation model because that's really at the crux of taking this plan from just a plan that you adopt and sits on a shelf to making it more active and something that feels um ingrained in the way we make decisions here at the city of Reno and how this body can help to prioritize. So what happens to these areas during this 36-month strategic sprint? So these five that are in the red uh rhombus I don't know space what shape that is trapezoid the red area these would be areas where this body would prioritize time resources and specify what projects we're expecting to get done we create tasks and measures and bring more quarterly updates back to this body of where we're at with those projects where we are in an implementation And I know you've probably been thinking, what about the other ones? I love those places. Uh my recommendation is that we keep the momentum going. This would be a more operational focus, department level um operations. But to Councilwoman Dur's point earlier, but what about that? The services still continue, but what we're saying here or I'm saying here is that we would optimize existing resources and andor identify alternative forms. So beyond the general fund, beyond that, um people could look to grants or something like that to help move these things along. And departments will continue to bring routine items to council as they're required. And we would also uh submit to this body that we are behind the scenes working on more effective ways to understand those operational um successes and and measures. And we're working to find ways to better report that to you all so that it doesn't feel like you have to always be looking over each one. And our guiding principles for implementation. So when we go to implement these are some of the core principles that we are committing to and that this body is committing to hopefully which is accountability, transparency, um finding win-win solutions, right? We talked about public private partnerships earlier pretty extensively. Those are oftentimes some of our most win-win type of scenarios. um looking at efficient policies, procedures and systems and of course including our community um partners actively and proactively um in through these processes and I alluded to this previously but we would be submitting a quarterly sorry I've been talking for 40 minutes submitting a quarterly report to this body come present where we at on all of our major initiatives publish an annual report to the community. At that point, we would kind of adjust if we needed to change any of the things that we're working on and continue to align our council items to the requests uh funding requests and to our staff reports and then ultimately converging the work that um staff has been working on about organizational performance management initiatives and our strategic planning. So they all kind of marry a little bit. And earlier this year, we were kind of inducted into this what works city certification as a silver certified city. And that is really helping to guide our teams and understanding best practices and making sure that we are um data driven. So by the end of today, I'm hoping that we can confirm these priorities, agree to the 36month strategic focus areas, and next time we talk, we would do major opportunities and measures. How would we get there? Uh schedule one-on-one interviews with each of you to really discuss those major opportunity projects that you want to see included into the plan. Uh draft the plan with measures, bring a drafted item back to this body to make sure that we're kind of hit the right note. um release it to the public for feedback, finalize and adopt, and then we'd get all the way there by July 1, hopefully. And with that, this is my recommended motion. >> All right, you made it. You survived. What do you think? >> I did it. >> You did a great job. >> I don't know why, but >> she reminds me of Jana. Does anyone >> like agree with that? Do you remember Jana and she left to be a teacher? You remind me of like >> her twin. I I always want to call you Jana. of the same very kind a effect. So, um, great job. I think it's fantastic. I'm going to open it up to comments to my right. Go ahead, Councilwoman Anderson. Um, turn on your mics and that's how I'll call on you. I will skip you if you're not green. Sound good? >> I'm not ready. >> Okay. All right. I'll come back to you, so I'll keep looking. Go ahead, Councilman Martinez. >> Thanks so much, Madam Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. Uh, I just really want to say that I appreciate the uh like the similarities between the pyramid that you've built uh to Maslo's hierarchy of needs. And I know you're saying that's not exactly the same obviously because there's a lot of different things. And I I'm glad you pointed out the fact that one doesn't have to be accomplished before the other, but it definitely seems like the base of the pyramid that you're presenting to us is what's going to structurally help maintain the city in a solid place for us to be able to do the rest of the layers that are stacked up on top of those. And so, um, I think you've captured a lot of what we talked about during our conversations. I know when I first saw the pyramid um it felt like sort of staff and the day-to-day which was already alluded to from the other council members was sort of left out. So, I really appreciate the government effectiveness that was added to the side of it because I think that does capture it capture that essence that even though we are the policy setting body of this organization, we're not the ones out there repairing the potholes or uh doing all the work that actually needs to get done to implement these things. And so I just want to put that out there and make sure staff understands that we are sensitive to that and we want to make sure that they're being treated fairly and they're getting what they need to be able to fulfill these roles and the vision that we see for our city and what we hear from our constituents to try to push some of that lovable city attributes that we get to hear from our constituents about. So I think you've captured um a lot of those. I started diving a little bit into the draft obligation. So I want to thank uh Mr. Sakone for his work um on that because it does clearly lay out the exact river statutes or reno municipal codes that we need to follow to accomplish some of those things. And obviously safeguarding and protecting the city from any legal liabilities is important to all of us up here. We don't want to expose those risks uh for that. That's why I appreciate you including those legal obligations and fiscal stewardship as the base uh for that. So I just wanted to start off with there with the kudos and appreciation of staff for all the time and efforts that they've put to make sure that we understand what makes a true a great government and what is government effectiveness and how we can reach the bare minimum to being a great city and where we're at today. So I just wanted to put that out there and start there today. Thank you, Madam Mayor. >> Miguel. Okay, Councilwoman Taylor. >> Thank you. Um, I just want to make I want to make sure I'm understanding. You're asking for buyin right now on the pyramid. Is that what you're asking? Yes. >> In this step. Okay. So, I I I can get there. No problem. So, but I want to start backwards a little bit and maybe move forward to adopt and chair because I don't want to wait 36 months for what I'm want. and I don't think it's out of line. And I'm going to start with like some actual visible measures. [laughter] So, one of the things that is absolutely critical that I hear from people is a safe and clean downtown. >> So, when we say we want a safe and clean downtown, I'd like to define what that means to me. and that is this council has taken several steps to provide or ordinances for um enforcement. So whatever we have to do when we see any sort of lying, sleeping, camping, jaywalking, I want for street and I want downtown to be the model of um of a clean city. I want that to be where people think that, you know, they want to bring their kids and that's not happening now. And I just want to be very very specific in that. So I we need to know or I need to know before 36 months is up what we have to do to get that. And I think there's a lot of steps in there if that's I don't know a regional approach, if it's allocating more resources, if it's moving resources, but it is probably one of the number one complaints if not the number one complaint I get. >> And then my question is, how do you plan another question is how do you plan to use this in the future? So, I was pulling up one of our agenda items and the staff report and in the staff report it says alignment with strategic plan. Okay. Well, this meets infrastructure, climate change and environmental environmental sustainability, public safety. To me, that's not a measurable result and we have that on every agenda or every uh agenda item. So, what do you see in the future >> of how we're going to actually implement this? But my first thing is the most important thing that I have been saying since I've been here and even before that to my council previously. >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. No, no worries. Uh Carissa Bradley Kac for the record. Um I know that uh in conversations I've had with other staff and some conversations about how do you measure a clean and safe downtown. I've got some ideas. Um love to workshop them with you. Um some of them >> I don't really want to workshop them. I'm sorry. I just I I want to drive down the street and not see people committing crimes, any kind of crimes. >> Yeah. >> And like I said, it's the little things like the jaywalking. I want us to enforce everything. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. No, thank you. Um but to if I if I may, M to answer the question around the staff reports and how to really make this like not just >> checking a box almost, right? Um I would propose and and we've been talking a little bit about this that so the pyramid itself all of those things that are listed would still be what staff would identify as their alignment for their item but hope my hope is that um there would also be a secondary kind of a descriptor of you know this is how you are uh achieving that and if it's a project that isn't defined in the the plan but it's under the overarching like bucket or umbrella of that initiative or that priority Um, let's use let's use the parks district as an example. If I had a magic ball, I'm going to probably say that's that'll be in the plan, right? When Nathan comes and drafts a staff report, I would say it's an alignment with um access to natural resources specifically in advancement of the parks district. It would get more granular to that level. Um, does that help a little bit? Yes, >> council member, if I may as well, [laughter] director of policy and strategy for the record. I also think what we're we're building into the implementation here, council member, is a quarterly you you guys only you see items and we align them with the strategic plan priority areas now, but we are going the plan under this is to actually bring you guys quarterly updates with and those may need to actually have policy direction in them. And so it won't be waiting two years when we refresh to have a conversation about things you're seeing. Um, and I would also say that those quarterly updates are not intended to be like one strategic plan update. It would be like every council meeting. It would be rolling, but like that topic would come up once a quarter. >> Okay, I can get there. Thank you. >> Thank you, >> Councilwoman Anderson. Thank you. Um, thank you so much for breaking down um, just bringing us along this funnel to to get to this point where we can really focus on getting this process started on a strong found uh, foundational um, understanding with each other. I don't think I I am totally on board with this this pyramid and the and the priorities. Nothing above fiscal stewardship can happen including quality of life if we are not fiscally stren you know strong and so what I want to make sure that we are doing each time my number one thing is to strengthen the things that we have let's circle the wagons in any and all ways where we can start adopting getting our infrastructure up to speed getting our parks up to speed and making sure that we're getting them up to speed and protecting them into the future. future because if we don't have that fiscal and energy attention to those things, everything above fiscal stewardship crumbles, >> right? >> And um then we start having issues with our revenues because property values drop, seed tax drops. So the other thing I would really like the council to focus on is each and every investment or each and every area where we are we're agreeing that we're going to focus think about how that will actually add to our property tax and add to our sea tax. I think we have a really big opportunity right now to make paired investments and paired um priorities that can really help us with our seax generation. That's not only with just the projects that we're um encouraging and and helping bring to market, but also with different ideas to tie in our regional partners to be able to make this city more um attractive for the people that are coming, whether it's the clean and safe downtown or people that are visiting um tertiary areas, making sure that those are safe and clean as well. Councilman Ree, go ahead. >> Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, first of all, thank you for the presentation. I think it's a great starting point. I think like anything, the issue is what we do with it. Um, it's I think like two years has gone into this moment to get us to this point. And so, I like a lot of what I've heard. Obviously, the sort of bullet point things that you've indicated are about today. Those are all pretty straightforward and I'm happy to support those. Um, one of the things I want to talk about is this pyramid and you identify on slide 23. Um, sort of the scale of government effectiveness and then this uh ratcheting up thing between bare minimum, foundational, good to great. Um, I think for my part, um, for me, safe community might be in the bare minimum category. And I don't know if that's just a a slight turn of phrase. I I think that, um, without a safe community, um, we can't do all the other things, right? So, that's why I think it's a bare minimum. Our, um, the men and women of our police force are the finest, um, law enforcement agency in the state. I'd put them against any in the country. I'm not sure we have given them all the resources they need to be successful, which goes back to the initial thing that you said about fiscal stewardship. Right. I think that all of us would like to see more police officers in our community and and and to Vice Mayor Taylor's point. It's for me, it's not just about downtown, right? I I'm talking to people in all parts of the city who are saying we lack some I don't know if it's response time or there's something we're seeing here. Um, I think that downtown is unique because it's highly dense. Um, there's some um populations that are there that are um that cause maybe more issues. Um, and so they're more complex. You know, I have suggested that we have um substations throughout the city and certainly because our police station is just out of the downtown corridor. I think we have a special relationship to downtown. I I'm not in it as often as Vice Mayor Taylor. I don't live there, for example. But I have seen great improvements in the time that I've been on council, so seven years, with very specific things about the downtown corridor. But I wouldn't want those things to be at the detriment of other parts of the city where people are also making those same issues. We we might even, for example, have a a police chief or a team that's dedicated downtown. I know madame mayor has for a long time uh thought a lot about strategic ways which downtown you know you have to have a downtown that is welcoming inviting to families uh to everybody who's coming down there um it is true that it is one unique part of town it's not the only part of town um so for my part again I think that we can u maybe just adjusting this mission and values vision thing just slightly because I think it is a bare minimum to have a safe community, right? Um, and I suppose it might be argued for all the things that it might be up or down on the on the ladder. Uh, but for my part, um, this is a foundational issue for our community and I think we're doing, you know, we're doing really well. We can do better, >> right? >> Thank you. Um, I'm glad you said that because I really I I felt strongly for a while now because um I think Councilwoman Taylor and Councilman Ree both brought up really really valid points. Um, and and then also I think we have to be very careful about the things that we see um on social media and you know it's funny you can see one incident and then all of a sudden people think that's a bad place to be. don't go there or you know don't go to Bry's word because that that's happening there. So you have to be very very careful. However, I think with your feedback and what you've seen and what um the you know the information you gathered, it's very it's very real. I I think because we have grown fast and um we are now a medium-sized city. I said that before, but I think we should have a downtown police um assistant chief and a dedicated one if we're really going to change uh downtown. Um and I know Councilman Ree, you've talked about this and saying, "How do we truly move the needle?" I think there has to be a specific lens on downtown. um because of the density. There are so I always say downtowns are cities inside cities because they're much more um because of the services, the density and we have more and more people living downtown and so it's very um different >> than what you see throughout the rest of the city. And then that way you really have a different lens and you have hyperfocused and it's also helps getting people's services um because when you come across a lot of the men women of the police department they are very very helpful with um alternatives and uh and I think that that is a great um interaction that they also bring to the table that we never talk about. They're also just really good interacting with the community whenever um they are on foot or in that capacity. >> Um they become much more ingrained in your community and people see them >> in in as people. >> Right. >> Right. So anyway, um I'm going to send it to Council Der. Go ahead. >> All right. Thank you so much. Um, I love the time and attention that you and Kelly and others have put on the subject matter because at the end of the day, this is really how we measure what we're doing and we know what we're achieving and if we never take the moment to find out where we are, it's very hard to report on it. Everything's so scattered, right? It's not like a consistent message. Um I um so really I think the value of this is a feedback loop um in terms of being able to measure um what we're doing to achieve whatever we're choosing and I'm not going to put out any priorities today. I'm I'm going to hold till you say it's the right time. But um what I've also understood though is I'm a little bit surprised that we haven't been measuring right 10 years 12 years we we we seem to be resistant to that and actually a little fearful because people are afraid of being judged. They will be afraid that it'll be used against them instead of to inform our process and move forward. So I think we're going to need some kind of culture shift about that. And I think that we've seen on boards that we serve on uh on other agencies, they're measuring. I mean, at home, they're measuring all the time. >> And at I'm sure at at health and at RTC, you know, all of the boards we serve on, they're measuring. And yet, we don't seem to be measuring. It's very hard to understand what we've accomplished. And we know the big picture. I mean, the the manager led us off with here's some major accomplishments. and and I happen to agree with the her list and I'm sure there's more but I think going forward in order to you know accountability is in here. We didn't really list that. I mean somewhere there was probably a word accountability on your slides somewhere but it is um having us stay true to what we want to achieve. Um I am not one that's totally in love with the pyramid and here's why. Um, I think Miguel said it. I would have said it if he didn't, but we're so um knowledgeable about Maslo's hierarchy of needs that when we see a pyramid built like this, this is where we instantly go. We assume that the stuff on the bottom's foundational. You've got to eat, right? We we talked about earlier in the presentation today. You've have to have shelter. Have to have water. And I don't even know which one of those three are more important, but you know, I think you you need water before you can last longer without food and you can last longer without shelter. But you need all these things and they go on and at the top of that pyramid has a lot to do with innovation. I think love is up there. Um once you've got your basic needs satisfied, you can go to your quality of life. What I am worried about, I will admit in this depiction is that we're never going to get to quality of life. And as you said earlier, what draws people here is not our famous being famous about um they have the best park system in the west. go to Reno or they have the best police force. We have to move to Reno. No, what they talk about constantly over and over is the open spaces, the mountains, the the weather, you know, the climate, the friendly people. >> Yeah, >> it's what drew me here and a lot of other people. Uh the freedom to do what you want to do. This is a very, let's just call it libertarian in some ways. We have freedoms that other people don't seem to have in other places. So, those are the things that stick us. And I'm only worried if all we do is focus on, you know, how many police calls did we make or we measure um how many parks did we mow to the B level or something that we're going to miss something very special about Reno. So, I'm I'm fine with moving forward. I just want to caution us to to not um lose our focus on the big picture um while we're fixing the small picture. And I do have a second comment. I'll wait till we come to round two, but I'll just tell you what it is so you can be prepared. I just want to know what goes into fiscal stewardship and legal obligations. Give us some examples. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> You can either answer now or later, whenever. >> Yeah. >> Whatever you're comfortable with. >> Yeah. I can uh so fiscal stewardship that is when we were just kind of defining it that would be things like um looking into maybe different ways of doing our budget annually or finding new resources or continuing the work that the manager's office has been leading and like revenue education to the community and understanding our sources better and um I don't have the the perfect of how but those are some of the things and >> so but it's innovation in the base. Is that what you're saying? >> Yeah. Yeah. Um >> and more transparency. >> More transparency and and a better understanding of what those revenue sources are, how we use them, what you get for those. >> Okay. But it's not about like the first thing came to my mind was our payroll system. I didn't know if it meant fix the payroll system first. >> So I had tagged that a little bit in the legal obligation section as >> Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I would I would submit that that goes into >> You have an example of legal obligations. >> I would use the the uh enterprise resource planning that payroll HR as the example of something that might fit under the legal obligations. >> All right. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Okay. Uh Councilwoman Eert, >> every time she uh I'm here. So, yeah, just want to also reiterate how important I think uh the downtown is. Um, I I know I've said a lot um about supporting the casinos. I think that we really need to um need to engage with them downtown. Downtown's important um and get those storefronts open downtown. And I know that we're doing a lot uh of work in that space. That's not to say that we're not, but I definitely want to see more. um anything we can do for the placem um uh study things uh to come to fruition is great to have um more partnership with Wo County um services to help with the unhoused population. Um I know that we've had some public comment come in and and just would like to prefer that we just remove people from the streets. Um that's not really an option. We're we're not just going to put everybody in jail. That's not like a solution, but I would like to see more partnership from Wo County as well to figure out how to get these people into the services that they need and how to activate the downtown um and just have more more people down there so more businesses want to open. And I know there's some issues potentially with some um landlords that just aren't maybe necessarily interested in in renting out their spaces as well. So, I'm I'm not sure how to tackle that, but I do agree that that that whole downtown area is so important to the city of Reno and having the river run through it is just such an incredible thing that we really need to celebrate and focus on. Um, and I know that's outside of my ward, but we all benefit from having, you know, a flourishing economy and a booming downtown. And I've mentioned several times to lots of people, I don't have a single hotel in Ward for. So, if anybody's coming for a weekend or trip, they're staying in the downtown and I want them to have a good experience, too. Um, so, you know, I'm interested in bringing um events and things up to Ward 4, but um also like we really need to um restore the heart of Rena, which is it's downtown. Um also extremely supportive of first responders in general. Um that's like one of the absolute most important things that we have to provide. But um kind of uh handinhand with that for me is um security. So uh data security. I know um the state was recently hacked. I just want to make sure that um any data system that we're using especially for any type of communication has all of the budget they need to keep us safe. because if something happens and we're not able to send that dispatch, then um then we're not able to provide those first responders. So, um I want to make sure that that's also um given a high priority kind of in the same umbrella as first responders because um you know that's that's kind of how we um tell them where to go and all that. So, just wanted to call that out just kind of um show support for things that have already been said. So, I'm not going to beat a divorce, but just kind of uh share my thoughts on it. And again, I'm not saying things are not being done, but um I do want to see more things being done, particularly um regionally with the county on [clears throat] a lot of things that they're literally bound by NRS to do. Um and I think it's uh time to start um >> kind of holding their feet to the fire a little bit on some services that they should be providing. So that was it for me. Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much. Thank you, Megan. I really really appreciate that. And actually, you have the ability probably more so than any of us to bridge uh the relationship over at Wo County. It would be fantastic um if we could have you help lead the charge as your father sits over there. And uh we could it's probably our biggest opportunity to be collaborative with them in a really long time. And um I I think that that is a benefit to all of us to continue to Yeah. So >> yeah, I think we need to have I think you know just like the fire um I think we need to have some joint meetings and have the leadership sit there and say here's collectively what we want to see happen so that um you know we all start heading the same direction. I feel like we're all rowing uh our boats but we're not heading the same way. So, I think that, you know, if we could kind of put some focus on that um in the same fashion that we're trying to regionalize fire, I think that would be helpful. But I know it's difficult. We don't have authority over Wo County. I can ask, but um you know that I I can't tell the county commissioners to have a meeting with us, but I just want to put that, you know, on the record on the table that I think we should be having regional meetings to discuss that as well. And I know that's a space that um Manager Bryant works really well in and collaborates really well with the the county manager. So I think they'd be open to a meeting like that, but I would just like to say um I think that's something we should work towards. So if if uh council's on board with that, um I'd like to, you know, move forward with having that type of regional meeting with that in mind. >> Okay. Thank you so much. I I'm really pleased to hear that. And we actually have um someone from the county who also works used to work with us here. Cadence in the off in the audience. She's going to love this. Her fore face is getting red. She's like, "Thanks, Hillary." But um we do have great relationships over there. I would agree. Um you know, city manager Bryant and Cadence, you know, helping us be better about probably getting on uh each other's schedules along with Sparks and those joint meetings. I do think um you know and it's crazy it is I I would I want everyone to know this it's really really difficult to schedule those meetings when you're looking at I don't know how many 15 18 whatever I don't know um >> you and then and then staff on top of what our schedules are it is really really challenging because we've seen some with great attendance and some not so great and then uh there's a lot of hurt feelings when they're not there So, it's complex. It's not easy to have a a joint meeting. And remember, everyone goes on a different day. Um I think what you're Tuesday um what's sparks? Thursday. >> Monday. See, I don't even know. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So, those are out. So, you get Thursday and Friday barely. Right. So, that's all I'm saying is that's why it's so challenging because and the other boards that everyone has to attend. So, you get this tiny tiny window. It's not that we um don't love our partners, but it's a it's a challenging schedule. >> However, I think um you know, I I know we we're having one that we coming up, but not until a uh probably after January, but we can work on that now. Um because we're probably overdue for a meeting. >> But it's not easy. So, >> no. >> The force be with you, Jackie. [laughter] Um, okay. We're going to move on. Um, did I miss something there? >> Second round. >> Second round. >> Okay, I'm going to send it to you. >> Yeah, >> Counciloman Anderson. >> I just the one thing I wanted to um build on on the regionalization opportunities that we have. I've been here my whole life and um for some weird reason I've been reading the paper since I was like eight years old and I've been following how um how much infighting we've had as a region over the years. I've never really understood that. >> Um but I was raised in a lot of this newspaper reading time and spark. So I was always like, "Yeah, we don't want to work with you." You know, I was just a bratty sparks girl at that time. So I just want to really really um highlight the unprecedented the energy, the willingness, the attitudinal change that has happened in this region between the all of our partners and our at the county at the city of Sparks. Um, I've been working really hard to get to know the people that are elected in, you know, our peer positions and I've never seen this much energy and focus for regionalizing anything and everything that makes the most sense to better leverage the the dollars that we're investing and improve service delivery. So, I just wanted to um acknowledge the regional electeds that are really rowing in this direction along with us. I also want to really acknowledge the community partners whether it's Edon, RSCBA, business leaders, people that get involved in the organizations that move things along in this community. They are also focusing on regionalization. We need their voices, we need their ideas, we need their support in this. And the third thing that I would ask is any community member that knows how important this is. Any community member that wants to see more police, any community member that wants to see more fire, any community member that wants their streets plowed more efficiently, they want their storm cleaned up more efficiently, want they want their parks improved, use your voice on this. Make sure everyone involved knows that you are behind regionalization and and behind figuring out creative ways to move this community forward. I think everyone in this community needs to hold each other accountable on this. This is our biggest opportunity. >> And I will Chris Bradley for the record that came up so much more than I expected through the interviews and conversations. Like the most not keyed in constituents would be like, "Well, why do we have three different ways to do this?" You know, they'd name off the city of Sparks, the city of Reno, and Washer County's way of doing things. And I was like, that was really profound. And I love that everybody's talking about this because you're right. It is such like put put aside the politics, put aside the the past and this is the right thing to do. So, thank you for the comment. >> Amen. Yes, >> sister. Okay. Um, Councilman Martinez, go ahead. Your lights on, so you get calls on. >> Thank you. Um I think it sounds like there is support um for the pyramid whether we agree with the shape or not um of it moving forward and your red trapezoid area or rhombus whatever we want to call it uh area of moving uh forward and kind of focusing on those area uh on those specific levels uh seems to be there. So, I just wanted to make sure I acknowledge that from what I'm hearing on the dis and continue to emphasize that without our staff and their well-being and their overall physical and mental health being in tune, we won't be able to uh complete some of these goals. So obviously it's important for me, if I haven't straight up said it, that we're taking care of the people that work in this building and the other buildings that the city owns to make sure we're providing great swim lessons, well-maintained streets, flowing sewer pipes that will lead where they need to go and not lead where they don't need to go. So I just wanted to emphasize those things and make sure that you're hearing the appreciation and the support for the work that you all are leading us to. And I'm really looking forward to uh your revisions and your refining of the plan and coming up with some measurable outcomes for us to sort of del dive deeper into each of these levels and further define how we look at fiscal stewardship, legal obligations, well-maintained city infrastructure, safe communities, and access to natural spaces. >> Thanks. >> Yeah. Um I think Miguel made a very important um recognition and that is and I'm just and and this is very this is very difficult but I do think he is exactly right. It's um and we don't talk about it enough and it's very challenging on so many levels because because it's also not a space that we're supposedly supposed to be in. I think it is all of our responsibility and I think it is the one thing that we again it's like I I don't even know how to like put it into context. I think it's America's biggest um basically secret. We don't we do nothing um to well I I shouldn't say we do nothing but we there's a lot that we could be doing to change the outcome of this country and that's with mental health and addiction and if you don't have your mental health you have nothing you have nothing you don't have safe streets you don't have infrastructure you you have nothing and so I I know that that is not identified in here because a a lot of times too. And be honest with you, the structure of the funding that comes in for that is doesn't come in from the city. It actually comes in from the county. And that's where I I think we have to have that relationship with them. I I'm going to be just really vocal. I would like to see the funding come in differently through the state. Um, and how because it's it's also the cities along with the county that deal with it at the at ground zero. It is ground zero for us. That is a whole other thing. we it'll never get touched upon until this country takes it seriously that we need to be building infrastructure and more doors um to get people the help that they need and deserve. So anyway, I'm not even going to go in there because it's a it's a massive massive elephant, but that's where I think at the very very top when we talk about quality of life and we should all be noticing. I want all of you to drive down the street. I want you to notice I want you to notice how much of this is a massive massive issue. Go count how many people are walking on our streets that are suffering um from this illness and we think it's okay. And I just think that that is wrong. But I do think that that is the biggest challenge in what uh plagues cities all across America. So don't get me going anyway. Um, >> okay. I think uh we have one more >> council member I'm sorry. >> Hold on. We have council member uh or do you have your light on? You did. Okay. Go ahead. >> Okay. >> You didn't before when I was looking down there, so I didn't mean to skip over you. Go ahead. >> No, you're fine. Um were you were you done? >> No, I'm done. Um I'm going to try and marry the two presentations that we had today and start with my last question. um bringing in some of the accountability that my colleagues were talking about when we go to make decisions um moving forward if we all buy into this when I'm just going to take the bottom one finance uh fiscal stewardship. So, what is that actually going to look like when we're trying to approve things or not approve things? Going back to what um Jeremy presented, he gave us five things. And I'm not saying that these are the five things that we've all agreed on, but it might be a good starting part. Is it, you know, does it lead to a balanced bud budget? Um, will it increase the deficit? What does it look like for our bond rating? Um, do we have healthy reserves? And then the last one was the community ROI and our promises that we have made. So those are the things that I'm going to be looking for on how to use this plan moving forward. Um and I I again I hope it we could do some of this less than 36 months. But those are the things the I guess the tactics and the measurable things that I want to be seeing moving forward. >> And thank you for that. Uh Carissa Bradley for the record. I I think that we wanted council to really buy into this concept today. I will say there's some really good ideas of how and those tactics and that that level. Um when I talk with our finance director and and her team around having a better sense of the life cycle cost of things and how do we understand um all those little factors, right? if it sounds like a good idea right now, but what does it look like in five years or we take this on? >> Like like you said, the life cycle, the maintenance cost. When we looked at, you know, this council be way before me had built this amazing pool and then um when Nathan came on, he's like, "Well, how are you guys going to pay for that?" What? [laughter] >> Yeah. >> I see Travis in in the background going, "How are we gonna pay for things?" So, I think those are great conversations and I didn't want to minimize the effort that you and your team have put into this. Um, I know it was a lot of work, so thank you. >> Yeah, thank you. And this is a reflection of uh your all's leadership and helping to prioritize all the different things that are coming to your plate. >> Um, go right ahead. >> What I I wanted to follow up on what you said, Mayor, um, you were talking about the importance of mental health, and I just want to know how we thread the needle with this. The reason I didn't love this layout is that it implies because we've seen triangles so often implying priority. >> That's all I didn't like. I don't care if it's a triangle, square, sh, >> yes, >> circle. It's just that we're so used to it implying priority. I just want to caution us when we get into our decision- making. But the the thing I was raised my hand about was where do we fit mental health here, mayor? Is it safe community? Is it uh is that where it fits? But but it's not police, it's not fire. But do you see what I'm saying? Is like how do we fit our housing initiatives? Are are they all about being safe because they're the most critical thing is to have a roof over your head. I just want to make sure when we get to the decisions that we have a place to map them to and that we we don't suddenly say, well, mental health itself is not on this list. >> Right. I think because it's not considered our lane. >> What's that? >> It's not considered our lane. So, it gets very overlooked had this council not have pushed things like um online therapy and those things. They they never would have been a a priority, never would have been funded and we act like they're not happening. I actually think it needs to be in conjunction with the county together so those services can marry. Um we're now in a point with I would say with everything going back to what um Brandy said as far as you know regionalizing. I mean, we are now in this place that we will continue to be a fragmented community if we're not doing it together. And quite honestly, um I think we've talked about it so many times. Why does everyone my phone and hide in the end? But um I would say that um we we were talking about this. If you really wanted to make it super effective, we should be one region and one body. Um, otherwise we're going to keep building on top of each other, spending where we don't need to, fighting over services that should be won, that should be life-saving services. I mean, let's be really honest about what that should look like. If there's any one thing, it should be a regional approach, a regional plan. Your elected leaders should be elected regionally if you want a cohesive uh community. >> But, so I've lived in a few of those and they work really well. I just don't know that we have the political interest or will to do that. >> Exactly. Politically, we don't. >> And I just wanted to say yes, a regional answer, but when it comes time for Reno to pony up our money to be a part of a regional answer, I I I don't what I'm cautioning people is you get married to a structure and then you go, well, where's this funding for our new regional mental health program supposed to come from? It's not on this list. And I just cautioning that the words mean something. Yeah. And they also exclude all the things that aren't mentioned. You could say they're implied, >> but I I just I was thinking of things that were working that don't neatly fit that you have to draw a dotted line. I'll I'll even pick a something that's at least three of us or more care about which is the Lear. Is that quality of life or is that maintaining our buildings? >> Right. Or one of our 56 buildings that we owned. Okay. I think it's one of our 56 buildings that we own. But it may but other people may see it different, right? It might be in a different bucket. So I'm just cautioning whatever we adopt, whatever rubric, I'm down with it triangles squares circles these words, other words. But the the concept is that we're working together on something, which I love. And the concept is that if it's important to me, the concept is if it's important to a particular council member or multiples of them, we're gonna find a way to do it as well. That's how I am. you know, if if downtown is the top priority of multiple council members, but it's not listed on here exactly like that, I'm I'm going to help figure out a way to get that thing. So, that's all. >> I think Megan has >> um Council Der. Oh, I already spoke >> or sorry, um Eert, sorry, >> Council Eert. >> Thank you. Yeah, I'm here. So, I just wanted to kind of um do you know round two here. So those those things that I said earlier about downtown and partnering with Wo County, those are more big picture. I just want to make sure for you know W four constituents that are listening. Of course my ward is also a you know priority. We need more parks. We need more open space. We need more um neighborhood planning um and infrastructure built out. Um, but I just want to make it clear that the way that we have the budget to do some of these things is by having um a thriving revenue source, which is a thriving downtown. Um, and that's how we pay for these things like infrastructure, um, first responders, things like that. So, I just want to make sure I make that clear because I didn't, you know, explicitly state that before that, um, I view taking care of our downtown as a way to, uh, get to the things that we needed in my ward. Um, and the people that live out here, we know what it is. It's, you know, we need more road, we need better roads, we need better, um, community input on planning decisions. Um and uh or just you know developers willing to engage more I think with community input. Um but also just access to first responders, you know, call times, things like that. That that increases with the the infrastructure getting better out here. Um and again, you know, those are things that we can have better access to if the city of Reno at large has the funding for that. So, I don't want people to think that I'm not concerned about the issues that are specific to Ward 4. I definitely am. Um, but we're limited on what we can do in the parks and open spaces category if we don't have the funding for it. So, I just wanted to make sure I I put that on the record so people understand where I'm coming from here. I definitely want more parks. Um, I'd love to have a space that's just an open space that we don't do anything with. if we just let it be sage brush and boulders. People love that out here. We don't have to maintain it. I think it'd be great, but um I think um we need to put a lot of energy into the downtown right now and I think that'll help us um you know have the budget to do a lot of things. Another thing I want to highlight too, and I don't mean to derail anything, is I really want to continue to harp on the Lear Theater. Um, as we talk about things that are a priority, um, that is something that is, um, in desperate need of repair, like I would hate to see this building collapse before a decision is made on what to do with it. And I'm, to be quite frank, concerned that that's going to happen. So, I just want to make sure we bring that discussion back up to the forefront, too. Um, if we're talking about things that we need to have, uh, moved on in the next 36 months, um, I think we should definitely have something going on there as well. And I'm not saying what it should be. I know Council Member Der leading the charge on this, but I think um, time is really of the essence on this. And you know, knowing that the city of Reno does not have uh the budget for a lot of things that we know that we need, um I'm really concerned about um us um you know, what kind of ownership we should be responsible for if we don't have the budget or the resources to um restore the building. So, just want to throw that out. Not trying to ruffle any feathers, but it's something that I really want to make sure stays on the radar. So, um, that was it. I think that's that's all my comments. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> I don't think we have any more comments. >> Great. >> And if we do, >> are you ready to make a motion style for I believe >> we're ready to make a motion. Are you ready? >> Yes. >> Oh, I'm ready. >> Okay. Okay. [laughter] Um, go ahead, Councilwoman Taylor. You want to give me a motion? Oh yes. Uh I move to approve the presented priorities and strategic focus areas. >> Second. >> I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. >> All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Good job. >> Thank you. >> Nice. Nicely done. >> Thank you so much for putting up with us today to be honest with you. Like I don't know. It's it's just feels a little different because it's a special meeting and so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, I hope you feel proud, Callie. You do. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of you worked with Calie during this process. She's great. She knows it better than anyone and she really cares and the outcome shows it. So, good job. We're excited to move forward. Okay, moving along. Madame Clerk, what do you need from us? >> All right, Madame Mayor, we're on item C1, which is city council comments. >> Okay, any comments from council members? All right, thank you. Uh, back at you for um public comment. All right, we're on item D1, which is closing. >> I had I had a a council member comment. >> Oh, skip that. Go ahead. >> Okay. Um, so just I wanted to talk about and if this isn't the right space, let me know. But just wanted to talk about future agenda items. one just want to reiterate I'd like to have a regional meeting with um county and sparks if they're willing to participate and schedules allow to talk about um services that should be provided you know via NRS that city of Reno is currently um kind of filling in the gap on or just in general things that we could come together and work on uh in the downtown area. Um, and then separate from that, um, I'd like to maybe get an update on, um, any affordable housing projects that are happening in the city of Reno. I know we changed an ordinance to remove, uh, expiration date on sewer credits for some affordable housing projects to to pencil. I'd like to get a a status update on uh, those as well. um just to hear if if they're moving forward, if there's any unexpected projects that kind of came back to life because there's no expiration date. Um basically just kind of see what the um result was of just making such a drastic change to that ordinance. Um so just want to put that on the record. >> Okay. Thank you so much. I I actually think um do city manager, why don't you jump in because I don't think that's accurate. Go ahead. >> Which part? >> [laughter] >> It's going to be a future thing >> with the sewer credits. >> Oh yes. So there is a little bit of uh discrepancy around the sewer credits. We released the sewer credits. I don't know the status of um any projects that are or are not coming forward um due to the release of the expired sewer credits. However, um I do think that we can get you an update and I'll do one better rather than just do affordable housing. Uh we know all housing is good. We'll bring forward an item that kind of gives you the lay of the land with respect to housing that's been permitted and expected to be built over the next year to five. >> Okay. Good. Thank you. >> That's great. Thank you so much. >> That's great. Okay. Thank you so much. Um that's it. >> All right. Madame Mayor, we're on item D1, closing public comment. We do have public comment from Art Rangel. >> All right. Great. Art, hello. >> Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. How are you? Go ahead. >> I'm doing well. You know, over the years, I've been somewhat critical of the city. Uh I want to tell you I'm very encouraged by today's meeting um to hear well uh how many times during your discussion money funding and revenue and things of that that sort. And I want to give a special thanks to Congress member uh Anderson for bring for asking Jeremy the question of which industry sectors could we be looking at and he he mentioned healthcare and trades couldn't agree more healthc care from the standpoint that those are all and those trades provide a lot of highpaying jobs which is what I've been trying to you know asking for it for you to do um and working with UNR and uh um some of the hospitals in in in the community can really help stimulate more more of these high-paying jobs and the trades u especially in a in a in a region like Reno uh that has so so many lowpaying jobs there are programs to Edon and Tamwa and things like that that will train folks to for these higher trade jobs so I think it's really important and u mayor you asked Jeremy the question about uh tiff which he did not answer, but I just want to reiterate a comment I made about TIFF is that it really is about to generate tax increment, you really have to hi have um high Florida area ratios, buildings on on parcels. That's what generates the tax increment can really be be to the benefit of the entire of the project area, the entire community. So anyway, thank you for what you've done. >> Well, Art, thank you for what you've done. It's always um so nice to have your um feedback but also uh community commitment because you have you've you know this you've you've done it before. So it just it really matters. Um and we really value that. So thank you so much Art. Uh we really appreciate you. So keep keep up and keep participating. It's it's very helpful. >> You you are very welcome. >> Okay. Um, >> all right. Madame Mayor, for the record, we also received one letter of neutral or concern correspondence which has been distributed to the Reno City Council. So, we're on item E, adjournment. >> Okay. Thank you. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say I. I. >> All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Thanks everyone. And thank you to um our great team. Good job. Now you can go and celebrate. Go have a drink.