City Council - Special Meeting

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Afternoon.

All right, thank you. We can take a roll, please.

We are calling roll for the Reno City Council for the Thursday, July 16th special concurrent meeting. Council Member Taylor is absent at this time. Council Member Dewar? Here. Vice Mayor Martinez?

Here.

Council Member Ebert is absent at this time. Council Member Reese?

I am here.

Council Member Anderson? Here.

And Mayor Sheedy is absent at this time. Let me ask you, Madam Clerk, are any of the people that are not in the room online? No. Okay. Well, let us know if they come online, if you will.

Absolutely.

Okay.

And Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll for the July 15th special concurrent meeting of the city charter committee?

Yes. So we are now calling roll of the Reno City Charter Committee. Member Gonfantini is absent at this time. Member Shin. Yes. Member Nava. Yes. Vice Chair Piskovich? Here. Member Pucher? He was on Zoom. Okay. Absent at this time, Member Knox? Here. Chair Offerman? Here. Member Barron? Absent at this time. Member Ginsburg? Here. Member Downey is absent at this time. Member Taylor? and member Guthrow is absent at this time. But you do have a quorum.

Okay, thank you.

Madam Clerk, just for the record, member Poocher is logged on to Zoom. We're just working to get him over. Correct.

Perfect, thank you. And I do think we may have a few more that joined by Zoom as well.

I don't see anyone.

This is William Poocher and I am present.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, with that I think we're heading into public comment. Madam Clerk, do we have anybody registered for public comment today?

First, I'm going to give the disclosure. Mr. Vice Mayor and Madam Chair, our first item today is public comment. It should be noted for those in attendance that comments are to be addressed to the mayor, council, and charter committee 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 agenda. City Council and the Charter Committee 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've stated 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. And we do have some public commenters present. Damian Cole, followed by Stacey Spain.

Good afternoon, everyone. Damian Cole for the record. I am here to talk about something that's not on the agenda, but I felt it was of great importance. The pathway obstruction that is currently blocking the Truckee Riverwalk at 180 East 1st Street. So there has been correspondence on this because currently it is permanently blocked and thus the two gates next to it are also permanently blocked. In 2024, the property owner had correspondence with the city regarding the fence that is along that walkway, and he states that the vagrants have broke the fence along the Truckee Boardwalk. Will you fix it? They identified his fence as private property, but then he insisted and said that the city of Reno moved the fence, picked the supplier, we shared the cost. So he is acknowledging that this is a public walkway. However, he told Phil from The Wind and KUNR that nonprofits illegally installed all of the bike signage there. So what really happened? In 1972, this walkway was demolished. provided by when AT&T, known as Nevada Bell back then, created a public walkway for public use. And Ray Cavallo, the property owner at the time, made an agreement with city council to say, yes, the public can use this public walkway. And they also built a floodway. So it has been in use for 54 years until this year when the current property owner put a gate there and is obstructing access. There is MUTCD shared path signage. And it has been there. It's been placed. with the city and with the Tahoe Pyramid Trail. This is a shared use corridor for transportation and commuting. This is the 1976 plan that was put together by the Public Works Traffic Division as an urban bicycle facility and later on it was extended all the way over to Sparks. This is very important because 1995, this was the final vision of the Riverwalk and as you can see, There is an extension that never got built. It is still in the master plan, as far as I know, to go past the auto museum and Grants Landing. So this walkway that has been obstructed is actually a very important vital piece of the Riverwalk District to open up the east end to neighboring neighborhoods. This is what NRS says. In other words, even if, let's say Reycavalo didn't expressly permit an easement, within five years, unless that sign is posted, it becomes a public easement by prescription. So it is a public easement. The city does not need to purchase any property from the property owner. We have a right to use it. The public has a right to use it. And the city can find the property owner, and they can have the city and Public Works remove the fence. And I would just like to say I took the liberty of creating a couple of nice color printouts, which I would love to present to the city. You can display it. I upscaled them, fixed up the coloring and everything. So I'd like to give this as a gift to just remind us that we need to retain the vision of what came about 30 years ago and beyond.

Thank you, Mr. Cole.

Stacey Spain.

Good morning, everybody, afternoon. My name is Stacey Spain. I'm the executive director of our center, the LGBTQ Center for Northern Nevada. And I have two things I'd like to do in these three minutes. First, I want to sincerely thank you and the Arts and Culture Commission for supporting our Artful Pride Grant number 0016. Because of your investment, we were able to offer a series of free art workshops celebrating LGBTQ plus creativity and community. People of all ages came together to learn printmaking, book arts, textiles, ceramics, photography, and poetry in an environment where they felt welcomed, valued, and inspired. That can't happen without the investment of a city who cares for all its residents. So I wanted to thank you for that grant, sincerely, $5,000. $553 was well used. Next, I want to say that our center supports the city of Reno's efforts to modernize the city charter by using clear gender neutral language. Government documents should be written so that they apply equally to everyone they govern. Replacing gendered pronouns with neutral language or official titles is a straightforward drafting practice that helps ensure laws and policies are inclusive, precise, and applicable to all residents. The proposed amendment is about the language used in the city's governing document and it does not determine or limit anyone's ability to use names or pronouns they prefer in their personal or professional lives. Every person, should continue to be treated with dignity and respect, including being addressed in the way they asked to be addressed. Unfortunately, proposals like this are often portrayed as far more controversial than they actually are. Updating legal language to be gender neutral is an administrative change that makes public documents more inclusive and accurate. Yet public debate around these updates can sometimes send an unintended message to transgender, non-binary, and gender diverse community members that their presence in civic life is somehow up for debate. When routine efforts to ensure everyone is reflected in government documents become political flashpoints, many people experience that as a signal that they are less welcome or less safe in their own community. We encourage our community to recognize that this discussion is not about taking something away from anyone. No one's rights, identities, or ability to use the names and pronouns they prefer are affected by using gender neutral language in the city charter. Instead, the amendment simply ensures that the city charter speaks to every resident without assuming a particular gender. Our center believes every resident deserves to see themselves reflected in the institutions that serve them. We encourage the city council to adopt a language that is clear, inclusive, and welcoming to all continuing to foster a community where every person is treated with dignity and respect. Thank you very much.

Mr. Vice Mayor and Ms. Spain, before you leave, tell us what's happening on September 12th.

Ah, September 12th. You should all put on your dancing shoes and come to Northern Nevada Pride in Wingfield Park. Thank you for making that happen early. So we're excited to be there.

Well, we're excited to have you back, and certainly the Arlington Bridge project was finished and scheduled for another season, but we finished ahead of schedule. So welcome and happy to have you back.

Thank you.

Thank you. Is there any other public comment?

There's no one else registered to speak, and we did not receive any correspondence prior to 4 p.m. yesterday.

Great. With that, I'll look for an approval of the council agenda. So moved.

Second.

We got a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes.

Sorry, I missed the mover and the seconder. Thank you.

Yeah, and then Council Member Reese seconded.

Thank you. No.

Or was it the opposite?

First and second. Sorry about that.

Council Member Reese first and Council Member Dewar second.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Perfect.

And now I would like to have a motion to approve the agenda for the Charter Committee.

Mike Ginsburg for the record. I'll move to approve the agenda.

Perfect. And can I have a second? Membership seconded the motion. Any further discussion with items? All those in favor? We would now like to approve our minutes for the last Charter Committee meeting so can I have a motion to approve the minutes Anyone in opposition

And Mr. Vice Mayor if I may just as a point of order for item b1 on our agenda and b1 on the Charter Committee's those will be opened simultaneously Yes, that was my hope.

Thank you so much It sounds like the mayor has called in versus zoomed in and She said we couldn't hear her so

Okay, we did have a phone number in there, but there's no name assigned to it, so we can move her over. Okay.

Thank you.

Hi, can you hear me?

We can hear you. Yes, we can. All right, perfect. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Good to hear you. So with that, we have a hand raised. So just to clarify, is that a public commenter or is that somebody who's on one of the bodies?

That's Member Barron.

I'm sorry. Yeah, I just it's asked me to unmute and it was too late. So I'm present by phone. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Just want to make sure we didn't miss anybody. So with that, we'll open up the agenda item B1.

Also, just as a note, and I don't know if the Member Barron is on Zoom or phone, but Mayor Schieve shared that the Zoom wouldn't work, and that's why she called the phone. But it looks like Member Barron is on Zoom.

Yeah, it looks like Member Poocher is also on Zoom.

Right, so, okay. Must be unique to her.

Good afternoon Council Members and members of the Charter. I am Callie Wilsey, Director of Policy and Strategy, and in this situation I also serve as the staff liaison to the Charter Committee. I'm just going to kick off this item, let everybody know why we are here today. So every two years, according to the Reno City Charter, the Charter Committee is required to convene and take a look at our Charter. Does it represent the best practices of the city where we are going from a governance standpoint? Are there any changes that need to be made? So the members that are sitting in front of you and on Zoom today, as well as a few who are unfortunately couldn't be here today, have completed that review over the last few months and have put together a final report for you. I'm going to let them lead that conversation in terms of what their recommendations are. But we're also required before the legislature convenes for both bodies to get together and for the charter committee to make those recommendations. So that is the purpose today. The information that they are going to share with you today certainly could lead to one of the city's BDRs. The decision about a BDR is the purview of the city council. That decision is not in front of you today. There'll be other information that you will need to gather about other topics over the next few weeks before you make that decision in August. But today, the purpose is to learn that information and ask questions about potential charter amendments as we consider the BDR. So with that, I am going to turn it over to Chair Offerman, who is going to lead the committee's presentation and kind of facilitate the rest of the conversation.

Perfect. Thank you, Callie. Yes, I am Tess Opperman. I got to serve as the chair for this convening of the Charter Committee. This is my second term on the Charter and my third convening of the Charter Committee. And so I was happy to serve as chair this go-around. Our Charter Committee was very helpful. I think we came up with some really good ideas. It's also exciting to be back in this room. I previously worked for the city, so I sat back there before, and now I get to be on this side, which is fun. Our charter committee, I believe we met, we started our meetings in February. We met five times, so this is the sixth meeting of our group, and came up with a number of recommendations. So I will move forward with our slide. First, we discussed nine different issues and our ideas came from different sources. So we asked our city staff members what ideas they had. Each of the committees on the charter, or excuse me, each of the members on the charter committee talked to their member who appointed them and asked what ideas they might have. And then we brought any ideas that had previously been brought up in the charter committee. So we sourced from various places. and came with nine issues that we discussed. So I can kind of briefly read those over. We talked about the process for filling council vacancies. if a council member resigns. In the past, most have been replaced by appointment. We talked about what it would look like if we required an election. We talked about terms for legislate appointed charter committee members. So some terms are four years, some terms are two, which can be complicated. We talked about residency requirements for the city manager. So where does the city manager need to live once they get the job here with the city? We talked about gender neutral language. This is something that has come to a charter committee multiple times. I know the last three times that I've served on the charter committee we have suggested having gender neutral language in the charter. We talked about the fire chief position being an appointed position that is currently part of collective bargaining agreements, but it's not mirrored in the charter. We talked about the timing of the vice mayor appointment. So currently it happens at the first meeting in November and sometimes that timeline doesn't work out very well. We discussed Reno-Sparks Indian Colony voting in city elections. So currently those in the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony do not vote in city elections because it is not within the city of Reno and so we talked about what it would mean to annex that and have them vote in city elections. We discussed the joint meeting requirement for the Reno City Charter Committee and the Reno City Council, so what we're doing today. And we discussed the election or appointment of the Reno City Attorney, something that comes up regularly. I think every election in the city of Reno that comes up. So having discussed these nine items, We came forward with six recommendations. So I'm going to dive more into the six recommendations, but I did want to highlight the ones that we did not move forward with. So process for filling council vacancies. We talked about this at length, but elections are incredibly expensive. It's difficult to do a special election. And we ultimately decided there was no clean path forward, at least in our own discussion. So we did not move forward with that item. The Reno-Sparks Indian Colony voting and city elections, this is something that is being worked on with the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and the city attorney's office, and they're in conversation, and it was decided that this really wasn't under charter committee purview at this moment, so we did not move forward with that. And then finally, we chose to not move forward with the conversation on election or appointment of the city attorney. That's pretty political, and we wanted to stay out of that, at least for this charter committee. So with that, I will move forward with our recommendations. We did decide to divide our recommendations into two buckets. So what we see as kind of policy recommendations and also ideas that came driven by the charter. And then we had administrative recommendations that we saw more as like cleanup language for the charter, easy changes that just made the charter a little bit cleaner. So in the policy recommendations, residency requirement for city manager, joint meeting requirement, and gender neutral language, and then in administrative requirements, or excuse me, recommendations, we dealt with the charter appointments, the timelines, the assistant fire chief position, and the timing of the vice mayor appointment. So first, I'm going to go into our policy recommendations. The first one would be residency requirements for the city manager. So right now, a city manager must reside within Nevada within six months of appointment. We wanted to limit that a little bit and make sure that the person was really Reno-centric. That said, in our conversations, we didn't want to limit it to the city of Reno itself because you can easily live in a county property that is directly adjacent to the city of Reno. Collin Ranch is a great example where you drive over the bridge and suddenly you're in the county. So we didn't wanna limit it to just city of Reno. We talked about Washoe County and having it be limited to Washoe County, but then we thought, okay, but what if someone lives in Gardnerville or Carson City? people who could be excellent city managers that might live outside of Washoe County but are close to the area and certainly care about city of Reno issues. So that's how we came up with this idea of a 60-mile radius. So you still must live in the state of Nevada, but we created a 60-mile radius from City Hall. So you can see on the map, I think this is the best way to visualize it. The little red pin is where City Hall is, 60 miles within that. So that allows a city manager to live in Gardnerville, Fallon, Carson City, Genoa, some other towns. They don't have to live in Reno itself, but it does limit it to northern Nevada. They can't be in Vegas serving as city manager for the city of Reno. The next one would be the joint meeting requirement. So right now we are having our joint meeting. And while we love to have a joint meeting and it is nice to have the opportunity to present in front of the city, our council members, sometimes it just creates a technical challenge when we have to have a quorum of both bodies. And I know in past years it has actually been the charter committee where we've struggled to get a quorum. It hasn't been on city council's side. So after conversation, we decided maybe we should ease that requirement, still present to the City Council, but not make it a joint meeting so that we don't need a quorum of the Charter Committee. We would still need a quorum of the City Council, but not a quorum of the Charter Committee. We all thought this was a logical idea to make it a little bit easier to have a meeting with the Reno City Council. Like I said, we would still present to the Reno City Council as we're doing now. Finally, gender neutral language. I don't think this needs a lot of explanation, and I know we've presented on this in the past, which is changing all of the language to gender neutral language. Most other charters in the state are now gender neutral language. Most bodies are using gender neutral language. I think this makes quite a bit of sense. Now I'll go on to our administrative recommendations. So the first one, the legislated appointed charter committee member terms, this actually was a recommendation from Nick before he left the city of Reno. I know we miss him and I bet you do. Part of his struggle when he was convening this body was figuring out exactly who was still appointed and the length of their terms. Because we have some people who are serving four years, some who are serving two. Many of us got appointed in January or even February right before we convened the body. And so then if it's a two-year term, does that go to, it gets complicated is the answer. And we felt, and Nick really suggested this, but the idea that our term should be concurrent with the length of the term of the person who appointed us. So if you are appointed by an assembly member, then the length from the time they were elected until their next election, that would be the term. Same with Senate, same with the city council. So just to ease that appointment process, that way when we come to convene the city charter committee, it's much easier to know, okay, who is still on the board, who is no longer on the board. The assistant fire chief position, so there's no reference to the assistant fire chief position currently in the Reno City Charter, even though it's allowed through a collective bargaining agreement. So we wanted to have conformity and allow for the assistant fire chief position to be appointed and have that explicitly stated in the charter. And then finally the vice mayor appointment timing. So currently this is required at the first regular council meeting in November. Occasionally this could fall before the election and it does fall before the canvas of the votes. And so that limits your body in terms of who you can appoint as your vice mayor. So we worked with staff to figure out the best date for when that appointment should take place and conversations with staff. It seemed as though the first regular meeting of council in December, that would happen after the election, after the canvas of the votes. That way, your body, the city council, knows exactly who is serving as city council and can be appointed as vice mayor. So here is a summary of those recommendations. This includes all six of them, so our more administrative changes and our policy changes. And finally, this is a list of our charter committee members. As a group, we worked really well together, and I really appreciate the work of our charter committee. I did want to turn it over to the other charter committee members and give them a chance to say anything about the process or about the recommendations. So with that, I'm going to give them a chance to speak, and anyone who has any comments is welcome to say something. And they may be quiet. And also, is there anyone on Zoom who wants to chime in? I know we have Lily and Member Puchart, excuse me, Member Barron and Member Puchart.

Yes, I guess, thank you everyone for meeting today. And I think the only thing that, this is my third term with the Charter Committee and it's been wonderful. I think the only thing that, has kind of been missing is a discussion afterwards if the body chooses not to go forward, just so that we can be better directed for the next term or whoever succeeds us is able to. So I don't know if that's possible through email or whatever. I know it's difficult to get everyone together, but that has been something that has felt like there should be some closure at the end so we can understand the body's decision to a deeper level. And that's all. Thank you.

Thank you, Member Barron. And for the council, I do just want to let you know, as a charter committee, we did talk about that. So we will be meeting in September. That way, after you choose to move forward with your selection of BDR, then we can reconvene and have a kind of final discussion to discuss that. Callie will be helping to create that presentation so any information that our council members want to give to Callie so that then she can pass that on to us we would be really appreciative of it because as member Barron said yeah sometimes you know we present to you and then you end up choosing your BDR and there's no no wrap-up so we understand you know why you did or did not choose to move forward with any of our recommendations so that was an excellent point member Barron thank you

Chair, I think you used to have Member Puchart who has their hand raised. Sorry. We can see him from this side. Yeah, I can't see him.

I appreciate that. Yeah, Member Puchart.

Good afternoon, fellow members and council members. I just wanted to say I apologize that I cannot be here today. And just from my humble opinion, I just felt one of the things that I thought was important is that we work as a committee to try and find consensus so we can work together to get a BDR that everybody could agree on. So thank you and have a good day.

Thank you, Member Puchart.

Before you go into discussion, we do have one member of the public register to speak on this item.

Okay.

Okay, we'll go with that first, please.

Stacy Spain. Nevermind.

No worries.

With that, then I think we can open it up to questions.

Okay. Yeah, thank you so much. We'll bring it back to the body.

Council Member Reese. Thank you so much, Mr. Vice Mayor. I want to start off by thanking each of the members individually of the committee. This is a very important committee to all of us, and we make our choices about who we ask to serve on it because of that. I view it as the constitutional or foundational document of the city. And so it is a very important thing when you really come to understand its role. It shapes the things that we do on this side of the dais. So it's sort of a precursor. What you do allows us to do what we do. And so I'm very grateful to each of you for your service, especially those of you who have served for multiple times. I know Ms. Barron has served multiple times. Tess, it sounds like you've served multiple times as well, or Ms. Offerman. So that's the first thing I want to thank each of you. Second is I want to thank Ms. Offerman very specifically. I will say, A, we miss you at the City of Reno. You taught me a lot about this job, and I am forever grateful for that. I know most of you very personally, and while those of you I don't know well, I'd certainly like to. So thank you. Certainly, you have added a layer of both professionalism and presentation skill that is not always present in our committees, not this one in specific or any that I'm criticizing, but simply that, man, that was awesome, and it shows that you learned a lot here, and you've also gone out and added a lot of other things. So thank you for that, Ms. Offerman. I wanted to say, third, you know, there's sort of a – all of the recommendations that have been made, I think I'm fine with all of them. They're all excellent choices. Everything that you've done to wrestle with the issue, how you've grappled with finding consensus, I think that's important. The body is – of your body is reflected in the diversity of the people who appoint. So when the minority leader of the Senate or the minority leader of the Assembly is able to appoint, it makes for a really good, robust discussion because that means no particular political ideology or viewpoint is being preferred over another. So I'm grateful for that. I did have comments on just one of the items, and I'll sort of confine myself to that. and then I'm interested to hear what my colleagues say. And it is about the timing of the vice mayoral appointment. So first of all, I would just say, having served as the vice mayor now twice during my time in office, it's a very important role, and we certainly take it very important and seriously on this side. It's also just an honorary role, right? There's not... any ego to it. I think it's a role that none of us wishes to hold, but it's one that's necessary because it helps for the orderly conduct of our meetings in the absence of someone in the mayor's chair. And so I think it's very important. I will say I never know whether the opening of the charter for the purposes of some of the smaller items is that good idea or bad, in part because when we open the charter, it allows other people to load into the charter things that they might be interested in, too. And so my experience in Carson City has not always been positive in as much as I'm not sure that our legislatures are aware of or as familiar with what we do at the city. And so I often, and if I may, Mr. Vice Mayor, I'm over time, but I probably won't have a round two. So if I can just complete my thought. I often wonder that the people who sit in Carson don't always know what we do as local leaders. And so when they jump into an opened bill and maybe add things that you all never contemplated or maybe even we didn't contemplate, that does worry me about the opening of the charter in general. I will say for the vice mayor timing issue, certainly that could be opened in November by us and tabled or moved to another meeting, meaning we could technically open and agendize the item and move it later. And also, I do think there's something to be said about why we do it then, and it has largely to do more with the way that we do all of our boards and commissions. So we have generally reviewed and revised those every year in November. I think probably for something for our staff to consider is I think maybe those could be realigned with our calendar year so that we'd be making those decisions in July. Again, where the date is is largely not relevant, but it's just that it happens along with the divvying out of all the boards and commission responsibilities. I'm someone who believes that we should be ready to go on the boards and commissions in the fiscal year. And so maybe if the mayor and the manager want to think about that, it might resolve your issue, right? Because it would be resolved somewhat farther in advance of that. And again, because it's not a political thing. It's just about practicalities. And then the last thing I'll say is that the city, of course, has two bills. That includes if we won a charter bill. So if we have different priorities, I know that you said, Ms. Offerman, that you worried that we didn't reconnect after our decisions and want to do so and happy to do that. Of course, they explained why we do what we do. But I do worry that because we're so limited in what we have, and I do think there are some priorities coming out of the city this year, whether that be the fire regionalization study, a conversation about sales tax and property tax, a conversation about the redevelopment agencies. It may just be that those priorities rise above the issues of the charter. And I'm not predetermining that. I'm just saying that therein lies one of the rubs. if we only have two and we give one to the charter, it means we only have one, we may need two. So again, nothing to do with your not being well regarded or the thoughts you have, but that's sort of how I see it. Thank you so much, Mr. Vice Mayor.

Thank you Thank you all for serving on this committee.

This is my first charter Meeting and so I might have a couple of questions that you think I need that I should have the answers to already and I don't so Everybody just buckle up for me being the newbie here. Um, I have a question about to our team if we were to sponsor a charter Opening is it just would we be just choosing from one of these items or could the truck we could okay great That's my first dumb question.

Kelly. We'll see for the record councilmember Anderson Yes, you could choose if you were to choose a charter bill You could choose all of these recommendations None of them a portion of them any new things you would like to add the the decision of the BDR would be in your purview Okay, great.

So with that I'm building on your response there and This is the first time I've heard that if we were to open our charter bill, pretty much anybody else can add on to those changes. That's the first time I had heard of that, so that's a concern. Second question or additional question is can someone else open our charter? Someone else can. Okay. Thank you. Last question is the precipice of where the fire, the assistant fire appointment came from and is that something that we are trying to drive towards? As a city, is that a policy question that we're trying to solve?

Callie Wilsey for the record. I would say it's not currently a policy issue that we're trying to solve. Since we know that these charter conversations happen every two years, we often will ask our leadership staff in the city if there are any barriers that they see forthcoming. This issue came up knowing that in our collective bargaining agreement with FIRE currently, it allows for it, but the charter wouldn't. under the rules and laws of the appointments under the city charter. So it's just a forward thinking amendment that would allow continuously to allow the city the flexibility to make that decision if and when the body and the manager decide that that's appropriate.

Okay, great.

That's all of my questions. Thank you so much and I too want to thank the whole group including those online and those that even are not with us for your service because this is a whole series of meetings. You're diving into minutia about the city that most people have no idea even exists. If you ask the average person on the street, they have no idea what the charter is. I mean, even, even people that are active in our other committees do not know what the charter is. So the fact that you do know what it is and you know how important it is and you know, it is, it is the foundational document of our city. Um, it probably could be more detailed and flack on a number of issues. It's, it's, fairly general in some regards, uh, for example, about the mayor's duties and, you know, it's pretty, pretty light on some details, but I appreciate the fact that you, you dove in and you grappled with these things. I guess I have a question for the committee, which is you, you said, well, we looked at nine issues. Were there 10 or 11? I mean, where did you get the issues? Like, did you generate them? Did our staff provide them? Just curious.

Yeah, I'm happy to take that, Chair Offerman. So various sources, and really our first committee meeting is where we came up with the list, and throughout the convenings of meetings, we added a few things here and there, but for the most part, we really discussed what would be on the list at that first meeting and a little bit the second meeting. And we source those from various places. So first of all, our members on the charter committee talked to the people who appointed them. So whether it was council or Senate majority leader or minority leader, we talked to those people and said, what ideas do you have and are there things that you want us to look at as a charter committee? We also asked staff to talk to other staff members and reach out to departments and find out if there are ideas from staff that need to come forth. And then we also, just kind of in an abundance of caution, I did have Callie make sure that our meetings were published in the various city newsletters just in case anyone in the community wanted to weigh in. So we did some public outreach in addition to reaching out to our own appointing member as well as staff.

All right. So my next question is, um, you have chosen three that you either termed as political expensive, Well, or underway, right? And so I would have liked to get your recommendation on those, I'll be frank, because even if they are political or expensive or whatever, I think it would be useful for us to know those things, how you're feeling, even if you don't have a recommendation specifically now for the charter, it would have been of interest to me to know some of your thought process. For example, I'll take the first one, process for filling council vacancies. I would like to know, was the group split on this? Was there a general feeling but worried about cost? I just am curious. You don't have to answer all. I mean, I'm out of time, but Mr. Vice Chair, I would like to, and I don't know how we want to handle this, I would like to tackle each of these recommendations. I generally do agree with your thoughts. I do. So I really, you know, I'm in alignment. Um, there's maybe one or two, I might've taken a slightly different, um, perspective maybe. Um, and then there's maybe one or two maybe that, um, you didn't address that. I'm kind of curious about. So how would you like to handle that? You, I'm happy to wait for around two or.

Yeah, I was just going to double check online. And then if you want to go through each one of those individually during your second round, I can allow you some more time to go through that. I just want to make sure we get everybody's comments on the first round. Okay. I think Mayor Sheeby, are you online? Do you have any comments?

Yeah, I do. Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for serving on the body. Let me think. The question that I wanted to ask was, is it helpful that sometimes that you have council members come and speak to the Charter Committee? I've always sort of had the opinion that it's best to remain extremely independent of your thoughts, but then I've had other Charter Committee members mentioned that it would be good to hear the perspective on the other side of the Council since some people on the Charter Committee have served on this side of the dais at times and some haven't. But there can be a different perspective because of serving on that side of the dais. So I'm just curious for the future of your meetings, is that helpful to hear some perspective from council members? But then I worry, does it weigh the opinion And I've always had sort of, I like the independence and I use that same sort of thought process with planning commission. But I'm just curious because I've often heard, oh, it would be helpful to know that because we never thought of it that way. And it's kind of going down the lines of Councilwoman Dewar in some aspect of how you reach a conclusion. So, I don't know if that's helpful or hurtful or what you, what the body might recommend for future meetings in that capacity. So, thanks everyone. Appreciate you.

This is Member Shin for the record. Last cycle, when we met as the charter committee, all of us that were appointed by a council member, after our first initial meeting, we were all charged to meet with you individually before we came back and met for the second time as a charter committee. And then we each presented what our council members recommended for the charter committee. So that way, we were getting feedback from your perspective, but also weren't requiring you to go to more meetings and mix further. So that was just an idea that I thought worked well last time around.

I did notice on this list that the mayor does not have an appointment on the charter committee.

So following your process, following your process, um, and I did meet with her, but she, um, did have to step down for just, I think, timing. It wasn't... No, and so... I will reappoint or, you know, probably probably doesn't make a lot of sense. It might make more sense for a new mayor to do that appointment, but also each council member has a different perspective, maybe on certain things. So you might not be getting, you know, an overall broader view, you know, in that capacity, if you're just meeting with one, I know council on breakfast at the time attended, many, I think, charter committee meetings, she told me, and I didn't know if that's helpful or, again, you know, want to keep it very independent, but also want to make sure that there's also conversations around things that you might not have had a perspective on. So that's all I'm saying. You know, if there's a better way to work collectively together, then that's great. I just haven't I just didn't know the preference of if you think it's helpful or not.

Chair Offerman, I'll just jump in and I don't want to speak on behalf of the entirety of the Charter Committee, but I will say that I do think there is value in having some level of separation between the Charter Committee and Council. I think it's really great for individual members to get input from their the person who appointed them. But I think that coming to the meeting and giving too much influence might really shape the outcome of the charter committee. So I guess, like I said, I want to speak more on behalf of myself. This isn't something that we talked about as a whole. But I do think having some level of separation is probably good to make sure that we come forward with our own recommendations that are not biased by the goals of city council.

Okay, great. Thanks so much, Tess. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Yeah, Council Member Reese.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor, and I said I wouldn't use a second round, but I will now. I wanted to speak to the gender-neutral language recommendations, and I really think that Stacey Spain said everything that I would say, so I won't belabor the point, but I do think there is a moment for us to acknowledge that language matters, word choices matter, and I went through the charter and looked at some of the changes because, of course, I think, and as Ms. Spain said, Some have made it a much bigger issue than it really is. It is not controversial in my mind in any way. It is certainly the reason why I refer to my colleagues as council members rather than as a councilwoman or a councilman. And so I just think it's a good thing to have language that gets cleaned up and reflects who we want our charter to be a reflection of. So like I said, I am supportive of all the recommendations of the charter committee. I have no objection to any of them. Certainly wouldn't want to Opine about what we ultimately choose to run as the bills that we will run at the city but I think that the Charter has made a really great effort to Grapple with these issues and I'm supportive highly of their recommendations Thank you.

Yeah council member Anderson

Yes, I just wanted to make it clear that I don't have any issues with any of the recommendations that have been made. I support them. I am not sure, like Councilmember Reece, if we are going to have room for a charter bill this year. some really exciting things happening in the community that we may need the support this year with our legislative bill drafts. But I think that this has been a really thoughtful process and I'm appreciative of all the different perspectives that you brought for us to consider.

Thank you. Council Member Dewar.

Yeah, thank you. Following on what Councilmember Anderson just spoke to, often there are ways, or I'll put it this way, sometimes there are ways to achieve a goal without actually changing language in the charter. I'm going to give you an example. I've already recommended it. In case we don't have a charter bill, Um, for example, I'm highly supportive of changing the timing of the vice mayor appointment. I mean, it makes ultimate sense to me, but if we don't have a charter bill and the charter is what it is, I still think that we could agendize appointment of the mayor. And then when we get there, continue it. to a later date in December to basically achieve the same goal, but still sticking with what the charter says without having to have a charter bill. And there may be ways there may on some of these to also fix some things. I mean, we can't fix the gender neutral language unless we fix the charter. Right. So very quickly, I just want to go through these. I totally agree with this concept of the terms of the legislatively appointed charter committee makes ultimate sense. Really add some clarity. Why should things be confusing? That doesn't help anyone. The residency requirements for the city manager, I am appreciative of the fact that you didn't go just with the city limits, to your very point, Madam Chair, about, you know, we have an inner fingering of city annex property with county property, and it makes no sense to me that you're in one part of Collin and you could be the manager, but you can't live in another part of Collin Ranch. be the manager. It just makes no sense. I don't know if I would have gone 60 miles. I like the idea of a distance residency because it gets to the issue of you want to be close enough. So if there's an emergency, you can drive here and be part of the EOC team as an example. You also want to be part of the culture of the city. So you kind of need to live close and get your head in the game. I might have picked as little as 30 miles. It still would have included Reno Sparks, Washoe County. It would have included Carson City, et cetera. It might not have included Fallon, because Fallon is 60 miles away. But I might have gone with a 30 mile prescription or even 50. I'm not sure where 60 came in. Why did you not pick a hundred? You know, I'm, I'm interested in how you landed on that number, but not so much that I feel like having a giant conversation about it, but I'm telling you what, if I was on the charter committee, what I might've said is something a little closer, but, um, using the mileage thing I think is really good. Um, gender neutral language, you know, triple check. Yes. Assistant fire chief position, you know, it'll probably eventually get there. I already mentioned the timing of the vice mayor and then this joint meeting requirement. Absolutely. You should be able to simply present your, um, proposals at a regular council meeting without all the time and energy it goes to to set up a special meeting. I'm not sure it's worthwhile, you know, expenditure of funds. So I would like to add to, to my comments. Um, I, while these things are political or expensive, the things you did not take a position on, I actually would have liked to hear from you on those issues. And I'll pick the Indian colony voting. When I was first running for office, I actually met with the Indian colony. So this is like 13 years ago. And I discussed this very issue with them. And I was all for them voting in city elections if they were in the city. And it took me a while to learn that they were not annexed into the city. I knew that their land was sovereign nation land. But what I'm very confused about is that they could vote for all the legislature positions They could vote for federal positions. They just couldn't vote for city positions. And this really bothered me. It felt very exclusionary and just wrong to me. So I really would like to see that addressed as an example of something you didn't address that I really would like to get it fixed. I've been thinking about it for the whole 12 years I've been on council. Um, uh, And then finally, I have previously taken a position on the election appointment of the city attorney. I must be very forthcoming. At every similar meeting like this, I have advocated to not have the city attorney elected. Excuse me, elected. Carl well knows that he's not here today. The reason is, is Reno and Sparks are the only two cities in Nevada that elect their city attorney. Every other city. appoints every other city, all the cities. And to me, I do not understand why we are different. I do not understand why we are so special that we are treating it different. And I know it's become a huge discussion over in Sparks right now, and they're in and out about this issue, but I just think for... simplicity, conformity, that it makes sense to be able to appoint your legal advisor. It just does. And Carl knows how I feel. Um, we ha it's okay to have a difference of opinion. He's serving in the position. Um, so that's one. And then I want to just say something else. Uh, this is something that would have been very controversial if you would have identified it as an issue. And I did not share it with my, um, uh, nominee to this committee. And that is, We adopted word only voting through a charter amendment and it had previously been tried to do by the legislature without charter amendment. It had been on a ballot initiative. It did not pass. It finally passed with a charter amendment and I will share, I don't want to speak for the mayor, but I was uncomfortable at the time. I know she's expressed. She was too, but we did it. The concept was that it would reduce the cost of elections and it would widen, therefore widen the pool of who could run. making it less expensive to run and more available for everyone to participate in this form of government. But what we've seen is actually the opposite. And this is what happens sometimes when you have a theory, but you experience a reality that is not the same. What I saw is that the cost of elections grew tremendously. And I'll just share mine because I happen to know it. I had an opponent that spent over half a million dollars in a city council election. where to heretofore, prior to that, I think the max was $150,000. So instead of reducing the amount in and of itself to run, actually, it went up three times. And so I don't know that if that was one of the goals that it was to achieve by going to ward-only voting. There are downsides, too. There are pros to word-only voting, but there's also downsides. And one of the downsides that we hear a lot about is that each of us, and myself included, are less in touch with the other wards. And so we tend to focus on our ward and the projects that are in our ward and how this would affect our ward and so on. And it's almost become even more so. Once we went to word-only voting, it became the norm to think mostly about, quote, our people. and less about the other residents of the city. And so I would have liked to, even if we never could come to an agreement on that, it was hard to get here in the first place, to unravel it. I wouldn't mind in 10 years or something, future charter committees took this up and discussed the pros and cons. of ward-only voting. So many people have told me they like the old way better. And just to remind you, the old way was that your ward narrowed everyone who applied down to the top two vote-getters, and then the top two went to the general election. So the entire city could vote on them. And then they also, therefore, derived support from throughout the city. And therefore, they were also accountable to all the members of the city for all of their votes. I think it's a better system. I would love to see us return to it, but it's a bit of a commercial, I know. But I did want to share, it happened at this meeting, and I regret it in some ways. So thank you. Thank you. A little bit of a, what do you call that? Anyway, an opinion piece here.

No worries. You're good. Thank you. I'm going to go online to Mayor Sheehy to see if you have any comments or questions you'd like to hop in there.

Thank you, Councilman Stewart, for being brave to raise that because it was highly political at the legislature. And I was kind of on my own island, but I've lived it. And it's such an unfortunate aspect of to the work that needs to get done on the city side. I also think it's very disingenuous that an entire council can vote on projects throughout the entire city, but the citizens of Reno can only vote on their perspective board, their ward members. And I think that is very problematic. And I have seen where it's gotten incredibly territorial for CDBG funding and other funding in board specific areas, which only hurts The outcomes of this entire city, you know, it's, it's very disheartening to see when I go to events that if that word member cannot show up, there is no incentive for other. Council members to show up and support either or I have also seen it, but I will say I have a few council members that have been amazing champions for the entire city and never forgot that. And I think that's because that was the process of which we worked under the guidelines at that time. I've also seen where a council member, if they know their ward specifically, and that's why it was supposed to be reflective of the people they represent in those wards. And I have seen it where maybe a council member has wanted a certain project because they know that ward specifically needs that certain type of project, whether it's affordable housing or other businesses or things of that nature, and the rest of the council can vote against it. So honestly, I commend you Councilwoman Dewar for bringing it up. It was one of the most political things that I've ever seen and absolutely disappointing. I can't even begin to tell you how it's fragmented this city on many different levels. And it has really hurt the outcome. And I believe it because I've seen it firsthand. And I think it's unfortunate. And anyone that wants to raise this in the future, I commend you for having the political guts to do so. So thank you, Councilwoman Dewar. I am incredibly grateful that you brought it up. So thank you.

This is Member Noms.

Just really quick, can you please speak directly into the microphone? They're having difficulty hearing on Zoom.

Thank you. This is Member Knox. I completely understand the frustration and I hear you. I've worked with all of you on different projects. I get it. I also work with 63 legislators that have the same issue and it is the same type of voting. At the end of the session, those big Christmas tree bills come. and you look at how that money is broken down, and they are special projects for special districts. So I hear you, but I'm not sure that it truly makes sense as our congressional districts do it. our legislature does it, as well as our local governments. So again, I hear you, but I think there is a much bigger picture in the elections that they all represent their districts, their wards, and that is the way of elections.

And just to say thank you, Ms. Knox. You're actually one of the very first people that I met whenever I was running for office. And so I highly regard your opinion on many, many levels. And I enjoyed working with you. So I just wanna say thank you and I commend you for speaking up. I would just say on the local level, we are very different. These jobs are, 365 days a year. Theirs are not. And if we were a city the size of San Francisco, I understand that ward-only voting concept. I think that, you know, might make sense because they have very different populations. But I don't think we are a city that size and it just, it fragments us. And it's unfortunate to see that the rest of the city and particularly the voters, we've seen it where the board member has voted against the project and the rest of the council votes for it. And they're supposed to know their ward better than anyone else. That was the reason behind it. It should reflect the residents. And that's the messaging that I heard during that discussion at the legislature. I just want people to understand why sometimes it doesn't make sense, and the council should work as a whole for the entire city. So that's my frustration. But like I said, Ms. Knox, I just, I'm really grateful for everything that you have done, because it's been many years of your service. So thank you, I appreciate you, and your comments are very well taken.

Thank you council member Anderson.

Okay, so I'm gonna try really hard to not get defensive here But the way that I hear what you said is that you are vouching for the fact that decisions of individual council members do not take into consideration what they think is their best and Decision on behalf of the city overall that is offensive every time it gets brought up in this council It's offensive every time the Hunger Games gets brought up. It's offensive now I've only been here for less than two years, but there's never been one single time that I have taken a vote that is a reflective of the fact that I don't have to consider the entire city's opinion so I Be very careful, I would say, about assuming that you know what I think or what my decision-making was and who I was considering before I cast my vote. I'm speaking on my behalf because I do not speak for other people, and I'm looking at you, Ms. Dorr, because you know how I feel about this. When people say things indicating that you understand or know what someone else was thinking when they had made a decision, that is irresponsible. Very irresponsible. I do not get the impression ever I've never gotten the impression from anyone on this council that they only care about their political future and they only care about their ward members, so I Don't know if maybe it's I've stayed out of this conversation up until this point, but I resent that accusation and And it's really, really irresponsible. Okay.

Well, if I may, Mr. Vice Mayor.

If I can, I'd just like to hop in there real quick. I haven't mentioned anything. Well, I'd just like to respond, though. Yeah, I'll give you your time. Okay. You know, I share similar thoughts. concerns I think from my perspective and if we go to the campaigns over the last few years and we look at the numbers if the voting were to change to how it was there are certain parts of our city that would Completely decide who the representatives are just based on sheer numbers and so for example if you look at the number of votes that were cast in Ward 3 in 2024 it was less than what councilmember Reese himself received and that wasn't even Encompassing all of the votes that were taken in Ward 5 and so if somebody that came out of Ward 3 was popular in Ward 5, but not Ward 3, they would have still won that election. And that person who Ward 3 would have chosen would have been elected by somebody outside the city, outside of the ward, but still within the city. And I think in terms of the assumption that goes along with members that have gotten onto this council based on the current rules, it is a little disheartening to know that you, there are some members of this body who feel like we're only considering people that I'm only considering the people in Ward 3, when the livelihood of the members of Ward 3 and the economic vitality cannot survive without the economic drivers of every other single ward within this city. And so I think we all rely on each other to have... and have good relationships within our city and our council and be good representatives of everybody overall. And if there is dissatisfaction with the decision that was made within our wards, then I think there has to be readjustments that have to be made in different things that have to be implemented throughout the process, not necessarily a charter of voting or an election change that needs to occur for that to happen. So I'll just jump in there and say that. I'll also say that the six amendments that are being presented to me seem fair, but I think all of the points that have been brought up in terms of us considering what needs to happen currently and in the future with all of our BDRs, with what's happening with the Reno Housing Authority, the parks regionalization, as well as fire regionalization. There are a lot of topics that we need to discuss to define what we move forward with in terms of our BDRs, but I'd also like to show appreciation and gratitude for all the members of the Charter Committee for all of your work. and your robust conversation that you've brought to us today. Thank you, with that, I'll send it over to you, Council Member Dillard.

Thank you. You know, whenever we're having communication, it's important to be clear in your language, which I tried to be, and to speak in terms of I, I feel this way, and I spoke using I language. I said, this applies to me, As a council member, I did not make any accusations to anybody. I said it may result in a different outcome. And I said I focus on my ward more exclusively now than I did before. And I've lived under both systems. And I am just explaining my perspective, which I'm allowed to have. And it's certainly OK for it to be different than anyone else's. And I think that I get to enjoy that privilege as well. And I've never said any one of you did anything bad or that it was based on some other calculations. Only you know what's in your head. Not I. And so what I am sharing with you is that I have seen a change. You didn't live through that change. You weren't here then. But I have seen an evolution and change over 12 years. And I'm sharing some regret for an action I took, which was to vote yes on a change. And that it did not reach—it had some idealistic aspirations that came from the legislature about why they thought it was a good idea. And those particular aspirations I do not think were met. Now, I also said there are some positives to having ward-only voting. Theoretically, it can reduce the cost of voting, theoretically, and it may have in some other wards. It may have. And also, it really frees up your time to focus on your ward. And if someone calls you, you can say, please call so-and-so in such-and-such ward, which we all do. We pass on the issue. So I'm sorry that someone would feel accused or offended, like you, Member Anderson. But that is not my intent. It was not aimed at you. It was not aimed at any single person here. I'm just explaining, if that did not come across, that is my intent, was not to accuse anybody of anything. You're living in a certain system. You're an outgrowth of that system. I came through a different system, lived in both systems, and I'm just sharing. I'm not adding anything to an agenda here. I'm not adding a recommendation. I won't be bringing it up. I'm just sharing thoughts, because when else would we ever do this? No, no, we would not be having this kind of conversation. I'm an outgoing council member. I won't be voting on those kind of things going forward. And so I'm just sharing with you some philosophical thoughts about it. And sometimes people go, oh, the good old days, right? And it may or may not be the good old days. And it may or not, I don't know that anyone's system is perfect or even better. But so please, I understand that how you heard me, but that was not how it was intended for either of you that have just responded. I'm just sharing. Great points. And also, Lindsay, Ms. Knox, great points to you too, but I'll just add one thing, and that is that we deal with people's homes. Land planning decisions deal with individuals, individual developers, and it is one of the most difficult and most controversial things we do. It involves everyone. We don't have that kind of turnout at the legislature, often on any one bill, where rooms are filled with hundreds of people. So I do think there is a substantive difference with what we do at local government. So just some things to consider. It ain't going to be changing, but I can share my opinion.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. A couple of things. Number one, can I ask of the charter members who serve more than one time? Yeah, so many of you have a lot of familiarity with this debate, right? A robust debate about whether it should be ward only or citywide, all those things. Of course, there was a system that was ruled unconstitutional. You couldn't run, ward, and then go to citywide, right? That has been eliminated by the United States Supreme Court. And so really it's a question of whether you have all ward voting or whether you have what we used to have, which was a hybrid system, which I posit is the best one, but which members of this committee work very actively against in the last legislative cycle. I was the last person to serve as the at-large member in the Reno City government. And so that meant that each person who lived in any particular ward had their ward member to turn to, the mayor to turn to, or the at-large member. So you really had three people. Maybe you didn't agree with the ward member, and so you still had people to go to. Unfortunately, the legislature many, many years ago changed that and it moved us to the system, which we have today, which I appreciate its uniqueness. I do think there is a... There was some elegance to having a hybrid system, right? It wasn't ward only. It wasn't citywide only, which is what your options are now. It was that there were the five wards, the out-large member and the mayor. And again, that ship has largely sailed. But I think what Ms. Dewar and Madam Mayor and I think I would posit is that when this charter continues to do the good work it does, It may return to this issue at some point in time in the future. And ask yourselves, what has experience led us to conclude? And again, I think that when we were last in the legislature, it must have been three sessions ago. And someone could correct me if I'm wrong. And there was an effort two sessions ago to preserve the at-large member. Members of this committee spoke very negatively, I think, mostly because of the personal animosity towards me as the then member, as though somehow it was related to me. It was not. And that's unfortunate because there was a certain elegance to the at-large member. And again, perhaps you will never take it up, and perhaps it was the opportunity for my colleague to my left to talk about experience and the 12 years they've served and what they have seen it do or not do to the larger body. I believe in good conscience everyone does everything they can for the benefit of this city. That's why we serve. Whether we're voted on by the very narrow group of people in our neighborhood, I think Vice Mayor Martinez makes the best case for representational models and democratic models as to why we have in the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that it is more representational to have that ward specifics. And so good arguments on all sides. I thank my colleagues for the robust discussion, rather academic because, of course, there wasn't one of the recommendations. But it does highlight one of the things we said earlier, that when the charter committee bill is opened, anyone could pile into it, which means any individual legislature who thinks that ward-only voting is not the way could go back in and over the top. So we have to be careful and guard against that sometimes. Thank you so much, Mr. Vice Mayor, for that interesting discussion.

Thank you.

I just wanted to note for the record that Council Member Ebert has joined remotely at 216.

Great. With that, I will go online to see if Madam Mayor or Council Member Ebert have any comments.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you. First of all, from Councilwoman Anderson and Councilwoman Dewar and Councilman Reese, I think... All of you have made excellent points that this could live in the future under the Charter Committee. And I think that's probably why Mr. Stewart brought it up. So I think all of you make excellent points. I also think the council members sitting there are, you know, they've been dealt the hand they dealt, right? That's not any fault of yours at all in any way. But I, you know, from Liz's experience, that's just my perspective. I don't think, I think both have positives and negatives. There's no perfect pill. The reason I put those comments on the record, and I apologize, Ms. Anderson, if you think that I was personally attacking you, that was not the intent at all. I'm just coming from lived experience on both sides, not for It's out of process, not out of person in any way. But I just want those on the record of where I think that there are faults. And actually, I'm glad Ms. Ebert has jumped on from the respect that she often has sometimes felt frustrated with certain things in her ward. And not that that's, it's her perspective. And listen, and I've seen great discussions, great outcomes on also other issues, weighed in by Councilwoman Anderson, very thoughtful, thought she cared about all words. And I'm not saying that directly. I just think it's a system that sometimes when you're put in it, you are confined. in ways that sometimes we don't get the best outcomes for our ward representatives. And that can be frustrating. The one too, where I do hear a lot from the public is that how can this be? I live in this ward, my ward representative voted against it. She felt the same way I did, but everyone else voted for it. And so, and then they end up only being, they end up are they're the ones that actually got a say in the process who they voted for and then they feel like that you know their word is not being heard to the capacity in which um the system allows it right so we all vote on projects across the city but the residents don't and i and so i hear frustrations on that end too so i think there's both sides of the argument i'm just saying for future discussion of the charter committee if it's ever brought up, which I don't think it will be. I think it's too much of a hotbed. Things to consider because I did live in both. So that's all I wanted to say.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Council Member Evert.

I don't have comment at this time. Thank you.

Thanks.

It does look like Member Barron has her hand raised.

Yeah. Member Barron? If you'd like to unmute.

Hello, yes. That discussion kind of took a longer turn, so I wanted to kind of rewind a little bit and just answer a couple of the questions. From my perspective, not speaking for any other members of the committee, I think that any... opportunity that the members of the charter committee would have to even just hear concerns or where council members heads are at in a collaborative sense, not in a sense of not remaining independent would be extremely helpful. I would have loved to have Council members in the room, because I will say that a lot of the items that we did not choose for the came from a place of they're not going to vote for that. And now it sounds like some of those things we were divided on such as like appointments and. I think it just would have been nice to have a little bit more reassurance or just hear where folks were. So, in the future, I think it would be wonderful to have council members and Madam Mayor at those meetings, because we did not, you know, though we worked together very well, we didn't all agree. And a lot of the things were us guessing whether or not this would be something Council would approve. and i'm regrettably we did not put some of those things on there that i think have a little bit more teeth i appreciate the discussion and i just think that you know it's very obvious that any chance Uh, that the governing body has to work on communicating and collaborating with each other is a good exercise that needs to happen. Um, and also that. Why this should remain a special meeting because of this for our council meeting, we wouldn't be out of here until midnight. Um, but I just appreciate everyone's lively discussion and do encourage you to give some insight at those at those meetings in the future. I think it would have been helpful from my perspective.

Great. Thank you, Member Barron. Are there any other hands raised? Okay. Do we need to take a motion on this item?

I just wanted to have Yes. So, Chair Offerman, I just wanted to say I really appreciate that conversation, and I think we can certainly have ward-only voting as a discussion item for a future charter, and I don't know that I'll be on that charter, but I think that, you know, that's easily something that can be included in conversation, and who knows whether the Charter Committee will decide to move forward with that. And then I did just want to go back to a point made by Council Member Rees at the very beginning, And that is to say that we as a body certainly discussed sort of the idea of opening the charter and the concern there and how things can get changed at the legislature. So I just wanted to say that we have also discussed that concern and we know that that exists. And so we had that in consideration as we brought forward these recommendations. Thank you

Director will see your city manager Bryant there any other comments or questions no Callie will see for the record if the the members of the council want to take a motion the motion on the table is just to accept the committee's report which is an attachment just for the record we've got a motion by member Reese and a second by councilmember Dewar all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion passes unanimously thank you all That will close our business item and go to public comments.

Mr. Vice Mayor, I think both bodies have mayoral and council or commission comments before that.

Yeah, sorry about that. We will go to city council comments first. Are there any comments? Yeah, Council Member Dewar.

Yeah, I just want to reiterate our thanks for serving in this role. It takes time, and you have to dive into fairly arcane stuff, and you also have to figure out How does this really work at the city I mean these are the words on the page but like how does the fire chief actually operator the system fire chief or what would it mean to require the manager to live in the city you know you really have to. think it through. You have to do a deep dive and that takes time and brain power and energy. And just, uh, you know, I'm incredibly grateful for your willingness to serve and do this job. Um, that said, it was interesting when council member Reese said who served before. I do think, that a little tenure on the committee serves you well? So now, for some of you, this is your first time. And now you've had a first bite at the apple, and you're starting to understand how things work. How much deeper analysis could you do with the second round? You know, I do think this is a committee that benefits from a little bit of experience and longevity, you know, once you get through the basics. And then lastly, I know I'm just going to reflect that, you know, this is my last opportunity to speak about that issue and to the right place. And that's why I've done it. And nothing I say here is personal. I'm not trying to figure out how anybody else feels but myself. And I won't be in this role in a future charter committee. And this is a charter issue, the one I was talking about. And even if given a chance to vote again, I might vote for word-only voting again because there are pros and cons. But I do want you all to be critical thinkers and not just accept, well, this is how it is. on anything. I want you to challenge the status quo and wonder about, well, what if? And could it be? And is something better? And I really think that that's the greatest gift that I can give to you, is to encourage the freedom of thought. critical thinking, questioning attitude, I think makes us all better. And because you might bring up an issue in the future that someone else may not feel is appropriate or may not support, you still need to see through what you think. In other words, if you're concerned about something with the way the city is run or how we're managed, but the issues about the charter, then absolutely. Even if the council's like seven, Oh, we don't agree. You should be bringing it up in my opinion, because that who else is going to do this, but you. So I, if I can have any ability to empower you to think deeply and critically, that's my goal here right now. So thank you.

Yeah, council Maurice. Thank you. Mr. Vice mayor. I just wanted to add my thanks to each of you again for serving It's pretty impressive because I know each of your backgrounds whether it's in the legislature or an advocacy Some of you have been lawyers for longer than I've been alive I mean, this is an important task and so I'm grateful to each of you for your service We don't get to spend a lot of time with one another and often many of you I'd like to spend much more time with and And so thank you again for the work that you've done and for the presentations today. Grateful for it.

Do any of the council members online, Council Member Eber or Mayor Schiebe have any comments?

No, thank you.

No, thanks. Yeah, turn it over to you, Chair Offerman. Thank you.

Do any members of the Charter Committee have any announcements or reports? No, no, no. Thank you.

Okay, with that, we'll go to our closing public comment. Is there any public comment, Madam Clerk?

We do not have anyone registered to speak, but we did receive seven comments after 4 p.m. yesterday, July 15th. They have been distributed and will be available with the final meeting packet on the public meeting portal.

Great, thank you. With that, I'll look for an adjournment to the Reno City Council meeting. Oh, yeah. Chair Offerman, if you all want to convene first. If you adjourn, sorry. Wrong word.

Sure, yeah. And then we'll adjourn. I have a motion to adjourn our meeting. Okay. I have a motion from Member Taylor, a second from Member Shin. All those in favor? All right.

Great.

Anyone in opposition? No. Motion carries unanimously. We are adjourned.

Second. We have a motion and a second from Council Member Anderson. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you all for all the work. Have a good rest of your day.