A Transactional City Hall
Happy Summer! I hope this finds all well as the season of endless days is upon us. For the Council, we are on our “summer break”. The Reno Charter (a law that functions as the City’s constitution) requires Council to meet twice a month. Two times a year – in June/July and November/December, we meet on consecutive Wednesdays on the first two weeks of the month. Then on the following month, meetings are at the end of the month on the final two consecutive Wednesdays. This allows for a month without meetings, but like most vacations we pay for it with long and intensive back-to-back weeks of meetings.
This Council’s meetings have been notoriously lengthy, but I think that Manager Thornley is doing a good job managing the agenda and separating the wheat from the chaff. It is a fine balance to orient the Council’s focus upon the routine (e.g., purchasing approvals) and non-routine (actions that progress the Council’s agreed upon strategic agenda). Under our rules, the Manager sets the agenda for the Council so it is his job to direct our attention to the value added.
Here is a rundown on a few Ward 1 issues:
The Mountaingate Drive Fence This issue is about an easement connecting the Steamboat ditch path across two private residential properties to a Juniper Ridge public street, and it has been messy. The matter started off in December when the easement was blocked by owners of one of the encumbered parcels. It is of question if they received legitimate approvals from the homeowner’s association and the City permitting division.
The easement path is longstanding with a right of public passage established when the subdivision was approved and many path walkers were unhappy about the closure. In a conversation with the longtime property owners, I understand that the fencing was prompted by increased use and anti-social activity by a small number of users and those concerns should not be discounted. Shared spaces are tricky because the public has an unquenchable desire for recreational opportunities and once established, are not easily relinquished. At the end of the day, the City is responsible to assert the public’s rights to use the easement for its intended purpose.
Fire Prevention We finally got goats to knock down vegetation in the City’s owned portion of Rosewood Canyon. Hopefully everyone else is taking precautions on their own property this year.
The Lear Theater Manager Thornley says he is in discussions with the Artown Board of Directors about the City taking possession of the building to bring it into its next stage toward preservation. What that looks like, we will see.
Controversy in the Powning District The construction of apartments at Riverside Drive and Washington Street is moving forward but so is the legal process. The next stop is a City Council hearing of an appeal from neighbors. The threshold for determination is if the building permit complies with applicable ordinances and/or did the City Manager abuse discretion in issuing the permit. All sides are lawyered up I am told.
Local Streets The City has a neighborhood street improvement program that rotates on an annual basis through the different wards. Next year Ward 1 is up, and the selected streets are in the Swope Middle School area and the Plumas Neighborhood around Lander Street. I’ve heard from folks that they’ve seen contractors in the vicinity and want to know what is up.
Don’t worry, they are in the beginning phases of project design developing as-built maps. There will be correspondence and outreach soon from the Public Works Department and issues about gas service, parking, landscaping, curb cuts etc., will all be evaluated in due time.
Speaking of outreach, the Ward 1 Neighborhood Advisory Board will begin meeting again as soon as we get some people appointed. When we went to hold a meeting in June, we realized we only had one member! If you’re interested in serving, please apply. I try to get a distributed representation of people from different neighborhoods throughout the ward, so please do step up if you’re interested or attend a NAB when those start up again. Here is the link.
In General City News:
We closed out the budget for the year and thank goodness for the federal relief bills. The first one known as the CARES Act has been mostly spent. It rescued last year’s budget and helped us help residents and businesses in need due to the pandemic lockdowns.
The second bill known as American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) will help us continue to recover with COVID economic downturn fallout but also advance community needs. Reno is earmarked for a whopping $51 million (for comparison purposes, our annual general fund budget is just under $260 million) and more is going to Washoe County. The state also gets an earmark.
In a low tax, low public services environment like Nevada, we are particularly helped with infusions of federal funding. The trend has been for this aid to retreat over the past several decades. The Council will be discussing how to invest these funds in our community needs later this summer and I welcome this conversation and community input.
Reflective of the Mountaingate Drive fence issue, I’ve urged Washoe County folks to use some of their funds to buy open space lands for community recreational needs. This is once in a generation investment and like Virginia Lake or other amenities that came about during the Great Depression, we need long lasting investments in our region’s physical environment.
Hopefully, better uses will come around than last time the federal spigot turned on during the Great Recession. Anyone used the Meadowood Mall interchange lately? That was the “shovel ready” project that was in the planning stages because no one had the good sense to fund it when resources were competitive. Watchful community eyes should be focused upon what priorities get funded this go around.
A Transactional City Hall
pol·i·cy | \ ˈpä-lə-sē - a high-level overall plan embracing the general goals and acceptable procedures especially of a governmental body (Merriam-Webster)
An alternative to policy setting is deal making. Deal making is the creation of agreements that are transactional and party specific. Outside of purchasing items or procuring services, local governments don’t enter into a lot of contracts with private parties.
I have come to realize, that I am serving on a Council that is an exception and engaged in more deal making, than policy setting. Manager Thornley is well disposed to this approach as he is an attorney, with more experience in preparing documents for inking, than community-based policy making.
In 2017 well before he joined us and after we completed the Downtown Action Plan, my attention turned to one of the plan’s implementation items that was to prepare a subarea plan for the northwest downtown quadrant. This area is more or less bound by First Street, Keystone Avenue, Sixth Street, and Arlington Avenue). As I represented the area, I sought a budget item to start the planning effort.
This was about the time that Jacobs Entertainment came to town and together with their uber lobbyists informed City staff that they did not want a plan for the area because they didn’t want to “give up control” of the area so the community engagement process of creating a policy plan was sidelined. They were far from a majority property owner in the area and today while I would presume they have the most holdings of anyone, there is still many other property owners in the northwest quadrant.
What commenced, was a serious of asks and gives to Jacobs by the City Council. Some of these were relatively benign, like abandonments of unneeded alley segments. Most disturbingly was the public parking lot on Second Street that was utilized by river goers and St. Thomas of Aquinas parishioners. Staff is working on the next round of Jacobs negotiations that I oppose.
After Jacobs started off the let’s make a deal thinking at city hall, next came the Mayor’s 1000 Homes in 120 Days program. This program soon changed characteristics and could now be called 5000 units in 5 years. As referenced in the article, many of the projects were already in the pipeline. I continue to question the legality of the program (state law only authorizes sewer utility subsidies if there is a guarantee of restricted affordability). As sewer hook-up charges are expected to go up significantly in the near term to be pay for needed treatment plant upgrades the longer time period freezes those fees for the lucky recipients.
Several times when I voted against the more than 30 deals, I raised the specter to the Council if this is such a good program, why not make it our policy for sewer hooks-ups. That way it is an across the board, available to all approach. This did not gain traction.
Then came a few agreements that got the Council over the hump if you will, to approve large scale development projects including the Daybreak one.
The most preposterous of these negotiations took place when the City was convened more or less as a judge panel (known as a quasi-judicial capacity), related to the development of the former Lakeridge Tennis Club. The ad hoc negotiations led to individual Council members pitching to the developer during the proceeding that he contribute to the planned swimming pool at Moana Lane and provide other goodies.
All of these requested or offered contributions are worthy philanthropic causes. But if you’re someone with legitimate concerns that a project does not comply with Master Plan policy, ordinance or state law, how are those concerns addressed by financial contributions to Council pet projects? Project requirements should almost always be measures that mitigate impacts to the surrounds of a project location.
Some of the deal points that the Council has wrestled during the approval process have merit. These include impacts of new projects that bring on high end new housing that is out of reach to many residents, fueling our affordability crisis. But the Council has not bothered to create a policy framework to this and has relied upon ad hoc negotiations. I’ve been calling for standardized guidelines or an ordinance to put these into place (if the legal authority exists to do so).
The back breaker for me was the most recent (and second Stonegate pay off deal). Far flung Stonegate in the Cold Springs basin has a lot of expensive infrastructure to provide because infrastructure planning has not extended to this outer reach.
So, Stonegate and their uber lobbyists pitched an idea to have the City use its credit to finance their costs through a dubious mechanism. Council members were legitimately sketch on the notion but all (except me) were able to get to yes, when Stonegate decided to throw in some goodies including future to be identified amenities in the Stead area.
If all goes well, the bonds will be paid by Stonegate. If not, the City is on the hook to take possession of the failed project’s land as a pledged security. One would wonder how valuable land in a failed project would be? But Manager Thornley is satisfied that it is an adequate security. Bond issuance is serious business that involves federal financial agency compliance. When I came on to City Council in 2012 in the aftermath of the Great Recession, I saw that some of the City’s bonding escapades imploded in sync with the nation’s financial system.
Most notable to the Stonegate bonds, is that preliminary underwriting had gotten far along before the deal was cut and due diligence did not contemplate the side letter. Security regulations are outside of my expertise. One only hopes that Manager Thornley and his advisors are ensuring that this deal is disclosed to regulators and bond purchasers, if it need be.
In summary, be wary (and there is an entire tale of redevelopment agency stories to rehash) of a policy making body doing transactional deals. These may well be subsidies or abrogation of regulatory powers.
Jenny Brekhus is the Ward 1 Reno, NV, City Council Member. When opinions and views expressed, without other attribution, they are those of Jenny Brekhus and do not reflect official views or positions of the City of Reno or the Reno City Council unless otherwise noted. This publication and any response it generates communicated through any channel, may be subject to disclosure under Nevada Public Records Act if it substantively refers to City of Reno business.