Mr clerk if you're ready I'm ready Mr vice mayor we are ready when you are thank you so much I'm going to open this Wednesday March 8 2024 city council meeting uh today is international women's day it's certainly an exciting opportunity to see so many friendly faces in the audience wanted also to Just note while we're why most of us are wearing purple for international women's day and we have our one of our own International women Cynthia sparza who's celebrating her birthday today our chief equity and community relations officer so I'll start off then with the Pledge of Allegiance and I'm going to ask Pastor Monero to lead us in the pledge for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all Mr clerk roll call please thank you we are taking role for the Reno city council meeting Wednesday March 8 2023 council member breckis I'm here Doer here Martinez here Ebert Taylor here Reese here thank you and uh mayor Shiva zapson thank you so much we're going to start off with a somber moment a moment of silence as many of you in the community know this last week there was a tragic accident uh just a little bit to the east of us and our heart goes out to the families of the Remsen care flight folks the colleagues of Ed Ryan and Scott certainly each of us who a great deal of gratitude and debt to our First Responders thank you so much for serving I want to say that there their legacies will live on in the lives that they touched and so we'll just pause briefly for a moment of silence if you'll join me thank you so much uh to my colleagues please know that Madam mayor will have some official duties today as it relates to the celebration of life related to the careflight and remsa accident and so she'll be on and off the diocese a bit today so just bear with me as I try to run the meeting as best I can for those of you who are not frequent visitors of our Chambers and if you're here for the first time giving public comment certainly you're most welcome we are going to um here are a couple of agenda items say that I think a number of folks are very interested in and when we get to the moment where we're rearranging our agenda you'll certainly understand why but please make sure that you register with the clerk and are prepared to give public comment when your name is called we're going to start then with public comment and and Mr Clerk the floor is yours thank you we are going to start with opening prayer by Cesar Manera good morning uh at Castle number wave and also all the city council members it has been a while that I haven't been here and I'm happy to see new faces and I look forward to working with every single one of you as you may know for several years I've been coming to do prayer at city council I believe that prayer is an important part an aspect of our lives and if I may read just one passage of scripture that always inspires me when you come and do prayer and it says work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I have sent you pray to the Lord for it for its welfare will be determined your welfare and there is plenty of churches in our community that pray for you guys so that uh you guys can lead our community with wisdom we pray for your families and obviously we pray for our community as a whole believing that we all need God's blessings heavenly father in the precious name of Jesus we thank you Lord and we thank you for mayor shivi and every single city council member we pray for their lives their health their families their children Lord as they lead our community that you will guide them keep them safe protected also for our community as a whole we prayed as it was mentioned a little while ago for the loss of life from some of our First Responders we pray for their families as they may be experiencing pain and void in their hearts as a result of not having their loved ones and we pray for our community Lord we need your blessings we need your mercy in every member of our community we place our community our state our government in your hands in the precious name of Jesus amen and amen thank you for public comment Pastor Monero always a pleasure to have you in Chambers thank you sir thank you very much as we move on with public comment just a couple reminders it should be noted for those in the audience that comments are to be addressed to the vice 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 the council may not take action upon any matter not agendized on today's agenda when you are 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 if you are an attendee in the zoom meeting and would like to make public comment please raise your hand at this time and lastly while in this room please be respectful warnings will be issued by the presiding officer if there is disruptive behavior you will be asked to leave Chambers if the behavior continues and moving forward with public comment first we have Andre Monroe Perez with Dr Sanchez followed by Terry Brooks good morning council members I'm Dr jeffette Sanchez director of the Latino Research Center at the University of Nevada Reno and associate professor of educational leadership I have with me one of the students that you all very graciously sent to the conference for the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute so I will pass it to Andre uh yes good morning uh council members uh for the record my name is Andrea Perez and currently I'm a sophomore standing at the University majoring in finance with a minor emphasis on data analytics so uh maybe some time in the near future I'll be working with you guys at the for the city um so yeah so today I'm here to I'm very excited here to be here today excuse me to offer my appreciation for you guys's funding for the opportunity for me to uh of course attend uh Chicago uh the conference uh so as a member of the Latino student Advisory board on campus with latino Research Center at the University of Nevada Reno uh it is a pleasure to work alongside my peers and planning and conducting and orchestrating events on campus all in effort and incorporating Hispanic representation and involvement on our college campus uh recently of course I was granted the opportunity to represent organization our University and really our city at the U.S Hispanic Leadership Institute in Chicago Illinois uh council member Miguel Martinez I just would like to say thank you thank you thank you very much for uh providing me with this opportunity that came into fruition for me excuse me attending this conference was truly an unforgettable experience and I was really able to learn a lot about myself and of the hundreds of other attendees are also you know very grateful to be there as well and uh I'm one of the seven students on the board who uh who is presenting our organization in our campus today and all because of your funding of course it wouldn't have been possible for me for me to attend so thank you in that regard so at the conference we have the chance to hear from many key uh Hispanic individuals and leaders across the country and uh one speaker that does come to mind is actually the president of the of the council himself his name was Dr Antoine Andrade Jr and Dr Juan Andrade for those who know him he's a very impassionate individual he's very uh fiery but he does all with a purpose and he definitely makes him stand out from the rest uh I remember something uh specifically that he did kind of tell uh the entire Conference during his speech and it was like a short story so essentially uh he spoke a final wars holder following the second world war and since this war soldier was a colored man he wasn't able to be buried alongside his white colleagues his white Fallen Brothers so with that being said Dr Andrade alongside others fought for his burial to be conducted despite the prohibition of it initially and ultimately the man was finally there to rest alongside his final comrades it's actually like these opened my eyes what true advocacy is and true Services which is advocacy and service for all so that is one thing if it fails anything I really learned at the conference it was what it was that specifically and um yeah being able to meet somewhere outstanding and highly accomplished like point and brother Jr was was a fantastic opportunity for me and it would have been possible again without your value support uh I hope you know how much it meant for me and the entire group to see how much the city cares and really just like funding and kind of really just accommodating our dreams and aspirations no matter I guess how big they can be at times and uh uh yeah I just hope for like the future students that come ahead of me uh they'll receive similar funding and support as well and uh lastly I just want to share a couple pictures of the conference Mr Perez while we're waiting for the photos to load uh thanks for coming and making public comment I know that councilmember Martinez was very honored to be able to participate fully and if you would find that opportunity to meet with me as well Dr Sanchez can help coordinate that with my liaison Mr Shaw so we'll have coffee and get to a little bit more about you yeah that'd be wonderful thank you thanks for the pictures these are just some pictures of the conference yeah that was actually like right outside the main conference Hall one of the main ballrooms fantastic lots of future Mayors in there oh yeah absolutely yeah the president Maybe thank you so much thank you very much next we have Terry Brooks followed by Jerry Memphis good morning it's me Terry Brooks again and today I come here to face the act of discrimination when it comes to housing and race I grew up in a Midwest town when there was discrimination of race and it seemed that the majority was in control of putting minorities in their so-called place at that time if a house was for sale by a member of the majority they could decide whether or not to sell it to a member of a minority or if a house or apartment was for rent by someone of a majority they could decide whether or not to rent to someone of a minority and as a result of what the majority decided most of that town I lived in became racially divided so for a long time the town was segregated but eventually things improved and that town became more integrated and when I moved here to Reno Nevada and learned more about this state I learned that there is a similar history here when it comes to real estate long ago if two people of different races practiced cohabitation according to Nevada law that was a violation and I learned that many real estate Deeds that were owned by the majority race had restrictive covenants preventing them from being sold to another race so for a long time there's been a lot of division but more recently we've learned to try some revision the more we live together the more we get to know each other and the more we know each other the more we learn from each other when we are divided does anyone benefit when we come together we all benefit I've heard that it's birds of a feather that like to flock together I've also heard that it's right now that we all need to come together I would like to thank you all for listening to me today and the more time I spend with you the more I'll learn how to say by the way this is chapter two and just so you know I've only got 44 more chapters to go next we have Jerry Memphis followed by Mark Markell thank you let's make a great adventures [Music] my name is Jerry Memphis I'm a senior activist and Advocate I've done many things to bring safeguards in the district I live in from my fellow seniors I did not deserve to be thrown out of this city council by Mr Reese and Mr Thornley on May 18th because my shirt was open there is no dress code was none then but Mr Thornley was quoted as saying in an article written two days later that he was going to work something up with the city attorney who's half asleep so what what have you actually worked up nothing because according to the ACLU what you did to me on that day was troubling um council member Jenny bexus objected to the man's removal imagine you had a police officer remove me and I've never been treated like this in the 60 years of my advocacy and community service I spiraled into a real emotional bad State and depression that has affected me tremendously you people you think you're going to get away with this well we tried to negotiate something but the mayor I couldn't get to her because Carl uh was stonewalling any kind of a an attempt for me to meet with the man until I put so much pressure that on September 27 I I had an hour meeting who gets an hour meeting with the mayor Jerry Nipsey does because she was worried about a re-election um it was supposed to be a good faith discussion about uh the damages that I incurred from May 18th and um they would not look at my medical records instead they decided that they would insult me for an hour I sat there um two days later after I was removed I got a call from the city clerk's office saying Jerry you are barred from City Hall and that was told to her Cassie is her name by a security guard the security guard was illegally used more than likely sent over by either Carl hall or the mayor to intimidate and threaten me this was done a year a couple of years prior to when I was going after a council member for something or another and a security guard approached me and told me that I was on a city hall watch list there is no watch list again security has been used illegally just like the hiring practices where you are bringing in all your friends from the lbgt movement to work here in City Hall and the only prerequisite is their sexual identity there's nothing wrong with being any part of the lbgt movement don't get me wrong here by bringing them in here and and hiring them how many people actually come out of Art Center which is your epicenter for your re-election you want to be the mayor stepping down in two years and you want to be the mayor you're not gonna that's not gonna happen have yourself a wonderful day thank you Merry Christmas next we have Mark McKell followed by Rhonda Thiessen good morning Mark good morning Miss Mr vice mayor and city council and city manager my name is Mark Marquel and I I'm a conserving your residence I was told not to come to these meetings fight by the managers or the mayor's secretary and I don't know I I collect the SSI so I I feel is my duty to warn you people and show you Pew what could happen when you get in the car with a drunk driver and I and they told me not to come to all these meetings and I did that because I want to show you people I warn you people about getting the encourage transcriber and and I I had a curtained down we had some dog there anyways back in 89 we are in the mountains of Southern California we drank four cows of wine and we are on our way to get more and we're doing about 100 miles an hour and we drove eight times I was ejected and the car landed on my head pretty meaning a coma for a month in hospitals for five to half months more anyways I I I I know I'm not out there I come to these beneath we can talk because I want to warning if you want to show you people what can happen when you get the cars drunk driver and the Holy Spirit oh God willed me alive and the holy spirit gives me that that gives me well I don't know what he gives me here I give you much but he give me something he that's running here and that's why I could talk where I talk it's not normal but it's it's the weather it's what it is but Mr vice mayor how you doing that's good and Mr manager are you are hi I gotta go now people I want you not to get in the car with drunk drivers thank you next we have Ron Rhonda Thiessen followed by Mel minarik Mel one second just let me is that Tyson speak first she's up before I'm sorry I thought I heard my name you did you're up you're in the hole so to speak on Deck actually you're on Deck my name is Rhonda Tyson I have spoken before this body a few times over the last few months about the Calamity that befell my community on October 3rd in the aftermath of a fire on the 11th floor of our apartment building and the absolute destruction caused by the practices of the Reno Fire Department I was here before and I showed you a picture of my apartment which was so far away from the fire that the fire alarms didn't even go off nor did the fire department bother to come to my floor to check out damage or the safety of the residents on that floor the floor is below me this is our third floor we still have two more floors to go the fire department damaged 11 floors in total I have come to you asking for information I've come to you asking for accountability I've come to you asking for help and I have received none I guess I shouldn't be surprised after all it was last April when I sent a certified letter to both the city manager and the City attorney asking that in the course of the Booth Street siphon project you repair the malfunctioning Culvert that is the primary source of water intrusion onto my property in the event of a flood I heard nothing nothing nothing and as a result tomorrow we will be paying people to sandbag our entrance from the city-owned lot in order to prevent us from the effects of Reno's misfeasance I'm tired of asking for something so I want to offer something I want to offer my apartment building as an educational tool for the city and for the city Fire Department on what it means to comply with the fire code what it means when you don't take mitigating actions in order to prevent loss I showed you my apartment yesterday I got the rebuilding costs 161 887.45 when you add that to the other mitigation efforts that occurred in my apartment the cost to restore me alone of the other 24 units it's there's more but the cost to restore my apartment will be approximately four times what I paid for it and that's because the city didn't comply with the fire code and the city has refused any accountability there's also a human cost I spent Monday at the ER thanks to the careful shout out to Saint Mary's ER they restored my heart to sinus rhythm you can't imagine what went through my mind when the doctor said have you been under additional stress yeah I'd like to also to introduce you to my 84 year old neighbor who cries every day because she believes that she will never return to the home she lived in for 40 years there's a cost the question is do you care thank you next we have Mel Monarch followed by Lynn coacher [Music] vice mayor Reese and thanks to city council members and staff I'm supporting the 2.3 million dollars allocated on item D5 of your agenda today and I have four points I would like to make about it can you please state your name for the record I'm sorry Mel minarik thank you 22-year resident of Reno okay first point I'd like to make the Reno Tennis Center is valued and valuable public resource and Reno and we pay membership fees to be able to play there um during the pandemic we were able to play Outdoors where a lot of things got canceled we took total advantage of that um whether it's the weather or sunshine or heat or cold we are out there and unless it's snowing which is what's going on right now so this is a very loyal group of people it's a very diverse Community ages sex race nationality and different Play Levels okay it's unorganized and organized it serves a lot of people here in Reno and you probably should know that these courts get more play than any other public courts in Reno so yay that's really great and we're really excited about the city investing money in the courts we are very very excited and investing it here makes most sense because this is where most of the play is my second point is really safety right the cracks in almost all the courts really leave us rely reluctant to play there we've seen ankle sprains we've seen knee injuries we've seen back injuries we've seen people falling and so people are hesitant and unwilling to play on those courts because of the surface the conditions that they are seeing my third point is that because the Reno Tennis Center is a community resource and provides social health to the people here in the community we play with each other we play get against each other we have tennis teachers we have tennis coaches that we learn from yes come there from all over the area to play and compete family come to watch uh parents are there watching we have kids clinics we have all kinds of things and you need to know from my perspective this is my family okay and I have never come to a council meeting to talk about an item this is it this is why it's so important to me this is my family so we strongly request that that 2.3 million dollars that you're get that you are voting on today that we hope you approve unless you want to give us more today and we're really open to that um not be used just to repair our courts but to expand access for tennis players meaning more courts and the community so that our kids our future tennis community have more opportunity increasing access to public courts is important because more courts we are increasingly having difficulty even scheduling courts on a regular basis because there's so many people that want to play so the plans of the 2.3 million dollars may not expand access to tennis but could do so for pickleball and I just want to remind you all that pickleball has been expanded exponentially with the convention center this year they are getting extra courts we are not we Lake Ridge fell apart we don't have any indoor courts and so we would really like to have input than into how that 2.3 million dollars is spent because we feel like we need more tennis availability so thank you for your time next we have Lynn kocher followed by Kathy Fitzgerald thank you hello my name is Lynn Coker and I'm living in Ward 5 represented by Kathleen Taylor here on your city council I am attending this meeting along with other participants in the Reno pickleball Community many of which are members of the Truckee Meadows pickleball Club many more members of the club would have been here today but our club is putting on a special event this morning at Boys and Girls Club in recent months Trucking Metals pickleball Club has grown from 350 members to over 800 members there are at least two thousand pickleball players in this area it is true what the lady said before me that the convention center has dramatically increased the amount of courts that we can play on and we really appreciate it thanks to Matt Williams however there are other events that happen at the convention center and sometimes we cannot play there since 2020 the number of pickleball players in the United States has grown from 4.2 million players to 36.5 million players and these numbers are increasing rapidly according to the January 2023 app pickleball participation report 14 of Americans 18 years and older played pickleball between August of 21 and August of 22. pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the United States and has caught on in many places worldwide last month the City of Reno hosted the winter Senior Games two-thirds of the participants were pickleball players Truckee Meadows pickleball Club provided the Manpower for running the 14 various pickleball events in these games as well as in the 2022 Summer Games other members of Truckee Meadows pickleball Club have as recently as September of 19 of 2021 come before the City Parks Commission to share the fact that more pickleball courts are needed for the citizens and voters of Reno as well as possible youth programs at that time in September of 2021 Truckee Metals pickleball Club also demonstrated that 12 outdoor pickle bulb courts could be constructed at Miraloma park on the tennis courts that had been out of commission for many many years these are the amount of courts that we have available in Reno the City of Reno only has seven indoor courts four of them at Neil Road Community Center which you can play five days a week in the mornings three at Evelyn Mount Community Center three times a week Boys and Girls Club has eight courts but were only allowed there two times a week the convention center is a godsend and we've had 23 courts open daily they're always full of City of Reno has 14 outdoor courts which I guess I don't have time to enumerate but Reno has four times the population of Carson City and they have many more courts available than we do pickleball is a health benefit to people of all ages Medicare Advantage is even trying to offer that as a benefit option but they're having difficulty finding courts and this could be an additional income stream for the City of Reno thank you Miss Coker next week I'm happy to know that I'm a member of the pickleball Club councilmember Taylor and councilmember Martinez have challenged the mayor and me to a friendly pickleball outing and so we'll see on the courts oh that's next we have Kathy Fitzgerald followed by Rick Rucker good morning council members my name is Kathy Fitzgerald and I'm in ward two um represented greatly by council member duer um I won't reiterate what Lynn just went over but I'm also in favor of approving the 2.3 million dollars for improvements of the Reno Tennis Center we've been fortunate this winter which has been a tough winter in terms of playing Outdoors to have the convention center that Matt Williams opened but the real purpose of the convention center is for conventions so every time a convention comes into town it takes two days or more and lots of volunteers to break down the courts and another time period during the convention where we're not able to play and then another two days with a bunch of volunteers to reinstitute The Courts at that facility so it would be great to be able to improve the Reno Tennis Center and the old eight pickleball courts on the North End have repairs to some of those courts and maybe put some additional courts along the backboard where the tennis courts are that would leave us about 20 quarts outdoor courts and it would be enough to hold outdoor national tournaments pickleball tournaments bring in people that would contribute to revenue for the casinos for the hotels and also for the City of Reno in terms of Revenue and tot tax so the demographics changing in pickleball it used to be you'd see everyone who was over 50 and retired playing but now if you go to the Reno Sparks Convention Center you will see young people coming after work you'll see families playing pickleball and there's going to be a lack of facilities because we have in the pickleball classes that we offer for free for beginners at the Reno Spa Convention Center we're getting over 50 people per session one of our volunteers is here who does that work so a few lighted Courts for pickleball I know there's one lit court or a couple lit Courts at the Reno tennis courts would be invaluable to enable the people that who could come after work or young families after school to be able to use those facilities so in summary I'm in favor of spending the 2.5 million for improvements to the Reno Tennis Center thank you next we have Rick Rucker followed by Brian Thornton good morning good morning my name is Rick Rucker I'm also a voter and a citizen of Ward 2. excuse me thank you for considering more money for pickleball I think it as was everybody has said it's a growing sport more and more people are learning it as as Kathy has said we're having 40 50 60 people learning going to uh beginners classes is incredible the exponential growth that's happening and the growth is happening of the particip participants greater than the number of Courts so maybe we can get that closer together and it's important to understand that these seniors and the retirees he got to get them off the streets get them they're crazy out there they need something to do so pickleball's been a good good place for them to go uh if I could read what I meant wrote down uh it's a lot of times we see uh visitors from out of town and they're they're so happy to find a place to play so it's simply something that when people come to Reno they see oh there's a place to play Pickleball and that's a good reason or maybe they can't go to Mount Rose today but the good pickleball or if they can't do this they can't do that but they can come and play Pickleball uh the demographics are are educated uh they're and we have a as somebody also said it's a community and uh I've learned about a lot of different people it's real Community Based and uh these people are voters they're smart they'll vote with the their pickleball paddle so thanks for letting me share next we have par tools followed by Christy holdregger good morning I think we've just decided to put four pickleball courts on the roof of hopes so it's exciting my name is part toles thank you for being a kind year vice mayor and councilwoman Taylor I'm a passionate pest on the money for hopes and I appreciate you uh talking to me over the last couple weeks as a proud member of Northern Nevada hopes board of directors I'm here today to urge the city council to both provide a formal response to hopes's East 4th Street funding request and I respectfully request that you allocate hopes the two and a half million dollars requested in their proposal this money will expand our reach and will provide medical mental health substance use treatment and more life-saving services to an additional 12 000 Northern nevadans at our existing Fifth Street Clinic we have gone from serving 600 to 13 000 individuals with 53 percent living below the 200 percent of the federal poverty level 12 percent of those are homeless and we currently turn away 40 to 60 people a day trying to establish Primary Care there are wait lists for both Behavioral Health and Psychiatry Services which are crucial to Hope's diverse client base in reality hopes Fifth Street Clinic has reached capacity with no current ability to expand as a side note while we love the hmis system we can't use it for the same reasons renowned St Mary's and Cha can't and don't use hmis we are a medical clinic in the legal boundaries of HIPAA prevent all of us from from collecting this semi-public information we do having a housing assistant program in hopes that does use hmis because it serves the homeless directly the new Fourth Street location is ideal the recent strong movement in the homelessness in Reno started with hopes then we added the downtown renal partnership then we added the Women's and Children's shelter across the freeway at our place then we added 220 beds of transitional housing at the Village of sage streets then hopes added 30 tiny homes then covet hit and like Manna From Heaven we received close to 70 million dollars and did 10 years of work in six months to create a 600 bed shelter with a 50 bed safe Camp all within a half a mile from each other at the end of Fourth Street Reno has created one of the most unique ecosystems of homeless services in the country while San Francisco LA Seattle Portland and Sacramento are 10 steps behind and have essentially lost their downtowns we are actually two steps ahead and are saving hours you may or may not believe it but we the public and private side of Reno might actually Crack the Code two three years from now Reno might be known as the city that is compassionally but firmly solving the issue can you imagine if we put another 50 000 square foot Clinic immediately adjacent to the cares campus in the most disinfront franchise ZIP codes of 89512 and 89431 do you have any idea how powerful this will be the impact that it will have on this population this is a One-Shot ask our project will be sustainable beginning in year three with the combined loss of less than a hundred thousand dollars for years one and two we've successfully raised 54 of our total project costs in the in the first 12 months of our campaign however we need you I really don't know of a more dynamic or more efficient way for the city to contribute Capital to this issue thank you for your service and for your time this morning I apologize I skipped Mr Thornton so we'll hear from Brian Thornton followed by Christy holder good morning my name is Brian Thornton Arena resident and retired mechanical engineer who worked mostly on building energy thank you for the opportunity to speak today I'm concerned about air pollution from buildings methane also known as natural gas is burned to heat buildings and create hot water this pollution causes climate disruption and Smog and can be reduced through building electrification and Energy Efficiency Reno has identified that 66 percent of climate disruption causing greenhouse gas pollution in the city comes from residential and commercial buildings based on global averages about a third of that comes from burning fossil fuels mostly methane through space Heating and water heating smog is a significant Health threat burning methane helps create ground level ozone one of the most harmful parts of smog Reno has a major problem with ground level ozone and is created in F for this problem which seems to be getting worse fortunately building electrification and Energy Efficiency can reduce greenhouse gas and smog pollution from buildings electric heat pumps and hybrid heat pump water heaters can provide space Heating and water heating instead of burning methane cold climate heat pumps work in our cooler Winters and are being used in much colder climates such as Minnesota and Maine building electrification can reduce greenhouse gas pollution by 50 or more ozone causing pollution will also be reduced energy improvements Energy Efficiency improvements can help these steps can also reduce utility bills all electric buildings that eliminate methane infrastructure are often cheaper to build which will make the transition easier for the development in building Construction Industries the massive incentives for building electrification and Energy Efficiency from the federal government's inflation reduction act will further reduce costs Reno can make a big difference in reducing pollution from methane burning in buildings you can commit the city towards electrification of buildings through the local government pledge from rewiring America working with business and Community Partners the city should create a plan such as starting with incentives and zoning rules moving to penalties and eventually requiring building electrification and More Energy Efficiency the building electrification guide with 12 case studies and adoptable code language is a good resource for this effort I'd like to close today by thanking Reno for securing a grant for heat pumps with Rebuilding Together Northern Nevada I've included sources in my written comments thank you for your consideration as you work to reduce climate disruption and smog in our city thank you thank you Mr Thornton thank you for your work with the citizens climate lobby as well appreciate you next we have Christine holderrager followed by Randy Reynolds nice to see you Mr good morning my name is Christy holdereger and I'm the president CEO of VOA and as we're celebrating women's History Month we're also celebrating Founders Day for VOA this is our 127th year of providing services to the most vulnerable in our communities across the country I'm here today to say thank you to the City of Reno for their support of all of our programs that help move individuals from homelessness to Independence through dignified housing Supportive Services and job training programs like granoworks I know you have on the agenda today a recommendation to provide operating support at The Village at Sage Street and the expansion this will greatly help us and our Lodgers as we come out of the pandemic repair damages from this year's storms and prepare for the village 2.0 this highly Innovative housing was the first of its kind in our state and there were many unknowns as we developed this site to address the lack of housing for those who are making minimum wage and cannot find safe and sustainable housing The Village at Sage Street offers dignified housing to individuals to stabilize and save for their next step of housing this project here in Reno is also being highlighted nationally through the Urban Land Institute as an example of innovative Workforce housing as leaders in our community you all have made this possible I want to thank you also for the generous support and investment in the purchase of Highway 40 motel by considering an additional 350 000 to complete the sale we look forward to addressing the lack of affordable housing through this project and again thank you for your investment in housing for those who are housing insecure in our community thank you thank you next we have Randy Reynolds followed by Matt Williams thank you Mr Reynolds welcome hello Mr councilman Reese Vice vice mayor Reese and the Reno city council my name is Randy Reynolds I'm the current concessionaire at the Reno Tennis Center and I'm coming here today in support of the 2.3 million dollars to improve the facility I want to thank you guys for considering this proposal we have a a diverse community at the tennis center between tennis players pickleball players every both groups are equally as important and both groups really see value in Recreation I think Sports as a whole is super important to our youth our seniors and everybody in between it's a place where everybody can learn different skills it's not just about playing sports but it improves all aspects of life so I definitely want to see the tennis center get improved not just for pickleball players but for tennis players and we have a vision for the center that I've laid out with some Architects and this would be the first giant step to seeing some of our goals come true there so I really just want to take a moment to say thank you it means a lot to me and it means a lot to the community so thank you guys so much next we have Matt Williams followed by Christy Cooley hello everybody my name is Matt Williams I've appeared to you many times before using I'm here uh advocating for youth which I am right now and I'm advocating for you guys to really step up and help this Reno tennis and pickleball facility the Reno Convention Center stepped up Renee mcginnings in the rstva board they stepped up there was a need stepped up for the Youth they stepped up for the adults to provide a place during the winter time for people to come in and play did not have enough space for tennis working on it um but this is crucial for the community we have improved the lives of people we have improved the awareness of Reno as a whole we've had events at the Reno Convention Center in for the turkey Meadows pickleball club and the volunteers and some of the instructors that came over and tennis players that were sandbagging didn't think they could play Pickleball but I didn't get pickled um we've created something we're asking you to help youth are now going to get involved in tennis and pickle ball but they don't have anywhere to go the Reno Convention Center is just a temporary fix but we've created something this facility in Reno the Reno tennis facility is crucial who have out of town events coming uh that's one thing we're working with the convention center on but this is important for the lives our kids need a place to go our seniors need a place to go you have a bus stop right there at the convention center our kids take the bus there they play Pickleball and basketball now but we've created a monster and we're asking you guys to step up and keep this going we ask you to step up and keep this going um we definitely want to be on that challenge with you guys I've got Randy on my team I've learned how to stay out of the kitchen but again I just want to thank everybody that stepped up and helped the Reno Convention Center we have the ability to put in 175 courts but we stepped up from the private section the non-profit section and we're asking you guys to help us with this Center fund this project it is needed it is just a beginning and we like to keep things going so again I just want to thank you guys for considering and and we hope you push it through it's needed Safety First those courts need to be safe they need to look good it's representing the City Las Vegas has 10 more pickleball 10 times as many pickleball courts than us and this is Reno this is our home so it will help the economic impact when we have our events we're going to need outdoor and indoors so thank you guys for considering this Mr Williams thank you so much especially the years that you've served this committee through Jam On It All Under One Roof always been a pleasure to be at your tournaments and it's been fun to be out at the pickleball courts in the convention center they're great thank you and finally we have Christy Cooley thank you thank you hey good morning um thanks for letting me have the opportunity to speak to you guys and my name is Christy Cooley I'm a passionate tennis player and when I found out a couple days ago that you guys were considering to put 2.3 million dollars into the Reno Tennis Center I was like I don't care if I have two broken legs so I'm going to go there on Wednesday and say we really need this um so thanks for considering it and um I just want to Echo some of the comments that people have made already just that um I support pickleball I play Pickleball but we're getting we don't have enough tennis courts either there's a lot of passionate tennis players in Reno and when Lakeridge closed I think there's just been a really big void and um with just no indoor courts to play on and then also there's just not a lot of tennis courts in Reno um coming from out of state and moving here a couple of years ago I've traveled around and played on a lot of tennis courts and played in a lot of cities and what Matt said about the Reno Tennis Center being a source of Pride for Reno instead of going there and being like Oh we have to play at Plumas again the courts are not in good condition I think you guys know that and it's just not a not the most Pleasant place to play tennis or pickleball um the people there are amazing the pros there who teach and devote their days to the kids and to the tennis players are really phenomenal and they really need just a great place to teach and play and that's all I wanted to say I just wanted to say I'm I'm a tennis player and I hope that you guys vote Yes on allocating that money to the courts thank you thank you that concludes our in-person public comment registered for this item we do have three commenters with their hands raised in Zoom if there are any additional please raise your hand at this time as far as Zoom callers we will begin with Rick Sue followed by Robin Palmer and Mr Sue when you're ready please unmute and begin speaking thank you um Mr vice mayor uh city council my name is Rick shu um I have lived in Reno since I was 18 months old and I'm no spring chicken so 50 plus years I started and I'm here to speak about in support of um agenda item D5 and the 2.3 million dollars being considered for allocation to enhance the Plumas tennis courts and and improvements um I started playing tennis when I was 13 years old and where did I start I started at the Plumas tennis courts what was my first tournament junior as a junior at the Plumas tennis court what were some of my biggest heartbreak losses during high school and after that was at the Plumas tennis courts and over the the decades I've seen the Ebbs and flows of the construction uh or the deterioration of the the courts and then the resurfacing and the deterioration and the bottom line is that we live in a tough climate here in the high desert with uh with the snow and the freezing and it's tough to maintain courts so I fully support and and encourage the council to vote Yes for the 2.3 million dollars in upgrades um I I even remember one season where the courts were resurfaced they weren't redone they were resurfaced and the next week there was a wheelchair tennis tournament and that had basically ruined everything that had been done so I've seen some some kind of um Band-Aid Solutions but I'm very excited that there is uh money being considered significant money to be considered for these courts and I too like some of the other people who spoke I am now a pickleball player so there's no better Community sense of community than having all these pickleball players come out and play is a lot more social and it's just all in all a great service for the City of Reno to have because who you know you want to encourage Recreation outdoor recreation and Healthy Living so thank you very much for considering this I ask that you vote Yes on the 2.3 million dollars and agenda item D5 thank you Mr Shu thank you how many of those losses at the Plymouth Center were to meet none none to bane of my existence that man next we have Robin Palmer followed by William hoochert and Robin whenever you're ready please unmute and begin speaking I'm sorry can you hear me now yes we can thank you um mute and unmute was not showing initially so I'm glad to be able to join good morning vice mayor Reese and console members my name is Robin Palmer and I live in rural Reno I'm sorry I do not have a camera I intended to attend this morning's council meeting in person and provide public comment but unfortunately my car slid off the road within a mile of my home and now sits in the ditch much to the Chagrin of my husband so I appreciate the opportunity to participate by Zoom again I do not have a camera Mr Messin said that there was no dress code I was thinking how novel it would be to provide my public comment to Reno city council without clothes I am very concerned about the crisis facing our civilization climate change I'm a member an active member of the citizens climate Lobby the City of Reno demonstrates that it can talk the talk with a sustainability and climate action plan the plant lists nine priorities for achieving sustainability the ninth or I think it's the number third priority is Green Building as standard practice a recent status report shows the city falling short of its 2025 goal for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions I share with you the Mantra of rewiring America and if I were there in person I would project this mantra when it dies Electrify with agenda item B8 you will be considering the allocation of funds to the lowest bidder and responsible better for repair of the national bowling stadium roof when it dies Electrify I don't know the extent of the needed repairs but it seems like this is an opportunity for the City of Reno to walk the walk please consider bidders for repair of the national bowling stadium roof who will incorporate installation of solar or solar capability into the roof repair thank you and next we have William Boucher and Mr Putra whenever you are ready please unmute and begin speaking all right can you hear me now we can thank you all right Mr vice mayor and Reno city council member my name is Willie Putra I reside in Ward 5 in Northwest Reno and I am with you today representing the Sons and Daughters of Aaron of which I serve as its president my apologies for not making it in person I wanted to thank you for your generous donation to our organization approve at the last meeting and also personally to thank councilman Reese councilwoman Eber and mayor shivi's financial support your donations have made it possible last year and will do so again this year for us to hold the Northern Nevada Celtic Kaylee and Kalik means party in Gaelic on May 20th in the Reno Brewery District the event carries on the legacy of the former Celtic celebration that used to be held at Bartley Ranch Park and was forced to shut down due to the pandemic one of the things our organization is all about is preserving Reno's Irish history a tradition we are proud to carry on is the blanchfield memorial ceremony where we spread Shamrocks we receive from County Cork Ireland on the grave of William blanchfield an air mail pilot who died in a freak plane accident in August of 1924 and whose mothers started this tradition of follow following the following next St Patrick's Day that was quietly carried on by the late Reno Undertaker Silas Ross and then local historians until our organization created a formal ceremony over a decade ago we plan to hold a brief rescheduled ceremony at noon Friday March 17th St Patrick's Day at blanchfield's grave behind the cemetery office located in the veterans section of a Mountain View Cemetery next year will be the 100th anniversary of this tread tradition and my organization is planning several activities around blanchfield I have emailed you a PDF of a PowerPoint presentation I created that summarizes the Blanche field story and our plans for next year I would also like to encourage you to visit Reno's Irish bars most of them who are supporters of ours on St Patrick's Day that includes Shanty Dolan's on Keystone Ryan's Saloon on Wells and of course Keel Irish Pub on California in addition the Sierra Tap House um and the bars participating in the Tour de bruise event in the Reno Brewery District we'll be donating a portion of their proceeds to our organization Sierra taphouse's co-owner Michael Connolly's grandfather and Grand Uncle were charter members of the Sons and Daughters of Aaron are the sons of Aaron which is our earlier incarnation of our Pub and will truth from black rabbit Meads we honored this past Saturday and he's done a lot of great things for our organization and if you notice the Shamrocks behind me well I have uh if I have some time uh these are a close-up of the Shamrocks that we just got sent from Ireland and we will be spreading on the grave of William blanchfield so in closing I just wanted to say thank you very very much for your support and I wish all of you a St Patrick's Day and I've looked at the weather and it looks like we actually are just going to have partly cloudy guys that day so thank you very much thank you that includes our in-person public comment registered for this item for the record we received 22 comments which were General in nature or not directly associated with an agenda item prior to 4 pm on March 7th these comments were written correspondence received via arena.gov online public comment form or by email to our office copies of these comments have been distributed to the Reno city council and are available to the public on the reno.gov meeting portal they represented 11 in favor six in opposition and five concerned in addition we have two voicemails which we will play for you now my name is Anita Peterson I work for ESI Security I had a post yesterday at the Reno Event Center had full view of the corner of lake and 4th Street there's a lot of pedestrian traffic there and of course there's signs posted double fines in this area for 20 miles an hour there were so many people almost hit so many people speeding over 20 very fast through there um that's just one issue the other issue I was driving home I lived south of the airport from up there where I was working in the Reno Event Center I don't drive fast and it's night time when I'm coming home it's dark it was nine o'clock there were several people walking across the street on Virgin no on kitski dark clothes you couldn't see them tell I'm driving slow and you couldn't see them until you're almost on top of them and they just walk across they're not in a crosswalk and they're wearing black clothes maybe we need a public announcement for people to wear bright clothes at night or carry something light a flashlight something white a jacket with fluorescent something I mean how this is like stupidity at its I mean and a lot of them are just so out of it so um yeah and then it would be the driver's fault but we need to do something about all that thank you for your time have a good day hi my name is Charlene marks and I'm at uh I'm calling on behalf of the 78 lots that hmm I'm calling on behalf of the townhouses that are proposed to be built at Grand Point Way and may Anne um there I invite you to city council people to come and drive up Shadow Park Drive and drive up Grand Point Way and attempt to make a left turn onto Mann from Shadow Park Drive you'll run into conflict of traffic where it takes two to five minutes just to get off the street um and on to me and make it a left turn between the Middle turnout Lane the blind Corner curve when you pull up to the stop sign at Shadow Park Drive heading Northbound to make a left turn westbound onto man there's even a blind spot in the Curve and then as you proceed left there is the bus stop so the bus stops blocking one lane of traffic and then you have traffic coming into the middle turn lane again to pull into Raley's and other traffic pulling to the right to pull onto Rob drive with pedestrians Crossing including students at each one of these intersections and corners especially on icy roads it is very difficult to pull out from these roads to Pace between the vehicles that are coming and I invite you to come and travel this roads to see what an impact would be for an extra 140 vehicles um to be impacting these two lane to blocks of Roads if you continue Northbound westbound on Mayan down the hill between 7 and 7 20 A.M or even 27 to 7 35 am you will see the impact of all the traffic already heading to McQueen with people trying to make u-turns in various locations to avoid long Lanes of traffic turning lanes that are backed up so far that they are blocking center lanes making a middle Lane in Maine that doesn't even exist that's just supposed to be a turn lane um and that blocks other people trying to pull off of Stone Valley Road and Ambassador Drive so it's already impacted and adding another 80 to 140 Vehicles assuming one to two vehicles per property that would be a huge impact not to mention they're already building Apartments over on Brown and that will add traffic already coming from the west and people needing to drop kids off at school bus will really add to the commotion I challenge you to come on Ivy roads at seven o'clock in the morning and see how cars are already spinning out on man and how this does Mr vice mayor that is the end of our opening public comment period and we're ready to move on to item A4 approval of the agenda thank you before I ask for a motion I'm going to go to City Manager Thornley we have some changes to the agenda and one item that I'm going to move in front of so Mr manager uh well if you're going to move an item I would recommend that we move D5 as well so that it's yes item D5 will be heard before the consent agenda as we have a number of folks in the public who are here on that item so D5 will be heard before the B items in consent and then I need to flag for the group that the City attorney has asked that item D1 be continued to the March 22nd meeting and what is that item D1 is a resolution of necessity to acquire a sewer easement I'm sorry could you say that again B1 or D1 Delta One D one okay and I want to ask a question you know the the item you're removing D5 is a very big item very big item I'm going to ask when we get through a suspension of our rules because we've heard more than six minutes on pickleball alone and you know we only limit ourselves to seven minutes a council member and I just don't think that's doing do rep deference to you know the big job that was done in DC to bring this money to us I think there's expectations that there's thoughtful deliberation but don't we want the mayor here for this item or did she not give any guidance to us to be part of this discussion and we'll move forward as I've identified as D5 when we get to item D5 if you wish to have additional time for comment please let me know and we'll see if we can accommodate you as to item D1 Mr Hall do we have to open the item at all okay item D1 is removed from the agenda item D5 will be taken before Item B item D5 then would come to us before the consent agenda items can I get a motion on the remainder of the calendar before we do I have a request council member doer um yeah I would like to um either remove and put back on the next agenda or continue whichever is a proper item D G2 which is the appointment of the historic Resources Commission members I haven't completed my interviews so I don't know whether we need to yeah I don't think you'll have the meeting continue yeah I don't think we'll have any objection when we get to there but normally when we have a continuance request to buy a member it is your liaison role to it we'll take it at that time okay so but just in case anyone is here I want them to know I'm going to recommend continuing understand thank you so much for that note can I get a motion council member doer yeah I'll move to approve the agenda With The Changes noted second okay but motion by councilmember Durer second by councilmember Martinez any further discussion at this time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously Mr clerk for the record are we voting on our screens today I I there might be some technical difficulty so I will record and I will clarify if I need it thank you so much I know that we're working through some of those issues okay the next agenda item is item A5 I'll need approval of the minutes any questions from my colleagues so moved okay I have a motion by councilmember Dewer second by councilmember Taylor any additional discussion sorry I didn't hear the what was the motion to approve the Amendments from February 8th 2020. okay yeah yeah okay if there are no additional questions I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously thank you item D5 Mr Hodge good morning vice mayor Reese members of the council Reese I think I need to get a haircut like you looking at the back of my head on camera it would look better a little bit more bald uh I'm here today to talk about three specific things as they relate to arpa and the presentation will come up in just a second but to highlight those three things we're going to go over today we're going to talk about where we are in the timeline what our plan is to reallocate to five specific projects that are already underway and a plan for 19 new projects as directed by public engagement Mr Roger I'm going to ask you to pause for a minute because I understand we do have public comment on the items so we'll take that public comment before the staff presentation thank you for that thank you we do have several in-person registered public comments we will begin with James fewins followed by Ian Anderson thank you and welcome thank you James fewins I'm here to say supportive D5 I'm a board member of the High Sierra Lacrosse League uh Heist here in La Crosse and La Crosse in general is one of the fastest growing team sports in the United States and one of the biggest challenges that we have every year is finding flat fields for our youth athletes and Truckee Meadows has grown a lot over the last years and flat Fields have just had not kept pace but the flat current capacity of flat Fields is around 170 percent so flat fields are definitely a challenge to get so new fields are in dire need the current highs here in La Crosse has over 800 players which generates about 500 families in the Northern Nevada area and myself having a youth athlete in the lacrosse we go to many tournaments Across the Western United States and I would love to see that economic growth in economic money that we send to our other municipalities around the west coast to come to Northern Nevada uh all those things filled tons of hotel rooms fill restaurants fill all that thing and by having the youth Fields uh we'll be able to build our young people have them join teams that build character uh many and then second of all I would like to say that I am obviously in support of it of D5 and then many municipalities across the West that when we go to see these flat Fields they a lot of times they use flood areas uh flood designated areas four flat fields and I think it's a great use that those municipalities do use for flat Fields so I'd love to see the flat Fields the two million dollars on D5 for the flat fields and thank you very much next we have Ian Anderson followed by Randy Ritter [Music] Mr fewins thank you for your service on the Sparks Planning Commission appreciate you very much hello Mr Anderson good morning Lou Lou good morning my name is Ian Anderson I'm a resident of Ward one in Reno uh I've been a youth coach for the last eight years I'm on the board of the High Sierra lacrosse league and I'm also on the board of the Reno Youth Sports Association which is an organization that this uh this group created to help with uh collect user fees for youth athletes that then get used for the maintenance of the Reno playing fields and it also allocates the fields amongst the member organizations currently this year Reno Youth Sports Association is going to have over 6 500 youth athletes on the fields in the City of Reno the city conducted an audit several years ago that noted that there's a shortage of about 60 flat fields that's soccer and Lacrosse and football fields in the city and as we've known this the Region's only grown since then and we haven't kept pace with adding new fields so in item D5 there is an allocation of two million dollars to support the development of flat fields and uh we're in great support of that we think that it's very very needed and we think that it will help all the youth organizations that are providing um team sport opportunities for the families in Reno uh to better meet those needs currently uh there's significant negotiations that go on between all the leagues to try and get access to fields and so by adding to the inventory fields that we have we're going to be able to better meet the needs of the families I'd also like to say that I hope that this group uses as a first step that the development of these fields is sort of the first and the step of the development of many new Fields the JMU just spoke to me previously mentioned about the ability of using dual use where we have flood abatement lands also used as Fields is a great opportunity for us in this area to expand the number of flat fields that we have so thank you very much I want to just mentioned again it's the support of the two million dollars for the flat fields in the arpa money thank you next we have Randy Ritter followed by Kathy Gilbert good morning vice mayor City Council my name is Randy Rader I'm here today wearing two hats I'm a Vice Pro I'm the vice president of fields for the rysa group and also the president for Great Basin Youth Soccer League as the vice president of fields for rysa I'm representing us today we all know that there's a shortage of flat fields for organized Sports in Reno we are 46 flatfields short in this city maybe more is he in as Ian said gbysl represents about 50 percent of all of rysa membership I've been the president of Great Basin youth soccer league for 12 years now Great Basin has over 8 000 registrations per year uh great gbysl we call gby cell gbysl is going on 38 years old we've donated over a hundred thousand dollars of our own money to help city and county with repairs and sod restoration No Other Sports organization could say that in our city I'm here to talk about the much needed Sports Complex that we need here in Reno Nevada I run multiple soccer tournaments in Northern Nevada every year and a very large tournament in the city of Las Vegas that tournament is the sixth largest tournament in the country our Vegas tournament brings in 1300 teams over a two weekend period some of the revenue we account for twenty thousand room nights in those two weekends and also it brings over a 40 million dollar impact to the city of Las Vegas the City of Reno is a destination just like Las Vegas we are missing sports facilities for the Youth in our city even Carson City has a 10 Field Sports Complex that I'm forced to use and that brings the revenue to their city and not mine we are building houses and apartments here in Reno with no plan on creating a needed Sports infrastructure we need up to six we we have up to sixty thousand people moving into our area and we do not have one multi-field sports complex in this city I'm asking you to approve this project and let gbysl partner with rysa to build this complex at Moana our parking lot and a third of the field has been taken from us to build our public swimming pool 800 soccer players have been displaced because of that a Great Basin maintains those fields to the highest standards and has not asked for one penny from public tax dollars to maintain or care for this complex in the past decade gbysl has proven with the Moana project for the last 10 years we built a beautiful field where drug dealing once took place now the businesses the surrounding businesses flourish because we built a beautiful complex where these kids play every day and it's helped the businesses around that area pembrick along with Mill Street will allow us to host large soccer tournaments not only for soccer and Lacrosse but all other sports thank you thank you for your time thank you Mr Ritter and thank you for your service both of those bodies gbysl and rysa are very important components of the community so thank you for your time next we have Bill kazitzki followed by Dr Hilary Lopez we have Bill kazinski in the room okay we'll move forward with Dr Hillary Lopez morning Lopez I'm the executive director of the City of Reno Housing Authority um I know you're in receipt of our letter on this item so I just wanted to say that we are aware that there are many competing needs in our community and we greatly appreciate your time in evaluating these myriads of projects it's no easy task and the Reno Housing Authority is appreciative of all of the support we've received from Council your partnership is and remains important to us the lack of attainable housing in our community remains a critical need and as I'm newer to my position aside from today I look forward to scheduling time with each of you to discuss rha's Mission our plans for the future and how we could best work together so thank you for your continued consideration Mr vice mayor that concludes our in-person public comment for the record we did receive 13 comments directly associated with this agenda item prior to 4 pm on March 7th these comments were written correspondents received via arena.gov online public comment form or by email to our office copies of these comments have been distributed to the Reno city council and are available to the public on the reno.gov meeting portal they represented 10 in favor one in opposition and two concerned that concludes our public comment period and we're ready to move forward with oh I'm sorry we do have a zoom attendee who has raised their hand so we'll take their comment uh this is Tracy Wilson and whenever you are ready feel free to unmute and begin speaking I I just want to make sure you can hear me we can thank you hi um good afternoon everyone I think we're almost optional I guess we're still morning I apologies um my name is Tracy Wilson for the record I'm with American Wild Horse campaign I've I've worked closely with some of the city staff members regarding Wild Horse issues and on in this um I I did submit some written comments but I wanted to reiterate on the on the uh 500 000 listed for Virginia range horse fencing uh what are boots on the ground perspective is of the priorities for that money um in the immediate need is is uh uh kind of a double whammy in the needed Wildlife fencing to uh create a wildlife preserve that allows natural access to a water source not only for Virginia range horses but also for all Wildlife as we lose more and more access to the two water sources with development this would allow a natural access that doesn't require a lot of Maintenance other than the fencing which is really a key piece that's important to consider the other big one is um the area where there is no fencing and that's down towards Geiger grade that is a multi-agency project but it directly impacts the City of Reno and the City of Reno streets we've done a very good job working with developers in the city to close off fencing in the in the city limit area but just south of that is a huge gap that's allowing horses onto the city of of Reno streets um where the grass has been planted right next to the street for an easy meal and creating a bit of a public safety hazard um and then again a wildlife corridor up that hill that allows for human movement for human Recreation people love to go up into those Hills for recreation and so allowing that Recreation Corridor which would allow also allow wildlife and horses to move through that Corridor safely um and this Project's been on the books for a while I know councilwoman Dorr has been working on something like this and a project coordinator to head this up and also look at these fencing issues would be really um important I believe to get these things done in Action Moving and then lastly replacing fencing that's at risk for failure should be addressed once the open areas are closed off and we've reduced the risk to the community so thank you for your time and consideration of these issues when it comes to this funding and congratulations for the funding and the good that will come of all of it thank you and that concludes our public comment on this item we're ready to move forward with the staff presentation thank you Mr Hodge welcome thank you vice mayor Reese members of council again JW Hodge for the record we're going to do three things today we're going to briefly talk about where we are on the timeline with the state and local fiscal relief funds I mean we're going to talk about two important outcomes from today and that's reallocating some funds through some underway projects and then allocating funds to additional projects identified through the public process we'll start with a brief timeline back in August of 2021 this Council accepted over 51.5 million dollars from the state and local fiscal relief funds at that same time this body directed staff to go out and engage in a robust public engagement campaign to identify what is important to the City of Reno to use these funds to recover we came back in 2022 and Council directed immediate priorities seven of them that said these were important to the community as well as this body to make sure that we were funding projects and finding projects that met the needs of our community at that same time Council began allocating funds so today on March 8th we're going to allocate some additional funds hopefully to projects that are currently underway as well as the new projects that I already talked about there are two important dates to keep in mind as we discussed today December 31st 2024 is the date we must have all funds allocated to projects in December 31st 2026 is the date we must have all funds spent as I mentioned Council approved and chose seven key priorities based on that public engagement these priorities align with council's strategic plan what the public has asked us to spend money on as well as the federal guidelines established by the treasury that says this is how you can spend these dollars I'll highlight just a few we have 24 projects currently underway as you know Council in October allocated six million dollars to Public Safety to improve technology and some of the infrastructure related to Public Safety we have almost eight million dollars in affordable housing projects already underway and we have over five or we have five Parks projects currently happening we also have some allocations that have not been allocated directly to projects but to categories the senior categories you're aware those projects are going to the senior citizen advisory committee in the next few weeks and we'll come back before this body for final approval two major things today first we have five projects that we need to allocate additional funds to complete and then second we're going to go through a list of projects contemplated for your approval can we pause that stat date and I have a question on the status well we'll wait until after Mr Hodge's presentation and then you'll have the floor first let's talk about the reallocation projects we have five projects that are currently underway that require an additional funds mostly based on the increased cost for labor supplies and expenses the first one in the council's priority of pandemic response wrapping up the remote work Technology Program allowing City staff to be fully remote remote capable when needed we need an additional 137 thousand dollars to finish that project in the Parks and Rec category as you can imagine those are big infrastructure building type projects including the California building HVAC Mayors Park and the Idlewild Pond Rehab those projects that come in at an increased cost due to supplies and labor overall we're asking for 1.477 million to cover the expanded cost of these projects and continue to make sure that they're complete based on your original Direction the exciting part is now talking about new projects that have been identified both through the public input process as well as council's guidance all projects fit within the categories or the priorities established by Council and I'll go through them briefly and talk about what they are so we can have a conversation first access to healthcare one of the key things that came out of public feedback was how does the city respond and provide improved access to health care what the dollars provided through the American Rescue plan Act one way we can do that is through a building that we purchased or the land we purchased in 1991 the building we built in 1999 that we have leased to three different occupants over the last 20 plus years and that's the expansion of our Neil Road facility this is a direct investment of five million dollars into our city-owned infrastructure to expand a space that we lease to a current healthcare provider that can then turn around and Lease additional space from the City of Reno and provide improved Family Practice care access to Pharmacy Services access to behavioral health and food pantry access we have just over 1.3 million dollars allocate or proposed to allocate to two more affordable housing projects you heard some public comment on these this morning but these will allow the continuation of these projects and allow us to make investments that will finish these projects off and ensure their success in the future the community programs is a really exciting area for the city as you know we have we're growing our economic development team and we're making strategic Investments and pushing things out so that we can improve small business downtown other corridors of the city so some of these projects include our tenant Improvement and Lease support project which is a concept to allow our economic development team to work with small businesses to identify areas where they can open a small business or a small restaurant with support from the City of Reno and help them be sustainable City Hall accessibility and improvements we've talked about it in this meeting a couple of times with Ada access to the building and wanting to open the first floor investing half a million dollars into improving the Ada infrastructure so we could open the first floor and make the building fully Ada accessible from the street waste and e-race recycling programs is a combination of both additional trash cans in the downtown area replacement trash cans for failing trash cans in the downtown area as well as a set aside for funds for Council Members Ward cleanup opportunities to include E-Waste recycling downtown placemaking and Improvement contemplates holding a two million dollars of funds to apply towards projects based on the Virginia Street Place making study when Council gets that study back and there are identify they identify items in there that we want to invest money in that money can be used to implement those projects immediately and there's an additional spine set aside to create a facade Improvement program and finally under the Community programs the downtown Reno partnership rise initiative and the clean and safe programs are in need of vehicles to ensure we can continue to do the great work that's underway in those areas pandemic response priority includes a couple of varied topics uh one being a critical need in investing in our infrastructure for security this is an expansion of our security infrastructure to include Security in parks open spaces other places where we lack the security right now but from the arpa perspective we know that those places have a high use and we have a duty to protect them and make sure we protect our investment the Reno fire department is seeking additional funds to buy a storage container for PPE supplies at a lower cost and then the FEMA covid-19 reimbursement is related to the Ila entered into this body at the beginning of covid that said any unreimbursed medical or unreimbursed covet expenses would be paid for it the percentage outlined in that agreement finally Revenue replacement we've been working in partnership with the finance team to understand what amount of Revenue our dollars we should hold aside to protect us and make sure that if in the need that Revenue falls short we have the arpa dollars to cover that we will work closely with finance and in the event that those those funds are not needed we'll be back in front of you at this time next year before the budget season to allocate additional funds to additional arpa projects finally probably the most exciting list is the Parks and Recreation list there are uh incredible projects on this and I think we've heard a lot about most of these this morning the parks planner will help Implement these projects as well as many more you know we're underway in building a prose plan and other things and a Parks planner a grant funded position if you will similar to what we did with the EMS covid coordinator someone that worked under the coveted dollars for a while and then as they became more invested or more integrated into actual day-to-day work is an opportunity for us to implement them into the city flat field support we've heard a lot about this morning contemplate setting aside money to help build and work with our partners like gbysl rysa lacrosse and building flat fields and improving the Platte field infrastructure for the city Idlewild pool deck contemplated in the CIP is a quick replacement or a replacement of the pool deck and making sure that we can continue as we open a brand new pool also make sure we're maintaining the pools we currently have the Lear theater upgrades is setting aside a million dollars to ensure that we can landscape do temporary fencing or whatever is appropriate for that facility to make sure we maintain the Integrity of that facility but allows us to have direct funding that can improve the look and the landscaping and the security of that facility since it's a city-owned facility we just heard comment on Virginia range horses contemplating setting aside money to support both fencing trails and any work that's determined that's needed for that project to make sure that we keep both the public as well as the Virginia range horses safe and the last two River path plan and improvements I think it's important to note the distinction that it's a plan and improvements we'd like to invest some money in developing a plan and what is the What is the personality the Integrity what is the plan for our River path and then having funds associated with that plan to then start implementing projects associated with that the Reno Tennis Center upgrade I feel like needs no additional commentary it's it's a very much needed project we do have unusable Tennis Courts at that location and this contemplates making sure that we can replace those tennis courts as I said at the beginning we have two things today the first motion is to reallocate funds to ensure we can complete those five projects underway and the second motion is to allocate the remaining arpa state and local fiscal relief funds to the projects we just discussed I am available for questions thank you Mr Hodge I appreciate the presentation and also I want to just thank you and the staff for the work that's gone under this obviously we're here at a moment when you've spent the last essentially three years working towards the way in which we are able to allocate I think important among the slides that you made early on was the discussion about the public process that went into getting to this moment and so when we as a city council decided to sort of piggyback on to the state's public process that means that we had the benefit or largesse of going to something like I think it was 79 or 83 couldn't remember which one meetings where we heard people who said these are the things that we're interested in these dollars being sent on because they are generational Investments I also think it's important that the folks certainly some in the audience today know that um their voice has been heard on the subject because that's why we went out and did all that listening to her as I looked around the country and looked at other cities and municipalities what they were doing oftentimes I was personally critical of some of the things which I saw because what I saw mostly was Revenue replacement cities were looking at this as a way to offset perhaps their past budget failings and things like that we haven't done that and so I appreciate your dedication to the cause which is to really think about how do we use these dollars which are one-time dollars to make investments in the community that will last for a number of years and so I very much appreciate the approach that you've taken and the staff we arrived at this moment not haphazardly or recently it really has been the better part of three years working towards this moment so thank you for that I'm going to start with the body but I'm going to go first I'm Adam mayor because she has to be in and out of our meeting today and want to make sure that she has the opportunity to comment on any of the items before we move on to my colleagues one of the things I just I kind of want to remind everyone because sometimes it's really difficult because everyone has different interests and what they think we should be investing in one of the big takeaways was investing in Recreation and outdoor parks and amenities people really in the pandemic said we want places that we can provide to have something that provides a great Quality quality of life because I think sometimes people look at that and say oh you know that doesn't seem like it's something of importance but now more than ever our Parks actually for a very very long time have needed a significant amount of upgrades um and outdoor recreation like we heard in the pandemic was just something that we wanted to hit home something was really important for me is the river there is no funding source for our River it's our drinking water and it could be a tremendous place where we recreate so we need to continue to make sure we keep a watchful eye on that the other thing is Health Care is really important I'm glad to see cha on there it's certainly in an area of the city that desperately needs more health care and there's a mental health component that I think is very very critical now more than ever again something the pandemic taught us so uh I appreciate it and and I hope that you know this is a collaboration with our community and the council so um we're here to listen so thank you appreciate all your work I know you've been working very very hard on that a lot it's it's a team effort on this one yeah that really is thank you so much thank you Mr Hodge before I move on the mayor reminds me the one thing that I think is also important about the presentation that could be easily overlooked was the allocation buckets right and we use the term buckets because it's just easier for us to think of than in maybe accounting terms but um can you bring that slide back up it was the priorities were in line with yeah here we are so there were um these were arrived at based on the treasury guidance uh fundamentally plus what we heard in the listening tour is that a fair characterization I would flip it I would say yes we we went to the listening tour to hear all the things what are all the things the community wants us to participate in and these seven aligned with the treasury guidelines as well as council's Direction and those treasury guidelines they were voluminous and ever-changing right so I think part of the thing that is uh amazing about your team is that you were able to navigate those guidelines because at the end of the day the dollars came from the federal government and through the state government to us but they had significant limitations on their uses the timelines the way in which they could be spent and so I appreciate you keeping abreast of those things I'm going to go now to the body and see if we can't start with councilmember breakfast who I knew you had some questions councilmember breakfast I know you had asked originally about maybe a suspension of the rules I'm going to sort of say that that's not how I would do it but I as the presiding officer for our time together will try to be very gracious and generous to you with your time and so we're going to start off by assuming that everyone's going to use their time allocations as we normally do under our rules and if you have some additional comments or questions anytime your voice is very important to me and it matters so I will certainly take that into consideration okay well for those who don't come to our meeting often council member on any item is given seven minutes of discussion and 28 million dollars seven minutes of discussion you know I think it's problematic I don't think it shows well to the people in DC who put a lot of them put their careers on the line to bring this money over to us characterize your position that way we're not going to stop your time hold on a second okay it's not that you only get the six or the seven minutes there that's the time before the motion and then you can ask for additional time we've also had this item in front of us now this is probably the eighth time Mr Hodge has been in front of us so this isn't new although it might be new to some people in the audience so I appreciate your thoughts so start your three minutes now Mr clerk okay I also would like the courtesy of uh taking individual votes on individual items rather than a roll-up boat which a roll up over 20 million to eight million dollars is quite remarkable um and so I I'm gonna make that request also my first question is and I'm the senior member on the council along with the mayor who came on in 2012 during the Great Recession when the city had laid off a third of its Workforce as a result of that economic downturn and was managing cash flow at one point I think the city was down to 17 days of cash flow those were really really dark days and a Great Recession now in terms of pandemic response Revenue replacement is one of the eligible items and revenue replacement to me was always very important because if we can't do the core Basics caused by this pandemic economic downturn you know we we can't launch onto new initiatives we've got according to my understanding uh nine months more before we have to commit allocations that's nine months more of economic uncertainty to our Revenue now usually at this point of year we're pretty far along into budgeting this year's year is very unusual I don't know why I haven't heard why we haven't sat down to do budgeting but what I understand is there's her coming forward um and so is the finance department and their recommendation for Revenue replacement holdback have a projection for what could happen for the nine months or is it already Revenue loss Revenue replacement that's already been incurred uh thank you for the question I think what you're seeing is the partnering between our department and the finance team to understand what we could project in the future and what we should conservatively hold on to based on 5.2 million dollars is roughly five percent of C tax right so that makes sense to hold on to that money and also you have to look at the Timeline as both conservative on both sides if we don't allocate this money by December 31st 2024 then we don't get to allocated to anything and we send it back so we've worked with the finance team to understand what percentage they want to hold on to to understand both through this budget cycle and next year's budget cycle if it is needed if it's not needed we'll come back to this body and reallocate it to projects okay so the holdback you know it was it was a very specific question the holdback contemplates forward Revenue correct okay of five percent of C tax that's that was the methodology I guess used correct okay okay that's that's good didn't see that in the stop stop report you know a detail on why we're where where the revenue replacement is wanted to know now the allocations that are being moved around I understand that they're one that didn't show maybe was that Reno Housing Authority one because I thought that had been reserved but now that's that's being reallocated forward you're not showing it as reallocation but the input from the letter from the Housing Authority was we had parked three million dollars for that for the housing authority to buy the Bonanza at one point correct it's not showing as a reallocation because the funds were never dispersed because the project never came to fruition and that agreement has been terminated well but I a lot of these aren't projects that has come to for fruition they were bucketed items and so I'm just um you know I guess my time is expired I have a lot of questions about um you know each of your little round Bubbles and one was housing and I only got to one port of the housing one but my time is expired thank you thank you Miss breakfast anybody else on the body council member doer yeah thank you um first I want to start off I've spent a fair amount of time with you and your team in at least three sessions going over the detail of this and I just want to say what a good job you have done it is never easy you know I often hear this allocation process called The Hunger Games but we have been allocating in tight environments you know as long as I've been associated with government about 40 years that it's always winners and losers some things you can fund some things you have to put in the parking lot for a future day so I think you've done a really good job in trying to balance based on our priorities what is important to us but also what's important to the community so for my comments I just wanted to start with um as the mayor did with the Parks and Recreation we're looking at 25 million dollars here today and you have about 10 million dollars just for Parks and Recreation and I want to commend you for that during the recession which we're starting to dim on when that was and what happened but the 2008 nine time frame where we lost about 60 percent of all of our our Parks and Recreation staff we were unable to maintain projects never mind build things so build new flat fields or maintain the Reno Tennis Center things like that all fell by the wayside just to allow us to do the basics of government public safety you know open up the doors provide services to people that are the base bare minimum so in the Park section I I can support every single one of these projects you know I would have liked to even see double but I understand I mean we have many things to do but we heard great things from the Reno tennis community and the pickleball Community today it's been the mayor and I advocating for the river path that we really think that we even have to take the next step to make the river a centerpiece of our city not a forgotten Zone not an area people are afraid to go so with lighting with bathrooms with Paving with kiosks you know explanatory materials about the river and how important it is that's what sets us aside sets us apart from other cities we have a river through it we need to build on what it is and provide that incredible opportunity recreational amenity for our community we heard from the Virginia range spokesperson about horses and I just want to confirm that the world the monies as I understand it says Virginia range horses but my understanding was to water sources fencing and the way through those are all important pieces and it covers not just Parks and Recreation but also covers Public Safety we've had many many horses lost on our street those have caused tremendous accidents uh 25 in just the last three years and we haven't even counted up this year's losses every one of those is a totaled car a police accident traumatized residents and loss of life in our animal population so thank you for including it I also want to comment on the Lear theater I am so grateful first of all for the work that Mr Thornley has done in the team in acquiring the Leo theater coming up with a process to keep get it into our inventory it will need an assessment as to its historical value the structures report all of that has to proceed spending this money hopefully some of the money of the million dollars you're looking at setting aside could be used for that first step which is what do we have here what is the historic process that we need to follow through before we actually build us something so of our comments when my time comes back Mr Hodge thank you and I'm just going to piggyback a little bit off of what Ms Stewart said first of all I think Miss Stewart is being very genuine and kind about the amount of time that she's spent if she said it was three meetings my guess is she spent 300 hours so thank you to her for doing that work truly I mean it is um a lifetime of service represented in a moment right and so I want to make sure that my friend and colleague knows how much I value her thoughts on the process because I think that's important for the public to understand um all of the things that are in here are represented representative of the people in the community who have a particular passion and again you saw a number of folks here from the pickleball and tennis community um it's certainly something I'm passionate about but it's very exciting to see a broad support for it even again with people who don't play tennis or pickleball just knowing how important public Recreation is with regard to the Leer because Miss Dewar posits that as one of the issues I want to make sure that I understand what the allocation potentially could be used for and I also want to sort of dispel some of the uh you know thought process that sometimes leaks into public discourse which is negative about it I see it as a first step right in the process which we ultimately hope will result in the Leer being restored right so the the dollar is being contemplated here are not to put up barbed wire fencing permanent fencing it's not to paint it neon green right so all of the things that we do with the Lear we would do with a careful and steady hand with the support of the historic Resource Commission with the support of folks who are very uh tuned into the historic nature of the building My Hope of course is that the African-American community of Reno will be invited to participate in that process deeply because of the historical nature of the architect Paul Revere Williams who really is one of the Premier architects of this era and is really something we can be proud of here at the City of Reno council member doers write that it's just a start right and it is in no way intended to do anything that would be antithetical to our goal of preserving its historic nature and so hopefully folks in the community who are concerned or contemplating their support or lack thereof but understand that our goals align right we may not always agree about every jot and Tittle about Reno's history or the nature of online community communication but that we would know that our goal is the same which is the preservation of this historic resource along the river so I appreciate that I did entirely understand with regard to the parks planner your hope is that we allocate dollars that would be then used to have an entire re imagination of our parks and and so that would help us lead the next 20 years of parks is that a fair way to characterize it I think the parks team it's fair but I I would clarify by saying I think the parks team is well underway on a Parks and Recreation and open space plan and by funding this position for three years to implement the projects that Council has brought forward through the arpa dollars and help make sure those projects come to fruition on the right timeline I think we also have a very unique opportunity to hire a person on Grant dollars that will allow that person to work with the parks team on the pros plan as well once that is adopted by Council and we get to move forward on other great projects in our Parks areas and much like the EMS covid coordinator at the time three years down the road when the arpa dollars are expired and spent Council has an opportunity to then if we're still underway turn that person into a full-time person or that that put that position ends but I think we have a lot of great opportunity with that person both paired with the projects a council has initiated and funded and invested in through our arpa but also in the plan that you're investing in over the next few months into the pros plan yeah that's exciting thank you so much let's see councilmember Taylor vice mayor thank you Mr Hodge as we say internally thank you for bringing the tiger today you've done a tremendous job I know your team has done a tremendous job thank you for educating me and helping me get through this process my only I have two comments one is I'm super excited for the downtown improvements and the river improvements look forward to working with some of our newest team members to see how those get implemented thank you for that and then the second thing is um you've probably heard this let me say this before this is one-time funding so whatever we invest in which is all good positive things here my comment is to ensure that we are not going over budget that we're not coming back to reallocate stuff because this is one time funding and I know that you and your team have worked very hard to make sure that we are meeting budgets and we will stay within them so thank you very much thank you council member Martinez thank you so much vice mayor and Mr Hodge I appreciate all the time your team took to meet with me and discuss some of the concerns and questions that I had regarding some of the allocations I just want to Echo some of the things I have already been said um I think the allocations to the Virginia reach range horses fencing the river path plan and improvements are great allocations and are going to bring really good things to our community affordable housing projects that were identified I know housing is a big concern for our community members and more specifically affordable housing options here in the area so I appreciate the city putting some allocation to there and then another thing that hasn't been mentioned yet but that I just want to know is the accessibility to City Hall specifically and having the opportunity for more public engagement which is something that I've brought up on my short tenure here on the council so I appreciate that already coming up I'm in the city addressing some of those concerns funds to close out I just want to um know as well that the money that the city is allocating for the expansion of Neil Road is really going to provide critical Health Care Services to an underserved portion of our community and I appreciate that being included in there as well thank you thank you so much thank you yeah okay councilmember breakfast yeah just to go back over the affordable housing I I so we originally gave money to the Housing Authority for the Bonanza purchase correct that is correct yeah I recall voting for it I was on the fence and then did we reallocate that from the Bonanza project that the Bonanza project never came to fruition So based on the arpa rules and the agreements that we put enforce in place with Partners if it's not funding going to Reno it's going to a partner uh that money does not go to them if that project never comes to fruition yeah where is that money going right now and and the projects you're talking about today okay so how much was taken away from that effort and is I would recap it was not taken away it was never given to that effort because the project never came to fruition okay it's six million dollars okay so six million dollars is is moved off from what the Reno Housing Authority board thought they were working with as recent as last week into something else that that's what I wanted established I you know I see some other affordable housing efforts there I'm a little concerned with the Sage Street one because you know they're asking for an operating hole but I had a good meeting with them I can be comfortable with that but um I I am a little trouble because uh they are our most important partner and I I would like to see that reconsidered I'm going to move on to the Community Health Alliance allocation because we originally had two and a half million for health health care my interpretation and I just want to say I haven't had a lot of meetings with staff the managers prevented me from meeting with our staff it's a retaliatory move from last year's evaluation so there may be a different narrative I'm missing out on a lot of these issues but I've not had the opportunity plus I like open meetings you know I like to I would have liked a workshop to really dig in and have a little more background but the two and a half million for Health Care is now allocated up maybe to 5 million specific to the Neil Road facility which is a a tenant then presumably for the tenant who's there so maybe that's where some of the Six Million went from the Housing Authority I haven't seen you know any background about that project um I and because it is our city property to me it's one that really demands upon us a master plan for that property how we're using our property you know because it's it's it's it's our resource I haven't seen any background you know in great contrast I uh the hopes folks reached out to me and they've got a 15-page proposal here 10-page Proposal with numbers and statistics of money that they've requested under that Health Care bucket and I'm I'm trying to understand it one let me be very specific is there more to the cha ask if you will um that's fleshed out that I missed and two why wasn't the hopes folks who said they went through all the process given any consideration thank you two questions first question so I would categorize it differently it's not an investment in cha it's an investment in our own infrastructure and that's the difference between the two asks we're investing in expanding our infrastructure our facility that then allows us to lease that back to the property lease that property back to whoever's there that property has been leased by St Mary's by the hot clinic and currently by cha all since 1999 providing critical underneath underserved communities with Health Care the second thing I would say is hopes is not not being considered Council has allocated a million dollars towards Community Partnerships with non-profits and they're they are contemplated in that project list and that will come back to council as part of that Community allocation okay um thank you for that I want to let you know that I was City staff in 1998 1999 when that's facility open I'm very familiar with this history I want to share with the council I think we need to take a step back from that I don't even know what the elements of this five million dollar remodel are it's never been explained it's not written down anywhere and it's not lost on me that the proponent and the executive director of that organization used to sit in this body and was involved in a lot of those discussions thank you Miss Brookes let's come back to the body and see if there are any other additional questions at this time councilmember Dewar yeah um just to follow through on that housing piece I I was pleased to see that we did allocate additional funding for the projects that we initially did Highway 40 in the last tranche and now they need more money and we're saying well we'll take from the Bonanza and put back into this uh the same with the Sage Street so I'm I'm comfortable with what you've done there I also know that there's a tremendous amount of money that didn't the Reno Housing Authority or other groups get individual Appropriations yes council member uh to answer your question specifically the City of Reno got 51 million dollars in funding the Reno Housing Authority got 60 million dollars in arpa fund alone alone just specifically for housing correct so I think that's an important piece that people need to know that there's a whole separate appropriation and it's gone directly to the agency that is doing most of our affordable housing so I think that makes a lot of sense plus we spent most of our first 25 million on affordable housing I mean that is their number one priority even before we get to things like Parks or or Healthcare or anything else that's what I recall from our first crunch you're correct okay so then on the Neil Road um I just I had a lot of questions myself and you explained that it was a Improvement to our building I just want to I wanted to categorize or just recap what you just said over the years it's been used by you said Saint Mary cha and who else the Huck the hawk yep what is the hawk it was pre it was the previous cha oh okay Hawk and then I just wondered I mean in that once this is completed would we visit with all of those non-profits and understand what basket of services could fill in this 5 million uh new space I if I understand your question I think we would offer the additional space to lease but to include what we know as underserved Community we know that that area specifically for lack of a better term as a healthcare Island for population that needs Access to Health Care well then if we can expand it could could hopes be part of that story I don't know I don't know enough about what the different nonprofits do and what's the similar and what's different I just want to understand is there a process once we build the space once we build the space based on being a healthcare provider facility it would make sense that one person would lease it and lease that additional space and not one person one group okay and I think both have different missions well keep us a price of course exactly and then finally in my remaining time I just want to cover a couple of these I want to go back to Parks and Recreation I also had an opportunity to meet with a lot of flat field advocates for All Sports and they're so passionate and they've been at this for so long I just wanted to put it on the record that since I was the director of the Truckee River flood project starting back in 2005 I have advocated to use lands that we have purchased for flood control dual purpose for recreation now that is a long time that is over 15 years I have been advocating for before I was on Council far longer to build recreation in any place that we could that we have a government owned the the lands at the river flood project are owned by all of us but in held in the name of the flood project since I've been on that board the last four years I have pushed them to move forward they've had other priorities but I'm not going to stop I just wanted the the field folks to know we have control over Pembroke we own it we can move forward with that we have a couple Partners on the flood project and we have to get them all on board and that's going to take a little longer I know I'm out of time but I just just want to say about the parks planner I'm so appreciative that you put that in because putting money in capital projects to go do these things you've got to have the Staffing that's going to be able to move forward on these projects and without that I mean it's great that we have the money but who's doing the work so thank you thank you councilmember Ebert yeah I do have some questions so just to clarify when when did the process start for allocating the funds the process started back in 2021 okay and when when did you complete the process for this presentation for allocating you know so there's multiple steps in the process in 2021 Council accepted the funds at that same time Council directed us to go out and get community input what's important to the community came back to Council in 2022 and got approval of the priorities established and at that time immediately started funding some projects so about 23 million dollars worth of projects are already underway this is the Final Phase or final-ish phase of the process where we're coming back and allocating the remaining dollars to the projects that have been identified both through the community input as well as Council input okay so this is pretty much decided before before I came onto the council this is a multi-year project yes yeah so just I looking at all this there's a lot of great projects on here and I'm really glad that there's going to be funding for pickleball so hopefully you know everybody will be happy but um I'm just curious as to why the seniors are only getting a million dollars I know they're kind of a vulnerable part of our population and I'm just curious as to why their funding is so low comparatively to other groups I look at it a little bit differently I think we've under we've identified how important they are and we've allocated a million dollars directly to them for senior specific projects but if we look through the parks projects and the recreation projects those are all inclusive of seniors so we're supporting seniors through the 28 plus percent of improvements to our Parks and Recreation infrastructure and found it important enough to also set aside a million dollars dedicated directly to supporting just that population so I think we've we've done a the team has done a tremendous job in identifying that seniors are a big user of our Parks and Recs Department let's increase that improve the infrastructure add new things like pickleball and new facilities and ensure that our outdoor pool is functional and at the same time also give a million dollars specifically to that population to say what are the other key things specific to seniors that we can help with Okay so this will be National programming or anything like that it'll just be for senior programming and the projects under concept right now are going back to the senior citizen advisory committee for that feedback and that input great thank you that was it thanks Madam mayor thank you so much so a couple of topics they tell you never to talk to you about they get very controversial I'm going to go through them it's children religion politics and money right and we're talking about money right so it always gets very controversial and one of the things I don't want to have happen is where we're pitting each other and projects against each other that's not how this works but you have to have these discussions ahead of time to make sure that you can come back give us a presentation and it's always that the council's discretion that if we wanted to go in a different direction we can do that that's why we're here today that's why we have a public process but you have to start talking about it because the window of time is so short right and and I just want to say the City of Reno has invested a lot in affordable housing especially in the last five years we've given away a lot of land we've done a lot of cdbg we've helped on so many different levels when it comes to you know whether it's zoning or working with Green Street that we've just done a lot in the Sage Street project has been incredible um and also I think it's really important we continue the work with the Reno Housing Authority that's why Willie J Wynn came to fruition and I believe the and we're also helping fund Dick Scott Manor that's correct correct okay because we've had a great partnership and I want to make sure that that continues to happen that we're not pitting projects against projects and when there is one affordable housing project and it's not the Housing Authority everyone in the community has to be grateful that those are all coming to fruition because they do help and they make a difference the other thing I just want to kind of point out for those that are watching that may not know I like to keep it at three minutes because that way the rest of the council can get all their questions on the record that's what's fair and that's what's what I want to make sure is Equitable when we sit up here and we have a lot of time going into Council meetings with Council briefings and uh you know speaking with staff and whether you're speaking with staff or in an email there's always constant communication so I don't know what that looks like but I want to make sure because I don't want it to be adversarial in any way and I think it's important to communicate on all levels and it's not a retaliatory effort I know that it actually comes down to respecting each other being kind and considerate and so I think that's what the council needs to continue to do when they interact with staff so I just want to clarify that because I I think that everyone's voice matters whether you agree with them or not that's really that's important so anyway so I want to say thanks thank you okay I'm going to come back and see if anyone has any last comments councilmember breakfast yeah oh you are not you're ready to go I do a woman Ebert the other reason that I felt that it was really important for cha is because the area in which it's located that that's our facility has a high population rate of seniors and they really need more accessibility to health care that is super super critical so that was another reason why I really felt that that was a great opportunity for that building that we have and here's the problem not a lot of people are doing health care and listen we've been great partners with hopes as well anyone in the community working with them on and anything when it comes to access to health care is really important whether he was a colleague or not that has nothing to do with it it's a very small percentage of people working in that space of entities working that space in the community so I do want to point out one of the other reasons I was so supportive is because of where it's located because there's such a high population of seniors over there that can't afford Access to Health Care that's remember breakfast yeah I mean on the Housing Authority Authority funds and the housing affordability need I mean it's it's endless it really is the determinating uh consideration of the last 10 years that has had economic growth but it has had a lot of hurt and pain and I think we're just still kind of at a a an influx point we're recognizing how much has happened now the 60 million the Housing Authority got I understand is just to preserve I thought this body wanted to help move forward um with the Bonanza I was always on the fence I don't know maybe Mr Jacobs wants it now and maybe you know it's it's it's out of the Run for the Housing Authority because there's a competitor but I I I'm surprised the council doesn't want to move forward with that but if you're you know I can accept that on the cha I just have a few questions because I haven't seen a shred of paper and this is five million dollars five things the five million dollars is going to do to that facility expand well I I mean we can talk about five things but it's going to expand to the footprint of a facility we own and Lease the building the building by up to five thousand square feet okay and I think the reason you haven't seen paper on it is because we need funding to understand is this a prior is this a project we're going to move forward with and then we're going to work with our Public Works team to understand what does that look like how can we expand the facility what can we fit into that facility I I have a problem because as it feels like we're building a private Hospital you know and in private I'll say a non-profit but all of our hospitals are non-profits so we're building a hospital facility for five million dollars and you said that the hopes could maybe come in for the 1 million to non-profits but um then the non-profits lose out I would really really encourage the council and it sounds like Miss Stewart usually reads A Lot hasn't read The Proposal from hopes because they don't want to colease it with cha they want to build it and they're 50 percent they're building with a location yes so so you have read it but I mean this is so much more of a firm project than a concept of five million dollars that you know we know we're expanding a building five five thousand square feet I would really encourage the council to pause that 5 million and um let the hopes and the cha equally commit for it and the fact that he was a colleague here that he was talking about it as a council member two individuals is problematic for me we need a little more evidence as we learned from our last colleague who left us um those ethics issues follow you into your next job and he was advocating as a council member in this building and outside for this money and we're giving it without a shred of a piece of paper thank you councilmember breakfast your time is up yeah just really quickly for the record I want to State very clearly councilman Delgado and I never spoke about this project not once so I want that on the record that is really important the other thing I do want to say about cha is that they have an incredible track record but they also serve some of the most difficult populations that do not have health care Healthcare is critical on so many levels so and and hopes is really critical as well and we have been a great partner with hopes along the way as well so that's what I'm saying I don't want to pit projects against each other I do think it's good to go to both of them and see what that looks like exactly because I can say you know I have some concerns on the Hope side whenever I hear that some of those tiny homes are vacant right so I want to make sure do they have the capacity to make it work and then also cha I am that I don't know I have not heard anything other than the clinics that have opened up it's not a hospital I want to remind everyone it's like a clinic um but I have not heard that they have struggled with any of their programming and again it's such an underserved population and so needed for our seniors and everyone that lives over there and they're so underserved so underserved but again I want to make it clear for the record I never had a conversation with councilman Delgado thank you madam mayor I'm going to bring this back to the body and and sort of give you my concluding comment Mr Hodge this is very positive and exciting day because the allocation of these funds I think will have transformational impact for our community it is obviously to me that some members would rather throw bombs and grenades and make innuendo and snide comment uh sort of lay the tracks for conspiracy theories in a way that is just not reflective of good governance and it's unfortunate because we have a lot of folks in the audience today maybe this is their first time coming to city council and I hope what they take away from it is we're here we're working in the service of the city you and the staff have been tremendous advocates for all of these projects and even the projects that maybe have not made it to the final allocation you're still a huge advocate for them as well we live in a very incredible Community where there are lots of groups doing lots of good things and everyone knows that there is perhaps there's less money for the kinds of things that we might otherwise like to accomplish in the world we live in it's like a blanket that's too small and we try to stretch it so I think we've made very good decisions the allocations in this entirety if you look at the entire allocations of the 51 and a half million dollars that we made as a city represents strategic Investments I think 30 percent nearly in Parks and Recreation um 20 percent in pandemic response nearly 20 percent in affordable housing more than 10 percent in community programs Public Safety represents 12 so all of these percentages perhaps those are very interesting and to government types like yourself who really think about the way in which allocating dollars is done but but hopefully at the end of the day what people take away from it is we're we're working hard to think about critical needs of the community whether it's health care and access to it whether it's parks and recreational opportunities whether it's affordable housing Public Safety all of those things can be positively reflected in our vision for what Reno can and will be and I thank you for helping us to get there I think councilmember dewer's comments have really resonated the most with me today as they often do always very thoughtful about the process and so I just want to thank her for her leadership on the issue too because we've got a lot of moving parts we have new members staff has been very gracious to work with us and work through it but making these Investments is strategic and also takes an investment of time hundreds of hours literally that have been spent by staff so I'm going to turn it over to council member door and see if we can't find yeah let me um try a motion I would like to do two motions actually and I think I'm going to take them one by one the first motion I'd like to do is to move to approve the allocation of 1.47 million dollars of the arpa and it's slfrf acronym what is that state and local fiscal Relief Fund okay to balance previously approved projects this second I have a motion by councilmember by council member Taylor before we get to call the question I'll see if there are any questions from the body ask questions at at this point you know to the degree to the degree that I understand you know the Six Million this Alec reallocation involves the 6 million from the housing authority and I don't sit on that board the mayor does um and she's comfortable with it but I usually defer to the Liaisons but I'm just I'm very uncomfortable because I thought we made a very a good faith promise to them and the letter from that we got yesterday from the executive director made me feel and look that you just can't pull that money from someone who's out there working in the market as the Housing Authority has for decades trying to acquire properties and so I'm troubled by that and so the I vote no on the allocation based upon that thank you me this is the reallocation okay I have a motion my councilmember Perdue or seconded by councilmember Taylor any other additional discussion or comment at this time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed post motion carries all right so I'd like to next make a motion to approve the allocation of the remaining 26.672 million arpa slfrf funds uh to the identified projects and priorities as you've presented them uh Mr Hodge okay but motion by councilmember duer second by councilmember Taylor any additional discussion at this time yeah remember breakfast yeah you know there's a lot to like in this plan I'm particularly warms you know my heart who worries a lot about the city's finances that the finance department has held back what they project could be a nine-month eligibility of lost Revenue because I'm I'm very concerned about how things are going in the economy at this point you know the wreck stuff is great um it's going to be a real aggressive job to spend it um and it's well distributed I hope the Lear theater will do a a plan first because we always talked about that rather than you know exterior finishes because you can't do exterior finishes on a building that's falling apart and doesn't have good programming but the the cha really bothers me you know I I ask is there a shred of paper anywhere of a proposal for this this is a 10 10 of our allocation it's going to one tenant in one building and there's not one shred of paper explaining what it is I just do not think that when all that money was you know issued back in DC with good faith to local governments that it would go like this I really do not believe that no shred of paper you know we no proposals the listening tour did not result in any proposal from them like it did for hopes I cannot vote in good conscience for ten percent of the money going out the door in this manner so I don't know on this motion thank you any additional questions or comments at this time I do also have a comment councilmember Taylor the floor is yours sorry um I just want to um agree with council member breckis um I I think the Community Health Alliance is great but I think that we should have also given some consideration to hopes to maybe possibly given them some allocation as well any additional comments at this time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please do divide by saying aye aye aye any opposed opposed opposed motion carries at this time we're going to take a 10 minute recess and just everyone can get up and shake their legs out we have a turn let me ask Madam mayor you've got till 1 15. Mr Hall how much time do we have for the attorney client it's going to start up it's going to start at one and probably about 15 20. okay let's come back to this body at 1 15 is that acceptable to the colleagues okay we'll be in recess vice mayor just so you know whenever we come back okay Madam mayor thank you so much thank you to all the community members who are here we'll be in recess till 1 15. foreign foreign we are prepared whenever you are ready okay we are reconvening the meeting at 1 17 p.m and we will open with the consent agenda Item B okay Mr clerk do we have any public comment on this item we have no public comment okay I'm going to start then with Council items that anyone wishes to pull for discussion can I start with uh the gentlewoman from Ward one yes I'd like to pull items B5 B10 and b11 and that's it so to be sure I have B5 B10 and b11 B 5 b 10 and b11. okay thank you councilmember Martinez none additionally for me I just wanted to make some comments on B1 and B10 and B1 as well thank you on B1 oh sorry my apologies B10 and b11 okay well those are already pulled by California breakfast so you'll have the opportunity then council member um Taylor nothing for me thank you so much yes I was going to pull B5 also but um B6 and all right that's it okay thank you I have B6 uh councilmember Ebert uh yeah I do just give me one second though I'm sorry okay no problem um oh no I guess I I don't at this time okay thank you okay to confirm I have items B5 B10 and b11 as polled by council member breckis an item B6 is pulled by councilmember uh doer can I have a motion on the remaining items so moved okay so I have most of my council member doerers second by councilmember Taylor any discussion hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously item B5 is pulled by council member yeah so this is a settlement agreement with the um hold on sorry uh with Walmart related to big legal um litigation related to opioid misuse by that retailer and we have along with many other jurisdictions agreed upon you know the terms for what we can use that money for it's not um you know it's it's not fully within our discretion and I just want to understand because um you know it has to rectify um consequences of opioid abuse um and and health going forward are we going to come to talk about some framework for using these funds and I would hope within other jurisdictions because it seems like I I'm concerned about rolling up some of this money to set up our own Program stand up our own programs when our sister jurisdictions like the county which plays a lot more in um in medical issues also is going to have their own program so I was wondering if maybe is the next step the manager could talk about how he thinks he's going to convene us to look at that this These funds and any might that might come from other um litigation because um you know obviously with the last item we got a lot of work to do a lot of one-off programs projects management and I just think this is one where frankly a lot of times I'm skeptical even of um you know a lot of regional approaches but this is one where I would almost be comfortable delegating the city's funds to the board of health or Washoe County to allocate in whatever programs they they are looking at Mr manager have you had any um uh preliminary thoughts or discussions with others about how to use these funds related to the allocations that are you know required in the or specific in the settlements I've had the briefest of conversations with my counterparts in at the county and at the city of Sparks and I think sort of the your suggestion that it be delegated is certainly one book end of that conversation but um as we go through it and better understand the federal guidelines for using the money we'll be able to stand up a program that benefits the citizens of Reno do you have a timeline for putting that before our agenda on our agenda I do not okay well I'd like to see it sooner than later because I I don't want it to be a broken thought and I also or for you know lost thought and I think it can be dispensed with rather quickly so I I'd be looking for to see that on the next three months maybe once we adopt the budget thank you okay any other questions or comments at this time counselor for breakfast can I get a motion please I'll move my councilmember breakfast second second by council member Martinez any additional discussion hearing none I'll call through the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously okay item B6 says council member do were and it looks like she stepped off the dies for a minute so we're going to trail for a minute there we'll go to item B10 yeah so 10. I pulled these B10 and b11 and we can roll them up together I had questions in my agenda briefing and I never got an answer on them so um that's why I did pull them again um because I the questions I was asking weren't weren't delivered to me after my briefing um so I'll just wait for a stop reporting and trying to understand what's going on here good afternoon for the record I am Mike Michelle the engineering manager with development services before you this afternoon are two resolutions that accepts the streets in two silver dollar State subdivisions in the North Valley what you see here is area one phase one that is subject of b11 what you see here is area one phase two which is subject of item B10 when I use the word accept what I mean is that the city is accepting the offer dedication for the streets that were offered by the developer on the final map when the residential lots were originally created and the city is accepting the physical Street improvements that the developer caused to be built they offer a dedication that was made with the final map was rejected by the city when the map was created and this is our standard practice the offer dedication remains open pursuant to NRS guidelines the city Only accepts streets once the developer causes the streets to be built to City standard we guarantee the streets are built to City standard through the city's quality assurance program wherein the developer hires an engineer record and this engineer record provides inspections and reviews test results only firms that are on the city's list are qualified Engineers of record are allowed to be Engineers of record for city-owned infrastructure after the engineer of Records submits the necessary paperwork to the city quality assurance program and the developer requests that the city council accept the streets it's then that I come before you with the resolutions that you see today I recommend that you approve resolution subject of item B10 and b11 and I'm available for questions yeah so thank you Mr Michelle councilmember breakfast three minutes so your period so we're getting we're getting in some cases maybe an almost four-year-old Road section well you know I look at it as we're getting an extra warranty period because that this developer has maintained these streets up until this point and you know the the way that this particular developer works is that he does all of his vertical Construction and then he comes back and requests that the streets be accepted by the city and it's just taken him this long to do it well I mean he's he you know I guess that's more of a market approach but the the question I have is what what's the warranty period is it 10 years from this action the warranty period is one year it's only one year yeah so we will go back we we will go back a year from now and make sure that nothing has been broken yeah and then when do you go in and do the slurry seal don't you do that on yours what years what years are those the developer slurries the streets just before we accept them but don't you do a protective one on new streets within the seven years of the life doesn't street operations do that I think I think in a seven year time period we'll be out there again slurring the streets yeah yeah I so you look at it as an extended warranty that's how I look at it I mean we've gotten free maintenance for four years well and not really because we haven't you know it hasn't been used um I mean you're giving certificate of occupancies along the street yes I didn't know that was loud the street is open they need Public Access it's not Public Access that's under the tenant of map well no it it it's Public Access today not accepted I don't know I I did not know that CFOs were going on Road had not been accepted I didn't recall that we had that practice you know so within this year before the year ends what do you do to understand because we go by we live and die by the pavement index Factor right and it's the other side of the house it's the Public Works house so the pavement index Factor do they do a pavement index Factor do they do that same standard measurement because uh through this through your warranty period we we will go out there and physically walk the site okay and we will be able to determine if the pavement is up to standard or not you don't do any Core measuring no that's what they do to evaluate the pavement in Index right and and I mean down the road you'll do that but not not initially okay it's all visual okay well I did want to understand that I didn't know that we let people live on undedicated streets but okay thank you very much I'm not going to make a motion on this but any additional questions or comments at this time councilmember Martinez yeah I I appreciate you giving us that information and sharing a little bit about the process I had an opportunity to visit with the maintenance and operation stuff so my question is going to kind of kind of come from that aspect um so I was just wondering if you have had conversations with them and if there were any concerns or anything from their Department about accepting these streets um we we have inspectors that are within our quality assurance program and they coordinate with our maintenance folks before we before we accept streets okay thank you any additional questions at this time I'm looking for a motion I mean um Ward four I think I'll make a motion to approve second by council member doer any additional questions hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion carries financially for the record I think that was items both items is that right as we open them that's what I thought yes Mr Hall and the objection Mr McQueen are you referring to B10 yes it's items B10 and b11 were opened simultaneously okay noted okay we'll go back now to item B6 as pulled by council member doer so this was really just a shout out um I I'm so pleased to see that we continue to apply for Grants and get the grants I mean this is a million dollars that we're going to have a Ada accessible bathroom and which which park is this in oh you have a presentation yes I said I do have a brief presentation if you're interested in hearing it sure um so before you today uh agenda item B6 is the acceptance of the fiscal year 2022 Economic Development initiative Community Project funding Grant um for park facility upgrades at some are some of our restrooms um next slide please oh hang on okay so here's an overview of the grant itself uh Congress awards grants to communities under the economic development Initiative for the purpose of supporting uh housing homelessness prevention Workforce training public facilities Parks resilience planning and other critical infrastructure projects these Community Project funding uh awards are administered by the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development and the funds are subject to the rules and spending categories outlined in federal legislation and by the U.S Department of Treasury we are very grateful to our Congressional Delegation Senators Cortez masto Rosen and Congressman amade for investing in our Parks um now onto the project itself we've identified four uh Park sites those are Idlewild park at the snowflake shelter Idlewild park at the kitty land uh Huff acre Park in Manzanita Park and the reason that these four sites were prioritized were because currently um these are seasonal restrooms because they're metal structures that are highly susceptible to freezing in the winter months so not only would improvements at these sites Advance our ADA compliance plans but they would also be able allow us to be able to provide year-round Ada access at some of our highest use Park sites um so some details on the project itself the objectives for this grant is to remove and replace the CMU units the restroom buildings currently these buildings lack sufficient space for ADA compliance and the new restrooms that will be built will be a twin-sided single user configuration and with that this is the recommended motion I'm happy to take any questions yeah thank you um one reason I pulled it was as I recalled and I saw again two of these bathrooms are in Ward 2 and the others looks like in Ward one and one thing I asked in my briefing was just um are we replacing the whole bathroom are we adding features that will make it be able to be open all year and be able to be Ada accessible and then it always also asked about the water fountains and just correct um so it does include the removal and full replacement of the structures as far as the construction details I can defer to our Parks manager well what I'm surprised about is this the total cost 1 million um yes so what that means is that these bathrooms are about 250 000 each correct which is even though that's a lot of money it's relatively less than what I keep hearing for General Park construction stuff you know so I think I'm impressed with the number it's lower than I would expect and I'm glad the whole structure is going to be removed and they'll be year round and then you also say that there would be automatic locks so that they would be open but then they would be closed when the Park's closed is that right which I think is great because that saves on personnel absolutely for the for the record Matt brezina city of Ringo Parks manager and uh yes these will all have automatic um timed entry locks on on all the doors so they will lock uh simultaneous with our our park hours and reduce the need for staff to be on site to lock them well and the other thing is that I get a lot of complaints and I don't know if my colleagues do about people just not being able to access the bathrooms during you know the off seasons the winner and they're there they're walking maybe and they go to use the bathroom as locked and it sounds just such a terrible message you know that the it implies the park itself is closed we don't care we don't you know we don't want people here you know everything about that's wrong and so I was really pleased to learn that these now could be year round I don't know anyone else if there are no additional questions councilmember yeah a motion to approve B6 but most of my accounts members do our second by council member Taylor any other additional discussion at this time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed name motion carries unanimously and very grateful for your work and seeking out this grant is this an annual appropriation yes well there's different initiatives right nearly yes um thank you yeah okay now Mr clerk I believe we're on to item D2 is that right yes and we'll be opening items D2 and three together okay let me first ask um to staff desire presentation or discounts will desire presentation I do I assume that we would like one so that's great uh Mr clerk do we have any public comment on this item we have no public comment registered okay let's start with the staff presentation welcome Mr George always a privilege thank you all right good afternoon Mr vice mayor and council members I'm Justin George senior civil engineer for Public Works and I'm here today representing the Reno fire department for delivery of this project staff has been working closely with the Reno fire department on these items and with me today is fire chief Cochran I have a short presentation that will highlight the plan to complete the Reno fire Reno Fire Department Central Station project by 2027 so Council has asked staff to begin the process for a new downtown fire station with the appropriation of two million dollars in bonds for preliminary work on the new Reno Fire Department Central Station project staff is seeking Direction on the plan to demolish the old police station at 455 East 2nd Street to build Central Station and for approval of consultant agreements for schematic design this council's prioritization of Public Safety and your fiscal responsibility we are back to present you this plan to begin the Central Station project using two million dollars from the general obligation bonds adopted by resolution during the march of 2022 council meeting the fire department has been without a permanent downtown station since 2008. that is when the old downtown fire station on Evans Street was demolished to make way for the aces downtown ballpark stadium fire department personnel were split between the temporary structures at station number one on Fourth and Valley shown in the image on this slide station number 21 on Mill Street and at City Hall today station number one is one of the busiest in the city and has been doing so from a tent structure the Reno Police Department will be moving out of 455 East 2nd Street to the new Public Safety Center at 911 kunsley Street in the summer of 2024. this leaves the ideal site to repurpose for the Reno Fire Department Central Station many locations downtown were analyzed for Central Station but this was identified as the best location as you can see in the aerial map on this slide it is centrally located has great access to Major streets in all Direction and is still within the same district as station number one the parcel is large enough for the fire department's needs at just over two acres and another feather in the cap for this site is that it's already a city-owned parcel on that note this site has been in use for emergency responses for over 70 years and is only a block away from the old downtown station that was on Evans Street as we've discussed with the public safety center project the current police station on site was built in 1947 and has reached its useful life therefore it will need to be demolished after police has moved out the struck the current structure is over 50 years old and will go through the proper steps for the demolition of a building of this age Central Station will be designed to accommodate diverse fire and Community functions the facility is anticipated to be three to four stories tall sixty five thousand square feet have six fire apparatus Bays two ambulance base and approximately 80 parking spaces some of the functions of Central Station include fire administration offices firefighter dormitory and fitness areas along with public spaces for Community Education or Outreach programs so what does this mean for the fire department Logistics fire Administration from City Hall and firefighters from station one will relocate to Central Station in order to get the ball rolling on this project we need approval of consultant agreements for preliminary design work on Central Station this will be a multiple phase project as shown on the timeline on this slide the first phase of this project is to get the schematic design of Central Station schematic design is approximately 30 percent of the final design the deliverables prepared at this point will include a site plan floor plans and preliminary renderings which will give us a good vision of what Central Station will be phasing the project in this manner will allow staff to better adjust the recommendations following a review of the schematic design along with those other deliverables is a construction cost estimate that will help fire and finance find funding sources for final design and construction some of those potential funding sources include sale of the fire station number one property at 4th and Valley sale of the police parking lot at 511 Kinsley Street grants bonding and capital project funds for this first phase approximately eight hundred thousand dollars of the two million dollars in bonds will be used for schematic design consultant agreements and the remaining amount will be used for demolition of the old police station our Consultants will also be putting together a set of demolition plans for the old police station at 455 East 2nd Street we anticipate bidding at completion of the public safety center project and we'll be bringing that to council for award to the lowest responsive bidder we will also be bringing final design consultant agreements back to council for approval around that same time as stated earlier this phasing plan is for a Central Station opening by 2027. so along with providing direction to staff on demolition of the old police station for use of this city-owned property for fire Central Station these items are also for approval of consultant agreements for site skills site civil schematic design and Architectural schematic design respectively as you can imagine this is a very complex project with a lot to accomplish as you can see here the Scopes of work for each consultant are very different and take looking at the project from different points of view in short the site's civil scope of services is for the horizontal work from which is from the utilities in the street to the foundation the architect's scope of services is for the vertical work from the foundation upwards we've had great success with engaging site civil engineers and Architects separately this helps to better manage Consultants resources and get better responsiveness the Consultants were selected from the city's list of qualified Consultants that has updated every two years by an open statement a qualification process the site civil engineer and architect will work together in collaboration with the fire department and Public Works to develop a program that best meets the needs of our First Responders and our community that concludes my presentation thank you for your time thank you Mr George this is exciting moment because of course we've been hoping and sort of planning for this for a number of years and now we're getting closer right I know there's a number of steps to go before we get there but thanks for the hard work even to get us to this point let me start by asking if my colleagues have any questions thank you so much um yeah I'm very excited you know we included this in the 60 million Bond if I recall uh this effort to plan and get started so I was surprised in my briefing to find out that we had centered on a on a place you know last I heard we were reviewing everything in the downtown General so I think it is a good place um two things one you made a very big pitch in this in the Moana pool for design build but I don't hear that here now I hear a different approach could you just explain why so the way we've set the project up to this phase is to get to schematic design which is that 30 phase which at that point we'll be able to Pivot and we can adjust it it makes sense for us to bid the demolition of this project as a hard bid rather than a c-mart I got you but we can still go through that 30 design with which if you recall from Moana 30 is the time that we engaged Core Construction for that project so how are we finding the design build I mean it was still kind of experimental for us is it working so you're referring to the Moana Springs project in this case yeah correct the uh the construction manager at risk delivery method has been has been a great help the um seamar Core Construction they've provided valuable constructability of the project which has helped to steer design and also they've provided valuable cost estimating Services which we typically would have to engage separately from from our consultant agreements I've heard a lot of positive out in the community about the progress now they see the parking lot I know the underground stuff's supposed to take quite a while you know so there may be a period where we don't see so much yeah is that what you have to say too yeah correct it with that CMR process it's really you know putting your foot on the gas Full Speed Ahead and um we're hoping to see vertical results on that site soon once we get through the permitting process so my other issue and question you you had two columns and what I didn't see on that list it's amazing there would be something I would not see and that is that I believe this building's 70 years old it's a city Arena property that it needs a historical analysis so that it is captured very much like what we did with the Virginia Street Bridge so that I think whether it's pictures or whatever it takes to understand this building and then maybe make a presentation for the atrium of the new police Public Safety Center something about the old and so I didn't see that on the list was there one of these Consultants that was going to do that work see I will be working with our our design partners and with our development services Partners on the the demolition of that old building and making sure we do go through the the proper steps as far as notifying HRC of I just really don't know I don't know myself so I'm just alerting you to not skip this step and I want to just say um when I was working on the flood project we were Excavating a landfill to build a new project and in that landfill we found the remains of the Old City Hall Reno City Hall and there were giant big blocks of granite we were able to repurpose those for art projects at Bicentennial Park ultimately there's also the Marquee I guess you'd call it for Reno City Hall parts of that so what I want to do is if there's something safe salvageable and reusable that could be recycled into something else like what you know we found the stuff in the landfill I would have rather just had it right and not had to go on a treasure hunt to find it but do you see what I'm saying yep yes understood okay something that's on our radar thank you thank you councilmember duer I think for my part Mr George I would like to convey a couple of things number one obviously I've already said my thanks but also you know the the site the historical nature of the state may be something that I'm not seeing but I think it's worth exploring right let us make certain that in the desire to demolish the site clean it up do whatever we've got to do there that if it's more than you know a rectangular prism of some kind or a special rectangle that we are preserving some element of the history sometimes that is as easy as being done in photos I think if you are up at par at all in the lobby of the Sheriff's Office you go in and there's some historical markers and some reference points for the history of this area so I think some of the building includes like old jail speaks exactly so I don't know maybe you know someone famous once was an overnight visitor there I don't know but please just in the rush to create the new please remember to honor the past and so to the extent that we can do that whoever we work with are you know request as a counsel would always be to consider the historical important of a place so I appreciate that comment um sort of third among my points is I want to make certain that as we go out that we um are making sure that our vision for this Central Station is a broad and large one right um it shouldn't be uh the Taj Mahal of buildings meaning it won't be built out of you know Alabaster and gold but it certainly be should be something we're proud of and the men and women of the Reno fire department can be in for the next I don't know if it'll be 50 years or 70 years given how we have used our historical buildings it sounds like we can use them for a long time so don't dream small I don't want to see you know come back in a year from now we thought wow we should have had a lot larger gym right or we should have had more crew quarters I mean the building perhaps is going to ultimately house maybe one of our historical apparatus uh you know that we I know that we have this issue going on city-wide where some of our historical engine equipment is sort of without a home currently right it's it's moving around it's I think coming outside they got a homo see he learned something new every year but my point is is if there is a way for us to continue that threat of honoring our past let us make certain that there is space for it in the new building and then my fourth comment really is um I suppose is both on topic and off topic but you know councilmember Dewer asked about the seamar project construction method and the delivery method and I'm glad to hear your comments about core at Moanna Springs because obviously because we have gone down that path in a new way for us as a body it's good to know that you have good thoughts and feelings about that delivery method because it went from I I go by there quite often and sometimes I stop just a moment to pause and reflect on what is going on there at the Moana Springs aquatic center and part of the thing I'm Blown Away by is course professionalism the work being done sometimes you don't see it because a lot of it started underground and then but ultimately I think we're going to find two that group has been a very good partner and one that we can continue to develop a relationship with so those are my comments and then I'll go back to the body and see if there are any comments for my colleagues councilmember breakfast yeah I'd like to hear from Miss Van Buren our finance director to elaborate on some of the financing plan for this project could she come up to the diocese and could you bring up the timeline to the slide with the timeline thank you um Miss Van Buren um Mr George talked about the fact can you hold on a second just let us Van Buren get up to the diet okay we won't run you we'll give you some extra time but I want to make sure she's situated okay thank you so he mentioned a number of funding sources and he's showing a project completion by 2027 so looking out in the future to 2027 he mentioned bonding what comfort of bonding do you have based upon your projections and your forecasts do you feel comfortable at this point taking on in that time frame from the general obligation pledge thank you for the question Vicki Van Buren Director of Finance right now we are looking at various options I've been in conversations with the city manager regarding some different options that we do have bonding would be one of them um obviously cash for portion of it if we could do that and we have some other funding that we have been discussing as well at this time we are looking to get the design so we know the full cost until we have the full cost of the project and the actual timeline once we have that design then we can really dive into how are we going to fund this and how best can we do that okay I didn't hear an answer there on an amount and you're the third Finance director in the over 10 years I've been on and at least the last one told me no more bonding we're where we need to be and I thought I'd heard that from you previously and so you know I am very concerned this Council should be concerned and understand 2027 is not that far off if you can if you're if there's comfort in putting out another General obligation ban I I don't believe there is I don't think it can be supportive we're moving very late into budget this year usually we have a better idea of what's going forward but we're making big financial decisions I need to share with you all that this project the 2 million that was shown on the slide from the 60 million which is just very preliminary work we even bonded for that usually a city will not Embark upon a major Capital project and even Bond the front end work so right then you're already in a hole in a public budgeting perspective and you know next thing is we took passes on the arpa money for this purpose I am very concerned that the honest answer is the truthful answer the accurate answer is there is no bonding capacity that can be absorbed when you put into everything else the debt we've already taken on the bargaining agreements we signed up for the added positions and so I would really encourage the council to put a hold on this one right now get through budget get an answer on where you're going it is not appropriate to be a jurisdiction having the engineer come forward and talk about um you know design build and the you know the demolition this talk about the historical until you get the capital lined up the capital stack needs to be lined up and understood integrated into the rest of your budgetary commitments that is number one I've sat through and been with this organization for a lot of years I saw them do retract I came in in really difficult times you cannot bond for this project you are going about this without the basic information that you need to understand how to move forward and it is going to be a problem and at the last point I'd like to make welcome I'll get another three minutes yes per our rules and the ones you agreed to I want to make sure councilmember breckus please give everyone the respect that we've shown to you thank you so much Miss Van Buren maybe I can start with you number one how are we doing on the budget I've heard at least three or four times today in the meeting at various times unrelated to the agenda items but some aspersions about where we are in the budgetary process I think that we're at the same place we always are and having been now through four budget Cycles how are we doing on the budget just writ large the budget process thank you for the question the first round of workshops at the end of March and we are wrapping up all of our presentations for that right now and part of that is because the projections even for next year won't really be till us till the end of March correct we have I think the March 29th deadline sticks out in my mind March 25th is one of the final projections come out from the state we get preliminary projections on March 15th yeah and so I just want the public to understand that we're we're supposed to be we're fine the sky's not falling there's no conspiracy theory let me ask also um you've been with the city for how many years now [Music] yeah awesome what an incredible job you've been doing thank you for stepping up to the plate and and being in a position to help guide us the third question I want to ask about is the financial Advisory board so I serve as the liaison to it and you're obviously integrally and involved with it we've been able to do some pretty incredible things over the last couple years especially under your tenure that includes balancing the budget for the first time in more than 30 years is that correct yes um it's also meant that our financial Advisory Board also reviews all of the budgetary processes including our bonding capacity is that correct absolutely absolutely appreciate too that you have been more we'll say it this way you have been very conservative in your approach oftentimes you've planned for a growth model and certainly the revenue has come in higher than not we're eventually going to land at some point in time in the near future where we're going to be more of that flat budget model I think for the next year but that's also in light of the fact that you've been conservative so we're still going to exceed a number of the targets that you've set for this organization is that fair absolutely and we certainly as you know on a pool and with also the public safety center those were topics that we talked about for many years and those finally came to fruition through cash and through other means and then some bonding so we are currently working on a plan for that and we certainly wouldn't present something that did not work well and I appreciate that and councilmember Dewer is often very good about reminding us that on the Moana Springs project it was a combination of all those things it's not just that we went out to bond on it it's that we had some private money we had some money we had saved we've also in your 10-year refinance a number of our bonds to make it so that the bond payments were lower thereby saving the city money over the long term of the course of those bonds is that true absolutely and then I suppose um ultimately the question is um I I don't understand the question entirely so maybe we'll work through it together but this concept that like we've reached our bond limit like that I'm not sure I understand bonds are One Financial tool in the toolbox as I understand it and they're used appropriately as we work through those issues is that a fair assumption it is it is people and personnel and the other expenses and we measure that what about our financial ratings as a city I know that different index indices and different agencies I don't know if it's standards and poor or whoever it might be but they will evaluate our financial largesse and and how are we doing in the eyes of others we're are doing very well we have a above average rating we have the double A minus which means we are very very stable and in fact we've increased over the time that you've been with the organization last year we received a bump up yeah and then last but not least and I think councilmember duer could correct me if I'm wrong but all of what we do is reviewed by others meaning this whatever budget we come to will go to the state it's vetted by them I can't remember the body that Miss Stewart sits on or has sat on for a number oh no that's for debt um that's the Washoe County debt management commission and they meet quarterly to evaluate and this is funding for this project is coming out of the 60 million that they approved and then you issued thank you Miss Van Buren I appreciate you yes any other questions from the body at this time Miss breakfast round two yeah you know a lot of that argument of well we haven't hit our limit we're a minus those are not um supporting uh information to this inquiry if you think about you know your own home where you get credit card applications you know coming into the house and stuff that's kind of how um you know the rating agencies and the bonding ceiling which is very high you know operate you it's not places you don't want to go to particularly when you have other obligations I'm I'm trying to help the council not get to a place where I've seen this body be because when it turns it turns very very poorly um we are behind in budgeting while we have our usual three hearings where you hear from the Departments usually in February sometimes in January here a little bit more of the outline now we're watching the numbers see taxes dipping a little bit below we all know that because we've received those info that information but bringing on another debt a general obligation debt is a going to be a very risky thing and it is not going to be prude proven to be um good fiscal management it is not um with other obligations so I you know I have confidence that that's I wish it was so I've argued again and again do these projects in sequence close them out and then move on okay that's why I objected you know Moana pool is the reason I ran back in 2011 but when you married that up with the Reno Gazette Journal building that no one had the City of Reno buying all of a sudden we're buying it and it's become a problematic and expensive project at least close those out and the seismic project before you tiptoe into something that can only be made real by going for more debt or balancing with your personnel costs and other ongoing obligations think about this think about this very seriously because none of you at this table three of you have never sat through a budget period before and none of you have sat with a resolution for layoffs in front of you but I have okay so that's that's that I do want to talk about the demolition a little bit we've had so much demolitions in downtown Reno this property actually is across something that was demolished in it for 20 years has not been able to go forward the demolitions the leveling of downtown Reno start to add up to disinvested downtown I've never been to Detroit I've never demented Beirut but we have a lot of leveled ground so I would really encourage you even though you've got a program in here to demolish to demolish at a very late date when you know you have the capital to build up even if the police has moved over because we don't need more demolished buildings in the City of Reno and More Level ground it just signals to anyone who comes to town like a bull the bowlers I saw the other day there's no investment there's only tear Downs so that's just uh you know kind of a thought I had and you're saying Mr George that the demolition won't happen until at least 24 Justin George civil engineer or senior civil engineer for public works that's correct um police is moving out summer of 2024. okay no work okay done until they're out of the building yeah just just I would really encourage you to to not demolish a building until you absolutely have paid for and picked up the plans and have a contractor go on Reno does not need more vacant land it's very terrible from an urban um perspective thank you any additional questions or comments by the body councilmember Dewar I'll look to you for a motion a motion oh sure um adds to D2 We have one in D3 one right so um two separate motions so D2 I'm gonna and before I say this I do want to agree with councilmember breakfast about the demo I let's say that we were in a unforeseen situation and we couldn't bond for the next phase then potentially we could find reuse for the building you know as it stands with some updates but I tend to agree I think it's better to have an asset unless it's being broken into or has a leaky roof or something that it's it's not sustainable but if it's still workable I think keep it until it's time to I I think that's a good principle but you'll let us know anyway on that um I mentioned that because the very first words of this are removed to approve the demolition of the Reno Police Headquarters and the building of a new Reno Fire Department Central Station facility and approved the consultant agreement with Dao for the site civil schematic design and demolition Administration for the Reno Fire Department Central Station an amount not to exceed 419 000 and authorize the mayor to sign second they have a motion by Council overdue or section by Mr Martinez any additional questions or comments at this time yeah yeah I mean as I mentioned before the managers prevented me you know unlike you know for the last 10 years meeting quarterly with our finance director he's he's he's blocked me from having that input and it's retaliatory I mentioned before for my job evaluation can you please stick to the topic at hand I don't believe anyone has retaliated against you that's your opinion I I do have an opinion and my opinion is that you should not disparage people unnecessarily in this context please stick to the agenda item uh Mr Reese I think you're abusing your power as the chair but I'm gonna I'm gonna anyway I give you additional time but please stick to the item in front of us so that we don't have an open meeting law violation I'm not worried about that I want to say that I did quite a bit of research onto our current financials up on our website you know I may not be having the conversations to understand because I'm not having the conversations I'm not as where I was before with that direct communication understanding where we're going on real time but I spent a lot of time on our website the financials are pretty out to date I would encourage the council particularly As you move into budget to really direct the finance director to get those 10-year estimates to plug in some costs and worst case scenario you bond for the whole thing so you understand what the repercussions are to Staffing to the bargaining agreements to everything you need today to create that this is a bonded project going forward and how you work with that obligation with the other obligations you have the the finance department is not updating the great tools that we put into place after 2012 in terms of modeling and understanding where we're going forward we were making really great ground that is not going on so please be mindful of this if you sign up for this please be careful on these outer years particularly as the economy is starting to dip thank you I won't be supporting any additional comments or questions at the time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed name post motion carries so then on D3 I wanted to make another motion uh move to approve the consultant agreement with TSK for the architectural schematic design of the Reno Fire Department Central Station uh in an amount not to exceed 404 or 300 404 300 and authorize the mayor to sign second I have a motion by councilmember Dewer a second bike councilmember Martinez any additional questions or comments at this time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed opposed motion carries we're closing out that item and moving on to item D4 Mr cecconi welcome to Chambers it's nice to see you in Reno I know there's been a lot of snow days down your way in Carson it's nice to see you though in Chambers I'm very glad to be here thank you vice mayor all right vice mayor Reese members of the city council Nixa County legislative relations program manager for the record uh thank you for the opportunity to give you a little bit of an update on our legislative priorities and some of the conversations that we've had so far this session so today is day 31 we're about 25 percent done with the legislative session as you know there's a lot of work to be done still and there are some major deadlines coming up major Milestones so on March 20th uh legislator Bill introductions will all of the bills by individual legislatures legislators should be introduced by then and then there are remaining Bill introductions uh with respect to various committees within the senate or the assembly yesterday I got some great news about Senate Bill 12 that's our Charter bill and uh the hearing for that has actually been scheduled for next Monday so very excited about that and excited to to talk to folks about our Charter bill and and move that through the process some of the major themes that we've seen so far I think this is of uh is of utmost interest the council but one of the things is housing affordability also a lot of folks have been talking about homelessness and different uh services with respect to mental health and uh other other things uh with respect to collective bargaining and Labor Relations uh there's been a lot of conversations um especially at the state level but some of those will have local impacts working on monitor on those then finally some elections bills that change mostly ministerial things or different uh different ways that we handle elections in the state of Nevada especially after we had gone through the process of changing to mail-in vote uh mail-in voting so with respect to a housing affordability yesterday I had the opportunity to testify in support of assembly Bill 62 what that bill does is it added other eligibility criteria for a developer to apply for property tax exemptions currently that has been a huge administrative burden for folks to get the home funds in order to get that property tax exemption so being able to support that and watch that go through the process has been great the cities of Las Vegas Henderson and Sparks also joined us in in support of that bill assembly Bill 213 is a major overhaul it's an Omnibus Bill with respect to housing and land use currently we're just working with the stakeholders to better understand some of the impetus and what what uh we're looking for in order to make housing more affordable across the state um the other two bills assembly Bill 218 and Senate Bill 78 those don't necessarily have a local impact but I know that those have been things that we have been talking about but the city council has been talking about for quite some time the tenant protections the first one just goes over some clarification and including some of the things like a list of all the fees that might be included on a rental agreement or Senate Bill 78 that has some similar measures in including uh the the list of all the fines and some definitions of deposits with respect to homelessness assembly Bill 135 just expands access to identification it would make it a little bit easier for some of our unhoused individuals to get identification so that they can get back on their feet Senate Bill 142 was the is the homeless person's Bill of Rights and that just uh defines some of the rights as homeless persons have the same rights as any other individual in the state of Nevada Senate Bill 155 that currently as you would see on the website says that it's a homeless person's ordinance restrictions but we are working with the stakeholders and understand that Amendment an amendment will be coming to uh copy some of the things that we had done with our community court because the ACLU and the bill sponsor so so proud and so happy with some of the things we're doing at the local level with respect to elections assembly Bill 95 that's a candidate petition Bill and what that does is it would require every single candidate for office whether nonpartisan independent or uh of a major party to get a certain amount of signatures in order to qualify for the ballot because we don't have a signature verification process at the the city level I did go ahead and testify in opposition to that because we would have to create that process and there would be an operational administrative burden Senate Bill 53 would just change the candidate filing period this is coming from the the Secretary of State but it would change it from March to uh January for all elections and then Senate Bill 54 Secretary of State elections manual that would just create an elections manual that City Clerks and county clerks would follow from the state level with respect to collective bargaining assembly Bill 172 would require that uh municipalities or local governments publish the information for all employees that may be uh under uh the same contract of members of the Union so that the union could have uh conversations with those individuals if they needed to assembly Bill 211 that would expand uh pers compensibility for uh law enforcement dispatchers what this would do is allow them to negotiate at the local level with their collective bargaining unit in order to be in the same police and firefighters retirement fund so just changing uh the rate at which their pers is paid Senate Bill 166 currently that is a a low impact on the City of Reno and the the definition of supervisor supervisory employees with respect to peace officers but we will continue to monitor that and just watch it to see what operationally that would change uh some other bills that I thought were worthy of highlighting I testified in support of assembly Bill 2 which is the blue blue lights bill from the city of Sparks in order to allow for our maintenance and operations and Public Works folks to just uh have those blue lights in order to be safer on the streets during especially the inclement weather that we've been facing recently assembly Bill 131 that's a Statewide urban forestry program we did submit a letter in support but that would just uh create a Statewide program that we could go to for technical assistance and that would examine some of the things like Urban heat islands and whatnot assembly Bill 140 is some cleanup language to establish that Juneteenth is a state holiday it is already a Federal holiday this would just uh clear that up Senate Bill 92 is a sidewalk street food vendors Bill we did go up in opposition to that the reason being is that this would um prohibit or restrict the the way that we regulate this legitimate business practice at the local level whether it be hours or location we would have to rewrite our our current ordinances and we are still able to change many of those things at the local level without State preemption Senate Bill 169 that is a requirement currently for a master plan to include heat mitigation elements to address things like Urban heat islands and uh we will be going ahead and supporting that bill and there's the recommended motion thank you so much Mr cecconi let's go now and ask first what's their public comment on this item there's no public comment on the side okay I'll return then to the body council member yeah sure a couple questions so the could you go back to the elections part I just wondered what problem they're trying to solve would the candidate petition what what do they see as the problem what's the fix the bill sponsor had mentioned that other states use this system in order for a candidate to qualify for the ballot the other thing that the bill sponsor had said was that they were trying to fix an equity issue because currently all independent candidates have to do this this candidate petition so they're trying to level the playing field or at least that that is what the bill sponsor is going on who is the bill sponsor uh assembly man Orient liquor okay the other thing was this moving up the time to file from March to January you know I just on the face of it I feel like that it is um somewhat discouraging of the candidates that the reason is is that it takes a while to decide if you want to run for office and I found if you have to file in January which I think the judges do is that right I would have to go and look at that okay well I think the judges have to decide um in January um it's the holidays you know it's it's a it's a convoluted period And I just I think there's a beauty in March personally I don't know again what problem exactly we're trying to solve do you I don't remember off the top of my head what the tech what problem the secretary of state was trying to solve but I'm happy to go and look at the meeting and review that and get back to you okay um and then I think there was another one before that um yeah I mean I have questions on a number of the bills but um I am following along so thank you for the update I'll just leave it there thank you very much okay councilmember Taylor moisture I thank you Nick for being here and all of the information I know you're working hard I wanted to just bring a little attention to the homelessness stuff that we're doing here at the City of Reno and I wanted to give a special thanks to our ACM Bryant and um Cynthia Esperanza and it looks like some of our partners are very interested in some of the work that we're doing so thank you very much for those folks and everything that they're doing thank you councilmember breckus yeah um was there anything going on with the economic development incentives that um go wig can give out have any bills dropped on that I know it was kind of the Tesla stuff came out and they said um you know those are granted but uh and did you testify at the goed meeting I did not testify at the go ahead meeting okay but are there any bills related to clawing back the economic development incentives I can't say one way or the other I'd like to go back and look at the build tracker just to make sure that I give you accurate yeah yeah because that kind of came out you know probably um strategically by Tesla's effect you know to drop it when you know at this point in time but um then uh taxation policy related to revenue sharing um could you look at make sure the tax bill that all any tax laws that are coming through would look about cross county lines and that sort of thing in response to the impacts of you know these big economic development subsidies to one to Tesla that then impact you know our County and Lyon County if you see anything because I think we need to be there at the table and talk about it in 2014 when it came out and it was a special session we weren't at the table I heard later from legislators where where was Reno oh well you know we weren't there and I think that was by Design because our lobbyist was also a Tesla lobbyist and then our city manager had just worked for the governor who was the architect of the bill so I think we need to be at the table and you know really talk about these impacts of these you know fueled Economic Development projects sex because I I don't think that Academia has been done but I think some of the big presumptions of a byproduct of the Tesla um you know tax breaks and incentives was the escalation on the housing price and costs and affordability and so we just cannot absorb Another Mountain of that kind of growth without having the resources is to come to us on the back end um to the degree that there is tax sharing and I think the tax sharing at the time in 2014 and I think I'm the only person on the body was here then um I think at the time um you know one of the arguments about tax sharing was well there's no Revenue to be shared because Tesla isn't paying for any but I think now Tesla is starting to pay some taxes and those go to Story County to provide the services but they might also need to come to us to share in that because we've provided the bulk of services because the bulk of any local government services or to the residential component and Story County hasn't absorbed the residents Washoe County has so does that make is that helpful background to you do you understand I'll continue to monitor locations yeah if you could keep an eye out and to skip daily have a bill looking at Cross jurisdiction impacts I believe you're referring to Senate Bill 81 which just looks at growth uh and gross reporting from the counties that are impacted yeah yeah it doesn't get quite to the mechanics of Taxation but how's have that has that Bill had a hearing yet that bill did have a hearing and he's working with other stakeholders with stakeholders to to re-examine that bill did you testify I did not okay I read it and someone who you know because I think it's embedded into the regional planning uh statute for this County um did not see a problem with it thought it was not a bad approach so thank you councilmember breckis I'm going to come back to the body before I do I wanted to just address a couple of things first of all um certainly if there are consequences of the goed decision to continue a policy of tax statements one which was not brought to the legislature but for which the legislature and attempt at wisdom seeks to fix please let us know I assume you would um I think councilmember breakfast is right that those decisions have exacerbated accelerated some of the issues we're now facing but I also hope that there would be legislators who would be wise enough to find fixes for them perhaps it's through some kind of Revenue sharing model as council member Breck has posits uh perhaps it would be related to other controls that would be put in place obviously the City of Reno had no position on goed's decision to allow for tax abatements but we'll certainly base the consequences of that decision and of course for that reason we want to be able to be aware of it second of all I did notice when I looked over that in our Gallery over here our chief equity and Community relationships officer Cynthia Esparza is here and it was kind of council member Taylor to mention her also because it's her birthday so we'll say hello and happy birthday to Mrs barza who was not here this morning when I tried to embarrass her then but I know that um the one of the chief issues that has occurred in uh Carson City this session has been related to that Equity component and so I hope that as we continue to go about the work that we're doing and as you look at the number of bills that are there identified that cover all measure of topic from Street vendors to homeless persons Bill of Rights that we continue to lead with equity and that as an organization we've established that as one of our guiding principles in fact maybe it's perhaps our most guiding principle and so as you look at and evaluate the bills continue to remember that that has been the cause and push by this body is that we frame a lot of the issues through that lens so that we know what the impacts of these decisions whether it be on taxes personhood or Bill of Rights type issues all of the things have some Equitable components so continue to monitor that for us and then of course last but not least hopefully you're hearing the same feedback that I'm hearing about your work in Carson which is that it's been excellent that you're putting in a long long number of hours it is early in the session I think you said we're maybe 25 percent of the way through that means you've got to sort of make sure that you aren't burning yourself out at the front end because a lot of the heavy lift comes early but to a t every person who I've spoken with on the legislative side that means legislators and on the lobbying Corps side other of your colleagues has remarked that you are doing an incredible job representing the city that your voice is well respected and that when you are in front of the Committees for various reasons that your command of the issues is very solid so that's just a moment to say thank you for the work that you're doing and continue to grow into the role thank you very much uh just a follow-up you know we were I was talking about the election aspects and I wanted to I didn't really explain why I think I'm concerned about moving up the time frame from March to file to January the longer the election season is the more money people spend you know there's time to fill so they're raising more money they're spending more money and I don't really think it goes to the issue of trying to keep the costs down in this process like just lengthening the time I don't I don't know if I could have done another two months of running for office you know like file and run it's just very intense period so I don't know I I let's pay attention and see what happens and what the why and then on the there's the bills the Statewide urban forestry program and the heat mitigation I'm glad that you supported the urban forestry we've already been getting support out of the division of Forestry so I'm not sure if this just makes more resources available perhaps is there actually going to be funding to support these programs I believe there will be funding and you're correct I think it just further defines uh that that office that is looking at urban forestry and how they can help the local and Regional uh okay um and then I um when the heat mitigation Bill comes up that sounds like something we might want to support too I mean we've been a leader in this trying to do the offsets because Reno is warming so quickly relative to the rest of the country so you know I'm glad that you're supporting those okay any additional questions from the body at this time councilmember Martinez can you give us a motion be happy to uh motion to accept the report okay I have a motion by councilmember Martinez second by councilmember Taylor any additional questions of this time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously thank you Mr cecconi thank you closing out that item we're moving on to eat ordinance introductions of which we have three Mr Hall as to items E1 E2 and E3 you'll go through each one of them separately I take it yes okay and then can I ask Mr lequi do we have public comment on any of the items so that I make sure to catch them we have no public comment registered for any e- items okay so I'll turn now to Mr Hall so E1 is ordinance introduction bill number 7231 ordinance of the city council the City of Reno Nevada repealing ordinance number 6596 and dissolving City of Reno Nevada 2021 special assessment District number two Stonegate one created for the purpose of acquiring and improving a sanitary sewer project and a water project and matters which pertain to or are necessarily connected there with word for okay I'll turn now to see if the body desires a staff presentation councilmember breakfast do you desire a staff person I just have some questions okay well let's see who's going to come forward from staff and I just want to say hold on one second let Miss Van Buren get to the mic yeah you know this is one that just as ardently as I argued against uh you know the bond I argued strenuously against this exercise that we're now reversing um and so you know here it is comes to fruition bad idea we have to correct it and you know sometimes you hear a lot of well we we just don't have the time the staff resources to do this or that um and that's because sometimes that they're working and chasing on bad ideas and this was a really bad idea it was lobbied heavily by the interests who wanted this tool they failed on their part and you know staff can say well they gave us a deposit and we used it but you only have 40 hours a week and the time that staff spent working on this was time not getting other things done done and so I just want to call that out and but more specifically you know two questions is one it seemed like they gave you notice back in 2021 that they weren't going to be able to move forward on this and I had to read about this in December of 22 in the Oscar that this event had happened what was the delay why didn't the communication come to stop and maybe because you and I are not meeting regularly but at direction of the manager but why why did you wait so long to inform the council that that this had fallen apart this deal thank you for the question councilmember breakfast Vicki Van Buren Director of Finance um well this particular in this particular case they notified Us in December of 21 we do have a developer financing agreement that was approved by the council and with that they had until December of 2022 to issue the bonds so at that time they were not ready to issue the bonds I can't comment on what their status of was as the developer but we were ready as the city as far as coordinating all of the pieces that came together to make that happen and so during that time it was apparently determined that they were not going to move forward and we waited and to give them that time and then we sent them the letter to let them know once the bonds were not issued that the agreement would be dissolved okay I really think that in that lag time you know it's a financial matter the council should be getting updates on these sort of things and I will apologize if there wasn't one coming through but the first that I saw was a note by are Auditors in the after and council members should not be finding material financial matters in the after because it's a report it's it's back looking we should know that number two they deposited with you what 150 000 150 000 and then as we paid the bills that came through for the assessment engineer the appraisals the bond attorney we had financial advisors those were all outsourced so we just coordinated that and paid those bills and then they replenished it back to the 150 000. so is there any amounts owed to us or to those that we facilitated the work with have you heard from any of those that they are default in on any of their payments we will make sure that everything is paid out of the deposit before we refund the remaining balance okay so sounds like they may have some defaults um but I mean how does that work say I'm engineer Joe and I was working you know and and I still have a bill do they get to bill the hundred and fifty thousand or I mean and you pay that or do they just is Joe just got to go after the this party to my knowledge all of the bills have been paid to this point because we were ready to go more than a year ago to issue the bonds so all the bills were paid up to that point the only bills we have right now we have a little bit of attorney fees um that from this process okay so an attorney I don't remember the council doing an attorney vote whose attorney do Scott shaver is the bond attorney oh the bond attorney okay we yeah okay let me come back okay thank you over two minutes now and I want to see if anyone else has questions for my part I'll comment as follows Miss Van Buren first of all it comes as no surprise that I see the world a bit differently than my colleague from Ward one I don't see this as a failing of the city council's making meaning um we I was not on the council when Stonegate was approved for development it was something that came before my time but having been on the council then when the project had been approved and the sort of land use planning decisions were made to go there I am a person who believes that we should always be rooting for the best centers of Reno and for the folks who are trying to build projects here which will impact you know positively our housing and the growth trajectory of this region and so when this particular Bond item came and the sad concept was first floated I think this Council was cautious there were lots of questions that occurred over a period of many many months and a number of my colleagues of course who are here now are not on the council at that time but it was a close question because we did not have the same experience with sad is that other communities had although we do have some here in the City of Reno I live inside of one in Somerset for example but there was sort of an agreement that if sads were to be used as an appropriate tool for the kind of investment that needs to be made to bring utilities to any area whether it's water infrastructure or roads that this was a potential vehicle for doing that and so I think with the best of intentions we went down that road I believe that your office is fully capable of compartmentalizing and handling its workload I think your folks put in long hours and that you've let no stone go unturned no moss grows on on any of the work that you're doing so I appreciate that ultimately of course we had a global pandemic the housing market has been greatly changed it will probably have some changes that will still reverberate and so that also means ultimately that projects like Stonegate may have had to change and pivot and and I am not in that industry so it's hard for me to know that the consequences that a global pandemic would have on a project of this size and scope and so for my part there was no risk to the city because of the deposit agreement it meant that we here at the city council were making a sort of a a measured response to say having this approved project go forward wanting to see it succeed that if they wanted to finance it using this method we were in agreement with doing that and there were a number of different Clauses for it but ultimately it appears that it has not worked out in that way and again that's no fault of this bodies it's certainly no fault of you or your office but have changed market conditions and so um I I just want to make sure that people understand that we have undertaken the due diligence necessary to perform our duties under the agreements but the market changed and the owner of this project was not incapable for whatever reason of moving forward in this vein and again that's no disparagement to them I mean I'm sure that they had their desire to make the project go to but here we find ourselves so I'll be supportive of the repeal of both of these are all three of them when they come through any additional questions from the colleagues councilmember breakfast I'll come back to you for round two okay so um the bond councils owed money now if they don't pay do you have a hundred and fifty thousand dollar deposit from this outfit we do we still have money on file from them to pay that okay and so that money um you could pay them and then say there's a balance left do you just give that back to this group yes that's per the developer financing agreement okay you're sitting up here right now you've been in this room for a half hour so is your time being built to them right now on this project no I'm not building this um this that is one of the lessons that we didn't learn through this process is that we will bill for staff time although I would say it's very minimal outside of being here at Council we review some documents and we coordinate with the the other um special items such as assessor and the bond Council and the financial advisor and appraiser we kind of coordinate that information but outside of that we don't have a lot of hours into it okay I well I mean this is three agenda items you know we I thought we were billing I thought we weren't being made hold for all the staff time that's news to me um and how will you integrate that in into the agreements then going forward I mean I know there was agreement last week that I you know argued strenuously against again and felt it didn't meet the guidelines because it exceeds the bond amount in the guidelines it's not an eligible project through the bond guidelines but um you know the council did what the council did and the council is always right when they make a decision but that agreement tax on all the hour an hourly rate for employee work um well we will be coming to council with a developer financing agreement for that okay okay and we can Define it in okay thank you very much appreciate it any additional questions or comments at this time hearing none I'm looking for emotion I'll move to introduce is this that yeah move to introduce second to refer I think oh no second reading uh refer to a second okay so I took that as a move to refer the bill for a second reading and adoption hearing that motion from council member council member doer I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously item E2 Carl Hall thank you Mr vice mayor ordinance introduction bill number 7232 ordinance of the city council the City of Reno Nevada repealing ordinance number 6598 and revoking authority to Levy Assessments in connection with the City of Reno Nevada 2021 special assessment District number two Stonegate number one matters which pertain to or are necessarily connected there are two I have a motion by council member beckus a second by council member do or any additional discussion hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed name motion carries Humanity unanimously item E3 ordinance introduction bill number 7233 ordinance of the city council the City of Reno Nevada repealing ordinance number 6600 and revoking authority to issue City of Reno Nevada 2021 special assessment District number two Stonegate number one local Improvement bonds series 2021 in the aggregate principal amount not to exceed 36 million 860 000 dollars and matters which pertain to or are necessarily connected there to word for move to refer yeah but most of my council member breckis a second by councilmember Dewer any additional discussion at this time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously thank you and closing out the ordinance introductions we'll be moving on to item G1 and we have no public comment registered for this item thank you as to item G1 um am I correct the staff recommendation or the financial Advisory Board recommendation was Judith rot I believe that was correct I'll make that motion second I have a motion by myself and a second by council member doer any additional discussion at this time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye right any opposed motion carries unanimously item G2 as directed by council member doer can I get a motion to continue yeah I'd like to motion to continue to the next meeting we do have public comment on this item Mr vice mayor okay I apologize let's do that first all right all right uh for the record we do did receive one public comment which was directly associated with this agenda item prior to 4 pm yesterday this comment was written uh correspondence uh receive your arena.gov online public comment form or by email to our office copies of this comment have been distributed to the Reno city council and is available to the public on the reno.gov meeting portal uh it represented one in favor and just some clarification on this item it is for three appointments one of the appointments must be for a historian with knowledge of local history and the other two are General positions right that's why I have not completed all my interviews and because we don't have this marked on the application what I usually do on these boards that require special knowledge is to interview the people and see if they have the special knowledge so I haven't finished yet so I want to continue this to the next meeting okay you said we had public comment uh it was a written correspondent so that's been distributed no problem so I have a motion by council member doer can I get a second please I have a council member Taylor Who's seconded the item any additional questions at this time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously thank you and moving to item G3 appointment to commissioner to the Reno Housing Authority okay we're going to continue that item uh until when Madame mayor gets back as that would be her appointment it may be that we will get to that tonight can we continue that to another miss or manager should we continue to another meeting entirely or what is your thought um I think we need to we should try tonight okay let's Trail it for later so we'll just move that to our six o'clock hearings and move on to item hh1 do any of my colleagues have any items in the H agenda I don't see any by anyone okay so we're going to stand in recess and we'll come back together as a body at 6 00 pm then there's event at 5 30. yeah there is an event at 5 30 if you're able to make it it's across the street at the city hall believe Plaza lighting but we're in recess until six eat the Wednesday and I believe that we are on the I agenda items am I right Mr clerk yes that is correct okay public hearing well let the record reflect that the city council is opening the public hearing on item I won Mr clerk was proper notice given any correspondence received Mr vice mayor uh proper notice was given a no correspondence was received okay and do any council members need to make disclosures at this time hearing none at this time I'll ask staff to make their presentation good good evening mayor vice mayor and council members my name is Jason Garcia labu planning manager for the record I'm with development services it's a pleasure to be here tonight I am presenting the application for the tentative map known as Riviera planned Community its LDC case number 2300025 the item before you is an appeal of the January 18th 2023 Planning Commission approval for the project the Planning Commission determined that the project was consistent with the master plan and made all the made all of the findings excuse me and made all of the findings for the project it should be noted that this is a typical land use for the neighborhood and if this was a apartment building it would be directly to building permit review the project site is 0.31 Acres the project is for a five-unit condominium with common areas the density is an allowed use this would allow for six units on the current parcel foreign key issues identified in the project are overall site design building design and compatibility the zoning district is multi-family 14. this allows for 14 dwelling units per acre because it's a 0.31 Acre Site that allows again for six units the master plan land use designation is mixed neighborhood this allows for the development as you can see on the screen there's a number of relevant master plan policies the overall site design on the screen before you is the proposed building in yellow the parcel lines are in blue as presented the development meets setbacks it improves on-site drainage and it replaces the existing circular driveway with a single axis access point on the screen in front of you is a visual this shows an existing six unit apartment complex to the left there and then to the right is a 20 unit apartment complex here's another visual this is from the front this shows the existing proposed development or excuse me the proposed development here's a visual of surrounding uses again across the street is the 28 unit apartment complex directly to the north is the six unit apartment building and then you can see two duplexes to the Southwest in addition the appellant is directly to the north there of the project site the appeal filed before you tonight cites Shadow concerns it should be noted that for structures less than 35 feet a shadow plan is not required under Reno municipal code the proposed structure is estimated to be 33 feet this would be below that 35 feet this is including the proposed walls planning discussion focused on compatibility of the proposed design with surrounding uses building design being an infill project addressing on-site drainage traffic parking and infrastructure improvements and public comments centered around compatibility height and flooding the Planning Commission decision was six in favor when opposed the findings are on the screen in front of you it should be noted that the Planning Commission did make those findings the planning decision is on the screen and there's staff recommendation and I believe the that concludes my presentation so and the app element appellant is up next I believe thank you Mr Garcia labeoux excellent presentation and we'll be back with you in a minute I'm sure for questions I think this might be the first time I've seen you in Council so welcome pleasure absolutely fantastic thank you so much at this time I'll have the appellants to come forward and you'll have 10 minutes to make your presentation hello welcome hi that's real adjustable and flexible so you move it around where it makes sense for you it moves around it's real easy it does all those things okay um hi I've never done this before so um I guess I'll start because somebody has to like pushed up you want to start by just stating your name for the record oh um and O'Brien I live at 2040 Idlewild Drive Brian just because our staff will be able to hear you better you've got to make the microphone come a little closer to you however it will yeah and then make it comfortable for you and then you'll be able to speak into it it doesn't have to be real close you can see how far I am away from it okay does that is that okay I think so Mr spark will you make sure you raise the volume just a little bit for all of us no it's not your problem we just got technology we got to deal with yeah um I guess I can can I start now okay um thank you mayor and vice mayor and city council for taking the time tonight to listen to my appeal as a lifelong Arena resident having lived at 2040 Idlewild Drive my entire life this project means a great deal to me and my family who I am representing my mother is actually here tonight as well um making comment um I'm representing my Father Patrick O'Brien who purchased our family home in the 60s who is still a resident at the age of 87 who has been an active member of Reno since 1959. I hope that my lack of experience in government matters doesn't deter you from recognizing the lack of professionalism as a community we have experience at the hands of the applicants team and your planning staff's negligence of their due diligence so when I put in for this appeal my neighbors and I thought that we that it meant that we had one more chance to try and turn the tide back on this project and have it reformed or potentially sized down but the construction fence is up and the process has already begun so I'm not really sure what it is that I'm doing here but I gotta get my 55 dollars worth and maintain some faith that this development won't happen especially since I'm hoping you will hear how and why we feel as a neighborhood that we feel that we've been failed and maybe come to a conclusion as to how to prevent more projects like this one from happening from happening in our Hamlet on the river and so I hope you will hear a plate and this won't be an absolute waste of your or my time myself and some of our neighbors got the notice in the mail about this development back in December we alerted the other neighbors because this project is very upsetting to us for obvious reasons which will be represented and were presented at the neighborhood meeting and the Planning Commission meeting for your reminder such problems as privacy due to height fence line proximity extreme lack of architectural adjacency awareness the 10 car half underground parking garage of which no examples exist in our neighborhood considering being it's across the street from the river and just overall blatant disrespect of not reaching out to the people who this project would ultimately be affecting for the rest of their days as most of us planned on living here for the rest of our lives anyway we met the engineer at the meeting at the McKinley art center and the poor guy got completely lit up by our community he's not a bad guy he was just a messenger of the incomplete PowerPoint at the time it had a scaled model of a design from an out-of-state architect firm and the structure is a five condo complex with a Central Court and a with rooftop balconies accompanied with a 10 car underground parking garage which personally is the most upsetting part of this entire endeavor they are designed for as the architect said in our meetings for luxury single or partnered living and don't expect children which is odd considering that this is the most highly coveted neighborhood in Reno for raising children due to its proximity to Hunter Lake Jessie Beck and roygam Elementary's with Swope and Reno high within walking distance Idlewild Park the Riverwalk and Chrissy Column park line the river and the neighborhood is alive with families playing year round the vast majority of the houses in this area have incredible backyard space and the existing apartment complexes have the city park grounds at their front door these condos are said to have trees which we doubt because on the layout they are mapped to be located where the five garbage cans and five recycling bins which is 10 total that will line my family home garden fence it says there will be trees in the front where the sidewalk actually meets the underground parking garage driveway and this massive structure will Tower over the adorable vintage sixplex and all of our yards and not add to the established foliage or the wildlife in the area the architect at the last Council hearing we attended here claimed that the neighbor complex was monolithic it's a six flex and monolithic in definition means formed from Marble interactively indivisible large powerful in uniform which is anything but the outer appearance of the complexes in question that were built in the 60s I hate to think it might be the way that they intend for these condos to look in their completion and that his statement was foreshadowing that will torment us all especially considering that it goes against your master plan section n-cn.6 building orientation and setbacks where it states to be consistent with the traditional orientation of structures found in the surrounding blocks of which this project boasts no resemblances the project is projected to take two to three years to complete my neighbors are considering selling their homes in an attempt to flee from this monstrosity that could compromise the sale value of their homes that has befallen our content and cute Community I assume that the project representatives are just doing the bidding of the land owner it's their job but this landowner has never contacted a single one residence before Planning Commission even after the board meetings or did design comparison shade checks acknowledged my family's brand new solar panels which could be compromised by the structure something that goes against your master plan section sd.7 for solar access which also could impede on our neighbors of mf-14 zoning from pursuing installing solar panels in fear of complication with your Co with your codes that would now be compromised by the structure I mean there's a reason that the last Council exclaimed that they felt that this project was handled unprofessionally and were bewildered as to why they were so overwhelmed by our outrage community and were completely unprepared for the outpouring of upset that they had to endure multiple planning Commissioners didn't even read our statements from the neighborhood meeting and your planning manager said that there were a couple and it was a sole member of the commission that there were in fact many concerns in the back of the packet your planning staff boasted that this process helps our community so that they can add conditions to the approval and yet there is only one condition regarding lighting and the fact that they wouldn't already have to follow lighting guidelines is appalling in itself but to only have one condition on such a negatively viewed project by all of the neighbors feels like a slap in the face due to the fact that the men who are handling the design of this project did not interact or interview or take our points of view into consideration and the fact that the architect stated on record that the owner intends to keep two of the condos me means these could still very well be rented by him or whoever else buys the other ones the architect also openly threatened our community with if this project is denied by the council the land owner will exercise his right to build an apartment complex of any kind to his liking and that he wouldn't have to run it past any council at all and then we as a neighborhood would have to deal with the consequences of ever-changing tenants which honestly sounds a bit cautious if you ask me especially since we've had no issue with the tenants of the two apartment complexes on the corners of Idlewild and Riviera the entire time and the line of the night was it could be worse I mean what is that it could be worse this project is a gross form of gentrification in an area that would proudly accept adus and duplex and conversions of existing and historical homes this is one of the oldest homes in the neighborhood built sometime before the 1940s according to the assessor and should honestly be registered with the Historical Society but to not convert the five-bedroom house to an immediate new use and to dismantle the riverbed for an underground parking garage in an area we have all experienced flooding even though we understand that it is claimed to not be a flood zone by the city but I guess we'll see this weekend with that atmospheric River that's heading our way but here we have been for months now trying to maintain the Dignity of our neighborhood and save ourselves and our properties from being defiled by this unmatched Behemoth of a building and yet the only excuses I hear are its own mf14 so they can build this monstrosity by right and I get that there are codes in place but what I don't get is why all are why you're all treating this is you're treating your established residents like this in favor of people who don't respect the allowances set by the city for the city and the citizens of the city [Music] thank you so much I just go away now I stay here no you don't have to go anywhere but just take a seat for a little bit we've got one more presentation to get through and now I will have the respondents presentation you'll have 10 minutes good evening Council excuse me good evening Council my name is Mike Vicks I'm with Monte Vista Consulting and I'm the applicants representative we'd like to thank you in advance for your consideration [Music] um here have you come maybe a little closer to the mic sir as we can hear you will do thank you all right uh this is a summary that Jason covered previously so I'll I'll go through it relatively quickly but uh this is his own mf14 and has been since the 1940s so this is established zoning in the city um for for quite some time now and again the master plan the construction will include the demolition of the existing residence it's not converted in favor of the new five unit Condominiums it's permitted by right as Apartments has been stayed before stated before and the the trigger for coming before the Planning Commission and now you is the the potential subdivision into five Condominiums which will promote individual home ownership and an enhanced level of construction it's also consistent with all the provisions of the Land Development code and we believe consistent with the master plan one thing that we would like to highlight um oh sorry oh how do I go back oh that's probably better huh um in response to to some of our conversations we wanted to highlight the the two areas where we actually are at the five foot setback the um area on the right hand side of your screen comprises approximately 11 percent of that Frontage the remainder of that building is actually set back over 10 feet where it could be five feet right along the entire um the side setback similarly on the left hand side of the screen we have it um it's about 20 percent on the shorter but again a small fraction of the the overall property line in those two areas um I would like to point out that that's towards the rear of the building these are some renderings but both of those occur as the building steps back down to a lower height in the rear so it is not at its highest peak at that five foot setback it is it is stepped down in that area I think it's also worth noting that as we have worked through this process with the city and through the neighborhood Advisory board meeting and the tentative map process that there have been some modifications to the design and the second level was actually brought in some to to be more compatible there are very similar surrounding uses and actually more intense surrounding uses there's a two-story apartment complex directly to the west and then a six unit apartment complex to the north here are some some photos as Jason also shared at the Planning Commission meeting there were concerns of how this would look from the the neighbors to the South and so um Don Clark with cathexis who's the architect for the project put together some renderings from Samuel way showing how this would fit into the neighborhood and so there are a few renderings beyond that shading has been a point of concern and so don put together a shading exhibit you'll notice as we go through the day okay the the shading does not ever reach the existing solar panels it um barely Clips the the building at the end of the evening this is uh in June um is when it was modeled so um oh we don't need to watch that again sorry so we would like to thank you very much for your time and consideration uh we would ask you to uphold the approval of the Planning Commission and approve the tentative map we're available for any questions you have and again thank you very much for your consideration okay thank you to all the presenters Mr clerk uh we'll now come to you and see if we have public comment on this item we will move into public comment we have several registered in the room before we begin 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 the council may not take action upon any matter not agenda is on today's agenda moving into public comment our first speaker will be Tina Dills followed by scottright foreign thank you very much my name is Tina Dills and I am here because I believe this project is not consistent with the Reno master plan it is not typical of our neighborhood in height design or transition the issues quoted of site design and building compatibility conflict with the stated policies and objectives of well-managed growth vibrant neighborhoods and quality places that Reno is known for the argument for can be summarized as it meets requirements yay however I do not believe it does Master Plan 4.1 a for housing options states that there should be a wide variety based on demand however our older family population in the area prefers single level and accessible they don't want to be climbing their groceries up three flights of stairs every day master plan 4.3 B for infill development it is not consistent with the Bland use plan which wants use to fit the scale and character of the neighborhood uh neighborhood growth number 22 the building design uh it is not differentiated through its architectural features the overall section here is labeled Community character Community character in The Old Southwest is characterized by bricks and Gables it is not designed morgue cubes the uh Central neighborhood 0.8 transitions is specifically against this particular project it states that there should be stepped down weight and massing along property lines to meet the height of adjacent buildings it should have increased side yard setbacks and use of Dormers and sloping roofs to transition to the neighbors the City of Reno has spent a lot of money and time and Community input to put this master plan together and these all are things that this project does not incorporate in addition to these arguments there are so many other issues conflicting with the Reno master plan there are no distinguishing features of this particular building it is designed to meet requirements not to have families living in them the tree canopy of Reno will be reduced and we are supposed to be the city of trembling leaves from the Washo Zephyr not from fear of being torn down by housing developments it's going to reduce the solar of neighboring houses the uh little video that we got to see was in June when the sun is at its Azimuth right now it will definitely be shadowing those houses because the sun has moved farther south there is no recycling capabilities and it looks like a bloody tenement block this is not the neighborhood that I have been living in for many years there's been no attempt to engage the neighbors and get our input we have showed up at every meeting and provided our three minutes or 10 minutes of input so this is why I do not believe that this project is consistent with the Reno master plan thank you next we have Scott Wright followed by Anna O'Brien as Mr Wright approaches if there's anyone attending via Zoom who would like to make comment on this item please raise your hand at this time all right good evening everyone Scott Wright 2040 Idlewild Drive um I would just like to reaffirm the lack of professionalism that was occurring during this project um as a geographer and GIS professional um there was no site visit obviously done by anyone the image that you saw on the first presentation was just a Google Earth snip same thing that was in the applicants application this is just an obvious don't care about the site they're just trying to do what they do the image also just happened to be from Idlewild which is on Riviera and just happened to show the two apartment complexes that are there um not all of the single-family homes that are adjacent they didn't show anything down Riviera they didn't show anything as a picture on the other side from any of our yards from the yard of the house looking to our yards on the side either so I just like to reaffirm that that was a gross Overlook from anyone involved that didn't see the site and actually what's going on on the ground which is what we're concerned about staff some minimal conditions are a joke to the tentative map process we just had one involving lighting we go through this process for a reason we brought up a plethora of concerns at the neighborhood meeting nothing was addressed between then and Planning Commission and now we're just dealing with it like like nothing happened so it's pretty great um however the most disappointing fact of all this was that planning commissions lack of awareness of our neighborhood meeting that we had at Ward one um was never brought up we brought up many issues they're all there they were noted by our signatures in the back of the packet no one read it there was as our as the appellant said only one Planning Commission member that actually read the packet and knew they were back there um so there's just not much more I can say I know there's lots of neighbors that were at the Planning Commission hearing that aren't here tonight so they are obviously just as disgusted at this process as we are here tonight thank you next we have Anna O'Brien followed by Nate Voss good evening good evening my name is Anna O'Brien and I also live at 2040 Idlewild Drive um I wrote a little thing so I hopefully will remember everything that I came to say so I'm going to say back in January myself and many neighbors came to the planning board meeting to speak about how this five Flex condo project would negatively affect us and the surrounding neighborhood regardless of what we had to say the planning board approved the project because the developer followed all the rules set by the City of Reno I'm here to question some of those rules first question why is the building in this neighborhood allowed to be taller than two stories in our neighborhood there are two-story homes and apartments everywhere this project is two and a half stories tall because there are five units stuffed onto this very small lot and there's no room for parking so the parking is planned to go underground which is why the building is two and a half stories tall question two why is the setback from the property line only five feet and this affects us significantly because where the five feet is is right on our property line and so we will be affected by that and so this two and a half story building is going to feel like it is right on top of us home sharing the property line on the North and the East will never have sunlight in those areas of their homes and yards ever again creating a dead zone privacy will be compromised with strangers being able to peer into our yards and our windows question three why has the developer been allowed to stuff so many units onto the slot to the point where there was no room for a community dumpster the plan is for the unit to have its own garage its own garbage and recycling trolleys a total of 10 cans stored on our back fence each unit will be responsible for getting their trolleys to the curb and back so on garbage days there will be 10 trolleys on the curb I'm curious how this is going to work out for Waste Management because all of the parking spaces are currently taking up by the apartment complex across the street question four why was there no consideration for the homes and the families around this project we were completely ignored we feel like we have been stomped on this project will not benefit any of us in any way the most significant being the loss of value in our homes you would think the city would care about the existing homes and families that have been there for many many years our family has owned our home since 1965. 58 years after the planning board approved the project their final statement to us was it could have been worse that meant the developer could have planned an apartment complex and then none of this review process would have happened and they could move forward without any scrutiny whatsoever so question five why would the City of Reno tie the hands of their citizens they would not be able to speak out about what happens in their own neighborhood this statement felt like a threat meaning don't complain about this or you're going to end up with an apartment complex in your backyard question six the construction fence is already up around the property have you already decided to move far forward without without regard for what we have to say it seems to be too late for us but maybe you might start thinking about your citizens needs and not the developers and change some of these rules for future projects thank you very much thank you next we have Nate Voss okay mayor council members my name is Nathaniel Vass I live on Riviera street directly across the street and to the West slightly um a few I wrote a letter and so did my partner who I'm speaking on behalf of um of our concerns and sent them in yesterday I hope that you all were able to take the time and look that over because there's a lot of concerns that I won't be able to touch on today um mainly it is parking a lot of events at Idlewild Park the parking underground parking during adverse weather it's just not a reality there will be adverse effects to the parking around my house the vicinity of my neighbors trash placement there's no way to put 10 trash cans in the available curb area in front of the apartment complex so where are their trash cans gonna be placed these are like easy things I brought it up three times nobody's addressed it um uh flooding issues the the design of the property is taking currently it slopes all directions the runoff goes to the other Lots adjacent they've redesigned it so the lot runs off to Riviera Street creating an additional runoff that will cause more flooding on Riviera Street which there's only one storm there kind of by Idlewild Riviera that's kind of an issue and then I wanted to touch on the issues that I just don't feel like this project um really goes by much of the master plan I just wanted to read a few quotes from the master plan for you guys to think about um on nce N8 transitions where infill development is of a different scale or height than surrounding buildings transitions should be provided to limit impact on adjacent properties um ncn7 infield development should be designed fit in to fit in with surrounding buildings incorporating similar Heights lock coverages and whisks in its design I have the the pictures I've been shown tonight are very friendly to the development they only show one side where the big apartment buildings are I have pictures of the adjacent buildings that are duplexes that are actually single level duplexes that fit in with the neighborhood the proposed um condos are actually twice the size of my house I had my house is 900 square feet I feel like that's a great starter home for a family that's why I moved to that neighborhood and why are there these I have no problem with development in the city affordable housing I love it let's do something on the slot that makes sense and fits in with the surrounding Community scale down the size of the condos we don't need condos of that size you know we can make some on part on some on-lot parking for for the residents that makes sense ground level parking would be great for those adverse weather conditions like we've been having lately there's no snow removal on Riviera Street and so this is just going to com further compound issues that are already happening as weather conditions change and get more adverse um I'd really like you guys just to kind of think about the master plan and how this really doesn't fit in with our neighborhood and just seconding everything my neighbors have said and thank you for your time and have a good night thank you yeah seeing no attendees and zoom with their hands raised that it concludes our in-person public comment for the record we receive three comments which were directly associated with the agenda item prior to 4 pm on March 7th these comments were written correspondents received via arena.gov online public comment form or by email to our office copies of these comments have been distributed to the Reno city council and are available to the public on the reno.gov meaning portal which represented two in favor and one in opposition and that concludes our public comment on this item thank you Mr clerk I'll bring it back to the body and see if my colleagues have questions for any of the presenters or for staff do any of our colleagues have disclosures at this time I'm um council member doer had just come back onto the diet so we're going to do a disclosure briefly and then we'll go to council member I just wanted to disclose okay thank you so much thank you councilmember breckis you have the floor thank you thank you very strict rules I never voted for them but they limit uh the questions that any council member may have to seven minutes and sometimes I don't get all my questions and information that I'm asking for as a result on some of these technical issues in particular so uh Mr Le Booth um uh it's the mf-14 zoning District which has a maximum height of 35 feet is that correct that's correct thank you and the height uh at one spot is shown as 33 feet is that correct that's correct and if it had reached that maximum loud height of 35 feet a whole nother trigger of showing a shading plan would have been required that's correct okay um so to preserve the Integrity of what has been shown um I just want to understand what the base elevation of the lot is do you have that Quantified to some elevation um so I think I can answer your question so just just for the record uh two and a half stories is uh allowed in the mf14s well I have questions about that but the base elevation do you know what that is to then measure the up to 33 feet and make sure they don't Contour the ground up to above the 35 where a whole nother set of regulations would have come in I don't have that offhand okay so um somewhere in the planning materials there should be a base elevation because I've seen this happen before with the way the code's been administered that they come in and Contour the land and then oh it's above what would have taken this review and it should have gone to this review and I want to confirm that in the when you administer this if it's approved if we uphold the Planning Commission there is a base elevation that will be understood and they can't come in on civil engineering and knock that up three feet and then really they've gone up 36 feet and this whole new um set of regulations that seem to be the core of the um appellants uh concerns about shading you know they get a pass-through on those so how do we confirm that you have what you need to do to ensure that this property won't exceed 35 feet is it the base elevation today or is it what they come in on the civils so during the building permit review process that'll be addressed so we'll look at what's presented and it's limited to less than that 35 feet so they can't Contour above what's in the plans right now right so we'll look at those technical drawings when they're submitted yeah because you made a decision that this is a 33 foot and the ground is what the ground is correct today that's the the applicant has proposed it at 33 feet 33 feet from today's base level correct that's correct okay and then two and a half stories um with an uh with an how do you count a half with a Subterranean garage so typically when we look at this we're defining it as an underground garage but as long as that first area of that garage area is less than six feet up from that elevation that's that's that less than that story so that those two stories are on top of that garage I thought it was a different definition of a story was at least 50 percent of the perimeter of the the floor plate could not be exposed but you're saying six feet from the base elevation that's how you're measuring it now justification to up to that first story that's true stories above that and so that's the interpretation okay I didn't hear a challenge to that one of the findings we have to make though is that it's consistent with Title 18 and so you're introducing information that I you know I uh you know technical information okay that's great I have other questions for you related to the tentative map and um but with our strict time limits my three minutes are up thank you well as you can notice councilman Breakers they weren't very strict because you went two minutes over which is fine but I know that you like to harp on the rules the rules are for everybody's benefit are there any other members of the body who have questions at the time councilmember Taylor thank you Mr vice mayor Jason so good to see you thank you for being here um I have two questions based on what I heard from the public comment the first one is um I think I understood uh some of the neighbors saying that they weren't reached out to they've never been communicated with and I also heard that there was a NAB meeting so I just want to make sure that this was noticed properly and that there was a NAB meeting to um if you could talk a little bit about that and the second thing that um I heard was that this has allowed an apartment by right and um too bad we could build this so I was wondering if you might be able to address that comment a little bit on on what's allowed within Apartments versus Condominiums I appreciate your time thank you thank you for the questions um to the to the first question for the neighborhood Advisory board meeting that was in December so that was held and a number of the neighbors came out and provided comments and based on that the applicant did redesigns their project um my understanding is the the applicant did not necessarily reach out to the neighbors but they did take that public comment into their design or their redesign and that was presented to staff so then some of the neighbors did attend that neighborhood Advisory board meeting gave comment and considerations were made by the applicant okay thank you that's correct and and just to the to the second part um to your second question um the mf14 that multi-family residential zoning that does allow for the buy right use of apartments and So based on the parcel size it would allow for up to six units so so the action before you today is focused specifically on the tentative map so Apartments they wouldn't have had to redesign their project they wouldn't have had to go through this process they could have just gone straight to directly to building permit that's correct thank you thank you thank you um councilmember duer yeah thank you um chance to read most of the comments in the back of the packet and I just have a few comments and probably some questions even for the appellant um I support infill where the challenge comes in is that um when you say this site can support six it's one third acre for mf14 that's actually Four units not five or six I understand that there is a density bonus being applied which hasn't been explained by the staff that normally this would be only four units but the density bonus comes in where like how small do the units have to be before this density bonus is applied well and that's where in this circumstance thank you for your question in this circumstance the density bonus and what the applicant's proposing would be for five five units so that's because it's less than 1800 square feet usually there's square footage triggers okay and so there's different thresholds so the gentleman made the comment 900 foot and and this is a an area traditionally of smaller homes on smaller Lots right um so where I'm struggling and I always struggle on all of the infill projects is that I want to see infill but at the same time I want respect for the neighbors that already have invested decades potentially into that neighborhood they've bought their homes they have made a commitment to that neighborhood they become part of that culture and where where I where I hope that our processes our neighborhood Advisory Board uh often developers have separate meetings with developer with neighbors to really delve into the issues that they're trying to get at and then they work to address those issues one of the issues that I heard discussed here tonight was lack of compatibility with the with the neighborhood so we put these things in the master plan because you weren't here but I lived through the whole experience and it was brought up time and again that people wanted their neighborhoods to have some kind of cohesive feel I mean I understand in downtown New York City we might have architecture of every Stripe Right very some old pieces that are still Remnant very modern and New pieces big pieces small pieces but in the residential neighborhoods around here what people are generally looking for is a feel to the neighborhood now I understand some of the apartment buildings that were built it looked like very blocky to me from what I've seen and it sounds like the houses are quite different and so I guess when we talk about transitions compatibility I just wonder how does the staff evaluate those things um thank you for your question in this in for specifically to compatibility staff looks at it's really focused on land use it's it's I mean house and house and it's it's looking at the options such as multi-family uh single-family duplex things like that residential commercial that's what we we look at those land use types that's the limit of compatibility you're looking at and and where I'm really going with that is it it Title 18 is doesn't really address our our zoning code doesn't really address the look or how it fits in design wise into the community unless it's specifically pointed out in like a neighborhood plan or something like that just because I'm a little short on time I'm sorry to cut you off when I read those words on the page compatibility to me doesn't mean a house is next to a house it means that there's a similar type of house next to another kind of house and in infill which is going to be something different in other words there's probably going to be increase in density then the effort I think should be made to make it fit with the neighborhood um that's my interpretation as a pretty common person interpretation that's why people talk about it that's why people that commented to US during the master plan development process meant so I'll I have more comments but I know I'm out of time thank you councilmember door um Mr Garcia labeoux let me ask a couple of questions first of all um I and perhaps maybe I'll pause one second before I ask you a question ask Mr hall or Mr shipment a question so I did not fully appreciate or understand from the staff report the claim about the difference between building something as of right there on the parcel versus building this so is our limited review of this project about the question of whether or not it's a subdivision of the lot so that they may be sold so there are five units as opposed to whether because Apartments could be built there no matter what this body has an opinion of like I may decide in my own mind that I don't care for it I'm not saying that's true but I'm trying to understand the land use planning legalities can you speak to that yes the reason this has come to you is because this has been condom minimized which is essentially a tentative map so since it's a tentative map it comes to you however if it was just apartment complex then has been stated before the developer could build an apartment complex by right without going through baseline commission or you and I appreciate the legalities of it because this is where I struggle with it I I have maybe thoughts that are not germane to the question that I've presented because maybe I don't like the size the height the setback whatever it is but I'm not sure that that's what's before us right with the tentative map the question remains as to whether or not it can be subdivided in such a way that can be sold as opposed to some of the other questions I've heard tonight um I appreciate that let me go back to you um give me just one second and then I'll come back to you um I sort of have some different thoughts I suppose to my colleague councilmember Dewer we have had these discussions at this body a number of times over the years about the fact that they're not making more land and all of the easy places no longer exist so now we're prioritizing coming back to infill and infill then creates these conflicts between existing homeowners and Redevelopment of land so I understand infill to be a little different I suppose than my colleague posited about the matching or the character of it and of course you get seven people in a body who are all having their own thoughts about things you'll get seven opinions right so as I understand it though the type of infill that we're talking about is the construction of buildings or other facilities on land that's located within existing Urban or otherwise developed area is that a fair characterization that's correct okay and the type of development of course in that regard and why it matters to our master plan is that is meant to encourage density and accommodate I suppose more environmentally sustainable uses for urban growth so rather than grow north of Reno into the outer reaches of Ward four there's some premium being placed on building where there are existing infrastructure things like sewer Transportation corridors is that fair characterization that is also correct and this is ultimately I think where the difficulty comes because all of us want to be able to support existing homeowners who have made their life in an area and then here comes the new development in that area and so those are often sometimes character changing we've had developments that go in that are in historic neighborhoods or areas where different changes to the character of that neighborhood are very important to the resident and they are understandably upset and yet we have made an emphasis and an important emphasis I think in the master plan about the use of infill and you talked about a density bonus can you sort of explain that a bit more that is my understanding is that this would otherwise have qualified for four but because of the size of it our decision at this body was to encourage smaller lot and smaller unit development so we could get more housing stock and therefore when projects come forward which meet the criteria set out by this body they are eligible then for a density bonus is that fair and that's that's correct so in in circumstances where we have our more urban regions and our Urban zones we want to encourage people where those where there's infrastructure and connections to water sewer and and other streets traffic addressing all those different issues so we actually have a density bonus um policy in our our zoning section that addresses that and what that essentially allows is um yes you're if use mf14 as an example you're allowed those 14 units per acre well it allows for an increase in that if you have units that are of smaller in nature and and honestly that also you know the affordable housing argument that even goes there so it really encourages in those areas uh to to be more compact to have more units and and that's why in this situation it changes from four to six well and I suppose it's also goes without saying that there are difficult moments you know the master plan is like 300 pages and you can pick out a line in the master plan to affirm and justify any project and also to deny or rail against any project so I hope people understand that the master plan is a guiding principles document it's not intended to be both a sword and a shield depending on how you view it I think those conflicts Arise at this diocese right sometimes people are very passionate about the projects that come before us and understandably so but yet they use small parts of the master plan to their benefit and they ignore the other parts of the master plan that they don't want to look at I'm going to I've gone over about 30 seconds and so I'm going to come back to the body and see if there are any questions yeah council member breckus yeah yes Madam mayor you would be first before Miss breakfast so I'll let you uh step in and I apologize I know you're home this evening okay um thank you so much and I apologize I'm just gonna chime in but um at the end I can speak at the end too a curious couple things so it sounds like there was not a lot of Outreach to the neighbors is that correct other than the neighborhood advisory meeting that's my understanding but I would refer to the applicant on that okay so usually what happens is the council member and I believe councilman breakfast this is your award did you bring the neighbors together to meet with this applicant in any capacity at all because some of this is you know it it gets very alarming whenever you're you're hearing comments like this yeah Madame mayor this is this is an issue that involves due process and we're deciders in an appeal body so it's not appropriate for us to be out there facilitating and being um you know engaging ourselves you don't see judges doing that sort of thing when there's competing issues it just doesn't happen really well we should in our capacity make sure that the conversations are happening you don't have to weigh in on those but typically the council member will bring parties together whenever there's concern a couple of things so I so I apologize to those residents because that can be incredibly frustrating and if you know one thing anyone that brings projects to this Council we are very um attuned to making sure that the neighbors are you know being heard and that there is a lot of dialogue going on besides the nav so that's one thing that's concerning the other thing is the trash um that has not been addressed I heard a couple comments from people uh from some neighbors and then the trees and then one of the things that I'm a little concerned about it looks to me that the parking is that on a slope would it go down maybe you can address some of those thank you Jason and by the way good job this is the first time we've seen you and I know sometimes it can be a little nerve-wracking but I thought you did a good job uh thank you it's good being over here from the Planning Commission world so well we're happy to have you so um just to answer some of those questions um Title 18 are zoning actually has a bunch of built-in protections to a lot of of those questions so that addresses um uh screening and coverage as well as Landscaping so so all of that at the building permit level will actually be part of that process our staff will take a look and make sure it's up to code um and you are correct this we are calling it underground parking because there is a dip and it is under those units so there are actually going to be 10 spaces under those condo units so I guess because the river is so close I'm a little concerned what that you know what how how do you figure out if that's going to be problematic to flooding so staff determined that this was not in a flood zone that would be impacted by that and we did consult with our Public Works and Utility Services departments and there was no issues brought up but those will be addressed if that does come up in the future um and I had mentioned during my presentation as part of the on-site development currently there's existing house and it's the runoff is actually going in all different directions and so as part of this this will actually be redesigned it into flow into City infrastructure so that'll that'll go into storm drainage and and be addressed accordingly okay is this in a flood zone so it's in flood zone X so it's it technically is not in a flood zone where we would have specific um restrictions put in okay and and the other thing is I can understand the frustration when it when it doesn't conform with the neighborhood especially some of our older neighborhoods that have a lot of charm and you know what role does that play based on the master plan well that that's where we really at the building permit level we look at that title 18 that's our technical details at when we're going through the entitlements that's more conceptual and that's where we look at these projects to make sure that they're consistent with the master plan um specifically and we look at substantial conformance because we know that not every project is going to fit every single master plan policy so we look to make sure that they're really addressing the key points like infill like safety like environmental things like that okay and just because this is the map then later on you will be looking at that correct that's correct as built-in Productions uh are are part of the building permit review process so uh planning engineering uh and drainage and and all that will be sorted out through that and make sure it's up to code okay thank you and I'll wait for my next opportunity thank you madam mayor councilmember breakfast I think this is round two for you now the zoning District allows two and a half stories correct that's correct is the topmost story a half story under the definition of a story or is that a full story um for this we're defining it as two stories so we're considering it a full story okay it's a full story because a half story is only contemplated as the topmost story but then it's it's got some Provisions that make it less than a full story um so what are you considering the the ground excavated is is that a story so that's again where we look at that Baseline level and we'll look and for anything under six feet above that that's not considered a story so we're defining this as a two-story structure okay so I mean I guess so it is not more than four feet below grade okay can't be more than four feet below grade so I don't know how you get a car in below four feet of gray that's what I'm struggling with for more than fifty percent of the total perimeter or not more than eight eight feet below grade so I I just I I don't understand how you can call this only two stories I mean I think you have to calculate that at that parking area from what I see on the drawings as a full story and so if you're counting the top one you're really bringing forward a three-story um uh uh project that although it's under the 35 feet of the base elevation it is a three-story project from what I am seeing um we don't have a lot of below level excavations although we do have some and this is really really tough area to excavate um but how are you describing that not as a story when that's where I'd refer over to the applicant as far as kind of the plans for design on the parking in a little more detail on that I'm not concerned you could put you know tulip bulbs down there I just really want to understand and I'm fine if they come up and if they're familiar with the definition of a story but um you know that would be helpful the the other point I do want to make um is one of the findings that we have to go with is a rational phasing plan and I want to understand about the timing of the demolition the building is one that is those kind of buildings their Rock are very sought out um and I hate to see premature phasing plan of immediate Demolition and then this project like so many others there's one very nearby a lot of it's to do with excavation costs as I've always understood doesn't happen and then we have a vacant land and the loss of a very sought out building style so I'd like to hear your thoughts on that um I'd have to refer over to the applicant on the demo okay I'll hear from them thank you any additional questions from the body at this time oh you miss breakfast you wish to hear those questions I do I want to understand let's bring the applicant forward yeah you had two questions I think for the applicant Mr Nexus did you um sorry Mr Clark did you hear the questions did you hear the question so so yes the the where the garage level is this we did go down more than half for the garage so that we were and and we actually it is a sloped drive down which you know that the homeowners will have to keep clear in the snow which we're all very familiar with now um so we use that for the two and a half stories too was to go down with that lower level being underground for the most part we would have gone further but we wanted to also on the back two units drop them down to the ground so if we push the the garage further all the way in the ground what you can do um that would have lifted up those units and and made the drive longer which we didn't want to do because we wanted to drop them down on the ground yeah but you can't count under my understanding of the interpretation and I have a long history with this code and the definitions haven't changed but under my interpretation the the parking area you're showing meets the definition of a story you can't call it a half story because a half story is only a topmost story I'm not sure I have the same understanding you do on that thank you Mr Clark thank you I'll come back now to the body and then the demolition plan the demolition plan because I am very concerned about premature demolition the demolition plan the owners moved ahead on that regardless of what they build on the other side I think I'm not sure that's not tied to the building permit well we're going vertical I'm just telling you yeah yeah I understand that they were doing it and then that yeah but we have to make a finding of a rational phasing and we look at the property and it's all total okay thank you I guess in my mind any owner can demolish their house if they want to to build whatever they can build another house they could build whatever I'm not that's not tied to what we're doing on the rest of this from a technical standpoint technical yeah okay thank you thank you Mr Clark we'll come now back to the body I think councilmember you were next thank you um first of all way back when you were speaking to the lawyers I just wanted to get clarity whenever something comes to us on appeal my understanding is regardless of the reason it's come whether it's uh phasing or an issue it's considered a de novo review meaning we start again and we look at it with fresh eyes is that correct I mean we're not just looking at one thing that's correct okay so it's like a thing of first impression we're looking at the whole project um I just want to get that clear on the on the record um my concerns right now are this underground I think where councilman breakfast is trying to go is it's I think her understanding is two stories and a half story so I think it's been posed that this is a half story on the bottom and two stories so I don't know if that matters but it may matter and what is built like maybe the half story is supposed to be I've seen them proposed where it's an open decking you know on top like an open um a rooftop or something I I don't know but let me just go to a couple issues that were brought up by the residents a man concerned about the trash cans I don't know that there's enough Frontage here to line up the 10 trash cans and the 10 recycle bins and have a drive out does someone would I would like to hear an answer on that number two is I brought up with the applicant and I do want to acknowledge you said that you've made changes right now where I'm concerned about is it's the classic just because you can doesn't mean you should you can squeeze in five units should you you know what I'm concerned about is the the coverage of impervious on this small lot the one-third acre covered fully by a building a driveway and the pertinent structures that have to be there for air conditioning and so on and just very little ground for trees or grass or any other thing to kind of soften the whole building and make it fit into the neighborhood so that's an issue I'm concerned about the impervious the open space the ability to fit the cans I think that going from one unit to four units definitely has appeal and definitely meets a master plan and has definitely an increase in density I think what's happened here is going into the five units and covering the site so incredibly and getting right to those five foot setbacks where you have neighbors on either side that's where I think we've just kind of tipped over the balance and that that's where I struggle so I'll leave it there I think I have a few more minutes but bottom line I guess I'm not convinced I I think that was a little bit more time and attention work with the neighbors that could have come up with a plan that would fit and I will just share I am looking for peace and Harmony in Reno Nevada I want density I want increased housing but I also want all of the people that are surrounding which is many this is one or surrounded let's say by ten I want the 10 to also be happy in their life still be good with their Community good with their neighborhood and kind of a live and left live I guess perspective I know Live and Let Live is not addressed in our findings but it is something that I think is within the purview of the developer and the applicant and is is something that can get worked out with neighbors and we can end up with what works for the owner and what also works with the neighbors so that's my perspective thank you any other questions from the body councilmember Taylor it's already been asked but I'd like to hear it's a theme that that we keep hearing is working with the neighbors as I understand it you had a project you went to a neighborhood meeting and you revised your design based on what you heard so to me that is meeting with neighbors and working with them could you tell me a little bit about that process um we we did have an ad meeting and we did do some adjustments to design based on the comments we didn't have further dialogue post that with them and so I mean I'll I'll own up to that all day long um but it was not we did listen to what was said we are very conscious of the privacy and even to um Council councilwoman durers comments on the setback we were very careful we were conscious of the views with them because we also see it as two-way views we also don't want the views to these owners it's kind of both directions actually that you worry about and so that's part of why the setbacks on 90 on one side and 80 on the other side are more than double what is actually required we actually pulled the building further away as well so let me ask you another question while we have you you just mentioned the requirements did you not meet any requirements for public noticing or working with the neighbors they were noticed they were noticed so you met everything that we said as a city that you needed to do yes you did not check a box no okay while he's here though I mean I did ask a question can you answer about the trash so there is plenty of room along the street Frontage and right now there are actually two Drive entrances and we're actually narrowing it down to one and there's a lot of length on there there's more than enough for the garbage cans to be out there and then this comment was made about is there a utility in centralizing that I mean I don't know if that would require Machinery to move in and out there there it's like there is on one level but then you have a dumpster it's a different type of interior and then you know do we want to put a dumpster at the street I don't think that's good for a neighborhoods so that was that's thank you the consideration we gave it yes any additional comments at this time yeah councilmember Ebert you haven't had a chance sure no problem you'll have you're on your I think third round Miss breakfast yeah 102 from the cathexis um documents I really want to get to this ground story because I'm I'm having just a tremendous difficulty with it um I know back in the day you know when you're in slope to terrain it came in a lot more um what is the story what is not but it looks like grade is can we bring that up on the on it is 4160 is grade and Miss breakfast what are you looking at I'm looking out in front of us I'm looking at from the Planning Commission report the Planning Commission stop report there were documents of the submitted request from cathexis they were the you know they're they're very relevant because the conditions of approval always say you know build according to plans so these are the plans and I'd like to see the one that is cathexis's a102 you should staff a chance to find the document you want to look at and when they put it yeah we'll have you continue with your line of questions oh it's exhibit be in the Planning Commission if you we have this uh if you go to exhibit B Planning Commission staff report and then you can scroll down to that onto about a 30 page document I see cut sheet a102 what page of the exhibit is it Miss breakfast um well there's on that yeah 47 Pages there's 47 pages and if you scroll down pass the staff report to switch Pages it of the 47. you get to exhibit B go to 12 you start to get into the cathexis materials and it's a102 it's got a cathaxis stamp on it oh excuse me it might be exhibit D it's um yeah do you see the one where it says cathexis a102 yeah yeah 15 of 47. yeah okay so he's got it on there unfortunately it's uh reversed I wish we had a hard copy but I didn't I didn't print it out I don't know if they can rotate it now Mr um Clark so the the ground level and this is the grade is is what you're showing it is 4160 is that is that correct I think so yeah I think you're looking at the section now all right yeah now so we use the curb Edge if that's what you're asking for our height you use what as your as your base 4160 okay we didn't grade the building up okay so it's not gonna count as a story if it is not more than four feet below grade for more than 50 percent of the total perimeter does that garage area well this is the definition of a first story okay so are you reading I'm not sure I'm reading from the the title 18 definitions and our staff you know what I mean I guess they you know they they worked with you did not Define that as a code because because otherwise we'd be have three stories I'm not as a story so is it more than four feet below grade I believe so yeah for more than fifty percent of the total perimeter yes then it's got to be counted as a story if if it's below grade I mean when is a basement below grade versus I mean from we've done several things where we Dig Down on different projects throughout the city to do a half Story down to make sure we don't go over that two and a half story so I'm but then you know then it's if you're counting the bottom of that as grade then you're up above 35 feet and we've got all those other shading things to come in so I've just I'm I'm really no I'm were we so it's below four feet I'm trying to understand that particular language because that's not something yeah fourth is not more than four feet below grade for more than fifty percent of the total perimeter or more not more than eight feet at any point so is it is it eight feet it's between eight and four is it more than eight feet below grade below that's okay but is it more than four feet below for half of the perimeter um of the whole building no but of the perimeter of that story or of that area it's actually not you've got the two units in the back that are they have nothing below them too yeah yeah so when you take the whole perimeter no it's not well I think it's the perimeter of that of that thank you Miss breakfast I'll come now to miss Ebert okay so um this question is probably more for staff um and this came up uh in one of the public comments that were submitted through email um there was two things called out from the area specific policies that stood out to me one of them uh is uh n-c9 app I'm sorry n c n 0.9 multi-family building should be designed to appear as separate homes um the other being uh N Dash C9 Cheese N Dash c n 0.7 building bulk mass and height blocky and blank multi-story buildings I'm just curious as to why um these two considerations were not taken into account when we were looking at the exterior of this development and thank you for your question in this circumstance again the project really focused on the tentative map aspect of it and not the um the look of it but that being said to address the one the first master plan policy you cited um in in staff's perspective as well as the applicant um speaking for the applicant sorry but but uh in in looking at the plan they are designed to separate units so so that that does kind of achieve that that goal um in in terms to in terms of the second master plan policy that you referenced um I think really during the building permit phase uh that will be addressed well there isn't really an approval of the Contemporary architecture or something like that our Title 18 doesn't speak to design there are certain articulation standards that are built into code as far as kind of look and other things so that'll all be evaluated at that point in time with the building permit so so hopefully that answers those two questions or two points Miss Heber did you have any other questions uh no not at this time okay thank you I think that we've gone around maybe council member doer are you um this would be my last one minute um I still have am challenged by this underground parking um I live far from the river and I don't have a basement but a lot of people around me have basements and they're all flooding right now it's just the land is saturated and it's flooding from groundwater seepage so I just wanted to call that out for the applicant and be aware that this is a challenge this is much closer to the river you know the groundwater is headed towards the river it's its drainage point so I I suspect if you ask the people that do have basements if there are any in the neighborhood they probably do have flooding challenges from seepage not from surface flow the second thing is just I'm really struggling I'm following up with Megan's question about um the look I mean I understand you guys are saying you don't do architecture but the master plan does contemplate this it talks about bulk I don't know what bulk is unless it is incorporated into architecture Mass height all of those things are are there are there other buildings I guess that are 33 feet high around this area [Music] um to answer your question I'm not sure of exact Heights but those multi-family units directly to the north as well as across the street or two stores right and I I hope that my colleagues maybe maybe these are fine points that four is okay and five is not or that two stories is fine and three is not but these are all things that are put into the master plan these are characteristics that we're supposed to evaluate I understand it's qualitative and not quantitative sometimes but and it's a um it's a an understanding of what these words mean but you know I really admire cathexis as architecture I have to tell you generally I do like modern buildings and I like what they do I don't know that if it's this neighborhood I'm going to be honest um maybe it doesn't have to fit the neighborhood that's what I'm hearing so I just I'll leave it there I don't want to you know over prolong this but thank you does anyone from the body have additional comments at this time I do not a mayor thank you so much appreciate it okay so are there any and I'm going to I mean I think I know the answer to this are there any other projects over there that have this type of parking where it slopes down and then the other thing I'd ask is maybe you could elaborate on this flood zone because you said it was rated what was it an X or something foreign thank you for your question Jason Garcia LaBeouf planning manager for the record um in in regards to the neighboring properties the um the current apartment buildings have outside parking so it is not currently Underground in regards to the uh flood zone in certain areas we have FEMA designated flood zones and depending on that flood zone there are different construction standards that are required sometimes they require them to be higher or something of that nature this is not in one of those areas so it is outside of a designated flood zone there so it's flood zone X so it currently doesn't have any requirements okay but it so is that not considered a flood zone if it's X or it's a flood zone but you have to mitigate how you build thank you mayor flood zone X is defined as an area state your name for the record please I apologize uh Mike Vicks with Monte Vista Consulting I'm the civil engineer on the project shaded X is defined as a zone that is outside the 500 year floodplain that's the all property has a flood designation Zone X is pretty much all areas that are not subject to flooding to further to your point there is a flood zone in the Truckee River to the west and one of the things that we considered while we were designing is that the existing 100-year flood level is uh 45-32 and our finished floor of our garage is nearly four feet above that if we were in that flood zone the finished floor of any building would only have to be one foot above the the base foot elevation so it's not enough flood zone the most adjacent flood zone that's defined the finished floor is over four feet above in that garage level so we're we're confident that as well out of the flood zone okay and now that I have you here let me ask you what concessions were made for the The Neighbors um and why didn't and why didn't you meet with them we went to the neighborhood Advisory board meeting and took that feedback um this is honestly my first time presenting in this forum so I wasn't sure what the protocols were however in our Planning Commission uh presentation we addressed all of the concerns that were brought up regarding flooding adjacency Etc at that time like I said the second story was brought in some to address some of their concerns flooding was one of their main concerns we addressed it um like with a slide similar to what I just explained regarding the flooding and so we we I believe added some Landscaping compared to the initial but uh again as Don pointed out the the neighbors were taken into consideration with the original development of the plan and you know with the extended setbacks there are some that are at the minimum but not you know the entire building is not and so we feel that it was designed for Mutual privacy and to take their you know their privacy into account and Don can speak much more intelligently about that than I can probably okay well and I apologize for that because usually the ward representative will facilitate some meetings so to make sure by the time you get to the diocese that we're not scrambling and it's unfortunate because they don't feel like they were heard um and that is never ever a good thing I would say this councilwoman doer is is right in the fact that everyone's basements are sort of on the edge and also I would say and it's another unfortunate reality that flood patterns are changing dramatically and as we've seen with this weather this winter has been extremely unpredictable and then you I think you're also telling me that that runoff will go into City infrastructure yes so currently the the site grades to the neighbors to the South it drains all of its water to to their properties with the proposed improvements we're using gutters to redirect water from invading the neighboring properties and direct it to the street where it enters the public storm drain system as Jason mentioned earlier there are no issues with the that they are aware of of the public storm drain system in that area and they determined that it was acceptable to do that in addition we added an additional layer of infiltration at the back property line on top of the the standard requirements in order to further reduce the current drainage issue of you know traversing the property line to the neighboring properties okay all right thank you no no more further questions Vice May smear thank you okay at this time I think everyone's exhausted their rounds of questioning so I'll bring it back to the body Mr clerk do you have staff recommendations for the screen this is certainly in council member uh breakfast's ward in Ward one so I want to first see if you can bring up the proposed motions sorry just one moment it may have not been set up that way it is Stafford is to affirm the decision of the Planning Commission they give us the three options to modify a firm or deny no I have them in front of me I'm trying to see if they can be brought up for the public it's right on the second page of the staff Report Team hey this is council member brexis Ward do you have a motion I do um you know and let me just preface this motion by saying uh on my review I was favorably disposed towards this request with the exception and I look very narrowly I think at this tentative level you have to um while there's General compliance with the master plan it's much more specific and Technical to the objective standards and one of the standards is a rational phasing plan and I think there is irrationality in tearing down a building and I would rely on other master plan policies the quality of that structure um prior to the project moving forward so I would have proposed an extra condition that you know a a rational phasing plan be proposed that coordinates very closely the demolition of the structure with the uh payment and full of a building permit to move forward because I've seen a lot of projects fall flat and I think one like this in this area where the excavation costs have sunk so many other projects there's a great likelihood that it will fall flat um but and also tentative Maps can last for a long time and so uh you know seven years of looking at a building that that's gone and could have had another life I think would have been important but um so I would have before the testimony I heard made a motion of approval with that condition suggesting but at this point and the applicants always um able to ask for a continuance but at this point I think more exhibits are needed to demonstrate compliance with Title 18 and that's a very specific standard the title 18 specific to height stories and the shading plan is not fully um uh demonstrated by the applicant materials and so non-compliance with Title 18 is um a finding for a motion to deny and to elaborate two and a half stories are allowed the underground um councilmember breakfast your motion is to deny is that correct I'm going to be very specific because I know but you're making a speaking motion and that okay yeah allow for that because it's hard for the clerk to understand I've done this I've done this for a lot of years so let me capture the motion and true way that it would go into the course okay thank you thank you this breakfast please understand that we have rules in this body for a reason I've asked you for a motion once you make the motion if you get a seconder I'll come back to you and you may explain it it's no problem may I speak now if you are making a motion yes okay Could you type the motion so that we can see what the motion is as I because it would go on the clerk's letter I moved I'll have to write it out then okay we'll take a moment for you to do that thank you I appreciate it I'll um I'll draft a motion to deny that is defensible because I think that's very important this is a body that's had a judge turnover a Subdivision map of ours by a poor record so if you'll give me a five minute recess I will type can you guys show me how I can type uh I I think I have it up here so just say okay I have okay move to not to deny based upon non-compliance with Title 18 provisions pertaining to the zoning District standards I'm so sorry I wasn't capturing oh okay go ahead motion to deny based upon non-compliance with Title 18 standards in the mf-14 zoning District pertaining to height stories and applicability of the shading ordinance to elaborate the number of stories shown is three it's not demonstrated that it's two and a half is allowed by the code the 35 foot elevation that triggers the shading ordinance is not clearly provided for with relief I clearly provided is is provided for with is relieved you can say is relieved and then the final one is that um the building height exceeds 35 feet additional exhibits which I've seen provided for many years could have shown all of this but okay that motion by councilmember breakfast is there a second you know I was second for discussion we have a motion and by councilmember breakfast the second by Miss doer now we'll turn to the body for questions or comments as to the motion Miss Doer just um I too in addition to what Miss breakfast said which I understand she's trying to very narrowly explain this um I am struggling to find conformance with the master plan the overall it says we're supposed to balance way competing plan goals policies and strategies and I I feel like we have not met that balance will it be any additional comments or questions on the motion hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed nay nay Mr can you do a roll call please uh yes can I have uh sorry council member breckus aye and uh Rhys nay doer hi Taylor name Martinez Nate Ebert hi and mayor shivi aye thank you okay the motion carries uh four to three out of comment we've got one more appeal tonight and so we'll move on to item I2 well I was going to encourage the applicant to just take into consideration what they've heard I think Mr cathexis and his team or Mr Clark and his team will do that thank you so much yeah we're going to take a 10 minute break okay we'll read uh meet again at 7 50 pm all right your mic should be on okay Mr clerk are we ready to begin recording again we are ready to go okay let the record reflect that the city council's back in session opening the public hearing on item are we at I2 I2 thank you so much Mr clerk was proper notice given correspondence received proper notice was given and no correspondence was received okay and do any of my colleagues need to make any disclosures at this time yes council member doer I I can meet with the applicant thank you so much at this time I'll ask Mr vice mayor I also met with oh thank you councilmember Taylor I did as well vice mayor councilman Martinez can we pause for a second and go to um Miss Ebert fire at North Hills appeal to the planning commission's decision to approval request for conditional use permit to allow 192 unit uh multi-family development mattamere and fellow city council members and Madam clerk uh Mr clerk sorry um in the interest of full transparency on mi2 I'm making the following disclosure on January 18 2023 I attended the Reno uh Planning Commission meeting as a city council's liaison at the end of the meeting I gave general public comment about Ward 4. these comments were not specific to any particular Planning Commission development application on the January 18 agenda including this one that is an appeal from a decision that the Planning Commission made that day as a result of my public comment in the subsequent statement in response by planning Commissioner of Alto in a follow-up inquiry by my colleague Miss Taylor I sought guidance from the city attorney's office in response to that guidance I am presenting testimony and evidence into the record to rebut a claim that I may have a biased against this application should there be such a claim now or in the future my January 18th uh 18th comments were are readily available for viewing on the city cities website as my introductory comments to the Planning Commission as the council liaison the themes of my comments were twofold one to let the Commissioners be aware of the lived experiences of Ward 4 residents as related to growth impacts and infrastructure and adequacy and two in response to comments made by different Commissioners throughout the evening and offer to assist in facilitating more useful data that could be shared with the Planning Commission as help in their decision making while my comments were perhaps an Artful I presented them in the 2 am hour the Planning Commission decided to deliberate into this early hour and it is a Time at which I'm not accustomed to working much less presenting to public bodies additional evidence that I am not biased toward or against this applicant or toward or against the Appellate is that on February 2nd at his request I met with Garrett Gordon he is the applicant's representative in that meeting I listened to information Mr Gordon presented about the project he also made a follow-up call to me on March 7th to inquire if I needed more information or had additional questions if I had already made my mind up I would not waste Mr Gordon's or my time in meeting about the project certainly Mr Gordon feels likewise or he would not be as recently as last night inquiring about my information needs as mentioned above on this matter I sought guidance from the city as attorney city attorney's office here because I presented evidence that my January 18th comments would not clearly and materially affect the independence of Judgment of a reasonable person in my position to Warrant absent abstinate abstentation under NRS 281a-420 3C and public officer com op number 12-15 a 2012 a public officer has a responsibility to represent constituents and vote on matters of public importance unless a clear conflict outweighs that Duty I will be voting on this item Mr clerk please accept this disclosure and Lodge it in the record okay before I move on to any additional disclosures at this time before we move on to this top presentation Mr Hall Mr Shipman I'm not sure I understood any of the disclosures except for Miss eberts so I want to know what is the rationale for the disclosure that person's met with one or either side in the dispute I understood Miss Ebert's disclosure and and it's been lodged for the record but I'm not sure I understood the other disclosures and I'm asking because I have not made a disclosure although I did meet with the applicant um and so I'm trying to understand I've not seen that in my time in four years on the body in light of the fact that this is a quasi-judicial hearing it is required that the participants from city council be unbiased and so the reason for that disclosure was to ensure Council and the parties involved that council member Ebert is now I understood Miss Ebert's disclosure I'm asking about the other disclosures the I met with someone disclosure is that a requirement on this body I I'm I'm unfamiliar it's appropriate that those disclosures be made yeah so everybody knows who's talked to whom and whether or not they've got any bias for the project yes okay so I'll have to disclose that I met with Mr Gordon on this project um so I've now made my disclosure although I don't think that's been our historic past practice and so it may be that it just there's some heightened concern over this evening's hearing so I appreciate the guidance from the city manager and the city attorney's office you know in addition that's a typical disclosure that it's made by all of our planning Commissioners so it is um normal that we right I see that they do it quite often because they might go out on site visits and they want people to know that they've done that but I make an assumption that everyone is always talking with everyone about every project that comes before this body okay we'll start at this time and ask staff to come forward to make their presentation hello good evening vice mayor Reese Madame mayor members of the council for the record my name is Leah Brock I'm an associate planner with the City of Reno development services this evening I am presenting the application for the conditional use permit for Aspire at North Hills which was appealed after it was approved by the Planning Commission on January 18th with a vote in favor of five I'm sorry vote of approval with five in favor and two opposed me the subject property is approximately 8.64 Acres it consists of four parcels and is located north of U.S Highway 395 with Frontage on both North Hills Boulevard and East Golden Valley Road the subject property is directly west of the Raley's Shopping Center on North Hills Boulevard the conditional use permit is requesting 192 unit multi-family residential development this is required in The General commercial zoning District when there are more than 100 units being proposed the reason for that conditional use permit is so that staff has an opportunity to look at the proposed development and mitigate any potential impacts before they submit for a building permit subject property is located in that General commercial zoning District it is surrounded by public facilities to the north that's Alice Smith Elementary School General commercial zoning to the west and to the South and we have some single family residential there to the north and across Golden Valley Road the density maximum for The General commercial zoning district is 45 dwelling units per acre the proposed density of this project is 22.2 dwelling units per acre so far below that maximum density the subject site is located in the Suburban mixed Juice Master Plan land use designation that Suburban mixed use highlights uses and characteristics including diverse mix of commercial and residential uses medium to high density residential uses and providing an opportunity for high density housing within close proximity to services and employment the proposed project includes 192 units in seven buildings with amenities such as a clubhouse Recreation private Recreation amenities such as barbecue areas dog Recreation areas and a children's playground regarding compatibility with surrounding uses there is that single-family residential zoning District on copper Vista Court there you can see that area highlighted on the map in front of you with a red circle the applicant did work with property owners on copper Vista Court and with City staff they modified their project design for increased compatibility with those adjacent single family residences as a result of that they provided additional screening there is an existing six foot tall wood fence between the site and the single-family homes which will remain in a second six foot tall Decker defense will be installed by the applicant between these two fences a dense vegetative screen comprised of evergreen trees will be planted and maintained by the applicant for the life of the project also it's important to note that the applicant reduced the height of the apartment building closest to the single family residential and modified the roof to reduce shading on those residential homes those modifications resulted in a 12 unit reduction of the overall unit count for the project taking it from the original 204 units to 192 units we have two appeals filed in this particular case the first appeal was filed by one of the residents on copper Vista court and they contend that the decision for approval by the Planning Commission did not analyze the combined impact on traffic schools and utilities with other housing projects that are currently being developed in the area how the proposed future road construction and improvements will affect traffic in that area access to Alice Smith school and vehicular Ingress and egress to the site there was a second appeal filed by a representative of the applicant in order to preserve the rights to judicial review at the planning commission's hearing on January 18th the Planning Commission did go until two o'clock in the morning that night there was extensive discussion about compatibility of the proposed design with the surrounding uses including that General commercial and that single family and the school cumulative impact of traffic infrastructure and future Road improvements access and traffic flow with those surrounding developments the capacity of the schools in the area and the timing of the proposed development related to Future infrastructure improvements again the Planning Commission did vote to approve that project with five in favor and two opposed the intersection at Golden Valley Road and North Hills Road and the project driveways to both Golden Valley Road and North Hills Road were analyzing a traffic impact analysis submitted by the applicant all three intersections will operate at acceptable levels under all study scenarios additionally as I think most everybody knows there are future improvements coming to not just the 395 but also to that area that's surrounding the development on North Hills Boulevard um the widening of the 395 between the McCarran interchange and the Golden Valley Interchange is set to start construction this year and RTC is planning uh to widen North Hills Road from two lanes to four lanes uh between Buck drive and Golden Valley Drive somewhere between 2026 and 2030. regarding the Washoe County School District there were some questions at the Planning Commission meeting about how the projections were created so after that meeting I reached out to Washoe County School Districts and the information that they provided me basically said that their data is constantly evolving it's received from the University of Nevada Center for regional studies amongst other sources but it does include development that's under construction development that's approved development that's been completed and development that is pending approval those projections are also updated based on current and previous enrollment data Washoe County School District representative did provide me with some more updated projections so here on the screen in that table you can see the projections that were presented to the Planning Commission and those were provided to us in October those are in Gray and then the ones I just received last week are the ones that are there in Black so you will see that those projections are fluctuating and at this time uh the projected capacity for those schools has decreased significantly in some cases on the board are the conditional use permit recommended findings that were made by the Planning Commission in order to vote for approval the planning commission's decision is on the board for your review the recommended motion is on the board and that concludes my presentation I will now turn it over to the appellant thank you thank you Miss Brock we technically have two appellants as I understand is that correct Mr clerk that is correct okay I'll let you call the next uh in presenter I believe we're hearing from Garrett Gordon first the yeah I apologize Mr clerk I think we had It reversed in the last hearing so no problem no we're welcome we'll welcome you up first Mr Gordon you'll go second as they did in the last presentation so who is here to present on understand we we just try to follow our procedure sir and it's sir if you would like to come forward it missed sir I'm not going to argue with you welcome to the council chambers come forward and make your presentation take really good care of you I actually do sir please understand listen to what I'm going to tell you and then we'll get into your presentation we have rules in this body if you were here for the earlier presentation they asked the person who was the neighbor to go first and then the developer went second those are just our policies we want them to be applied to everyone the same so you're here now welcome to Chambers introduce yourself for the record and then make your presentation thank you I appreciate the Castle's time my name is Mike Burke and I live on copper Vista Court which is directly adjacent to the project that's right at the end of our street now we do not believe that the intent of renal master plan was to shoehorn 192 units into an eight and a half acre site that is directly adjacent to single-family residences yeah they're stating that access has been in place for many years from Golden Valley Road uh to the site and right now the only access is a parking lot which is next to uh as a quick shop gas station and you can see the excess access access road right there as a matter of fact and what they're doing is uh using the existing you know I guess if it's a agreement with the uh business owners but uh they're using existing driveways from Golden Valley Road and calling the access rotor actually is calling it an access which is uh it's an emergency access that has been chained off for geez 20 years that's it like I say it's a road that's uh Wallace in the center there it seems like you know the developer when they showed the uh I guess which one is that it's exea okay and let's go to the next one uh EAD okay the developer shows the access road coming in from Golden Valley Road and it comes down about halfway into the project and stops now at this point uh the abandoning the emergency access that goes all the way to Raley's parking lot I mean we can even do that I have no idea and along that you can see the bushes and trees and the Landscaping and that Landscaping from the rear fence of the existing houses in Copper Vista there's maybe 10 to 12 feet with uh 14 foot slope 12 to 14 foot slope up the emergency access road so you really don't have any room to put those bushes yeah there's no room there so that just goes to your going to have eventually an 18 foot elevation change between those fence between that fence and the project but between the project and the access road and the existing fences there's literally no room with bushes and put this stuff in there but yeah okay see the project site is zoned General commercial and it has been zoned commercial for many years and no change to the zoning are required with the project the proposed project is allowed in The General commercial Zone the approval of petitional use permit without the cup Project's not allowed if the cup is allowed it will open up the area joining places like Raley's and across the street by the post office bank which right now are all GC but it'll open up the uh Suburban mixed use and more Apartments as hard as they're pushed in this project I think it's more of a trojan horse to go ahead and get those Apartments built so they can put them all over out there it's definitely one of our fears it's not difficult to use identify a similar land use patterns in the Reno area for example The Galena Junction shopping center on Mount Rose Highway has a similar General layout with the shopping center located on major roadway surrounding multi-family and single-family housing the Fire Creek Crossing shopping center on Kietzke Lane shows same pattern intense commercial use adjacent to multi-family housing transitioning to single-family housing Insurance proposed project layout conforms both the textbook zoning practice and local land use patterns in Reno using a Galena Junction in the Fire Creek Crossing shopping center as examples of similar land use just simply does not work Rayleigh Shopping Center has approximately 12 businesses and the only Access Road uh for that is the North Hills Boulevard the two driveways for Ingress and egress the apartments at Galena Junction which you can see there open the top of the screen they have a very large buffer between the uh apartments and single family right across the road from there especially as a substantial fence that you know pretty much distances them from the single family units and that's just not what we have I mean we've got Apartments going up within 55 56 feet of the homes on copper Vista yeah like fur Creek Shopping Center you've got Walmart and that Walmart pretty much put all of the businesses in Raley shopping center right into Walmart there's room left over there Fire Creek yeah okay they all look the same to me after a while but that's absolutely no comparison with what we have there at uh aspire okay it says uh project is highly compatible with the Jason single family zoning District Bozeman General planning perspective and from a specific Arena development city code perspective as noted the common projects of this type to be located between commercial centers and single-family housing in fact the project like this can act as a buffer between intense commercial uses and single-family neighborhoods well I disagree completely with that statement because the apartments are not at all compatible with the surrounding area Property Owners of copper Vista Court do not believe the apartment buildings in their backyards is the proper buffer it was an 18-foot grade change six foot fence on top of the slope and two stories above the death adjacent property ordinance will have the reviews of Peavine Mountain completely blocked greatly diminishing their views and diminishing their pop their property values you got building seven which is pretty much left out that's what the yeah it is hard to see but bottom right corner view from 425 copper Vista to building eight building seven is just to the right of building eight and it's going to be 20 feet taller gonna be 40 feet as opposed to 20 feet and that's going totally wipe out any views and create a great deal of shading the houses in Copper Vista okay uh the application proposal States the project site does not meet the threshold for a conditional use permit due to the depths of Cuts grading cuts and fills greatest depth of cut is 14 feet greatest filled depth is seven and a half feet the project will require expectation of roughly 7 375 yards of excess material the approximately 700 truckloads hauling that stuff out of there be a mess but they also state the Slate is generally flat with no challenging slopes or landforms well if you gotta move that bunch of dirt out here it's nowhere near what you need just uh it's ridiculous okay the application States required landscape area of 15 is based on code section 1804.804 the project provides 561 192 square feet of landscape areas required 15 of 8.6 Acres well it's kind of hard to see but General commercial is 15 percent but Suburban mixed use or mixed-use Suburban is 20 so we're missing that Landscaping by five percent and again that's one more thing in the uh yeah traditional use permit kind of ignores now the project will contribute 600 81 000 and fifty dollars in Regional Road impact fees and that's a means of outstanding any traffic impacts may occur so money doesn't help with inadequate roads their traffic study we got a Wednesday August 24th 2022 and Tuesday August 30th 2022. studies not take into account the new homes and apartments that are already permitted and under construction or the ones that are permitted and waiting to be built or the ones that have been permitted and worked on and finished just recently got a brand new subdivision across the street from North Hills High School on Golden Valley Road that project will positively increase traffic you have homes and apartments finished or under construction about a mile away from Raley's that definitely affect traffic now some of those people instead of going up to 11 Valley they cut off in Golden Valley Road and they go up North Hills to get home and a lot of those are finished a lot of them are still waiting to be built in some are under construction I see hmm so I guess we ran out of time Mr Burke do you need another minute to conclude yeah another minute or two wouldn't hurt you have a minute is that a traffic study you know just a couple afternoons just uh does not really does not really take into account the actual amount of traffic you know the policy of data in the traffic study does not reflect actual conditions they actually try to put some stop lights on Golden Valley Road at 395 on and off ramps and their temporary lights on both ramps and it basically backed up traffic almost all the way to uh beckworth which is you know ways away and they finally gave up he had to take them out because they couldn't couldn't get them time to facilitate the traffic we have now but when we moved out here and 20 let's see moved in the house in 2020. but our developer promised the folks in Golden Valley that they would have one acre buffer Lots between the Golden Valley homeowners and the new subdivision Stonegate as soon as that was uh signed off on the first thing the developer did was they cut that back to one third acre lots and what the city said they couldn't afford the uh litigation couldn't afford because they're going to get sued if they went if they tried to force them to do that we see a lot of that it looks like in in the city because uh there were slopes behind our house where two to one and city codes so they have to have rip rap or some kind of stabilization again I've seen inspectors said well we can't afford the litigation so it's Gotta slide you got to quit letting these uh California companies come in here and basically push us around ruin neighborhoods from the back back of these folks houses from their Back Fence 56 feet away you got almost 40 feet and right next to it you've got closer to 60 feet and that's gonna only destroy the property values but they probably won't get any sun at all so I'll conclude there and time's up and I've got a lot more I should say but I do appreciate your time thank you very much thank you Mr Burke Mr clerk now we're on to the respondent appellant developer so many names uh you'll have 10 minutes to make your presentation Mr Gordon thank you Mr vice mayor for the record Garrett Gordon Tonight on behalf of the applicant and the appellant Leah did a great job so I'll try not to be repetitive we consider this a mixed use infill project it's surrounded by development schools to the north single family to the north single family to the East Commercial existing commercial to the South and then existing 108 000 square foot Rayleigh shopping center and for the record the developer the owner of that shopping center is here tonight happy to answer any questions he also owns the subject parcel that site the subject parcel has never been developed but as you can see it's been graded the intention was always to have it be phase two of the shopping center it's been marketed for over 18 years as a commercial pad for release for purchase two expand the shopping center I've seen 18 years of marketing for commercial without success we're here before you tonight the bill to for approval and eventually build some much needed housing in the region the project zoning as you can see here surrounded by General commercial public facility neighbor commercial sf3 again it's a mixed-use infill project that's infill and um adjacent to existing shopping center the project is compatible with recently updated code and no zone changes or variants are required a subject aside as you heard from Leah is allowed 100 units by right the use permit required tonight is for the additional 94 units I point you to this this depiction as well you can see there's a lot of red a lot of General commercial there's a claim that this project is developed residential which again is allowed in General commercial with the use permit that somehow there'll be no leftover commercial to eventually build one day you can see logistically and logically the first commercial that would be built out there when there's sufficient rooftops would be between North Hills and the freeway adjacent to the freeway great access and great visibility so if approved tonight there is still plenty of General commercial land to be developed for General commercial uses project site plan Leah did a great job 192 units mix of one two three bedrooms six three-story apartment buildings before we met with the neighbors I would be standing here saying seven three-story apartment buildings but now we have a two-story apartment building and direct response to meeting with the neighbors with their concerns about shadowing and adjacency a clubhouse common areas Recreation areas and amenities design features project parking exceeds renal code requirement storm water retention capacity exceeds city code requirement open space Landscaping exceeds city code requirement you heard earlier we could have went up to 45 dwelling units per acre or only at around 22. and also in your staff report you see that General commercial allows 65 feet by right for height and we're nowhere near that so we've exceeded all the requirements and not pushed the envelope to the development standards that are allowed in General commercial impacts on traffic this came up with the Planning Commission and this came up in the appellant statement first of all the traffic study concluded that no significant traffic impacts are expected no off-site traffic deficiencies were identified and that all surrounding intersections will operate at acceptable levels of service there was also a statement that the Planning Commission that this was developed commercial it would be less traffic or less impact than residential you can see my slide here this project 192 units would trigger 9 73 am Peak trips 93 p.m Peak trips if this was developed at approximately 37 200 square feet of commercial but you could do by right you have 216 am trips in 240 PM trips so close to 150 more trips in the morning in the afternoon with a commercial project by right so my argument is to the appellant and I made it to the Planning Commission certainly when you're looking at this project it's nowhere near the trips that you have if there was in fact commercial even though not applicable to the findings you're required to make tonight the Planning Commission had questions about the broader um traffic improvements roadway improvements the regional roadway improvements that will be coming Leah did a great job showing the ndot phasing that's coming as it moves up 395 we transpose that onto kind of our project and our area so you can see 395 phase 1B all the way up to Golden Valley commence construction uh this year and next year North Hills widening it's in the RTC plan for 2026 2030. the Planning Commission said wow that's way out we're going to get an impact today with North Hills no because we're not opening the apartment complex today you can see here anticipated completion is 2027 by the time you design build occupancy at 2027. so really everything works out as you look at 2027 build out including the widening of North Hills Road in addition staff was very respondent to some of the neighbors issues condition number 13 in our staff report requires us prior to building permit to go coordinate with RTC about giving them right-of-way on our property to widen North Hills so this project actually participates and helps with that process of widening and more capacity so we think there's no issues at the micro level of where this project is located or on the larger level with respect to improvements coming at the regional level again mixed use project back to kind of the smaller micro level of this project the Project's location mitigates traffic impacts why because it's a mixed-use project right next to us is an elementary school kids can walk there right within the mile as a high school sidewalk all the way kids can walk there it's adjacent to a Raley's a pharmacy Urgent Care a library a post office a bank restaurants exactly where you want these kind of multi-family projects adjacent to services and adjacent to um um other businesses that they would a visit on a routine basis and again this is housing on an infill site which is the best way to minimize area traffic schools it was mentioned in the appellants statement there was a concern about schools so on the right hand side is the letter from the school district and you can set you can see it's their numbers they've anticipated this project would generate 17th Elementary School students six middle school students and 12 high school students I would certainly say in the grand scheme of things of schooling this is a very small number and the impact is minimal but regarding the high school where there was a question about over capacity 12 high school students again not happening today or next year or the year after but then 2027 but at the bottom of the the school district statement they say the construction of a new high school or the time frame between 2024 and 2028 is dependent upon Regional residential growth and development so actually us getting this project approved if it is today and adding more students in 2027 would give the school district the need to go out and build more Schools they're not going to build schools unless there's capacity to fill them so we don't believe there's any negative impact to put 12 high school students for this project in 2027. there was also a statement in the appellants appeal about this letter and that we were not complying with the school district's uh demands or conditions we absolutely are we got this initial letter from them we met with the school district we are complying with their two requests that the Alex Smith gate is not blocked by any fencing and pedestrian connections to the school date gate are maintained and the Washington County School District will review any final building plans neighborhood Outreach not only a NAB two on-site meetings emails which resulted in additional fencing additional landscaping and reducing a whole story it was a three-story building now it's a two-story building with 12 units taken off the top to make sure it not only reduced but eliminated in a shading whatsoever on these properties at the end of the cul-de-sac as well as another layer of of landscaping code requires every 30 feet we're doing it really installing those trees a lot closer along with a fence and meeting with the neighbors they didn't want just a fence that is code compliant but we have a more upgraded solid durable fence that will be added so because of those half dozen meetings we came up with I think some pretty good mitigations in addition to that you heard the Planning Commission approve this project five to two when we went to the Planning Commission they said and there's you know some really good planners and and our and folks on there that review project this like this for a long time and they said absolutely it's a traditional land use pattern you have freeway you have Zone General commercial you have some existing commercial you have vacant land and then you have single family putting a multi-family in that donut hole makes a lot of sense but a few Commissioners wanting to go wanted us to go a little bit farther so you can see where the existing commercial is here there's a Burger King and there's a guy station there was concern about noise of cars so we agreed to do sound mitigation Windows along this building you heard tonight about this road from the Appellate this road is existing why because there's an easement with Alice Taylor this is their emergency fire access for the school so absolutely that stays and that is gated so the general public aren't confused and using this road but it's used for fire purposes with the school district as well as additional screening with the additional commercial uses you can see a solid fence along here and some additional plantings to the north again to mitigate any impacts to future tenants support from adjacent restaurants I don't always get to stand up here before you and give you a list of project list of adjacent businesses who support this letters in the record before you tonight are from Subway Taqueria the Chinese Restaurant Round Table the brewery Burger King saying we need these rooftops that additional residence within walking distance to North Hill shopping center will help us continue to serve the community we strongly support plans for the proposed project so we have a I think 10 or 12 letters in support from adjacent businesses to say this is going to help us be viable in the future and finally in conclusion staff recommends approval Planning Commission recommended approval we ask you that you please uphold um both of those approvals and we're here for any questions thank you thank you Mr Gordon Mr clerk I will now ask you if there's any public comment we do have public comment on this item okay let's begin with that okay uh first 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 the council may not take action upon any matter not agenda is on today's agenda when you are 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 if you are an attendee in the zoom meeting and would like to make a public comment please raise your hand at this time and lastly while in this room please be respectful warnings will be issued by the presiding officer if there is disruptive behavior you will be asked to leave Chambers if the behavior continues we do have two public commenters registered in the room first we'll hear from Kelly Orr followed by Natalie Larson thank you good evening and welcome check you for your time good evening for the record my name is Kelly Orr I'm a resident of North Valleys um I've been there since 2019 long time resident of Reno Nevada but have grown up all around the world um from military family this project to me I have many concerns with we also presented to the Planning Commission on that night of January 18th three days prior we had heard that this was going through to the Planning Commission and we put out a the change.org survey and a petition we had 1700 signatures in three days we now have 2407 signatures opposing this build I want buildings to happen in the North Valleys it desperately needs it we need commercial um yesterday just like we needed the roads yesterday we do hear that they are coming everything is coming to the North Valleys but unfortunately every day when we need to go to work it's an hour and a half wait time especially when roads are bad and people are trying to be very cautious when people want to go out to eat there is not one place that will service the football team at North Valleys a cheerleading team at Alice Smith a um an event that holds for the air races for family and friends to go eat at without over capacitating a restaurant out there we need Services we're not asking for more housing within this build we have seven housing developments approved and going to plan being built seven not one not two not three seven on top of that we have one apartment complex on Buck that is the Lakes at Lemon Valley they are on their Final Phase that's another 200 and something apartments that is all within four miles of this build with only access to Golden Valley exit Lemon Valley exit Panther Valley exit all on 395 to feed in the same every day not every other day but every day if you were trying to go home to the North Valleys from 3 30 in the afternoon to about 6 p.m and you wanted to take that North Valleys Road you will be sitting in traffic for 25 minutes waiting to get to your house you are literally three blocks away and you'll be waiting for 25 minutes the build also where I have some questions is during the Planning Commission meeting they had mentioned the grading for the water and the spillover and for melting that they were gonna do DG and then have grading for underneath so the water will just go down into the soil well we all know what that's going to do in about 24 hours it's not going to go anywhere and we have more snow higher elevation than normal Reno does so I just urge the council members to sit on this a little bit longer let's go back to the planning this is not acceptable build at this time thank you thank you Miss Orr next we'll hear from Natalie Larson I'm gonna probably use the overhead assuming I remember to do that pull that up for you just one moment Miss Larson while they're getting set up just know that when you place it on it you have to leave it there so they can take pictures of it okay for the record so he'll help you work through it the technology is a little dated but we make the best things you've already seen but no no worries use it as you wish to but um just know that they've got to record it and capture a screenshots okay so like don't yeah uh Natalie Larson for the record I'm a lifetime Arena resident specifically in Golden Valley I was present in this room for the Planning Commission meeting on January 18th I want to do two things here tonight first I want to take a look at the growth and the implications of growth for this project and second I want to look at the project specifics and ask for one alteration to the property as it stands now should this project get passed again traffic reports for this project indicate no off-site deficiencies it is my understanding that a proposed project just down the street on North Hills has recently been denied based upon their trafficking analysis that's two analysis on the same road with different results last meeting one commissioner admitted that the board is not being consistent about considering traffic impacts from Project to project or from Ward to Ward he also wondered what the logic is and or going ahead and approving projects just because we know Solutions are coming the timing and the location of this project as he admitted is problematic another commissioner asked the board how do we as a city phase these projects so as to not create massive deficiencies well nobody had an answer to that question other than the planning manager who gave the response of what I can only assume was we figured out as we have problems this is a matter of becoming reactive versus proactive the ndot representative present that night literally said that for them traffic problems come before solutions to a degree I get that that's their policy I ask that you deny this project based on inadequate Road and highway conditions as they stand today and because the timing of this and any future projects in the North Valleys are problematic until the day ndot and RTC have completed all currently planned traffic improvements second thing is I want to move on to the project site specific plans this is a drawing rendering because I couldn't get the picture of that you guys have already seen of the property the building on the northeast side is challenging it infringes upon our backyard boundaries and property rights as homeowners on this street the existence of this building has been at the core of any talks negotiating with the team which I have been present for we have negotiated the structure from three stories down to two but it's not good enough yes we have negotiated on enhanced Landscaping as well as sound and visual barriers but that's not good enough not for me and not for our three neighbors bumping up to this property with the existence of this building our neighbors and Friends cannot and continue to enjoy their properties post-construction as they do today I ask that you request the team to do any one of these three things a eliminate this building altogether and leave that parcel vacant reduce it down or reduce it down to one story which would only reduce the project Again by another 12 units should this building exist it will have to be a single story foreign these pictures indicate again what the these backyards will be looking like with a two-story building a one story would be even less than that or lastly C replace this building um from a residential structure to a possible single story garages for rent type structure with this proposal would eliminate both homeowner residents and apartment residents existing in close Visual and audible contact with each other on a daily basis in my opinion this change would reduce noise pollution Visual impediments and overall activity from the project site take note that the reduction elimination or structural change of this building ought not to trigger the team to change any of the existing amenities such as Surplus parking retention Pond plans Landscaping plans or sound and visual Berry plans already in place anywhere on the site specifically those protecting our street thank you thank you Miss Larson if you sing No Hands raised in zoom and no other public commenters registered in the room that concludes our live public commenters for the record we received 15 comments which were directly associated with the agenda item prior to 4 pm on March 7th these comments were written correspondents received via our reno.gov online public comment form or by email to our office copies of these comments have been distributed to Reno city council and are available to the public on the reno.gov meeting portal they represented 11 in favor of the appeal three in opposition and one concerned in addition we received eight voicemails which we will play for you now hello I am speaking and calling you in favor of project LDC 23-00018 which is a multi-family development apartment complex as you know Reno is suffering from a dirt of residential and we need this project very much really appreciate it and uh look forward to hearing that it gets approved thank you very much [Music] rally shopping center uh executive Condominiums absolutely opposed there's been no Street improvements up in this area highway or Street surface streets and all these uh is going in around our North Valley's up here approval or no to this to transportation highway system I used to be a builder and I was opposed to this kind of thing before and I was in the trade as opposed to it now because nobody ever it boosts the streets and and the highways leading into these projects it's it's this is how come I've never heard of this until three seven and Benny that's I'm opposed okay I would like you to vote no on reference number l d as in dog C is in cat two three dash zero zero zero one eight I would love to know where you're getting the water for all this new building you're doing thank you I would just like to state that I oppose the new complex being built in North Valleys really lot referenced ldc23-00018 thank you hello my name is Ari and I'm calling the support project lvc 23-00018 and I'm looking to move to the North Reno area as I've secured a job in Reno but I do not want to be located downtown and I see this housing complex as a great opportunity to be close enough to my work while also being close to Martin Luther King Jr Highway and easily accessible to the surrounding environment and I think this would be a great place for me to live so I am in support of this project thank you yes good afternoon my name is Chris Wiseman and I am calling in support of project l d c 2 3-018 again that's project L [Music] dc23-00018 and um I am in support of this project um I hope it gets um the support of of of council and staff in this upcoming um I think it'd be great for the community I know uh Reno needs more housing um and by having 200 units next to an existing shopping center uh there'll be some good synergies there I think the community will will clearly benefit um from not only the the the shopping center but but the additional housing in the area um and I think it'd be good overall for the project the existing shopping center the existing tenants you know tenants are struggling right now in Reno as um as they as they continue to work through some of the challenges given uh during the covered pandemic so again um I support the project and and hope hope you do as well thank you foreign and I am calling in support of ldc2300018 and I'm in support of this project because I'm hoping to move to the northern Reno area from Reno and I am looking to become a TA or teacher at Alice Smith Elementary School and I was just looking around the different housing options and there really isn't something available for affordable I'm hoping that this developed through offers me a more affordable and safe place to live thank you hi my name is Greg Rossini I'm calling to support project LDC 23-00018 uh Edon has mentioned in the past several years I've been several Edon meetings here in Reno um that the need for more housing is at an all-time uh uh is all-time high by having nearly 200 units uh next to the Rayleigh shopping center I think it will increase Supply and reduce traffic as neighbors would often walk to the restaurants next door and and the banks and groceries businesses are also struggling um and more housing will support the business uh more housing users will support the businesses around and he's also been been renowned up for 21 years and uh the housing Supply and or shortage um is actually a depth from it now and residents cannot find housing in the North Valley areas um be also be next to the post office and Library would be a nice feature for these for these houses for these rentals um thank you for your time and hope you consider my comment Mr vice mayor that concludes our public comment on this item okay thank you Mr clerk I'll bring it back to the body and ask if anyone has any questions or comments at this time councilmember Ebert did you want to start it's your ward sure I have some questions first about the schools how did they determine their estimates of how many additional children would be added to the school district yeah Angela Foose assistant director for development services we have had discussions with the school district over the years on how these numbers how they come up with these numbers there is a model and there is a lot of detail that goes into that model they can look at apartments single family duplexes town homes they also look at the different demographics of the area based on North Valleys versus Arrow Creek they can tell you historically how many elementary kids they see out of certain types of houses or certain types of development So based on historical data they try and populate that with what's proposed so they know every affordable housing project every multi-family project for instance that's developed in North Valleys they can track how many kids came out of those developments so again historically they can say generally speaking something with 192 units at this location here's the estimates we come up with so are those models like updated annually or is that something that they I think like on more than annually and probably on a monthly basis so much new data comes in right as new projects come forward they update those on a very very regular basis okay thank you yep okay any other additional questions from the body council member breckis yeah um Miss Brock could you bring up the site plan please and about the site plan [Music] yeah that's good we had one that you know was maybe just the side plan itself that would be good but that um that easement to Alice you know I think Mr um Gordon's presentation had a better look at the site plan um could you bring up his presentation and and those those slides I think he just had that same site plan so the um that that edge of the property it's a very irregular shape property and then it's got you know some carve out some Lots were sold what is that um in terms of you know evaluating yards you know front set front yard rear yard side yard that um keep going I think um wrong one no problem that um that that yard that's against the uh actually I have it right here um that yard that is um if you want to just put it up hold on a second okay let's give the clerk a chance to bring up the right picture and then miss breakfast will give you additional time to answer the question then we're all on the same page there should be a site plan Mr Gordon's presentation it's page 13 of 16. you can put it on the glass guys page 13 of 16. yeah there there so I don't know if that's any better but the the yard I sometimes just like the old way of having physically the the paper and and using our glass I think it works really well still I'm not a public commenter who had the names of the persons who were there yeah so the the yard that um touches the um the easement to Alice Smith is that a rear yard or a side yard and what is the setback there thank you councilwoman breakfast uh I I I'm not 100 sure I'd have to look okay because I'm I'm trying to understand I heard concerns about setback and then you've got grade differential and when I read 1809-204 property line setback yard it says that basically you have to come back that that easement there can't can't set can't count as a setback so what correct yes that is correct so the the setbacks are measured From the Inside Edge of an access the outside side yeah the inside to the property line and and what is that feed how many feet is that what what kind of yard is that and what kind how many feet is that how are you asking what the setbacks yeah what's the setback probably okay so it's a side yard then I think it's a side yard okay so a side yard is 10 feet and so you're saying it is 10 feet from the the building I just I mean I don't have a you know I don't see it Dimension I it was just trying to understand that and then the other so that that is a side yard and that has to meet the side yard um standard from the easement okay and the easement is um you know shown on the plat map as something correct okay okay and then the next question on the other side there's a statement in your staff report that says um it's rather odd it says that access is provided uh to the Raley's parking lot that is correct or to the Raley's parcel could you can you guys bring up that other set of the site plan I'm having a little bit of challenge with that and some of the findings are um you know no Hazard to pedestrian bicyclists and uh safe access and I just don't understand why a uh you know I why a vehicular access would be allowed between the two properties and then of course we do have master plan policies of cut through traffic and you know when you hear a lot about the congestion in that area a big fear of mine comes about congen you know cut through traffic from one you know Lemon Valley to Golden Valley can you show me where this access is I've just I was really confused about it oh looks like someone has something to put on the glass great maybe too much glare yeah I do have the the so where is the vehicular access into the Raley's parking lot [Music] right there so I I just I I'm I'm really struggling with that and then when it goes there over to the Raley's it looks like it has the option A vehicle you know a Rayleigh Shopper in a car heading over to you know nor you know Golden Valley has the option to go um or or vice versa someone from the from the apartments can go behind the Raley's building or through the Raley's parking lot is that what is the thinking there that that's creating too many conflicts in my view Derek Wilson on behalf of the applicant um so first we don't require that driveway for our site to function we could lose that driveway and the site would still function it functions better for car circulation with that driveway but it but it isn't required for us to meet code or for the site to work so if that was a huge issue we could certainly put up an emergency gate there or or get rid of it all together the important connection to me personally is that people can walk easily from our site to the library into the supermarket into restaurants um I I think that that car access can function somebody theoretically could head out of there and go behind the rallies building I'm not sure there's much sense in that there's there's nowhere to go back there's just loading docks but it gives another another way for for traffic to circulate in and out of the entire set of properties yeah I have a real issue with that I mean The Pedestrian a hundred percent but that sort of configuration knowing cut through behaviors you know with what you've got going you know through the the traffic circulation a real problem for me but I'll move on to my next question hold on a second you're over significantly so I want to see if any of your colleagues have any additional questions council member doer I think this is your first opportunity to have thank you um I don't have I do have a comment about the last thing we were about which is I was extremely pleased to see the thoughtfulness on The Pedestrian access to the school the shopping the library making those connections and cut throughs I understand the applicant owns both the commercial side so they have control over both sites so I think that you know facilitates this kind of thing and even if they didn't I would be asking for it so I'm really glad to see it um I want to really speak to my colleagues so we have a tale of two different projects here the last one in this one and this one to me is quite different because what we have is a completely different process we went to the NAB then there was a separate meeting with the neighbors then changes were made then a second meeting with the neighbors with more changes that the changes were vetted things a whole story was dropped off of a building um trees were added this is the process that I like to see and I just want to I think it really draws a dramatic contrast with the prior and I wanted to share with my colleagues so that you can understand what I am thinking better this I think is a very effective process and they've come up with a good development they tied for 18 years to put in commercial we need housing I think it makes a lot of sense so that is all the good so kudos to the developer and to the developers Consultants on the approach you've taken this project um where I have a challenge is on traffic and when I want to ask my colleagues again is we have requirements that in order to do a project you have to have water in order to do a project you have to have the sewer it's not optional you have to have these things but when it comes to roads you don't have to have it you study we we accept D level um as acceptable we've heard year after year now from North Valley residents about the traffic congestion and they keep saying you should come up here during fill in the blank uh rush hour school time whatever and I'm my question is really to our staff and to my colleagues is how do we change this Dynamic how do we get concurrency so that right now the system is set up so that they pay a road impact fee the road impact fee goes RTC and as long as they're using it north of I-80 that's completely fine where where I'm challenged is why is there not requirements that they use it to mitigate the impacts of these projects I know they don't have to so if you just say they don't have to I get it they don't have to I know so I want to change that I mean project after project many projects fit into the environment but then some projects cause a very unique conflict in a particular place in this one we've heard that the road along there North Hills is supposed to be upgraded by 2026 or isn't a plan to maybe be considered for upgrade by 2026. we heard from the developer that they expect this to be built by 2027. and to me that's we almost have concurrency like we almost have a road being built at the same time a project is being coming in for a landing and I wonder how we if that is really true like I want to make sure that is really true and then two how do we achieve that going forward what can we do as a council to help address this problem Angela Foos for the record from a process perspective each project comes in and has to do a traffic study assuming it warrants it or is Justified has enough units to trigger it so when a project comes in their job is not to solve the North Valleys traffic problem their job is to mitigate their traffic problems right bigger picture as a region we know that there are a lot of roads that need to be widened there are a lot of roads that need to be redone so that's where RTC comes in we look at from a regional perspective right if you lived in in Spanish Springs and had to drive pyramid Highway every day you would say this is the worst why aren't we doing something why are we allowing any more development before we fix pyramid Highway this is this is a regional problem everywhere you live you hear these concerns so as a region we look at what roads need to be fixed and when and so for the North Valleys we know there's projects happening along Military Road road projects road projects on Lemon Road projects on Buck will that solve the problem today no but as a region we can't solve everybody's Road problem today we have to look at it as as a region how can we systematically start picking those roads that need it the most and we look at it in two ways right today where where those Road fixes needed but long term where is growth happening and how do we plan ahead for that so while Buck today not Buck I'm sorry um Northbound North Hills while North Hills isn't widened today it's a two-lane road it will be widened to four lanes and we know that's happening sometime between 26 and 30. and that's planned and it may be an issue too of you know there's there's a lot of vacant land on North Hills so we may be saying well why are we widening North Hills when there's a lot of vacant land but again looking ahead that's an area that we know is going to grow and so really this is one piece in terms of a bigger picture again we're planning for the roads by 20 to 2026 to 2030 to fix that problem to widen the roads this project when they did their traffic study does not create level of service F it's not failing and so when we look at each project on their own how do they have to mitigate their impacts they pay their ROTC impact fees that doesn't mean it's going to widen North Hills it could be going to Pyramid it could be going to a number of things if you want to change that policy that process that's an ROTC discussion not so much a City of Reno discussion RTC member right here correct and on mayor our mayor and our vice mayor on there to advocate for this in my opinion I'm over time thank you for the answer I have one more thing I'll come back later but I just wanted to say Kudos I think the project applicants have done a really good job in hearing listening to the residents haven't solved every problem nothing probably will but I've gone a long way so thank you Miss Foose you sat down too early Miss Foose you sat down too early I think you're so kind so I wanted to just continue with the thread that Miss Stewart is pulling here and and really this is again more speaking to my colleagues and also with you but the mayor and I do serve on the RTC we're both relatively new to the body at RTC the mayor a little bit longer than me but what I will say is that you and Miss Koski and the team in the planning department have been really um just great advocates for the city I don't know that we've ever had the kind of concerted effort that's gone into some of the planning choices that are being made I think we all acknowledge and would be hard-pressed not to recognize that some years ago let's say 25 or 30 years ago there was a decision in this room that said we're going to grow to the north of us right into the North Valleys there's going to be abundant land and we're going to have a lot of development out of there and I think at that time you know 25 or 30 years ago when the decision was made to go north as opposed to say go towards Pleasant Valley or go out towards in Valley I don't think they would have known that today here we are in 2023 dealing with some of the complex problems that we have right none of us build roads that are six Lanes wide hoping for a 30-year window in which those roads would ultimately be able to be you know collectors or Feeders for that area that's what you're seeing on Pyramid Highway certainly seeing on Karen but I will say that of late and I would say the last three or four years you all have been really helpful as a staff to help us to advocate for the City of Reno and the needs we have there and I'll give the example of North Hills widening this is one that you and I were able to work on and also improve our opportunities over at the RTC so you and I went up there we're looking at this roadway we're saying to ourselves yeah there's a lot of vacant land here why are we expanding it right and the idea was is that you as a planning person and your planning staff are saying well we know that in the coming years there are going to be a number of different housing and apartment communities here along this road so let's plan for it now and that includes micro Mobility projects the widening of roads to include protected and other kinds of bike paths and I think that's what I've seen be the difference from the planning department so I want to just say thank you for that it really won't help people to see it because they want a response now about the roads as they are they're suffering out there and and they're really being challenged by it I wish planning worked in a different way it really works in the way you've described it but I do think that with the advocacy you're seeing that that North Virginia widening the lemon expansion uh some of the material changes that will happen out around Swan Lake and also we're dealing with another entity that's not even been mentioned which is ndot right so it's not so much that we aren't doing the right things it's just that when you have RTC which includes members from other bodies you have ndot a state agency and everyone has competing needs you start to layer complexity on top of complexity so I think I'm encouraged by what Miss Stewart said which is that they're about lining up right project and Road lining up doesn't always work that way but I think in in this case your planning staff has done a good job of helping us to make good choices as we Advocate at the RTC let me see if there are any other questions for body councilmember Taylor I think this is your first round as well it is thank you Mr vice mayor um question regarding traffic in uh Mike I've seen you in the audience or and I don't want you to feel left out um we heard from the applicant I just want to understand from you does the traffic work at a level of service that's acceptable for this project for the record Mike Michelle engineering manager um I have reviewed the traffic impact study I agree with the recommendations it meets standard and intersections operate at an acceptable level service under all cases and again you're a professional engineer right thank you um my next question is about fencing I heard one of the public commenters ask about fencing in Mr Gordon I think you mentioned that in your presentation can you just spend a brief amount of time on the fencing that will be part of this project can I can go to my presentation briefly while it's being pulled up yeah rather than just what code requires we agreed the more durable aesthetically pleasing so you're going above the codes we're going above code okay thank you very much um and then my last comment was um uh Council window appreciate the comment that you made about the different processes and the different projects I I just I guess a comment would be I appreciate an equitable even playing field for everybody so I would say Mr Gordon and you and your team went above and beyond what was asked for you for the Outreach and the neighborhood is that accurate you went way above and beyond what was asked for you the last applicant did what was asked of them so I don't think they should be penalized but I do think that what you did is very good and I appreciate it so thank you very much councilmember Taylor I think you make a good point and I'll just add that we want the projects to be handled on their marriage right not based on the quality of The Advocates that present them is really another way of looking at it and so I won't belabor the point except to say that certainly I appreciate those projects that go out of their way to engage the community in which they are in and sometimes going above and beyond is the important part I know Madam mayor emphasized that earlier this evening but I think it goes without saying that we appreciate that kind of Engagement let me see if there are any other comments councilmember ebook I do um so I'm just wondering if we could get the um developers presentation up again um look at page uh slide 17 of 16. it's possible councilmember Ebert thank you for making it that easy for us to find it this is what we're looking for tonight let's take the time to put the right page up and and did you have questions for the developer well yeah I did so Mr Gordon can you come forward let me get your page number again I'm sorry just wake up 7 out of 16. that's the current Regional roadway improvements slide yeah okay I'm there as well on my screen so I just wanted to say also you know I I do appreciate that you've made accommodations based off of community feedback I do appreciate that and I want to thank you also for meeting with me to address concerns that I have and I've gotten a lot of community feedback and overwhelmingly it's been about traffic it hasn't been about the specifics of that plan so I just wanted to share that and So based off of that I just want to look at this map and just call out concerns that I have so when we look at this map we have you know three colored lines here we have the red line the blue line and the little green line my concern as a word for Resident is that when you look at those lines those are our main entrance and exit points for the North Valley East my concern is if we were to have an accident on North Virginia and 395 which frequently happens and we are also in the process of widening North Hills Boulevard um how are people going to get home we only have those three roads and I'm asking that honestly like if we approve this project and we have another however many people living in that unit um 192 Apartments and um we wait until later to widen that road so we now have Construction we don't have any alternate routes at this time I mean just looking at this map this is where the problem is here where we've bottlenecked with infrastructure um you know we've reached a point now where you know we have this debate of infrastructure coming after development and and I get that but we don't have alternate routes coming in and out of the valley so I I think that this project in and of itself I don't actually have a problem with it the thing that scares me is access um I don't know if we can put a condition on here that this project um could be approved once the the road is widened but I just have very legitimate concerns about access because currently when we have accidents on North Virginia and 395 the alternate route people take is North Hills to Buck to Lemon to wherever because that's our only access points um I and I'm just struggling to find Alternatives here and it's not just about a traffic study it's it's we're extremely Limited on access in and out of the valleys and it's not necessarily your fault or this development's fault but we're we're kind of stuck here in the valleys I mean I mean I just want to know like maybe this is more for staff how how do we handle that if we have a traffic event I mean we have bad weather we have accidents frequently out there how how do we handle construction on North Hills and widening a road um if we have only two other access routes in and out of the North Valleys I can just add me if staff wants to come up that would be great but I can just add I mean first of all right as far as the the findings for this use permit for you know 94 additional units right the traffic study this is important to emphasize isn't just our traffic engineer coming up with intersections that should be studied or rows right we meet with your city engineer and he directs us with the scope of work of what should be studied so then that is study then we looked at the appropriate levels of service you know what you're satisfied but to your point about emergency access and those type of issues that's why this application also went to police fire another city reviewing agencies right Public Safety in the staff report there's a specific section about public safety and I've been before this body before where there has been issues with response times are you outside the six minutes how you mitigate that or if there's um not a great alternative route how do you mitigate that but in this situation with this application there is no concern by either police or fire with respect to Public Safety and construction of this site probably because then full site and there's you know many different Road networks coming in and out but I I feel we feel confident and hopefully you would with your Public Safety staff not saying there's any concerns that should be mitigated there okay thank you got to remember Ebert I think um I am hearing the concern and the the sincerity of your concern and I wanted to share with you maybe the experience that I had this week due to the snow in my own home situation so for me to get to my home I have to take I-80 and go westbound so I came past the Rob Drive exit which would have been the last opportunity for me to get off of that road and there had been trucks um idling for the better part of the last several days because they couldn't get over the hill and eventually what happened was I got stuck between Rob drive and my exit for about an hour on the freeway and I think um like you I was saying to myself where is the other way to get out of this situation and of course Somerset was not developed to a amount or take into account every contingency what happens when there's an earthquake on top of a historic snowfall and one of the roads is washed out by right so I think your point is very well taken because access matters right and and how we get in and out of it and so I just couldn't think of another way to go so I you know unfortunately I had to spend that hour in the car and I think what I'm hearing from a lot of residents um in the North Valleys is they're just very tired of spending that much time in their car they would rather be spending their time with their family and my hope is that as we continue to do the improvements that we are to the RTC driven projects that are up there and the ndots project in 395 that that will relieve the pressure valve but I think there's always going to be conflicts with the growth pattern that has been developed in North Valleys and my hope is that what happens is over time they become less right and and my hope will be of course that as to all of these various programs and projects that we are able to Advocate at the RTC for the in increased awareness of what's going on in the North Valleys because I think it's been ignored for a long time and I think that your time on this body will likely be the harbinger of lots of good changes up there as you advocate for the community and because I'm the at-large member it's also the same people that I represent so your point is very well taken about access I mean I think that's really the same question that we're all asking did anyone else have any questions oh councilmember or do her I'm so sorry I just wanted to follow up with a couple smaller things um there was a comment made about well on the one building that you dropped a level maybe you should drop another level but I wanted to get on the record if this is General commercial and it was actually like another equivalent to O'Reilly's you said they could go 65 foot I'm guess I'm asking you both and then how high are you how high is this development The General commercial zoning does allow for up to 65 feet in height so what how tall would be like the raleys or a big building like that just state your name for the record story generally probably less than 20 feet the rallies is no I don't know how tall the rallies is just generally I'm just saying it's probably less than 20 feet and this boost make sure to state your name for the record I apologize for the record no problem we've just got council members speaking you're trying to speak we've got audience members speaking only one person can speak at any given time so that we can all get in what we need to hear yeah I I said Isis what what whatever answer you think it is I don't have the answer so I think that sounds like a good answer as well well anyway I just I felt like if if this apartment complex wasn't there the alternative is to build commercial and to your point maybe it is only 20 feet maybe it's 40 feet maybe the developer knows but um it would be some height and I don't think it would be one story I I don't think it would be 10 feet let's say or 15 feet I think it would be more like 20 30 40 feet so I think there's going to be something there and I think they've made a reasonable accommodation I get that it's on a hill and I think that's part of the problem is the change of elevation from one to the next is that right the residents are low are lower right and so whatever goes there is always going to seem taller because it's on a hill right so that that is correct thank you uh councilwoman door this is Leah Brock for the record so there is an 18-foot grade change between that single family residence and the person so it seems extra tall so you've got like 20 feet already in there exactly so the proposed two-story building that's adjacent to that residential is just under 21 feet to the peak of that roof okay so it's like 40 feet above the other with the 18 and the 20. yes I get it okay um two things one I just um you know I made a comment earlier about process and just um Miss Taylor pointed out that I was asking for more public process but I maybe left off part of my statement and that and just so I'm more clear the more public process leads to project changes that I think are for the betterment of the project and I'm going to give you some examples the density was reduced the parking is overparked you said I love to see that because these are islands and they have to park within and if you don't have enough parking for the visitors I mean it's a tough tough situation so between the density the Heights and the parking all of those are less than what they could be and that's what I like to see I'm just saying let's not Max it out every time so I just wanted to be clear you know to the group it's it's not just process or talking for talking's sake it's where that process leads to a changed outcome that I'm hopeful for well in council member doer I think about a mayor's point when she made it was that it's the process of working through the project yes oftentimes with the award member and in your case yeah that brings to light a better project in the end I think that was the part of it that the Madame mayor and you were in agreement about yeah let me turn to the colleagues to my right and see if anyone has any additional concerns council member breckis I think this is your final time for comment oh see your second thank you so much so in your staff report you mentioned that our standard for a neighborhood park is 2.5 acres for every thousand residents this brings in 500 residents I presume there's another 500 residents not far off being built with all the growth there do we have a new park under construction in this area north of this freeway area anywhere does our city parks department did they weigh in on this when you submit circulated it out um I do not believe that they provided information specific to any parks and I don't know of any parks being developed in the area it would be a good question for the parks department yeah I mean I don't want that concept to be lost because you know big theme in our master plan was concurrency and if it's two and a half par two and a half acres of a neighborhood park for every thousand residents and we're not working on setting aside land and buying land and building land we're not building complete communities and I I don't think um I think that's a deficiency that has to be addressed and these are the places where we address it so that's a concern but my other my favorite topic of course is um about uh adequacy of sewer and storm water now you mentioned that this goes to Tom Wharf was this part of the shave um I'm trying to understand because we just had a last item the council gave a little more room uh to shave over to um tumworth is this a within the tomwarf sewer shed or uh is this part of the shave um I I don't have an answer for that question perhaps the applicant does maybe well you know what it's our infrastructure it's a major infrastructure I want to hear from staff I think Mr Michelle has something for the record Mike Michelle engineering manager so this site sewers to the Golden Valley lift station which sewers to tum Wharf it is not part of the city not part of the shave okay so it's a permanent in the tum Wharf uh correct but it's in the Swan Lake Hydra Basin that is correct and they're mitigating to 1.3 to 1. yes good but um I don't I'm having a hard time believing that's enough at this point and I've been very consistent when I sat through the jury deliberations and heard the verdict it was it was runoff and it was pumping so it was you know we've got the pumping because we're going over to tomworth but the hydro Basin is still Swan Lake correct correct and I I am when it comes to me I'm not supporting any more runoff into Swan Lake until we get the infrastructure out there and I want to you know I've got 16 seconds the fallacy the fiction that 20 years ago everyone decided the growth was going to North Valleys that is not in any way accurate what happened was a series of sequential development requests came through and they were approved a lot of times because developers were very influential in campaigning and lobbying to people often meetings where the public wasn't there but the decision to grow is based upon this table supplying infrastructure and we don't have a storm water utility we don't have an operating 4mgd plant there we're still putting runoff into the Swan Lake where we're putting the influent so I do not believe and will never validate the decision that 20 years ago the plan was to grow here because 20 years ago and going the infrastructure was never provided so I wanna I wanna correct that and the runoff is still a very big issue for me of concern council's given more and more head more and more room into that plant which compounded with the runoff is creating I think a near catastrophe situation and I've been so consistent on this so uh you know there's some minor things that that access but other things I am very very troubled with even though I do see it going to tell more but more run off into Swan Lake is no go when it comes to me on a on a descript you know on an appeal thank you Miss breakfast any additional comments or questions by the body for my part I'll clarify an earlier statement that I made certainly the way in which planning happens is we have Regional planning documents we have Regional planning governing board which sets the parameters for how our region is to grow and and what service area they are and certainly will also have the regional decisions that are made by our Master planning documents so it's land use zoning designations have made choices that these particular applicants are coming in with projects that are zoned for particular areas so that is ultimately the decision now some of the infrastructure needs have not been well provided for but that's why this body has seen fit to expand for example the sewer capacity there although at least one colleague on the body did not vote for that and so those are the explanations that I'll provide I don't think there are any other comments unless council member Ebert did you have one more round okay thanks I had a question about um cost or the rental how much the apartments are going to cost is it just market value okay any additional comments okay I'll come back to the body if anyone has any requests for additional one minute no okay I'm gonna ask the clerk to put the staff recommendations back on the screen this is in council member Ebert Ward do you desire to make a motion okay let's see if we can't go to councilmember Taylor at um we have affirmed the planning commission's decision and I can make all the findings second okay of emotion by councilmember Taylor or second by council member do or any additional discussion at this time yeah yeah I want to you know I tried to make my um comments very specific to the findings and code and application um and my my concerns about storm water really do get to that and I didn't wasn't able to be a part of emotion um getting to where I wanted to go but I do want to um but those you know I think do have basis and and this is an elaboration on that there's go between Miss Stewart Miss fuss say it's not our job in these hearings to solve all of the north Valley's traffic problems well you can say traffic problems lack of Park problems storm water problem runoff uh at this hearing that's true but it is our job here to say sorry we just can't this we don't have the capacity for this that's what all the findings go to and I don't see that we have the capacity for this I'm troubled that we don't have advanced planning for neighborhood parks we're building we we're okay with deficiencies on Parks the mount master plan Foundation I don't believe ever got there and so it is our job on this not to solve problems but to say there are too many problems that put this at a a logger jams and and I that's what I see on this one particularly as related to storm water runoff now I've we've been trying to get a storm water utility to address all those deficiencies for four or five years we don't have it and we have deficiencies and this body this staff is satisfied with continuing to exacerbate those deficiencies and those deficiencies are tremendously as related to storm water in this one Lake Hydro Basin um posing risk we paid three million dollars to the last times the last folks I I cannot believe that we have not even you know even in these discretionaries much less putting forward very uh revised regulations to what we're willing to tolerate at this point of time to increase runoff in the Swan Lake Hydro basin it's amazing councilmember yeah I just want to comment um I'm very much in support of this project but I do think that the discussion has revealed some real issues that the council has to address and I think Mr manager I'm going to kind of put them at your feet that's what your staff do for us it is it took us the entire Council lobbying to get one single light from indot at the Bonanza I'll never forget it we had to have numerous people die before a single light could get put in we have to figure out a way to address these roads more comprehensively we just do the parks I think is an excellent point I was going to talk about the issue with dogs here I just decided to save everybody's time but I agree like we should be adding Parks we heard the discussion at um yeah earlier about at the arpim about the flat Fields like we're adding a bunch of people but no additional amenities and then the storm water we all know the story there so these are things that are in our purview that we're going to have to address I think the discussion here has put a bright Spotlight on them and so I we need your help and our staff's help on how to move through but I am supportive of the project so thank you hey any other additional comments at this time hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed nay post opposed motion carries [Music] Mr clerk we're on to our final public comment period is that correct well before we move into closing public comment just some clarification on item G3 the appointment to uh commissioner to the Reno Housing Authority my understanding is we want to continue that until April 13th yes that item will be moved to an additional agenda I'll leave that at the manager's discretion as to where it will be done and just for clarity we're just looking for a motion to continue that okay can I get a motion from the motion to continue item G3 to the next council meeting okay I have a motion by council member doer second by councilmember Martinez any other discussion hearing none I'll call for the question all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed motion carries I'm sorry this will be for the April 13th council meeting 12 I'm sorry the first one in April thank you yes not the next my motion was the next but if if it was intended to be April 13th excuse me April 12th sorry okay do you need me to amend the motion if you don't mind just we'll keep it clean so we have to do the whole reconsideration could I just put Clarity I meant to say April 12th not not the second meeting not the next meeting yes that was a misstatement on my part councilmember Martinez do you second that motion okay I'll call for the question again and make sure everyone was clear as to what the motion was all those in favor of the amended motion please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously thank you and moving into closing public comment we do have one member registered in the room uh we'll be hearing from Kathy Orr Kelly Orr I'm sorry can you hear me okay yes we can I'm Kelly Orr for the record uh in closing public comment I wanted to just thank you guys so much for everything that you do your time being here today very very busy and I appreciate you um I'm reaching out on a different level today we talked about parks and recs and some of the funding that's going into services for our city um pickleball being one of them and I have emailed um all of you guys um through your ways to let you know about roller derby um during the pandemic Reno roller derby has kind of you know gone to sleep a little bit just like a lot of other sports and businesses but we're growing we're back we have junior roller derby that's Sierra scorpions we have a regional roller derby team so Sierra Regional roller derby that's the All-Stars we travel worldwide Nationwide according to wifta we are 501c3 non-profit we also have a B team that we just uh 64 new skaters we taught 22 people that have never roller skated a day in their life how to roller skate and now get to hit their friends which makes me excited because I love this sport so much but we are in need of a house we used to play right here on the rink of the river that was a great asset that we had during 2011 2012 2013. I've been playing roller derby since 2007. um I really would like to see the city get involved with uh the roller derby team at some capacity I know in June we have a skate skating event that's happening I'm very excited to be able to put on my roller skates and skate with everybody outside um we frequent the areas all over town um and I just would like to see roller derby have a home like there's a really really good um kind of picture of this uh San Diego has done it it's called Derby United San Diego team bought some land that is mix purpose and they give back to their Community with training classes rental roller skates at a very low rate they host birthday parties and events and they also house multiple roller derby teams a bank track and flat track so I just wanted to urge the council maybe to check out Derby United too see if that's something that fits with you know North Valley's award all divorce like we we want some sports here for roller derby and roller skating that's all inclusive and we don't always get to rent spaces the convention centers a thousand dollars an hour We're a 501c3 nonprofit We cannot afford that my son needs tennis shoes and things for his school and sports so um I'm just looking for more Avenues we've exhausted asking the Washoe County School Districts gyms um the volleyball facilities anywhere indoor because obviously the weather Keeps Us kind of where do we go um the roller rink charges us by the hour to to have staff so it's about seven hundred dollars for us to have um just practice there for two hours so just really looking reaching out support roller derby thank you have a good night Miss or that's pretty cool I am looking at the website for Derby United uh that looks awesome I'd love to see that come to Reno and maybe we can make that happen through our Parks and Rec you know obviously this body is very concerned about um Recreation right and and so it makes some sense that we expand that to include this I I guess I'd ask are you a Jammer or are you a blocker or what what's the story there I do whatever my coach tells me to do good answer I uh only Jam in certain situations and that is a uh um if we have Jammer or the other Jammer in the box and so a Power Jam scenario I am a force to be reckoned with um so I can tell I can move mountains but I can't move your decisions but yeah I love this or I'd also encourage you to think about getting involved in our nabs and the NAB for the North Valleys I am you are on the nav I am yeah oh you're no I'm not alternative alternative right now yeah fantastic well nice having you here in the chambers tonight have a good evening yeah that concludes our in-person public comment for the record we receive nine comments which were directly associated with the agenda item prior to 4 pm on March 7th these comments were written correspondents received via our reno.gov online public comment form or by email to our office copies of these comments have been distributed to the Reno city council and are available to the public on the reno.gov meeting portal they represented five in favor and four in opposition in addition we have four voicemails which we will play for you now Ryan Gardner I'm calling it support project ldc23-00018 uh regarding 200 units for housing in the North Valleys of Reno and just supporting the project because uh it will deliver a who needed a housing boost for residents in the North Reno area in addition it will likely be less traffic than a previous approved use so we support it 100 percent thank you for your time have a great day bye now hi my name is Doug McIntyre and I am support in Project ldc23-00018 as everyone knows there's a major housing shortage that needs to be taken care of thank you hello my name is Ed Shaw I'm a resident here at Reno and I'm calling to support project [Music] ldc23-00018 it's a different complex in the North Hills area I'm calling in support for it because I do think we are still in need of homes here in Reno houses housing units for the many people coming here for work uh I think it's also a great infill project I think there's that the property has developed all around it um certainly as Apartments being close to the amenities shopping Library it's all a good thing and um again I just think it's a good fit for the property and it'll be a great project in Minnesota and again my name is Ed Shaw thank you hi my name is Mark Kaiser Senior vice president of Kidder Matthews I'm calling today in regards to project ldc230018 at the North Hills Shopping Center in support of the apartment project that is proposed for that I've been the leasing agent on the shopping center for many years and we've had every effort to try and get retailers there but I think that the uh the apartments would be great to have housing next to the school and also to allow for lesser traffic which is generated by the multi-family which I know is a concern that the developers expressed so if anybody needs any additional information my number is 775-470-8875 thank you Mr vice mayor that concludes our final public comment and I'm looking for a motion to adjourn a motion to adjourn for the question have a good night