Another New Council Member, Four More Schieve Years, & in Defense of Zoning
Ward 3 Appointment
Happy Fall! By now, you are probably aware Council Member Oscar Delgado abruptly resigned for personal reasons. Mr. Delgado and I joined the Council in 2012, and I wish him well in his life’s next chapter.
The Reno Charter is unusual in outlining two options for the Council to fill a vacancy. My objections to going the appointment route rather than a special election are by now well known. If you didn’t catch it, here is a Reno Gazette Journal editor’s opinion that endorses the special election. Nonetheless, the Council decided to go the appointment route again.
A lot of folks have asked if I will skip this appointment process in protest, as I did the one a few weeks back when the Ward 5 seat came open. Yes and no. I have a long-scheduled family vacation and will be out of town for the first step of whittling down the 19 applicants. I miss very few Council meetings. And as the most senior Council member (along with Mayor Schieve), my decade-long attendance record lives up to my expectations for myself. The final selection is scheduled for the October 26 meeting. I will be in attendance and plan on being present when a vote is taken.
Four More Schieve Years
While we look forward to two new Council members, we also are going to stay the course with four more years with Mayor Schieve. How do I know? I polled it! Last week, in fact. She has an impressive 17-point lead in her renewed match-up against Eddie Lorton:
1. Q2 The candidates for Reno Mayor are Hillary Schieve and Eddie Lorton. If the election was today, who would you vote for?
Hillary Schieve ................................................ 47%
Eddie Lorton ................................................... 30%
Not sure .......................................................... 23%
Please don’t ping me and ask who I will vote for in November or who you should vote for. Mayor Schieve will win a third term, even if undecided voters break heavily against her in the next few weeks. In terms of her eligibility to serve for another four years, that is for others to duel. As noted above, Mayor Schieve and I were first elected to the Council in November 2012. While my mayoral candidacy due to term limits was challenged by two-time Mayoral candidate William Mantle (who is also now vying for the Ward 3 appointment), hers was not.
The district court ruled that I was eligible to serve, and Mantle appealed that decision after I was no longer in the running for Mayor. The Supreme Court tossed his appeal because it was moot. No such challenge has been filed against Mayor Schieve. With a win in November and confidence in the district court ruling about my candidacy, she is on path for a total of 14 years on the City’s legislative body. This was the central question of the Mantle appeal. Can someone serve beyond the 12 years specified in the Nevada constitution? For now, the answer is yes, and she is poised to do so.
Sewer Bills
Check yours in November, or ask your landlord about it when you negotiate a lease update. They are getting hiked – over 8% this year because the rate is pegged to inflation. This comes out to more than 40% over the past decade. The hook-up cost developers like those building warehouses and apartments pay? Those haven’t budged since 2012 despite a rapid development pace. I am a broken record on the fiscal inequity of growth and development getting a ride on the back of ratepayers. But because development interests play heavily in Council election campaigns and the City has failed to update its financial models, the status quo continues.
In Defense of Zoning Part 1: Adult Business
I consider myself a zoning specialist, although a bit out of practice over the past decade as an elected official. And zoning is having its moment. This is a good and interesting time. Most of the reckoning over zoning is about its exclusionary and racist past as a tool of segregation. Not unrelated is zoning’s role in overly accommodating detached single-family residences as a contributor to the country’s housing supply shortfall.
I hope to stay engaged and write about zoning and housing soon. While it is a national conversation, local dynamics and circumstances must be understood. But I also think it is important not to throw out zoning in some anti-regulatory mindset because it is a useful tool, when well deployed, to advance community planning objectives.
I’ve worked with the Reno zoning code since 1998. Adult businesses take several forms, like strip clubs, retail outlets that sell pornography and other graphic items, and theaters. Some adult businesses may feature more than one of these components. Regulating adult businesses poses challenges because these businesses, like signs, are protected First Amendment expressions. While they may be regulated, courts have ruled that there must be a public purpose for doing so and may not be unreasonably burdened. Fortunately, and unlike signs, adult businesses are relatively few. In fact, since I’ve been working with the Reno zoning ordinance, I recall only one adult business obtaining a new license.
So, you can imagine my surprise the other day when after dropping off my car for service at my mechanic of twenty years and walking to a nearby restaurant that I frequent on such occasions, I noticed that a new adult business was open at the intersection of Mill Street and Terminal Way. Upon investigation, I learned this business includes both a retail component and a movie theater component. In fact, it has two theaters with occupancy for nine and ten theatergoers, respectively.
The section of the zoning code on adult businesses goes into quite a bit of detail, as is typical of zoning codes, about the secondary effects of adult businesses. The concept of secondary effects has been sustained by courts as an appropriate rationale to reasonably regulate these activities. An example of this for illustrative purposes is that adult theater could be a place where secondary to watching the movies, people could meet and negotiate prostitution arrangements or even engage in such on the premises. It is more likely for prostitution activities to take place in the sexually oriented place of a theater than, say, the auto mechanic’s waiting room.
As I waited at an outside table in the early morning, I noticed this restaurant and the adjacent locally owned independent restaurant share a parking lot with the adult business. In fact, the table I was sitting at was just feet from where a car could park, so theatergoers walk 20 feet or so to the theater entrance. A child of any age could be sitting at the table while a parent or guardian was inside ordering. We have relatively few independent restaurants in these times, and I felt sad for the restaurant owners, employees, and patrons who would be sharing this parking lot.
As I dug around more, I could not understand how an adult business could be approved at this location. While there have been some changes to the zoning code, I don’t recall any discussion about liberalizing the locations where adult businesses can locate. It has always been City policy to keep these businesses off the beaten path in industrial-type areas where the secondary effects can be limited.
City staff was unable to respond to my request to produce a written decision outlining the approval as required by the zoning code. So, to better understand this issue, I’ve appealed the decision, and the first stop will be a hearing before a hearing officer the City utilizes for such matters. My concern is that if an adult business can pop up in such a location, it could proliferate elsewhere. Stay tuned.
In Defense of Zoning Part 1 Bonus
The warehousing industry has concentrated in pockets across our national landscape, and some communities are starting to push back. As the article describes, communities almost overnight realize how warehouses come to define a community’s character. More worrisome is how operational impacts are felt on quality of life and public health, so some are adopting moratoriums. Count me in for Reno! But let’s understand what a moratorium is in the land use/zoning sense. It is a temporary suspension of approvals for the purpose of studying an issue and possibly modifying or enacting new regulations.
I think Reno needs to go in this direction because we have, over the past decade, like some of the California cities cited in the article, dedicated a lot of land to warehouses. They are particularly land use consumptive and, when placed in certain settings like adjacent to residences or near school zones, can have negative consequences for the surrounding area.
A moratorium is needed to study the industry and decide if our community goals are being met as we continue to allocate more land to this economic sector. With these questions answered, we can evaluate if we have the right zoning and other regulatory tools in place to meet these goals. But don’t count on this happening yet. This industry serves global economic demand and has enriched landowners, real estate developers and brokers, engineering and planning consultants, and contractors. Their interests are well served at city hall, and the occasional complaint about impacts is easily ignored.
While the train has left the station in the case of the former University Farms area just east of the intersection of East McCarran and Mill Street, where massive warehouse-distribution facilities have been built that will likely displace floodwaters to other areas, more warehouse development is coming. Please keep an eye out for the carving up of a Peavine Mountain flank across the highway from the Red Rock Road exit. This is the latest such behemoth the Council has approved. The earthmoving to level the site for a building pad will be epic.
Thanks as always for reading! It is an honor for me when someone spends the time to consider my thoughts. Even those who disagree with me, lol.
Jenny Brekhus is the Ward 1 Reno, NV, City Council Member. When this newsletter expresses opinions and views without other attribution, they are her own. They 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.