City Council - workshop

Awesome, thanks a lot. Thank you everyone for joining today. My name is Lance Ferrado, Director of Licensing and Code Enforcement, and we're here to talk about Reno Municipal Code 507, alcoholic beverages. For many of you that are in this call right now, you already know the direction and the angle we're taking with this stuff. We met a lot over the past, well, it was mostly towards the end of 2024, beginning of 2025 on how we could clean this code up, how we could introduce some new language to clarify, to elaborate, and add some new sections to make ease of compliance, ease of enforcement, all those types of things. If you found your way here, I assume you've seen the draft. What I'm going to do today is go through the draft. I'm going to try something a little different. We had this meeting on Tuesday as well. So I'm just going to play the recording of the part that when I went through the code so that I can make sure that you all get the same exact information that the rest did. And then once that's through, we'll just open it up for questions. um if for any time during this little video that we that we go through this if there's any uh technical difficulties or you know trouble seeing or hearing or something like that just raise your hand we can pause it and alex and i can try to figure out the problem um also to let you know uh we have some spanish speaking assistance online as well so um if that is a need just uh let us know if you have a question that you want to ask or some sort of, we need to meet separately to discuss in Spanish, we can coordinate with that. So with that, I will turn it over to Alex to get this little video going and we'll go from there. Thanks.

Can you see the screen, Lance? Yes, I can.

Sorry, it looks like I'm having buffering issues all of a sudden. Give me one second here.

All right, sorry about that.

Let me start the share again. All right, Lance, one more time. Can you see it?

Yes. Okay, great. All right, so starting off very broadly, we've updated definitions quite a bit. I won't go through all of them, but at the end, if something catches your eye and you want to talk about it, we can do that then. First off, added the alcohol delivery service support or delivery support service. This was added to enable lawful third party in-house delivery. That's something we'll get to a little bit in a minute as far as alcohol delivery. We've changed a lot of the beverage, the standard beverage, alcoholic beverage license definitions to match NRS. You'll see that throughout. We'll try to just make it consistent. It basically, it makes it easier across jurisdictions just to make sure we're all on the same page. Everyone has the same definition. Same you'll see that with beer. Cabaret license, we've moved down into its own light in the license section and described it there. Change of ownership was one that was sort of drastically changed if you will. We just wanted to really drill down and make it clear on what a change of ownership really is. There are a lot of people that come in and do stock purchases and then they get through the process and don't have to do as much of the background that we would like. We want to ensure that every new owner has the right background check, has to pay that new application fee for the alcohol licenses. There were a couple loopholes and we're trying to try to tie those up a bit. Getting down in here, caterer, we move that as well to give it some more explanation and remove some extraneous language there. Food cupboard establishment, same. We'll get to that with alcohol delivery. Any of you that know about alcohol delivery are familiar with that term, but we'll get to it in a little bit. Essentially, it has to do with all the alcohol to go cocktails and things like that. We removed some definitions of department application, department, we're referring to state of Nevada department taxation. We just explain it in the regulation just to get rid of some of that, to streamline some of these definitions. Inactive, we've added some provisions to that, which I'll get to, it has its own section, and we're allowing administrative approval for things like that. Intoxicating liquor was another kind of a duplicative definition that we weaved into the others to match the state. Same with liquor. Let's see here. Then we get down and we've elaborated on premises. We get a lot of questions on what people can do on their properties, specifically parking lots, things like that. So we want to make sure that we're approving things to happen, but they have to be within the approved four walls, essentially, or whatever planning determined as the approval for that business at the time, just to make it very clear. that if there is something in the parking lot at this point, it does require a special activity permit, which is a topic for another another day. But we are looking into that as well. Elaborate a little bit on sale and sell because of the delivery. And then we got into specified anatomical areas. There was concerns from a couple of our owners that this was too restrictive and we needed some modifications. So we've done some wordsmithing there. So we're hopeful that this will satisfy everyone's concerns. And then we had questions on wholesaler and the definitions didn't quite fit the state. So we changed that as well. So getting down into the real stuff here, aside from definitions, again, I'm not gonna go through everything. A lot of the changes you'll see were just basically, they were semantic changes or making more clarifying statements, things like that. This whole posting of a business premises, a couple of licensees, we do this on behalf of the licensees currently, and the code said that it was the licensee's responsibility. Staff already does it, we just change it to say it's the responsibility of the staff, kind of take some burden off of the licensee. Now, as far as licenses, each license used to be connected, or I'm sorry, it was given its own section. So what we did is we consolidated this just so it's very easy to find. It's in one section. It's all alphabetized. It's really just for clarity and to make sure that it's an easy to follow format. This first section is just kind of your standard language that you must have a license, you must abide by state law, separate license for each activity, that type of thing. Very general comments to cover the license types. So let's get into that. Again, a lot of these are very similar, if not exactly the same that they used to be. They're just organized in a different way. Some of the stuff that we changed, like I said, specifically a caterer's license. The, uh, the previous definition was very narrow and it very, it basically said you had to be a food establishment with a catering truck. We know that's not the way that it works nowadays. There, there are many beverage caterers. Um, they're allowed to occupy or to, to offer their services at special events or private parties. Um, we just made it very clear that this is, it's not a mobile food truck. It's a catering, alcohol catering license, and you have to follow these specific rules. A cabaret license was also a very heavily discussed topic. If many of you have been probably following the live entertainment discussions and then that the planning staff has been having with Council and the current sunset, or I won't say sunset, but a stay on the requirement for a conditional use permit to operate past a certain hour. Again, I'm sure most of you are very familiar with that, but we tried to weave some of this in. The current standards that you have to supply a security plan upon getting approval to go past operations at a certain time. So we're just building that into the license code. It belongs in licensing. It is not necessarily something that planning should be doing, but they do help us monitor it and they do help us sign off or review them. So we've placed that on here. We've also put the definition of entertainment in here. It's basically the same. However, it does allude to NRS 368A090, which defines live entertainment at the state level. We hope that that can clear some things up and keep everybody on the same page. Going on, these are all the same license types that we've had before, on-premise, packaged alcohol, wholesale. We had a question from one of the, I can't recall if it was an industry representative or if it was an actual licensee, that it didn't, the code wasn't unclear, it wasn't clear on how we require the wholesale delivery if you're delivering from outside of the city. And so we made that clear that you have to have a license to deliver into the city and that's pretty straightforward. We also added complimentary alcoholic beverage permit. This is an item that we used to have or we currently operate under a policy that's been on the books for probably 20 years, but we want to put it in code. We want to make it very clear to everybody what you can and can't do. This is new language. It's a little bit different than our old policy, but we hope it covers it. So I'm glad that we have this here and have this as an opportunity for certain businesses that want to take advantage of that, like a salon or a barbershop, things like that. Now we get into the delivery, the new sections. So as you all know, or most of you know, in 21, the state passed alcohol delivery regulations or a statute and then came out with regulations after that. We have not been in that. We have not ever come into compliance with that to actually officially allow it per that statute. We had delivery Delivery methods before, but now it's very, it's very pointed and the regulations are clear on what you can and can't do. So we're adding that and we're basically not meaning any extra provisions at this point. I know that there are certain industries that have comment on this and we'll want to add some. So I'm looking forward to that. Same with the to go to go alcohol sales. This this is something that came in in the last. I'm sorry they're not to go alcoholic to go cocktails. They were this came through last session and basically no one of the other. None of the other jurisdictions are doing this at this time. We would be one of the first. I know the city of Las Vegas is working on taking public comment as well, so Council may be willing to move forward at this time and they may want to wait so. something to be cognizant of, but I look forward to comments on that. Prohibited activities. One of the things we looked at striking here was the section that alludes to boisterous conduct, unreasonable noise, things like that. Really, those are very subjective terms. We want to make this very objective, and it may come down to changing the language altogether, or it may be just deleting it. We're looking to see if this could just be something that's enforced by PD and a disturbing the peace call and we can track it that way. Not so sure that this specifically needs to be in the alcohol code. We wanted to add the provisions for NRS 202 to allow minors in an establishment so long as they're abiding by the state law and that they're not hanging out at the bar, they're at a separate area. Generally speaking, they're there because they have a reason to be there, like eating food. Locational compatibility is a big one. As far as the current code, it basically gave the council the discretion to deny licenses if they felt they were in you know, proximity or too close to a sensitive use. Obviously, as the business community has shown, that's very unnerving. You can make it all the way to council and you could have your whole project shut down. So we really want to make this clear. And after I posted this, we had some more internal discussions that I'm interested to see if anyone has any feedback on. We added in here within 500 feet of a sensitive use. Well, that sensitive use also means it defined as a park, right? So the Truckee River is in many places considered a park. So that would prohibit some bars and things like that opening along the riverfront, which could stifle development. That's not what we want to do. So we have some other ideas of how to tweak this so that we have a better idea of a better review process on things like that. Specifically, we were considering maybe just any new on premise alcohol or beer and wine license would just have to submit a security plan and it could be reviewed and we could impose the certain conditions necessary to allow things to operate like that and not necessarily shut them all down or have it be a free for all. So somewhere right in the middle where a council can be comfortable that staff has reviewed the ins and the outs and then we have the ability to condition things. So just a food for thought if we come back to that. Um, let's see, moving on inactive licenses. Um, this was a newer section in general, but we've tweaked it to basically it doesn't, it doesn't apply to licenses that, um, are brand new, but once you're open and you have to close, We don't want to see a closure for more than 90 days without a temporary approval, an administrative approval. At first, this also was a council authority to grant approval. And we think that that's very cumbersome for the licensee. It's cumbersome for staff. We were recommending that this goes to city manager, designee, just an administrative approval to allow a licensed establishment to stay closed for more than 90 days. In general, we would like this to happen and apply to all privilege licenses, but since we're not there yet to put that in the general chapter, I've just inserted it here since we had a section. So ultimately, I'd like to see this apply to all licenses. So it's just here on a standalone at this time to make it a little easier for something like this to happen. We want to make it smooth and we want to be able to be on the same page as everyone out there. No changes here. State license requirements. We've stricken a little bit and this is just basically to streamline this. All this information is in NRS on the application, application standards and what's required. We didn't think that is actually necessary to duplicate here, so we just refer to the NRS that governs that. On this second section here, we added an ability. We've come across this a few times. The state requires us when we're reviewing a state license application that it has to be done with the background check before we can put it on Council. So we've tried to craft something here to give a little bit more leeway Specifically, if a licensee can supply a background check that's been conducted in the prior three months, and this was, you know, we went back and forth on a couple timeframes with PD. If they could supply us with some history of a background check, then we could use that. in our materials to recommend to council so that we don't necessarily have to wait until it's completely done and we can get the ball moving and we can get the state license, state license recommendation issued to Department of Taxation. Really, this is just trying to give the licensee a little bit more leeway and a little bit, a little easier path forward when these unusual circumstances arise. Some some referencing here changes also. Administrative approvals on these licenses. Sometimes there are changes that don't necessarily impact how Council would have weighed in. Like let's just say a distiller is changing to a, you know, a rectifier or a. You know, a manufacturer of Beer is changing to a manufacturer of liquor. Council doesn't weigh that decision when they do this. That's more of a planning determination, if anything. So we want to be able to amend these licenses as smoothly as possible, as quickly as possible, so that we can just get the administrative approval done, get that to the Department of Taxation, and they can weigh in. We really don't want to see these manufacturers get put on hold for months at a time while we're waiting for that process. And then we go through a bunch of sections here that are all deleted and moved. These are all the individual license types that were all in their own section. And as I said, we combine those in about one page as opposed to five or six pages. Do this. Um, council action on on package, alcohol licenses. This is something that we're seeking direction from council. It's another 1 of those discretionary. Sections that gives counsel the ability to deny, but the sentiment I got from the business community was this feels like it can be very subjective. And it puts the business owner in a very strange, very, very tough position. WHERE THEY'VE ALREADY INVESTED TIME, MONEY, EFFORTS, BRANDING, BUILDOUTS, APPROVALS. THEY'VE GONE TO THE CITY, THEY'VE GOTTEN ALL THE APPROVALS, AND THEN THEY'RE STANDING AT THE DIAS AND HAVE THE POSSIBILITY OF BEING DENIED BASED ON SOMETHING THAT A COUNCIL MEMBER MAY FIND PARTICULARLY OF INTEREST OR CONCERN. SO WE'RE WORKING THROUGH THIS CHAT, THIS SECTION, TO SEE IF WE JUST NEED TO BUILD SOME MORE OBJECTIVE STANDARDS OR if it needs to be uh revised into just a like i said maybe it's a security plan on new things or some sort of some sort of operational plan that we can review and recommend to council as far as this safe scape we didn't change much here um we made some clarification on what they applied to just what the original intent was a couple strikethroughs you'll see nothing substantial um when we get into the actual standards for each of these we were running across issues with visibility um so we similar to um well let me just dive into this one first so the 25 uh service area of the windows had to be um could you couldn't exceed 25 it's 75 clarity in all these windows well some of these places have uh generally restricted architecture or build out um Some of the coolers were blocking windows. And it was one of those things where without substantial remodel, these businesses would not be able to meet compliance on the standard. So we're looking to just put it in here to have an administrative approval so long that it does not impact public safety and that everybody's on board as far as RPD, business licensing, code enforcement, et cetera. Then we can make those provisions to more clearly make it easier for the business license to comply, but also to be able to have some sort of, some level of comfort at the city level. Same with the metal security bars and grates on windows. They were required to be on the interior of the window. This became an issue. People were breaking, you know, on certain areas, if a window got broken, the bars don't do very well on the outside, I mean, on the inside. So, you know, we want to allow people to protect our property as much as they can But again, this would be an administrative approval. And that also goes for the accordion style doors that go on the front of these places when they close up. Most of these are just verbiage changes and clarification. And then as far as package alcohol licenses, the cap in the downtown area, just striking out things that are referenced prior to us being at the cap. Right now there's 18 mandatory, sorry, maximum, but we're at that cap. So some of these provisions don't apply anymore. So we just went through and cleaned it up. Again, that number two, that goes away because it does not apply anymore. Same with number three. Same with the Wells Avenue overlay. They are at the cap at six. So this subsection B and C do not apply anymore. And then we get into some more license types that we all move into that consolidated section. And then this plenary action, we made some tweaks to if we had to require a licensee to use identification or ID verification equipment that they could bring it to us, we could approve it, as opposed to having a standard list that only we had the choice to tell you what to use. We're making this a little easier on the licensee. And that's that. So let me unshare this.

Great, thanks.

OK, so I know that's kind of a fast overview of the whole document and all the changes that we've incorporated. At this time, we're going to take some questions. So the best thing to do in the most organized way is you can just raise your hand in the chat and Alex will bring you over and then you can go from there.

Alrighty, I'll let Eric go first. Eric, go ahead and unmute yourself and then you can begin speaking. It looks like you're just still on mute. Okay, well, Eric looks at that. Robert, why don't you go ahead and unmute yourself

Hi, yeah, I'd just like to know where I can get access to this document to really dig into it.

Yeah, absolutely. So Alex is going to go ahead and put in the chat our website. And at that website, we have a bunch of materials. We have a red line version. We have a clean version on there. We have also a form for submitting comments. And we also have the original document, obviously, current code that is in place so she can submit that in in the chat um it's just reno.gov business license and you can um you can dive in from there she may have given you more direct link in that chat um just maybe another click through uh the main web page but yeah um please please uh give it a good look and and supply comment during that or in that feedback form that'd be great

And Robert, if you have issues accessing that document, I can definitely send you over the link as well directly.

That'd be great. Thank you.

Yeah, of course. All right. Eric, you want to try again? Okay, while we figure that part out, if anyone else has any comments they'd like to make, feel free to raise your hand. Chris, go ahead.

Thank you. Hey, this is very helpful. I think I went through the clean version. It's pretty straightforward, Lance, and you guys cleaned it up pretty nicely. It's a lot clearer to understand. And I think you did take into consideration a lot of the public comment that we went through a couple of years ago. So, you know, the number of issues that I have, Lance, do I have to resubmit that?

No, I think we, I have a clear record of our discussions over the past that, you know, through emails and your previous comments. I think that'll suffice. I'll make you duplicate it. We can pull that forward for sure. Okay. Thanks. Appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely.

Anyone else? All right, Lance.

Want to try Eric one more time? See if he was able to.

I lowered his hand and he didn't put it back up, so.

OK. OK, well, this is obviously this is not like the end of the end of the show. You know, everybody can feel free to to go on the website, use that form, submit your comments. You can email us at BLcode at Reno.gov and that'll come to Alex and I. That's a very easy way to just submit any comments or questions or just get a hold of us if you need to have a separate call or something like that. Happy to do that. The next steps with this process, we're going to go to council on July 22nd, and I'm just going to give them this document with some changes that we talked about through these last two meetings, some additional things that internally staff has has decided, you know, maybe we should tweak this or we had some other comments that were relevant to delivery regulations that we will put forward for council's consideration as well. And then once they digest that and give us direction, then the next step could be to come back with an ordinance introduction at a later date. If that is the case, and there aren't any major changes I could foresee us getting back in front of council in, you know, August, September, something like that, just depending on how substantial the changes are from what we do now to then. I don't foresee real substantial changes from this document, but you never know. We'll see where it lands with council. So again, comments are great. And if you send public comment to the council meeting, that's always an option too. If you're really happy with it, make sure to let council know that. And if you really don't like it, do the same. That helps us a ton when we really hear from people before we move forward with all these things. So with that, if there are no more questions, we will call it good. And if you want to watch this back, it'll be on the website. I appreciate everybody's engagement and their time. Thanks very much.