yes um yes i know the one of my favorite things to do is sort of embarrass people and so we have a very special birthday today mr lance verretto is 21 and in the house please he hates it he's so shy he's like one of the shy people i know anyway um he runs our incredible business department thank you happy birthday do you have any fun plans okay all right also i want to welcome brian mcardle he comes here from edon stand up i know you don't want to but stand up yay i'm really excited to work with you thank you so much i'm honestly it's going gonna be great thank you all right madam clerk i'm gonna start out by leading us in the pledge i would love for the beautiful casey christensen to lead us in the pledge today where where'd she go she was oh you're right there you've moved a seat okay go ahead take it away all right thank you madam clerk i'm going to send it to you to call the roll thank you madam mayor we're going to go ahead and call the roll for wednesday september 7th councilmember breckis abstinent this time councilmember door here delgado weber ward 5 is vacant reese chevy here madam mayor you do have a quorum of the reno city council okay thank you so much before we go into public comment madam clerk would you like to outline the process i have something here or do would you rather go the public comment and then we can go into the process yep so we will go ahead and open general public comment now we only have a few comments to a few commenters here that are specifically signed up for general and then we will go over the process i'll come up and give you guys a process for today and then we'll move into opening public comment for item b1 which is the item on today's agenda and then we'll go into interviews from there so we'll first do general public comment our first public commenter today is mr myth said followed by rod cooper additionally if you are in the zoo meeting and would like to make public comment on general a3 public comment please raise your hand at this time and while mr miffset is making his way up here i'll go ahead and read my disclosure it should be noted for those in the audience that comments are to be addressed to the mayor and council as a whole comments heard under this item will be limited to three minutes per person and may pertain to matters both on and off the council's agenda please note that council may not take action on any matter not agendized when you're called on for public comment please state your name for the record and begin speaking the timer will begin when you say your name and you will be afforded three minutes lastly while in this room please be respectful warnings will be issued by the presiding officer if there is disruptive behavior and you will be asked to leave chambers if the behavior continues mr miff said if you'd like to start now you're more than welcome all right good morning jerry my name is your worst nightmare [Laughter] you know um dr king said anybody who's a witness to racism and does nothing is a racist and what the city council was a witness was to one of their members the city council person will say that wrongfully had me thrown out of city hall because my shirt was open there is no dress code i heard what you said earlier that's a bunch of baloney my shirt is still open throw me out you also had the nerve to assign a security guard to go to the city clerk's office to cassie who's no longer working there and tell cassie to call me up and tell me i was barred from city hall for six months this is four months into that i dare you to throw me out now it's four months into it i'm supposed to be bored you know why you're not because you tried to bully me and like i said last time you can't bully a pit bull you like that don't you i used to like you you know i felt all this charm i mean you're very charming but you can't use political seduction like that though i remember the first picture i took with you i squatted down and you looked up at me and said are you trying to make me look short well if i stood up or away you'd look short you know for the highest person in reno that's highly regarded you shouldn't have that kind of complex now i know you people don't have to listen to even look that's kind of rude because we're just up here for a comment we really don't need you here but i'm told i can't direct any of my comments to you directly because that's wrong i can't give you a co a compliment because it's wrong but for five months i was up here complimenting and criticizing and never once told this until recently when it seems like a collaborative effort to try to silence me we were supposed to work out a deal me you and the city attorney and what did the city attorney do well he pushed the snooze button like he normally does and he went to sleep [Laughter] i tell you you people mess with the wrong guy because what this is going to end up doing ended up going to court or the court of public opinion so i called upon my fellow seniors vote don't vote hillary out vote for george eddie lorton the honest businessman that would uh will honor his oath you've been the mayor for 10 years that's a monarchy you want four more that's 14 years you have three terms do the math three times four is twelve two years into your term if you should win you should resign i suggest that you should turn in your resignation to the attorney general today because you're on your way to the big goodbye that fifth story that you own imagine a high-end thrift store that's a contradiction in terms of thank you so much thank you [Laughter] he who laughs last laughs all right madam mayor with that we have no additional public commenter mr rod cooper has asked to be moved to item b1 and so we'll go ahead and accommodate that request so we're going to go ahead and close general public comment and furthermore and we'll be moving into opening item b1 which is discussion thank you we're moving into item b1 which is the discussion and potential direction to staff regarding the interview process interview of finalists and possible appointment of the reno city council ward 5 vacancy madam clerk i think uh we need to go to item a4 i'm going to ask the council thank you for keeping me on track of the agenda i have a motion i have a second all those in favor say aye all those opposed motion carries unanimously all right back to you madam clerk okay always juggling good morning mayor and council um so we're moving on to item b1 today which is the interview and selection of our ward 5 vacancy again just for reference for the those of you in the audience and those of you watching publicly on august 12th this body met and decided between a special election and an appointment process the decision was made by the arena city council to move forward with an appointment process to avoid a 9-10 month vacancy period for the ward 5 constituency after that point we did move into an application process so august 15 through the 19th my office the reno city clerk's office accepted applications from 36 residents of ward 5 um at which time on september [Music] what day did we do that august 24th um this body narrowed that selection of 36 down to three last week on the 30th and 31st we held two public meet and greet sessions for the constituents of ward 5 or just constituents of the city of reno to come out engage with those three finalists ask questions it was very successful we had a great turnout and a lot of really good connections were made during those meetings and then today september 7th the job for each of you is to a determine a process which is what i will go over next interview the finalists and then hopefully we will be able to make a selection and appointment and then swear that person in to start their duties as soon as possible um so the recommendation for today is the following process um we will go ahead and allow um or the what my recommendation would be that we're going to bring the finalists down in alphabetical order by way of last name at that point they would be given a five minute opening statement period each council member and the mayor would be able to ask one question we would ask that that question is the same across the body just to ensure that there's equal question or the same kind of question format asked each candidate follow-up questions we'll be doing one round per council member if necessary for follow-up questions based on the last council member's question the finalists will be given three minutes to answer the questions being asked of the body and then they would be additionally given a five-minute closing statement period following that it should take no longer than one hour per candidate is really kind of the timeline that we're trying to stay within at that point we would go into deliberations where the council members would go ahead and negotiate and ask questions amongst each other to then move into the selection process the candidates are sequestered at this moment so they're upstairs in a private room um none of them will be able to hear the questions being asked so that none of them have an unfair bias or an opportunity to come up with answers ahead of time and so when we call them down they will be escorted down to chambers the questions will be asked and then we'll actually just have those that have already participated stay in the room because they don't need to sit up in a silent room by themselves any longer so if you are good with the process that's presented yes thank you madame go ahead yeah um just to clarify and just kind of put this to bed um do we have we we all have eligibility requirements to run right correct and could you just go over what those are for us i'm actually going to let mr hall go over them okay i just think it's good to get that out there and kind of deal with that yes councilmember doerr the candidate has to live within the ward 30 days prior to the declaration of candidacy okay and according to the records that i reviewed specifically driver's license information all candidates meet the requirement and they have filled out an affidavit stating that they do meet the requirements fantastic thank you and that's the only requirement right that is the only well you have to be a registered voter you have to yes you have to be over 18 you have to be a registered voter and you have to live within the ward so all of those three things are double checked um when those applications were filed you have to be a registered voter like that 30 days before or any moment before you just have to be a registered voter active with the right to start yep and then in that word i guess to your point you have to have a residency 30 days before that you clarify thank you so much thanks welcome okay all right okay so we're good with that process yes okay we're gonna move into public comment okay our first public commenter is rod cooper followed by amanda voskov followed by ken oak kevin weiske good morning mr cooper hello there uh good morning council members and mayor i appreciate the opportunity to stand here before you today my name is rod cooper i reside at 5150 rio pinar in reno and i'm the retired vice president regional manager for granite construction i'm here today to speak on behalf of this agenda item and i've read the bio and the resumes for all three of the candidates coming before you and you really have some good choices however i am here today to talk on behalf of kathleen taylor now i read a comment pasted on the wall of the elevator as i wrote up or down whichever direction i was going today and went both and it says conversation creates unity and how much better could that be of a motto for what you're going to go through today again as i said i'm here to support kathleen and she has demonstrated unity in her in her work over the years uh while being the vice president and regional manager for granite we worked on two major projects in the city and for the city the first being the reno retract project and kathleen facilitated critical community engagement in downtown which is ward 5. with multiple stakeholders and competing priorities being the residents business owners special events and elected officials even though this was 20 years ago kathleen still maintains these types of positive relationships today it was a controversial project but the community outreach was successful and respectful and well received it was actually award winning kathleen spent hours and hours knocking on doors of businesses and residents daily to receive feedback and communicate project goals and operations and there were no surprises again conversation creates unity where i-80 goes through downtown reno uh granite had a design build project and kathleen again was the public information officer for that project as well she developed business partner patronage program during construction to support business it was the first in the region she communicated engaged with stakeholders throughout reno sparks and washoe county to minimize impacts she facilitated discussions between granite businesses residents special event coordinators ems to reduce impacts and improve operations and efficiencies she communicated the schedules with the city arena and again there were no surprises after working with kathleen on these and other projects i appreciate her core values and integrity which i'm confident she'll bring to the council in the city of reno and i'm certain you would appreciate working with her as well thank you very much thank you amanda vosko followed by kevin weiske followed by gary cecil good morning reno city council my name is amanda voskov today i'm here to show my individual support for elliott maylen in filling the ward 5 vacancy elliott was the only candidate which reached out to me and my colleagues were all very involved you and our students this gesture meant a lot to us as you and our students are a significant part of ward 5 that interact with reno city government on a daily basis elliott conversed and listened to us regarding campus safety in the surrounding area safety student struggles with housing and security and food insecurity among you and our students i thank him for being receptive and attentive and regardless of who fills this vacancy i hope that these conversations about students needs are continued among council members and especially among our ward 5 member thank you so much for your time and amanda is a future senator future mayor yes there you go i love it nice to see you girls by the way yes nice to see you too kevin weiske followed by gary cecil followed by linda or lena tanner madam mayor council members good morning kevin weiske for the record and it still is so different being on this side of the dice than that side familiar face thank you planning commission um with that being said uh i am here as a retired planning commissioner i have served my 12 years and wished i could have gone longer but with that 12 years also came a tenure with kathleen taylor and i would like to express as vice chair chairman both reno city planning commission and also the regional thank you devin regional planning commission is serving both and serving with kathleen that i always found kathleen to be very well prepared she was always on top of the conversation and the items of the agenda that were before us kathleen also did a fantastic job and i have watched her since then since she has come back on to the reno planning commission following robert's rule of law there is decorum there is law that you know as well as i do that must be followed in order to make the decisions that you make and that [Music] future councils will also make and that's very important as a as a resident of this city i want my council to follow the the rules of law i don't want them expanding and going out into areas that get challenged in court although mr hall does a nice job when he has to go and i've always appreciated the fact that our planning commission did our best to stay out of courts that that says a lot and that says a lot for kathleen it says a lot for what you are asking a candidate to do in stepping up right now mid-term and taking off and running and that i believe is what kathleen can do also one of my other professional duties here in town since leaving the planning commission is i'm an executive officer of the associated general contractors and the associated general contractors of northern nevada wanted me to come before you with a positive message that they support kathleen taylor also with that madam mayor thank you for your time keep up the good work thank you so much and it's so nice to see you and thank you for your service i can't believe you served for 12 years there that went by like that kevin thank you for your service and also uh give our regards to patty i know that dress for success is happening on october 21st it's a great event and and we have a table this year so my colleagues and i will hope to attend so give patty our best thank you so much gary cecil followed by lena tanner followed by curt gotchok good morning madam mayor city council members mr thornley um as i was at the august 25th meeting i'm here today on behalf of a group of engaged ward 5 residents and they are again sunny allen from downtown jill flanzeroy from downtown carly borchard from verdai pam mcneil from somerset ken mcneill from somerset rangel from downtown and gary sussell for downtown and thank you councilmember webber you to come up and thanked us for our input in looking through all of the 36 handed materials that meant a lot to us thank you last week we had the pleasure of doing our own zoom interviews with your three finalists elliot alex and kathleen already agreed to be interviewed separately they came well prepared and open to answering some tough but fair questions and we're very grateful to each of them it was they were rich sessions they also allowed us to engage in a positive give and take that helped our group both know them better and to imagine them as our council member madam mayor you've rightfully decried the shortage of respectful public dialogue i agree with you i can assure you that our exchanges with the three would have made you smile they were substantive and they were pleasant and very productive that said this accelerated selection process has kind of felt like going through a drive-through we will be looking forward to the 2024 election will be more like dining at a restaurant you've had time to thoroughly research our group has made it clear to each finalist that whoever the council selects we want to engage with them to begin positively working for the good of ward 5 residents and the person you select will be hit with a tsunami only each of you really know what it's like but we are committed to helping that person be successful and we hope they take us up on our offer of help we're still grappling with an acronym for our purpose but we did create a shared email space in which we define ourselves as a group of engaged ward 5 residents who value collective respectful and positive dialogue aimed at contributing to our award and assisting our council member and if there are any other ward 5 residents that would like to meet with us and i'm going to shamefully publicize ourselves here please call 775-420-5185 and leave a message in two of our membership are on the ward 5 so please come any first tuesday in the month and uh sorry second tuesday in the month at 5 30 and we can meet with you then and we wish the finalists the very best of luck today and we look forward to working closely with whomever your final selection is thank you very much gary i just want to commend you for your work it was so good that i mean it's hard to believe we've done this three times now this will be our third time so i loved it so much that that would be part of the process moving forward hopefully we don't have to do this again yes but it was so good and so helpful and informative thank you for doing that because that's how moving forward we would do this process well you have three very good candidates thank you thank you very much lena tanner followed by curt gotchok followed by jeff hale good morning madam mayor members of the council mr hall nice to see you my name is liona tanner i'm a lifelong reno resident and a small business owner here in reno of a law and government affairs practice i actually have been advising the city on sustainability matters for the in regards to the public utilities commission for a few years now uh with suzanne she's great um i apologize for my voice i also work for burning man so it's not whiskey and cigarettes it's actually applied to us so forgive me um i'm here today to voice my support for the appointment of kathleen taylor to uh to your council kathleen's resume speaks for itself i'm not really here to talk about that i think she's clearly the candidate with the most experience and the one who can get up from the proverbial um ground get from the ground running um what i'm here to talk about is the um fabulous human that kathleen is and i'm gonna get a little teary about it um candidly kathleen has been one of my closest friends for about almost 20 years now and and the reason why is because on probably my first worst bad day when i learned that my son uh my six weeks old baby had what we now know is terminal cancer i met kathleen when she was the executive director of angel kiss foundation and she took that foundation and merged that into what is now the nevada northern nevada children's cancer foundation which is really you know the the sole permanent organization for families like mine in their region if there's one word that i could use to describe kathleen is that she's fierce she's fierce in love in parenting and friendship and work and charity um so through her work uh with nevada with angel kiss we became good friends uh we raised our kids together our kids were of the same age um they love each other we have been through divorces the death of my child um through being single mothers through leaving somewhat cushy jobs and starting our own practices and all of those uh setbacks and triumphs that those bring and i think one of my fondest memories of kathleen and katie bonnie will will um probably correct me when kathleen i'm not going to say canceled christmas but altered christmas for her tweens when she felt that they were too spoiled and did not appreciate christmas enough so all presents were cancelled and she took them with the sheriff's department down to the motels on fourth street and handed out presents and i believe and katie can correct me that every christmas since it's been about experiences and not presents and that's who she is uh kathleen is a fierce advocate for her clients for her friends for her family and she will be for her constituents should you choose to appoint her there's a scene in ted lasso really quick and i hope you all watch it because it's better than therapy where where keely the model who is famous for almost being famous secures her friendship with uh with rebecca the team owner in front of the red carpet adjusts her stands back and says behind the photographers ah look at her she's fierce i'm omitting the f word but i think that you'll get the point kathleen is who you want in a foxhole and i think she's who you want on this dice thank you linda thank you so much and thank you um you've been through so much adversity thank you for being there with us um was it fun i just want to know was it fun it was miserable it was so hot and so dusty i left for the first time ever before the man burned wow i couldn't handle it but i was there for a week and a half because i worked there so i look cool with that all right well good thank you kurt gotchok followed by jeff hale followed by rebecca goff good morning uh my name is kurt gottschalk i am a long-term ward 5 resident 37 plus years um so i have a good idea of what goes on in ward 5 i was also a member of the nab until i got turned out vice chair numerous times chair numerous times as well i spoke here last month in regards to your process of appointing or election though i do not agree with your decision that's what we're living with um i think all three candidates have excellent backgrounds alex is strong and involved kathleen is highly motivated in various areas government agencies infrastructure and planning elliot malen has extensive government interactions not focusing on one particular area his numerous contacts because of his business i think extends more to the council than either the other two candidates being able to communicate with them over the years understanding how that communication has to go is what elliot doesn't have to learn he already has that in in his background i think one of the greatest attributes that i can give to elliot in the short period of time in interacting with him is that skill of listening listening is an art it requires concentration and focus and elliot has already put forth some of his ideas of what he's going to be doing meeting with the residents of the community not just going to a nab meeting but reaching out as he did on labor day by having a mini town hall at a coffee shop off off of las priestes where he invited a lot of the members of ward 5 to show up and we were there interacting with him learning more about him learning more about what the community was looking for not just our opinions i think beyond an individual's education life experience is very important in reading each candidate's resume online you can see that they're all have different variety of how they've been involved in life i think elliot's involvement in government is the greatest attribute that we can give back to our community someone who can hit the ground running may not know all the intricacies at the city level but in the county and the state level he's already very well versed and i think his expertise will lend itself to a better city council thank you thank you kurt jeff hale followed by rebecca goff followed by alexis motorex good morning madam mayor members of the council i'm here today to speak in support of kathleen taylor i probably know kathleen better than anybody because we're married for eight years raise two kids together raising kids while you're married is tough but doing it while you're single is really tough and while also trying to build a career and a business uh at the same time is is very difficult and that's something that she did and it's a testament to her strength and her dedication and character kathleen besides being a dedicated mother is hard-working and dedicated to helping others she cares deeply about reno and has worked to make it a better place she started here leading a non-profit that helped families struggling to care for kids with cancer she also tracked our kids down to feed the homeless during the holidays and provided meals for the delivering with dignity program she also spent her weekends working on community projects uh such as gathering artists to paint a mural on a plain block wall along mayberry all examples of how she's worked with the community to improve the city something that people don't know uh mr cooper alluded to earlier she's been in a unique position to play a key role in some major infrastructure projects that have changed and are changing the face of reno she worked closely with the rtc as contractors engineers and community members affected by construction the midtown complete street project the fourth and prater complete street and brt project in this role she worked with both rtc city staff the engineers contractors and property owners to inform them project activities and work to meet the needs of people impacted by the construction of these projects she performs the same services to other public agencies within truckee meadows including ndot to help navigate the difficult times that could come with construction of needed improvements that that may impact their business or their livelihood both of those projects that i mentioned significantly work to improve the character of those of those corridors working with property owners that are not only happy about losing access as i mentioned um impacted by road closure finding a way to communicate with contractors and maintain a co-parent relationship and friendship with me can be challenging but that's what she does and maintains and she maintains and fosters relationships a critical skill set demanded by people represented by ward 5. she decided to become more active in community leadership and run for city council about 10 years ago and while unsuccessful at a time at the time it made her more determined to work to make the community better she was able to land a seat on the planet commission where she worked to engage with community builders and city staff to understand best practices and community development ensure that beneficial projects were able to move forward as efficiently as possible kathleen has worked very hard for her kids her career reno residents stakeholders to make their lives better and appreciate what they've done what they have so it is taking care for the next generation that's why i urge you to support kathleen today thank you all right thank you so much rebecca goff that you get the x coming up that was very nice followed by alexis motorex followed by sandra newman newmark stevens [Music] hi good morning madam mayor and council members um thank you so much for having me here today i'm speaking today in support of alex goff who i have the extreme privilege of being his wife um i've known him for 14 years and the first thing that really struck me about him from the first moment we spoke i knew he was exceptional and i wanted to know more in fact the first time i met him was at an event and it was like intermission and we talked and i was just like this guy's amazing and then i couldn't find him after the show and then he didn't call me for a week i was so upset i thought he didn't like me um but he did and almost 14 years later here we are um so i have the privilege of knowing him deeply you know his accomplishments his achievements you know all the great things that he's done for our community what he's done for our country but i'm here to talk about who he is in the quiet moments not only is he whip smart literally smarter than me smarter than i could ever be he's a kid that barely graduated high school but just a few weeks ago graduated from an ivy league school with his master's degree it's a big a big accomplishment that he did on his own nobody told him when he was younger that he was anything in fact he had teachers literally tell him that he was worthless and he would be nothing in this world and statistically speaking coming from a single mother in the deep south he should be dead or in jail but he's not he's here and he's been called to serve at home we talk about all kinds of things but we talk about the city i mean he talks about housing and zoning and honestly things that are beyond what i can understand um because it's just not my area of interest frankly but he's really into this stuff and he in his free time his free time is is looking into these issues in the city looking into these issues in our state and he's coming up with ideas how he can make it better long before he even had this opportunity this is the kind of work he's been doing at home in the quiet moments of of our life he's also extremely kind and compassionate despite all the things that he does he still has time to volunteer at the shelter with me he still grieves with me when i lose a patient or when i have to make a difficult decision at work he's excited when i tell him about exciting adoption stories you know he really does care about these animals as much as i do and to me a person who cares about animals is a really good person and the kind of person that you would want leading your community and honestly if you see him with our dog at home she's like our baby we weren't blessed with children and so we have our dog and the way he loves her and dotes on her and cares about her and he'll probably be mortified that i'm sharing this is very touching just to see the kind of person that he is in his day-to-day life so i know that he would be an excellent representative of our ward and he would be an excellent leader because i see his leadership day in and day out when he's not doing it for show you know when he's just living and existing and being who he is and who he is is exceptional and i know that he would work together with everyone on the city council with the members of our community to continue to make reno not only the biggest but the best little city in the world thank you love it great job [Music] alexis motorex followed by sandra newmark stevens followed by katie hale good morning my name is alexis motorex and i'm here today uh representing myself and to encourage the appointment of kathleen taylor to fill the vacancy in ward 5. i've had the good fortune of knowing and working with kathleen for just over a decade i first met her early in 2012 when my son was diagnosed with leukemia kathleen was on the board of the northern nevada children's cancer foundation and was part of the warm embrace my family received during that terrible time i later learned that she had previously served as the executive director and was instrumental in the transition from angel's kiss foundation to the more regional reach of the northern nevada children's cancer foundation her involvement in this organization one that helps so many families in their darkest hours is a large part of why it is so successful today i then worked with kathleen at a local pr firm where i got to know her better i saw her saw firsthand her integrity and work ethic her collaborative approach to solving problems her willingness to admit when she was wrong and her willingness to listen and include new ideas and something else i admire in every situation she uses kindness humor and her infectious laugh to bring people together i now work adjacent to kathleen in the construction industry and my role with the agc and hers is the city of reno and truckee meadows regional planning commissioner a past member of bfac and a communications consultant on large transportation projects our paths across frequently i feel fortunate to be able to call her a friend and a colleague you had several quality candidates apply to fill this vacancy and have narrowed the field to three outstanding options i don't envy your position in having to choose but between kathleen's years of experience in and around the city's operations and her dedication and commitment to making this community better it seems to me she's the clear choice thank you thank you nice job sandra new mark stevens followed by katie hale followed by jack aucoin good morning mayor stevie and council members thank you for having all of us um sandra if you would turn the microphone so that it's facing you that would be great thank you better you're gonna have to get right up in there my name my my name is sandra newmark stevens and i'm an attorney here in in reno my husband and i practice out of an office in ward 5 and we own a home in ward 5 so we're very very interested and who is going to be representing us you all have a tough day today you've chosen three candidates um that have presented you with diverse resumes and they are all very very well appointed the skill sets that are listed on each of their resumes are very different however i i am here to give my support to kathleen taylor i first met her 20 years ago when i was on the board of the angel kiss foundation and at that point in time angel kiss was a very new organization we had um had an executive director before that didn't work out and we were looking for somebody who who is energetic who is personable who is a self-starter who is a communicator and had leadership skills we interviewed very many people and kathleen just popped out as the right person for the job she worked with us for four years and by the time she left and turned over her responsibilities to her successor the organization was up and running we had name recognition we were serving children who and their families who were suffering the devastating diagnosis of cancer there was money in the bank kathleen fundraised for us she wrote grants she organized a cadre of volunteers who actually helped her in the office because initially she was a one-woman show and did everything she really built the organization to a place where at the point where she left it could be turned over to another person and it could move forward since her experience with angel kiss she has moved on in her professional life and she's gained a wealth of experience as the owner of her own business taylor made solutions she's gained practical education in management and negotiating contracts and solving complex strategical problems and in dealing on a day-to-day basis with a diverse set of stakeholders in the community where most of our work has taken place kathleen's interest and concern for the city of reno is evidenced not only by her involvement professionally but by her work on this city of reno planning commission and by her willingness to spend the hours it took to graduate from the reno citizens institute where she learned more about the complexity of city government as the resident of downtown reno now she has a vested interest in what needs to be done to maintain the best of the central city and she knows what issues are need to be addressed but she also knows what is best about the city of reno um i remain close friends with her over all these years and i think that kathleen is the right person for the job i hope you agree with me thank you so much sandra katie hale followed by jack alcorn followed by joanna altcoin hello good morning madam mayor council members my name is katie hale and i would like to start off by saying thank you to all of you for being here today and allowing me to speak and support my mother kathleen taylor every time i've been asked my role model is i've said my mom i know this may seem very cliche and an easy role model to choose however she is not my role model because she is my mom she is my role model because of her character her will and her kindness she has not only taught me compassion but has also demonstrated her compassion in reno's biggest little community every day she gives whatever she has whenever she has it even when she doesn't have much i have watched her raise two amazing children myself included start her own successful small business all while being passionately involved in reno's community i have seen her donate volunteer and get to know those who are less fortunate than her i have seen her have conversations with people who don't have a home and be genuinely interested in their experiences and be eagerly willing to help she is the type of person whose intentions are only pure and the only satisfaction she gains in helping people is seeing them get better a lot of politicians claim that they want to clean up the homeless people clean up the streets and that they want to make these big grand dose policy changes for the good of people and really they're only trying to fill their own poc their own pockets the great thing about my mom though is that she's not a politician but a person a really kind-hearted intelligent and caring person she is honest and she applied for this position for the right reasons the reasons being the better reno and make it an attractive place to visit and live in i have seen the hard work and dedication that she has put into raising children and growing a business nonetheless the hard work that she has put into applying for this position and i truly believe that she will be a public servant and that she will live by the words by the people for the people as i said before she is not my role model because she is my mother however i am truly honored to call her my mom i am proud of who she is and who she has taught me to be when i grow up i want to be just like her i want to have her compassion intelligence dedication and drive to make things better than they were before maybe not her red hair because i'm not sure if i could pull that off but i definitely do want to embody her character anyways thank you for letting me brag about my mom and i hope that my insight as someone who has known kathleen for almost 20 years allows you to come to the conclusion that she is absolutely the best person to have to fill the ward 5 seat thank you very proud of you jack allcoin followed by joanna alcoin followed by casey christensen right cool uh hi my name is jackacoyne uh first off i want to thank you all for listening to me today and allowing me to speak um i'm a student at unr and i've known kathleen for a while but more recently i have been luckily blessed to be able to work under an internship under her for over the past month um yeah before my internship i didn't really know kathleen so working with her so closely has allowed me to kind of see who the person she really is um what i first noticed about while working with kathleen is her compassion and love for what she does uh she always seems to have a smile on her face no matter how crazy i drive her with sam again work late she always has a smile on her face and no matter how tough the work may seem and that's what i think reno needs another great person on this council that does everything with a great mood and work ethic another thing about kathleen that i respect is her love for reno her work is focused on bettering reno and for for one i am a big reno fan so me and her really quick together really well um i love seeing my city grow and something better i love seeing my city grow into something better and kathleen will provide a better future she's a great boss and she will be a great representative on this council as ward 5. thank you thank you jack joanna allcoin followed by casey christensen followed by rochelle lieberson all right is it still morning good morning madam mayor and council members for the record i am johna coyne and thank you for allowing me to speak with you i am here to to support kathleen taylor candidate for ward 5. as a third generation nevadan and one who is now raising a fourth generation i am my community is very important to me i'm incredibly proud of our city and i value the hard work the grit the tenacity and dedication that it takes to represent our beautiful community that is why i am in support of kathleen taylor to represent ward 5. i've known kathleen for about 10 years we met through our girls soccer team we were the parents on the sideline chatting solving the world's problems while our girls ran their hearts out on the field by the end of game one kathleen's commitment to our community was indisputable and throughout our ten years of friendship and the end of our girls soccer career kathleen's commitment and tenacious devotion to our community has never wavered she's a fierce advocate for small business shaming me for my department store purchases reminding me to shop local and support our neighbors she's a voice of reason and advocacy for the betterment of our community she is someone who walks the walk kathleen is in the community and having those brave and needed conversations she regularly meets with our homeless community and does so without judgment nor preconceived notions her mind and heart are open and she is solution oriented she's generous to a fault both financially and with her time she doesn't wait for a need she seeks out the opportunity to help as an elementary school principal i always tell my students and my staff that we represent one another that when they are out in the community they represent me and when i am out in the community i represent them i am proud to call kathleen my friend and i am and a valued neighbor but i would be honored to have captain kathleen represent me in ward 5. thank you for your time thank you so much i've been to your school you do a remarkable job thank you thank you remarkable casey christensen followed by rochelle lieberson followed by matthew lakoff hello thank you so much for having me madam mayor members of council my name is casey christensen and i'm here representing myself and my business soup restaurant in reno nevada and also as a ward 5 member as well i live in ward 5. so i i have the pleasure of knowing kathleen for quite a few years i got to work with her when i served as the president of the midtown district during the virginia street project um as we all know that was quite a quite a challenging project and had a lot of interesting um interesting feats of bringing people together to kind of solve a problem find a solution and i was so incredibly impressed with kathleen and how she met with each person and found solutions for each person it wasn't a blanket response i think that's the beauty of who she is as an individual as she is very caring very willing to listen again there's been so many beautiful things said about her and i can only support those as well but her ability to listen and truly care i think is top of that list as well she's shown so much of her character and quality of an individual which i believe all we're all we have to do together is try to find solutions and and the fact of her willingness to try to work with people is is paramount it's really huge and i think is a benefit for the city council as well having people that can see eye to eye or try to find a solution she worked tirelessly with her commitment and love for our community it was really beautiful to watch her willingness to go and meet with each individual business and think creatively to find solutions i think sometimes with such a huge task that we had ahead of us it was really key for her commitment to all of that she loves our community she is she is authentic too which i think is really huge for me and especially as a what you all form with our city council that authenticity is is really really important and i i see that in her and i trust her and believe that her intentions are true and what she's trying to do is just to support our community and to see it continue to grow and thrive and and do better each day her experience of course speech speaks for itself working with um you know counsel and working with the commission and then again multitudes of people which i think you understand how many people you have to work with in this position and be able to listen and understand so again my my biggest support for her and i truly believe she would be such a benefit to what you're doing and then i think the growth that you could all achieve together would be really beautiful so thank you again for having me and and you have a hard task ahead of you but again my support lies with kathleen taylor thank you thank you so much casey and for those of you that don't know she owns one of the best restaurants in midtown soup i just have to give you a big shout out one of my favorite places amazing thank you thank you so much rochelle lieberson followed by matthew lakoff followed by morgan sherman good morning my name is rachel cunanan now lieberson um friendly face to some of you guys i'm just here today as a new ward 5 resident but i just want to show my support for elliot lakoff he's done a lot um in all areas of the government and the community but in one specific area in the jewish community he's a large advocate um always making sure that whatever is you know whatever issues may arise he wants to be there in support and as we head into rosh hashanah which is the holiday that's coming up in three weeks the jewish holiday so we say shana tova sweet new year it's actually not the new year for the jewish calendar it's a time of you know welcoming sweetness into our year and kind of heading off our you're in the right state of mind and i think that it's beautiful that we have this opportunity to appoint a council person for ward 5 in these weeks you know we need a strong leader ahead and i think you guys are all amazing you're supporting the body which is reno and i look forward to you know either elliot or whichever candidate you find best to really head ward 5 and lead it in a good and right direction thank you all right great job matthew lakov followed by morgan sherman [Music] hi there my name is matt lakoff i'm a student at unr and i'm also a student leader in multiple of the unr organizations including uh multiple of the jewish and the lgbt-related organizations on campus so i actually helped found several of these organizations um so uh with that being said i'd like to give my endorsement for elliot malin um i've known elliott for um like three years now and um ever since i first met him i have been struck by how engaged he is with the ward and with the university in particular um elliott was a alumnus of unr or he is an alumnus um and while he was at the university he was very very engaged with asun with the jewish life on campus with civic engagement and he helped found a lot of like really important organizations that have only been able to exist because of his hard work and his leadership and since graduating he's remained engaged he's really been a mentor for a lot of our students he frequently actually gets interviewed by nevada fitment or nevada fit students when they're first entering the university because he's just one of these great leaders that comes from reno and um in terms of his character he's a problem solver he always makes time to listen whenever there's an issue even though he's incredibly busy he always finds time to listen and find a solution and um he does this not just for people that he personally has a relationship with um he would pretty much stop time to help anyone who needed help and i as a leader on campus have frequently pointed students in his direction because there's a lot of civic issues that students are having to deal with including housing and security safety and just trying to navigate the world as new voters he's a fierce supporter of free speech and voter rights and he as a currently going to law school he's um really learning how all of these things shake out to be able to um apply the constitution correctly um he's not a businessman he's not here to represent the interests of you know financial superpowers in in our award he's here to support the people and um i think that's why i can say on behalf of you and our students that he is the right choice so thank you for your time great job matthew you sound like a future senator right future uh you know that'll be if that'll be a future me question i love it nice job morgan sherman good morning mayor and council how are you so i am here in favor of elliot malin um similar to matt i am heavily involved in the unr community um let's see similar to matt i also helped found several clubs on campus over the last few years i have been very privileged to benefit from the community that elliott malin has built i come from a super small town for me community is very very very important and through coming up to unr i was very lucky that i stepped into a ready-made community i heard many wonderful stories of elliot malin long before i actually met him in person um i can speak to the wonderful stories that i've heard to the tenacity and the accomplishments of this man for me i distinctly remember providing a service for an event that we did and he said hey have anyone has anyone here said thank you i heard that you stepped up last minute i was like we haven't even eaten yet it'll come up later and he was like hey we're saying thank you now what this person did for us was incredibly special and incredibly important i believe that he represents the best interests of the community at unr the jewish community the overall students i believe that he like matt said and has as he has discussed with us i believe that he strongly believes in free speech and voter rights he has a wonderful respect for what we as american citizens and nevada residents have rights to in all honesty i was not planning on making a public uh uh speaking public comment so that will be all for me thank you very much future senator again i love it all right madam mayor there are no attendees in the zoom that have their hand raised for public comments but this time we're going to move into our voicemail which we have three hey my name is brian williams i have been a resident of reno for 10 years i've lived in the area for 20 years i'm calling to support kathleen taylor for reno city council my phone number is 530-414-1861 i'm a local business owner uh and i've known kathleen for eight years she has excellent communication skills a wonderful character she's overall good person great person actually i volunteer with kathleen she volunteers a lot of her time i i would have to ask he's probably around 10 hours a week um and i've seen firsthand uh her volunteering services change people's lives dramatically i i can't say enough good things about kathleen taylor she's she's a business owner a successful business owner she's very involved with her community she puts community first she's willing to listen to people listen to ideas take them all into account and come up with the best possible solution i've seen this in action firsthand volunteering with kathleen once again my name is brian woody my phone number is zero four one four one eight six one on the sole propriety of woody calculus and i'm in full support of kathleen taylor uh for a councilwoman for my district thank you hello my name is drew sheehy and i just wanted to express um some public comment to the reno city council in favor of elliot mallon as the candidate for the ward 5 council vacancy um and the reasons for my support of elliot generally include his the amount of time that that eliot has lived in the ward um it seems like he's lived in ward 5 for long enough to really have a good understanding of the issues and the problems that are facing the residents of ward 5 and i think that because of his residency he is uniquely well suited to to assist those citizens that are living in ward 5 and really be their best advocate and especially with him having received two degrees from the university of nevada fairly recently within the past i think 10 years he also is uniquely suited to you know advocate for the students and the members of the university community as well i've seen elliott has been doing a fair amount of community outreach he's really making a lot of effort putting a lot of effort into into trying to learn about the issues that are facing his neighbors in ward 5. and i really appreciate that about him and his his pursuit of of this seat on the council i do want to also register some concern that i have over one of the other candidates kathleen i'm just viewing her application it looks like her driver's license was issued looks like sometime in july and my understanding is that the potential you know appointee would have to have been a resident of the ward for the preceding six months and so i would like to encourage council to look into the residency into kathleen's residency and determine whether or not she actually has lived in the ward for six months and if she is not to evaluate her residency or her um her eligibility for this appointment um once again i would like to register my support for elliott elliot mallon as the candidate to fill the ward 5c and if you have any questions please feel free to call me back again my name is drew sheehy my number is 775-742-9074 thank you hi i'm calling in support of kathleen taylor who's running as um city councilwoman my name is kelsey castaneda i'm a local cpa here in the city of reno and i support kathleen taylor's initiative and running for city council i think she would make a fantastic councilwoman and the city would be very lucky to have her she has great communication skills very good character and overall is a very good person i think that she would be an asset to the city and um yeah and she definitely has my support and other members of the community if you have any questions please feel free to call me at 775-530-8976 thank you so much have a great day bye all right so okay and i really hate to do to do this but we have some unforeseen circumstance and because the body is short a member we need what i would like to do is we're going to have to break for lunch because i don't want to have a candidate come in and then we go to lunch and then they come back madam clerk because we have to have how many do we have to have we have to have four present with the body correct because we might be losing a council member in between so i'm trying to figure out i think the best way to do this is break come back at three and then interview all three of them what what's your preference madam clerk okay so it's 11 30 so we're going to take a break until 3 p.m reconvene at 3 p.m with hopefully all members present and then start conducting the interviews at 3 00 p.m i'm so sorry i had to step out could you just tell me so due to unforeseen circumstance we possibly will be losing a council member and because this body is already short a council member yeah it puts us into a precarious situation where we need to make sure that we maintain enough on the body the issue i have is we could move forward for probably about an hour but i feel like it would be like not fair or something yeah i feel like maybe it's not fair i'd rather have them all sort of at once do you want us to take a break i was just looking for the bottom so i'm thinking we take a break so then we can interview everyone at once instead of having one come in and then sort of stagger it so start when three p.m like 305 i think is the time that everybody can get back online so and we we plan to have the special meet until five anyway so through those two hours um we will resume with that is that does that sound acceptable now councilmember webber has a question they're probably so nervous as it is i know well and i think council member to your point that's that's a part of the problem that's a part of the resolution of stopping now without having asked any questions so that they're free to go and have lunch and go and do stuff until we get until we're reconvening at three o'clock rather than starting a series of questions and then having some sort of discussion happening over a lunch period so if we stop now before any interview questions are asked we can take a break come back at three o'clock with everybody having a fresh mind and a fresh opportunity to go ahead and answer all the interview questions okay so that that is probably the best option okay so we'll go ahead and break right now at 11 30 and we will reconvene at three o'clock three o'clock so i would just say um go take a run let off some steam or some some anxiety because i'm sure that they are all um sitting back there because i i can only imagine how difficult it is i do want to say i think today is a testament of how wonderful our community is and also how small it is actually in a lot of ways which is so wonderful about reno um it's very not small maybe but now they say we're a medium-sized city but intimate all of you came here and just expressed so much love actually for all three candidates which i thought was super impressive but i think these candidates would be so humbled and honored for everything that all of you said it was so heartfelt and so warming and it makes me really really proud of the biggest little city because sometimes we sit here and we get yelled at for about two or three hours just that's just public comment and it can get really negative and your heart sometimes um walks away a little broken and i want to just say today um it was really impressive and it makes me so very very proud many of you i was thinking you would be an incredible city council member or mayor and so i would just say please stay involved but i think the candidates that are sitting there probably like i said anxious and you know i mean i can't only imagine but they'd probably be just so honored about the incredible kind stories and the things you said to them so i will encourage them to play the meeting back because it warmed my heart and um i i didn't know jeff hale was was married to kathleen at one time that's the biggest little city for you right and so we all know each other i say we dated each other missed our turn or whatever that looks like i really don't but um i want to say thank you very much and i hope all of you can come back at 3 o'clock i apologize for the inconvenience it's certainly not what we expected uh hope to have you back at three o'clock thank you so much okay thanks to transition into our interview portion of today's meeting okay do you want to just just sort of refresh the process refresh our memories correct so we will go ahead and have the city manager's office bring down our first finalist which should be alex goff and the process will work where the applicant gives us a five minute introduction about who they are why they're here at that point we'll transition into council member questions if you madame or have a preference of order i'd be happy to or the body would be happy to oblige on which direction you want to go with the questions each question will give the finalist three minutes to answer the question and one round of follow-up questions from the body at that point we will move into closing statements which again is a five minute process and then we will go ahead and go into the next applicant could you just say that one more time just i'm so sorry that's okay five minutes yes opening statement three to five minutes three to five they don't have their heads at all correct okay um then we will do individual counsel questions and then the finalists will have three minutes per question one round of follow-up questions by the council members oh good and then one five-minute closing statement before we move on to the next finalist okay all right everyone's good to go okay we're good to go you like them they're orangy i don't know why i'm different a little different i thought good for summer fun yeah i'm good for full hello howdy how are you doing well mayor we'll have a we'll have a conversation about that later i'm great i'm ready it's been a long day did you get some lunch yeah yeah my wife rebecca and i were able to get some lunch make sure ellie got lunch ellie didn't even eat yeah but i made sure he got lunch i know how that feels yeah right um so just be calm take your time and remember we're all gonna sit up here and smile at you so uh madame clerk i guess i'll just reiterate either you can or i can okay so you will get a three to five minute opening statement and then we'll bring it back to the body and we will ask you some questions and then after that we you'll get a three to five minute closing statement it's pretty simple um just like i said take your time don't be don't be anxious we're all gonna be up here smiling at you thank you so begin when i'm ready uh thank you mr manager mayor uh members of the council my name is alex goff a couple weeks ago i had the opportunity to tell you all my story about growing up the oldest of three raised by a single mom some of the challenges i had frankly i do believe my story is frankly improbable i think that most people growing up you know the single raised by single mother did poorly in school i think oftentimes those kids wouldn't have had the opportunities that i've had but i talked about why i've been able to have the opportunities i've had i think that was due to mentorship when i joined the marine corps opportunities for leadership training so i stand here before you today i'm asking you to consider me to join you all as a member of the city council and i stand here today because of my immense um what i feel obligation give back to a community that's given so much to me and my family my wife manages a local non-profit shelter clinic and all the animals that come through there and they rehabilitate them and get them where they're adoptable and that's opportunity for people in our community and in the the pat center in our community to have a second chance and uh much of the way like i said my family's had a second chance here in reno we initially when we first moved to northern nevada can afford to live in reno so we had to live in firmly for the first five years to be able to save up enough money to be able to buy a home here and that what i believe has given me a perspective and an appreciation for this community and um thank you um and so uh i stand here today like i said earlier uh feeling an immense sense of obligation and and death that i owe the two people who have invested in me standing here today chair of the city of reno's human rights commission uh governor syslag appointment at the nevada state rehabilitation council where i serve as vice chair and on both of those councils members of the councils or committees voted to have me in those positions i think that speaks to my ability to work with others i think that speaks to my ability to gain consensus and move the agenda along which is something that i'm honored and humbled to serve in both those capacities earlier this year i ran for nevada assembly lost the race it was it was a tough loss and i decided to make a career change where i was working in the defense industry which was very uh close to what i did when i was active in the military i did that for 10 years and i thought if i wasn't going to be the person pushing the button taking the votes i thought well maybe i could be the staffer of someone who pushes the button and takes the votes so i decided to work on a campaign i was just up in you know the uh in the council in the room and there was a member of council liaison who used to work on a campaign i worked with him a little bit while he worked on that campaign and so i knew that was a trajectory i didn't know this opportunity would come up and so i was very excited when the opportunity presented itself to be able to serve in this capacity again and so i know that whatever happens today that uh my heart and uh my my passion will lead me to something in service and lastly i stand here today because of all the investment like i said earlier and people that they've made in me throughout my life also my wife has allowed me to do so many things and as you all know your family is i think what supports you and allows you to do service and so i'm proud that i have a wife that supports me and allows me to serve my community and so with that that will conclude my opening statement thank you okay thank you so she um much came in public comment and said some wonderful things about you that's very sweet all right i'm gonna send it to our vice mayor to kick off some questions well thank you madam mayor mr golf we know each other i consider you a friend it's really an honor to have you in chambers in this capacity for the next half hour so we're going to ask you some questions and it's much like a job interview we will ultimately make the decision on who we think is the best fit for the role all of us come to that with some background and understanding of elections how they matter the constituencies that we serve i'm proud to have been born and raised here and then represent the entirety of the city so we spend every day talking to our constituents and i think a number of my colleagues will have questions that will concern them but for my question i want to ask you a bit more about our employees the staff at the city of reno are team members the city of reno employs roughly 1400 people across all of its departments it represents 10 bargaining units across multiple different kinds of departments from police and fire to sewer and i want to know and perhaps you can focus your answer on how you might work with a diverse team and help them to help you represent your constituents because i can tell you the folks on this body are not the ones who are doing that kind of work every day it's the members of this team and this organization i'm proud to work on their behalf and in their service so that's really my question for you is how do you work with that kind of a team and and help them achieve their professional goals while representing your constituents thank you for the question councilman it's interesting actually the first time i was brought down here to speak to you all jennica and i took a moment to speak outside and uh jennifer informed me that she recently looked at a photo and saw that she and i went through the same reno citizens institute and then we began to talk about all the changes that are happening at the city city manager doug thornley has you know worked with staff to incorporate a lot of changes in the city of reno the departments are changing and so i found that very interesting to learn about but i think that it is important to work with people so they can ensure their professional um to make sure their mentorship and leadership to make sure they're able to achieve their goals um in the military that was kind of the focus and drive of what we did uh being a sergeant i had people that i was directly responsible for and so ensuring that they were able to achieve uh whatever they wanted out of service was uh one of my roles and responsibility and i'll be honest i was young coming into leadership i was 21 the first time i was ever signed marines and i was really bad at it to be honest with you you know and fortunately for me i was able to learn and able to get better at it and so i actually ran into one of my junior marines later when i was in iraq and we're in the same rank and i got the opportunity to apologize for how poor i had been to him when i was younger and so what i've learned about leadership through time is that it's important to listen it's important to like i said earlier game consensus and to work as a team we have different titles and different roles and understanding what each person brings to the table but making sure that every person feels like every day when they go to work that uh they feel like they're respected and appreciated i think goes a very long way and so sitting here an advisory role to the city and all the departments it's important that you respect the work that these people do every single day because frankly we're not the ones out there doing it right so making sure you respect their expertise respect their knowledge and um you know i see i was watching the other day and one of the uh when the staff members had admitted you know they had uh there might have been a mistake on a report or something and um you know i can only imagine standing up here under the bright lights having that admission but you know not a term that comes to mind is blowing it up and making sure that you're treating that person with respect you know this person people that come up here that advise the city council they have very tough jobs and so um making sure that you pay them proper respect things important all right great job thank you okay thank you appreciate that um uh i was elected city-wide when i first ran but i represent a ward much like you would if you were appointed here um i was wondering what i've gotten to know about your award being on council is that it's very diverse you've got the university downtown area you've got what might be called old and new northwest you know keystone and so on and then you've got the summerset all the way out to verde got it and i was wondering given that you have the different areas um could you tell us maybe three issues in that you think are are perhaps local to those areas or some top three issues that you think are facing those areas and then um how would you work with the different constituents i guess to result to seek some kind of balance and work with your colleagues to come up with some decisions i'm trying to get at your understanding of the different issues in ward five and then how you work with others so um so okay so two things there are three issues and then how well i work with others if there are three issues i mean you might think there's only two or there could be five i don't know but so uh affordable housing i think is an issue throughout the city not just in ward five and i think it's every war's responsibility to bring units to the table making sure that we're able to address uh the supply problem of housing in this community making sure that people can afford to live in a place uh i think is the first problem uh second problem is public safety uh that goes from not having enough police and fire on in our community also wildlife wildland fires uh in our community we've city councils increase staffing in both police and fire but you know where people will talk about uh the retirements that are about to happen there's there was a lag in hiring at least firefighters that i'm aware of and so making sure that we have enough staff to cover uh public safety and then the third thing that i i'll talk about is just economic opportunity making sure that businesses are able to come to ward 5 making sure they're able to be successful and flourish and we have to do all this on the umbrella recognizing fiscal sustainability making sure that we're addressing climate change and environmental sustainability and so there are certainly challenges that overarch all of these issues but to your second question i think that working together is how you seek to solve those and i was at a rubber chicken dinner as i've heard you referenced before and i ran into assemblywoman jill tolls and um we were different political parties and we had a really good conversation at the end of it she had told me um we may agree and disagree on issues but the place that we start out as a love of our community and so i think that's where you have to meet people i've told the story through our public forums and i'll tell it here that in the military in the marine corps people come from all over the country to serve and so different backgrounds different ways to communicate certainly different expectations as well and so being able to meet people where they are i think is a skill that developed over time and something that i believe i would be able to bring to city council because each of you appreciate the city each of you appreciate your communities and so working with that appreciation to be able to move uh things forward is something i believe that i'm prepared to do okay and then i guess i could just add since you still have a minute so what i'm thinking about is you have the university downtown and they often the people living down there are thinking certain issues they want things they don't want things but contrasted to verdict they maybe want a different lifestyle so i've just seen a lot of diversity in ward 5 much as ward 2 that i represent have you seen that i mean have you experienced it specifically i mean you know it's interesting even you know talking some residents downtown i don't believe there's a consensus about what the thoughts are about some of the changes that are happening downtown but just as you spoke to just a second ago is that you have that experience with your ward so i know that coming into this role if i'm fortunate enough to be selected i know that i can talk to you i know i can talk to the members of the council about your experiences and that way that i don't have to exactly learn everything new that i can have the opportunity to learn from you all and your experiences and how you navigate very similar problems because as you said i think these things kind of will duplicate throughout the different wars they may look a little different but okay thank you thank you councilman thank you all right [Music] thank you madam mayor it's been a great experience working with you working with you and seeing you um actually working i wasn't working you were working and you were working with the other council of the other candidates at the two meetings that i was able to attend and see your interaction what i liked the most was that all three of you were just interacting and um just like you would with your constituents just like you would be at at the council you know here at the dyess and i just i just loved seeing that and it was great meeting you and your wife and just having the opportunity because i don't know you and i think you were really out there and letting people see who you were that may not not have known you well thank you for the opportunity councilman exactly exactly and i i just appreciated that so much um so uh i'm from ward 4 and i i don't know how much you know about ward 4 but i hope you do but we're looking at you for ward 5 right but we all no matter what ward are working city-wide so i think that's something that is really important is that there's issues in my ward that are gonna be impacting yours and and vice versa um all around so um but one of the issues that is really out there right now is um i'd like to know about what you believe is the single most important issue facing the growth of the city of reno and in ward 4 it is as all the wards are it's the growth is out there and we're continuing to grow so um so the question is is the single most important issue facing the growth in the city of reno how do you plan to work with your colleagues from other wards to best consider this issue thank you for the question councilwoman and thank you for coming to the public forums i appreciate it the opportunity to speak with you and members of our community and so um one issue i would if possible i'd like to put a bucket of issues so i would have a bucket of infrastructure climate change and environmental sustainability i think those things are considerations when we're talking about growth and um you know in ward 4 as an example you know you have people who are very concerned about flooding and traffic and issues such as those when it comes to growth and development and navigating those issues are very serious topics when you talk about traffic i mean people sitting in their car away from their families is something you have to take very seriously and i mean much less flooding someone's home has been flooded or the concern that eventually their home could be flooded and so how you navigate those issues you know at work when the covet pandemic happened i had the opportunity i was a union steward which means that i represented the workers in my labor union and i met with the site manager and we developed policies related to mitigation around covet so what we did was we started with principles we started with our site couldn't shut down because we had to support a mission which was training naval aviators and we also started from the position of um well one that we couldn't shut down i mean that was the main thing we had to continue to go and so working with first establishing principles in order to move forward for a common goal and so i think that sometimes in politics maybe the common goal isn't always as evident but i believe i'm an optimist and so i always believe that a common goal can be found between people and i commit to continuing to work to find common goals if i'm fortunate enough to be selected for this position because i understand how important this city is to each of you thank you for the question councilwoman all right councilman delgado i hear you're up there in the sky somewhere all right thank you madam mayor my apologies to everybody for not being present uh it's great to hear you can see you alex um you're doing a great job i'll just dive right in it's no secret that we have started the process of hiring a new police chief the city of reno uh what's your vision for the future policing of reno thank you for the question councilman my future my vision for the future of policing the city of reno and just for background on that i remember a couple of years ago during the pandemic there were issues with policing throughout the country and then councilman delgado and dr angie taylor among others were to look at reforms presented at the time through the gwen center report and i was very excited that those conversations were happening at the time chief soto was his interim city manager and he was working navigating through a lot of that stuff and so moving forward i think that community responsiveness from police chief is incredibly important having connections to the community i think oftentimes uh you know people closest to the problem especially when it's systemic can be aware of what problems are coming out and making sure that you're connected to those in the community so you can figure out what's going on i think that's the number one thing i would want to see is just someone really connected to our communities here someone that knows us and uh can help us navigate through whatever potential problems certain communities may be having i think that's really important thank you thank you okay thank you councilman delgado okay i i was going to ask you a public safety question because i always say the safe city is a prosperous city and i pride this council into investing more in our public safety every budget cycle so but i am gonna i'm actually gonna send i'm gonna take a question from mr cecil they say cecil right yes cause i said cecil they said no it's cecil scary cecil okay okay and mac rossi um what is one code or policy that you would like to see changed and why uh that was the one i was wondering our forum that i think caught us off guard and so um everyone will be happy to know that that question is coming back maybe i shouldn't i didn't realize you don't know you did this already in a forum [Laughter] let's go back to public safety because i think it's it's so important in our city and so i would like to know um how you feel investing in our public safety and what do you think is the most critical issue facing public safety in our city today thank you for the question mayor and so what this council has done previously with the budget is you've increased the most team which is the mobile outreach safety team so these are people who are trained to deal with people that are having mental health crises and so when we talk about what we want to see out of policing what the future kind of is that's a good example of something that is uh newer and innovative increased staffing and so what i believe is is that we need to continue to find that right size for city of reno people refer to the past and how many people that we've had in the past but we can't go back we can only move forward so in the full and in the future what i would like to see is continuing working toward um a public safety police and fire that fits the city of reno and i don't think we're there yet as far as the people and certainly in the hat in the past i've i've been told about conditions as far as the trucks and the different items that the firefighters use and so i know that there's been efforts to correct some of those as well but you know the firefighters and police are on the front lines providing the services that the city gives and so making sure that they know that we respect what they do and make sure we respect that we know that you know they have a tough job and so i would like to see we continue to hire more police and more firemen here in our community okay thank you so much all right madam clerk what would you like to well she said we maybe get a round two is that what you said what do you think i had said that we could do follow-up questions to any of the answers or the questions that the council has done and then i'm just gonna follow up so um i guess it's safe to say i'm going to assume with your answer that you would be supportive at budget time to increase the resources for our firemen and our police officers in the community absolutely i mean you know so so often in government we ask people to do more with less right and so i think it's important that we uh make sure that people have reasonable uh you know uh they have they have the the the things that they need to be able to do the job effectively i think that's important because what you do actually is that you put out a worse product when you don't have enough and so i think that to have a better product we need to make sure that we have a right size police and fire that fits the community and so uh you know there's the issues with fire as far as dispatch and so i think that you know we figure out dispatch i think that'll go a long way but firefighters they we certainly need more of those as well and so there's you know technical fixes such as dispatch that we can continue to work on but certainly making sure that they have the resources that we need that they need okay go ahead councilman sure thank you um you know my question was about the top three issues and it's my reverse is almost what we've had to consider as our bottom three issues so we we have uh done a reimagine reno master plan and the number one issue that people say they like about reno is the access to the outdoors and recreational opportunities and so that has remained a focus at the same time whether we like it or not we are experiencing tremendous heat the flooding you mentioned before the climate change issues so my question is how do you feel the city's progressing on those two things recreation and sustainability how are we doing and then what do you have ideas on an additional focus or resource on those things yeah thank you for the question i mean i i believe that you know um there will continue to be work done uh for generations after us right so uh i don't think the job will probably be completed with this council but i mean as far as moving us in a better direction i think that this council has moved us in a better direction as far as those issues i mean now in the city of reno we track emissions going forward so that can give us real good data points about emissions in our community and how we can best hopefully mitigate those through ensuring that businesses have uh items that will reduce the emissions into the air and so um and you know out recreation outside recreation i think is uh the the true gem of our community being able to go to our parks and our trails and um you know it's uh i think the council's done a good job yeah do you think that the question was do you think we need to do anything additional in terms of focus or resources and i'll just put this in context during the recession we had to cut our parks department more than half and we're still rebuilding and there's so much demand with the growth for the outdoor recreation it's been a struggle when you're balancing wanting looking at our top issue uh public safety are our demand from our public for affordable housing you know where did these things fit they they often get short shrift so i'm just asking you if you had any thoughts about how to kind of pull it together how we can do better um not at this moment i think that you know working together and working as a group we can uh tackle a lot of these problems but as you said i mean they're they don't fit neatly right right and so you know and we have to do all this under the umbrella fiscal sustainability as well right because we don't have unlimited resources at the city so we need to be really targeted and effective about how we use those those resources and so you know i think working from you all and learning from you all about how we could do that in a more effective way all right thank you okay any other questions because i know that we're probably needing to wrap it up but i do want to know because i'm really curious because i think it's a great question is the city code or policy that you would like to see changed sounds like you thought about it so i'm curious um the city code or policy that i would like to change would be the priorities that i've established earlier working with people that know the city codes and policies in a better way to be able to navigate those issues together i'm not coming before you today as an expert on the city of reno about our codes and policies what i think the skill set that i bring is the ability to work with other people the ability to trust people and their word and and working collaboratively and i think that's important when you when you address these issues and so i think that giving ideas of principles and allowing staff and stakeholders to be able to do their roles and their functions and working together i think we can change whatever codes and policies need to be changed to be able to effectuate the goals of better my goodness effectuate better public safety ensure that there's opportunity here in the city of reno and you know making sure that we're able to accomplish our goals okay thank you so much so we're going to give you three to five minutes a closing statement but here's one thing one thing i do want to ask sometimes we don't all agree up here and i think that that's nice it gives us a totally different perspective and a lot of times you might not have thought about it a certain way and a council member will bring something up and you can totally see why um they might feel that way but you know we have differences of opinions and sometimes politically different and those kinds of um you know not challenges i think they're really good it makes us all really different but when you walk away from the diocese i think for all of us the most important thing is to respect one another tell me how you feel about that uh when you walk away you know sort of if if you don't align with the council what does that look like to you you know i'll be honest you know and some opportunities that i've had for service i've had to learn those lessons you bring a lot of passion into something you believe in something very strongly and then you may not be successful in the way that you had imagined when you first thought of it and so uh through the university of syracuse they had a program specifically for veterans and there was a mayor michael nutter from philadelphia i had the opportunity to speak with him about this particular topic i asked them how how do you deal with a loss and he had told me that you have to understand you're going to have 24 hours tomorrow and that you can get back up and you can re-engage and possibly change the perspective to be successful in the target and this was years ago and so listening to that lesson having the opportunity to observe um you know i was talking to a friend of mine the other day who felt like they had lost a particular policy position and i had said you know um moving it's all about perspective and how you look at it and and approaching it from respect like i said earlier about my uh interaction with assemblywoman tolls about coming from the position where we all love our community we that's the place we should start from and so i think that if you have a good start point um you can navigate sometimes very thorny and very difficult issues but i mean it's um it's not always going to be easy as councilwoman door said earlier so when you're trying to connect these puzzle pieces sometimes the pieces just don't fit or maybe you just don't have the money to be able to fully get the thing done et cetera et cetera these things are difficult and you bring sometimes i tell people you know because oftentimes people coming here will be very frustrated with what is happening in our city and i say sometimes the people sitting in the front are actually some of the most frustrated people that's why they decided to run for office right and so recognizing and appreciating that i think is a good starting point for finding mutual understanding and hopefully mutual respect okay great thank you sir okay go ahead you have three to five minutes well thank you so much thank you so much for your time today um this is a very big decision to select the next person to represent ward 5. and ultimately i think that i offer diversity that this council currently doesn't have having served in the marine corps for eight years i think has taught me a number of lessons uh serving in iraq where uh mission focused mission driven working with people from all across the world to be able to accomplish things i think that's something that would greatly uh that would benefit uh didn't mean to have the qualifier they would benefit this council that experienced that background and like i said earlier uh you know i currently chair the human rights commission serve as vice chair and was elected to those positions and i think that that speaks to my ability to work with other people which i think is incredibly important and i think my passion optimism for the future of this community you know like i said earlier when i first started getting involved in the city of reno completely different departments i almost felt like i needed to re-enroll in the reno citizens institute to continue to learn about all the new changes that are happening and it's exciting but you know there's certainly challenges as well and so navigating the success and the excitement as well as the challenges you know like one of the words i wrote down here with cyber security we know that you know foreign actors are looking to exploit uh municipalities cities counties and so um you know that's a that's a challenge that you know this council has on it too making sure that you know we're investing enough resources and cyber security to make sure that we're able to protect all of our records that we're digitizing right and so there's a lot of challenges but there's a lot of opportunity and so i stand here before you today as someone who's a product of a lot of opportunity and uh where i started from in my life and where i am today i'm very proud of and it's a direct benefit i think to like i said earlier the investments that have been made in me and so i would be honored and uh would it would be honor it would be an honor to work with you all in that capacity so thank you for your consideration and thank you all right great job thank you how do you feel you made it uh i i don't think that was ever not on the table man i think i was always going to make it but um it feels it feels better i mean unless someone but someone have but different this is hard it's hard to get up especially public speaking is like in the top three of like the things that people just absolutely dread to do i think it's flying public speaking and the dentist so i was telling my wife earlier like part of my uh not that i'm the best i mean obviously you just heard me i'm not the best public speaker but i did poorly in school and part of that reason because i acted like a goofball in school i wasn't paying attention and so that has allowed me i think to stand in front of people and be able to speak because i would in the past life act goofy in front of people and so i think that helps me that's very good because everyone likes to laugh okay thank you so much really appreciate it and also thank you for your service thank you mayor have a wonderful day i think i think you can stay alec okay madam clerk all right madame sounds like elliot malin is on his way to chambers hello hello friends how are you feeling a little tired a little tired yeah okay well you got to get some energy now oh there's plenty that's the time to be tired there's no such thing as being too tired you may want to bring down your mic or just adjust it i mean oh absolutely i'm way too short for that no i mean everybody does i just have no preconditions of my height just get started okay you're not nervous right now being here we're all up here we're gonna smile at you we're rooting for you so you are going to get three to five minutes of an opening statement and then we're gonna ask you some questions and then we're gonna give you three to five minutes of closing remarks so go ahead take it away whenever you're ready awesome are you ready great thank you uh good afternoon mayor and members of the council elliot mellon for the record um all the habits die hard so i always do that i've lived in ward 5 for over 12 years now since moving here to attend the university of nevada where i've actually graduated from twice while at nevada i was highly involved with asun where we started the march from the arch homecoming event uh which i'd like to see come back and work with asun on that uh we laid the groundwork for the bridge area we now see between the university and downtown it was a very important project for me when i was the vice president of student potty and we expanded access to services for students all in ward 5. i like to say that i moved to reno and fell in love twice first with reno and the second with my now wife who i met at the university which is in ward 5. and we've actually been married three years as of today so she'll be excited about that later i recently turned 30 which makes me the youngest potentially the youngest member of the city council and would be a unique view of into the life of the students and millennials here in reno we have seen a steady increase in our young adult population due to the diversification of our economy and they deserve a voice representative voice on this body since graduating i've been working in public policy to expand opportunities renoits and nevadans from regulatory reforms to the legislature to reno municipal code fixes with you and even helping businesses find the right department here while relatively young i'm proud of what i've accomplished in my career so far from the previously mentioned legislation um to starting a nonprofit foundation that is centered in ward 5. to even expanding a non-profit base in southern nevada to reno to increase services for local arena rights i love giving back to the city i have not served on a border commission with the city and i've done that purposefully because i believe that with my career previously there might have been a conflict of interest and i don't find that it'll be ethical to have had that but i've been able to put aside my career so far through this process and hand off a lot of that business to make sure there is no conflict of interest i want to mention that reno is doing incredibly well we've cut our debt by 241 million dollars we cut our retired employees medical benefits by 112 million dollars our tax allocation bonds are down 22.92 agency debt is down 71.78 our largest remaining debt balances retack at 220 million we've improved our credit rating to an a plus reno is now a top three city to live we've increased our parks and rec budget increased bridge housings such as the sierra and sage that is also ready to expand again and all of our fire stations are open for the first time since the great recession my goal is to keep the health of reno going strong and meeting our reimagine reno master plan to work with this council our regional and state partners and the amazing reno staff would be an honor being part of this team will make us stable for future generations we must remain sustainable as a city to keep our neighbors and residents safe and sustainable means our water our energy our health our safety and our fiscal status as a city our police department is currently smaller than it was 15 years ago with a much larger population today we are growing but ensuring our sustainability is key to protecting this we know that we all know and love we must keep our fire department staffed and i've been fortunate enough to meet with so many people from rpd reno fire the village on stage which i had an opportunity to go and tour which was incredible our university students asun officers and being present in this community's events such as yesterday's senior fest which was amazing the overdose awareness event two weeks ago and so on it's been incredible listening learning and helping respond to residents issues we must work with our partners to accomplish this goal i love i know how to make the fixes necessary to alleviate future stresses by leveraging the relationships that i've created throughout our state and federal delegation i'm ready to tackle the tough problems moving forward to sustain the new reno i bring local knowledge from ward 5 as having lived there for my entire time in reno over a decade now i have a strong commitment to doing what's right having the conversations and collaborating with others and listening to feedback is vital to make us keep our bright future we have other challenges ahead from affordable housing healthy development traffic and street safety recreation preservation and the continued diversification of our economy a big concern for our university has been street safety and working with them to keep the student population is safe is key to the ward as a university is a economic engine for our entire region i'm ready today to commit to moving us forward i commit to consistently holding listening sessions throughout our ward and have already had one this past monday to get as many residents involved as possible in this process it's been a privilege and honor to listen meet and get to know so many of my neighbors and fellow ward 5 residents and have earned so much support from them i don't take this process for granted and understand the privilege it is to be here today and i have plenty of experience at the city as well and it's been an honor to have worked with you all previously with sups business licensing ordinances and so on not just one part of the city life for me i try to touch it all and help everywhere i can again it's an honor to be here today uh it has been an honor meeting so many new neighbors and now calling them friends earning so much support from them and doing what i can do to be the best representative possible for them we accomplish these goals and keep our city moving forward together as a team and i look forward to hopefully joining this team and thank you all and especially a big thank you to our city clerk who has been instrumental in helping us through this process nice job thank you how do you feel a little relief okay all right i'm going to send it over to our vice mayor to ask the first question thank you madam mayor mr malin thank you so much for being here i consider you a friend we've known each other for a number of years you're going to hear a lot of questions over the next half hour or so and i would encourage you just to listen to the question do your best to answer each of the questions and and put your own spin on it because there isn't a right answer right there's not a right answer to any of the questions we're asking um for my part and i know my colleagues are going to focus on your constituents sounds like you've been doing some of that on your own which i applaud you for doing but for my part i want to talk really about our employees here in the city of reno the city of reno employs nearly 1400 people that includes 10 bargaining units across multiple different departments and really what we do up here is set policy goals and directives for the city and all of the ideas that we get some of those come from the staff some of them come from us and they have to make do with what we give them and go out and try to accomplish some of those goals but they really are the heart and soul of the organization the city manager's office of course in our organization is the head of those 1400 employees so my question really wants you to focus on how you will engage with our diverse team here at the city in order to represent your ward and also the city at large none of the awards are so differently complex from one another that you aren't still representing all of reno every time you take this dice or represent yourself in the community so really just focus your time with my question on our employees and the team members here in the city of reno and how you might interact with them thank you that's actually uh i've had the privilege as i mentioned to have worked with so many of the city employees i consider a lot of them friends and having attended so many of these meetings and worked with you all it's more than just friendship it's more than just a colleague this is a reno family and part of being in a family is listening learning understanding that you don't have every answer don't know every uh question and ha being able to to get to the right answer by going to the right person and treating them with respect dignity and making sure that we understand what our role is especially for the city council the employees drive the mission especially for the implementation of what what happens here and so working with them and listening to them and understanding their concerns if a certain policy idea might not work i i can't say it will right off the bat but knowing that i can approach them in a healthy environment and work with them as a team to get to the right answer is kind of the strategy i would like to take i think that the city of reno has a tremendous talent here it's talent that i've previously tried to join because there's so much good that happens from the city from the city people always ask why do i want to come to the city and the reason is our employees here the reno family here touches every person's daily life and understanding that they're the ones that really see what's going on and are the true experts for our city is very important so thank you all right nice job okay councilwoman do we're sending it to you thank you so much um i think you know um that when i ran for office i was elected city-wide but i do represent ward two and each word i found has very localized issues uh what might be the preeminent issue down in ward two is maybe different than ward 5 even though we have a lot of issues in common so um as i've observed it over the years ward 5 has some distinct areas there's downtown university there's what the old and new uh what are we calling this the northwest i guess and then there's the somerset verdi and they they all have different kind of people living them in them some are retired some are family some are going to school some are starting businesses some are maintaining businesses so from your perspective what do you think are the top three issues in ward five i mean you might even think of these different areas when you're answering and then the second part of the question is how would you work to balance and square up the issues with constituents that may not agree across your very long and diverse ward that's a it is a very diverse word because as you mentioned you have the university which is very young you have downtown which is very vibrant you have verdai and then you have somerset and somerset has two distinct areas too from del webb to somerset itself and then you have old northwest where families have been for generations at times um i've been fortunate enough to live in different parts of this ward from downtown to the university of the old northwest and my parents are now in somerset and i'm very thankful to have them there the first thing is affordable housing and that's what i've noticed is mostly worldwide from downtown to the university and northwest the next is going to be public safety street safety on 7th street over off of keystone you see gates that are often blown down from cars hitting them you see students that are almost hit by vehicles after school hours and that's been a big big issue and the other one is an issue we've worked on together which is the downtown alcohol ordinance specifically for the downtown area and fresh food i we all worked on that very well and i was very thankful to be here to do that but i don't think we've solved the problem from what i've heard from people down here in downtown it's still a food desert what we were able to include in there is fresh food i don't think counts as enough for groceries and especially at the university bridges into the downtown area that's really important to think about is um how we how we bring that food in there and how we manage that and one of the ways i've been trying to figure this out and balance that is i want to host listening sessions these aren't town halls these are listening sessions it's where i have the opportunity to go and listen i need to know what the issues are if i can't hear the issue i can't respond to the issue and then i can't bring it here and i can't work the city staff and so i want to hold these in every different part of the ward because i don't want to put old northwest where i currently live over the university or over downtown or over verdai and somerset they're so diverse that i have to be able to bring these to each one and see what's going on and listen to them if i can't listen then i shouldn't even be here to be quite frank all right thank you so much thank you all right councilman weber thank you madam mayor so glad to see you today i think we've known each other for quite some time and appreciate the fact that you're here and making it through doing a great job i mentioned to um goff that um i represent ward 4 i think you're familiar with ward 4. i think we've talked about that um but it is a little bit different and my question is going to be about growth and so i can find my question here i will ask the question what do you believe is the single most important issue facing growth of the city of reno how do you plan to work with your colleagues from other awards to best consider this issue i thank you um i think that actually gets to how i opened and that's sustainability right i mentioned that for the first time since the great recession we fully fast staffed our fire houses we can't allow those to go unstaffed again as we grow we have to be able to uh respond to crises we are not ignorant to understand that there are fires there are things that happen within our community and having and making sure that that is sustainable going forward that also means making sure that the coffers for the city are sustainable and the revenue is healthy as we move forward it's not lost on me how we derive revenue in the state of nevada for municipal and local government and we have to make sure we do everything we can to protect that revenue especially the next economic downturn as we grow i would say that i want to see healthy development and healthy development means that our resources are there to be able to respond to everything from sewer to streets to fire to police as i mentioned again our department right now for police is smaller than it was 15 years ago with a larger city as we grow uh north especially in ward 4 and we have to work together as a team as colleagues and addressing these because it's not just your award um ward 2 is also growing with the de bonnie area and this is important over there and in ward 5 as there is more development west towards verdai this is important over there and so we have to work together to address these keep all of reno safe because i think that's the interest here for everybody is keeping the city safe keeping the city prosperous and moving forward thanks thank you all right councilman delgado hi thank you madam mayor hi elliot good to see you mr melanie good to see you um on camera um i understand you have a tight 4 30 so i apologize if we're going to carry you past your your tight schedule there uh as you know there's it's no secret that we're starting the process of hiring a new police of chief of the city reno and you've spoken to a lot of the issues with respect to us the lower staff numbers that we have what's what's your vision for the future of policing arena thank you and i actually got out of my 4 30 meeting we are all good that was a little bit of a crunch there that was made me a little nervous but we're we're good um we're flexible that's the way i like to put it right um that's a great question as well because i i sat in this room and i saw community support for a candidate here something that i look at as i've lived in reno is the response from rpd and how they interact not just with our citizens our tourists but others within our community and i want to make sure that we have a a police force that continues uh to treat others humanely with dignity and operates within our community um a little anecdote for this um i'm a member of the jewish community here i'm very involved in our jewish community the high holidays are coming and every year rpd shows up to every synagogue here in town to just check in and that's part of being a community police force and so i want to make sure that we have a a police chief that comes in that understands reno understands what we need to do for the size of city that we are in the region that we have within our local agreements and other departments within our area but also wants to invest their time in meeting the various communities because reno's of diverse city it's a growing city and i believe that the police chief no matter who is selected has to truly understand our city and i look forward to seeing a diverse applicant pool i'm hoping we see a lot of applicants especially from cities that are of kind of a like size because sometimes it's good to see and understand and hear what's going on in other departments and how we can take that especially learn from that if that's the right candidate and so just having them involved being a community-based police force being interactive with the community in a manner that shows the community humanity and dignity is vital for the trust in rpd thank you thank you all right good job okay i'm going to jump around i think i'm not going to ask the same question that everyone else asks um one of the things i think it's really important to have compassion for all different populations and certainly our homeless population and mental health is um so so critical can you tell me what you believe the city's role is what what what role should we play that's a that's an important role actually it's an important question we have to uh understand the public safety side of everything but we also have to treat people with compassion there is an indigenous population here that is always looking for often looking for assistance health resources and we've had a little bit of an issue i think in our community and this is a region-wide problem of how do we address this together i think the city must work with our regional partners to address this we have the cares campus obviously that's mostly washoe county but we have this sage street project that uh i think is amazing the i had the opportunity like i said to go and view it and tour it and understand what was going on there and seeing what they needed as a bridge from living on the street to moving ahead and having a home and treating people with that dignity of saying you deserve this shelter you deserve this opportunity you deserve fresh food you deserve to be clean um i've been in meetings here where i saw an individual all they wanted was a shower and sometimes we have to remember the to have compassion not just as individuals as leaders but as an organization and treating others and i've seen this city and the city staff go out of their way to treat people with compassion and it leaves me inspired for our community for our city for our region that we're the ones of leading that effort to be compassionate and treat others with that dignity and i think it is incredibly vital that we continue to do so as we look for other resources grants everything we can to bring into this community to help this population all right i forgot you were here that day they did a phenomenal job absolutely amazing job nominal job i left me i left proud yeah um okay go ahead councilwoman yeah thank you thank you so much uh really appreciate this opportunity to hear your views um i asked you earlier about some top three questions top three issues and sometimes um we we also need to look at things that are maybe lower on our priority list that we'd like to do more than must do so we've got you mentioned public safety you mentioned housing and downtown alcohol and now i'd like you to think about we did a reimagine reno process and our top one issue seemed to come out why do people love reno it was the opportunity to be outdoors and to recreate and so yet through the recession we've had to cut those resources even more dramatically than our police our fire our other ends of our you know city staff and at the same time we've been hit with something not of our making and that is climate change we can't avoid it you know they're asking us to conserve energy we're 105 degrees potentially today so my question to you is how do you feel the city is progressing on both of those issues recreation sustainability you mentioned them both and i'd like to know where you think we need to put any additional focus if we do need to so i'm trying to get your take on those two issues i think thank you um i mentioned this as well as we've given a budget increase to parks and rec which i think is incredible my wife grew up in ward 5 as well the house she grew up in there's a little park over by there on mccarran the park is overgrown it's a little dilapidated it needs a refresh it doesn't really need new uh play fixtures uh program fixtures it just needs a refresh and i think that it's it's vital again as you mentioned um and i read the reimagine reno master plan um our residents want something to do they don't want to go home they don't want to go to work and go home and that's their life no they want to they want to do things in this community we live in a what i like to call this little hidden gem which is nestled in the sierras where we have the truckee river lake tahoe and we have all these wonderful parks and we have expansion of our parks and recreation with a new moana street uh pool all of this is vital to giving renoits the best possible life experience and quality of life i personally don't want to live in a place that doesn't have that recreation that doesn't have those parts it doesn't have that greenery i i value that because we also use that for culture from the food truck fridays in ward 1 every friday during the summer i love these things and i want others to have them as well and i want to see that expanded throughout our city and so uh when we come to recreation i think it's vital it's not just a lower on the totem pole thing it is actually i think up there uh unfortunately maybe not in the top three maybe like three and a half okay um but it's important and then when we get to uh climate change and green energy we had a i had a conversation with somebody in the ward recently they were asking this question and it's funny because i think we talk about trees in here frequently and one of the biggest reasons why cities are are warming is because of all the blacktop through them how do we increase the uh tree cover and i know that that's part of the master plan as well but that's gonna be vital moving forward and trying to draw down the temperatures here in reno because you're right the last three days i think we've had record uh temperatures i don't let my dogs outside right now and i know they love being outside but it's too hot and so we have to address this i think the city has done a great job so far we have more to do i don't think this is something we can ever just stop on we can't end at the eb at the end of the day be like pet ourselves on the back and say we've done it we solved climate change we solved parks and rec that'll never happen we always have to move forward see what we can do to get to the next step and bringing more uh wreck to reno and part of that is dependent on climate change right look at the river right now one of my favorite things to do is come watch people do the slum kayaking through the river it's hard to do when there's no water in it and so i think those things go hand in hand um so i appreciate it thank you thank you thank you okay i'm gonna hurry here really quickly so i think you were already asked this question but um i think it's a good one and it's from um i believe your ward five nab what is one city code or policy you would like to see changed does it happen why is everyone laughing at that question does it have to be one go ahead uh there's two and i think the city will there is one uh i'll start with the alcohol ordinance okay and i worked on that with you um i think that we have to go back and solve the fresh food part of that especially for the downtown area i know i say this one because i know it intimately but i also don't think that at least i got where i want it to be unfortunately and i want to address that fresh food earth stuff in downtown reno if that means trying to incentivize somebody to come down to reno and build a grocery store in the downtown area then fantastic because it's a food desert here between here and the university and there are residents in both sides that are dependent on that they have to either have a car or find somebody to give them a ride to go to the raley's off keystone and that's sometimes too far especially for students or other resources school books textbooks paper pencils recreation in the downtown area and so i think by building out and uh enhancing our fresh food requirements and uh down here would be vital i don't know if we really solved it in that ordinance the next part and i know the city has done an incredible job at this so far but is maintaining the cutting of red tape for affordable housing so that way we can get this built so we can get people in homes that they can afford because i know we have a population that was unfortunately removed from their living situations and we have to find a solution and so continuing that work it's not necessarily changing it but making sure that's a focus and continuing it so we can ensure that this population has a place to live and again with dignity and compassion is is so important and those two things i also think go hand in hand we can build affordable housing but if we don't have a grocery right there for them to get to then it becomes expensive and the cost of living continues to increase um there's more in cost of living than just the roof over your head and so we have to give as much opportunity as possible for residents to have a healthy safe and clean environment to live to work and to go shopping all right good job okay lastly really quick um sometimes we might have a difference of opinion up here and when we walk away from the dice tell me how you maintain consensus i've learned throughout my career that leaving angry doesn't get me anywhere i can disagree at the end of the day i've known a lot of you for a long time now there's things we all disagree on that's okay at the end of the day that's okay if we can have a healthy conversation to move the ball forward and get to uh some sort of consensus that's what's most important working as a team for what's best for reno is how we do that and uh we have to be able to leave things on the dais we can't uh carry that with us it's uh i don't find it healthy um i don't think it does any benefits to the constituents to people our residents um so for me it's so important i will work with anybody i will listen to anybody i'm willing to do that it's how it's always been in carson city during legislative session if i'm carrying a bill that i've written and somebody has a problem with it i i sit down with them i ask them what the issue is i can't fix it unless i know and then we can work on fixing it together as that team uh to be cohesive um to be collaborative that's how we move forward thank you okay all right are you ready sure okay this is your last five minutes so go ahead and give us your closing remarks all right thank you uh mayor and council thank you again for your time today and this opportunity it's been incredible um i believe i'm uniquely situated to hit the ground running today to continue the health of our society diversity and drive our sustainability for the future i've lived in ward 5 for over a decade and understand the diversity of our ward and it is a very diverse ward having met with community organizers groups and neighbors from across the world i'm thankful to have earned so much support from all of them from a very diverse walk of life i will be thrilled to be part of this team working with you our amazing city staff our partners and our community to propel us forward with knowledge of the nevada open meeting law uh relevant nrs i have a very small learning curve and i can get started right away there's a lot to address to keep our city the gem it is to keep us going in a healthy manner from affordable housing healthy development water energy and fiscal stability i know how to get these done and i know the path forward by working with you all together recently i had the pleasure to sit down with our leaders throughout nevada and know they are looking here to the city council here and cities of council across the state should be the driving force for the changes we need for future viability and sustainability throughout nevada and especially here in reno this is necessary to keep renowned safe and healthy not just from today or tomorrow but also the day after tomorrow the city council person for ward 5 needs to have the knowledge to drive these conversations with the team and be part of that team there's more to reno than just development and development is vitally important but as we develop we must be ready to address crucial changes of a burgeoning metropolitan community by picking me for this position i will be ready to address every issue i will continue to listen learn and respond appropriately as a team i look forward to a partnership with you and always put reno first thank you again uh mayor and council to our city clerk and her team and the amazing professionals that make up the reno family it's been incredible so far it's been an amazing journey having been able to talk to so many people learn so much and listen to so many residents and hear what is what's the problem for example over at the university with both housing affordability street safety where they're talking about students almost getting hit on the crosswalks and how we work together with that to downtown and talking about food insecurity to the sierra the sage street property and seeing how we can expand that to somerset and learning about the intricate issues especially with development as it grows over there and in the northwest where our parks are are ready to be revitalized our neighbors are excited and they want to make sure that their our children are kept safe as we grow and we remain sustainable to make sure that we have the police force necessary to respond adequately and in a healthy manner and the fire stations filled with firefighters to be able to keep us all safe and our parks and rec being fully staffed and doing everything that they can to keep our resources our city resources going fresh and an opportunity for our families that call reno home and i'm proud to call reno home i'm proud to have lived in ward 5 for over the last decade i'm proud of the work i've done in ward 5 and i look forward to the opportunity hopefully serving with you all to keep making reno the best place possible so thank you all right great job you made it how did you feel relieved did you feel relieved no it was it was good i i had fun this was a fun conversation that's important it really is and we addressed a lot of i think important issues um even at the kind of the grassroots level for the city and the our neighbors right these issues affect everybody so i appreciate it and i appreciate your time even though i know your experience i'll never forget my first time in in these chambers gosh it was probably i don't know 15 years ago i don't remember if i'm going to be honest with you though i'm almost always nervous before i get up here even with all the times i've done it well i even still i do this for a living and you can still get a lot of nerves and so i really try to relate because i have the same fear all right thank you nice job thanks okay um really quickly does council want to take five minutes that'd be great we i think everyone needs to take a five-minute break because i think people need to go the restroom so we will be right back and stay with us um boys yeah absolutely so we're going to go ahead and reconvene the meeting at 4 29 reporting has been resumed and um all members present council member breck is still absent so we're moving into our final final interview for this uh i guess evening now and we should be in any moment having miss kathleen taylor brought into the room pushing in here hi hello how are you doing i am so glad to be here finally i've asked everyone how you feeling i'm good i'm ready okay you're not nervous i'm good and ready because i was telling them that i sometimes get anxiety whenever i public speak and this is my job right so um so i always say use that like negative energy or anxious energy or whatever comes before you and just use that to your advantage right so we're all going to be up here we're going to be smiling at you and then we're going to ask you some questions we're going to have you open for uh three to five minutes some opening statement and then it's pretty easy we'll just we'll just hand you off some questions okay so start whenever you're ready i'm just trying again she's like i've been ready hillary i've been waiting for like four hours three five minutes okay what an exciting time to live in reno nevada madame mayor city council members mr manager it is truly an honor and i am humbled to be here before you today in the last week i've had the opportunity to work and meet my fellow applicants and i know today you have a very challenging decision before you i know one thing is for sure councilwoman jardin left behind some very large probably high heeled and stylish shoes to fill and i'm forever grateful for her service to this community the last time i was in this room i heard a couple of things from what you wanted in a colleague the first one was experience the second was somebody that you could work with i believe i am the most qualified for this position i have the most relevant experience out of all the applicants secondly well i guess i can expand a little bit i believe i can walk in this door hit the ground running today secondly i've successfully built a small business for the last 25 years in public engagement stakeholder involvement and community outreach a little bit about myself well i was born in northern nevada i'm a native i was born in carson tahoe hospital the old one i graduated from carson high school i went to the university of nevada reno graduated with a degree in journalism and political science i am a mom of two children that i've raised in this community that i'm very proud of i have a small business called taylormade solutions i'm a woman known dbe disadvantaged business enterprise and i work on major infrastructure projects in the region i've worked on every project in northern nevada my first project was the reno retract project where i had the opportunity to walk downtown in ward 5 and meet all the stakeholders facilitate meetings bring them to the table engage them with construction operations and work through the challenges together the great thing about that project is i still have those meaningful relationships today 20 years later i was pregnant with my first daughter walking down keystone it was fantastic in 2012 i ran for the at-large position unsuccessfully ever since then i have been in service to the city of reno i'm a graduate of the reno citizens institute the reno sparks leadership program i had the opportunity to sit on your reno planning commission your regional planning commission your building enterprise enterprise funding advisory committee bfac that's a mouthful to say and then i got to do it again recently at the planning commission regional planning commission and most recently as the chairwoman of the reno planning commission i know the reno reimagine reno master plan i use it every single day with the planning commission and making decisions i know title 18 again use it every day when i with the planning commission decisions i was part of the team that worked on the code update recently and we still have some more work to do as a matter of fact there might be an agenda adam tonight on the planning commission about the code update but we're getting there i also was part of the 2019 truckee meadows regional plan update we're also in the process of developing a natural resource plan that i'm part of that i voted to approve and support i'm extremely excited to be here finally today and i look forward to answering any questions you may have thank you all right thank you so much good job okay i'm going to send it over to vice mayor devin reese go ahead thank you madam mayor miss taylor thank you so much for being here it's been a pleasure to get to know you through this process i don't know that we knew each other that well although i've been able to watch you operate on the planning commission so very honored that you're here tonight a number of the questions our colleagues will ask tonight will focus on constituent engagement i'm going to focus on a little different thing and that is really what i believe is the heart and soul of this city which is our staff the city of reno has nearly 1400 employees representing i think 10 bargaining units across multiple different departments many of those i think you've interacted with and are familiar with but i think it is important to know that as council members we often have great ideas sometimes we have not so great ideas and our staff really help us to carry out the policy directives so from this side of the diocese we really owe a great deal of gratitude towards the staff members who are out there and many of them are really focused on making us look good i know that's a strange way to put it but it's their effort that goes into building this community from our firefighters and police officers who are creating public safety to our sewer folks who are making sure that the toilets work when we flush them and it's um it's pretty humbling to get to spend time with our team here at the city of reno the city manager manages all of those diverse interests and has a team of support too and so i really want you to focus in your answer to my question just help me understand how you'll work with that diverse team to represent your ward but also the city at large and just maybe talk to me a little bit about your style how you see yourself interacting with staff that kind of thing what a great question um when i was walking in here this morning i had the opportunity to meet two of your fabulous team members and they said to me it's the best it's ever been here at the city of reno wow what a statement right i mean that is amazing so whatever is being done from leadership it's working people are happy here i have the pleasure of working with a team of people on the planning commission your community development department they are top-notch not they're experts i use them as a resource because they are they have the tough job i am respectful to every single person that i come in contact with even if there is a disagreement and there have been times when i have not necessarily agreed with the staff report but i ask the questions i listen and i get the most information i can i am friends personal friends with a lot of the people that work here because reno is a small community and i've been friends with them for for many years we were just talking about this upstairs and for me personally i've been in the position i don't like using the term even staff i like using the word team i like saying you know grace tell me about what you and your team have done i don't like addressing people that it's just me it doesn't you know mean anything different in regional um partnerships i work with the city of sparks leadership i work with washoe county leadership all on regional planning commission we're developing plans together i have the utmost respect for anybody that walks in and out of this building and i try to carry that out my life too with everybody treat everybody with dignity and dignity and respect and i um i put that on the record all right councilwoman doer go ahead thank you thank you so much and congratulations for being here um when i first ran for office we ran citywide and a big part of our job is to look at things from a citywide perspective at the same time we're hiring you potentially to represent a ward and so i'd like to focus in on this ward 5 and understand from your perspective what issues do you think are top and what i'd like you to think about is the different areas of ward 5. so you've got your university downtown corridor you've got the old and new northwest and you have the somerset and verdi which often see things similarly and sometimes when they come here don't see something similarly so thinking about ward specific we'll have more global questions later what do you think the top issues are and then given that there are different perspectives in the ward it's very diverse in my opinion how do you we started to talk about it how do you bring those together both collegially but also with the constituents who may or may not agree so the top three issues just reward specific and then just talk us through how you might work through those issues well i think i have a unique approach and insight into that because i have actually sat in the homes of ward 5 residents on complex controversial and complicated developments um in in ward 5 particularly in the somerset area up in the northwest area and i've also had the opportunity to talk to my neighbors in downtown and talk and see the issues that are going on there as a region i think growth is our number one top concern and i'm not i think growth is is huge for everybody and how we grow i've said a couple times everybody wants to grow strategically everybody wants to go grow smart well what does that actually mean so i think growth how we manage our resources is huge open space trails connectivity um up in the verdi somerset area that's a top issue for them the university we're growing we've always said we want to be a college town councilwoman jardin really started to lay the foundation of how we connect the university to downtown that's a huge conversation that needs to continue i think in downtown reno it's obviously near and dear to my heart it's my backyard i um i love the way that people are investing in our downtown we need to make sure that with that investment we get the amenities and the services that benefit the community the most but i think it's moving definitely in the right direction we have a tremendous resource with the river and that's a split between ward 1 and ward 5 obviously but i think that we need to make sure that we're taking care of that resource so growth also in downtown with amenities and service and public safety and so so that's great you've mentioned several issues so the question is now you have this diverse world you just identified some of their top issues the question is if growth is coming i guess to downtown how does the rest of your potential ward feel about that or if it's going out to verdi i mean this is your business right is building consensus so i just want to get insight into how you do it well the way i've done it in the past on the planning commission on regional planning commission is um kind of going back to councilman reese reese's question i take the information that i'm giving from the experts which are the folks here at regional i review that very carefully i meet with everybody and anybody i have an open door policy very transparent inclusive bring everybody to the table i will go on tours with developers i have been on tours with residents in ward 5 and then i will make a decision based on that i will listen to everybody i ask questions i'm not afraid to know what i don't know so to speak and i make a decision and i've actually had to explain those decisions to the people in ward 5 um about some of my some of my votes in the downtown area and up in the somerset area all right thanks so much councilwoman webber go ahead thank you madam mayor good to see you here i'm usually watching you when you're leading the meetings the regional planning community regional planning reno planning commission and i know that you just left that position before you this was even announced you we had a new election of your chairman right before you even knew about this position being open yeah i served my two terms and now commissioner velto was appointed as or selected as our new chairman so it's it's great and you've done a great job as chair and my question is about growth and i just want to throw out a couple of extras on this one but it is um what do you believe is a thing and i think you've probably even answered this but let's go again because that's my question um what do you believe is the single most important issue facing the growth of the city of reno how do you plan to work with your colleagues from other wards to best consider this issue so i guess i'll just expand a little bit on the last question i believe that we have the tools that we need for growth we have the master plan we have um title 18 we have codes we have design standards i think we have everything we need we just need to make sure that we're using them i also believe that the regional planning commission is putting together a very interesting tool that is going to help us it's a natural resource plan and it's a collaborative effort among all the regional all the region so that gives us a document of how we're looking all the resources that we have where we're using them because i think the natural resources the water um the infrastructure the um affordable housing all types of housing housing those are things that we need to to look at when we're growing how we're growing we're running out of land we hear that all the time all of the easy land is gone how do we build up while respecting our neighbors with infill development i know councilwoman durer is going through some of that right now in her ward so i think there's some challenges but i think we have the tools and i think we have the experts here right now another thing that i think we might be able to do is look at some of the regional experts in the area i think it's important that we see what other places are doing and maybe learn and live from them too because we're not the only ones experiencing this we're not it's not unique to northern nevada i don't think thanks for expanding that's good stuff okay councilman delgado oh councilman delgado hi i know we forget you're here i'm so sorry that's all right you guys are doing a great job thank you uh yeah my question is it's of course it's no secret that we've just started the process and earlier today we had a pre-press briefing regarding the new hiring of a police chief um what is your vision for the future policing of reno that's probably my favorite question so far because um public safety in my opinion is our number one priority and based on the budgets that i'm looking at in the next year it's this it's this council's priority too we spend more than 60 percent of the budget on public safety i had the opportunity to go on a ride ride-along with um officer leady and i asked him the same thing councilman delgado i said what do you want to see and he um i don't know if i should have used his name i went on a ride-along with an officer with reno police department and i think it's okay okay he said we need resources we need bodies that was what i heard from police that's what i heard from fire we need more bodies i know that we're getting more ftes we're not up to the number of people that we were years ago but we're getting there so i think that's progress in the right direction um we want to see leadership skills we want to see somebody that is transparent and accountable that's what i'm hearing from um from the people that i'm asking that they want to see in a police chief and i know we just opened up the search for that it's kind of weird looking at you because i i'm trying to make any contact and i can't but um those are the things that i'm hearing we we want we want a leader we want somebody that is accountable we want transparent we want to see community policing we want to see some progressive um outside the box thinking i hope that answers your question it does thank you you can look at dev and he looks like me we always get confused okay so public safety absolutely i always say if say safe city is a prosperous city but one of the things that happened before we got elected there was this terrible fire divorce and now we are finally having these conversations about what regionalization looks like what dispatch looks like give me sort of your thoughts on regionalizing these fire services yeah before i answer that i i watched the joint meeting and from the bottom of my heart it was so impressive and i was so proud to be a resident to watch everybody come to the table because in 2012 you know firsthand that was not the that was not the story so it's taken 10 years for these conversations to happen i can stand right here right now and tell you i am 100 behind those efforts and i think they need to be happening and i'm so excited for where they're going and i appreciate the people that are in the rooms doing the hard work because it's it's a long road and we're starting with dispatch and that's something that needs you know we can work on that to come up with a common solution but i'm just i'm very excited i'm hopeful for the way that's that's going so thank you all for for being there at the table and supporting it okay i'm going to send it back to councilwoman thank you you said two things dear to my heart and that is you said all the easy land's gone i don't know if i coined that phrase but i did i think i did about six years ago um when it things just started getting really tough and i said all the easy land's gone we're we're on the hills we're in the we're in the wet we're in infill each of these put greater challenges on the developers and greater challenges on the residents you know to kind of move over or accommodate and i've talked to a lot of the um uh consultants to the developers and they said they've got to step up their game you know the the some of the best ones in town told me um it's it's actually physically mentally harder the engineering you know that's associated so given all that um you've mentioned the master plan a couple times and when we did do the new master plan reimagine reno what came to the top were this issue of outdoors recreation what do people love about reno that seemed to be the number one but since we've been on council we've been doing things like pay down debt uh rebuild our fire and our police um do the hard work and not as much be able to focus on recreation until recently as a compliment to that and and these are both quality of life issues so they get maybe a little less attention very important to our constituents but a little less attention is another thing you mentioned which was sustainability and you said the natural resource plan and i didn't i'm so pleased that you know about that because when i was on regional planning and chair i pushed that that we needed to adopt one so all of the growth didn't get out in front and we didn't have one so i really appreciate you bringing that up so my question is just in terms of this recreation issue the climate change issue the sustainability issue how do you think we're progressing so far and would you explain you know any additional focus areas or resources you think we should bring to the table should we be doing more less do you care about it is it a passion issue tell us a little bit about it specifically for parks and recreation and sustainability and 16 things okay um well i i think i can again go back to the planning commission i was super supportive of the sustainability piece of that and i think it's still being worked on today um it's definitely a balance between give and take of developers um and the community and the industry coming together and making sure that we're doing what's right for the community so sustainability is absolutely near and dear to my heart and when um you know i know at the planning commission the whole commission was on board with that we had a presentation recently about lead um suzanne came and we said whatever you need from us we are here i mean we're very limited in what we can do but we support all of your efforts 100 percent um the cool thing about sustainability too is there's a lot of funding out there to support it so when we talk about parks and recreation we have 80 plus parks and it it kind of goes hand in hand with the fire stations a fire station is great but if you don't have bodies in it it really doesn't do any good so our parks are great but if we're not maintaining them if we don't have the bodies there that's a challenge for us so i've heard a couple people talk um about the parks master plan that's coming up that's going to be finished hopefully in 2023. that's an amazing tool that we're going to be able to use once it's completed i've heard people talk about park districts i'm not sure i don't know a ton about them but that might be a sustainability a source of funding first to sustain those parks and recreations another thing is if we looked at innovating funding partnerships our public private partnerships for some of our parks and recreation what can we do to make them energy efficient which sounds weird when you're looking at a park but when you're thinking about the lawn mowers the cars the bathrooms all those things there are things that you can do to fall into the sustainability category where we can get funding we can make met or matches or we can look at how that funding funding looks let me just put it in this perspective often people present it as a binary choice you know development or are we going to do the sustainability sustainability costs money the parks cost money is that going to impact on developers profit or their ability to develop a parcel and so i guess where i'm just struggling that's where we struggle and that's why i'm bringing it to you um we're looking for fresh answers is do we just say well it's going to cost money every state if we require ev charging stations or if we i've been lately people have been asking me why don't we do more with solar why why do they do more in southern nevada than here so i'm just wondering you know just looking for how do we balance i don't know the answer but i'm just wondering on your perspective um do i have a little time to answer that yeah um well you just said it it's a balance okay if you have a developer and you ask them to put in ev charging stations or solar there's a cost to that and that cost is going to get trickled down it's a cost for them to do that um specifically i think the developers pay a thousand dollars per unit now that goes into parks and eight hundred dollars per apartment that i don't think that has been updated in some time so maybe that's something we need to look at i um i think that there are different ways besides you know raising people's rates that we can look at funding but i think our mr manager here has done a tremendous job of looking at budgets and finding resources so if we're open to have those conversations and thinking outside of the box for other things i i think that's a good solution thank you thanks so much you're welcome okay i've asked everyone this question i think you've already had it if there was one policy or code that you could change what would it be and why only one only one yes give us one one well i'm gonna i'm gonna go with something that's really topical right now which is affordable housing i think if we were able to advance affordable housing applicants and developers to the front of the line assign them a planner from beginning to end to help improve and speed up that process it would be very beneficial i think somebody put it as a fast pass at disneyland if you're coming in with an affordable development you're going to go straight to the line you're going to get somebody that's going to hold your hand through the whole entire process and i i think that's that would be a good um first start all right i like it okay who doesn't like disneyland i hear some fans back there i think we all are okay next question really quick so we don't always dis we don't always agree up here um you know obviously politics is a funny thing and but i also really i kind of enjoy that it gives you a different perspective and i think it's important to walk away um you know with mutual respect and so when you leave the dice if you were to be in this position what does that look like to you if you don't agree with someone or you know have a different philosophy when it comes to making decisions give me a little bit of an idea what that looks like to you i think i deal with that a lot i'm going to use a different example than the planning commission but we have disagreements all the time on the planning commission excuse me um i'm going to call it commissioner gower and i usually have very different approaches to our priorities on the planning commission i could not respect that that gentleman more he is so knowledgeable he's friendly he i talked to him constantly about his opinion because in the end it helps me make a better decision on the planning commission recently i was a no on a vote because i didn't understand something and um arthur sorry was able to walk me through some of the things with an rtc development and it actually made me change my mind so i'm not afraid to reach out to have the conversations to get another point of view from somebody because there are a lot of things i don't know in my job i do extensive public involvement outreach stakeholder engagement facilitation and when you're telling people that their business access is going to be shut down or they're going to have a detour where they depend on foot traffic you don't always get along it's not always the best conversation but i pride myself on having very respectful and professional relationships with all the people that i work with all right okay thank you okay so this is your your final five minutes go ahead and give us your closing remarks okay i'm gonna take a drink of water really quick go right ahead i'm excited about the direction the city is heading i want to be a champion for downtown all our communities for the university for the northwest for the old northwest for everyone this council has trusted me to be on your planning commission trusted me to represent you at regional planning commission i've sat at the tables of ward 5 residents i've had the hard conversations with them i've been in the process of making decisions that weren't necessarily popular i know what that looks like and i talked about this a little bit i've had to explain myself to them and i do i believe in what we do here those are those aren't always easy conversations i've also heard um i'm in the pockets of the developers that couldn't be further from the truth i um recently voted down i was the only person on the planning commission to vote down a development actually in ward 2. um i was the only one that voted against that i actually voted a development down in ward 5. i'm not pro or in the developer's pocket i look at everything that's before me and i make an educated decision i've been sued by sitting on the planning commission from a developer personally they came to my door and served me and my daughter i know what it's like to make the hard decisions i have the time and the dedication to be in this position i'm ready and committed to take the next step i want to represent my neighbors in ward 5. i want to be their next councilwoman i have the dedication the time and the energy to put into this position like i said before i have the experience i can walk in here and start working well maybe after 7 pm if you don't mind i appreciate your time and i thank you for your consideration all right is that that's it okay how do you feel you made it i want to put on different shoes i certainly know what that feels like absolutely well um i just want to say honestly remarkable job remarkable job from all the candidates it this is always so hard it is so so tough and reno is really small that's another thing like you know there were people that were here today that i went to high school with elementary school with hello i'm glad you're back did you go get a pizza you do no oh okay good you got some swag but um i'm i'm so impressed with all the dedication that you guys have shown and really like there hasn't been a lot long a lot of time to get involved but every single one of you were just um you were gracious and kind and thoughtful reached out to constituents i mean yes go go right ahead um i i honestly very very very tough decision i think all three of you are tremendous tremendous and need to serve this city in some capacity because i i couldn't be more proud and i mean these are always the most difficult difficult decisions we've done this three times and uh and you know that's no we've done it maybe before now because we had a judge and sometimes it you know it doesn't turn out the way that you want it but i just want um each of you to know you have done a phenomenal job and you should be incredibly proud incredibly proud and there's a lot of people that are watching this and um i think you've probably made a lot of new friends and met community members that you didn't even know and have supporters now that you probably didn't know so um i'm just i'm really really impressed okay madam clerk how do you want us to proceed you want us to do it like we've always done it or do you have a list so in the past when we have done the interviews there's just been deliberation amongst the board we haven't done a scorecard however if you would like to i'm happy to generate one super quick like i think negotiating that with council member delgado will be just a tad um more interesting on the technology side but yeah generally speaking it has just been an open discussion and a selection based on that i thought that's what we did in the past too so that everyone can kind of see across the board okay let's do that just an open deliberation so that sounds good the discussion happens and then if we can't come to a consensus then we can go to a scorecard and i'll start working on something now perfect okay all right who do i who wants to start cancel councilman delgado yes [Laughter] because you're not in the room that's perfect thank you madam mayor uh he's like i'm happy to kick things off um i think it's just general open discussion as you stated uh all three candidates were amazing and i think we could all go home at night and i think the community could go home feeling better about the future leaders of our community especially ward five so congratulate all of them especially their families for allowing them to go through all this process it's it's a different thing once you're out there and you're open to being criticized for your thoughts for your leadership and for wanting to do better and so congratulations to all of them and again thank you to their families you know just diving deep into it i believe and listening to all of them i think often about councilwoman jardin and her advocacy for the diverse different groups that she advocated for and i think that was shared across the council with respect to how diverse ward 5 is she did a tremendous job and she was um supported overwhelmingly on three different occasions by the voters ward 5 for the amount of work that she did i also think and thought very thoughtfully about how each candidate answered the questions that was that were before them many of the questions were answered and like any candidate going through a campaign very thirty thousand one hundred thousand foot level uh because uh it's new to a lot of folks um and so i started thinking more about the tough work that's happening in ward 5 a lot of the development projects that are happening in ward 5 and how much we need to get people off and running um what brought me to neom again councilwoman jardin um and and the work that's on the planning commission um you know it's many different ways that's a gatekeeper position for many of us on the council it goes to the commission before it comes to us they've done a tremendous amount of tedious yet extremely important work on the commission side they've looked at the overlays they've looked at new plans and they've deliberated uh and not only with the constituents but also amongst themselves and also us and so uh just kind of chewing all that i like to hear what the rest of the council is but um those things stood out to me pretty heavily with respect to all three candidates all right thank you so much so i guess is it safe to say we would just deliberate and then you want us each one of us give you the selection is that correct exactly so i just need a motion for the appointment so you're free to deliberate um amongst each other and then the the real thing i'm looking for is just the motion of the selection and the appointment to that seat if there will be one today okay all right make it a motion well i was going to deliberate go ahead okay go ahead that's what we were just invited to do um i just i want to do a huge shout out to the three of you you came from 36 and you're down to three and you all represent i think some of the best of what we have to offer in our city um you all came out this a different way and i read all the materials prior to and listen to part of the online i wish i had a chance to listen to the whole but i didn't and then i took a lot of notes and i would paid a lot of attention to what you were bringing to the table in terms of your answers but your perspectives and what i'm looking for in a colleague is some independent thinking uh openness to i think you said it kathleen being hearing from all sides i think all of you said a version of that being able to build that consensus i heard that from alex a lot from elliot i heard a lot of study you called it not town hall but listening session so i i heard a lot of themes that that i really appreciated from the three of you and that is uh in fact the goodness of your answers is what's making this incredibly difficult frankly for me um because you're all bringing something new to the table that we don't have today you know some different experiences and that's when i'm weighing and trying to balance myself and uh if i could have three new council colleagues that's what i'd be having why not no you get to stay two we do have three seats here you know three open seats so i mean we can make a motion they can't come back that's how i feel about it is that um um i think you're all each of you are bringing something unique to the table that we haven't seen before and that's what i really really like and you all know i didn't want to have to make this decision for the ward 5 voters i i wanted you know uh you know a different process but we're here today and i've gotta we've five have to select for that whole community so i just wanted to thank you for putting yourselves out there for doing an amazing job all three of you and um like like mr delgado i'm gonna listen a little bit too to my colleagues uh because i gotta tell you each of you and gave a best answer to to all of our answers in other words you might assign alex in one thing you kathleen another you elliott in a different aspect of this and that is what is making this incredibly challenging but i know we're gonna find a good colleague no matter what we end up with here today i'm very very positive about that know one of the things i i want to point out is that reno is very small we all know this right but what is even smaller is sort of the government circles that we are in i have had the opportunity to work with all three of you and um you know i don't know you well but i've supported you you have supported me in a lot of initiatives and that's what happens whenever you live in a small city and in government and um i want to just say like honestly i've been very proud to do that because there has been um you know some negative talk i can't remember someone mentioned it said oh i think it was you kathleen talked about being corrupt um and so i want to really address that because there were some things oh you know whether it was alex or elliot or because of what you do you know doing government affairs or kathleen taylor and you know i don't know you personally i've worked with you professionally and have a great deal of respect for you and i've been uh supported by you and vice versa i want to address that that does not make someone corrupt that makes a city and what we do sort of a smaller environment but also i'm proud to say that because um of course people will say things about oh you know even a council member to be honest with you it was really disheartening and i wanted to address that because that can be further from the truth and it's incredibly difficult decision very very hard because i think all three of you are incredibly talented and capable and what i would ask please please stay stay engaged um i think actually all three of you i'm probably speaking to a broken record because all three of you have shown that you will stay engaged because here we are in political season and some people only come out whenever it's time to run and they don't really stay in and stay committed all three of you have done that and that is impressive and it shows your dedication to this community so please know this is very very difficult but i have to encourage you to please please stay engaged because we need people like you you you are our future all right anything else because then we're going to do a motion well i'm happy to um say a few comments and then um we'll see what we can get to first of all i'd like to sort of address all three of you folks who are here today what a privilege it is to spend time with you i came to this body the same way i was appointed to the body in 2019 so i know what it's like to sit up in that room uh come down the stairs bury your soul a bit here in the audience and to quote the amazing ted lasso i feel like we fell out of a lucky tree and hit every branch on the way down ended up in a pool of cash and sour patch kids because you all have shown something incredibly thoughtful and brought some different perspectives each of you has um i think um both things that you're strong in and things that you would need some work on i think we all do i mean that's the nature of it i certainly did not know everything about what i was about to get into in 2019 that i know now and uh you know we never none of us have a time machine to go back and tell our younger self those things that we could have done better differently more i think too for my part the thing that i have observed about this body is each one of us probably walks in uh imagining that we're one in a million but sometimes you forget that you're one of seven you know and you're on a team and this is a team that i find a great deal of uh support from family countenance we don't always agree and sometimes we disagree in ways that are difficult and painful and you know we have caused each one of us you know some sleepless nights over an issue but at the end of the day we come back to that central theme which you all have expressed very politely and graciously today which is that reno is worth fighting for reno is a very special place for all of us and that's why we want to serve and be here with regard to how i observe each of the candidates you know if i can just be more specific my ultimate decision has changed over the course of this period of time a couple of times as i've got to know people as i've taken input from the community even i just sat here so you know what you read on facebook and you know the twitter verse is hardly ever true i think mayer says it often that she never knew how beautiful uh skinny and smart she was until she got on the internet and and sometimes i think that's true for all of us um well we know those are not true things um but i say that so that you all understand that it's a range of emotions for us on this side too uh and that we have each one of us have to bring our skill and expertise to it for my part i am ultimately going to turn to the person who i think has the most experience and is able to most quickly get up to speed on this job there's not a lot of uh onboarding that goes on um i think you know they sort of pushed me into an office on day one and said we'll have fun i'm hopeful that we'll change that but in that regard based on the answers that were given today and the process um well yeah i i'm excited about the prospect of adding a new colleague so i do want to hear from our last colleague on the dyess before trying to make an effort out of motion so but councilmember weber is that okay madam mayor thank you so much i just wanted to have the opportunity i i feel honored to be even be able to be here and um to be helping to select this person i think what you had to go through is the hardest thing it's harder than running for election you know for office so it's pretty hard i don't know it's pretty hard but i think what you have to go through i can remember i'm sorry i'm making everyone laugh i mean that's a good thing i disagree um but i can remember when councilman reece was running or was in this process with a lot of other folks and i just i just felt the pressure of what it was for you to have to sit in the rooms for hours and i have to say it it has to be the hardest thing that you you go through it's a job you're running you're running for the job so um anyway what i was so impressed by and i think i i might have mentioned it earlier but when i was able to attend the two public meetings and just see the three of you up there talking with each other sharing um talk saying to each other oh that was a great idea you you did this or this was what i saw in you and i just appreciated that from all of you and then for the public to be able to see that see how they would be talking to their constituents and working with their constituents i just thought that was the greatest and i think that it's a really difficult decision and i just want to say to you all don't go away and i don't think any one of you will and unfortunately only one person gets it and i i just want to say to each one of you that i this was such a blessing for me to be able to have you in front of us and thank you and for what you do for your constituents and what you want to do for your constituents thank you all right thank you so much yeah you never know this is the fourth time we're doing this so seriously right so opportunities right well and that that's another thing that i want to address with um you know some of the negativity surrounding this no one had any idea that councilwoman jardin would be leaving no one had any idea at all and it's been hard to lose her she was a tremendous colleague and was always respectful and i mean it's only been a couple meetings but i miss her already she has done a phenomenal job in the city and cared about ward 5 so very much so passionate about it so okay i'm gonna send it to you vice mayor go ahead madam mayor it would be my honor to nominate um kathleen taylor to the appointment for the ward 5 vacancy and i would second that all right i have a motion and a second question yes go right ahead i wanted to say um i think it is a good choice and i think kathleen um you impressed me with the specificity of your answers your experience shows i do believe you would hit the ground running i think your two partners to the to your right also could do the job and i also think they need a little bit more seasoning frankly you know to get up to what you've experienced on the planning commission frankly i would be i'm looking for a partner i look for partnerships here all my colleagues and i think that you would be a good advocate and i would learn from you and i also think that my colleague here to my right told me earlier today that one of the ways that he came up to speed was my coaching he told me that i i helped onboard him and mentored him to be a colleague to learn this job because i had a few more years on him and it is a very challenging challenging challenging job every decision that we make you know has an up and down side and people are happy with us people are sad with us constantly and you kind of have to have kind of a sense of self to be able to get through that you know to live through that and know you're not going to make all the people happy all the time that's just what we live with and maybe none of the people happy some of the time you know you said you said if you know sometimes you've had that experience so anyway i just wanted to put that out there on the record you've impressed me through this process as i have been impressed by your colleagues here that have also applied but um i think that you do have that experience to hit the ground running so i appreciate that motion all right anything else okay thank you so much all right all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed motion carries unanimously congratulations [Applause] oh tough we didn't know about standing up i was nervous for all three of you you just feel that right how do you feel do you feel okay all right madam clerk i'm gonna send it back to you kathleen there's still time three minutes on the clock well and i want to do a secondary shout out to both alex and elliot because you've become critical to us i feel like i know you so much better after going through this process and i'm going to be depending on relying on you even more to advocate a perspective to give us your insight to share with us what you have to offer this is not an empty thing when the mayor says stay involved you both have jobs that keep you involved and i'm going to be leaning on both of you and i think you're i think kathleen will as well because i think she's gotten to know you and learn about your issues and your perspective so i just i don't think those are empty words like oh stay involved i i already think you are involved and i'm gonna be counting on you yeah i remember how hard it was i mean because i've had it where my choice did not get chosen i think we've all probably been there but i remember andrew dis was an incredibly great candidate remember when andrew dis came before him yeah he was incredible he's stayed involved he's doing great things and he's making a huge impact um in our community in other ways and so don't don't discredit that at all because we really do we really need you guys and if we had three more seats up here there's still time um then it would be hands down a very easy decision it's this is never ever ever easy ever um but it's just about one of the hardest things that we've gone through in my mind it is it's really tough really really tough so um okay madame clerk all right what do we have to do next i can't believe how fast that is okay we need to give you a time to breathe do we take public comment before that no okay all right wow that's kind of scary miss taylor your children can certainly join you while you're being sworn in these are my children nice to meet you do you solemnly swear that i will support that i will support protect and defend the constitution protect and defend the constitution and government of the united states and government of the united states the constitution and government of the state of nevada the constitution and government of the state of nevada and the charter and ordinances of the city of reno and the charter and ordinances of the city of reno against all enemies against all whether enemies or foreign and that i will bear true faith and that i will bear truth faith allegiance and loyalty to the same allegiance and loyalty to the same any ordinance resolution or law any ordinance resolution or law of any state notwithstanding of any state notwithstanding and that i am not under and that i am not under any direct or indirect any direct or indirect obligation to vote for obligation to vote for appoint or elect a point or elect any person to any office any person to any office position or employment in the city of reno position or employment in the city of reno and that i will and that i will well and faithfully perform well and faithfully perform all the duties of the office all the duties of the office of city council member ward 5. of city council member ward 5. on which i'm about to enter on which i'm about to enter so help me god all right congratulations thank you [Applause] okay thank you good job all right madam clerk i'm going to send it back to you for public comment thank you madam mayor so we're moving into closing public comment i have no comment here um in front of me however if you are in the zoo meeting and would like to speak speak please raise your hand at this time for the record i would like to note that we did receive eight additional comments some of which were either general in nature or additional comments in favor of any of these three candidates those have been distributed to the reno city council and are part of the official record we do have one public commenter via zoom that would like to speak which is tom dunn okay and at that point we'll transition into voicemails of which we have four all right tom please state your name for the record and begin speaking uh madam mayor members of council uh councilwoman taylor for the record tom dunn representing the men and women of the reno firefighters association first of all congratulations to your appointment as reno city councilwoman you do have some very incredibly large heels to fill we really appreciate the dedication and commitment that former councilwoman jardin has given to the city council we'd like to congratulate all all three of the candidates today it takes a lot of grit integrity determination and drive to run for public office today and on behalf of the reno firefighters association we look forward to working with all three of you in the future as we address the needs and goals of our community thank you very much mom clerk is that our final final public comment that is our final public comment we have four voicemails okay go right ahead good morning mayor civi and members of the city council my name is charles aglabot i have been a resident of ward 5 since 1995. i'm calling you regarding your difficult task coming up of appointing who is going to represent ward 5. the three candidates are all highly qualified but i think that elliot malin is going to be the one who's going to represent water 5's voice in in the council i have been a cassette i have been resident of water 5 for more than 20 years i have never seen a person who represents me come in come into my neighborhood and ask what our concerns are for the past 20 more than 20 years i felt that our voice um is not heard in any level of the government and elliot malen is going to be the one um who's going to do that um i'm not going to talk about his professional strengths i'm pretty sure he has done a really good job and sell himself and all the documents that he has given to you all so i will be speaking about one thing one thing alone on a more more personal level i know that elliott malin is going to be willing to come down to our neighborhood and and talk to us and figure out what the issues are or our concerns are and represent that in the city council and and do everything that he can to work with everybody to get that through in the end he is going to be able to let all of you know what our concerns are for wired five's voice he's gonna represent that in the council and in the end he is going to be willing to work with all of you to do what's best for the whole city um i am sure about that because it is in his nature um he is going to going to not be able to help himself do that um so so if you are going to consider someone who is going to represent ward 5's voice it should be elliot malen um he is going to do a great job he is going to be able to to represent our voice and and do it really well thank you so much for your time i really appreciate it good luck to the task that you have today please choose why hello this is craig stevenson i'm just calling to show my support for elliott mallon for the appointment to the ward 5 vacancy um he's far and wide the best choice for this position i mean he's lived in the in the ward much much longer than the other candidates that have been selected and i'd just be remiss if i didn't point out the fact that you know he has been there the longest and he has been open with the community you know in meeting with mr malin i've just been very impressed by him uh and i just wanted to show my support for him and you know be sure that he got the opportunity here i know that he's going to be great for the ward and you know living there the longest being with the community uh it's it's really important to this small reno community that we have support from uh from people like elliott malin and i just i think he's gonna be the best fit so you know i'm hopeful that you make the right decision make the right choice and appoint him to this vacancy here to represent us here in ward 5. thank you very much for your time afternoon my name is guy moreno and i am a resident of ward 5 in the city of reno i just wanted to take this time to commend elliott malen for taking the time to run for the city council position open in our award and i highly recommend that he fill that vacancy elliot is a hard worker honest true and capable of serving the city of reno i hope that you will take my comment into consideration thank you hi my name is thomas hodges and i support elliot marlin he has been involved in the ward in the city of reno and he has given back to our satan community and he is just a great and honest person thank you all right madam mayor with that we have no additional public comment okay thank you so much i would love to ask councilwoman taylor if you would join us up at the diocese and you can lead us into our final motion assuming that things don't change looking forward to sitting next to you councilwoman taylor since uh devon left me [Laughter] [Applause] [Laughter] it's someone i know his favorite motion go ahead madam mayor counts women taylor for the record and move to adjourn i have a motion i have a second all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion carries unanimously i always want to know if i don't accept the motion what happens do i get to keep you here all day all night okay all right good evening everyone thanks you