City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, everybody, we're going to go ahead and call this meeting to order for the Reno City Council. Madam clerk, how are we feeling? Are we ready to go? Okay, perfect. Yeah, if everybody could take your seats, please. Really appreciate it. We're going to go ahead and get our redevelopment agency board meeting and the Reno City Council meeting today. At the same time, we'll be moving around in the agenda once that's approved, but we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance. And if I can ask Chief Solferino, if you could lead us in the pledge, please. Thank you chief with that we'll call the roll for both the redevelopment agency board and the Reno City Council Okay, we're gonna call roll first for the Reno City Council for the Wednesday July 29th 2026 meeting I

Councilmember Taylor absent at this time. Councilmember Dewar? Here. Vice Mayor Martinez?

Here.

Councilmember Ebert? Here. Councilmember Reese?

Here.

Councilmember Anderson? Here. And Mayor Schieve?

Here.

All right, and you do have a quorum of the Reno City Council, and we will call roll for the Redevelopment Agency Board. Councilmember Taylor absent at this time. Councilmember Dewar? Here. Vice Mayor Martinez?

Here.

Councilmember Ebert? Here. Here. Council Member Reese? Here. Council Member Anderson? Here. And Mayor Schiebe?

Here.

You do have a quorum.

Great, thank you. With that, we have a couple of proclamations and public comments scheduled to start our meeting. We're going to start with our first proclamation for Parks and Recreation Month. So if I can invite Director Uliat, and I'll join you up on the podium.

Mr. Vice Mayor, did you coordinate jackets with Mr. Rouillant or what happened there?

Sale.

Looking good.

We're going to bookend this as a corduroy.

Have to get a genetic test here, see if they're related.

We're on the same vibe today, I guess. So happy to read this proclamation on behalf of the mayor of the city of Reno. Whereas parks and recreation is an integral part of our nation's communities, In Reno, Parks and Recreation promotes health and wellness, improving the physical and mental health of people who live near parks. And whereas our parks maintenance and urban forestry initiatives maintain and expand green spaces to improve air quality and mitigate urban heat islands, and our inclusive programming ensures equitable access to recreation for all, fostering a sense of belonging and community cohesion. And whereas the U.S. House of Representatives has designated July as Parks and Recreation Month, And now, therefore, I, Vice Mayor Miguel Martinez, on behalf of Hilary El-Shivi, Mayor of the City of Reno, do hereby declare July 2026 Parks and Recreation Month. Congratulations, you all. I'll pass it over to Director Leal. Thank you, sir.

Yeah, thank you. Always excited to have this. How the breaks always work with the council breaks. We're always right at the end of the month by the time we get there. But July is Parks and Recreation Month. And since I've been here, I wanted to highlight some of the folks who've worked in our team very specifically. And today we have our irrigation team here, who is relatively small when you consider irrigation. There's about 2,000 miles of irrigation lines that they maintain, and I shudder to think if we didn't have the skills of this group right here, what the growth of our grass, our trees, and all the things that grow in our city would be like. So I wanted to highlight that. We have Mark, Corey, Nick, who's here, and then Jason Alls, who is... 26, 27-year employee getting ready to retire in August. The skills of this group, and it's literally the cardiovascular system of our parks and our open spaces and a lot of our parkway strips and things like that throughout the city. People don't think about it, but it's so important. And it's not fun to think about funding it, but again, if it doesn't happen and these guys don't fix it, stuff dies. Literally stuff dies. So this group has worked so hard. They're up to their ankles, they're up to their knees, up to their waist sometimes in water trying to fix valves and fix lines. And so just wanted to highlight them. And then... As I said, Jason Owls is retiring here in August, so coming up very soon. A lot of institutional knowledge, and I'm going to try not to cry. I've only known this guy for three years, and that's one of my regrets, is I haven't been able to work with this guy longer, because he is just... A great person. I think his team would say that recently promoted to a parks supervisor and just the most unassuming but most caring person for community members for things that grow and for his team and has served as a steward on the Union. Just just I don't I don't have enough good things to say and I know a lot of people will say more when it gets closer, but Yeah, he's put a lot of gray hairs in for this place And I know we have a lot of people in the city who do that and Jason is definitely one of them So I just want to highlight him and one of the things I like to do is as much as I love having these proclamations Giving them to people as as they participate. We've given ping Lu he's behind the scenes accounting person in the past and and So this year, I'd like to give it to Jason and the irrigation team. And again, thank you, Jason, for your service. Nick, Corey, Mark, thank you guys for what you do all the time for this city that no one sees except when a sprinkler breaks and it's shooting a geyser or something like that. You guys are everywhere and really making it happen. So thank you.

If you all don't mind taking a picture with us, yeah, we'd love to commemorate this.

Thank you We can hear you mayor

I am so glad that you are recognizing the team. I have to tell you, I've been going on walks and it is outstanding how beautiful, especially down by the river is looking. I mean, these people really, really make our city beautiful. And like you said, they really go unnoticed and Jason. I just want you to know, you know, my office is one of those areas where I hear a lot of bad, but I have heard remarkable things about you. And I just want you to know how grateful we are for your service all these years. And I love what Nathan said about you. So just please know the work that all of you are doing is phenomenal, phenomenal. I can't begin to tell you, and I hope that people walk along the city and see how many wonderful things are blooming all because of you. And I just, I can't thank you enough. So I'm so glad, Nathan, that you are recognizing this team. I just, it blows my mind. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. With that, I think we'll move into public comment and do the proclamation, the second one after.

Mr. Vice Mayor, our first item today is public comment. It should be noted for those in attendance 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. 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. For those participating in chambers, in accordance with council rules 6.3.11, while in this room, please be respectful. Disruptive behavior from audience members like clapping, yelling, whistling, et cetera, which impede the meeting may result in a warning issued by the presiding officer. If the behavior continues, you may be removed from chambers. If you are an attendee in the Zoom meeting and would like to make public comment, please raise your hand at this time. Ron Trevor, followed by Ian Anderson, followed by Terry Brooks.

Good morning, my name is Ron Trevor and I'd like to thank the Council for allowing me to speak this morning. I'm a representative for SAVE, which stands for Senior Auxiliary Volunteer Effort that works for the Reno Police Department. Today I've got the recaps for the hours volunteered second quarter 2026. SAVE currently has 81 active volunteers, another three in training. During the second quarter, there was a total of 5,464 hours volunteered by members of SAVE. This represents a savings of $177,525 to the City of Reno. Some of the key areas that were covered during this time frame, we had 5,079 citizen contacts, we had 2,201 72-hour notices put on abandoned vehicles, had 1,052 school patrols, 448 handicap violation citations, 91 metered parking citations, and stolen vehicles, fictitious plates located, 14. That's all I have.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you to the SAFE members. I know they do so much for the city and I'm a huge proponent for just increasing social connectivity and activities for seniors. And I just hear nothing but great things about this program from the people that are participating in it. And I know that they're always looking for more ways to help. So I just wanted to let you know, I'm taking your suggestions and talking with staff about how we can help. get more things for you all to do because I know you're just so eager to help and I appreciate it so much. So I just wanted to say thank you again for your work. It's incredible and just appreciate your willingness to step in and do more to help the city of Reno. So thank you.

Thank you very much.

Ian Anderson followed by Terry Brooks followed by Stephen White.

Good morning, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Ian Anderson, and I have the privilege of serving as the Chair of the Reno Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. July is National Parks and Recreation Month, and I wanted to take a few minutes to recognize the outstanding work of the Parks and Recreation Department and celebrate what has been an exceptional year for parks and recreation in Reno. Three years ago, the City adopted the Parks and Recreation an open space master plan with a vision of creating a healthier, more connected, and more sustainable park system. Over the past year, we've seen that vision continue to become reality. The department secured nearly $1 million in new grant funding and partnerships, bringing in additional resources into our parks without relying solely on tax dollars. That's an incredible accomplishment and demonstrates the value of investing in innovation and collaboration. The city also continued its leadership in developing a regional park service plan with Washoe County and the City of Sparks, bringing together local governments, advisory boards, and the public to explore long-term solutions for funding and maintaining parks throughout our region. The department strengthened its commitment to responsible stewardship by completing facility condition assessments across the park system, implementing an asset replacement strategy, and adopting a sustainable fee structure that helps preserve our parks while maintaining affordable access through a sliding scale program. We saw investments in people, additional park rangers and recreation staff are helping to activate our parks, improve safety and expand programs for residents of all ages. Our partnership with the Washoe County School District continues to grow through after school vacation and summer programs that give thousands of children safe, active and enriching places to learn and play. This year also marked the successful opening and full operation of the Moana Springs Community Aquatics and Fitness Center. expanding access to swimming, recreational, regional swim competitions, and water safety. Swim lesson participation has more than doubled from approximately 1,800 participants just two years ago to more than 4,000 this year. That's an investment that will benefit our community for generations. And throughout the year, the department continued improving trails, parks, athletic fields, public arts, special events, and recreational opportunities across Reno, making our parks more welcoming, more accessible, and more vibrant for everyone. These accomplishments didn't happen by chance. They reflected the vision established by this council through the PROS Master Plan and the dedication of outstanding Parks and Recreation team that works every day to turn that vision into reality. On behalf of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, thank you to Nathan and every member of the Recreation Department and the City Council for your continued leadership and investment in our parks. Our parks make Reno a healthier city, stronger community, and a better place to call home. Happy Parks and Recreation Month, and thank you for your time. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Anderson.

Terry Brooks, followed by Stephen White, followed by Caleb Mulvaney.

Good morning. It's me, Terry Brooks, again. And today I'd like to share with you my thoughts on transportation and what seniors go through. Sometimes when we get older, our vision isn't what it used to be. and our hand-eye coordination might not be what it used to be. So we might have a little trouble trying to drive our car, especially when we have to go somewhere that's kind of far. So we then find ourselves in a situation where we might depend on others for some means of transportation. But one of elder services is access to health care, which includes free van service for health needs to help us to get there. The Neighborhood Network of Northern Nevada provides lift discounts for transportation for seniors who find themselves in such a situation. And an RTC, Regional Transportation Commission, provides access, bus discounted fares and taxi bucks for seniors in need of transportation. The Warsaw Senior Ride Taxi Bucks Program provides alternative reliable and affordable transportation to Warshaw County residents 60 years older who are in need of such a situation. It's good that here in Warshaw County there is affordable transportation for such seniors that will relieve them of their frustration. And when a lot of people ride a bus instead of their car, there aren't as many cars on the road and the safer we all are. I only live six blocks away, so I've walked here more than 133 times. so that I can present to you all another one of my rhymes. I usually walked, even though I did have a car, but I only drive it when I didn't want to walk very far. I walked two miles to the grocery store, but on the way back, I eat most of the food I had just bought, so I'd suffer from a hunger attack. I would like to thank you all for listening to me today, and I look forward to coming back if I can still walk here that day. Thank you.

Thank you, Terry.

Stephen White, followed by Caleb Mulvaney, followed by Tom Dunn.

Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Mayor out there in the clouds. I want to praise the Park Department today, too, for the Art in the Park program we're doing. It's an amazing thing. We drove around all the public parks last week and looked at areas where we can install the mushroom displays for artists to display their artwork. You know, I wanted to talk to you today about young people, young artists. I've been a working artist for 50 years. I've run into a lot of young people in my years. You know, there are young people amongst us that have been endowed by their creator with this incredible gift of being able to bring beauty to the world through their artwork and their talent. And throughout my entire lifetime, our society tends to stifle that. We encourage the sports and all that, but it's always the young artists that tend to be left behind. We're losing funding for our programs in our schools because kids aren't signing up for our programs anymore. A person can't make a living anymore as an artist. There are very, very few people anymore that can actually make a living. creating artwork in the world, that hurts all of us. It hurts all of our society. But more importantly, when we stifle that gift that these young people have, it leads to depression, which leads to alcoholism. Later in life, it leads to drugs. It leads to kids joining gangs because they're accepted. There are so many negative things that happen when we stifle the arts amongst our young people. So the Art in the Park program that we're doing right now is something that's really revolutionary. It's the first time this has ever happened in any city across the country. We're actually installing art displays where young people and old people as well can come down and share their art with the community and it enriches all of our lives when we do that. We can't even begin to imagine over the last 50 years of my lifetime the creativity, the wonderful art that we've lost from generations of young artists that were labeled as commercial vendors and run off of public property. People don't understand that there are no venues for artists. If you're a young artist and you want to share your artwork with the community, you can't afford to do these festivals. And even if you did, you'd find yourself set up next to commercial vendors. Chances of getting in a gallery are next to impossible. So it becomes very difficult for a young artist to share their artwork with the community and bring beauty into all of our lives. You know, the fine arts bring beauty and understanding to our lives. They bring love into our lives. So I'll end by quoting the song. What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It's the one thing that there's just too little of. So thank you for Park and Rec and thank you for all of you for supporting the Art in the Park program and helping us all to bring beauty to the world, which we need right now. God bless you all, and thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Caleb Mulvaney, followed by Tom Dunn.

Good morning, city council members. My name is Caleb Mulvaney. I'm here today because I'm interning for Tom Clark Solutions. I've gotten the chance to sit on the sit in on meetings like this and take notes and see what's happening. But it kind of helped me realize that maybe I should be coming down here to talk about things that I think are important. There's a trend that I've started seeing around the nation, and I learned a little bit recently is beginning to happen in Reno. Flock cameras, which have been showing up everywhere, are very present in Reno, totaling 29 in Reno and 47 in Sparks. These cameras have been advertised to only be used for tracking wanted cars, locating missing persons, and assisting in active chase situations. But we've seen around the country that this is not the only thing that they are used for. Police have used flock cameras to abuse their power, with a case in Kansas of police officers using flock camera footage to track down a man who wrote a critical op-ed about the department. And ICE has also used flock cameras to arrest people without warrant. And I'm sure you guys have heard that citizens here are not very happy with ICE being here. Flock cameras have also been found to be inaccurate and misidentify license places that lead to innocent people being tracked down by the police for a crime that they did not commit. While I understand that flock cameras can be useful for finding people, for helping with Amber Alerts, for finding cars that have warrants out for them, I think that there are also power abuses and risks that have come with it. And there's obviously the other privacy concerns that come with the matter. do not continue to bring flock cameras into our city. And if you can, it would be great if you could remove them. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Tom Dunn.

Good morning, Mr. Vice Mayor, members of council, City Manager Bryant, for the record, Tom Dunn, proudly representing the men and women of the Reno and Sparks Firefighters Association. Just want to give you a few updates of what we've been doing over the last month or so. First of all is fire assignments. Currently, we have personnel that have been assigned to five different states on fire assignments, providing equipment and or overhead personnel to working incidents. That includes the state of Nevada. We have our Battle of the Badges blood drive. It'll be the 10th annual Battle of the Badges on August 10th, 11th, and 12th. Go Team Fire. We have a Recruit Academy graduation on August 28th at the Grand Sierra Resort, so details will be coming out to that as well. We have a new golf tournament with one of our affiliated nonprofit organizations called Ashes and Ambers. They're having a golf tournament September 5th of 2026. What this organization does is it provides resources to fire families and our own personnel that have been afflicted with ALS, and so it's a good fundraiser for people in our own community. We have the field debut for muscular dystrophy happening September 12th from 7.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the corner of South Virginia and McCarran. The IFF has been a proud supporter of MDA since 1954, and over $700 million across the country has been raised for MDA by firefighters. Regionalization, we're currently engaged in the process to ensure that the best possible fire and EMS delivery to our community is brought forward, and we're closely following with the study and the recommendations that will be coming out as part of the SB 319 process. And finally, we're here today to offer our public support to our friends, family, and coworkers at the Reno Police Department. We are here for you and offer our support in any way that you need. Thank you.

Before you leave, Mr. Vice Mayor, Tom, thank you for being here. And I just wanted to comment on the very first item you brought up, which was that our firefighters are deployed, you said, in five different states. Do you happen to have the WatchDuty app on your phone with you?

Yes, ma'am, I do. Most firefighters do and we follow it religiously. I thought you might.

If you could indulge me, would you just bring it up and show? I have been watching it, following it extremely closely to the point almost of religiously. And if you zoom in on Reno, there's a couple fires. But if you zoom out... you will see that the West is virtually on fire. And if you could show this on the overhead, I just think it's important to see the visual to amplify what you are saying. And what states does this cover?

Just this little piece right here covers Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and California.

Right. And so if you zoom in on Reno, you see hardly any of this over by Pyramid. And you might think, well, it's not that bad of a fire season. Or even zoom out a little to California, like we have a fire on the border right there. But when you zoom out even a little farther, this Biscar Fire, I guess it's mostly, you know, out. But if you zoom out a little bit more and show some of these adjacent states, you start getting such a better feel for what is happening regionally. And I have to believe that part of it is due to climate change, and part of it is due to meaning it's hotter and it's drier. And the amount of fires, like the area you showed in Oregon and Washington, And you have the advanced version, which I do too, which shows that twirling purple is actually a helicopter responding. But anyway, if you could pull out a little and show Oregon and Washington again, and you'll see.

Just this little piece right here is Elko County, which I just returned from a fire assignment in Elko County. We have one person that's running a task force for the Great Basin that's working out of Elko County. And we've had six large fires in Elko County just within the last week.

Okay. I was once in the field and had 27 fires start around me as a geologist due to lightning. I put out three of them myself, but I had called the Forest Service and they said, yeah, I mean, this one storm started 27 fires and it was out in White Pine County, out north of Ely, 40 miles north of Ely. But this is an insane world. And I had a friend who wanted to come out and visit. And I said, have you looked at the fire map? He was going up to Seattle and such. And I mean, he changed his plans, actually. So anyway, thank you for what you do and what all our firefighters do. And the amount of response and going off to five states to fight these fires is very important to our whole region, you know, our whole West. So thank you. Thank you.

We do not have anyone else registered to speak. For the record, we received two comments which were general in nature or not directly associated with an agenda item prior to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, July 28th. These comments were written correspondence 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.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. I think we have one final proclamation. I'll send it over to Council Member Reese, who's going to read the proclamation for us. It's Captain Daryl Ames' Read Day Proclamation. I believe we have some guests in the audience. Mr. Hagen-Sandoval, who's looking dapper, sir?

Well, thank you and good morning, Mr. Vice Mayor. I'm going to ask the members of Reno Police Department to come forward and ask Chief Solferino to read this proclamation, but I'll just say a few words before we begin. So I've had the privilege of sort of knowing a little bit about the background here of this really special family and my good friend, Hagen Sandoval, who happens to chair our Human Resources Commission. And so a couple of months ago, he reached out and said, hey, I'm really trying to do something special. What do you think we can do? I said, well, the mayor absolutely loves you and your family. Let's see what we can do. So she's with us online, or else she would have been here reading this for herself. But this is great history, an important part of our history here locally, and just a really special family. So I'm going to ask Chief Solferino to come forward and read the proclamation. But it's my honor to be a part of getting this put together and it's sort of special. So, Chief. Sure.

Thank you, everyone. Before I get started, I just had the pleasure of meeting Captain Reed's family here behind us today and members of the Reno Police Department. And it's truly an honor having Assistant Chief Garlock, Captains Johnson, Trenton Johnson, and Wade Clark and Lieutenant Bueno in front of us today. It means a lot in addition to the family because one of the things that we really want to do with our leadership team is bring back the legacy and the history of the Reno Police Department, showcase that on the strong foundation from which it was built and continue to build upon that. So I'm going to ask the family here for a favor at the end as we start to highlight the history of the Reno Police Department within our internal walls and our new public safety center. But we'll go ahead and get started with the proclamation. Whereas Captain Darrell Ames Reed was a proud son of the state of Nevada, born to John Reed and Florence Reed, and descended from a family rooted in Nevada's early history through his father to Theodore Winters, a prominent figure of Virginia City and the Comstock load, and whereas he courageously served his country during World War II and began his distinguished career with the Reno Police Department in 1931 as a patrol officer, proudly bearing badge number one, which is here with us today, While rising through the ranks in three decades of service, and whereas over three decades he exemplified professionalism, public service, ultimately retiring in 1961 as a captain of the patrol division, a role in which he led with strength, integrity, and unwavering commitment to the safety and community. And whereas Captain Reed attended the FBI National Academy, in Quantico, Virginia, where he met J. Edgar Hoover, and he maintained a close relationship with United States Senator Pat McCarran, reflecting his deep ties to Nevada's political heritage and his engagement in public life. And whereas he was a devoted father whose legacy lives on through his twin daughters, Barbara and Beverly, whose families carry forward his name and his values of community service and a life devoted to others. And now, therefore, Mayor Schieve, Mayor of the City of Reno, do declare July 29th, 2026 Captain Darrell Ames Read Day.

Couple remarks, Devin. Is that okay? Sorry. Good morning. I just wanted to express my gratitude again to you guys to recognizing my grandfather who was a hero to me. I'm happy to be surrounded by what family could attend today. Captain Darrell Ames Reed, he devoted his life to service. And when he joined the Reno Police Department in 1931, it was still held out of City Hall, which is where your guys' parking garage is now. From escorting a president beneath the Reno Arch to walking the streets of Reno, he lived a remarkable life. To a child, my grandfather moved mountains. He was larger than life, an incredible public servant whose stories seemed almost impossible to imagine. But as I've grown older, I've realized that's not why I look up to him. I admire him because he did something beautifully simple. He raised a family, he protected his community, and every morning he chose to get up and do it again. My grandmother Barbara, one of his twin daughters, loved telling stories about him. My favorite was how she and her sister would go out with their friends after a Reno high school football game and immediately get picked up by his patrol officers and taken home. She said, when Pop was captain of patrol, you couldn't get away with anything. She also told me about one of the hardest days of his life. My grandfather was the second officer through the door of a Reno motel. His partner went in first and was killed in the line of duty. Like so many who serve, my grandfather carried that loss with him for the rest of his life. It reminds us that there is a cost to public service. The uniform comes off at the end of a shift, but the memories, the grief, the sacrifices often remain long afterward. If I could leave you with one thought today, it's this. Look out for your neighbor and nurture your roots in being a contributing member in your community. I'm a seventh generation Nevadan. Some of them are behind me. My family called this desert home because they believed Reno was worth serving, worth protecting, and worth leaving better than you found it. I challenge everyone to do the same. Thank you so much again. I sincerely appreciate it.

Hagan, I've got to know you through the Reno Historical Resources Commission and what you said was so moving and so well written. I really appreciate the fact that you've highlighted this today for us.

Hagan, I don't know if you can hear me.

We can hear you.

First of all, I love how you tell a story. You're one of my favorite historians. I don't know if you call yourself that, but I certainly do. I think your work is remarkable. And I think honoring Captain Reed is so special. And it also really has such a special meaning, I think, in the police department. And it just says how I think touching it is and how commendable it is to serve your city, but also be a man of such honor. So, and you know what's so funny, little tie in, Brian Colpin, who you know is in my office, I believe your wife was, was your history teacher yeah from shaw absolutely yeah right um but that's what i love about reno it's actually small and we are really like a family but i'm so grateful that you have honored him it's really something very special and so just thank you for all that you do and i think um your family should be incredibly proud of you how you honor their legacy the life and legacy so Thank you, my friend, and very, very special. And I want to thank the chief for doing the honor because I think that just shows how strong a department is when your chief really recognizes the work that the men and women do and their legacy as well. So thank you so, so much.

Thank you, Mayor Schieve. I sincerely appreciate it.

approval of the agenda.

Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you all. With that, we'll move on to our approval of the agenda for today for the Reno City Council meeting.

So moved. Do we have changes? Yes, we do. Thank you very much. Excuse me, Vice Mayor Martinez. No, thank you. Yes, we're going to pull item B12. The timing just isn't right for this item, and so we'll bring this back at another time. Also today, as we proceed throughout this day, we have a very heavy agenda. We have a 6 p.m. hearing. We're going to have a floating agenda where you might be moving back and forth between the RDA agenda and the City Council agenda. So I just want to flag that for you. So other than the pulling of the B-12, there are no other changes.

All right. So with the change mentioned by the manager, a motion to approve the agenda. Second.

Okay, we got a motion in a second all those in favor say aye Any opposed? motion passes unanimously Thank you with that. We'll begin on the Reno City Council with a consent pool You need to do the approval of the agenda for redevelopment as well. Okay, you want to do both of them right now? Yeah, let's go. No changes. No changes on that one second Thank you. We have a Motion and second to approve the redevelopment agency board agenda. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. I have a couple items. B5 and B6 which are together about rapid rehousing and then item B8. I' m not going to pull B8 but I want to make a comment right now. Leave it on the

do a shout out to the team that has managed to snag us another $3 million in grant funds to help with one of our sewer projects, our Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility dewatering building. And I mean, I just, I'm so impressed with the continued focus on to do our work and to reduce the demand on our general fund. It's truly remarkable. So I just wanted to make that comment before we approve the agenda. But I am requesting removing B5 and B6.

Okay, understood. Thank you. I'll go online. Councilmember Ebert, do you have any items to pull on the consent?

Yeah, I would like to pull B7, B8, B9, B10, and B11, please.

Okay. Mayor, do you have any items?

No, nothing, thank you.

No, of course.

To approve all items not pulled.

We do have public comment. Thank you. We will move on to public comment.

Ann grogan.

Good morning council my name is ann grogan I' m homeless here in reno but a recent resident of the village on sage street. and I couldn't help but notice the item on the consent calendar today, to spend $650,000 in tax money and grant funding to support the rapid rehousing program at Village on Sage Street. I just have to, I sent a letter yesterday via email, but it was late in the day, and I just wanna ask, who is conducting oversight? Conditions at Village on Sage Street are abhorrent and unlivable and unhealthy. My home here in Reno, my affordable housing unit, was okayed for demolition so that Our Lady of the Snows Church could build a parking lot. So I am homeless, I was made homeless by City of Reno policy while in cancer treatment. I was adopted, gratefully, by Mary Ortega with the city to be entered into the Rapid Rehousing Program. I tried it for three months. And my letter says it all. And I hope you will review it. I did send it late yesterday, but I hope you will review it. Because if you're going to invest $650,000 In the village on Sage Street, just downwind of the transfer station, you might want to consider the people you're shoving into that place. It's unlivable. It's dangerous. It's unhealthy. And without proper oversight, you're just throwing money away. You are just throwing money away.

That's all I have to say. Thank you. Well, Ms. Grogan, just if I may, your letter, which I read and already sent an email to our manager to look into, was the reason I pulled these items that are on the agenda so that we can better understand what's happening and discuss that potential for oversight. So I thank you for writing your letter, because without it, I would not have had the insight. We got several letters later just this morning that say that they had a wonderful experience at Village on Sage. So maybe it depends on who you are, where you are, why you're there, what's going on, where you're coming from. how you happened to get there. But we'll discuss that when we discuss the pulled items. But I appreciate you being here in person because it is hard to catch up with all the mail that we get at the last minute. So thank you.

I appreciate that. I do have one last comment.

Yeah, go ahead.

The problem of homelessness is a policy problem. It's a problem of leadership. And to make it illegal for people to be homeless is a failure of leadership. And I'd just like to remind you of that as well. Thank you.

Thank you. We also have some staff in the back. If you'd like to connect with anybody, there is staff available to speak with you.

Thank you. Of course. My dog just spit on the floor. Sorry.

It's okay.

Are there any other commenters? No, just Ms. Grogan's letter that was distributed.

Okay, yeah, I see it included in our packet. Thank you. With that, we will look for a motion for the non-pulled consent items.

So moved. Second.

We got a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. With that, we'll move on to our pulled items. We'll start in numerical order with item B5. Would you like to do five and six together, Council Member Dewar?

Jennifer in the back. Jennifer. Jennifer.

I don't know if she can hear you.

Anyway, Councilmember Dewar, she's going to assist the individual.

I know, but the woman may want to hear this discussion since we're discussing her very item.

Would you like to open both items up? I would, thank you.

The reason I pulled this item was Ms. Grogan's letter, and I forwarded it to our manager and our mayor because the items that Ms. Grogan discussed were really of concern. The first thing was that she said... The five different agencies told her that she would have access to a shared kitchen. But what she found was a microwave in a different place, not in her building. So she came in with maybe a misunderstanding of what facilities would be available. Next, she cited... The fact that she just needed a peace and quiet to help recover from cancer, go through her cancer treatments, and that that is not what she found. That there was no sink. Let's say you did cook something in the microwave. There was no sink, she said, to clean up, just a small sink in the bathroom. So they really couldn't make food in her mind. And... So she mentioned the kitchen, filling a cup that you can't fill, let's say, a water bottle, right? Because it's a regular bathroom sink. So she identifies a number of things, and she ends up moving out fairly quickly. So I just I thought before we approve these items we should at least understand what at least one Individual has experienced it may be experienced by more individuals. We're very proud of village on Sage Street I've been with it since the beginning We contributed three million dollars for the land that the original Village on Sage Street is built on. We did further financing for the second shelter, Village on Sage Street. So I think our city's very committed to this program. I certainly have been. But I know over time that some of our expectations were not fulfilled, and I'll give you one or two. So when we set it up, we had an expectation the rent would be very low, below $400. It ended up being $400, and then it ended up having some rent increases. which I don't know that anyone on council, I don't even know what the rent there, it may only be 450 today. That was one thing. The second thing was we voted for it with the understanding that there would be a dog shelter. And the last time I got involved, which was about two years ago, I found that the dog shelter that was built had been closed. They weren't being able to very well manage it. And then I think they may have made accommodations to try to fix that, maybe bring animals back. I don't know the current status. But what I'm really concerned about, bottom line, so those are hopes and dreams that we had for the facility, which is still a great opportunity and a great option for our residents that are homeless to transition to housing. But what I do want to make sure, and I think her letter well highlighted, is that there's what people say, and then there's the actual lived experience. And I just want to make sure, I know we're not technically in the homeless business, right? That's to the county. But we have made investments in this facility, and we are about to approve potentially a contract to manage it. And I just want to make sure we have the right oversight in place and the right audit tools in place to make sure that performance is what we would hope it would be. So thank you. Those are questions. If you feel like commenting, I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Okay, great. Well, good morning, Mayor, Council Members, and Manager Bryant, Elaine Olson, for the record. The majority of your questions surrounding the facilities themselves at Village on Sage, I do have a representative, Devin McFarland-Pinion, here, as well as the Service Coordinator, Cesar. They're both here to answer those questions, so I'll go ahead and turn it over to them for those specific questions.

Yeah, and do you know if they saw the letter from Ms. Grogan?

I don't believe that they did.

Did I hear from the clerk that you printed copies?

No, they were distributed in the correspondence yesterday. Okay.

Yeah, they're in our packet attached.

That's very good. So I've tried to highlight some of the things, but there are more things, you know, more challenges. And you may know her personally. I don't know.

Absolutely. And thank you for giving us the time to come and respond to any concerns. In fact, when we have someone who leaves... outside of a normal cadence and we have contact with them, we do reach out and ask what we can do for process improvement in the future. So this is new information coming to me. Happy to address any concerns and see how we can work together. I made a couple of notes, so let me know if I'm not covering some of those specific items for you. One of the concerns was the perception there would be access to a kitchen. We are very particular when I communicate. In fact, if people are calling and they don't know about us, Almost the second thing I say is we do not have access to a kitchen. So we make that as clear as possible. We do have access to outside cooking devices, such as outside grills. We have microwave and toaster access, and it is limited. All participants do receive a fridge, so they do have access to storage. We do also have a fridge. And is that in their unit? In their unit, so their own personal fridge. We also have a food pantry. that we are able to fill. And we get food donations from Sprouts and Trader Joe's biweekly as well. So people have access to food knowing we're in a food desert. And that's one thing we're always trying to look at as to how we can continue to improve the resources that we can provide the individuals we serve knowing these barriers. Additionally, on that note, One goal I've always had is to put a commercial kitchen in. We were hoping to identify an opportunity to do so last year, and unfortunately we had to prioritize replacing a roof. And so it's always part of our consistent conversations. It's still one of our goals to have a true commercial sink and grow towards a commercial kitchen where they can have true cooking devices as well, such as access to ovens and stoves. Knowing that it started as dorm-style living meant for you know, month-to-month placement. It wasn't included in the original renderings, but that has always been one of my focal points, including adding services like service coordination to the community. And I believe when I first toured Devon Reese back in 2019, you asked if I could wave a wand, and that was exactly what I stated. Was what?

To wave a wand?

Was to add in, like, service coordination to provide additional assistance. Gotcha. One of the other items that you mentioned was filling a cup with water, and I'm assuming that's related to washing a dish. We do have a water cooler, so it's tapped in, it's purified, so they're able to have access to clean water. And where is that? That is in one of the community units.

I think she mentions it's 300 yards from where she is. So she did mention there was a place to fill, but it was a very far walk, and I think as a relatively...

unhealthy individual might be a challenge absolutely understood with that and I would also jumping back a little bit as far as access to food not that it makes a difference we do have we had a community garden and we were able to expand through the love your block program an additional community garden as well so folks can come and pick fresh fruits and vegetables as they grow as they would like um And just small things, you know, we get feedback like it would be nice to have a garden. And those tools provide therapeutic benefit. And so we absolutely agree. And we work to make those improvements as we go. Another one was essentially, I know you mentioned the dog shelter. So we never opened a dog shelter. I just want to provide clarity on that. We do have a dog run. We also allow all pets. We allow pets in addition to service animals and in addition to emotional support animals. So that was an expansion we did do. That happened when we brought the new building online, the new buildings online, and it has been working ever since. So if there's any questions you have about that or you would like to see it. I'm happy to do so.

Okay, well, I'm really glad. We had originally asked for 25% of the shelter to allow dogs, and it sounds like you've expanded that, so I'm extremely grateful as chair of the Washoe County Animal Services and the fact that many people who have been homeless often find their major companion and love coming from an animal. I have just one final question, and I appreciate all the answers. I know you guys do a great job. It's just this is a one-off, and I want to make sure we address it. And the last thing that she mentioned, and it's very concerning, she said a resident died in the room, and the deceased went undiscovered for two weeks. Now, I don't know if that really happened or maybe it was one day, but, you know, that's her perception. Do you know about the incident?

And did she list, because my understanding is that she believed that that happened in her building during her time here. And I can state that nobody had passed away during that time frame.

During her time, which was three months. Yeah.

Nobody had passed away in their unit on the property. But do you know if something like that did happen? I can say that we do have folks who pass away. We service a lot of medically fragile individuals, a lot who come to us with terminal illnesses as well.

It's not about dying. It's more about having room checks and making sure residents are still alive and in a timely manner.

And recalling that it is also a lot of folks, they pay rent, so we don't have the rights to just enter their unit. We did have someone pass away recently. They did go about 10 days. They had only come to us- a week prior and so as far as we didn't have a regular cadence but when we have medically fragile individuals and we notice we haven't seen Bill today for example we're gonna go check in on Bill.

Maybe it's just something to add. Absolutely. So it sounds like you're doing a great job also from the other letters I read with some counseling and support services. And maybe this person fell through the cracks, didn't quite get that hand-holding that maybe some of the others do. But, you know, there's always room for improvement in everything. And I'm just looking at this letter as an opportunity to look at these specific things, which I want to make sure you get a copy of the letter, and address them. And especially, I mean, police are allowed to do welfare checks. So, you know, maybe there's an accommodation that you can work through so that you do have something like that.

Yes, we try and be as proactive as we can, and I'm always open to process improvement. Okay. So I welcome any feedback. All right.

And again, you guys do a tremendous job. I appreciate you being here.

Thanks. Council Member Reese. Thank you so much. Ms. McFarland, just so that we're clear, the record is, and just introduce yourself for the record. Tell us your name.

Yes, sorry, Devin McFarland, Volunteers in America.

Thank you so much, Ms. McFarland, for being here. I appreciate the comments. I think Ms. Dewar said it best, which is you're doing incredible work. It's a project that we are, at this body, very proud of having started it, but of course we don't oversee it. The county and volunteers of America oversee it and so ours is sort of this pass-through thing that happens with us And the rapid rehousing program is very important I wanted to share with you something over the and my more for my colleagues benefit over the last month. I've had the fortunate opportunity to work with a particular individual who is now a resident at the village on sage and this is someone who came into my life and revealed to me after I'd known them for a couple of weeks that they were in fact homeless and And so I went first to our staff, who has done a tremendous amount of work in case management. And then that person then came to you and your facility and has been a resident now for about a week. And I've checked in with him each day to figure out how he's doing and what his needs are. And it's just an incredible thing to see someone go from the street into the shelter, out of the shelter, into the first step along the way for him, I think, which is the village on Sage Street. And he said something that made me sort of took my breath away, which is he said, for the first time in a long time, I have hope. Right. And I have hope in a future. And I know that you see it every day. And certainly Ms. Dewar's role in pulling the item was not to say anything negative, just wanting to figure out improvements. And when we have citizens who come in front of us and, you know, our heart is breaking for their experience. I want you to hear also the good things, and I know you see those each day. I'm grateful for it. One thing that I did not hear in the conversation back and forth, Ms. Dewar, was about the cost.

Yes.

Can you just give us an update there? So we have a positional awareness of it. It just would help us to understand.

Absolutely. And so the rent is $555 a month, and I know that exceeds the initial $400 when we opened. We have been open for seven years. Operationally, we need to actually be charging about $750 a month per person to break even. So we operate at a loss, and part of that is because The give and take would be, do we have 24-hour staff? So do we have employees who are available to clean the restrooms overnight, to provide lockouts, to provide emotional support, to respond to a noisy neighbor? And so we had to evaluate where can we give, and that was not something I was willing to give up access to, to ensure we were providing the best quality we could. with the resources we had. So we operated a loss. We have no intent. And in 750, I don't know if that's the exact number, but I know that's the range it falls in. And so that is something that Volunteers America had to consider. And we can choose to continue to consider, but have no intent at this time to increase further.

Well, thank you, Ms. McFarland, for sharing that. Again, such a tremendous resource, and I know that we are asking you to do a lot with very little, and I'm grateful for the county and their leadership in this space and certainly for Volunteers of America for always answering the call and certainly being accountable when we ask you to be accountable. I am grateful for that, too. I didn't know that we were going to have you here today, and so it's always a privilege to have you in chambers. If there's anything that we can do for you, you'll let us know.

Will do, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Any other comments or questions?

Okay, I'm ready to make a motion. All right. Again, I want to thank you for being here. And as I said, we received three letters of praise, but they were very late breaking. And I just read them while I was sitting here this morning. So like I called this, her experience may not be transferable or representative. But if even one resident is... so stressed that they're running away from the facility early after only three months, we should find out what is going on there and maybe do, as you said, an exit interview with her and find out a little more detail. So with that, I am appreciative of the fact you guys continue to take this on. And I would like to make a motion to approve both item B5 and B6.

I'll just check with legal first. Mr. Shippen, is it okay to take that for both, or would you like an individual one? Yeah, both is fine. Okay, perfect. With that, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Motion passes. Thank you all. So we approve with items B5 and 6, and we'll move on to item B7, which I think was Councilmember Ebert.

Yeah, I think there's multiple items in a row. I think there might be, there would be 10 actually for Tumlock. So I'm just looking for kind of a high level overview for the good of my ward to have a better understanding of what's happening with the future American Flats water purification plant and just what's happening generally in work with that project.

And Mr. Vice Mayor, if I may, just a point of clarification and maybe through you to our attorneys. Are we opening items that looks like 7, 8, and 9 at the same time?

Yes.

Thank you so much.

Just for the record, Susan Bulroth, Deputy CID Attorney. This relates to Tom Wharf. It has nothing to do with the American Flat project or Ward 4 Riz Wharf.

Thank you for the clarification.

Thank you. Can I still please get an overview of them?

Madam Mayor, Reno City Council, Matt Smith, Senior Civil Engineer with Utility Services. Items B7, B8, B9 are all related, so I'll just tackle them all at once. They're all related to the long lead equipment purchase for the Tomworth dewatering building project. The dewatering process is a process at the plant which separates the liquids from the solids from the sludge that's generated at the plant. We're pursuing a construction manager at risk process, which is where we hire the contractor up front for pre-construction services. They assist with the design. They provide cost estimates, they identify long lead equipment which may lengthen the construction schedule and increase construction costs. We're also pursuing, we as the city of Reno is pursuing the state revolving loan fund. And pre-procurement, which is item B9, is not included or eligible for reimbursement under the SRF program. Since the city of Sparks is paying cash for their portion of this project, and the city of Reno is seeking to maximize the benefit of the SRF loan funding. Item B7 is a funding agreement between cities of Reno and cities of Sparks for the funding of the pre-procurement items identified by RCMAR. Sparks will pay for the cost of the pre-procurement, while the city will cover more of the construction portion of the project once we get to that portion, thereby utilizing the SRF loan to maximize it at the city's best benefits. IT'S IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT THE DEWATERING PROJECT AS A WHOLE WILL STILL ALIGN WITH THE JOINT OPERATIONS AND OWNERSHIP AGREEMENT FOR THE TUMWARF COST SPLITS, WHICH IS 31.37% FOR CITY OF SPARKS AND 68.63% FOR CITY OF RENO. ITEM B-9 IS THE AMENDMENT TO THE AGREEMENT WITH OUR CMAR TO FUND THE PROCUREMENT OF THESE LONG LEAD TIME ITEMS, WHICH WILL SHORTEN THE CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE AND REDUCE OVERALL PROJECT COSTS BY AN ESTIMATED $1.4 MILLION. The long lead time equipment consists of storage silos, electrical equipment, centrifuges, and other supporting utility infrastructure. And then finally, with item B8, thanks to Kayla Garcia and John Flansburg in regional infrastructure, as well as our federal delegates, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Senator Jackie Rosen, and Congressman Mark Amaday, the city has secured an EPA grant for $3 million to be used towards this pre-procurement of long lead time equipment. This $3 million will reduce overall costs of the pre-procurement outlined in Item B-9, and Item B-8 is the acceptance of this grant.

Thank you. Do you have any additional questions? Council Member Eber, before I move on to the other members.

Yeah, just to put it on the record, this... does not affect flow shape, correct? And this is not diverting any water to American Flats. This is a separate project altogether. This will not have an impact on Swan Lake or American Flats in any way.

Correct.

Okay. And flow shape will remain the same for City of Reno, for North Valley in particular?

Correct.

Okay, thank you so much for explaining that. And I don't have any further questions, so unless anyone else does, I'll make a motion. No? Okay, I'll make a motion to accept items B7 through B9.

Second. Okay, with that, we have a motion and a second on items B7, 8, and 9. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. With that, we'll move on to item B10.

Yeah, just kind of the same thing if we could just get a high-level overview on this.

Good morning again, Vice Mayor, members of the Council, Corey Solferino for the record. What this is, is honestly, it's a project that I started when I was wearing another uniform on the other side of the aisle. And it's a split cost mutually between the cities of Reno and Sparks in Washoe County for an inmate work program leader to take out crews from 9-11 Par Boulevard dedicated to our homeless encampments and our cleanup efforts. This position is currently housed within the Washoe County Sheriff's Office. It was previously funded through Sparks, Parks and Rec, and when their budget picture got a little bit tighter, the position stayed on the books, but it was no longer funded. So the sheriff does have the position authority to hire, and we are splitting the costs and dedicating them to our homeless outreach and protective, sorry, homeless outreach proactive engagement team efforts in cleaning up the corridors in all three jurisdictions. Happy to entertain any additional questions.

So can you kind of just explain further, like, what will that position take? Will it just be similar to kind of what the SAVE officers do in regards, or not SAVE, I'm sorry, Downtown Partnership people do when they do outreach with the unhoused population? Will it just be kind of interacting with people and attempting to get them in services?

No, ma'am. For the record, this is strictly the funding of an inmate work program leader to check out those inmates that qualify to work out of custody of 911 Parr Boulevard to do not enforcement, not connectivity, not any of the shared resources. This is literally a cleanup effort, another force multiplier to dedicate to the cities and the county those encampments that can be rather cumbersome to clean up and to navigate.

I don't have any further questions.

Are there any other questions from the body? Now we'll entertain a motion.

Motion to approve.

Second. We got a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. With that, we'll move on to agenda item B11. I believe this was also you, Council Member Ebert.

So I think she's having technology issues Can we just get a brief presentation on this agenda item

Thank you so much.

Can you hear me any better?

Yes. Okay. And Madam Clerk, we were also having a hard time hearing Madam Mayor, and it's odd to have this. Maybe we can boost the Zoom output.

The audio has been increased, but the mayor did hop off as well.

She what?

She... Yes. Yes.

Okay, thank you.

This item is approval of the capital project surcharge advisory committee bylaws. It's pretty straightforward. We're making it the same as all the other bylaws in the city at this point. We've created new templates, so we're bringing them up to date with that. And then also the one major change in these bylaws is a change in the composition of the city council members. Currently there's three city council members, but we are now designating that one of those council members be from ward one.

Is there any other changes to the bylaws?

No, they're generally all just the standard bylaw terms that we've had in our templates and that we've already had in our existing bylaws.

Mr. Vice Mayor. Did you have anything else, Council Member Ebert?

So, is the most significant change just the addition of the word 1 representative correct? Okay. It's the other changes include, you know, removal of the board. A set of kind of meeting is that the type of. Bylaws that were making uniform across the boards.

I was having a little trouble hearing you, but yes, we're making them uniform.

Yeah, she was just asking if it was all uniform.

Example of what we're trying to make uniform across the boards. If you could just give me some examples of that.

Okay. Last year, our agenda management team brought several board bylaws in front of council to approve. And a very standard template that's updated brings greater clarity to bylaws in general for boards and commissions. And we wanted to do the same for this committee as well.

Okay. All right. Oh, my dominoes.

Thank you councilmember Dewar.

Yeah, it was my it made sense to me to add award one representative because isn't the committee Focused on the bowling stadium and the event center. Are there any other facilities that are? Under the purview of this committee.

Those are the primary places that the funds are going towards Anything that is related to tourism and entertainment that's publicly owned within the district is actually eligible Do you know any others? Since I've been involved in this committee. No, we've only been funding Event Center in Bowling Stadium, but do you know of any others that are eligible as far as big facilities?

well or small I Isn't the ballroom included in the Ballroom is technically a publicly owned facility.

It is managed by the row And so as we have an agreement, right? Yes, they have an agreement for that maintenance. I

but could we be paying for some of the maintenance? I think if the revenues don't meet a certain level, then we kick in, if I recall, but I don't recall totally.

Yeah, there are more specifications in that ballroom agreement that we would need to review just to see what qualifies.

And then could you just say your name again? I missed it.

Yeah, I'm Brenna Nichols.

Brenna, and what's your job at the city?

I'm a senior management analyst in public works.

Okay, thank you.

Motion to approve. Okay, we got a motion and a second to approve. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. I believe that was all of our pulled items. Are we ready for D1? City Manager? Is that you again, Ms. Nichols? Okay, perfect. Yeah, we'll move on to agenda item D1, please.

thank you. we do need to open the public hearing.

give me one second.

Madam clerk may I ask a point of order was proper notice given on this item and any correspondence received?

yes, proper notice was given and no correspondence was received. We will have one public

Now we can move on. Yeah, Ms. Nichols.

Okay, great. Good morning again. My name is Brenna Nichols, Senior Management Analyst in Public Works. And today I'll be presenting on the resolution of sale and hearing of objections regarding the sale of city-owned property to RTC for expansion of the 4th Street bus station. I am joined today by Dale Keller with RTC. This item is in alignment with the fiscal stewardship component of the strategic plan. Some details on this property. RTC has requested to purchase for expansion of the 4th Street bus station. It's located in Ward 1 in downtown Reno, just south of the existing 4th Street bus station. The property consists of three parcels totaling about three-fourths of an acre, and the appraised market value is $1,350,000. A brief timeline on this issue is we've been having this issue in front of council for many years since 2020 is when RTC first brought a letter of intent to purchase the property. At that time, council approved it pending the existing tenants vacating the property at the end of their lease. In 2022, that tenant did not vacate the property. and council approved eviction proceedings. Last year in April of 2025, these groupings of properties were included in the property plan that council approved for sale. And then in November of last year, RTC, we granted them a right of first refusal to purchase the properties. And then in December of last year, the legal proceedings with the tenant were finally resolved, clearing this property for sale. That leads us to 2026. In June, I came before you to present the resolution of intention to sell, and today we're here for the resolution of sale. This type of sale is unique from other potential property sales that we've done recently. This is a sale to another government entity for a public purpose, so it follows a separate set of NRS requirements. There's two required steps. The first is approving a resolution of intent, and then a public comment on this item. We will have a public hearing of objections and resolution of sale which is where we are today. With that here is the recommended motion. I'm happy to answer any questions. Dale is here as well.

thank you for the presentation. Before we move on to any questions I will ask if any of the council members have to make any disclosures. Thank you. We will move on to public

Oh, there you go. Okay. Thank you.

Okay.

Right there. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Almost.

Morning.

Good morning. Damian Cole for the record. Ward 1 resident. So, forgive my Black and white, my color printer ran out of ink. So I think this is a good opportunity to expand the 4th Street Station. My understanding is that that property was intended for use of charging vehicles, which I think could be compatible with that area. However, what I would love to bring up is my concerns regarding the public walkway as it extends past that property here on the north side. So this is a five-foot walkway with a parking lot next to it, but that seems to be the main pedestrian avenue for people crossing Lake Street to get there. Most people don't use it. Instead, they illegally walk through the busway areas to reach the station, and that has increased since the pandemic when the south station building was closed. I don't know when RTC is ever planning on reopening that because the way that it was designed was for people to walk through that station to get to the main bays or to walk around the building. So the red line that you see here is a whole different matter. I want to show, so when we get light rail in the area, which I predict it's going to happen sometime down the future. And this is to provide local access and commuter access for people working at TRIC and Tesla and all of the buildings out there on Story. I have identified that that corridor is going to be extremely important for bringing the light commuter rail through Fourth Street before It uses the trench. We have to put a cap on the trench for one block and then connect it up to the right-of-way, which the city owns, for the Union Pacific Railway and have it head out over to Legends and beyond. This is the Washoe County parking lot here. I've identified that this is the middle of the Central Business District, and I am proposing that we turn this into a multi-story garage and train terminal for light rail, which comes off of Liberty and also Prater. So for this entire area here, basically, this is Lake Street. This is where the rapid transit system buses currently go. And this is the two streets down Midtown to reach Plum further down and go all the way down to Sierra Summit and eventually Carson City. And then this and then the other track here would follow the western pacific stub and go all the way up to stead. Basically this area here I think we need to consider considering there' s going to be a bikeway here soon and people are trying to cross here we need to make sure we improve the facilities when that site is developed. thank you.

thank you.

there' s no one else registered. reviewed all the materials about this project and I'm supportive. I've gotten different answers to this question. What is the purpose or envisioned purpose of this land? If you could address this, Mr. Keller. The reason is Mr. Damien brought up electric charging. I had never heard of that as a purpose for this parcel, but could you...

Good morning, Vice Mayor, City Council, Dale Keller, Deputy Executive Director at the RTC. So, Council Member Dewar, back in 2020, we initially thought that was one of the proposed purposes is help out with our charging of our electric buses. Since that time, those needs have changed, but still there's a need to help operations and future expansion over on the 4th Street Station. One thing is we start moving from environmental to final design. The discussion that Mr. Cole brings up about pedestrian access, bikes access, yes, there's opportunities for improvements, and that's what we look into to help improve that site.

Yeah. So what is it primarily to be used for?

Yeah, so future bus operations for a fixed line for our BRT.

Do you mean just more buses? What do you mean by some?

Yeah, buses based. So how do we look at the site? collectively from all the way from 4th Street all the way down to make sure that as some of the things have already changed how we operate the bus system that it flows and that is the future site of our main transfer station.

And are we saying that we want to expand though? I still haven't heard. Yes. Expand like the number of buses?

So once we get, we maybe take a step back. So what we do, we look at what our needs are for the next 20 years and into the five-year plan. So we are in the middle of completing what does the next five years look like and look at where our capital needs are. There's opportunities to help expand 4th Street Station to adjust those needs for our systems overall for those operations. So at this time, we haven't clearly identified pinpoint exactly what those improvements will look like.

Okay.

If the council would like to and if we can help provide those briefings and ultimately come back to the RTC board for that approval, what the future of that.

But I would guess from what you're saying, you're not planning, let's say, to move RTC's headquarters there. No. because I've heard you talk about expanding your facilities or expanding what's under 395 or I-580. I mean, those are still discussions happening, right?

Correct. So I want to make sure we understand for this purpose, for this property, is related to the 4th Street Station. Gotcha. With RTC Board, there are other discussions about the future of our administration building, future of all of our maintenance stations, but those are separate conversations outside this transaction.

Okay, but the idea here is to expand bus and bus service. Yes, ma'am. And maybe pedestrian... other bike infrastructure, maybe. Correct. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Vice Mayor, if I could, and Mr. Keller, don't run off. I want to make sure that Ms. Dewar gets the full picture, though. There have been conversations at RTC and here about expanding the office or the facilities at 4th Street on a different parcel, not on this parcel, but on a parcel more northerly than this parcel, which may happen in the future, right, as our growth needs happen. It's just that we may need more physical facilities infrastructure, administrative offices, security offices, buildings for that station?

Yes, sir. And part of that, too, is that partnership with the Downtown Arena Partnership and DRP. How does that service help with our security services, making sure that it's safe, it's reliable, people know how to get on and off the bus and get where they need to go?

I just want to make sure, because I know that what happens is there's different pieces of this puzzle, and we've talked about other pieces in different meetings, and then it's easy to take pieces from that meeting and import them to this one. This is not for that purpose. It's so that we can expand bussings. actual literal more bus terminals as our region grows we may have needs for more buses sometimes buses change they go from gas to electric to hybrid to hydrogen we seem to be always finding new ways to change our buses but this is literally the expansion for potentially future more terminals so that more buses can service this bus station correct yes sir thank you so much mr keller

Are there any other questions or comments from any of the members? Okay, with that, I'll look for a motion.

Move to adopt the resolution of sale to approve a purchase and sale agreement to sell city-owned property located between Lake Street, East Plaza Street, Evans Avenue, and the railroad tracks. I'll second.

Great. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you so much. With that, we will move on to agenda item C2, our general fund financial update with Director Van Buren. Thank you, Mr. Cole.

Good morning. Vicki Van Buren, Director of Finance for the Record. I'm back before you today to do the financial updates for the month. June we took a little break, but I'm back for July and you'll see me every month as the second meeting of each month. So today I have a financial update for you, and then I'm also going to be talking a little bit about a special topic. Each month here for the next probably six months, I'm going to bring a special topic, something that doesn't necessarily come up as much during budget cycle, doesn't get as much attention as some of the other funds, and talk about some areas that are really important, critically important, but they just don't get as much attention as a general fund just because it's much more harder to manage as far as dollar-wise. So this aligns with the strategic plan through fiscal stewardship. Right now, we are in the year-end closeout process. We're actively closing out fiscal year 26. So this ended June 30. We're ensuring that all the financial transactions are reconciled and doing the year-end reporting. Final payments for consolidated taxes and property tax and some of the larger revenue sources, franchise fees, are still pending. And we expect those by mid-August, so 45 days after the year end. And then prior year expenditures, we record those through the end of August. So those are for 60 days following year end. So right now we're in that process. And so rolling up numbers and bringing those forward today would not be valuable data for you at this point because we still have a lot of moving parts. What I can say right now is I've reviewed everything. I don't see anything that's really flagging right now. Everything appears to be on track or within the realm where we thought it was going to be at this point. But at the meeting in August, that's just like last year. That's where I'll have that first roll up. We won't be completely through the 60-day period. But it's close enough that I feel comfortable that I can give you very good, valid numbers at that point. But right now, nothing's really flagging. I do have a little bit of information that's kind of good news as we get the next couple slides. But that's really where we're at. Departments are doing their final invoices through that 60-day process. And we're also reviewing all the purchase orders that are outstanding. So a lot of work that's going on. The audit process has begun. This is the annual audit we do every year with our audited financials. The auditors were here last week on site. They will be back in August for two weeks on site. We'll complete the financials with that audit in November, and we bring it back to you in December for your review, same process that we do each year. And again, the next update will be August 26th and that one will have a lot more robust information because we'll get closer to year end and we'll have information on how we're gonna end the year and what that looks like for the current year, which impacts next year as well. Forecasting, I want to just mention that you'll hear me talk about anticipated actuals or the estimates that we had for fiscal year 26. That's really what we're going to be comparing to. So when we talk about where we're ending the year last year, how does that compare where we thought we were going to end the year? Because that's really the baseline for what we use for the fiscal year 27 budget, those estimates. So this is the information that I really have for you today, salary and benefits in the general fund. Salary and benefits make up 80% of the general fund, so this is a significant data point. Payroll posted, the very last one for last fiscal year posted July 17th, so this is valid data to bring forward. We do have a couple of entries that are still outstanding for year-end entries that we do to Reconcile some things we also have some reconciling of some liability accounts again I don't think those will be material some will be up and down depending on those adjustments, but this is Pretty much the valid data that we have right now the blue the dark blue shows you where we estimated ending the year for salaries and benefits and for 2026. The gold bar shows you the actuals. This is as of the data I had for July 20th. For salary and benefits, we were within $240,000. I mean, extremely close for salaries, excuse me. And then for benefits, we were within $1,000. So in total, we were less than a 1% difference. We're actually in the hundredth of a percent difference. Really incredible. My team has done a really great job of developing some tools that we're using to do these estimates. These used to take us a long time to go through salary and benefits every time to re-estimate as we move through the year. We've developed some new tools to do this, one at a really detailed level, one at a much higher level. We're doing it in several different ways. I'm very excited about this because it's working very, very well. We've gotten close in the past, but this not only is getting more accurate, it's so much faster for us because normally it would take us like two weeks to go through and do a re-estimate. We can do it within a few hours now, and this is how close we're getting, so really good work here. And then I'm going to move on to the special topic. So the Fleet Internal Service Fund, this is where Fleet purchases vehicles, outfits them, and maintains the vehicles for the city. And so I just want to give a high level of what it is, why it exists, and then I'll turn it over to your Fleet members. department to kind of explain the operations of it. But a fleet internal service fund, we use it. It's an accounting fund separate. We manage it kind of like a business where the departments are provided a service managing the fleet and the fleet that they use, and then they pay a fee for doing that. So we charge the departments that use this service for that. So in that way, it's run like a business. So how does it really work? You know the fleet department they provide that service Then they incur a cost of doing those services. You know maintenance fuel staffing replacement costs and other things, and then the departments are billed for the use of it. The rates are reviewed annually on what's charged, and those are adjusted for changes in costs and utilization. So this is something we do every year. We don't focus a lot on it during the budget process because there are so many other moving parts, but it's really a critical function of the city. So what does the fleet fund pay for? It pays for fuel. It pays for maintenance and repairs, tires, fleet staff. They have 16 full-time staff members that work in the fleet. And then contracted service. Sometimes there may be a need for them to send something out that they can't do in-house. Very rare, I would say. But they have that need, and sometimes that does occur. So why use a fleet internal service fund? Why do we do it this way? Well, it's way more effective from a management perspective and from a cost effective perspective. So from the management perspective, you have a professional fleet team and you'll see that when they step up here. They do just a fantastic job. It centralizes the fleet in purchasing, standardizes the vehicles. You get better contracts that are negotiated on jointer contracts. They track the maintenance of every piece of equipment and vehicle that's there. And it also improves utilization. So if something's not being used very much from one department, they can move it to another department and such. But they track all of this versus if we were to try to individually do it with each department. They actually manage all of that. And then it's better cost allocation because departments pay for what they use. So departments that have vehicles pay for it. Departments that don't have vehicles, like finance, we don't pay into this because we don't even have a vehicle. So it's directly charged to those who utilize it. So what does the budget for fiscal year 27 looks like? It looks like this, you know, high level, $3.3 million in salary and benefits, $4 million in those operating supplies that are needed, fuel, maintenance, all those things. And then this year we have a little bit heftier capital equipment replacement program, the $11.3 million. And that's because, if you remember, we cut that last year. during the budget cycle to balance the budget. So a little heftier, but on normal, it's averaged between seven and eight million dollars for that. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Fleet Operations. And Travis.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. It's good to see you. I'm actually really grateful that we get this opportunity.

Mr. Trugo, will you tell us your name for the record?

I am sorry. Travis Truhill, Director of Maintenance and Operations. I don't do this frequently enough. I'm sorry. I'm actually really grateful that we get this opportunity to kind of brag a little bit about what we do and highlight some of the great work that Zach Hafner and his team do in fleet maintenance. They're one of our four divisions, as you're all aware. And they're really the ones who keep the equipment on the road. They're a one-stop shop from purchasing, sourcing and purchasing the equipment to ending its life and putting it out for auction when it's done with its useful life. So we have a really great team. They're all highly qualified people. We're very efficient in what we do. And I'm actually going to turn this over to Zach Hafner to kind of bring a little more color to what I'm talking about.

Good morning, Council. Good morning, City Manager. My name is Zach Hafner. I'm the Maintenance and Operations Manager in the Fleet Division of Maintenance and Operations. It was touched on a little bit before I got up here, the different things that we do. We're not Jiffy Lube, and that's not a shot at Jiffy Lube. They provide a great service for a certain demographic and a certain kind of service. But what we do is a beginning-to-end-of-life service for all of the city assets outside of the fire department. So we purchase equipment. Once we get the equipment on board, we're going to do everything from put lights on it. If it makes sense, we're going to recycle beds. Sometimes we build those beds. We have a preventative maintenance and repair program that we base off of the type of equipment, whether it's a bucket truck or a cop car. A bucket truck is going to have a different service schedule than a cop car is. And then when they break down, unfortunately, it happens. We make those repairs mostly in-house. I'll get to why we do that in-house on the other side of the slide. And then we purchase parts. We focus on just-in-time inventory. We try not to keep very much inventory on hand unless it's something that's high use, a filter, a brake pad, a rotor. Additionally, we do field management for the city. We have software that tracks the usage, the costs. We are dabbling into electricity now. There's some exciting things coming your guys' way in the future related to some EV projects that we've got coming on. And then at the end of a piece of equipment's life, whether it's based off of age, condition, obsolescence utilization. We'll work on sending that piece of equipment to auction. So I put together a busy slide so that you guys weren't reading, but you wanted me to speak to you. So I put, for making Reno proud, the ASE Blue Seal Certified Shop. What that represents is the amazing team that I get the opportunity to represent. And they are the person that when you're like, hey, I'm looking for someone to work on my car, and I'm I'm like, oh, man, everyone that I'd recommend works for the city of Reno. And the Blue Seal certified shop is saying, hey, we know how to do it. And then they take tests and they're certified to say, hey, this is not only can we show you by doing it, we can test and prove that we know what we're doing. Another item to highlight is the shop rate for the City of Reno's Fleet Management Division. Our shop rate is $180 an hour, which is a lot more than when I started in this role about 11 years ago. However, in a recent study from our local market, the average that we're seeing across shops within the Truckee Meadows is about $215 an hour. Every hour that we spend, we're saving approximately $35 an hour as in if we outsource that work. And that is a fully burdened rate, including all the government benefits that we all take heat for every day related to pensions, related to health insurance, and all the collective bargaining agreements that go into that staff. Third on making Reno proud is that we're being green and saving green. It's important for us to be green for the planet, but we also want to be fiscally conscious and make sure that it makes sense for the pocketbook. We work with our partners in finance. They have been critical in making sure that the fleet for all the operators across the city has been in a great position and going into fiscal year 27. it's in the best spot it's been in in north of 15 years. So we appreciate that, and we're always looking at where we can do things economically as well as environmentally. The Fleet Pros Challenge, this is a more recent one. We have two technicians that tested across other technicians across the entire state of Nevada. Two people were selected. They're both City of Reno fleet management mechanics that are going to represent us in Colorado next month where they're going to go against technicians across Colorado, Utah, Arizona. and Texas, and they won't be coming home if they don't win, so that's it. That's my joke. Sorry, you guys heard that one. And then last is the 33 top 100 best fleets in the Americas. This is a recognition that we got in 2026. I'm extremely proud of this, not from the work that I'm doing, but from the work that the team is doing. We were ranked across 12 different categories, things from financials to doing it right the first time to customer service, 12 different categories. And we were able to rank across both North and South Americas as the 33rd. We're going to try and beat it. That was a really high rank, so don't hold me to it. And with that, I think that's it. If you're wondering some of the cities that we beat out in that competition, Dallas.

I would like to know. I'm not sure.

New York City, if you've heard of it, it's... Eric Johnson is Dallas. There's Miami, Denver International Airport. Those are just to name a few. Atlanta, if you're not familiar. So that's who we've had the opportunity to meet.

Gives me the opportunity to mess with those other mayors because I'm so competitive. So I'd like to know.

So, yeah, that's the presentation around fleet, and we'll open it up to any questions that you may have.

Okay. Thank you so much. All right. I'm going to hand it over to Councilman Reese.

Thank you so much. Mr. Hafner, thank you so much for the presentation. And Mr. True, who else is with you? I just want to make sure we know who everybody is.

This is Joe Piera. He's our administrative services manager. I'm sorry, I always botch your name. Joe is actually the guy that manages our finances and maintenance ops and keeps us on track, makes sure that the budgets are appropriate and that our spending is appropriate and complete.

Well, I love that. Thank you so much for the presentation, all three of you, and the contributions you make. Number one, I'm not sure you're the 33rd ranked one. In my mind, you're number one, right? So that's sort of my shout-out to you all. I had the privilege of going out and visiting with Fleet and being in the shop within the last six months or so. And one of the things I wanted to share was, and for my colleagues' benefit, is how... how knowledgeable the guys are that are taking and basically customizing a lot of our law enforcement vehicles with really high-tech stringing of various kinds of wires. I mean, to me, I don't know what all that does, But I will say there's such a pride of ownership in the shop that these are folks who are doing something that other people cannot do. And it's just impressive to see folks who are so enthusiastic about the work that they are doing. Because you imagine it's a shop and it might be a harder environment, but it's the cleanest place I've ever seen. And I've been in a lot of shops in my lifetime. and you could I think eat off the floor and so there's just a lot of pride of ownership with that group very impressive to me when I've been there and they were willing to hear my endless amount of questions about what the technology was and why we were doing it and you know it's neat because then it works with the sign shop and people are working on the decals and there's all this stuff that goes into it you know when we envision you purchasing a vehicle you know I like I go to Toyota to get my vehicle, and it comes with how it does. Well, you guys get them from a lot of different sources, but they're totally customized and then made better for our folks and all the ergonomic design elements that go into it. And when you start adding all the computers that our law enforcement folks need specifically, it's just crazy. I feel like it's like Fast and Furious, Tokyo Drift or something, all these very high-tech vehicles with all the kind of bells and whistles that get added. Very impressive group. Really enjoy my time whenever I'm in the shop. I wish I had the skills that they have. I do not. But really impressive. And thank you for the update. It's good for us to hear it. Thank you.

All right. Councilman Taylor.

Thank you. Great job on the fleet. Very, very proud of you. I have a question for Vicki really quick on the budget. And it was just about, you mentioned briefly on the auditing that we do on the city side of the budget. And a couple of questions. It's something that happens every year. It's by a third party. And it's very thorough. We get findings. And it shows our accountability at the City of Reno. Is all that accurate?

Vicki Van Buren, Director of Finance. Yes, that is correct. We are required to do it annually. They are an outside firm, Baker Tilly. They've done it for the last few years. They do sampling. As I mentioned, they were on site last week doing sampling, and they will be back for two weeks, and then obviously in between we're providing information to them. But we produce the financials. They do audit testing to make sure everything – appears correct, is materially correct, applies with GASB and accounting standards and such. And then when we issue the statements, which is the annual comprehensive report that comes back to you, we call it the ACFR, comes back to you in December, it has their audit opinion on it as well.

The audit opinion, it's not like you get an A plus or a very good or a gold star. It's sort of a nebulous term, right? What do they say?

I think they usually use the term unqualified which means they haven't found anything that tells them that there's anything wrong everything looks correct it appears correct obviously they put some disclaimers because they can't look at every single thing but they do issue that opinion that they've reviewed everything and it looks good or not and then how have our opinions been in the last three years

perfect we've had perfect opinions for well since i've been here for 10 years so and the next thing i wanted to say is the the ability at which you are predicting the budget for us to plan is very impressive and you and your team deserve a lot of credit for getting us that close it's not even a percent it's a half of a percent or something so congratulations thank you thank you appreciate it

All right, Councilwoman, and then I'll go to you last by saying.

Thank you. Vicki, I was wondering if you could describe what you changed to get the formula that you're using to get within that close, less than 1% of accuracy. That is a really big change and very impressive.

For salary and benefits, that's the biggest piece that's really hard for us to predict during the year because as positions are held vacant or someone tires and leaves, or if we have large payouts, someone's been here a long time so they have a big severance. All of those things impact our estimate on how we're going to end the year because we have to factor all of that in. Police, when we have the police changes here, we have to factor in open positions, positions that still exist, or recovering with county positions, how that all occurred. All of that we factor into the estimate so that we'll know where fund balance is at the end of the year. Because that's ending fund balance is where we're starting this year. And if that beginning balance isn't what we thought it was going to be, then we have to make adjustments. It may be more, it may be less, but that's really why we compare to where we estimate to. One of the things that, we've always done this, but we didn't have a process that was quick, was a fast process. And it was very time intensive for me to review it and look through it, and so it was all in a spreadsheet. You have every single line from every single department and sub-department in salary and benefits, and then we're projecting out based on the payrolls that are left in the year and all of the things that we know are coming or not coming and filled and unfilled. So it's a very tedious process. One of the things that I asked Matt Taylor, the assistant finance director, to do this year was I said, you know what, we're doing this in a spreadsheet. Why can't we do this using the same software that we use to produce the ACFER? So we have a software where we pull data to it and create reports to do that. Well, that's what he did. He created a report in there that will do this, and then we can upload it as payrolls go through. It uploads just like we do the ACFER. It's not exactly perfect because we still have to kind of tweak a few things in there, but he can do that and pull it together for me to at least start reviewing and start going line by line through it within about three hours. And before it was like two weeks. That's amazing.

And my budgeting background, just being able to have a forecasting formula or tool that is that quick to be able to... make changes, catch mistakes, model something specific that if you're going to take budget out or add budget in a certain area. So that's a really big opportunity to just continue to educate us on the wild ideas that we have with the budget. So thank you for that. And I just wanted to acknowledge that your work in the beginning of each budget cycle since I've been here to be really honest and give us a big target that we have to start working towards achieving so that we can get a balanced budget year over year without really Harmfully affecting the services that we provide to the community has been really impressive And this is now even though I wasn't here for your first for your July presentation on the 25 budget I was here in November when we started making adjustments because we had a 25 million dollar hole so your leadership here and just really the commitment of the The people at City Hall that are willing to have those hard decisions, have hard conversations, and be creative about how we're going to continue to deliver services in the meantime has been very inspirational. So thank you very much for you and your entire team.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you so much. I just wanted to tack on to the compliments and congratulate you and your team for getting within, was it 0.09%? of your projections to our actual, so that's a great accomplishment, just shows the tremendous amount of work that you and your team have dedicated to making sure that we have accurate numbers and we can project what's happening in the future and how to better adjust our services or what we are doing to accommodate any deficits or increases that we're seeing. So I'm really appreciative of all of your efforts, which is the first one I want to say. And then the second one goes for our maintenance and operations staff, Zach and your team, punching above your weight class, like I told you yesterday, definitely, as you're saying, making Reno proud, making our folks that work within your department proud for everything that you all have done. I was just wondering if you can hit on two things for me, Jack. The first was, I think you talked about the Fleet Pros Challenge, but if you can sort of talk about who maybe is representing us there and what the challenge is about.

Yeah, absolutely. So Fleet Pros is a nonprofit organization that focuses on networking and learning and advancing the fleet industry. The two technicians that work for the city of Reno are John Roscoe and Martin Rodriguez-Guillen, who they sat down for a proctored exam that was both timed and graded, and they were the ones that beat out all of the other technicians across the state of Nevada who who are then going to compete at the 50th anniversary conference of fleet pros in Loveland, Colorado next month.

So our state rep is coming out of the city of Reno is what I heard.

They're going to bring it home is the plan.

Okay, perfect. And then just a little bit about the fuel management portion of the work that you all do. If you can maybe explain that piece of it and how you track all of that data.

Absolutely. So in fleet management, we have both an asset management system and then a fuel management system. We're in the process of making sure that the vendor of those two – with a huge shout out to the information and technology group, do it. It wouldn't be here without him. Kimberly Heist, thank you. We use the fuel side of that asset management system to track the usage down to the 10th, or I believe the 10th of the gallon to each piece of equipment. When a vehicle comes in as part of the outfitting, what we do is we connect, we put on the systems now called an FJ3 system, and we connect that to the vehicle that tracks so that when you as an operator of a city piece of equipment pull up to the pump, it recognizes that vehicle and allows the dispenser to dispense the fuel. On the electricity side, we're new to that. We've put watt-hour meters in line to try and track electricity used to each vehicle. It's a growing area where we have about 5% of the fleet for the city of Reno is all electric with a potential goal of moving up to about 10% in the coming years with pending replacements.

Great, thank you. Yeah, and I won't ask questions because I'm running out of time, but I just want to show appreciation and thank you for all the work that is to come. You gave us a short preview, but I'm excited for all the good work y'all are doing in the future. Thank you. Thanks, Madam Mayor.

Councilman Dewar.

Yeah, just real quick, again, thank you for the work. It often goes unrecognized, right? You're working in a place that we do not see you. We do not experience what you do. We do not have vehicles either. So we have very little connection with you. So thanks for being here today. And to Vicki, I just wanted to say I was full of congratulations at your briefing with me for managing to achieve this less than 1%. deviation from projected to actuals in the budget. So again, kudos, kudos, kudos. Thank you.

Yeah.

Just wanted to praise you guys. I've taken a tour of the maintenance and operations facility. Everybody there seemed to really love their job and get along great. And that was just really fantastic to see. You want to have a great work environment and also got to do a ride along in a street sweeper. That was like really cool. And see the little robot thing that goes in to clear out drainage ways and stuff. So just really cool technology and a lot of things that people don't think about. They just take for granted at the city that you guys do. So it's great to have this opportunity to say thank you for everything. that you kind of manage behind the scenes and I'm grateful for your team and that you guys all seem to really enjoy your work and happy to support you guys. Thank you.

I see Mayor Ed Lawson has entered the building. Elvis has entered the building.

Thank you for being here. I just wanted to recognize you, my friend.

So, Zach, I wanted to say, I feel like, were you in finance whenever I first got here?

I was. I was in budget in the city manager's office, and hearing the less than 1% on the budget side for Vicki's team makes me feel really lackluster, because we were nowhere near the numbers that they forecast. So, it's up to you, Vicki. So, they're in a better place now.

But I just remember... working with you over the years and just sort of seeing how you've evolved and grown. And it's so impressive.

That's the nicest way to say, hey, I watched you lose your hair while you've been here. That is too kind.

Hey, we're all losing everything. Trust me, my eyesight, my hair, it's all happening. But I do want to say, and you were actually one of the first team members that I met here Like at my very first council meeting so I remember we were having conversations And it's just been really nice to build a work with you and see you just continue to like lead It's impressive, and I love that you're competitive and I would say Travis Great job when I am there you have so much respect in that department. It's you know when there is a good leader at the helm whenever you see the amount of respect that you all carry for Mr. Truhill. So I just want you to know that. It's impressive. It's so clean. You're right. I think you mentioned that, Devin. It's so clean there. It's incredible. I wish we could build you a whole beautiful space, but you guys have done a really great job with what you have over there because I know that we're always having this conversation with you, and it's kind of painful. Like, hey, we just... you just make so much more out of the things that we might not have a lot of money for and I don't think people realize how much you guys stretch and get creative that's one thing I've known about you you really do you do some some really cool things so thank you for all you do because I think you're right I think it's a department that totally goes unnoticed but you know I also know when we have certain weather challenges, you guys are just unbelievable. So you should be proud. Yeah, you should be really proud. And Zach, thank you for all your years of service and friendship. So great job. And then Vicki, I would just say I'm such a huge fan. You know this. I think you are tremendous. You have really been a fiscal hawk. And also very, I think, a realist. And that really helps because I know you have a lot to manage, especially like Jackie does, when you have a lot of personalities up here and we all have different initiatives that we want funded or we all think that ours is more important than the next, whatever that looks like. And you have to manage that. And you do a phenomenal job. But I love that you're very, I think you're very direct about it. And you're very kind in your delivery. Because if I were you, I would probably be highly, highly frustrated. So I just want to say thank you. Your team does a phenomenal job. It's always impressive. I have to tell you, my experience with what you do and your team has just been top notch.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Great job. I guess we don't need to take any action.

This is just for discussion only, no action. Yeah, so no stress up there. Next month. We'll get deep. Okay, we'll get prepared. We start it and we get deep, so yeah. Okay.

All right. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming, Travis. Great job. Great job, honestly. Okay.

Madam Mayor, you mentioned your eyesight's going a little bit, so I thought I'd take the liberty of just welcoming our friends from Sparks. I see Council Member Ivey.

Are you saying I can't see them? Is that what you're saying?

Something like that. Council Member Bybee joined us, our city manager from City of Sparks. I see Council Member Joe Rodriguez in the back and Council Member Diane Vanderwell. And as you already mentioned, Mayor Lawson is here. And I'm guessing if Mr. Anderson could be here, he would be. And I don't see him yet, but maybe he'll join us later.

Okay, all right, we are gonna move forward, but it's nice to see our friends and colleagues that we've worked many, many years with and we've worked very closely with. This is actually pretty historical. So to be honest with you, as I leave the building in a few months, this will probably be something that will be one of the things that I remember the most. It was a commitment that I wanted to see stronger public safety throughout my tenure. And it was for many personal reasons. Many of you know my personal story, you know, losing a family member in a fire. And I just can't imagine anyone else ever having to experience the news like that. And when you are in that situation on the other side, you feel extremely... different about the services we provide and quite honestly protecting life is priceless. And so you just you can't put a price on life and I know we get so wrapped up in what's this going to cost what's that going to cost. And again, you just you can't put a price on life. And so I want to thank each and every one of you for being here today, our partners and sparks. The other thing I do want to point out, I think this is really critical. We forget that. I learned early on from my friends right here that. Fire engines don't put out fires. It's the men and the women on the ground, the boots on the ground, literally, that put out fires and keep people safe and protected. And so I'm beyond grateful for your service. We've gone through so many iterations. I'll never forget the first day I walked through this building. There were literally fights. Brandy would know way better than I would because she's lived it, firsthand experience. But just to see how we've evolved is... It's so touching and it's deeply personal for me. So I'm excited to move this item forward and I'm excited to hear all my council comments. I would love for the Spark City Council to please come and sit in front. I know you might dislike that, but I certainly want to hear from you. I know we're going to go out in the foyer and to discuss a little bit more with our media partners. So I just can't begin to tell you how much this means. I do need to point out, this is very important, he is not here with us today is J.W. Hodge, who has just done tremendous work in our public safety environments. I remember, you know, he came to me and said, what do you think, you know, about this possibility? And I just I think I was just blown away. But this really shows the partnership and the care that we all have for our community and that we don't see boundaries. And we're not saying that's your problem. It's my problem. But that takes strong leadership and that takes leadership from the Spark City Council and the leadership team. from the Reno City Council, but we've all worked together for many, many years. And of course, we sometimes fight like family, but honestly, it's been something that I have to say I'm so grateful for your partnership in every capacity. And I think all of our community members will absolutely feel the same.

And if they don't, they can come to my office and you know me, I'll get feisty.

But I just want to say thank you and I'm, this is very emotional for me. So thank you. And thank you, Chief Cochran. I've been hard on Chief Cochran, just so everyone knows. You don't get to see what happens in the background and he knows it because sometimes I see him down the hall and he turns the other way. Oh no, here she comes. Right. But I appreciate your leadership. And actually, this is where it really starts is whenever you do have a chief that explores all possibilities to make people safer in their communities. That takes a lot of soul searching. So I'm putting great trust in you. And I want to just say thank you because I know that I have not been easy. So I want to recognize that. So thank you. I'm going to let you start the presentation. Did it keep you up last night? What am I going to say? What am I doing? Sometimes I get like that.

Well, I'll start with Dave Cochran, Reno Fire Chief. Happy to be here. A couple things before I start. Yes, I've been giving this a minute of thought for a long time. And it's a great opportunity. And you're absolutely right. You should be proud of what we're doing here today, what SPARCS did on Monday. As I said then, and I'll say to this group as well, it takes a certain courage to do what hasn't been done before, right? There's no place we can point to and say, we did this before, that's how you do it. So the faith and the belief that this council and Sparks Council has in this process, I think, is an honor and well-founded, because I think this is a great opportunity. The other thing I would like to point out, thank you both, Council Member Reese and Mayor Schieve for recognizing our SPARCS partners. Is that three times fast? We have Labor in the room, which you've already recognized. We have my command staff.

Oh, we recognize.

We have SPARCS command staff. So I think you're seeing behind me.

If you're SPARCS, raise your hand. Okay, there you guys are. Thank you so much. Okay.

YEAH, SO VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS OPPORTUNITY, AND WITH THAT, I WILL KICK IT OFF. SO WE'RE HERE TODAY TO TALK ABOUT A SHARED LEADERSHIP AND OPERATIONAL COORDINATION ILA BETWEEN CITY OF RENO AND CITY OF SPARKS FOR FIRE SERVICE SPECIFICALLY. THIS IS OBVIOUSLY IN ALIGNMENT WITH OUR STRATEGIC PRIORITIES HERE AT THE CITY, PUBLIC SAFETY, OF COURSE, BEING THE TOP OF MY LIST, AND I KNOW IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO YOU, MAYOR SHIBE, WITH A HEALTHY DOSE OF FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY. Just the highlights by both points make it sound like it's kind of a smaller agreement. It's not. It's very detailed, very extensive. We worked very hard on it for a very long time. The idea is that one chief will lead both Reno and Sparks fire departments. I don't usually talk about myself in the third party, so the one chief, of course, is me. I will be accountable to both city managers. The department stays separate and independent. I'm going to talk about that a little more further on in the presentation. Sparks will reimburse Reno for a portion of the shared cost. And then just to bundle everything up, this type of agreement is authorized under NRS 277, an interlocal agreement between the cities. So one year term, the idea there was we want to be able to go in, see how it's working, and we're not going to wait a year to see how it's working. We're going to do quarterly reviews, and we'll report back to both councils, either in written form or presentations, whichever is appropriate. But we want the councils to have the flexibility to know that they have the ability to change direction, to modify things, to work within the parameters of the agreement, and let it grow, let it evolve. To the extent it doesn't work, and I don't anticipate that at all, but both cities have the option to withdraw. So both cities are protected in that way. They can give 180 days notice, and they can withdraw from the agreement if it's not working. I mentioned the review together every year, but we're going to do it quarterly as well with city managers. Any major change, I mentioned the independence of both departments of both cities still. have come to either the city manager or the city council as appropriate. So this is not something where you're just sending us off into the wild and you don't have any control. You still have 100% control of your department, just as Sparks has control of their department. And then I mentioned the evolution. We intend to refine as we learn, look for other opportunities, and figure out ways where we can expand the collaboration. Now is the time to take advantage of this opportunity. We've been talking about it for a long time. And I say we, I mean the fire service at large in the area. How can we be better? How can we be more efficient? Our costs are going up. Our call volume is going up. This was an opportunity to take one step. The only overlap between the two departments right now will be me, will be the fire chief position. But we're going to look for ways to grow that and expand that. The goal, of course, is to improve coverage, improve service across the region, fire service, EMS, all the things. And again, I'll reiterate, each city keeps its own governance. You keep control of your department, so nobody is giving up control. city sparks will reimburse city of reno for 25 of the fire chief salary along with any shared leadership or administrative costs as those develop again those will be we won't engage those or we won't commit to those without the commitment of the city and city leadership including city manager of both cities The residents will be the direct beneficiaries of this. This is the goal, improve that service delivery. We can collaborate better under a shared leadership when we have those large incidents, special events, peak demand. We know those things are going to happen. We just had one about a week or so ago that was in Sparks. And it was actually very nice to see. It was a large fire. You saw the column going up behind the GSR. Basically, Reno came at it from one side, Sparks came at it from the other side, mitigated the emergency. It's a great example of a large incident that we know we're going to have. How can we work together and handle those better? And then we have shared services like fire investigations, our mechanic shop, air truck support, special teams. Special teams is a great example because there are ways in that arena in particular because they are the high risk areas. low-volume calls, but when you need it, you need it. So is it responsible from a fiscal standpoint for everybody to have the maximum capacity that anyone would need at any time? No. Why don't we combine our resources, manage them effectively and more efficiently, and that way everybody benefits, and by everybody I mean everybody across the region. The support that I have, you can see it behind me, not only with City Council but with the command staff, from both departments is going to be crucial. And from labor, I mentioned command staff, but from labor as well. You need that structure. I'm not going out fighting fires, right? I'm not doing, I'm not the boots on the ground, they are. But having that command staff in place, having worked with them and understanding the experience they have is what's going to provide the foundation to make the system work, to make this plan work. The reality is that the division chiefs, like Chief Keller behind me, and I think Chief Mandel is here as well, they're running the operations out of day-to-day business. That's not what I or any fire chief gets hired for. We are hired to work with our leadership, work with our bosses, manage the department so that they have the people, the equipment, the fire stations, all the things they need. You mentioned fire engines don't put out fires. The firefighters do. But we need to provide them with those fire engines. So that's the job of leadership. And this is just another representation of that idea. When the alarm sounds, both cities respond. You have the boots on the ground. They're actually doing the work. You have the unified command, which is the command staff of both departments managing the incident, calling for more resources, directing resources on what to do. And then on top of that, you have the fire chief. And in this situation, it would be me. My job, when I go out there, and I don't go to every incident, but the bigger ones I try to go to, I don't go and say, do this, don't do that. I say, how can I make this better for you? Do you need me to talk to the media? Do you need me to make sure council is informed, that the city manager is informed? Let me do those things so that you don't have to, so that you can focus on the emergency, which is their job, and they're excellent at it. So that, again, is just another example of why and how I think this is going to be very successful. What is this not? It's not a plan to cut staffing. We know we need more staffing in both departments. But can we manage the staffing we have and be more efficient? Yes, that's one of the goals here, is to use the staffing we have while we work on growing it to provide the best response possible. In this case, we're already looking at auto aid across the jurisdictions, dispatch, integration, so that we can make sure we're getting the right resource to the right call at the right time, whether that's at Sparks on the side or Reno on the side. So staffing, frontline staffing and EMS are untouched. And I repeat that because it's important for the labor group and for the people of both departments to understand that, that this is not, we're going to go in like some merger and acquisition and cut staffing and save money and be leaner. That's not the goal here. The goal is to provide better service. The cost recovery I mentioned for Reno strengthens the general fund, so that's part of that fiscal responsibility. Shared assets, in this case me, but we're going to look for other opportunities to do that. We'll save money for Sparks and provide revenue for Reno. It can work the other way as well. If there's opportunities where Sparks provides something, we can work within the agreement to do that as well. I mentioned managing all the resources. When you manage all the resources, you can provide better service. When one person's at the top saying, here's the goal, it's not, well, my goal's a little over here, my goal's a little to the left, and you have to resolve that. one person can understand, one person, in this case me, can look at it and say, here's the goal. I understand what both departments can do, what they can't do, and work together to reach that goal. And I mentioned to Mayor Lawson beforehand, I think I have about a dozen things on my list already that we're going to be working on that won't impact either city fiscally, but will improve service. And so we really look forward to working on that, working with both departments, and really making fire service in the area make it take a step forward and improve it for everybody. So with that, here's the recommended motion. I or anybody else is available for questions.

Fantastic, thank you so much. And I would also say, and you could confirm this, we do this now. We assist, they assist, we all help each other out from Washoe County to Sparks. to Reno. So it's also, I think, to identify that, you know, people are saying, what's happening? But actually, you really do it now already in that capacity that everyone jumps in and helps each other.

I'm really glad you brought that up because Sparks City Manager Luton has brought that up. This is the plan. The agreement is not a fix. We're not trying to fix anything. We have two proud, high-performing departments that work together. We're looking for ways that we can be even better. And you've heard me say it about the Reno Fire Department. If we're not trying to get better, we're stagnant. We're always trying to get better. That shouldn't be interpreted as we're trying to fix something or something's broken. We're just trying to move the ball forward.

And I love that because it's hard. I think in government, we get chastised a lot for thinking differently or doing something a little different or thinking outside the box or thinking innovative. And will it work? Sometimes we don't know. But if we are not trying, I think that's whenever we fail. I really commend that you are always thinking about innovative ways, different ways. I do really appreciate that about you. But I do want people to know we do this already in the sense of helping each other out, and that's what's really great. But I also think there is a lot of value and, quite honestly, financial value. Yep. to doing it together. Otherwise, I have watched firsthand how incidents can be extremely fragmented. It doesn't just happen with Bayer, but I've watched it over and over and over again. And that's what will frustrate you the most is whenever you see things that are fragmented because everyone has a different plan going on. And that just isn't going to be helpful. I also think we have to continue to do More and more and more to recognize the threat of fire wildfires you know Reno is the fastest warming city and I can't begin to tell you enough that we have to have honest conversations in this region that We could face a catastrophic event at some point and you better have strong and leadership boots on the ground and be ready. And so strengthening the partnership together really can make the difference between how an outcome is in a community. So I just want to tell you, it's just something that does keep me up at night. It absolutely does, because I live in a very fire-prone area. Many people do. This is Nevada. And a couple days ago, I was thinking of you guys so much. I was looking at my app, fire, fire, fire, right? There's a lot going on, and especially in temperatures that we see. So I just want to recognize that. But people need to know, we do this now, which is great. And so... I think people need to realize that that service will not stop.

It'll just get better.

Yeah, just get better. All right, I'm going to start with Councilwoman Anderson because she knows a lot more than I do. So go ahead, take it away. Well, thank you, Madam Mayor.

I don't know a lot other than how important the fire family is to our community. And I just want to say a few things to recognize how unique of a position we're in and recognize the folks in this room that helped us get here. So first, Chief, we wouldn't be here if you weren't willing, first of all, right? We wouldn't be here if you hadn't built the rapport and trust and those relationships with your partner agencies that you work with and amongst in this community. We wouldn't be here if 731 didn't trust you So the fact that you're willing to step up and put yourself in the limelight in an unprecedented situation with people that you care about. I know you care about the opinion, the trust, and your reputation with the Sparks department, the Reno department, the department within the airport that are all now led by 731. So first, I want to acknowledge you. But honestly, we would not be here in this room today if it wasn't for the leadership of 731. And 731 is our bargaining and our labor group that now represents Reno, the airport, and the city of Sparks. And that is unprecedented and very, very rare. So I just want to recognize you, President Tapia, and your team for the hard work that you've done really to break down barriers between the different departments build their trust, and bring us into an environment where we can even consider something like this. A decade ago, we'd have been left out of a room in this area. I just want to thank you for your leadership. And the third group that I want to thank is really the elected leadership that is in this room represented from Sparks and in this room represented from Reno. Because again, 10 years, eight years, seven years, five years ago, we would have been laughed out of a room based on the relationships, based on the mutual or lack of respect that we had for each other, and just based on the silos that we had accepted in this community over the years. So the fact that you 731 and the city of sparks your leadership has trusted us With the opportunity for this unprecedented pilot program that we can continue to potentially find new ways to deliver the service that the community deserves But also find new ways to protect the health well-being safety and working and conditions and environment for our first responders Not only fire, but at large. So I have more to say, but I just wanted to kick it off with that and acknowledge the people in this room that made this happen because it truly is unprecedented and very exciting.

Anyone else over on this side? No. All right, Councilman Reeves.

Thank you so much, Madam Mayor. I want to say many of the same things that Ms. Anderson said so articulately, I won't repeat them. But I want to say two things. One is that, you know, we sometimes joke about our presence here in West Sparks and their presence over in East Reno, right? And I want people to understand both of the communities have an incredible history and tradition, proud folks living there. But we mean it as a reflection of the love that we have for our shared community. I am grateful to Mayor Lawson and the other council members for their consistent willingness to work across the aisles. We don't do a lot of silo building in the ways in which we work together. We all serve on boards and commissions together, whether it's Regional Transportation Commission or TUMWA. And at each one of those, I never see anyone talking about what's in it for me or like taking the me first approach. And I think that has to do with certainly Mayor Lawson's attitude. And for that, I am grateful. And to our mayor similarly, because no one has ever said, we're in it for our own. I think that is unusual, right? We know a lot of governments, a lot of areas of the country where there's a lot of silo building and kingdom protection. And we don't do that. I think it's true to our city managers, Mr. Lothan and Ms. Bryant, help to foster that culture. And so in that regard, I'm grateful for the elected people on this body. I'm grateful for the folks who work in fire service because without them, all of this is largely irrelevant. And I'm grateful for the culture that's been created by the staff. And Mr. Hodge is not here today because he's furthering his educational opportunities. But I know that he thinks very critically about all these things. I will also say, similarly to Ms. Anderson, I think, Chief Cochran, this is not possible unless people view your leadership as willing to be something that they are committed to investing in, right? If you did not have the reputation for you know, honesty and for forthrightness and for compassion, all the values that we see in you at the City of Reno, the City of Sparks would not say, hey, we're open to this idea. And I'm not actually sure where the idea germinated from. I take no credit, certainly. I am sure it was much smarter people than electeds that came up with the thought of it. But simply to say that it only works because people do believe in the leadership that you exhibit and that the men and women of each department really have invested in each other and their belief in each other. I love that Local 731 now represents Reno Sparks and our airport folks. That also is a sign of the shared commitment and love that each have. And last, I'm going to say a special shout out to Councilmember Rodriguez, who has experience in fire service. right, who I go to and say, hey, they're telling me this. What do you think, and how can that be played out here? Because, you know, we all bring to it a very specific and unique skill set, and I cannot replicate Mr. Rodriguez, Councilmember Rodriguez's knowledge of this, and so I always look to him and sort of test against him, and we don't always agree, but he kind of iron sharpens iron, and he helps me to figure out maybe see it from my perspective. I know a little bit more. And then I say, well, I'm a lawyer, so I know this thing over here. And we all tend to try to help one another in that cause. I'm grateful for the vote that Sparks has already taken on this issue. And certainly, my vote will be to support this effort. I'll be excited as it unfolds. What you figure out are the things we didn't think about, what things we might have to tinker with and change. And a lot going on in our region in terms of a lot of these interlocal agreements and different kinds of ways we work together, but all in the benefit of our community. So again, my attitude is one of gratitude. I'm thankful for so many folks for making us get to this point and am grateful for Madam Mayor and Mr. Mayor for their leadership on this issue.

Yeah, thank you so much What a remarkable pleasure it is to be here to be discussing this important initiative For many of you know, I'm in my 12th year soon to end in three months, but the entire time I've been here Fire management has been something I focused on and it began before I was even elected building relationships with our members of our fire service and to see what they had done to in terms of spreading their wings, building bridges with other organization firefighters who are all joined in a common purpose, was really remarkable to me. I thought that was the greatest step. Frankly, I still couldn't get over it. A year later, I'm just like, I can't believe we are unified in this way. So now, as I'm completing my 12th year, I view this as the beginning of, really, a important next step in a long-term vision that I've had since I joined council. When I joined council, we were just completing our fired divorce. And that's all we talked about. There were lawsuits, there was rebuilding having to happen, there was distrust. And it wasn't with Sparks, but it was with Washoe County. And it was so disheartening to me as a council member to have to experience that for the first few years. How do we settle this? How do we work through it? How do we do better? And so my dream has been to operate with... one purpose, one vision amongst all our fire services in our region and to prevent the damage that we see and to save lives. And those are our fire department and I've looked across and seen how the Sparks Fire Department acts as well. Very focused on this mission. So today, this is a wonderful realization of part of a dream come true for me. And I, like the mayor, feel incredibly proud to have helped take us from where we were when I came into office to where we are now, starting a new beginning. And it's really not, as my colleagues have said, a new beginning. It's an expansion on a relationship that has been building for years. And I am grateful to the SPARKS Council and their management in general because what we're really seeing here is a fulfillment of trust, trust in us to do the right thing, that we have the right fire chief for the moment and that we are willing to share and share his expertise, but more important almost, that he is willing to recognize and build upon the expertise that already exists in Sparks. you know, to just help it come together, maybe be a little bit better, a little bit more unified. So incredibly grateful to be here today. I thank my colleagues for their wise words and, you know, their sentiments because I share all of them. So to everyone involved, especially probably both of our managements, thank you for getting us to this day.

All right, Council Member.

Okay, so I have some questions that I'm just gonna relay that I've received from members of the public. So the first one I wanna kinda get out of the way is, how is this arrangement different than the potential regionalization of fire that we're still working on the report for?

So I'm glad you brought that up, because there could be some conflation between that report and that and this. They're completely separate. The only overlap right now is me, is the leadership, the fire chief. Do we want to? Could we possibly merge, consolidate, whatever terminology you want to use later on, either in whole or in part? Yes, but there's labor groups involved. There's contracts involved. So we would have to go through that process. We couldn't just dictate that. So right now, you as city council have the ability and Spark City Council to merge at the top, and then we'll look to expand and develop that relationship and grow into other areas. Again, emphasizing, one, it's gotta be at the direction of city leadership from both cities, and it's gotta be in collaboration with the affected labor group or groups.

So another question I have is I know there was some friction a little bit between having a four-man crew or a three-man crew. Is that still an area that we need to iron out between Reno and Sparks?

I wouldn't call it friction. Reno, by contract and by design, operates all four-person crews. Sparks actually has verbiage in their collective bargaining agreement, so that's what they want. That's why I would say it's not friction. They want to get there. Okay. Fiscally, right now, they're not in that position, but we're going to look for ways that maybe we can redistribute some resources and start to build that up.

Okay. Thanks for correcting me on that, too. I misunderstood how they were addressing that issue between the two agencies. another question I have is you mentioned that I got copious notes here both cities will respond to a call is that accurate like if there's a call are there going to be fire trucks from Reno and sparks responding like let's say there's a residence in between they call 911 are both agencies sending a response.

That is one of the initial plans we're working on right now. So the short answer is yes. And I apologize because in my brain, having worked in the city, I was thinking in terms of districts. But in District 2, which is up off of Sutro, where our Station 2 is, We're close to a lot of Sparks, or closer to a lot of Sparks, but even if we were there first, and it could be a Reno response, a Reno incident, the next in engine might be, the closest anyway, might be from Sparks. So even though we have the resources, wouldn't it be better to get the closest appropriate resources from wherever they live? Yeah. We've all said it. We've all heard it.

Okay, so you're saying not both at the same time, but technically both could respond depending on the location of the emergency.

Yeah, and if there was a need for multiple resources.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that for me. And I know it's been mentioned about... aid given from different agencies. I have a mutual aid, or I'm not sure what the technical term is. I have Truckee Meadows Fire has agreed to respond to calls at Sierra Sage Golf Course because they're practically in their parking lot. And there was a couple instances think it was a year ago maybe two years ago there was two people that passed of heart attacks in the parking lot there and there was a perception that response times may have played a factor in their medical outcomes so what what kind of like agreement is there is it all these locations do we have to do any kind of special agreement for any area or it's just a uniform across Reno and Sparks?

I think the answer, everything is nuanced, right? Because it depends on the type of call and the exact location. But the goal would be, when I say the right resource to the right call at the right time, from whatever department is appropriate. And in practical effect, that usually means the closest.

Okay, okay. Let's see here. Oh, I'm way over. Thank you for your answers on that. I appreciate it. You're welcome.

Do you want to continue? I didn't want to interrupt you. I thought those questions were excellent. Oh, thank you.

Let's see. Oh, I don't want to be a downer, but do we have a plan if we decide this isn't working? Like it just, for whatever reason, I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but we have... divorce before so do we have a strategy for you know, I don't I don't like To the best outcome for the worst, right?

Does have a provision that if it's not working either city can get notice and terminate the agreement and Right now, like I said, the only overlap is me. I would stay with Reno. Sparks would get me, Fire Chief. So, yeah, there is an out clause that's not working.

Okay, because my concern is you would now kind of have two bosses, right? You would have Reno City Council, which is already, you know, seven people, and then also Sparks as well. So I'm just concerned if we end up having, like, I don' t see any other conflicting agendas that might cause problems or this just doesn' t work for whatever reason. Thank you for that and then also will this include unified training will everybody get the same training with this change?

that is on my list to collaborate more extensively because we do to some extent but I want to grow that collaboration in the training environment because that' s something what we hope is a great result, the best result possible because of the response we provided. Yeah. That comes from training. Great. Training across jurisdictions. So we're on the same page. We're doing the same thing. We respond in the same way to the same call. We want to do all those things.

That's great. All right. I don't think I have anything else right at this second, but if there's another round, I might know. Thank you. Okay.

Thanks so much. All right. Councilman Taylor. Think about a mayor chief. I think it was slide eight if you could bring that up really quick. I'll be very brief I think our job here is to make sure that we set good policy and we assign resources So my one question for you is do you feel like you have the bandwidth to maintain these two roles? And is there anything you need from this council or other councils that are sitting here to make this successful? I

So the first part, yes, I have the bandwidth. And I've given that a lot of thought, obviously. Councilwoman Anderson mentioned my willingness to commit to this job. I've been saying, and Mayor Sheeby's heard this her whole career, we should be a regional department. It would be disingenuous of me to say that and then not say that I'm willing to step up and do it. So I've thought about that a lot. The reason I believe I have the bandwidth, I know I have the bandwidth, is because understanding Reno, understanding Sparks, and this region, I know how to prioritize. And I understand what my job is, like I said. I'm not the boots on the ground. I'm working at a higher level to make sure that both departments are operating effectively and efficiently.

And we're doing this to an extent anyway. With major things so I will be absolutely supporting this and thank you to everybody in the room Thank you to our city managers for getting us here appreciate it. Thank you local 731 Appreciate all your work on this Thank You chief

Miguel hasn't gone yet, or Mr. Martinez.

You look blue over there. Oh, now you're green. I'm green now. Okay, go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Council Member Henderson. I just want to start off by giving you a huge shout out because obviously without your leadership and what's already been said, without belaboring the point, obviously your willingness to step up and ensure that we provide the best service to our community is apparent. Every day that I have interacted with you and seen you out there, I can tell the passion and commitment that you bring forth in your position and within our department. So I'm hopeful and appreciative of the work that the council in Sparks has already done and approved. As I read the agreement, there were a lot of off-boarding opportunities, check-in opportunities, oversight from both parties to be able to ensure that both of the needs are getting met from both jurisdictions. And so I'm just really appreciative of all the collaboration I've seen. I wasn't here when the situations changed in our jurisdictions, but now being on this side and being able to witness how collaborative and regionalized we can be in our efforts has been tremendous. So I'm really appreciative of everybody's willingness to come to the table and continue to explore these options. Thank you to everybody that's in the room and those folks that have continued to ensure that these conversations move forward in a positive and fruitful way. Thank you.

All right, Councilman Anderson.

Okay, so I can't get out of here without acknowledging the city manager's team and JW specifically, JW Hodge being the assistant city manager, just in case people in this room don't know him. or his leadership, or his experience. He is a uniquely qualified first responder that is leading teams of people, whether it's dispatch, REMSA, paramedics, fire, police. He is the heart and soul of public safety at the city of Reno in terms of leadership ideas and potentially collaborations with the region. And so when he set out to work with Manager Dion, and I know that the two of you have built an intently relationship incredible relationship and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of all the variables that we have to work with in public safety and so the work and the reputation that JW has brought to this and also you City manager Dion is really appreciated and I wanted to recognize that since I was recognizing everyone else And I just wanted this is my final my final point on this. I met I sit on the fire board with councilmember Rodriguez and I met with that team and had an update yesterday and Admittedly, I thought that I didn't learn more from that the very expensive consultants that we hired to tell us how we can improve and fund offering fire service in this region. But the whole time I was sitting there listening to them, I kept ticking off all of the progress that we are making while they are providing the study for us. We're going to be able to come in with 50% of those ideas already achieved at no additional cost and The emotional intelligence and the confidence and the relationships that you have been building while we've been contemplating this additional proposal, they're just taking us light years ahead of where we could have been if we hadn't have been led by our city management team and your leadership here and our city council in Sparks being willing to even work with us. So with that said, my confidence in this arrangement is amazing compared to the meeting that I had yesterday with people that are supposed to tell us how to lead and take the next steps in this community. I think our own community knows how to do it better than others. So thank you for being a part of this process and I'm very grateful to this council for being willing to entertain this type of an arrangement and share our fire chief. So thank you.

All right.

Yeah, so I know I just flooded you with questions the first time, so I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for your work and all of the firefighters. I think you guys have done a great job with unifying with the airport fire, and also want to thank Jackie and JW as well. I'm sorry he can't be here. I know where he is, but... He's put in so much work with the new dispatch system and everything, too. I think that will be so helpful for just creating more efficiencies for getting first responders where they need to be faster. So I think we've really got a great team working on all this. I want to thank Councilmember Anderson and Mayor Schiebe for their work on that as well, and SPARC's Councilmembers. It's just not an easy task at all, but I feel like we're really making some progress. The stars have aligned. councilmember Anderson's point and I feel like we're actually Taking the steps to get there. You know, we haven't had the study back yet But this is a great way to kind of test the waters and see how how this would work if we were More unified regionally, so I just wanted to say thank you for your work on this I'm really looking forward to seeing how this improves our service for the community. That's always my ultimate goal is to provide the best service for the residents in the area. So really grateful for all the efforts. Thank you.

Okay, anyone else? No? I do wanna say I've had a lot of interactions with actually Sparks Fire, obviously a lot more with Reno, but with Sparks Fire, I have to commend what a great job you guys have done and built a wonderful, wonderful team. So this truly is a family partnership. And I'm really glad you said nice things about Ed, because a lot of people don't. No, I'm just kidding, Ed. We love you. But Ed is a wonderful leader, and it really is a testament to so many people, but particularly the mayor. The mayor takes the most criticism. I know your job is not easy, my friend. We often find ourselves on islands at times, being the most unpopular people in our cities. And so to... think differently and to really step up when sometimes you don't know what the best outcomes are, but we also know the things that don't work. And so I want to remind everyone that in a year, once this pilot is finished, I would really like for everyone to come back. Obviously, a few of us won't be here, but I think it's important to come back and be honest and talk about ways in which we can improve or, you know, what does work, what doesn't work. Um, but I do think quite honestly, this partnership is going to prove to be incredibly successful for this entire community. Again, I have seen where we can get very fragmented in our approach. And let me tell you something that could cost someone's life. It can obviously cost, um, millions and millions and hundreds of millions of dollars, but the biggest thing is protecting life. That is the most important. So I just, I cannot commend all of you enough, but I really wanted to recognize the Sparks Fire Department. And of course, I'm very biased because I love many of our firefighters and You know, being from, you know, born and raised in Reno, you actually have a wonderful fireman by the name of Greg Garman. You know, so I like, you know, I grew up with many of them and went to school with them. I won't say that he was my first kiss, but he might have been. But anyway, we laugh and we joke about that. But I also have to really commend so many people that brought me along the way and educated me whether I liked it or not. And we had many, many arguments at times. Dan's shaking his head. But it was really always, always, always rooted in how do we make this community better and safer. And the tough jobs that you guys do every single day, I can't even imagine. I don't think people realize the amount of trauma that you see. Working firsthand with people, you guys truly are the ones that are there picking up so many pieces for people in this community. And so I know your hearts firsthand. And so I love to see how dedicated you are to your brothers and sisters. It is remarkable because I have seen a lot and I have learned a lot and I'm grateful for you. And you might not have always agreed with me and I might not have always agreed with you. We've gone round and round and round. but you need to know how much I respect you and what you have done for this community. Tom Dunn, I love that you're always so direct and it's so helpful. I'm not sure I know anyone more knowledgeable. I can say, hey, Tom, what does this mean? And he can say, here's this, here's this. He can point to every manual that I think exists. I don't know, you're like a walking cyclopedia, but I want you to know I'm grateful for your years of helping educate me and just, and always being in the room, being an advocate. And Dan Tapia, you know, we've gone around before, but love you like a brother. You're amazing. You're amazing. And I've just really, I just wanted you guys to know that. But it also goes back to people like, I got to work with Jake. You know, what's Jake? Lightfoot. What? Lightfoot. Yeah.

No, he's retired. Oh, Dennis Jacobson.

Yeah, Jacobson. And he helped me along the way. I did not come into this job knowing a single thing about what you do. And Pilcher, Mike Pilcher, I just... I can't say enough nice things about Mike Pilcher. So I've had a lot of people along the way that have helped me understand exactly what we need to do in this community. And so, and I wanted to say thank you to Casey and and Dan, and I mean, you guys have just been like family along the way, and we have fought along the way. People need to know that we have because we care. But as I leave this position, you need to know how grateful I am for your service. I hope that if I ever need you, you are the ones that show up for me in times of need because I have watched you lead this city with total heart. So thank you. Thank you. And I do want to remind just the community that this is a pilot. We want your feedback. We want to hear from you. Your voice matters. It's important to get it right and work on the things that we do get wrong. So I just, I can't stress that enough. We want people to be involved. We want it to be transparent and just be at the table. So anyway, okay. Are you ready? I'd love to make a motion. Okay, go right ahead, Councilwoman Dewar.

Yeah, thank you. I just want to make sure I'm at the right spot here. So, and did we put it up on the screen? So, I'd love to move to approve the interlocal agreement between City of Reno and City of Sparks for fire department shared leadership and operational coordination, establishing a shared fire chief model and framework for operational coordination and regional cost sharing, and authorize the fire chief the city manager, and or the mayor to sign the necessary documents.

Okay, thank you. I have a motion from Councilwoman Dewar. Second. I have a second from Councilwoman Anderson.

Any discussion?

Okay, no discussion. I do want to recognize one other person. The back end of this is very complex, and there is one person that is at the helm. He hates it when I do this. I can tell. I'm staring at him right now. Cody, thank you so much for your leadership in everything you do. Dispatch is super essential to what we do, and it makes such a huge difference. Your team has been phenomenal. Cody, I love this. He gets so, like, red, I feel like. I love it. But I just need to recognize you and your team, because dispatch is such an essential component of what we're doing and how we do it. So great job to your team, and I know that they work tirelessly, so I needed to recognize you, because I'm a big fan. Anyway, okay, I have a motion and a second.

All those in favor say aye. Aye.

All those opposed?

Motion carries unanimously.

All right, congratulations. We're going to recess. I know that we're going to give a few interviews, and then I get to congratulate my friend over here, and so we'll see everyone outside of Believe, I believe. I believe. All right, so we'll see you out there, and then we will be back. Lead us into city manager because we do have an attorney client. Yes. We will have an attorney client. We will need to take a recess. What time is it right now? Yeah. So it's going to be probably 2.15, 2.30, just so everyone knows.

Okay. Thanks so much.

I used to come for this staycation. I used to come here and enjoy the hotels and go down to the river. And I was familiar with the Automobile Museum, but I never in a million years thought I'd be working here. My name is Philip McDougall. I'm the president of the National Automobile Museum. The history of the National Automobile Museum goes way, way back. So most people know the name Harrah from the casinos, but they don't know the story behind it. Mr. Harrah, he had a collection of 1,400 of the most unbelievable cars. And when he passed, he didn't have a will. The community got together and they said, you can't sell all these things. This is part of our community. It's part of our identity. We need to keep them here. They raised money to build the museum. The city said, we're going to contribute the land if you get the money to build it. And then the Holiday Inn, who purchased all the assets of Mr. Harris' collection, said, if you do all that, then we're going to throw in 175 cars of the total collection of 1,400. So all those things came together because the community thought it was important. And in 1989, the museum was opened up. We want to be a community partner and we are great. We have events, we have older cars, newer cars, Elvis's car, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future. We have a brand new children's educational activity center, 3,000 square feet of technology for those kids and adults to get hands-on experience on how cars work, how next generation of technology was created. We wanted to be different. We wanted to embrace the community, be a community partner. We did a complete renovation, and then we went out with an active campaign, not in that car mode, that museum mode, but outdoor concerts, speaker series, parties, birthdays, and a whole new selection of cars. I think the biggest change is that we have a new exhibit every 60 days. It really is fun to watch how a family can come in and they'll just go in five different directions because we have something for every generation. It's not just the building, it's not just the cars that are in there, it's the people, it's the livelihoods of everybody that's around this town that keeps us going. The downtown partnership has been a lifesaver for us. Just helping us overhaul the day-to-day challenges we have, like any business downtown. We can't make it without the security issues addressed, without the communication addressed, and it's all one big team down here. So the restaurants help us, the businesses help us, everyone here, we all kind of depend on each other. And that's what we're trying to bring to the equation is another partner who can help us all be a little bit stronger and a bigger community partner. I see a greater emphasis from the Downtown Partnership, from the elected officials, than the community leaders to get together and say, we really want to succeed. We have to succeed as a group. No silos. The restaurants, the businesses, the gas stations, everybody that's here has to get a common bond. Otherwise, we're not going to succeed. It's a storytelling. It's a camaraderie. And we had that not only with us in the museum, but all the local businesses downtown here. We have the same common bond and passion. Downtown Reno's the place to be. It's a family place, it has something for everybody. Come to the museum, go to a local restaurant, you're gonna feel safe, you're gonna have fun, and you're gonna be 15 minutes away from wherever you live.

My name is Robert Downs. I'm a field specialist with RISE and this experience with Bonnie Pace and the Pathway Pilot has been awesome and tremendous and I'll never forget it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

What home means Nevada to me is just that. It's always a place that I find comfort and solace. We travel a lot, we camp a lot, and I just love coming home. Home means Nevada for so many reasons. My name is Scott Dunseith, and I'm the owner of the Home Means Nevada Company, which was formerly Reno Envy. I grew up in the Bay Area and I went to school at UNR. And my thought was that I would spend two years in Reno and then I would go back home. But after the two years, I just fell in love with the place. I love the people, the community. It's just been awesome. I was talking to a friend, I was giving him my address, and so I told him Scott Dunstheath, da-da-da-da, Reno Envy, 89523. And he's like, Reno Envy? I'm like, Reno Envy? So it was kind of at that moment, that was our aha moment, where I realized that the state abbreviation for Nevada, Envy, sounded like the word envy. So that's where it all started from. What's great about the downtown Reno community is that, you know, People believe in Reno. We have something here. People really love this community as much as I do, and people really resonated with the idea of having a local brand. Downtown Reno honestly has been a challenge, but we're a small business, and we've been down here since 2008. And honestly, if we can do it, there's a lot of opportunity out there, and we kind of wanted to prove to people that retail works. In 2012, rebranded ourselves and we went from Reno Envy and renamed our brand the Home Meets Nevada Company. Kind of trying to support the local artists in the community by bringing their products in and selling them on their behalf. We have all sorts of great stuff. We have coffee from Glory Cloud. We have local honey. It's important for us to collaborate too with local celebrities. Krista Palmer is an Olympic athlete and we have the opportunity to partner with her and create her own authentic Krista Palmer Battle Born t-shirt.

My name is Krista Palmer, Nevada's Olympic diver. This is a really special company to me because my roots are in Nevada. I grew up down in Carson City. I truly feel this connection between Home Means Nevada and my story. This has been a really cool partnership that I've been able to develop over the years with Scott. Projection of Reno downtown, I really see it opening up more doors for people to continue to get outside, continue to take their dogs for a walk and enjoy the Reno River walk, to be able to have space to enjoy those lovely afternoons. I think that's where I kind of see the progression of Reno going and for more people to enjoy what Reno is. It's truly a treasure here.

People believe in Reno and we believe in Reno. There's so much opportunity and so many different types of people in downtown Reno. And the city of Reno has been great with this partnership with the Visitor Center, the RSCVA has been great. The collaborations that we do with the community, with the university, with Krista Palmer, Olympic athlete, it really is about a community that kind of binds us together. If we didn't have that support, we wouldn't be able to survive in downtown Reno. I have always felt like Reno's been kind of our little secret, and we love to share that secret. We love to see Reno grow and prosper. Great for shopping for friends, great for gift giving. So come on down, visit us, check it out. It's been a while.

Come visit downtown Reno and see what you're missing.

Do you want to make a difference in your neighborhood? The City of Reno's six Neighborhood Advisory Boards are your chance to shape the future of your community. From parks and public safety to development projects, your voice matters. Joining a NAB is easy, and it's a great way to connect with neighbors and city leaders while making Reno an even better place to live. Applications are open now. Visit reno.gov forward slash nab to learn more and apply. Get involved and help make Reno not just livable, but lovable.

Hi, I'm Reno Fire Chief Dave Coffey. It's an honor to connect with you as we look back on 2024. A year of innovation, strong work, and unwavering dedication to protecting our communities. The Reno Fire Department reached incredible milestones, overcame challenges, and made a real impact on the biggest little city. Let's look back at 2024 and the achievements and highlights of the Reno Fire Department.

2024's wildland season tested our region with incidents like the Gold Ranch Davis and Callahan fires, straining resources from across the West. Although these fires happened just outside Reno City limits, our firefighters stepped up to assist while ensuring our Reno community remained well protected. In 2024, RFD deployed 264 resources to more than 100 wildland fires, contributing over 65,000 hours of work. These efforts brought nearly $2 million in reimbursements back to the department. Right here at home, we responded to 51,737 calls for service, an increase of over 2,000 from the previous year. Our commitment to service continues to grow along with our community.

The Safety and Training Division saw impressive growth in 2024, paving the way for a stronger, more skilled team. We proudly promoted 11 captains and eight operators, hired 25 new firefighters, and welcomed five single-role EMS personnel. This year, we ran two three-week fire equipment operator engine academies, one two-week fire equipment operator truck academy, and a two-week acting captain's academy. These intensive programs help sharpen our skills and prepare our teams for any situation. We also expanded our monthly company-level training sessions, introducing specialized active shooter training and wide area search exercises. And through partnerships with surrounding fire departments, we enhanced our response capabilities for wildland fires and hazmat operations. Additionally, we upgraded the training facilities at Station 11 with new technology to improve the delivery of our programs, ensuring our team is always ready to meet the demands of our city.

The Reno Fire Prevention Bureau experienced significant strides this year in 2024, starting with the appointment of a new fire marshal, three fire captains, and three new fire inspectors. Our team saw great success in our arson investigations, achieving an impressive 80% conviction rate and completed over 6,000 building inspections to help keep Reno safe. For the fourth consecutive year, we hosted our dumpster program thanks to a grant from State Farm. This program helps neighborhoods in the wildland urban interface clear dry vegetation and debris, creating defensible space. Thank you to everyone who participated and helped reduce wildfire risk in our community. In 2024, We were also thrilled to receive nearly $245,000 from FEMA's Fire Prevention and Safety Grant to develop a community wildfire protection plan. This comprehensive framework will prioritize wildfire mitigation efforts, improve emergency preparedness, and ensure long-term safety for Reno's residents and infrastructure. Keep an eye out in the coming months for ways to get involved. We're excited to collaborate with you.

In 2024, we worked closely with our community partners to update the Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan. The plan assesses the potential impact of all prioritized hazards to the region and provides mitigation strategies and actions to reduce such risk. The update ensures the plan remains effective in addressing the evolving needs of our communities. We also prioritized firefighter health with initiatives like our fourth annual cancer screenings and the introduction of the coronary calcium scan. These proactive prevention programs are vital in detecting early markers of heart disease and cancer, critical steps for firefighters facing heightened risks associated with their profession. Additionally, we launched a groundbreaking pilot program with the Epic Brain Center, exploring enhanced mind-body performance treatments. This innovative approach supports firefighters dealing with PTSD and other mental health challenges, while empowering them with improved executive function to perform at their best.

2024 was a landmark year for the Reno Fire Department Emergency Medical Services Division with 30,649 calls for service. Collaboration played a key role in 2024 as we joined forces with regional partners to strengthen our unified response to medical emergencies.

We were excited to welcome our new EMS management assistant and expand our specialized training for our single-role program. Ensuring our EMS team is always prepared to meet our community's high demand for advanced emergency medical services. We conducted division level training on new medical equipment, including cutting edge video laryngoscope blades that are vital in life-saving situations and new medications that can be used to treat various patient presentations by our mid and advanced level providers. We also implemented a new medical charting platform, further enhancing patient care.

Reno Fire Department's Support Services Division achieved significant milestones in 2024. Enhanced vehicle maintenance and repair, increased apparatus safety, and equipment modernization. Through our Apparatus Replacement Program, we added two new brush trucks designed for firefighting and rugged terrain, and a state-of-the-art ambulance, ensuring our fleet meets the diverse needs of our community. We also enhanced operations by refining the use of fleet cameras throughout our vehicles. These systems capture critical moments during incidents, training, and daily operations, providing insights that improve safety and support crew education. Our logistics team continues to push innovation forward, adopting advanced battery-powered tools on our fire engines and ladder trucks. and improve personal protective equipment. These enhancements extend equipment lifespan, improve functionality, and prioritize firefighter safety. Looking ahead, we're excited to introduce a new heavy rescue apparatus in 2025, the first of its kind for our department since 1986. As an all-risk fire department supporting many different types of incidents, this addition ensures our crews are ready to respond to any emergency, no matter the challenge.

As we reflect on 2024, the Reno Fire Department has much to celebrate. our interlocal agreement with the reno tahoe airport authority enabling us to assume firefighting services across all airport properties and our partnership with truckee meadows fire and rescue which now provides automatic aid to ensure the closest resource responds to emergencies no matter the jurisdiction we're building the foundation for continued growth and excellence i'm pleased to share that we also received the keys to 455 east second street our future central fire station We're excited to begin serving you from this state-of-the-art facility in 2027. At RFD, we believe that being part of the community is just as important as responding to emergencies. Whether it's hosting fire safety programs, participating in local events, or building relationships with residents, we strive to be more than the first responders. We're your neighbors, partners, and advocates for a safer region. None of our work would be possible without the dedication of our team and wavering support of our Reno City Council, state and federal representatives. Their commitment ensures RFD is always ready to serve and protect our community. On behalf of the Reno Fire Department, thank you for your trust and support. Together we accomplished so much in 2024 and we look forward to an even brighter and safer year ahead. Thank you for standing with us.

Grab a slice, hitch a ride, get a rush, and roll the dice. Step into a world where Nevada's northern lights shine bright. And last calls are rare in a city that never sleeps, where the spirit of the Wild West lives on through daring rapids, and rocking out goes beyond the crowds. Founded on the rebels of resilience, we aren't what you expected, we're what's coming. We don't just embrace downtown, infuse it with life. We are a convergence of adventure, art, and taste. It's not just our city, it's our identity. The mighty Truckee, our lifeline, and the Nevada sky as our backdrop, downtown Reno is a tribute to our roots and a leap into the future. Discover 110 blocks of stories of residents, entrepreneurs, creators, and masters of their craft coming together in the spirit of discovery and progress. In a city that never ceases to reinvent itself, we are the unexpected. been a while downtown Reno invites you to rise with us again what's your story

Grab a slice, hitch a ride, get a rush, and roll the dice. Step into a world where Nevada's northern lights shine bright, and last calls are rare in the city that never sleeps. Where the spirit of the Wild West lives on through daring rapids, and rocking out goes beyond the crowds. We're the unexpected in a city that never ceases to reinvent itself. Been a while? Downtown Reno invites you to rise with us again. What's your...

You know how speeders got categories? Categories? Different types, different cars. Wannabe race car drivers with zero talent and all the insurance claims. Go on. Yeah, so you got the, I didn't realize I was going 95 type. Like the car magically went 45 over just on its own.

Oh. Officer, I thought I was going 45. No, buddy. You thought about going 45.

Well, then you got the I'm late for work guys. Like going 25 over is going to make up for the 30 minutes they spent laying in bed watching TikToks.

Ain't nothing like risking a reckless driving charge to get to a job that you already hate.

We can't forget the I was just keeping up with traffic folks.

Oh, the if everybody jumped off the bridge defense.

Just because everybody else is breaking the law doesn't mean that you get a free pass.

Nah, but it does mean we all get to sit on the side of the road together while we trade live stories and I write this ticket at lightning speed. There's one.

Yeah, we got a black Volkswagen headed your way, guys. Got him. In all seriousness, Reno, we need to slow down when driving on our roads. Speed and impairment are the two biggest factors in fatality crashes. That is why the Reno Police Department will be conducting proactive speeding enforcement on McCarran and around the city. Slow down, Reno. Nevada?

I'm not from Nevada, and I'm pretty sure the speed limit signs all look the same everywhere.

We're the unexpected in a city that never ceases to reinvent itself. Been a while? Downtown Reno invites you to rise with us again. What's your story?

I'm Corey, I'm a housing manager with the City of Reno and we are here at our second Love Your Block project, Pop-Up Nursery for Yori Avenue residents. We had residents of this neighborhood apply and we've got about 75 plants and trees here to give out to the neighbors to beautify the neighborhood, get a little more green here. One day of planting and a lifetime of shade and beautiful greenery in the neighborhood.

The Yori Pop-Up Nursery is a project that my neighbor and I kind of came up with. People get to beautify their yards. Sometimes landscaping is intimidating due to the cost. This initiative, this project helps kind of eliminate that obstacle for a lot of people. And so it'll be nice to see more plants in more people's yards and just make more of a beautiful neighborhood. Secondarily, I'm a huge fan of pollinators and native plants. And so getting more of those in the ground is just going to help the environment overall.

It's super exciting. I love this project. I started the Be Friendly campaign, which was created to help people talk to their neighbors. So a lot of times when you start a pollinator garden in your front yard, it doesn't look like a traditional yard. So I created these signs to kind of help with communication. It's a great neighborhood gathering, and I'm super proud to be a part of it.

We're just so excited to be here in partnership with Reno Food Systems, Bee Friendly Nevada, and the Nevada Division of Forestry, alongside all these neighbors to get in the neighborhood and get planting.

The Pioneer Center is a nonprofit performing arts center located in the heart of downtown Reno. We are in an absolutely gorgeous, one-of-a-kind historic building right on the banks of the Truckee River. Our building was constructed in the 1960s, so we have been open and operating as a nonprofit performing arts center for over 56 years now. I'm Denise Sewell. I'm the CEO of the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts. One of the amazing things about being a community performing arts center is our historic stage is the very first performance opportunity for so many young children in the area. Aspiring young musicians and dancers will perform their first recitals here on our stage. There is an incredible magic when all of those children come into this professional theater for the first time. The feedback we get from those children and from their parents is that it's literally life-changing. for them to have those first experiences on our stage. And we know that many of those people choose to stay in this community and build their lives here in Reno as they grow. And they remember those first experiences and what it meant to them. We are quite literally in the bedrock of downtown Reno and we're not going anywhere. And we really have seen and felt a tremendous improvement since the business district has created the Downtown Reno Partnership. The work of the ambassadors to provide casual folks on the street with directions, with assistance, they are the friendliest, most helpful people out in the community. The name is well-earned, Downtown Reno Partnership. We really do feel that they are partners in helping to make downtown the place that we all see in our hearts, that we really know it is. They've just been an incredible asset to downtown and we've been really grateful to work with them.

My name is Adam Cates and I am the Director of Community Engagement for the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts. The Pioneer Center is the hub of the performing arts in our region right here in downtown Reno. We are the home to some incredible organizations from the world-class Reno Philharmonic Orchestra to Art Town who brings in incredible performances from across the world and AVA Ballet Theater who present the annual Nutcracker, a tradition for so many families in Northern Nevada. The Pioneer Center is the place to come for the best of world-class performances. One thing that I love is the way that the bar and restaurant scene has just exploded over the past decade or so. And many of those incredible restaurants and bars and establishments are right here in downtown Reno. They're right across the street. They're right down the block from us. And it's been really wonderful to have a central gathering place like the Pioneer Center that is also able to engage with many of the restaurants and bars in our region.

As the footprint of the city continues to push outward and more incredible folks learn about and want to be part of and want to live here, the heart of Reno remains right here along the river in the core of downtown. This is that unique identity of the city and arts and culture have that unbelievable ability to weave into the fabric of the identity of a city. It's through bringing so many different folks together for so many different kinds of experiences, all authentic, all genuine, all designed to bring you together and uplift each other and to explore what it means to be human together through the arts. There is no limit to what that can do to change people's lives and to enrich a city well into the future. So whatever the future has in store for Reno, arts and culture are a critical part of our identity. They always have been and they always will be. We at the Pioneer Center, together with all of our friends throughout the arts and culture community here, we will continue to evolve and adapt and explore new ways of making connections. And all of that will continue to happen right here in the heart of downtown, along with the other amazing organizations that make up this area with us.

Downtown Reno is where the best of the performing arts live.

Downtown Reno is alive with arts, culture, and entertainment.

My name is Parr Tolles and I am the CEO of Tolles Development. I grew up in the Bay Area in Middle Park and I moved to Reno in 1994. Met a pretty girl and chased her down and got married and decided to put down roots here and it ended up being a really vibrant place for us to do business with our family and it's been a wonderful decision. but always had the desire to start my own business. And in 2016, started Tolles Development Company with the goal to focus on all product types of real estate, but with extra effort downtown. We bought a portfolio of office buildings with the goal to redevelop those buildings and really try to push downtown Reno into its next level. We also did that with Midtown. We bought a portfolio of retail buildings, turned that into what is now a very vibrant area. People always ask me if Reno is the next Portland, is it the next Austin? My response has always been, we're Reno. We have this really interesting quilt. I love the fact we're not trying to turn it into somewhere else, but that we're allowing it to evolve in its own really unique way. Private investment in downtowns, it's hard, but it's also incredibly rewarding. Downtown Reno's really got a nice platform for additional mixed-use development. We have a good foundation of retail, good foundation of office, good residential arts and culture. We have a river that runs through it. It's important for us to move where the market is telling us to go, but also to be more than just financially rewarding. I think it's important to take a longer-term view when you're redeveloping and trying to obviously not only making returns for your investors, but also making more social returns for the community itself. I think we have a collaborative culture here. We're part of the fabric of this community. These businesses are our friends now. We don't have big communities. People want to be together. We'll never leave Rita. This office portfolio and the Midtown portfolio, I did right before COVID. I've seen the vibrancy of downtown. It hasn't been hot as bad as it could. And now we're prepared to continue to move it forward with good development. It's easy to stay in suburbia, but it's certainly not as fun. And you haven't come to downtown Reno yet, please come visit us. I promise you, you will make it your Friday night date night. It is one of the most vibrant, special cities on the West. I can't wait for you to experience it if you haven't done it yet.

Hi, I'm Monica Kirch. I am the Director of Housing and Neighborhood Development for the City of Reno. The Rapid Rehousing Pilot Program is a program that the City of Reno started in coordination with Volunteers of America and the Reno Housing Authority.

Programs like the Rapid Rehousing Pilot Program are important to Volunteers of America because it gives us an opportunity to catch individuals who are otherwise potentially falling between the cracks as far as services go.

The Reno Housing Authority assists nearly 15,000 Washoe County residents through its traditional housing programs, yet we know there are many more who need assistance. The Reno Housing Authority supports the Rapid Rehousing Pilot Program in two ways. The first way is through a financial contribution to support half the salary. of the service coordinator who works directly with clients at Village on Sage. The second way that we support the program is by ensuring that clients are on one of RHA's wait lists prior to being housed at Village on Sage.

The program is new and we just started housing people within about the last month. We have several folks now staying at the Village on Sage working with a service coordinator.

Partnerships like this give RHA the opportunity to assist more families outside of our traditional programs. And it's these innovative partnerships that create a stepping stone from temporary housing into long-term permanent housing.

So specifically, this program works with individuals who are on a fixed or low income who can't afford conventional rents. and they're eligible for a housing voucher, but they still have to take the time to wait for that voucher. So it allows us to support them in that intermediary timeframe so they can stay housed and have access to services. I know specifically with this program, a lot of our folks are coming directly from the street and haven't had a rental in a very long time. Specifically, Mikey, hadn't paid rent in over a decade. And so it was really exciting for him to come to the office with his money and just celebrate that new experience that he got to have.

Hi, I'm Mike, and welcome to Village on the Sage. Come on, let's go look around. Yeah. Oh, hello. Welcome. This is what we get. I got a brand new television. It's an element. This is one of the finer, finer televisions. You're welcome to bring your transportation inside with you. Nobody cares as long as you keep it neat and tidy. What can I tell you? Door's open, the train's right there, you know. So if you like trains, excellent. And this is where all the magic happens. This is where the happiness, you know, where we come to ground out. And this is just where, you know, we can be ourselves. I know it's cold out there. It's cold and you don't want to be homeless in high desert. Guys, if you don't have a room, You want to get a room? Think about Village on Sage. I know it doesn't look like all that from the entranceway, but you'd never judge a book by its cover, right?

The Village on Sage Street is ideal for the Rapid Rehousing program because we're in a transitional setting by means that they're month-to-month units, so they have their own space where they can find and build their comfort and also build community while having access to a multitude of supportive services.

The program's service coordinator ensures that clients receive the assistance they need as they transition out of homelessness and into Village on Sage. and then ultimately will help them navigate through RHA's admissions process. The program also helps clients prepare for permanent housing and the adjustments that they're experiencing as they move out of homelessness and eventually into permanent housing.

My hope for the future of this program is that we get folks housed and off of the street and they're into safe, permanent housing that they can afford in the long run.

RHA hopes that clients assisted through the program can find respite from living on the streets and ultimately find long-term, safe, permanent, affordable housing.

On top of just having a unit here at the Village on Sage Street of their own, they also have access to community resources. Those resources include a community fitness room, a conference room, community lounge, a mail room, computer room, on-site laundry and on-site vending.

unit here at the village. They're $555. So in this instance that somebody can afford $300, the program would fill in the $255 monthly, and then that would keep them housed until their permanent unit came open. That would be subsidized to the amount of money that they make.

RHA is always looking for opportunities to fill gaps in the affordable housing landscape and it's a partnership like this where three community agencies came together to do just that.

Volunteers of America is grateful to have the opportunity to partner with the City of Reno and Reno Housing Authority to run this pilot program and provide additional housing for folks who are on a fixed income and otherwise waiting for their permanent housing.

The community can support this program through donating to Volunteers of America or making donations to the city of Reno, we have had a donation from some of our local housing champions of $20,000 that is gonna help extend it a little bit also. So those are the two ways that folks can get involved and make donations to keep this program going.

One of the reasons why I joined RCI was just out of curiosity to know more about what the city of Reno does for everyone who lives here. It was a very genuine interaction with all of the people that we were able to meet throughout this process. That experience was incredible.

I'm a small business owner, and so I definitely felt disconnected. Not in a bad way, but in a way where I'm like, oh, if I have an issue, who do I call? This seemed like a great opportunity to get a lot of information in a relatively short period.

you might touch the street department or you might touch the police department the fire department for whatever reason just being a regular citizen but you wouldn't learn about almost all aspects of city government and how it operates i have never seen a city that has been so people oriented i mean it really seems like they care and i love that about reno i love it

This is definitely eye-opening, informative. It's a way to just learn how the city runs and to meet incredible people. Street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, getting people connected and running them through some kind of education and connection, I think, is incredibly valuable.

You'll have an incredible time. You won't regret it.

It's a benefit all the way around, I think.

Hello and welcome to the Reno Minute. I'm Chris Payne. We're here this week with Reno Public Safety Dispatch to discuss calling 911. Erin, what tips do you have for the community?

Well, definitely it's a life-threatening emergency. You need to call 911. Things for immediate police, fire, medical response. Make sure you know your location to give the call taker and only use text to 911 if you can't make a voice call.

This is good information to know and what should the residents also know about dispatch?

We do have a non-emergency number for all the rest of the calls that aren't emergencies, 334 COPS. Those are things for like parking problems or graffiti. It's also important to know that our call takers take over a half a million calls a year, so we get pretty busy, but we're always looking for more dispatchers. If you're interested, go to reno.gov slash dispatch for a job description.

Outstanding information. Thank you, Erin. And don't forget to follow the City of Reno on all of your favorite social media platforms. So now you know with Reno. I'm Chris Payne for the Reno Minute. Hello, and welcome to the Reno Minute. I'm Chris Payne. We're here today to discuss community court. Judge Hazlett-Stevens, what exactly can you tell us about community court?

Thanks, Chris. We hold community court each Wednesday here at the downtown Reno Library. It is an innovative approach to the justice system that offers services rather than jail time for our participants, many of whom are homeless. Services needed include those for substance use disorders, mental illness, chronic homelessness, and chronic unemployment. This is all good to know, but how does this differ from traditional incarceration? Community courts reduce crime, increase services to victims, reduce unnecessary use of jail, and save money by collaborating with service providers using a problem-solving approach instead of jail. We also recently implemented a treatment readiness program on-site.

This is all great to know. Thank you so much, Judge. And don't forget to follow the City of Reno on all of your favorite social media platforms. So now you know, with Reno. I'm Chris Payne for the Reno Minute. Hello and welcome to the Reno Minute. I'm Chris Payne. We're here this week with the Reno Police Department to discuss the dangers of distracted driving. Officer Reza, what advice do you have on this topic?

Thanks, Chris. Distracted driving claimed over 3,000 lives in 2020. Here locally at the Reno Police Department, we would like to remind everybody that it is illegal to use any electronic handheld device while driving. Taxiing has become increasingly dangerous.

Outstanding. And what other tips do you have for the community?

If you do need to make a text or make a phone call, simply pull over on the side of the road where it's safe to do so. Once you've pulled over, it is now safe to make that text message or make that phone call. You can even put your cell phone in the back seat, in the trunk, or even in the glove box until you've reached your final destination.

Thank you, Officer Reza. And dig this. For more information, go to renopd.com. Also, don't forget to follow the City of Reno and RPD on your favorite social media platforms. So now you know with Reno. I'm Chris Payne for the Reno Minute. Hello, I'm Chris Payne, and it's time for the Reno Minute. Today we're going to discuss making a fire escape plan. Joining us is Chief Mandel from Reno Fire Department.

Thanks, Chris. A fire escape plan is essential because it lets everyone in your household know exactly what to do in case of a fire. Seconds matter in the event of a fire, and an escape plan can make a world of difference. Start by drawing a floor plan of your home and marking all possible exits from each room. Then designate a meeting point outside a safe distance from the home. Practice your escape plan regularly with everyone in your household, especially children. It's important to make sure that everybody knows how to operate windows and doors. It's also important to teach household members to stay low to the ground in smoke and to fuel doors for heat before opening them. Thank you, Chief Mandel.

To create your own fire escape plan, scan the QR code on the screen or visit Reno.gov slash fire. So now you know with Reno. Thank you for watching the Reno Minute. Hello, I'm Chris Payne and it's time for the Reno Minute. From lap swimming and drop-in sports to fitness equipment, the City of Reno offers many opportunities to get active and have fun. You may even be able to access these offerings at no cost. Kayla, what should residents know about insurance reimbursement?

Thanks, Chris. Our Parks and Recreation Department recently expanded their offerings with insurance companies, offering memberships to them at no cost.

Well, this is exciting. How does it work and who qualifies?

Yeah, the program offers memberships through their individual insurance company. The insurance company then reimburses the City of Reno for each visit that they come and use our facilities. The expansion of this program is especially beneficial to our seniors. However, it qualifies anyone 18 or older. You just need to contact your insurance company.

Thank you, Kayla. And don't forget to contact your insurance company to learn more. Visit Reno.gov slash Parks and Rec for more information. So now you know with Reno. I'm Chris Payne for the Reno Minute. Hello and welcome to the Reno Minute. I'm Chris Payne. We're here this week with Maintenance and Operations to discuss leaves. Tim, with fall being here, what advice do you have about leaf removal?

Thanks Chris. This is typically the time of year we start to see the leaves drop and it's pretty simple. Property owners are responsible for the removal of leaves on their property and we ask them to do this in a timely manner to help from flooding or clogging drains during a rainstorm. This is good to know. What other advice do you have for the viewers? So it is unlawful for homeowners or property owners to rake or blow leaves out into the street. So we ask them to please place them in their garbage cans or in a bag with the excess waste sticker for garbage pickup on their days. And if they could help out our street troopers by trimming their trees and removing parked cars in garbage cans, it would be very helpful.

Outstanding information. Thank you, Tim. And don't forget to follow the City of Reno on all of your favorite social media platforms. So now you know with the Reno Minute. Hello, I'm Chris Payne and it's time for the Reno Minute. Today we're excited to spotlight the city's new Rolling Recreation Center, a mobile recreation center designed to bring fun and activities to communities across the city. Here's Kayla Snow to tell us more.

Thanks, Chris. Our Rowling Recreation Center is all about making accessible recreation for everyone in our community. Our mobile recreation center travels to various parks following the schedule of the Food Bank of Northern Nevada Kids Cafe summer meals program. This means that not only do kids get free recreational activities, but also a free meal. our program offers a wide range of activities for people of all ages including sports games arts and crafts and so much more the rolling recreation center is free and open to the public we welcome everyone of all ages to come out have fun and enjoy our city parks thank you kayla visit reno.gov forward slash parks and rec to find out when the rolling recreation trailer rolls through a park near you so now you know with reno thank you for watching the reno minute

Hello and welcome to the Reno Minutes. I'm Chris Payne. We're here this week with the Reno Police Department to discuss the SAVE volunteer program.

Evan, what is SAVE? Thanks, Chris. SAVE is an acronym that stands for Senior Auxiliary Volunteer Effort. It's a wonderful organization that comprises of seniors and they help the police department with additional resources. and through their patrols, they help with crime prevention and observations. Outstanding. Also, if someone wants to volunteer, how do they get involved? Basically, anyone in SAVE is 50 years of age or older. We ask that they volunteer 16 hours a month, and they can, if you're interested, either call, email, or visit the website for Reno PD.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Evan. And don't forget to follow RPD and the City of Reno on all of your favorite social media platforms. So now you know with the Reno Minute. I'm Chris Payne. Hello, and welcome to the Reno Minute. I'm Chris Payne. We're here this week with Public Works to discuss street rehabilitation and maintenance.

Jonathan, what can you tell us about this program? Thanks, Chris. Our Public Works departments were working really hard to improve our neighborhood streets in our community. For instance, we're just finishing up a rehab project in Midtown where we included the replacement of our roadways, streets, sewer, and even had alleyway improvements. This is good to know, but how are these neighborhoods chosen? Sure Chris, good question. The City inspects all our local roadways and calculates a pavement condition index, or a PCI score. The streets with the lowest PCI scores are grouped and ranked based on factors such as utility placement or proximity to essential services. If you'd like more information, please visit our website at reno.gov forward slash capital projects.

Thanks so much Jonathan, and don't forget to follow the City of Reno on all of your favorite social media platforms. So now you know, with Reno. I'm Chris Payne for the Reno Minute.

Do you know how to survive a fire in your home? I'm John, this is Katie with the Reno Fire Department, and today we want to share some important information with you.

To survive, you need to know the basics of fire behavior. A fire needs three things to exist. Fuel, heat, and oxygen.

The best way to do this is to keep the fuel side of the triangle away from the heat side. The easiest way to survive a fire is to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Today we'll show you some ways to prevent fires from happening, and if they do start, how to evacuate safely.

Cooking is the main cause of home fires and fire injuries, and you can prevent them. Here's how. First, stand by your pan. If you leave the kitchen, turn the burner off. Then, watch what you are cooking. Fires start when the heat is too high. If you see any smoke or the grease start to boil, turn the burner off. Another thing to keep in mind is to turn pot handles toward the back of the stove. Then no one can bump them or pull them. Finally, keep combustibles away from the burners. Believe it or not, dogs have turned on burners accidentally while trying to get food stored on top of ranges.

In our modern world, lithium ion batteries are everywhere. These types of batteries can be dangerous. So here's some things to keep in mind. Stop using them if you notice an odor, a change in color, too much heat, change in shape, leaking, or odd noises. Charge and store spare lithium ion batteries away from anything that can burn. Don't put lithium ion batteries in direct sunlight or keep them in hot cars. This is a fire risk.

Here are some other things around the house to remember. Keep anything that can burn at least three feet from the furnace, oil burner, wood stoves, water heaters, and other heat generating equipment. When it comes to cooking appliances, face heaters, washers and dryers, they should be plugged directly into all outlets. Clean lint filters every time you use the dryer and never leave a burning candle alone.

Looking at the triangle again, the third component is oxygen. Fire needs oxygen to survive. Percussion of fire can be slowed by compartmentalizing your home. The easiest way to do this is to keep room doors and windows closed. The garage typically houses many potential ignition sources and heavy fuel loads, so make sure the man door between the garage and living space is a solid core door with a fire rating of no less than 20 minutes. Any alterations to this door, including pet door installs, will allow a fire that starts in the garage to quickly progress into the living space. Many home fires can start outside and spread into your home, so don't store garbage or combustibles under windows or next to doors. Remove vegetation that is against your exterior walls, especially if it is dead and dying. Juniper brush may look green on the outside, but under the green hides dead needles that can easily ignite.

Even with our best intentions, accidents can occur. Always be prepared to escape. On average, you only have about two minutes to escape a fire once a smoke alarm sounds. Working smoke alarms are critical. Install and maintain them in every sleeping room and every floor. Test the battery monthly and replace it if over 10 years old. Know two ways out of every room and make a meeting space. If you have children in the house, take time to draw a plan and explain it to them in a way that makes sense to them. The biggest takeaway is to make a plan and practice it.

One common mistake we see after fires is that residents will open doors and windows, thinking this will let the heat and smoke out of the house. Remember, fire seeks oxygen. Adding air to fire only makes it bigger and spread to those openings. When exiting, close the doors and windows behind you.

For more information on fire survival, please visit our website at Reno.gov slash fire. Thank you. Be safe. Hi boys and girls, my name is John, Fire Marshal for the City of Reno. Did you know a fire occurs in a house every 65 seconds in our country? That's like, every minute. Sadly, this also means many people get hurt. Your ability to get out of your home during the fire depends on early warning from fire and knowing how to escape if a fire happens. Fires can happen anywhere. The question is, are you prepared? Our Xtreme team is going to help you make a home escape plan. When you are done with that home escape plan, teach it to your family and other members in your household so they can escape fire as well. If you do that, you can be part of the Reno Fire Department Extreme Team. This is Boston, our fire dog. He's going to introduce you to our fire extreme team.

Thanks, John. Meet the extreme team. Together, we're making a fire escape plan. This is Sean. He takes care of me every day, and he'll talk about fire alarms. Shelly's here, too. Shelly will teach us how to get out and stay out. This is Katie. She'll talk about finding a safe meeting place. And finally, Talena is really excited to talk about why we need to practice our plan.

The first part of a home escape plan is a working smoke alarm. Fire produces smoke. Smoke and hot gases move upward towards the ceiling. As a fire gets bigger, the smoke and hot gases move downward towards the floor and superheat the room until everything in the room catches fire. That's why smoke alarms are so important. They detect fire and warn you before the fire gets too big and you can't escape. Because smoke goes up, smoke alarms should be installed on the ceiling or high point of the wall. They should be in every sleeping room, hallway outside the sleeping room, and every floor. Smoke alarms should be tested every month to make sure they work. Have your parents or older brother and sister help you with this, as you may need a ladder. To test a smoke alarm, push and hold the test button for three seconds. It should make a loud beeping noise. If it does not make a loud beeping noise, then have your mom or dad replace the battery or install a new alarm. Thanks, Sean.

Smoke alarms can be loud and scary, especially if it goes off when you're sleeping and dreaming of chasing rabbits. If I hear an alarm, I will wake up immediately and run outside. But I have four legs and I'm low to the ground. You are human, so you need to be more careful when getting outside. Right, Shelly?

That's right, Boston. Remember, fire produces heat and smoke that travels up. Have you ever tried to breathe in smoke? Smoke can hurt your lungs, especially if it's superheated. If you smell or see smoke, you want to stay under the smoke. If you are in bed, when the smoke alarm activates, don't stand up. Roll out of bed onto your hands and knees. Stay low and go. Always know two ways out of any room. For most people, the first way out is the door they came into the room. That should be your first way out. Remember to stay low. crawl to the door and feel the door for heat before opening it. The best way to do this is to feel the doorknob and face of the door with the backside of your hand. If it is cool, then open the door slightly and look for smoke. If you do not see smoke, go outside to your safe meeting place. If you do see smoke, close the door and go to your second way out. Usually, the second way out is the window. Don't break the window. Broken glass can cut you. Practice opening the window in your room when you get home. If you have a screen, practice popping out the screen with your parents. It's usually pretty easy. If you live on an upper floor, talk to your mom or dad about getting a fire escape ladder and learn how to use it.

Thanks, Shelly. So if you hear an alarm, don't hide. Get outside. If there is smoke, stay low and go. But once you're outside, where do you go?

That is a great question, Boston. Everyone in your household needs to know where to go. So when firefighters arrive, they know who is safe and who needs to be rescued. A meeting place should be a safe distance from the building. A tree, mailbox, or even a neighbor's house is a good, safe meeting place because they don't move. A car, garbage can, or traffic cone is not because they may not be there when the fire actually happens. Once you're out, call 911 if you have a phone. Now let's go back inside and answer some questions.

Thanks, Katie. My first question is, should a person go back inside a burning house to rescue somebody else?

Once you are out, stay out. Never go back in for anyone or anything. Once firefighters arrive, they are trained and have the tools to rescue anyone still in the building.

What if I live on the third floor and I cannot get out?

That is a great question. If you're stuck in your room and cannot get out, make sure your room door is closed. Hang a towel or sheet outside your window. This acts as a signal to the firefighters outside that someone is still in the building. We will come get you. When firefighters enter the home, they will be dressed in turnouts and be wearing a mask, helmet, and This can make them look very scary. The mask they will wear will make a noise like Darth Vader. Remember, they are here to rescue you. Fire can make a lot of noise, so you need to say loud words over the noise to help firefighters find you. Help is always a good choice.

Now that's a lot of good information, but now what?

Well, Boston, now we draw and practice our plan. Pretend you are a superhero flying over your house. From this view, draw a map of your home. Include the rooms and all windows and doors. Now identify which rooms are used for sleeping and draw a green arrow showing your first way out and a red arrow showing your second way out. Draw your safe meeting place and circle it with both colors. Now the important part, practice. Sit down with all the family in your household. Identify where all the smoke alarms are and test them. Practice rolling out of bed and crawling to the door and then the window. Practice escaping from your door and out your window and meeting at your safe meeting place.

That's great. So to make a great escape plan, start with a working smoke alarm, have at least two ways out of every room, and meet at your safe meeting place.

That's right, Boston. Now you have the knowledge to join our team. Let's get to work.

Hello, I'm Chris Payne and it's time for the Reno Minute. It's back to school time and we're here with Officer Johnson from the Reno Police Department to discuss some great reminders on how to keep our students safe.

Hey, thanks, Chris. Here at the Reno Police Department, we want to ensure a safe school year for every child in our community, and so we have some important tips and reminders for drivers. Slow down in school zones. Always adhere to posted speed limits. Stop for school buses. It's illegal to pass a school bus that is stopped to unload or load children. Yield to pedestrians, especially in school zones and residential areas. Avoid distractions, such as using your phone while driving. The Reno Police Department will be increasing enforcement in and around schools this summer and fall to help keep all of our students and pedestrians safe.

Thank you, Officer Johnson. And don't forget to follow City of Reno and RPD on all of your favorite social media platforms. So now you know, with Reno. Thank you for watching the Reno Minute. Hello, I'm Chris Payne, and it's time for the Reno Minute. Today, we're excited to spotlight the city's new Rolling Recreation Center, a mobile recreation center designed to bring fun and activities to communities across the city. Here's Kayla Snow to tell us more.

Thanks, Chris. Our Rolling Recreation Center is all about making accessible recreation for everyone in our community. Our mobile recreation center travels to various parks following the schedule of the Food Bank of Northern Nevada Kids Cafe Summer Meals Program. This means that not only do kids get free recreational activities, but also a free meal. our program offers a wide range of activities for people of all ages including sports games arts and crafts and so much more the rolling recreation center is free and open to the public we welcome everyone of all ages to come out have fun and enjoy our city parks thank you kayla visit reno.gov forward slash parks and rec to find out when the rolling recreation trailer rolls through a park near you so now you know with reno thank you for watching the reno minute hello i'm chris payne and it's time for the reno minute

If you're looking for a career in a fast-paced environment, perhaps becoming a Reno police officer could be for you. Let's go inside and speak with Officer Hunter Mercurio and find out more.

Thanks, Chris. The Reno Police Department is on a continuous hiring basis. If you're interested in finding a career in law enforcement and finding a job with purpose, come join us today. Also, being a Reno police officer in Reno makes my city not just livable, but lovable. Every day looks completely different, and you're normally going to somebody's worst day, but you get to be that opportunity to make a change in their life and hopefully better their day. If you're interested in becoming a police officer, go to the City of Reno jobs page and apply for the police officer recruit position. If you have any questions about becoming a police officer or want to come do a ride along with us, you can reach me at recruiter at reno.gov or you can reach me at my phone number, 775-437-0043. Thanks.

Hello, I'm Chris Payne and it's time for the Reno Minute. Today we turn our attention to motorcycle safety, a crucial topic for our roads. Joining us is Officer Chris Johnson from the Reno Police Department.

Thanks, Chris. One concerning trend that we're observing is an increase in speed-related incidents involving motorcycles. Another issue we're facing is lane splitting, which is illegal in Nevada, but unfortunately still occurs frequently. Speeding reduces the rider's ability to react to unexpected situations. increasing the likelihood of accidents and the severity of injuries. Lane splitting, besides being against the law here, is dangerous because it puts motorcyclists in a close proximity to other vehicles, increasing the risk of a collision. We also urge vehicle drivers to be aware of their surroundings, including motorcycles. Check your mirrors and blind spots often, especially before changing lanes or making turns. And remember, always give motorcyclists plenty of space on the road.

Thank you, Officer Johnson, for sharing these important insights. So now you know with Reno. I'm Chris Payne for the Reno Minute. Hello, I'm Chris Payne, and it's time for the Reno Minute. We're here today with Reno Fire Inspector Talena Skye to discuss Wildland Urban Interface, or WUI, and how you can protect your home from wildfires.

Thanks, Chris. The Wildland Urban Interface, or WUI, is the area where urban development meets wildland.

These areas are at increased risk of wildfires.

The City of Reno has implemented several initiatives to help residents mitigate wildfire risks, such as creating a community wildfire protection plan, which outlines strategies for reducing wildfire hazards, fuel mitigation projects, such as GOATS and Rosewood Canyon, and residents can also participate in our dumpster program, where they can dispose of green waste to enhance their defensible space. Residents should keep their home in the first five feet, non-combustible, and ember resistant.

Thank you, Talena. For more information from the Reno Fire Department, visit reno.gov slash fire. And follow RFD on all of your favorite social media platforms. So now you know, with Reno. I'm Chris Payne for the Reno Minute.

I'm Jamie Peek with the City of Reno. I'm a housing and neighborhood development and I'm a housing coordinator. And I met Michael with the clean and safe team. They were really instrumental in getting Michael into kind of like in contact with us. But we've helped him with some rental and deposit assistance and some private funding for a motel stay while we're trying to figure out his next moves.

My name is Michael Dean St. Clair. I'm a Reno resident here in Reno, Nevada. I'm sharing my story about how outreach helped me and my family out over the last year. My wife passed away about a month ago, so it's hard. This is my wife and my three kids, Michael, Tish, and Reba. My kids, they're my life. And I guess it was them that kind of made me realize that I needed to get out of this one situation about living in the RV and getting a place of our own. Well, we were staying with some friends, and then the landlord found out that we were staying there, Got my RV out of storage. Me and my family, we stayed in it for about three years, I believe. Three, maybe four. Living in the RV, it was rough. You know, five people in a small area. And then my RV broke down. They put a sticker on it for it to be towed. And one morning I woke up and the tow truck was there and said that they're going to tow my vehicle. They wanted to give me a chance to move it. They notified these people from the state. They helped me get into it. You know, put me and my family in a motel until they found this apartment. It's good to have family and friends and people like Outreach to help out. I'm glad there's people like them out there to help. Just don't give up. You know, there's people out there that can help, and if they offer to help, take the help.

RISE, well especially the outreach, is mostly compiled of lived experience outreach specialists like myself. I was in a tent three years ago. So we understand what it's like to have that desperation, and we just try to meet people where they're at.

I just got tired of living the way we were living. I mean, we only had my wife's check and my daughter's check, and we were trying to find a place. But, you know, it's hard trying to find a place when everybody kind of looks down on you, you know. I appreciate the outreaches, you know, and my goal is to just stay here, provide for my family. I made a promise to my wife that I'd make sure the kids always had a roof over their heads. So that's my goal.

Well, Outreach would like to do anything we could to assist you in doing so.

Yes. And like I said, I appreciate all your guys' help. It's all good, brother. Yeah.

Glad we could help.

And I appreciate it.

Oh, yeah.

I used to come for this staycation. I used to come here and enjoy the hotels and go down to the river. And I was familiar with the Automobile Museum, but I never in a million years thought I'd be working here. My name is Philip McDougall. I'm the president of the National Automobile Museum. The history of the National Automobile Museum goes way, way back. So most people know the name Harrah from the casinos, but they don't know the story behind it. Mr. Harrah, he had a collection of 1,400 of the most unbelievable cars. And when he passed, he didn't have a will. The community got together and they said, you can't sell all these things. This is part of our community. It's part of our identity. We need to keep them here. raised money to build the museum. The city said, we're going to contribute the land if you get the money to build it. And then the Holiday Inn, who purchased all the assets of Mr. Harris' collection, said, if you do all that, then we're going to throw in 175 cars of the total collection of 1,400. So all those things came together because the community thought it was important. And in 1989, the museum was opened up. We want to be a community partner and we are great. We have events, we have older cars, newer cars, Elvis's car, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future. We have a brand new children's educational activity center, 3,000 square feet of technology for those kids and adults to get hands-on experience on how cars work, how next generation of technology was created. We wanted to be different. We wanted to embrace the community, be a community partner. We did a complete renovation, and then we went out with an active campaign, not in that car mode, that museum mode, but outdoor concerts, speaker series, parties, birthdays, and a whole new selection of cars. I think the biggest change is that we have a new exhibit every 60 days. It really is fun to watch how a family can come in and they'll just go in five different directions because we have something for every generation. It's not just the building, it's not just the cars that are in here, it's the people, it's the livelihoods of everybody that's around this town that keeps us going. The downtown partnership has been a lifesaver for us. Just helping us overwhelm the day-to-day challenges we have. Like any business downtown, we can't make it without the security issues addressed, without the communication addressed. And it's all one big team down here. So the restaurants help us, the businesses help us, everyone here, we all kind of depend on each other. And that's what we're trying to bring to the equation is another partner who can help us all be a little bit stronger and a bigger community partner. I see a greater emphasis from the downtown partnership, from the elected officials, than the community leaders to get together and say, if we really want to succeed, we have to succeed as a group. No silos. The restaurants, the businesses, the gas stations, everybody that's here has to get a common bond. Otherwise, we're not going to succeed. It's a storytelling. It's a camaraderie. And we had that not only with us in the museum, but all the Walker businesses downtown here. We have the same common bond and passion. Downtown Reno's the place to be. It's a family place, it has something for everybody. Come to the museum, go to a local restaurant, you're gonna feel safe, you're gonna have fun, and you're gonna be 15 minutes away from wherever you live.

My name is Robert Downs. I'm a field specialist with RISE and this experience with Bonnie Pace and the Pathway Pilot has been awesome and tremendous and I'll never forget it.

I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point.

So, I'm sorry if this is the first time you've been in the house. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

What home means Nevada to me is just that. It's always a place that I find comfort and solace. We travel a lot, we camp a lot, and I just love coming home. Home means Nevada for so many reasons. My name is Scott Dunseith, and I'm the owner of the Home Means Nevada Company, which was formerly Reno Envy. I grew up in the Bay Area and I went to school at UNR. And my thought was that I would spend two years in Reno and then I would go back home. But after the two years, I just fell in love with the place. I love the people, the community. It's just been awesome. I was talking to a friend, I was giving him my address, and so I told him Scott Dunstheath, da-da-da-da, Reno Envy, 89523, and he's like, Reno Envy? I'm like, Reno Envy? So it was kind of at that moment, that was our aha moment, where I realized that the state abbreviation for Nevada Envy sounded like the word envy. So that's where it all started from. What's great about the downtown Reno community is that people believe in Reno. We have something here. People really love this community as much as I do. And people really resonated with the idea of having a local brand. Downtown Reno honestly has been a challenge, but we're a small business and we've been down here since 2008. And honestly, if we can do it, you know, there's a lot of opportunity out there. And we kind of wanted to prove to people that retail works. In 2012, rebranded ourselves and we went from Reno Envy and renamed our brand the Home Meets Nevada Company, kind of trying to support the local artists in the community by bringing their products in and selling them on their behalf. We have all sorts of great stuff. We have coffee from Glory Cloud. We have local honey. It's important for us to collaborate too with local celebrities. Krista Palmer is an Olympic athlete and we had the opportunity to partner with her and create her own authentic Krista Palmer Battle Born T-shirt.

My name is Krista Palmer, Nevada's Olympic diver. This is a really special company to me because my roots are in Nevada. I grew up down in Carson City. I truly feel this connection between Home Means Nevada and my story. This has been a really cool partnership that I've been able to develop over the years with Scott. Projection of Reno downtown, I really see it opening up more doors for people to continue to get outside, continue to take their dogs for a walk and enjoy the Reno River walk, to be able to have space to enjoy those lovely afternoons. I think that's where I kind of see the progression of Reno going and for more people to enjoy what Reno is. It's truly a treasure here.

People believe in Reno and we believe in Reno. There's so much opportunity and so many different types of people in downtown Reno. And the city of Reno has been great with this partnership with the Visitor Center, the RSCVA has been great. The collaborations that we do with the community, with the university, with Krista Palmer, Olympic athlete, it really is about a community that kind of binds us together. If we didn't have that support, we wouldn't be able to survive in downtown Reno. I have always felt like Reno's been kind of our little secret, and we love to share that secret. We love to see Reno grow and prosper. Great for shopping for friends, great for gift giving. So come on down, visit us, check it out. It's been a while.

Come visit downtown Reno and see what you're missing.

Do you want to make a difference in your neighborhood? The City of Reno's six Neighborhood Advisory Boards are your chance to shape the future of your community. From parks and public safety to development projects, your voice matters. Joining a NAB is easy, and it's a great way to connect with neighbors and city leaders while making Reno an even better place to live. Applications are open now. Visit reno.gov forward slash nab to learn more and apply. Get involved and help make Reno not just livable, but lovable.

Hi, I'm Reno Fire Chief Dave Cochran. It's an honor to connect with you as we look back on 2024. A year of innovation, strong work, and unwavering dedication to protecting our communities. The Reno Fire Department reached incredible milestones, overcame challenges, and made a real impact on the biggest little city. Let's look back at 2024 and the achievements and highlights of the Reno Fire Department.

2024's wildland season tested our region with incidents like the Gold Ranch Davis and Callahan fires, straining resources from across the West. Although these fires happened just outside Reno City limits, our firefighters stepped up to assist while ensuring our Reno community remained well protected. In 2024, RFD deployed 264 resources to more than 100 wildland fires, contributing over 65,000 hours of work. These efforts brought nearly $2 million in reimbursements back to the department. Right here at home, we responded to 51,737 calls for service. an increase of over 2,000 from the previous year. Our commitment to service continues to grow along with our community.

The Safety and Training Division saw impressive growth in 2024, paving the way for a stronger, more skilled team. We proudly promoted 11 captains and eight operators, hired 25 new firefighters, and welcomed five single-role EMS personnel. This year, we ran two three-week fire equipment operator engine academies, one two-week fire equipment operator truck academy and a two-week acting captain's academy these intensive programs help sharpen our skills and prepare our teams for any situation we also expanded our monthly company level training sessions introducing specialized active shooter training and wide area search exercises and through partnerships with surrounding fire departments we enhanced our response capabilities for wildland fires and hazmat operations Additionally, we upgraded the training facilities at Station 11 with new technology to improve the delivery of our programs, ensuring our team is always ready to meet the demands of our city.

The Reno Fire Prevention Bureau experienced significant strides this year in 2024, starting with the appointment of a new fire marshal, three fire captains, and three new fire inspectors. Our team saw great success in our arson investigations, achieving an impressive 80% conviction rate and completed over 6,000 building inspections to help keep Reno safe. For the fourth consecutive year, we hosted our dumpster program thanks to a grant from State Farm. This program helps neighborhoods in the wildland urban interface clear dry vegetation and debris, creating defensible space. Thank you to everyone who participated and helped reduce wildfire risk in our community. In 2024, We were also thrilled to receive nearly $245,000 from FEMA's Fire Prevention and Safety Grant to develop a community wildfire protection plan. This comprehensive framework will prioritize wildfire mitigation efforts, improve emergency preparedness, and ensure long-term safety for Reno's residents and infrastructure. Keep an eye out in the coming months for ways to get involved. We're excited to collaborate with you.

In 2024, we work closely with our community partners to update the Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan. The plan assesses the potential impact of all prioritized hazards to the region and provides mitigation strategies and actions to reduce such risk. The update ensures the plan remains effective in addressing the evolving needs of our community. We also prioritized firefighter health with initiatives like our fourth annual cancer screenings and the introduction of the coronary calcium scan. These proactive prevention programs are vital in detecting early markers of heart disease and cancer, critical steps for firefighters facing heightened risks associated with their profession. Additionally, we launched a groundbreaking pilot program with the Epic Brain Center, exploring enhanced mind-body performance treatments. This innovative approach supports firefighters dealing with PTSD and other mental health challenges, while empowering them with improved executive function to perform at their best.

2024 was a landmark year for the Reno Fire Department Emergency Medical Services Division with 30,649 calls for service. Collaboration played a key role in 2024 as we joined forces with regional partners to strengthen our unified response to medical emergencies.

We were excited to welcome our new EMS management assistant and expand our specialized training for our single role program. Ensuring our EMS team is always prepared to meet our community's high demand for advanced emergency medical services. We conducted division-level training on new medical equipment, including cutting-edge video laryngoscope blades that are vital in life-saving situations and new medications that can be used to treat various patient presentations by our mid- and advanced-level providers. We also implemented a new medical charting platform, further enhancing patient care.

Reno Fire Department's Support Services Division achieved significant milestones in 2024. enhanced vehicle maintenance and repair, increased apparatus safety, and equipment modernization. Through our apparatus replacement program, we added two new brush trucks designed for firefighting and rugged terrain, and a state-of-the-art ambulance, ensuring our fleet meets the diverse needs of our community. We also enhanced operations by refining the use of fleet cameras throughout our vehicles. These systems capture critical moments during incidents, training, and daily operations, providing insights that improve safety and support crew education. Our logistics team continues to push innovation forward, adopting advanced battery-powered tools on our fire engines and ladder trucks. and improve personal protective equipment. These enhancements extend equipment lifespan, improve functionality, and prioritize firefighter safety. Looking ahead, we're excited to introduce a new heavy rescue apparatus in 2025, the first of its kind for our department since 1986. As an all-risk fire department supporting many different types of incidents, this addition ensures our crews are ready to respond to any emergency, no matter the challenge.

As we reflect on 2024, the Reno Fire Department has much to celebrate. from our interlocal agreement with the Reno Tahoe Airport Authority, enabling us to assume firefighting services across all airport properties, and our partnership with Truckee Meadows Fire and Rescue, which now provides automatic aid to ensure the closest resource responds to emergencies, no matter the jurisdiction. We're building the foundation for continued growth and excellence. I'm pleased to share that we also received the keys to 455 East 2nd Street, our future central fire station. We're excited to begin serving you from this state-of-the-art facility in 2027. At RFD, we believe that being part of the community is just as important as responding to emergencies. Whether it's hosting fire safety programs, participating in local events, or building relationships with residents, we strive to be more than the first responders. We're your neighbors, partners, and advocates for a safer region. None of our work would be possible without the dedication of our team and wavering support of our Reno City Council, state and federal representatives. Their commitment ensures RFD is always ready to serve and protect our community. On behalf of the Reno Fire Department, thank you for your trust and support. Together we accomplished so much in 2024 and we look forward to an even brighter and safer year ahead. Thank you for standing with us.

Hello and welcome to On the Agenda, a semi-monthly podcast.

Grab a slice, hitch a ride, get a rush, and roll the dice. Step into a world where Nevada's northern lights shine bright. And last calls are rare in a city that never sleeps, where the spirit of the Wild West lives on through daring rapids, and rocking out goes beyond the crowds. Founded on the rebels of resilience, we aren't what you expected. We are what's coming. We don't just embrace downtown. fuse it with life. We are a convergence of adventure, art, and taste. It's not just our city, it's our identity. The mighty Truckee, our lifeline, and the Nevada sky as our backdrop, Downtown Reno is a tribute to our roots and a leap into the future. Discover 110 blocks of stories of residents, entrepreneurs, creators, and masters of their craft coming together in the spirit of discovery and progress. In a city that never ceases to reinvent itself, we are the unexpected. Been a while? Downtown Reno invites you to rise with us again. What's your story?

Grab a slice, hitch a ride, get a rush, and roll the dice. Step into a world where Nevada's northern lights shine bright, and last calls are rare in the city that never sleeps. Where the spirit of the Wild West lives on through varying rapids, and rocking out goes beyond the crowds. We're the unexpected in a city that never ceases to reinvent itself. Been a while? Downtown Reno invites you to rise with us again. What's your...

You know how speeders got categories? Categories? Different types, different cars. Wannabe race car drivers with zero talent and all the insurance claims. Go on. Yeah, so you got the, I didn't realize I was going 95 type. Like the car magically went 45 over just on its own.

Oh. Officer, I thought I was going 45. Nobody, you thought about going 45.

Well then you got the I'm late for work guys. Like going 25 over is gonna make up for the 30 minutes they spent laying in bed watching TikToks.

Ain't nothing like risking a reckless driving charge to get to a job that you already hate.

We can't forget the I was just keeping up with traffic folks.

Oh, if everybody jumped off the bridge defense.

Just because everybody else is breaking the law doesn't mean that you get a free pass.

Nah, but it does mean we all get to sit on the side of the road together while we trade live stories and I write this ticket at lightning speed.

There's one. Yeah, we got a black Volkswagen headed your way, guys. Got him. In all seriousness, Reno, we need to slow down when driving on our roads. Speed and impairment are the two biggest factors in fatality crashes. That is why the Reno Police Department will be conducting proactive speeding enforcement on McCarran and around the city. Slow down, Reno.

Nevada? I'm not from Nevada, and I'm pretty sure the speed limit signs all look the same everywhere.

We're the unexpected in a city that never ceases to reinvent itself. Been a while? Downtown Reno invites you to rise with us again. What's your story?

I'm Corey, I'm a housing manager with the City of Reno and we are here at our second Love Your Block project, Pop-Up Nursery for Yori Avenue residents. We had residents of this neighborhood apply and we've got about 75 plants and trees here to give out to the neighbors to beautify the neighborhood, get a little more green here. One day of planting and a lifetime of shade and beautiful greenery in the neighborhood.

The Yori Pop-Up Nursery is a project that my neighbor and I kind of came up with. People get to beautify their yards. Sometimes landscaping is intimidating due to the cost. This initiative, this project helps kind of eliminate that obstacle for a lot of people and so it'll be nice to see more plants in more people's yards and just make more of a beautiful neighborhood. Secondarily, I'm a huge fan of pollinators and native plants and so getting more of those in the ground is just going to help the environment overall.

It's super exciting. I love this project. I started the Be Friendly campaign, which was created to help people talk to their neighbors. So a lot of times when you start a pollinator garden in your front yard, it doesn't look like a traditional yard. So I created these signs to kind of help with communication. It's a great neighborhood gathering and I'm super proud to be a part of it.

We're just so excited to be here in partnership with Reno Food Systems, Bee Friendly Nevada and the Nevada Division of Forestry, alongside all these neighbors to get in the neighborhood and get planting.

The Pioneer Center is a nonprofit performing arts center located in the heart of downtown Reno. We are in an absolutely gorgeous, one-of-a-kind historic building right on the banks of the Truckee River. Our building was constructed in the 1960s, so we have been open and operating as a nonprofit performing arts center for over 56 years now. I'm Denise Sewell. I'm the CEO of the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts. One of the amazing things about being a community performing arts center is our historic stage is the very first performance opportunity for so many young children in the area. Aspiring young musicians and dancers will perform their first recitals here on our stage. There is an incredible magic when all of those children come into this professional theater for the first time. The feedback we get from those children and from their parents is that it's literally life-changing. for them to have those first experiences on our stage. And we know that many of those people choose to stay in this community and build their lives here in Reno as they grow. And they remember those first experiences and what it meant to them. We are quite literally in the bedrock of downtown Reno and we're not going anywhere. And we really have seen and felt a tremendous improvement since the business district has created a downtown Reno partnership. The work of the ambassadors to provide casual folks on the street with directions, with assistance, they are the friendliest, most helpful people out in the community. The name is well earned, Downtown Reno Partnership. We really do feel that they are partners in helping to make downtown the place that we all see in our hearts, that we really know it is. They've just been an incredible asset to downtown and we've been really grateful to work with them.

My name is Adam Cates and I am the Director of Community Engagement for the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts. The Pioneer Center is the hub of the performing arts in our region right here in downtown Reno. We are the home to some incredible organizations from the world-class Reno Philharmonic Orchestra to Art Town who brings in incredible performances from across the world and AVA Ballet Theater who present the annual Nutcracker, a tradition for so many families in Northern Nevada. The Pioneer Center is the place to come for the best of world-class performances. One thing that I love is the way that the bar and restaurant scene has just exploded over the past decade or so. And many of those incredible restaurants and bars and establishments are right here in downtown Reno. They're right across the street. They're right down the block from us. And it's been really wonderful to have a central gathering place like the Pioneer Center that is also able to engage with many of the restaurants and bars in our region.

As the footprint of the city continues to push outward and more incredible folks learn about and want to be part of and want to live here, the heart of Reno remains right here along the river in the core of downtown. This is that unique identity of the city and arts and culture have that unbelievable ability to weave into the fabric of the identity of a city It's through bringing so many different folks together for so many different kinds of experiences, all authentic, all genuine, all designed to bring you together and uplift each other and to explore what it means to be human together through the arts. There is no limit to what that can do to change people's lives and to enrich a city well into the future. So whatever the future has in store for Reno, arts and culture are a critical part of our identity. They always have been and they always will be. We at the Pioneer Center, together with all of our friends throughout the arts and culture community here, we will continue to evolve and adapt and explore new ways of making connections. And all of that will continue to happen right here in the heart of downtown, along with the other amazing organizations that make up this area with us.

Downtown Reno is where the best of the performing arts live.

Downtown Reno is alive with arts, culture, and entertainment.

My name is Parr Tolles and I am the CEO and Director of Tolles Development.

I grew up in the Bay Area in Little Park and I moved to Reno in 1994. Met a pretty girl and chased her down and got married and decided to put down roots here and it ended up being a really vibrant place for us to do business and grow a family and it's been a wonderful decision. but always had the desire to start my own business. And in 2016, started Tolles Development Company with the goal to focus on all product types of real estate, but with extra effort downtown. We bought a portfolio of office buildings with the goal to redevelop those buildings and really try to push downtown Reno into its next level. We also did that with Midtown. We bought a portfolio of retail buildings, turned that into what is now a very vibrant area. People always ask me if Reno is the next Portland, is it the next Austin? My response has always been, we're Reno. We have this really interesting quilt. I love the fact we're not trying to turn it into somewhere else, but that we're allowing it to evolve in its own really unique way. Private investment in downtowns, it's hard, but it's also incredibly rewarding. Downtown Reno's really got a nice platform for additional mixed-use development. We have a good foundation of retail, good foundation of office, good residential arts and culture. We have a river that runs through it. It's important for us to move where the market is telling us to go, but also to be more than just financially worthy. I think it's important to take a longer-term view when you're redeveloping and trying to obviously not only making returns for your investors, but also making more social returns for the community itself. I think we have a collaborative culture here. We're part of the fabric of this community. These businesses are our friends, you know? We don't have big commutes. People want to be together. We'll never leave Rita. This office portfolio and the Midtown portfolio, we had it right before COVID. I've seen the vibrancy of downtown. It hasn't been hot as bad as it could, and now we're prepared to continue to move it forward with good development. It's easy to stay in suburbia, but certainly not as fun. And you haven't come to downtown Reno yet, please come visit us. I promise you, you will make it your Friday night date night. It is one of the most vibrant, special cities on the West. I can't wait for you to experience it if you haven't done it yet.