City Council - Regular Meeting

All right.

Can you hear me? Yes, we can.

Good morning.

All right. Good morning, are we ready?

All right, do we have on Zoom?

Yes, Council Member Ebert is on Zoom. Okay, perfect. All right, here we go. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. So I have a very special guest. This is the mayor for the day, Serenity Griffith. She did not know she was coming. This was a surprise, wasn't it? What do you think? she's speechless and her wonderful father Elijah Griffin he reached out to my office and asked if we could send her something special because guess what what's happening Sunday she's gonna turn 13 so we thought wouldn't it be more fun to do a surprise and sort of ambush you so what do you think You like it? Okay. And we also have to get her back to school. So one of the things she does love, we both have a love for, is what?

Dogs.

Dogs. And cats. And cats. And I hear you volunteer at the SPCA? Is that true? All right. I love that. Okay. We are going to get started. We're going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Would you please lead us in the Pledge? Okay. All right. Here we go.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Good job. All right, now I'm quick.

We are calling roll for the Wednesday, September 9th, 2026, Reno City Council meeting. Councilmember Taylor? Here. Councilmember Dewar? Here. Vice Mayor Martinez?

Here.

Councilmember Ebert? Here. Councilmember Reese?

Here.

Councilmember Anderson? Here. And Mayor Schieve? Here. You do have a quorum.

All right. Thank you so much. I should also recognize Elijah Jr., which is her brother, and you are what, 11? Yes. He's certain. He's certain. Okay. Well, it's nice to see you too today. Okay. Sending it back to you.

Madam Mayor, our first item today is public comment. It should be noted for those in attendance that comments are to be addressed to the Mayor and Council as a whole. Comments heard under this item will be limited to three minutes per person and may pertain to matters both on and off the Council's agenda. Council may not take action upon any matter not agendized on today's agenda. When you are called on for public comment, please state your name for the record and begin speaking. The timer will begin when you say your name and you will be afforded three minutes. for those participating in chambers in accordance with council rules 6.3.11. While in this room, please be respectful. Disruptive behavior from audience members like clapping, yelling, whistling, etc., 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 did you want to do the proclamations first?

I do. That would be great. Okay, I'm going to send it over to Councilwoman Dewar. You are going to read the 988 proclamation. And then I'm going to send it over to Councilwoman Anderson. All right, do we have anyone? There you are. I didn't see you sitting back there. Ma'am. Hi. Robin, would you like to, do you want to kick, Robin, why don't you tell people a little bit about who you are and what you do.

So I am Robin Reedy. I'm the interim executive director for NAMI Nevada. That's the National Alliance on Mental Illness here in Nevada. I'm here for 9-8-8 day, which was yesterday conveniently dated 9-8. So NAMI advocates, educates, and supports people who live with a mental health condition. And we are partnered with the state and Carillon, who's the provider of the phone services. And we're just trying to make sure everyone's aware of 988 and uses it whether the crisis is suicide or just whatever they feel the crisis is to call. Over 90% of the calls are handled on the phone. Don't go any further. and less than 1% go to law enforcement when necessary. So there you go. It's something that's working. It's probably, in my lifetime, the biggest change to mental health in this state. I have brought with me our 988 coordinator, Brent Andres, which is a face you'll probably see more often going forward. And then we have our newest intern who started yesterday, Dorothy Maas from UNR.

Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, and just so everyone knows, Robin has been doing this work for how long has it been? She's iconic in mental health.

Boy, do I feel old.

No, but she keeps trying to retire, I hear, but we're not letting her.

Pretty much. Right?

Nope.

So, yes, that's why I'm interim until we get our new... And if you could help with that, Hillary, I would appreciate it. I will still, even in my retirement, be advocating for a 988 revenue increase in the coming session, and my advocacy will include that that extra revenue go to mobile outreach teams across the state.

role thank you for everything that you do and also I think for families NAMI has been so critical so if you have a family member that's experiencing mental health issues you guys have been a godsend for those other families so thank you for everything that you have done you I'm glad you brought up families because that's one of the tools that 988 can be for families most families

When they have a crisis going on, they really don't know who to call, where to call. And they can call 988, and they will navigate the services for them and let them know where they can be going, which is tremendous because our mental health system is a maze and a lot of dead ends. So 988 is a great navigation tool.

Wow. I encourage families to participate. Your support group is phenomenal. And sometimes it's the only lifeline they have. So thank you so much, Robin. Okay, go ahead, take it away, Councilwoman Dewar.

All right, thank you, everyone. Before I read the proclamation, I just wanna say I feel particularly privileged to be able to read this proclamation. Why? Because my father was a psychologist. and he dealt with mental health issues for his entire life, not himself personally, but with many other people. He also ran a hospital in Pennsylvania, and he also joined the VA here in the 70s. In addition, my stepmom was a psychiatric nurse, and so I learned from her. She also was director of nurses at a psychiatric facility, so I learned a lot from her about the hands-on treatment how to help people. And then finally, I just want to mention we have had suicide issues in our own neighborhood and many of us, including myself, have been displaying the signs that say, you know, we're here for you, we care, you matter. And I've had those signs up for years and they're still looking good and we continue to display them. So I think it's an important message to people that are feeling like no one cares. They drive by my house and they see you are important. You matter. We care. And so I think it's just the smallest kind of way that you can send a message without even doing much more is just to show neighborhood support. So with that, I want to read this proclamation. And again, I'm honored to do this. Whereas mental health is an essential component of the overall health and well-being process, of individuals, families, and communities. And whereas suicide and mental health crises can affect people of every age, every background, and every circumstance, and timely access to compassionate support can save lives. Whereas the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline provides free, confidential support by call, text, or chat to individuals experiencing emotional distress, mental health, or substance use concerns or thoughts of suicide. And whereas 988 Day is a national initiative to increase awareness of the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline and the importance of mental health and suicide prevention and the 2026 988 day theme, which is 988 reasons. Your reason is reason enough. It reminds every person that they do not need to be in a severe crisis to seek support. And on that note, I just want to say I'm so impressed with today's current generation because more than ever, they seem to have shed the stigma of seeking help, counseling, therapy, In fact, it's almost like a badge of honor these days that you have a therapist helping you to better understand yourself and to move through crises. And whereas the city of Reno is committed to fostering a safe, healthy, compassionate, and connected community in which residents can access resources and support during times of emotional or behavioral health crises. And finally, whereas recognizing 988-DAY is an opportunity for Reno to increase public awareness of the resource, again, 988, encourage conversations about mental health and suicide prevention, and remind residents that they are not alone. And on that note, I just also want to say that we continue to have suicides in our community. Many of them have touched us personally in this last month. And I know that the people in those families are grieving. They are trying to move forward. They are wondering why the person that committed suicide did not seek help from them, their friends, them, their family, them, their extended community and colleagues. And yet, even though they are friends, even though they talk, they are not reaching out to folks. So it's really up to us to reach out to them, to sense when someone's in a crisis. So on that note, now therefore I, Naomi Dewar, on behalf of Hillary El-Shivi, Mayor of the City of Reno, Nevada, do hereby declare September 8th, 2026, as 9-8-8 day. So thank you.

Thank you.

I want to present this to you, Robin. And I think that we have people standing by to do a photo, it looks like. Okay.

I also want to give a big shout out, I believe it was Tiffany East that started that campaign of encouragement of those signs that I've seen around town. So I want to give her a big shout out and then Steve Shell who does a lot of the work and Jackie for recognizing the value in what Robin's doing specifically. So thank you so much. Great job.

Okay, let's take a quick picture. Okay, you get to stand.

She thinks I'm taller than she is, but really, I'm a lot shorter than she is.

I want you to be able to see. One, two, three.

All right, there you go. All right. Thanks, Robin. Nice to see you.

How are you?

Yeah, you too. Good luck. Great. Okay. Next up, Councilwoman Anderson. This is a very special proclamation and it has touched the lives of so many families in our community and particularly Councilwoman Anderson. She knows exactly what it's like and so she's grateful that you're here today.

Well thank you Madam Mayor. I would like to introduce three superheroes. in our community to everybody here that's at City Hall and potentially watching. It is my honor to introduce the executive director and her team at Northern Nevada Children's Cancer Foundation. So I'm gonna keep it together. I'm not gonna lose it today, but I am gonna tell you a personal story about why Northern Nevada Children's Cancer Foundation means so much not only to my family, but to everyone in this room. Because the number one thing I want to express to you is that when a child gets cancer, their entire family has cancer. Their checkbook has cancer, their jobs have cancer, the kids that are going to school, the teachers that are receiving them that are just the, they're the siblings of the child that has cancer, everyone is affected. And who is there to help them? Bridget, Emily, and Lizzie, who I'm gonna just, the story I'm gonna tell you is my own personal heroic story. from Lizzie, and we've seen Lizzie in those chambers before because she comes in, she advocates for things that are really important to other kids in this area, like mountain biking, being able to do it in a shelter, being able to do it in a safe place, raising money for other things. Lizzie, her job is specifically to find and source grants for Northern Nevada Children's Cancer Foundation. And so on October 15th of 2010, my family received the news that our six-year-old Cooper had ALL. And within 24 hours of that news, I found myself in a hospital room in Oakland, separated from Cooper because he's the superstar. And as soon as we got there on our medical evac plane, they wished him away. And I was walking down this hall in Oakland And I was learning about my new life. And I was learning about Cooper's new life just by observing what everybody was going through there. And I started to spiral. And you want to talk about mental health. I started to go into a very dark place. And then I pulled out my flip phone because it was vibrating. And it was Lizzie. Lizzie called me and she said, hi, Brandy. This is Lizzie Dalton with Northern Nevada Children's Cancer Foundation. And I wanted you to know that we heard about you and Cooper. Those words cleared up my ability to focus, cleared up my ability to summon the courage that parents need to summon to look their children in the eye and tell them that they have nothing to be afraid of and they are going to be okay. And the only reason I was able to do it that day was because of you. And that's just the first thing that you do. It's just the first thing that you do. Northern Nevada Children's Cancer Foundation finds, seeks out the children and their families in this community that are struggling with this. And I'm not talking about zero to 18-year-olds. I'm talking about zero to 27-year-olds. I don't know if people in this chamber know that the fastest growing age group for cancer in the country right now is age 18 to 27 or 13 to 27. It's 15. Well, 15 to 39 is the young adult population.

Oh, all the way to 39. Okay. Yes, that's the young adult population.

Well, I stand corrected.

15 to 39, it's the fastest growing group.

Yeah, the 20s are different. And those young adults are also the humans that have the least resources and really the least awareness of what's going on in their bodies, and they need the most support. And so I just wanted to say thank you. I'm going to read this proclamation, but you three ladies and the entire team that works at NNCCF, you bleed, you sweat, glitter. You bleed and sweat money. You bleed and sweat ideas and resources for these families. And I can say that I was able to keep my head together for three years of treatment with my son because of the support that you gave me. So thank you very much. Okay, so I'm going to read this proclamation, and then I'm going to give you a couple minutes to say a couple words here. Okay. Thank you for putting up with my... my glitter and my energy here today. Okay, whereas child cancer is the number one disease-related killer of our nation's children and nationally, one in 285 children in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer before they reach 20 years old. And whereas in Northern Nevada, approximately 45 children and young adults are diagnosed with cancer every year in Northern Nevada. And due to awareness and research, 85% of children will survive a cancer diagnosis. And whereas in Northern Nevada, approximately 160 children and young adults each year are fighting cancer. And whereas in 26 years, the Northern Nevada Children's Cancer Foundation has provided over $12 million INDIRECT FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE TO LOCAL FAMILIES TO EASE THE TREMENDOUS EMOTIONAL AND FINANCIAL BURDEN FOR THE FAMILY. AND WHEREAS NORTHERN NEVADA HAS EMBRACED THE FIGHT OF THESE BRAVE CHILDREN AND PROVIDED SUPPORT AND ASSISTANCE TO FAMILIES BURDENED WITH THIS HORRIBLE DISEASE, AND WHEREAS NNCCF IS COMMITTED TO RAISING AWARENESS OF CHILDHOOD CANCER IN NORTHERN NEVADA DURING THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER AND THROUGHOUT THE YEAR. NOW THEREFORE, I, BRANDY ANDERSON, ON BEHALF OF HILLARY EL-SHIBI, OUR MAYOR OF THE CITY OF RENO, do declare September 26th Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and I will be wearing gold as much as I possibly can all month to bring awareness to that. So thank you.

Well, I can't really follow up from everything that Brandy just said, but you know, and in CCF wouldn't be able to do this amazing work that we do without the support of our community, our city, you know, everyone comes to rally around these families and that's really what it takes. It takes a village for these families to go through. a diagnosis, and we're not there just to support them financially, but emotionally. A big part of September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. We show up and we let these families know that they are not alone. It is truly an honor to do this work, and I think that Reno and our entire Northern Nevada community should be very proud by that $12 million, because that really is from the support of everyone. and everyone in this room, and it makes a huge impact. So thank you so much.

How can we help you? When I go into your offices, you can just feel the love and support in there. How can people get involved?

Well, I think definitely donations right now are being matched by the William & Pennington Foundation. Matched. So that's great. This is the time to donate, everyone. Yeah, every dollar is double the impact. So that is huge. So I would definitely say... You know, donations make such a huge impact for these families. 80 cents of every dollar donated goes directly to families here in Northern Nevada. And that is huge. So donations are very important. Also volunteer work. You know, we have many amazing signature events. September is extremely busy for us. We're going to be at the Aces tonight. We're going to be at the Reno Air Balloon Races. We have a lot going on, Natalia's night. So going to our website and just getting involved that way. Wearing gold. We also have these super cute shirts. Hold on, I've got to take my jacket off.

These are super cute. No one is stronger than a kid who...

by cancer.

Oh, those are great. So these are really great shirts. So we asked our community to go gold for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and just really, you know, spreading awareness and also letting people know we serve zero through 25, anyone in Northern Nevada that has a cancer diagnosis. And I myself am a two-time young adult cancer survivor. That is why I do this work, is because I believe in advocacy and resources. So we really want to make sure that we aren't missing anyone. So if you hear of anyone that's going through this, please refer them to our foundation, and we can step in and make a huge difference for them and, you know, a really devastating time for them. So, please.

You guys are amazing. And if you ever want to see something really emotional, go and do the bell ringing. That is just unbelievable. I know.

Well, you'll definitely have to come to another one because I know it's been a while.

Well, we love those because that's a big deal. Those are a big deal. So thank you so much. And I know Councilwoman Taylor, you've done a lot of work with them.

Yes.

over the years and also a huge shout out to Shirley Fulkins Robert because she is such a champion as well and so just thank you from all of us and Brandy what a story What a story. Thank you for sharing. Okay, let's take a picture.

Just ever so briefly, I want to mention, since Bridget was talking about things that we could do to get involved, I know that you're always accepting folks to shave for the brave in March. Oh, yes, shave for the brave. Council Member Martinez and I have done our duty a couple of times and also met a mayor in honor of this proclamation. I'm going to allocate $1,000 from discretionary funds to you this morning, and we'll get that process in the next couple weeks and encourage anyone else who has council funds available to do the same.

Awesome.

All right.

All right. Dad, how are you holding up? Good. He's doing good? Okay, good. How are you doing? Good. Good? Okay. All right. You know what? Your dad is really, really special. He wanted to do something so kind for you and make it a big surprise. And you're also a single dad.

Yes.

What a great dad. So make sure you're nice to him, right? What are you going to do nice for him? One thing. Clean your room. She's going to clean her room. Okay. All right. I'm going to send it back to you, Madam Clerk.

Carlos Reyna followed by Tammy Holtz still followed by Terry Brooks.

Thank you. I've been three minutes I'm covering everything you know so I hope this time I cover everything. My name is Carlos Reyna and I'm talking again about RTC the I mean everything I've been talking and I'm talking right now it's I've been on the RTC board meeting but It's just a waste of time to have been there. They have a really bad janitorial cleaning company. Their resume's really spotty and it smells really strong. It smells bad. You know, and that can bring the viruses, you know. You want to keep it sanitized. And you know how the pigeons are pretty messy? So they just grab a bucket and pour water on top of it and just melt it with a broom and just stay there. It looks pretty bad shape, that station there. And the next one is going back up by the Moana pool. You know, when the criminal goes out of order, it goes out of order forever. There was a 12-meal. It was a few months that it was out of order. They said, put it on order. And then after that, they put another sign, put it on back order. It lasted about a few months. And then three more. It was a total of four, you know. for more than one hour order. And it was over a month that I wanted to stay out of order. You know, we need that agreement. The gym is not that big, you know. It's really small, you know. And with all this agreement out of order, you know, we need it. We pay for membership month to month. They get the money. What did they do with the money? So hopefully, you know. And another thing, I've been on every... pool, every gym that has a pool, and from the time they open, the pool is open until the time they close the gym at night. And this is the only gym I have, not that they close during business hours. It doesn't look normal, you know, appropriate, you know, closing during business hours, they close, like there, in there, they close pool, during business hours, that's not normal, normal thing. Because every pool, every swimming pool here, they keep it open from the time they open the door until they close the door at night. Yeah, you got to do something about it, you know, because we pay. You know, it's not fair, you know, for us, you know. It's inconvenient, you know, because we're paying for membership and not have a, you know, not have that, you know, available. And it's not normal. It's not appropriate to have a pool close during business hours. Thank you.

All right, Tammy. All right. Good morning. Good morning.

Good morning. Tammy holds still for the record. I was going to stay out of this, but after doing my research, it was time for me to come forward on several facts after seeing a display that I saw in some public... areas and in a public conference, and I don't appreciate it. It reminded me of 2017 and the false robotics that you really feel for people, but yet you don't do anything. You haven't done anything. That was proven. In 2020, the car fire that got renamed the Poville Fire. If anybody watched... the out back, I think it's called, I can't forget, I forget right now. But anyway, they had Poeville people. They are the poor people and they called it Poeville. This is insulting. This fire in 2020, we started coming to you because it burned up to Virginia Street. We said, what happens if it crosses the freeway? You're building too much. You don't have access for everybody to get out. You didn't listen. You kept approving development, whether you were part of planning, which some of you were, and the ones here in council. You kept building without doing your infrastructure. I watched from my home from the time that I saw the smoke. This is a was put out on Facebook. This was how the fire looked five to ten minutes from the time the fire started. It was a red flag day. Where is, where are the people? Where is the fire protection? Here's what it looked like at 1230. The Polville fire was a live model of how that fire was going to run. Somerset was protected, but us people in the North Valleys, what you think is Poeville, burned. This should have had a bomber on it putting down slurry and didn't. And this was at 1230. Now, I watched... Headlights from Bravo, Echo, Dirt Lemon Drive, all the way in front of Lemon Drive and trying to get out of the valley for two hours. Parking lot. Thank God for the firefighters who stopped the fire from coming back to Lemon Drive, otherwise you would have had a lot of dead people in the car. And I'm angry. I'm angry because the city of Reno, who owns RTC, are so busy spending money every place else but where it needs to be. I also did my research, and I'm not giving you guys copies of this except for to that gentleman over there, because I'm tired of wasting my money and I'm actually wasting my breath. You knew the prevailing winds. Anytime we have a high wind warning, it's 99% of the time going to come from the southwest, which is going to push the fire. What way? To the north, northwest, northeast. You knew where that fire was going to run, but you have protected Cold Springs, you have protected Somerset before you protected us county residents. Now those poor people that did burn out, get burnt because of these fires, they rebuild because of your laws that you have pushed the county to put in, they are going to be paying a higher tax for something just to replace because it's a new building. That is incorrect and wrong. Not happy.

Thank you.

Terry Brooks, followed by Stephen White, followed by Deanne Radcliffe.

Terry, good morning.

Good morning. It's me, Terry Brooks, again. And today I'd like to share with you my thoughts on elderly abuse and what some seniors go through. Abusers usually pick seniors as their targets to be abused, thinking that they, the abusers, won't as likely become accused. Some of the signs that are shown by seniors who have been abused include or if they are easily frightened, depressed or confused. If they have cuts or bruises or if they have abrasions, if they have hypothermia or asphyxiations. If they have unexplained injuries, poisoning or over sedation. If they have malnutrition or have dehydration. If they have untreated bed sores or under medicating, burns or scalding or even de-medicating. Sometimes a senior may suffer because of self-neglect, but if a volunteer fails to provide supervision, then that is their neglect. Sometimes seniors suffer from non-consensual sexual abuse, and sometimes from threats, verbal assaults, and other humiliating abuse. Sometimes a senior is abandoned by a caregiver and suffers from desertion, or is prevented from having visitors, mail, or phone calls, and suffers from isolation. Sometimes seniors have unusual withdrawals from bank accounts or other financial institutions, unauthorized signatures on checks or other documents, or unusual purchases and other exploitations. The Adult Protection Services Nevada Aging and Disability Service Division assists such vulnerable seniors who suffer from abuse and exploitation. So if a senior is having to go through such a situation and doesn't know how to deal with it, I hope someone knows and acts in intervention. Seniors shouldn't have to go through any such abuse. And for those who abuse them, there is no excuse. I would like to thank you all for listening to me today. And I look forward to coming back, even if I'm abused that day.

Stephen White, followed by Deanne Radcliffe, followed by Dana Miller.

Good morning, Mayor and little Mayor and members of the Council. So do you still want to be Mayor? Yeah? Okay, good. Well, you're mayor for the day. What are you going to do about all these city problems we've got now?

Exactly.

This is your one-day chance to correct everything.

Magic wand.

Spent the day yesterday on my boat out in Topaz Lake, and I'm pretty tired. To tell you the truth, I came because David Ducar said he was coming and he was going to buy me breakfast.

Oh, and did he bail on you?

But give you an update on the Art in the Park program. We're gonna be moving the temporary displays over to different parks around the city now. Starting on the 19th of September, we're gonna do Virginia Lakes Park over here. And we're gonna start putting up the different temporary displays in different parks around the city. We got the signage done, and I gotta tell you folks, I'm just totally blown away. When you read the signage, we're actually inviting artists to come down and display their artwork in our public parks. You have no idea how huge that is. I've toured the country for over 50 years as an artist. I've fought the battle for artists' rights for 30 years. What we're doing here in Reno is absolutely remarkable. and it's a wonderful, wonderful thing. We're giving the gift of art back to our kids. I've been fighting for that for 30 years, just trying to deliver the gift of art back to our children that has been taken away from them for decades because of wrong governmental policies. Right now, what we're really doing is we're educating the entire community about the difference between a commercial vendor that's subject to licenses and permits and the First Amendment protected artists. The reason why the fine arts are a form of protected speech is because they're purely expressive. They have no other purpose than to be expressive. Paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, printed self-expression, engraving, stained glass, but only as art for art's sake, not as a functional window or a functional work. music, theater, dance, and film. The one thing that gives the fine arts the full protection of the First Amendment is they're the same as our spoken words. They have no other purpose than to be expressive. There are a lot of people in this country that are under the false impression that the First Amendment only protects spoken or written words. But in fact, the First Amendment protects all forms of human self-expression in all myriad manifestations. so long as it meets two standards. Number one is self-expression. Number two, it has no other purpose than to be expressive. Also, I gotta throw, Nathan's not here today, or I'd be complimenting him. And God bless you, Mayor, for all the years that you've supported me doing this. It means so much to me. You can't imagine. My best friend. I also wanna thank Mr. Hall. Mr. Hall, you know, I'm used to normally fighting with city attorneys all over the country.

Do you, Carl? You don't get a lot of thanks.

I kind of miss fighting with city attorneys. But God bless you, Mr. Hall, for helping me go along with all this. And thank you all for letting me have the range to be doing this.

Well, I have to tell you, because of your long-term advocacy, you have changed it.

See what you can accomplish today when you've got the one day here.

Well, thank you so much. You have done a remarkable job for decades and decades fighting for artists and their rights. So we appreciate you. Nathan is just been such a champion. I can't thank you enough. And then Carl, thank you so much for all that you have done. It is really remarkable. I walked by the other day and I saw the most beautiful acrylic painting over here off of by the river. And it was literally there for someone to just take. It was just, here, this is for you. It was remarkable. Of course, I wanted it, but I was like, someone else has got to have this. But it shows that it's working, and it just stopped me in my tracks. It was about this. It was big. It was beautiful. It was unbelievable. And whoever this artist was, they left it there for someone to take with them for free.

You're sitting on a gold mine. It was incredible. What, 280,000 people? There are so much talent in this city. And we're finally tapping into it like a goldmine.

It's amazing.

And the talent that's going to come from it is going to blow all your minds. It is an incredible thing that we're accomplishing.

Well, I took pictures, so I'll send them to you. So thank you so much.

I'm your messenger, Mayor. I'm here to deliver a gift to the children of your city from the children of Columbine. Thank you. I'll never forget that.

Thank you so much. And you have an animal friend here. He likes bunnies and dogs and everything, but he's got a big bunny flock where he lives.

Show her the picture. I will. Okay.

I will. Thank you.

Take care.

Sorry. She doesn't want to go to school. I said, are you ready to go to school? She said, no. I want to stay here. But we want you to go back to school because we think it's probably much better for you than here. All right. Come on up again. Thank you.

Good morning, members of the Reno City Council. Thank you so much for your service and for taking this lovely one-way feedback. My name is Deanne Radcliffe, and I live in Verdi, and I'm back to talk about Meridian 120 and the impact on Washoe County. So as you can see from the schematic, I have, this is the development that is planned. And I'm just speaking specifically on drainage today. You see the county properties, I put a little note on there. And then up near that red dot is an artificial spillway that they are creating along the steamboat that will go into a catch basin. There will be a 30 inch pipe that'll graduate up to 42 inches. It'll go to that common area, which is really a one acre detention basin. Looking at the Truckee Meadows Regional Drainage Manual, where a lot of this sort of rules and regulations goes to, I found some really fascinating things that really just provide information that the development is not supporting the tenets of the drainage manual and are really contrary to it. So as you'll see here, it says that the policy should be limit the rate of flow from developing properties to the pre-development condition flow rates. If we are taking water into an artificial catch basin and spillway and drain it down to the back of that common area, which will then drain onto the county properties, We're not adhering to that principle, right? Please remember that the property they're developing, the water doesn't hop up from the steamboat, levitate five feet over and go to the county properties. No, indeed it flows through that property. So, unreasonable use law. So that is just recognition that downstream properties should not be unreasonably burdened with increased flow rates. By creating the artificial spillway and catch basin, the drainage law is not adhered to, and the downstream properties will be unreasonably burdened. They are modifying all of the drainage from the steamboat, and again, bringing that down to the county properties. My ask is please make the developers do this the right way. Please make the developers do this the right way. So design storm events. Again, this is all from that Trekkie Meadows manual. Maintain pre-development conditions for major and minor storm. Address overflow. Please hold the developers accountable. Please hold the developers accountable. Let's look at the detention basin. Again, this is all from the Truckee Meadows Regional Drainage Manual. It says local detention facilities are usually designed and financed by developers or local property owners. The facilities are intended to allow development by protecting a site from existing flooding conditions or to protect downstream property from increased runoff caused by development. If we are doing all of this artificial modification up at the steamboat, they are not doing that. They are creating increased runoff, and it's not the right thing to do on this property. Please do not let the developers put their problem onto existing residents. Thank you for your time.

Mr. Vice Mayor. Yes. Just real quick. Could we, I don't know, have you spoken to our city staff? Okay. I'm sorry. So I just want to encourage to make sure our engineers, especially the side of our house, it's not in development review, but does stormwater management and water management make sure they look at this and make sure it's being done correctly? It would be very reassuring to council, I think, if we could get that feedback.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Dana Miller, followed by Lawrence McNutt, followed by Robert Smith.

Do I need to tell you I have something to present? Good morning. My name is Dana Miller and Lawrence and I own the River Inn. We have just experienced more than a few wildfires recently in the area in Somerset in Reno. And I wanted to start by saying that defensible space is very important. It's important to everything. It can make the difference between burning a building down and keeping a structure. And I have this little clip to play here. Hang on.

I don't know why it's not playing.

Anyway, it is Channel 2 News saying that with the bug fire, somebody actually had their home saved because they had defensible space. And also with the Hawk fire saying that if they had had defensible space or more defensible space their home would have been saved But it wasn't and then I would like to also say That we have gotten citations from the city we have been I believed bullied by the city and the neighbors and the city believing our neighbors and what they are saying and And one of the citations that we have, and we have 24 acres of property, 24 acres and old buildings on our property. And we got this citation and it says right here, outdoor storage is not allowed except for furniture designed as outdoor use, such as barbecue plants, plant stands, and basically just patio furniture. We are not a residential property. We are a 24 acre property. And with that being said, I want to know how we're supposed to keep our tractors. We're not allowed to keep our tractors on there. We're not allowed to keep our trailers on there. We're not allowed to keep the equipment that is needed to do the proper maintenance on a property that large. A barbecue is not going to make defensible space. Not only that, but every time we are on a tractor, our neighbors complain. We are grading. The city comes after us for grading. But that is not always the case. Just because you get a picture of somebody on a tractor, they could be doing yard maintenance. They could do fire maintenance. They could be doing all sorts of things. But seeing a tractor on there, we have been cited for many things. And we have a six-foot fence that is covered. It is shaded. And down 4th Street, nobody else has that. Nobody has a covered fence. All their equipment is out there for everybody to see. And we are also being attacked for that. Even though we have one. You can see it from the highway. But I don't believe that that is something that we should be accountable for. We can't make a 30-foot fence. We can't do it.

Thank you. I'm going to pass my time on to Dana Miller.

You can't. Is that a yes?

He would have to speak for the three minutes. I thought it was the rules that we could... No, the time cannot be passed on.

All right, give us one minute then.

Do you want to move on to the next commenter and we can come back? No.

So this is Lawrence McNutt, one of the owners of the River Inn. So the primary point here is we need to do fire abatement. We require on our 24 acres, and just because you guys don't know, we have 175 acres on the other side of the river as well, which we'll be working with the county for fire abatement. We continue to be hindered from doing what's just and safe for our property. And we, yeah. So over on the other side, and on our side, but on the other side, it's the hiking trails. It's called the Steamboat Ditch Trail, which is private property, the majority of it, owned by us. We have hikers on our property every weekend. We invite them. We don't stop them. But we have to do fire abatement. We have to have our vehicles. The fact our vehicles are heavy equipment to clear the, we've done 24 acres of clearing. It's been a huge process, not to mention the clearing on the properties. We continuously from our neighbors, the city receives complaints. We get warnings. We get citations. No one even thought about when they complain about our property being a fire hazard, that's the river end. The neighbors do, and they do it consistently. No one complained about, why don't we put fire hydrants on 4th Street across from the properties that they're so concerned about? No concerns whatsoever. It's all targeted complaints, and the city should take that into consideration when you get these complaints from the same people again and again. should take that into consideration that perhaps it's not a heartfelt safety concern that the building, that we're going to start a fire and burn down the properties which are 150 feet and more across the river. But instead what we get is we get more complaints.

We get more citations.

And more citations. We have a significant amount of costs in legal fees, well exceeding $100,000 in legal fees.

The people that are looking and taking pictures of us doing everything on our property, we pull a pipe out of the river and left it on the banks because it was garbage in the river in front of our property. And we were accused of taking water out of the river. And the city, what'd they do? They came and they said, we must be doing that, so let's go and investigate. Let's go do this. But all they're doing is assuming. When they drive by, they're assuming. Every picture that you get, we could be on a tractor, we could be doing... Things to evade erosion. We could be spreading bark out. We're just trying to make our property better. And all the city does is listen to the neighbors. We have been accused of tax fraud. We have been accused of doing so many things to our own property that nobody knows. And it's just been an inconvenience. And it's been a targeting and a weaponizing of the city. And I am just so disappointed that you all cannot see that. And Naomi, every time I email you, you never even email back.

Thank you so much for your comments.

But you email everybody else back.

Robert Smith, followed by Trevor McLemore, followed by Danny Cleas.

First of all, good morning, everyone. Thank you. This item is actually for agenda item C4. It deals with a request by the city attorney to appeal a case involving my client here, Callie Prendergast. My name is Robert Smith. I'm the attorney for Callie Prendergast. Don't worry, this is not going to be a legal argument. This is just a public policy statement. Ms. Prendergast asked me to read it, so I'm going to read it for her. We are extremely disappointed that the city attorney would seek to appeal the United States District Court's denial of its motion for summary judgment regarding qualified immunity of the officer whose gross misconduct and intentional disregard of evidence resulted in Ms. Prendergast's false arrest and imprisonment. Ms. Prendergast is a young woman who grew up here, went to high school here, had started her own wedding photography business, was working hard to grow her business and was on the road to success when the actions of the Reno detective, who I understand is no longer with the department, brought that to an abrupt end. Because of his and others' conduct, Ms. Prendergast's reputation and business were destroyed. Reno is a relatively small community. Word travels fast. And when your business is dependent upon word of mouth, once you've been labeled a thief, and a fraudster with your mugshot being published, there's no coming back from that. In fact, the Ninth Circuit, which is where the city attorney is seeking to appeal this decision, is the exact same court that ruled mugshots could not be published because they recognize the extreme reputational harm and damage it can cause those who have been falsely arrested. Now, instead of acknowledging the extreme reputation and emotional harm that its officers caused Ms. Prendergast, The city wants to keep fighting, keep litigating, keep punishing Ms. Prendergast for having the audacity to stand up for herself and pursue what is right. To be clear, it is undisputed that Ms. Prendergast did not commit the crime she was accused of. Yet neither the city, the county, the detective, nor the Washoe County Sheriff's deputy that was also involved have attempted to even resolve this matter. In fact, the city opposed a motion by Ms. Prendergast requesting the court order a settlement conference. to see if the parties could resolve the case. Apparently, those involved would rather use our taxpayer dollars to see if they can avoid liability and sweep its officers' bad conduct under the rug rather than doing what is right by compensating the victim of a false arrest and imprisonment whose reputation and business was ruined. Thank you. My name is Robert Smith. I'm with Silver State Law. I've been an attorney here for the past... 18 years, but I've been practicing law for 30-plus years. But thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Trevor McLemore followed by Danny Cleas.

All right. I'm Trevor McLemore. What I'm requesting is some kind of corrective action. I always start at the small scale and work my way up. So I called. There was an Instagram comment. Normally, it wouldn't elevate to the level of me speaking here. But I called 311. It wasn't removed. A few hours later, I called again. And finally it was removed. I talked to the communications manager, and she gave me a reason that, you know, of why the comment was published that didn't make sense. I would have gone to the Ward 3 meeting, but it was canceled, so that's why I'm here. Normally I do get a lot of support, and I've been impressed with city officials, you know, police officers, firemen in the city of Reno. So this is kind of a one-off, which is why it surprised me. But There was an Instagram post on August 26th. And the context of it was I have an Airbnb. I just had some evacuees book it. I was doing some research because I was basically taking off all the price except basically how much it would cost me to clean it. And I wanted to understand how to support them and that kind of thing. So I was looking at the official information that was coming through the city to try to get a better understanding of what was happening. And there was an Instagram story, and it read, All right, Reno, we have a message from our fire department, but I'm going to say it for them because I'm sure they can't say it for themselves. Everybody stop being effing stupid for a week. And then it went on. But this was shared by the official fire department of the city of Reno, and then it was shared by the official city of Reno, Instagram. And that shows, that posts as their actual story. And I thought... I thought everyone would recognize why that post wasn't great, which is why I was surprised that the response I got from the communications director was, our intent in sharing the referenced post was to reinforce the importance of fire prevention following the recent fire activity in our community. or reaching audiences that might not typically engage with the city of Reno. And obviously that is not acceptable to me. Just a little bit of my background. I've been in public service for 24 years in the Navy. One of my jobs was the executive officer of a... military base in the Middle East. And I had an emergency management department reporting to me. I've been in an EOC during emergencies. So I'm not an expert, but I've read a lot of instructions, and I know that this is not normal. Obviously, sharing is a form of endorsement. It fails to provide actionable information as insulting. And it undermines authority and reflects poorly on firefighters that are doing hard and dangerous professional work. I built a house in Reno, and not every code is perfect, logical, or up-to-date, but I was professional to everyone who worked in the city the entire time, and I spent a lot of my own money, too. That's all I have. I hope it gets fixed.

Thank you for your service, first of all. Thank you very, very much. Did you say you had an Airbnb that you were renting? Yes. Is that what you said?

Yeah, and I was cutting the price. I mean, normally, because of... Birdie Man, it would go for about $1,200 for the week, and that's what they booked it for. And so I called Airbnb and they cut it down to, I think, like $400. Thank you. Thank you so much. But I also wanted to, like, follow up and understand what the actual situation was. So both for support and because I also had someone who I'm pretty sure was a scammer

There was a lot of that. That's why I asked you. I'm going to reach out to you if you wouldn't mind. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Danny Cleus. Okay, Danny, come on up.

Danny Cleus, 53-year resident of North Valleys. First of all, I want to say whoever took the water out of the chambers, You need to bring it back because I get dry mouth and you guys all drink coffee and everything else. Why can't we just because of somebody in some other state or city through a water bottle or whatever they did? That's wrong. You guys wouldn't need all this security if you guys would do the right thing, which comes to this. A lot of these fires and people getting homes destroyed, damage, fences destroyed, yards destroyed, vehicles destroyed. It all comes down to you guys, your fire department, your police department, your planning department, and the city council. Everything that Tammy and I have been coming up here for eight years, you guys laugh at us, call us names behind our backs. And that does happen because a developer told me that I just had a meeting with. If they would step up and say, no, we don't have the infrastructure, we cannot fight these fires, that building should never went up. These big old homes should never go up. All these developments should not go up where they're going up. It was posted on Facebook that you all were concerned about WUI. Well, South Reno's halfway built up the Sierras. They're building right now in Lemon Valley on a hill. It's projected to have more warehouses built up on Peavine where the fire just went through. A lot of these fires could have been stopped. And you guys, whoever was in charge of this fiasco is the worst one in 53 years that I've seen. Besides the flood in Lemon Valley, now this fire is really bad. I mean, what's it going to take for the city of Reno to say, stop it until everything is fixed? You know, we've been asking for infrastructure out there for years. And you guys voted no. Look what happens. We were told, you need these buildings before infrastructure. Well, any of that money that all those warehouses that you guys wanted out there, where does that money go? I know where it goes. It goes to downtown. It doesn't come back to us. It doesn't come back to our valley. And just because you're building new roads right now, doesn't mean that it's infrastructure that you guys really should have needed because military road when I grew up it was a two-way dirt road and it should have stayed that way Danny thank you I agree with you on the water I did not know that so we should change that because people take medications so let's yeah yeah thank you that's why I got dry mouth because I take one yeah right

I did not know that.

we have no one else registered to speak for the record we received seven comments which were general in nature or not directly associated with an agenda item prior to 4 p.m. On Tuesday September 8th these comments were written correspondence received via our reno.gov online public comment form or by email to our office copies of these comments have been distributed to the reno city council and are available to the public on the reno.gov meeting portal.

Okay, thank you so much. I know I've had a lot of emails into my office you probably have two regarding fire facts and so forth I do want to say thank you to our firefighters for providing mutual aid to Washoe County and if you're getting those I want you to send them to Washoe County because they will do an after action and I really would like to have any correspondence you're getting to be shared with them so Yes, I will get you that email. I share it with JW. So that would be great because I think there's a lot of questions we can't answer since it wasn't our jurisdiction. So I just want to make sure those get answered.

Madam Mayor, on that note, I have sent several requests to JW and Christy for an email where the public can send their recommendations. Kelly Echevarria at the public meeting, Brandy was there, Kathleen was there, I was there, Megan was there, announced that there was a place they could send their recommendations. And I've called several times to our own staff saying, what's the email that we could publish that residents could send their suggestions directly to? And they keep saying it's coming. But I'm just wondering if our city manager could, like, actually make it happen.

I can give it to you right now, Council Member Dewar. Okay, I'm ready. You can send it to the county manager, Kate Thomas. It's C-A-T-H-O. C-A-T? I'm sorry, K-A-T. Yeah. H-O-M-A-S at WashoeCounty.gov.

Okay. Let me try that again.

K-A-T-H-O-M-A-S at WashoeCounty.gov. Okay. And I'm sure she'll pass that along to the right individuals. Okay.

Because they were going to establish like a hotline email, not just to Kate, but a special place where they could send it. But we'll publish this in the meantime. And you said WashoeCounty.gov, right? Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Damien, are you not speaking today? Yes, for the consent. Oh, okay. Got it. Approval of the agenda? Okay. All right. May I get a motion?

Are there any changes?

Oh, sorry. Sorry, Miguel. I just stepped right in. You go ahead.

I was just checking with the city manager to see if there are any changes to the agenda.

Thank you. There's no changes, but we have two items that cannot be heard before 2 p.m. That's D2 and C3, so Delta 2 and Charlie 3 cannot be heard before 2 p.m. Other than that, you can go into the order.

Can you say what those are, though?

Yeah, items C, I'm sorry, item D2 is the Lighthouse Sierra SPD ordinance amendment, and C3 is the Northern Nevada Public Health guest presentation.

Okay. All right, perfect. So that's the lighthouse that's in Ward 2 on Talbot Lane. Do you have this piece of paper? It's right there. Probably. It's right there. Yes, I do.

Got it.

Thank you. Mr. Vice Mayor, Madam Mayor, I move to approve the agenda as posted.

I'll second. Okay, so we have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously.

Okay.

All right.

Approval of the minutes.

Move to approve item A5.

I have a motion. Second. I have a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Okay. Let's head into consent. I would like to ask council members to pull off any items. Councilman Anderson, you're shaking your head as no. And I don't see any green lights over here except for vice mayor. Go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. My only item is B8.

B8? Okay, perfect. All right, Councilwoman Reese. All right, Councilwoman Dewar. Councilwoman Ebert.

Yeah, I do have a few items. I think I just need a quick kind of overview just for the public's benefit. I have item B10, B11, B13, B15, B18, B19, through B22. Okay.

All right. May I get a motion to approve all other items?

Actually, hold on one second. There was two more I did want to discuss. B16 and B17.

Hold on one second. Let me get these in line. 16, 17. Okay. So 16 through 22. Okay. Thank you. I think it's 10, 11.

Yeah, 10, 11, 13, 15. Actually, yeah, 15 through 22. Okay. All right. Thank you.

All right. Can I get a motion?

Yeah, I'll move to approve the rest of the items. All right.

Thank you so much. Second. I have a motion. Second. I have a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye.

Opposed? motion carries unanimously.

Okay we will head into consent pulled items. I want to since there are a lot that have been pulled I want to make sure we get to our presentation on the agenda however I would like to head to you for public comment.

Yes so this is for item B 17 did you want to take an hour when we open B 17?

No I think you should put it on the record now.

Perfect Damian Cole.

Okay.

Before you put the slides up, can I show my phone? Because it was something that I didn't add. I didn't think about it until the last minute. Cool. All right. Hi, Damian. Good, Morgan. Damian Cole for the record. I am here to talk about the truckie, or they're calling it the Dickerson Trail Bridge, which I did not know about until... I'm sorry. Damian Cole, for the record, I just wanted to talk about the Dickerson Trail Bridge that I did not know was even going to be a thing until yesterday. This was something that had been spoken about between people in RTC and random staff, things like that. I didn't know what was going to be on the agenda today, so I quickly put something together. But before I do that, I just want to show you, this is what the area looked like Before retract happens this was the old Dickerson 4th Street underpass that was built in the 1930s and was present until retract the only reason why they removed it was because they needed to have a sidetrack temporarily placed While they were building the trench so can I go to the other one here? So I'm absolutely for the thank you. I'm absolutely for this project that's happening in a highly call for you to match the funds for $50,000 that they're asking. The reason why I wanted to speak about it in the minute and a half left that I have is because the proposed bridge position currently The reason why I know about this is because I thought about it four years ago. It was part of my initial plans for creating the bike network in downtown. And with the RTC Fourth Street improvement area and also with Public Works Design Manual calling for a shared use path, on any arterial or collector that is above 7,000 ADT, I recognize the need for improvement to this area. So all of that green area that you see in Wingfield there, I'm sorry, in Idyllwild, that's existing shared use path. 2016 is when the major improvements happened. So I thought, okay, if we bring back that underpass, and then build a bridge, suddenly we get connectivity directly across the river there. The thing about going to Bicentennial Park is another idea that I have that I'll talk to you about in more detail when I have the time. But the proposed bridge position, I realized if it happens, once the underpass is made, the better place to put a bridge would be right there where the intersection is made instead of having it over there. Now, there's a little bit less room to deal with where I'm considering putting it, but there's also another reason. It's because there's two forks in the road. So that's like the hub area. Okay. I wish I could get into more detail, but I only got like 13 seconds left. But yeah, in other words, I'm thinking about the long-term vision for this area, not simply putting a trail bridge, which I'm very much for, because this area right here, if I may just real quick, this area becomes a transportation hub. The park becomes the transportation hub for people accessing Reno High School, Booth Street, all of that area south of Idlewild Drive. It's a great idea to do this, but it's going to take some more consideration. So if there could be collaboration between RTC and the organization that's doing the bridge and consider what I'm discussing there. And that's without a traffic signal light. If there is a traffic signal light, even more reason. Because you don't want to have a crossing mid-block. You want to have it controlled in an area where people look out for each other. And... Thank you. Here's a detail area.

Madam Mayor, and I just wanted to share, and I was going to pull this, but Megan pulled it anyway. I wanted to share that during the briefing on this, I asked staff to get with residents in particular that live on Dickerson Road and then that general area to get public input into the location of this bridge. So I brought that up during the briefing. I was going to bring it up again here, but while Damien's here, I just wanted to mention that, so thank you.

And the reason why I brought this up quickly is because I noticed in the proposal or the thing for the money, the city has to come up with a plan by the end of this month. So it's like we're already into, yeah. Yeah, I saw that. I'm like, oh, shoot.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Daniel.

There's no additional public comment. Item B8.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I pulled this item. Yeah, just quickly, I don't need a presentation. I was just curious about the process and the initial phase of this contract. It did look like it was about a little over $800,000 increase to this, and so I just wanted to understand more of the process of how you got... to see the repairs and sort of what your initial assessment and the information that you went off of. I think the staff report mentioned the encumbrance of shoring, if that's needed, and if you could sort of explain that. And if it isn't needed, what would happen with those funds as well?

Yeah, correct. Justin George, senior civil engineer for Public Works. And a couple of questions in there. I'll start off with the initial project. Staff investigated the retract trench with the structural engineer two years ago to evaluate its condition. There were some areas that we noticed that had some concrete spalling on the trench walls under the bridge that we're working on right now with Q and D. And the initial inspections, we can only see what's on the surface. So once the contractor started removing concrete, we could see that the area that we could see from the surface was much larger that needed repair than what was initially visible from the surface. So as that area grew, it surpassed the amount of concrete repair needed that was in the original contract documents. We worked with our engineering consultant and with our contractor to identify the ultimate limits of the concrete that needs repair, and that amount is included in this $823,000. And your question about shoring, the original plans showed only shoring the north side of the bridge was necessary, and that was because the area of repair on the north side was much larger. The area on the south side of the bridge was much smaller, did not need shoring, so because the area on the south grew, we may need to shore that, and we're not gonna know until removal is done or until we've started removal to know if we need that shoring or not because shoring is partly dependent not on just the surface area but also the depth of repairs needed to that concrete so we'll know better once we can get q d in there to to do the full removal of concrete on the south side of the the trench walls okay thank you yeah just not being in the field myself i want to understand sort of how this wouldn't have been captured

in the initial assessment and how that impacts it. Can you just touch on the funding? Maybe I missed that portion in your response, but what happened to that funding on the shoring?

Funding for this is available in the retract maintenance fund. So there is fund balance in there. The CIP for fiscal year 27 does include $2 million for repairs, which would include this in that. That has already been approved by the CIP for the retract maintenance fund.

Okay. Thank you. I'm out of time.

Thank you, so I just confirming that there's a possibility that three hundred and thirty eight thousand dollars will not have to be used if the south without the shoring right if we get in and Conditions are favorable that concrete depth repair or the depth the full depth is not needed So if we can keep it to about two inches of depth Removal and not have to go to a four inch or six inches of depth removal then we wouldn't need to shore the bridge but I It's hard to tell until we start removing that concrete to see actually how deep the repairs need to go Okay, and then for the third party flagger is that for the additional ten days of work?

$140,000 correct. Okay.

Thank you Okay, I'll move to approve this item I Have a motion.

I have a second all those in favor say aye all those opposed motion carries. I Okay, item B-10.

Madam Mayor, are B-10 and B-11, can they be opened at the same time?

I think they can.

George, I think Ms. Ebert pulled these items, B-10 and B-11. These are from the Capital Projects Room Surcharge Fund, as I understand it. And Ms. Ebert may have questions.

Yeah, I just want to talk about this one with RCBA and how City of Reno is responsible for reimbursement and RCBA is responsible for some of it. I know that they get the contracts for the bowling tournaments, but City of Reno is responsible for some maintenance. So if we could just kind of go over how that works because I know it's a lot of money and just kind of Explain at high level how City of Reno and RCBA share responsibility for this.

Okay, yeah, Justin George, Senior Civil Engineer for Public Works. The city owns the National Bowling Stadium and the Reno Event Center. Reno SPARC's Convention and Visitors Authority is responsible for operation and maintenance. So these two items, B10 and 11, are for... B10 was for replacement of an uninterruptible power supply unit. And then item B11 was for required repairs on the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning chiller. Those are both capital items. They're large items that are required to keep the building functioning and operating and to extend the service life of the facility. So those fall under capital, um, maintenance or capital repairs that the city would be responsible because they are our infrastructure to repair. Our SCBA, they're the ones that go in and do the daily maintenance, the daily operations, so changing out fluids in those systems and Filters for the air conditioners and stuff like that. So the day-to-day maintenance is our SCV a's responsibility the large capital repairs and maintenance is the the city's responsibility because it's our our infrastructure The city has ownership of the equipment and our CBA is responsible for taking care of it.

Is that an accurate statement?

That sounds correct

Okay. So just wanted to clarify that because, you know, there's definitely a distinction between what RCVA takes care of as maintenance and, you know, why this appears to be maintenance, but it's actually maintenance. of a physical item at the stadium, which the city of Reno owns. So just kind of trying to get that delineated so people who are watching the council meeting can understand what the difference is there and why we would pay for that versus our CBA. So thank you for that information. And I don't know if anyone else has questions.

Nope. We don't, except for, I will say, based on the bowling contract for them to come here, we have a whole itemized list of things that must be taken care of so that they can have a building that functions to do their events. So that's also part of that piece. Okay. Would you please give me a motion?

Yeah, I was just going to say, I realized how temperature controlled and all the things that need to happen in there to keep the floors from warping. I was surprised to hear about all of the maintenance just to keep everything secure for the tournament. So it's really interesting. Okay, thank you. I'll make a motion to approve.

Thanks so much. Okay. I have a motion. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. I also could not hear Councilwoman Ebert. It was very muffled. Oh, yeah.

I was a yes for item B10 and B11.

Okay. Thank you. I just want to flag it for the clerk because her comments probably are going to be hard to get on the record.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay, next up. B13.

Yeah, this is regarding purchase of aggregate sand and salt through a jointer contract. Just wanted to find out if this is going to be stored in the regular maintenance yard, and if some is gonna be in the new area in the North Valleys where we're working on putting in a satellite station, or just how this is gonna be distributed after we receive it.

Yeah, good morning, Madam Mayor, Council Members, Tim Hendricks, Division Manager of Maintenance Ops. Yes, that is correct. It will be stored at the Corp Yard and at the new North Valley Station.

Is this the first year you'll be storing it at the North Valley Station?

It is.

Okay, great. So this is something that will help us get these resources out there faster since people won't have to bring it all the way up from the main maintenance and operations yard. So thank you for that. This is a great step forward for services out there. So thank you.

Any other questions? Okay, please give me a motion.

Yeah, motion to approve item B13.

All right, I have a motion. Second. I have a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. All right, thank you. How's it going, Travis? You guys doing well? Yes. Phenomenal job out there. I've been walking every day, and I am just, like, blown away what you guys do. Someone pointed out MNO, MNO, MNO. So you make the city hum. Good job. All right, hi.

Item B15.

Hello. This is, item B15 is approval to purchase three fire department light duty vehicles, equipment, and associated outfitting from various vendors utilizing the state of Nevada contracts. Including state contract, I'm not going to read all that. Well, I guess I can 99 S WC dash S 3, 8, 1, 3, 8, and or other joint or cooperative purchasing agreements in accordance with the matter by statute. And other. Other information. I just wanted to inquire about what kind of equipment is this and where is it going to be located or is it going to kind of float to where it's needed?

Aaron Weick, Admin Services Manager for the Fire Department. Thank you for the question. Two of the vehicles will actually be Battalion Chief vehicles. They will be assigned to the Battalion Chief and they will actually be take-home vehicles for them. so that they can respond to events like the Hawk Fire. The third vehicle is actually our fleet mechanic vehicle, and that one will be stored at our Edison location where our fleet facility is. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, a light duty vehicle and a take-home vehicle. Can you explain what does a light duty take-home vehicle mean?

We define our light-duty vehicles as most of the battalion chief and service vehicles for us, and they're typically under $100,000, and they're not heavy apparatus. The take-home vehicle is a light-duty vehicle, but the only people who have take-home vehicles are our battalion chiefs.

Okay, and can you tell me what it is? I'm having a hard time understanding.

Like an SUV? They're battalion chief trucks. pickup trucks, their F-250s, I believe.

So what kind of light duty could they do?

I will refer to our chief, Chief Mandel. Thanks.

Hi, Chief.

Hey, John Mandel, Division Chief with Renal Fire. So what kind of light duty vehicles are used by the battalion chiefs to respond to calls, transport themselves around the city during their work duties to go to meetings, and And whatnot. It's just a pickup truck, three-quarter ton pickup truck. It's not, I think the difference, it's not a heavy duty. It's not a fire engine. I think is what we're trying to differentiate here is just a pickup truck. Does that make sense?

Okay. So the definition of a light duty vehicle is a pickup truck?

Correct.

Okay.

Can you also, I think she's raising some really good points. I'm sorry, Megan, were you?

No, go ahead, please. I'm interested here where you have to ask.

Okay. Because I've asked this question before, and you tell me, but this is the answer that I got. In case they have to go... to a scene that they have to be identifiable. So it's one of the reasons why they have these apparatuses instead of, because I said, well, can't they just use their own car? But they have to be identifiable on scene, and I believe you also have other tools in that truck.

They have lights and sirens so we can respond code three to scenes as well, but they're identifiable, yes, like you said, so people know who we are when we go on scene, so media knows who to talk to. So the police department knows who to talk to when we get there. So they are identifiable, correct? So both of those. Yeah.

And I also heard they have medical bags in them.

We carry excess medical supplies and some spare gloves and hoods for the firefighters in case they need extras. Yeah, so they carry some other miscellaneous equipment, fire extinguishers.

Yeah. Okay. Councilman Ebert, good questions.

Yeah, so a little bit more. How much did you say each light duty vehicle was? Approximately.

Aaron Wake for the record. So the vehicle themselves are around $60,000 to $70,000, but there is quite a bit of upfitting with the lights and sirens and radios and Toughbooks. So we're asking not to exceed $250,000 for all three vehicles. and the associated equipment.

Okay. So the two light duty trucks, essentially. And then what was the third one again?

It's a fleet mechanic truck.

Okay. So that means it's a mechanic that could go to the different fire stations and do some kind of maintenance on the trucks? Is that an accurate statement?

Correct. They are called whenever a truck breaks down and they actually show up. to the scene or wherever the truck broke down, a fire apparatus, and they can perform some of the mechanical work there.

Okay. And do we currently have one of those? Like is this a replacement of one or is this in addition to what we currently have?

All three vehicles are replacements for vehicles we have end of useful life.

Okay. And then the ones that are end of useful life, are we going to sell them or donate or do we know?

It depends on the condition of the vehicles themselves, but typically we reappropriate those to stations for service vehicles.

Okay. Reappropriate them where?

To a specific station that we deem a service vehicle that currently exists there needs to be taken out of service. So, like I said, it depends on the vehicle situation and whether or not it needs to be taken out of service immediately.

So it would still be within city of Reno department?

Correct.

Okay. So it's not really going out of service then. It's just being reallocated, the ones that we currently have?

Correct.

Okay. I don't know if anyone has those questions.

Okay. Any questions? No? Okay. May I get a motion, please? Yeah, motion to approve item B-15. Second. Okay, I have a motion, I have a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Aye. Motion carries. All right, Madam Clerk. Item B-16. All right, I think that's back at you, Councilman Eber.

Yeah, yeah. So this is acceptance of a grant award from the state of Nevada of conservation and natural resources.

No, this is the one before.

Oh, sorry, sorry, my bad. Request of approval of a lease amendment of City of Reno real properties identified as says parcel number 008-370-26 and 008-370-27 and 008-370-27. dash three seven zero dash two eight and zero zero eight dash three seven zero dash three zero located on 300 Montebello Street in Nevada to Reno Salvage Company from the retract maintenance fund. Just to get a high level overview of what this is just for the public's benefit.

Definitely good morning. My name is Brenna Nichols senior management analyst in the Public Works Department I'm going to show a map here on the overhead and Okay, so this item, it's for a lease amendment for 301 Montello Street. This is four parcels of land, and the lease is to Reno Salvage Company. The amendment extends the lease for five years with an additional five-year extension option and increases the monthly rent by 20%, with 3% increases each year thereafter.

Is this a property that was... not having a rent increase for a significant amount of time?

The 20% increase is working to get us up to market rates on this lease in particular.

Okay, so it wasn't previously at market rate?

Correct.

Okay. All right. Well, I guess that's good. It's getting up to market rate. Okay, I guess I don't have any other questions for anyone else. Actually, I do have one more. Does the revenue from this go directly to the general fund?

The revenues from this lease go to the retract maintenance fund.

Oh, okay. Yeah, it's on there. Sorry about that. Okay, I don't have any further questions.

I was going to motion to approve the lease.

All right, second. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously.

B17.

This is acceptance of a grant for the Dickerton Trail Bridge. Just wanted to talk a little bit about it and the city match and what the process was to get this grant.

Definitely. This is Brenna Nichols, senior management analyst in public works. This item is an acceptance of a $250,000 conserved Nevada grant award from the state of Nevada. And this is to design the Dickerson Trail Bridge. The grant project amount includes a $50,000 match from the street fund. And the actual grant itself is $250,000 for a $300,000 project total. This project was identified as a high priority connectivity project in the Truckee River vision plan. And I do want to emphasize this grant is not for construction. It is for design only to get us to a point where we can be competitive for construction grants for this bridge.

Okay, so this process was a grant writer at City of Reno, you know, went after this grant and received it. How long is that process?

I want to say the process I started about maybe two years ago.

Okay, so this is a really long process to get in the fun. And I only ask because there's a lot of areas that I know people would like grant funding. So I just want people to be aware the timeline for that. And also to your point that this is just for the design. There's restrictions on the money we receive. Thank you for sharing that. I really just wanted to kind of have an opportunity to talk about the grant process a little bit. So I don't have any other questions unless anyone else does.

I do. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for pulling this, Council Member Ebert. I meant to do that, and I did discuss it at my briefing. First of all, I was extremely excited about the city's application to this grant program. This is a new grant program, relatively new for the state. I think it only started like three years ago or something. And they're giving grants from the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for this thing, this new program called Conserve Nevada. And I was so pleased that we actually made the effort and applied. Now, do I love the fact it took two years? No. This should be more like a six-month grant process where they announce you have maybe two months to prepare your grant, they decide. And then they're awarding so that we can do things in a more regular process. But they are just getting started. So I understand they're probably working out some kinks in the process. Now, it's also statewide competitive. So it's not everybody can apply for these grants. And I'm sure there's a lot of demand and need in Southern Nevada. And just the fact that we were able to get one is phenomenal. Now, the specifics, I had asked, too, how did we decide that it's going here versus any other place that has a need? And you identified that... You know, this has been on the books for a long time. It's part of, I believe, the whole bikeway in terms of the Pyramid Tahoe Bikeway. It's a way to get across the river, which is difficult at times, especially given what's in that area, which is Keystone Bridge, which hasn't had any kind of really way to cross the river. It's just down from there. The other thing that I asked at my briefing, and I want to make sure that we talk about this, Damian brought up the fact that somehow a design had to be done in 30 days. I was kind of confused about that. If you can just, I'm going to just have them address what the timeframes are.

Yeah, so with the grant timeline, we do need to get a consultant contract. A what? The design consultant in a timely manner. Okay. So we will be bringing a design contract to this council for approval in the next few sessions.

Are you going to do an RFQ or...

I'm going to actually have John Smith come up. He's our project engineer on this.

All right. And then while he's coming up, if you could just address the fact that when I've met with Dickerson Road residents, they're very interested in having a say in their world. And I just want to make sure that we have public input integrated as part of the design process. So if you could answer. Thank you.

Yeah, so like Brenda said, we're taking a consultant design agreement to the next council meeting.

Have you already advertised then?

We did not do an RFP process. NRS 338 allows us to select a consultant based on qualifications off of our SOQ list. Got you. We did pull off of that list. And yeah, we will be working closely with the Dickerson neighborhood when this gets going. This design agreement is just to help us vet out the correct location for the bridge itself. And then once we get that process is not for construction, then we'll work more closely with the .

Just a comment, Damien showed a potential alignment, and that looked interesting. As a geologist looking at the geography, I'm not sure it's a right idea to put a bridge right in the middle of a bend in the river. It could be. I think we generally try to go over a more straight section because there's more rapids and there's more scour where the river bends. So I'm not sure, but I'm sure you'll take all that into consideration.

Yeah, we did. Sorry, for the record, Jonathan Smith, senior civil engineer at Public Works. We did look at the preliminary location was not just arbitrary. We did choose it based on FEMA flood zone mapping span. We have a specific length we can span across the river with a bridge with abutments outside of the flood zone. And we did look at like the mature trees and stuff like that.

Thank you for considering the trees and doing your work. So I'm excited about the project. Thank you. Okay.

Go right ahead.

I was going to make a motion to approve. Second.

I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries.

Aye. Madam Mayor, items B18 through 21 are all grants through granting agencies to the Reno Police Department. And I just wonder if they might be open together, if the inquiry is really about why we ask for grants or how we get them. But I'm not sure. I just didn't know if we were going to open them together.

I do have questions about, I mean, we can't open them together because they are all arena police department, but I do have specific questions on item B-22 because it's COVID-19. hazard mitigation grant program.

And Ms. Hebert, I didn't include B-22 in my list. I was just saying that our chief is now here. It looks like 18 through 21 would all be inquiries through you to him. So I was just asking if they could be open together.

Yes. Okay. I'm going to come back to those right after this. And one of the reasons is that I have to leave, and I want to kick off. So I'm going to put those items on the back end after your presentation. Yes, ma'am. Is that OK? Yes, ma'am. All right. Do you want to do B22? OK. We could do B22, and then I want to take all of the other items that she's requested, put it on after that. OK. Go ahead.

Yeah, so B22 is an acceptance of close to $400,000 of federal fiscal year 2021 COVID hazard mitigation grant program funds. And I know you were not in this position in 2021, but I just have a question about how this... grant and where these dollars are going relate to COVID relief. And if this is, you know, like ARPA dollars where we could use them or needed to help the city of Reno in specific ways, just because again, this is specifically called out as COVID hazard management. So just asking, you know, what the link is there to the fuel reduction project in Pinehaven.

Aaron Wake, the fire admin services manager. To answer your question, the COVID related to the title on this was just the timeline of the release of the grant, has nothing to do with additional funds or any particular avenue of what we can address with that.

So even though it's called COVID hazard mitigation, we can use it for anything we want. It doesn't have to do with anything with COVID hazard mitigation.

Correct. It's just for the hazard mitigation grant. There was additional funding through FEMA that they titled COVID and they just added it to this grant in particular. But this grant is specific to hazard mitigation.

Okay, so how did we decide to put this into fuels reduction in Pine Haven? What was the decision making process?

So this particular grant was immediately following the Pine Haven fire. So after every major fire, they have grant funding related to it that you can apply for, for cleanup and reseeding and hopefully pre-emergent to not allow the invasive plants to grow back.

So is this something that will be pursued for the Somerset and North Valley's area around Peavine and up Peavine now after this fire, the Hawk fire and the Bug fire?

That is something we can't apply for, correct?

Okay, do you need direction from Council? How do we, you know, make sure that we pursue any type of grant funding for assistance in this area?

It is a standard process for us in the fire department after a major fire to apply for these grants.

Okay, so we don't need to give any specific direction or request?

Correct.

It will be for every area affected by the fire?

That is correct. And just so you know, we only own about 10% of the land that was burned in these recent fires. So that's all we can apply for for the city of Reno.

Okay. Do you know if the county also pursues these kind of grant funding opportunities?

They do typically, and oftentimes we work with them if it's a joint project.

Okay. All right. I think that is it for me. I don't know if anyone else has any questions.

Okay. All right. And if you think of anything else.

I do have one more question. Okay. If they're just now giving the funds. Okay. Sorry.

Okay. Hold on one second. Hold on. Zoom can be really hard because it's very disconnected in timing. Madam Clerk, I need you to please put the timer on because I've let everyone go today, which I don't mind. I just want to make sure because some people say, you gave them more time than me. Anyway, I want it to be fair. So could you please do that? And then I'm going to go to Councilman Reese. He has a quick question. And then I will come back to you, Councilwoman Ebert, because I believe you're three minutes. And then let me get Councilman Reese's question on. Madam Mayor, I just want to tell you.

Madam Mayor, can you hear me? Yes.

Yes.

Hello. I just want to tell you, I can't hear any timer on my end. So if I go over, if you could just say, hey, time's up, that would be helpful. I don't intend to go over, but I can't hear the timer or see the clock.

Okay. Got it. I will let you know. Okay. He has withdrawn his question because I think it was answered. Councilwoman Aver, I'm going to send it back to you.

I'm just curious as to why they're calling it COVID hazard management, if it's something that they're just now distributing.

Aaron White for the record. So we actually applied for this grant immediately following the Pine Haven fire. For reasons unknown to us, this was delayed five, six years. So I don't know why they continued with the same title, but that was the original grant we applied for.

Will future grants be called COVID hazard mitigation or what? Do you know the name of the grants we'll be applying for now or is that TBD?

I believe that would be TBD, but I don't believe it would be COVID. They only released all COVID grants during the time of COVID.

Okay, except for this one, right?

Well, the original application for this was during the time of COVID and it just carried forward till now.

Okay, but just the funds are getting released now.

Okay, thank you. That was all my questions. Okay. Thank you. Give me.

Make a motion. A motion. I'd like to make a motion to approve item B22.

Okay. Thank you. I have a motion. Councilman Dewar. Second from Councilman Reese. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. If you have any more questions we're time on that item but if you have any more questions please submit them in writing if you sometimes we think later that oh I have this question or that question. So please submit them in writing and then also Your brief? Briefings. Okay. Just make sure you're doing everyone's brief.

I know we do mine separate, but... We do. We have briefings in advance of every council meeting. Okay.

All right. So good time to get questions on the record there and then follow-up questions in email if you forget. Okay.

Thanks. Madam Clerk, back at you. Yes. Are we taking B18 through B21 and then going into C1?

Now it's going to be C1 first. Item C1. Okay. All right. Do we have any public comment on this item? We do not. Okay. Chief Solferino, come on up. Yes. Oh, we do. Okay. Perfect. Let's take public comment. Josh Hebert. Josh, come on up. Okay.

All right, Josh Avera for the record. Thanks for this opportunity. I just wanted to say a few things about the police off Chief Soferino's report. First, I want to thank him for the commitment to transparency and commend him for putting the standing orders online. I think that's a really great public service. And in the interest of transparency, I have a few things that I would like to see addressed and I think probably other members of the public do too. is that I think we deserve an update on the investigation into Chief Nance and the previous leadership team. There hasn't been any reporting on it in a very long time. The leadership change was rapid and unprecedented and clearly an indication of some serious deficiencies and or misconduct. I don't want to see this quietly go away, so I'm hoping that we can find out when we can expect an update on this. And then looking into the standing orders, Reno Police Department has said it doesn't cooperate with ICE, but in item 3B7 in impartial policing, It states that an officer who legally contacts a person may contact ICE if that officer reasonably suspects that the person is an unauthorized immigrant. Given that the same general order prohibits racial and ethnic profiling, I'm curious about what informs an officer's reasonable suspicion that a person is an unauthorized immigrant and how often has this occurred. And then finally, in the drone operations order, What constitutes exigent circumstances? I know all such circumstances cannot be defined, but a list of representative examples would be beneficial so that we understand the scope of this authority. And in addition, I didn't see any guidelines regarding recording done by drones. Now, it's possible this is in another order that I did not find, but I think it's important that this particular authority be well-defined. And if there is a reference in some other place, then it would be helpful if that were actually put in the general drone order. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Okay, great, great questions. Agree with you, so I'm going to get an update. We have not heard anything either, so we're going to get an update. Those were good questions. Okay, thank you. All right.

There's no one else signed in, and we did not receive any correspondence.

Okay. Chief Silferino, it is all you. And then just to let you know, probably certain topics... we will probably request other agenda items on so that we can get more elaborate, because I think there's a lot to unpack. And because you're relatively newer, and I know you haven't had a lot of, or you don't have a lot of time today to unpack everything, so I just want to let you know we'll address it in another item. Yes, ma'am. All right. Thank you, take it away.

Madam Mayor, Madam Manager, Council, Cory Solferino for the record. It's hard to summarize your first 90 days with all the amazing work that the men and women of the reno police department have done so I have a different perspective as a local but from an outsider coming in a different respect for the volume of work that our men and women do on a daily basis and that's what we're attempting to highlight today is I appreciate the public comment too because I hate the transparency word I believe you have to show it you can't say it and that's what we're attempting to do through putting everything on our forward-facing dashboard trying to show the Reno Police Department story through social media through our actions not through our words necessarily so I'm gonna move forward right here on the first 90 days what we've done is rebuilding that internal and external community trust through communication and transparency one of the first actions that we did is we took a California vendor that was providing policy updates that maybe didn't necessarily correlate with our our mission or our vision and worked with the city and their current power DMS structure to use that system, save the city money and put all of those policies forward facing on our internet. So you can literally see on renopd.com all of the policies for the Reno Police Department. We've also worked in concert with our collective labor groups with our city attorney's office, with our executive staff to make sure that there is a yearly review of those policies to make sure that they're up to date, they're current, and they're relative. Because as technology changes, as our times change, our policies need to change as well. Strengthening our staffing. Right now we're keeping up with attrition, but we're not planning for future and continued growth. Our officers continue to do more with less. We continue to make sure that we are responsible with the taxpaying dollars that we are entrusted with. We understand that a majority of the city's budget goes towards public safety and police and fire, and I've asked our department from the top down, bottom up to look for efficiencies. As technology increases, do these necessary positions need to continue in perpetuity? Do you have new efficiencies in your area or span of control that will allow our that have grown, like our real-time information center or detectives or our heat unit, to transfer those assets from one department or one bureau to another so that we can be more efficient in that space. I really need to commend the city's prerogative with working across all of the different departments. It's something to be celebrated, it's something to be collaborated, working with the CMO's office, working with the city attorney's office, working with Parks and Rec. I love the collaborative approach because you really see, hey, where can we help you out here? And we're looking for efficiencies across the board, specifically as it relates to our unsheltered population. We'll touch on that in just a moment. Strengthening staffing. We're continuing recruiting. We have an open recruitment through civil service. The problem with our recruiting is it takes 18 months. From the time that we have a vacancy, from the time that we've had somebody test, go through the written application, go through the physical abilities test, go through the background investigation process, be approved, vetted, and hired for an academy. We do two academies a year. We run it in conjunction with the Sparks Police Department and the Washoe County Sheriff's Office. The Northern Nevada Law Enforcement Academy, we host one in January, one in July. They're 24 weeks. By the time they've graduated the academy, they come back to us. We have a transition academy. Then they go on their patrol training program. It's about 18 months from start to finish before that vacancy becomes a reality on the street where they're a single unit. able to go out and answer calls for service on their own without having additional training. It takes a process, so we're continuing doing that. Right now we have 20 candidates that have graduated the previous academy. They're going through their patrol training right now, and additionally, we hired two lateral officers. We have 10 current recruits in an LEA academy that is transpiring right now, and we're looking to have upwards of 25 recruits in the next academy set to commence in January of 2027. Managing our current enforcement priorities. Chief Garlock and I had the distinct honor of attending all of the NAB meetings over the course of the last six weeks. I know that I owe Councilwoman Dewar one, and I know that I owe Councilwoman Ebert one because I was out of town that week that that happened, but Chief Garlock was there. And I think in our conversations and understanding... And he did a great job. Oh, thank you, ma'am. Very much. And I think, you know, hearing from the council is very important, but hearing from the NABs, because while we all have general consistencies in crime and disorder in the respective wards, the priorities are different. And I think it's important. Yes, sir.

Sorry to interrupt. I just, I see that Madam Mayor is not here and I have to step off for a second. So I'd just like to appoint Council Member Reese to serve as presiding officer in my absence.

Second.

thank you.

thank you. we have a lot going on today and continue.

I understand and I apologize. I will try to be as brief as possible and informative as possible.

this is an important For a ceremony or no? You're here with us. For the 9-11? Yes.

I am, but I believe that Rebecca can handle that for me and Chief Crawforth is here as well for a Friday ceremony.

Well, I want to make sure that we're respectful of your need to be there as well. So you just let me know if you need to step away and we can come back. Yes, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you.

But I think it's important to hear the NAB's perspectives of what their important topics are, because if we're missing the mark there and our social media is inundated, our service requests are inundated with needs that we don't know about, it's important to be in that room so that we can address and prioritize those. We understand our community is growing. We understand that traffic is a concern. We understand that our unsheltered population is a concern. After six proactive years of pushing... individuals towards services. We're kind of at a stalemate now with about 150 to 200 high frequency utilizers. So looking at the intercept model, looking at different things that we can do. The city attorney's office has been very progressive in addition to the district attorney's office and the new coming elected officials and looking at how we can collaboratively work law enforcement, public defender's office, court system with long term programming because the one thing that we have seen If we're using evidence-based practices and intelligence-led policing that's statistically significant for curbing recidivism, it's programming. It's education. It's counseling. So that's the space that we need to do. But if we don't know what's happening in our areas, if we don't know what's important to those communities, sometimes our lines can get a little blurred and can get distracted from time to time as I break the clicker. So it's important for us to be there. We made a commitment to the NABs to make sure that command staff is there so that we can hear those on a reoccurring basis. Technology opportunities and advancements. As our community continues to grow and evolve, so does a crime trends. Criminals are getting smarter. They're victimizing people in different ways. Madam Mayor and I had an opportunity last week during the public safety brief to address some of those issues with people putting up false GoFundMe accounts and looking for different insurance fraud parameters. the cyber space what we're doing with our human exploitation and trafficking what's happening behind closed doors criminals continue to advance in that evolution of law enforcement needs to happen there's a reason why we're not walking the beats all the time or that there's so much technology in our vehicles it's because we demand so much of the rank and file and the boots on the ground that they need to be better equipped to make sure that they can respond safely timely and ethically to all of these calls for service. So again, I do pay attention to what's happening in social media. I do pay attention to what's happening in our public's concerns with some of the technology because it's advancing further than we can get out in front of the public and say it. And I think that I've told this body before, my time down in Carson City, Well, representing public safety interests collectively across the state, there's nothing better that can happen than when we are all collectively aligned on goals. When we have the public defender's office, when we have the ACLU, when we have our legislators, our law enforcement personnel collectively look at issues and make sure that we're making model policy, that is the way to the future. Not just necessarily digging our heels in the sand and saying, this is horrible. It's about responsible stewardship. It's about responsible policing. It's about public transparency by showing our actions and not saying it. culture and operations back to the basics that has been chief garlocks and my theme is that we want to get back to boots on the ground to training to having classic patrol men and women put cars on the curb and start talking to our public. I have understand and I have heard unequivocally about our traffic issues in this town and working collectively with our regional partners. the Sparks Police Department, the Washoe County Sheriff's Office, the Nevada Highway Patrol, even school police to an extent, but they're entrusted with making sure that our kids are safe, so we want to make sure that we don't take them outside that space. We will handle what happens in a traffic realm, but making sure that we're pulling people over, that we're having dialogues, getting back to good old-fashioned police work. If we look at what happened after the Boston Marathon bombing and after the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing those two criminals were caught by basic patrol traffic stops and officers going with their instinct and asking additional questions so as we continue to change that behavior it's not to over penalize the public It's not to target the public. It's to change the driving behavior. Sometimes that can be done with a simple warning. Sometimes it's a citation. Other times it's an arrest. So making sure that our officers have that discretion to go out there, make sure that they're equipped, that they're trained, and they understand what they can do. We're achieving more with our current constraints just by trying to maximize our footprint. Patrol is the backbone of the Reno Police Department. We want to make sure that they are critically staffed so that we can fund other initiatives. But when the public calls, we show up and we want to make sure that that is what the community sees. Accessibility to leadership. We have an open door policy. I'm working five, six days a week to make sure that we are available to the public, that we're available to our people because we believe that that's important. We have to understand what the rank and file are seeing. It's been over 10 years since I've been shagging calls for service as a patrolman in this very area. So while I didn't have the pleasure of working in the city, I had the pleasure of working in Washoe County. But the technology, the job has changed over the last decade. We need to connect with the men and women to see truly what their needs are and making sure that they have the bandwidth to do what we're asking them to do. Staffing challenges, our community continues to grow and we understand the shortfalls of the budget and we understand that cops and firefighters cost a lot of money. So how do we leverage that footprint with technology? How do we make sure that when our officers are responding to call that they have the latest technology, that they have the best equipment, and that we're leveraging that technology to make sure that they're safe in the mission that we're asking them to accomplish? Improving our community communication reinstated my advisory board and impact panel. We've convened each of those boards at least once. My impact panel was twice with our recent OIS release video. the opportunity to bring in those communities and show the video before it was released to the public and get some great critical feedback on what we're trying to do and what our men and women are facing on a daily basis. There's a lot of things that happen each and every day that don't get publicized, that don't get talked about outside of the police department. And the public should know what's happening in that space. So the better way that we can report and communicate that and get feedback from our community members in all different walks of life. It's important so we can be better. Iron sharpens iron, and that's our footprint moving forward. Already talked about our advisory board meetings. Our community engagement. I realize poor Hunter Mercurio, my PIO, has about 19 different hats because we're asking so much of him. He is my social media expert. He is my public information officer, my community engagement ambassador, my recruiter, all things PFT, which is our physical abilities test and background. So we've looked at our CAO office and look at what we're doing in recruitment and backgrounds and how we can combine those units because they're all about community engagement the Reno Police Department has a brand we want the public to understand and come be part of the solution and We truly want to recruit, and our best recruiters are our men and women out there doing the work. So when they see excellent customer service, when they're on a call for service, we want them to be able to hand out a business card and then contact Master Officer Reed and Officer Mercurio to sign up for a physical abilities test because we want to recruit talent. Talent recruits talent. So we're looking at how we're doing that, and Master Officer Reed has done a phenomenal job in her last just couple weeks of coming into this community engagement officer position and working directly with backgrounds and with our recruitment efforts to make sure that the Reno Police Department is seen and heard in our public spaces. Our 4th Street business meetings, I have to commend the city manager's office, assistant city manager Ashley Tierney, attorney, apologize ma'am, and everybody, Cynthia Esparza, for grabbing a an area that has historically since I've been in high school a bad area of town where people didn't want to go down to 4th Street because of what happened and what really has happened with redevelopment partnering with our local law enforcement agencies the Reno Police Department can't do it alone so when we increase patrols in that area and we're pulling people over and we're talking and we're educating and we're enforcing our laws, we have made marginable changes in that area and in that space. By businesses partnering with FUSIS and sharing their data with us as far as our real-time intelligence center, we know that we have stopped and displaced and a lot of times gotten rid of crime. The mobile surveillance trailers were great when they first started. We would bring them out to an area, it would provide a footprint, and it would displace and deter crime for a time period. I remember when I first came in here, Councilwoman Taylor gave me an opportunity to go address some issues up on University Ridge with some after-hour activities in the park. And it was great when we had the trailer deployed, but the second we pulled the trailer out of that area, crime came back, disorder came back. So how do we fix that? Those are the conversations that we're having today with ALPR technology, with our Pam Tilt Zoot cameras, but the responsible stewardship and ownership of that to show how it can deter crime, how it does keep our community safer. And those are the conversations that we want to have moving forward. We're going to talk about crime data. So I'm embarrassed to say that I don't have an annual report for 2026. Our team has worked religiously with our intel analysts and our entire... consolidated team from a real-time intelligence center to grab data. A couple things that I want this board and this council to know and our community to know. In 2020, not only did we have the beginning signs of COVID, we also had the FBI switch from uniform crime reporting, which is a hierarchy type of crime where the highest level of crime got reported, but not all of the things that led up to it, to a national incident-based reporting system or NIBRS. So Previous to 2020, we really can't compare that data because we're comparing apples to oranges. Moving forward with NIBRS, NIBRS is unique in the sense, too, because I hear a lot of public safety officials across the country talking about crime is at historic lows, crime is down, crime is down, crime is down. Is it? We have to look at the numbers. We have to look at the data. Because now what I'll tell you is with the National Incident-Based Reporting System and or NIBRS, if we disrupt a burglary ring and there are 19 different victims in a given area, ward, beat, whatever you call it, but they're all linked to one incident, that's one incident. even though it affected several different people in that base. So those are the things that we need to have discussions about when we talk about vehicle burglaries being down, crime being down, is we have to look at what we're talking about and the dates that we're comparing it to So my pledge to this council, to our community, is moving forward from this date as long as I'm the chief, is we will have an annual report that's actually published. I think that's important for several things. It's important for our community. It's important for the council. I understand, again, the budgetary dollars that come to the police department and what we're doing with those. We have to be able to show it, how we're impacting crime in our areas. Does it have measurable significance? on what we're trying to accomplish. And honestly, upcoming legislative session had the opportunity to present before Senator Flores earlier this year during the interim. And that data is important so we don't have to task our statisticians, task our analysts with taking away from their jobs and finding specific data we're looking at those matrix what's important through our nabs what's important to our council what's important to our community and making sure that we're publishing that so it can be compared year over year so we can see what we're doing with our money and what our measurable impacts on crime are doing. I also have to commend one of my peers and good friends, Director Shadle from Communications, because we're also transitioning from Tiburon to Hexagon. It's a multi-generational project. When I first started in law enforcement in the 1990s, yes, gentlemen, I did handwrite and type reports. There was a time that happened before that. Tiburon was the latest and greatest, and we've been with that for over the last 25-plus years. It's been on life support for the last couple. Hexagon is going to change the game as far as that CAD and records management system integration, our historical data, being able to pull all of that together. The dashboards are exciting, being able to give council, the CMO's office, and our community the data that we request without having a PhD in computer coding and or crystal reports to be able to go, this is what I'm trying to capture, how do I get it? Well, the data's in here, but I've got 19 other projects in front of you and we can't do it. So that is a generational project and I appreciate Cody's help and assistance on that because I've been derelict in my duties with everything going on as far as police department representation on that board. So we've got some help with Lieutenant Lopez and Lieutenant Robinson coming into that space as we get that project across the finish line and then ultimately culminating in our annual report for spring of 2027 and moving forward. Training and wellness. And I want to add another thing to this in addition to wellness is resilience. I think sometimes we get... Tied to a buzzword and we forget and we swing all the way over to one side and we need to bring it back to center Wellness is absolutely important. I remember when I first came on the board our debrief was Meet at the first and Sun Valley or local watering hole whether it was a gas station or convenience store We talked about what we did Well, we talked about what we messed up and we talked how to get better again, and that was it We didn't talk about it again as we understand some of those long-term effects of trauma and and PTSD we need to be more mindful of individuals that are in the workspace and how we build up that resilience how we make sure that we take care of that wellness. I think I shared with this council that one of my nerd out things when I was in grad school was doing my thesis on general strain theory maladaptive coping strategies and how it affects police legitimacy i.e. long story short is when cops are introduced to trauma and they don't do anything to cope with it that They start not necessarily taking it out on the public, but they maybe have too many complaints. They maybe have an excessive use of force. They may be driving an unauthorized pursuit, and they start making bad decisions, and how does that affect our legitimacy with the public we serve? So we're very mindful, Chief Garlock and I, of what our men and women were asking them to do. After incidents debriefing that, we've partnered with Liberty Dogs, Blue Courage, Victory Mindset, and the Nevada Military Support Alliance to to start bringing together our team quarterly to debrief these incidents. There's no one-size-fits-all approach to wellness. Some people work out. Some people read books. Some people go on vacations. Some people run with their headphones for an hour a day and just check out. All things are good, but we're trying to give our entire team the ability to use what's best for them and make sure that we're there, we're listening, and we're taking care of our officers. But also with that, that we're also building their resilience. Because as we saw during the Hawk Fire, the Bug Fire, or any tragedy that hits our area, we're also asking them, hey, our community needs us. Now's not the time to check out. You got to check in and come to work. So we're balancing that. We're working on that. And I think We're in a better space moving forward than we were just three to six months ago. Enforcement priorities. Here's a small little snapshot on what we did in July 2026 citywide. We issued over a thousand citations. We arrested 51 drivers under the influence. This is a number that I want to draw attention to this council because Nevada continues to lead the country. in our average BAC. BACs are blood alcohol concentration. Everybody knows through NHTSA, our National Highway Safety Traffic Administration, through 50 years of empirical data, That .080 is that standard where impairment is observed, where it affects your ability to safely operate a moving vehicle. That number is our average, and it's over two times the legal limit of being able to safely operate a motor vehicle. That tells a story, and that doesn't even discuss poly drug use. The worst DUI I ever had was somebody who was under the legal limit, but they had married the alcohol with Ambien. They couldn't even stand up, function, or complete a sentence. So that doesn't speak to the poly drug use to somebody else that might be using opioids or marijuana or any of our designer drugs that are out there. That's just straight BAC, and that tells a very, very disturbing story. Obviously, part of that has resulted in 254 crashes. That's just in a month. Just in a month. Our teams are out there. We're getting back to basics. They're pulling cars over. They're enforcing that patrol mission set. We're working with, and I apologize, Councilwoman Anderson, that we weren't able to get into the schools before the end of the school year to talk about our e-bike education, but working with the city manager's office, working with Cali and our state legislators, we want to make sure that we are providing good education about responsible e-bike ownership because that has become a pervasive issue throughout all of the wards. and how people are using those, and parents understanding what they're giving their kids. I mean, that is a motorized vehicle, for lack of a better term, that's capable of injuring themselves and the public. So we want to make sure that we're out there doing education before enforcement, and that we're making good progress in that speech. Our Homeless Outreach Proactive Engagement Team, We're working more collaboratively with the Washoe County Sheriff's Office and the Sparks Police Department, HOPE teams. But we also want to understand, too, and I hit on it earlier, about... We've been pushing people towards services and enforcing the law for the last 6 years we have specifically. Done that and now we're we're at a space where we've got about a 150 to 200 high frequency utilizers what are we going to do with those I've told this board, I've told the commission we can arrest our way out of this problem. So that's why it's important that we partner with our bench that we partner with our local attorney's office, whether it's the city of the And we find alternatives for these individuals that have severe co-occurring disorders, mental health issues, and substance abuse issues. Where's the best place to program, house, and protect them and protect our community? Our human exploitation and trafficking team in illicit massage parlors A couple months ago, I had the opportunity to present before this board to mirror some legislation or to mirror some code enforcement that had come from the city of Sparks. We continue to work on that with our SMEs, and we will bring it back before this board when we're ready. McCarran Boulevard. 18 miles of the McCarran, I believe 25 miles are within the city of Reno. It is owned and operated by Nevada Department of Transportation. NDOT controls all of the right-of-ways and RPD patrols 18 miles of that. Here's a snapshot within the last year, and this is citywide enforcement on McCarran specifically, not outside of the McCarran loop. We did over 2,694 traffic stops. We conducted 53 DUI enforcement stops, issued almost 1,500 citations, investigated four major crashes, made investigations, which resulted in three fatalities. We did two special enforcement operations with the Nevada State Police, and we also responded to over 262 collisions with over 800 warnings. So even when we're pulling people over, we're trying to do the minimum amount to change the behavior. So almost 1,500 citations and almost 800 warnings pulling people over to educate them, to make sure that they're driving slower. Why is law enforcement out there? Because we know that speed kills. We want people to bring their speeds down so that they can safely react, respond to, steer around, brake from obstacles in front of them. Now, when we started looking at the previous slides and what's happening with impairment in our area and people driving under the influence, Not to mention the fact that distracted driving is probably two times worse right now than impaired driving because people aren't even driving paying attention. They're looking down at their phones. They're trying to answer that call. They're not being aware of their surroundings. And how do we respond to accidents? Accidents surprise us. If our eyes are ahead and we can see issues happening, we can see vehicles coming up from behind us, we're using our mirrors, we can avoid accidents. And that's what we want to communicate to our public. Emerging technology, we currently have 29 automated license plate readers deployed throughout the city. We have seven pan tilt zoom cameras in our open space. We have four first responder drones that are being able to be deployed within our immediate city area. We have 355 body worn cameras and 134 fleet cameras. Our fleet cameras are those cameras that are mounted on the dashboard of all of our marked patrol vehicles so that they can capture those initial moments of a traffic stop or anything that happens in front of that vehicle. One of the things that's very amazing with the emerging technology with our body-worn cameras and those 355 is through our real-time information center when we have a critical incident, we can actually remote live in to that officer's body camera to see firsthand what they're seeing and what they're being exposed to. With that, I want to address some of our ALPR facts and myths. ALPRs identify license plates. They identify vehicles. They take a picture from a single point in time, from a single location, and they only create a record, a picture, when a vehicle passes it. If a vehicle does not pass an ALPR, no record's created. ALPRs do not use facial recognition technology. They do not identify people. They do not record any biometric data. They do not record audio. They do not provide live camera feeds, and they do not provide continuous GPS tracking. We have had ALPR technology in this valley, and I know that there's a certain popular word that's going around right now that I don't want to use because it's a vendor. It's a vendor. We've had this technology in our area for over 25 years. I had it on my vehicle when I worked in the high-intensity drug trafficking area in a marked patrol unit 25 years ago. This is not new technology, but when it becomes new to the public, we have a stewardship, we have an ownership to get out in front of it, to talk about how we're using it for good, not for evil, and holding our people accountable to make sure that it's not misused. We have a duty to get out in front of our public and talk about how we're using it and how if there is identified misuse which has not been identified within the Reno Police Department that the anecdotal stories that we are hearing are happening in jurisdictions far from here. But what if they do happen in our space that we're holding our people accountable and that there are certain measures to make sure that it doesn't happen in the future. Our technology successes, and this is just a snapshot from one week in time that happened right before the Hawk fire, but these numbers are staggering. We had, for a week's time, 44 flight hours with our drone as a first responder that issued 284 flights. First on scene, they beat patrol to the scene. Our pilots are back in the real-time information center. They're listening to rapid SOS and calls for service. They're launching for dispatched calls for service. That eye in the sky is the patrolman who's first on scene. They are licensed Part 107 pilots. They are commissioned law enforcement officers for the Reno Police Department. They're beating patrol to the call for service 70% of the time. They're freeing up the men and women in those vehicles to do proactive stops to make sure that they're addressing our unsheltered population, that they're enforcing traffic stops, that they're available for calls for service. They cleared over 50 calls for service from the air. from intercepting those calls from dispatch. That is how we are managing. That is how we are being able to stay on top of our shortages in law enforcement by using this as a force multiplier, by allowing our men and women to enter unknown, progressive, critical incidents as safely as possible because of that bird's eye view. Previously, I hate saying back in my day, if we had a helicopter and we had a pilot and we had the time for them to get out there to get to the stead, pull the rotor ring out and get out. We had maybe an hour or 45 minutes before they were overhead giving us that bird's eye view. So truly phenomenal equipment. And our team has done a phenomenal job with drone as a first responder in our community. making sure that we're solving crimes. We've identified two homicides this year that we've solved through our technology. Two of our fatal hit and runs were solved through the use of this technology that would have otherwise gone unsolved because we had no eyewitness testimony. And it's improved timely domestic violence arrest by identifying people of interest as they leave before our officers can respond. Again, I want to touch on our policies and what we're doing to put those forward facing. All of our policies are available on renopd.com. As we start establishing our governance framework for emerging public safety technologies, we don't want to wait until the legislative session. We want to make sure that the legislature knows that we're already managing these policies, that we have a model policy, that we're using progressive framework to make sure that we're addressing all of the community's concerns with this. And when you see with what they've done in Oakland, what they've done in San Francisco, what they've done in Chicago, Illinois, and also NYPD, they're using these technologies to make their communities safer. But we also have to get in front of it and make sure that the community knows that we're using these responsibilities and how we're doing that. and that's what your city police department has done. Again, talking about PowerDMS sponsored by NeoGov and how we're publishing those, that is a sample of our policies that are on our website, so you can go on there. And we're also trying to affect the amount of public records requests that are coming into our records division so that the public doesn't need to go and do a public records request. They can literally go to renopd.com and have the ability to look at all of our policies online. Furthermore as time permits we do have a program called drone sense It's going to be going public-facing that allows the public to see what calls for service for 9-1-1 Launched our drone as a first responder what the flight plan was what the resolution was and what the call for service actually was Because we too believe that's important Recommended motion If the council accepts before questions, I move to accept the Reno Police Department's 90-day update and provide direction to staff on future initiatives as discussed here today, but I really want to thank this council for their opportunity. I apologize for being Italian and long-winded and talking with my hands because it is both a curse and a benefit, but... I can't even talk about all of the amazing things that's happened in the last 90 days because there's literally too much. I'd be up here for eight hours, and I know that that's not reasonable or feasible for everyone's time, but I'm impressed by the men and women that come to work each and every day that continue to answer the call, and it's my honor to lead them.

Chief Solferino, thank you for the presentation. There's a lot there, so I'm not sure how much of it we'll be able to get through today, in part because Madam Mayor and our Vice Mayor also had to step off the dais, and I know that they have some significant interest in the topic area. So it may be that some of these issues will have to be an ongoing conversation, so I appreciate that. I'm going to start with comments to my right and start with you, Ms. Anderson, if you have anything that you'd like to talk about in this first pass.

Sure. Thank you, Council Member Reese. Hi, Chief. Thank you for being here today. Thank you, ma'am. I've had the privilege of seeing you present multiple times in the last couple of weeks, and I just want to give you my support and my sincere thanks for you wear your heart on your sleeve and you have proven immediately that you love the men and women of this department and that you're here for them during a very extremely exposing and upending time in our department and in our city. So I just want you to know that from my perspective, it brings me a lot of peace knowing that you are in charge of healing this department. So thank you very much for that. There's a couple things that I just want to touch on. I really appreciate the report. I really appreciate the findings. I am stunned at the crash data. Was that Reno? City of Reno crashes in one month, 254.

I believe that one was just on the McCarran Loop, too, if memory serves me correct. No, that might have been a year. I think it was in general. So we had two here. One was just a snapshot citywide for July. We had 254 crashes citywide. So, yeah, almost eight a day for the month of July 2026. That resulted in an average of 51 DUIs that were .180 and over 50. A thousand citations and then we look at the McCarran loop specifically over a year was over 2600 stops and 262 collisions. So just in the McCarran loop. The other one was citywide for just a month's period.

Okay Well, I'm gonna keep my my comment here quick short Because I know we're gonna talk about this a lot in the future but there we've been having a lot of conversations in my own home about privacy and surveillance and things and And one of the main conversations we've had is, what is the number one question that anyone has when something illegal, dangerous, or terrible has happened to them? The number one question The answer from everyone that I've asked is, was there video? Was there surveillance? Did anyone get it on camera? 100% of the time, that is the issue. Cameras are a tool of law enforcement. Cameras are a tool of security for just personal people, personal businesses, and things like that. They're no different as a tool for law enforcement than a gun, a semiotic weapon. weapon, one of, what is it, the beast. You've got formidable tools that we trust you with to do your job to protect us and keep us safe and to solve crime. And so I view these new technology tools no differently than the very, very highly dangerous tools that we already entrust you with. It's about the men and women in the police department. It's about the policy that is created around that. It's about enforcing and reviewing the policy and it's about accountability and When it comes to the city of Reno the accountability sits with us and it sits with you and so any of these new technologies I am just going to ask that you are involved in creating the policy of accountability the policy of oversight and the in the policy enforcement not only on the use of the tool but but on the way that it's being used within the department. And from what I've seen from you in the last six months, I trust that every time you come to this dais, you are going to want to be proud of the report that you're giving us, even if there's things in there that you had to address and deal with that you aren't proud of that we are going to solve for. So I want to give you my vote of confidence in that and then ask you, create the same policies around these very, very important tools that you do everything else that is lethal, that is within your right to use to keep us safe and to solve our crimes. Thank you, Councilman.

Ms. Taylor.

Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Councilwoman Anderson. I echo those same thoughts. I know we're going to have some discussions about safeguards, privacy, tools, and the policy that you're creating. I wanted to talk a little bit about... Sorry. You mentioned I'm focused on downtown, and we've had conversations, and you said in six years we've been working towards these 150 to 200 high frequency utilizers. So I am going to ask what your thoughts, maybe the city manager's on for a downtown public safety corridor ordinance. And that is something to look at based on Clark County Code Chapter 1202, and it's referred to as the Order Out Corridor. So my request is going to be that we look at something like that, and I'm hoping that's another tool that we can use to help you and your team. But at the end of the day, also, we need to get you more staffing. We need to get you more boots on the ground. Last time I think we talked, you said you were down about 30 officers. So I think for me, my priority... When I'm looking at budget, and I just had a conversation with our council team, that's one of my number one absolute priorities is to get you more boots on the grounds. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Taylor. Ms. Dewar.

Thank you, thanks chief excellent report and also as I mentioned the report at the NAB was really good The When you started off your presentation you said the T word Transparency and you said it's all about that and it's about being proactive and not reactive so that you maintain the public's trust is how I was reading it and I think the the couple things I want to bring up here sort of all have to do with that tangentially some but in main part others. One of the things I'll start sort of towards the end we were just talking about the use of technology and when we approved additional cameras you said there were 39 and I thought there were more.

I said 29. 29 okay.

But anyway, it's less than I thought. I don't know if those were the ones that we approved, I think it was last spring, before you were here. But at that time, I reluctantly agreed to them with the caveat that we have a policy and that that policy come back. And I have asked several times, not necessarily you, but our city manager and others, when we would be getting that policy. And you mentioned, well, we already have a policy. But the thing is that we haven't seen it, and therefore the public hasn't necessarily seen it because they sort of see it when we see it. And I'd just like to really directly ask you when you think your policy could come in front of us. so that we can meet that transparency goal.

I think within the next couple of weeks. If not, we'll have the general orders that follow it as far as our carrying out, but the policy is ready to go.

Okay. And as part of the... And just for the record, Council Member Doerr, it's taken quite an amount of time. It's not something that we whip up, but Chief Solferino, when that policy is ready, it will be posted on the website consistent with the others. Is that correct?

It is, and I apologize. Corey Solferino, for the record. One of the things that I want to commend is we don't want to do a policy that just hits the base level requirements. The same with our in-service training. We understand that there's a national movement, that there's a lot of talk out there about misuse in smaller departments. You have a robust, large police department. Most police departments across the country 10 to 15 people. They're smaller than that. We have the checks and balances in place. We have the training in place. We have the procedures in place where some other departments don't even have password protection or network parameters. We have that. So I really want to commend my team, my executive team, our unions. that literally go into the war room every Tuesday, every Thursday, and have these difficult policy discussions. My time down in Carson City, I do have a couple of friends that are on the state legislature that obviously are looking to sponsor legislation in this upcoming session. I want to make sure that our policy meets all of those demands before something statutorily is mandated. Well, that's fantastic.

And the reason I'm asking is I believe it will help quell answer the public's questions that continue to come up. And bear in mind, you don't know how much email I get, but I think we all get every single day either one or multiple emails about the flock cameras, cameras in general, other brands of cameras and surveillance, ALPRs, et cetera. And all I want to be able to do is have a public conversation about it. And I also want to recommend, when you posted the key elements of your policy, there were two things that I did not see and that I'd like you to consider including when you bring it back to us. And one is the auditing, which you mentioned here, auditing and accountability. But I think it's really important just for us to understand who has access, who doesn't, when, who's reviewing that, those kind of things. That will really help the public gain some trust, I think. Secondly, I've gotten commentary that we're not releasing information about our use of these cameras. We're in contrast to, say, Sparks or other jurisdictions. That may or may not be true. But what I'm wondering is if you could include in the policy when we would or would not. Will we never release any information or data saying it's all confidential? Will we release some information? saying, you know, this is what we have. And then you addressed, I think, a really important thing. I think it was your next slide where you said what the cameras don't do. And you said right here, you said they do not identify people in the car. And I can't tell you how many times I've read that the ALPRs, which are supposed to be focused on license plates, are actually surveilling people in cars. using facial recognition and so on. So I just want to make sure. I think it's a really important point. You know, it's to your credit that you're saying they do not. And I just think we need to have a little dialogue around that and assure our public that that's how you're implementing. So before you, I will ask for a second round because I have a couple more things and I'll just give you the topics. One is your crime data heat mapping, which I'm so impressed that you're working on. The second is your patrols. The third is McCarran. And there's probably one more. So just so you know, coming attractions. Thank you.

Ms. Hebert.

Yeah, just to carry that on, the camera portion. I know you mentioned some crimes that were potentially solved with drone footage, is that correct? So did those numbers include anything with the flock cameras or other kind of cameras? So that was all kind of grouped into- Our technology, yes ma'am. Okay, so do you have any information about other cameras that might not be specifically flock? Because I know that there's other cameras around. Do they provide information to you at all, or are you only using flock cameras for this type of information?

I think we... Corey Salfrino, for the record, to Councilwoman Ebert, we use all kinds of technology. We have the opportunity through our partnerships with the 4th Street business owners where if they want to share their camera footage with us, They have the ability to. They set the retention schedules. They set everything that they want to share with us, the cameras that they do, the cameras that they don't. They have that ability to share with us, and we've been overwhelmingly successive in that space. So they have the ability through a program called FUSIS to tie into our technology. So those are owned cameras from outside of our purview. that the public is sharing with us because it's truly a public-private partnership. San Francisco's use, Oakland's use of this commercial data, in addition to whether it's a Flock, an Axon, a Genetech, or whatever the vendor may be, they have the ability to partner with real-time intelligence centers to share that camera footage with their local law enforcement to help prevent future victimology, to help identify suspects. One of the things that we see is not just officer wellness, but victim wellness. Sometimes eyewitnesses don't, they think they see something, but give a wrong suspect description, direction of travel, clothes that they're wearing. So really what we've done here is we've entered a time and a space where we've captured that individual on camera, where we can now potentially have a suspect or a partial plate where now our detectives, our patrolmen and women have somewhere to go where before they didn't. A lot of times that crime didn't get solved or that crime basically said, hey, sorry for your loss. We don't have any DNA anywhere in your vehicle because it was a smash and grab. So here's your report number, go report it to your insurance. That wasn't helping victims. That wasn't helping drive down or identify crime trends. This technology has been instrumental in helping to identify people of interest so they're not out there committing serial robberies or serial burglaries or victimizing our community. But I understand the responsibility that goes with that. So there's a lot of cameras out there, ma'am. I don't have all of them at our disposal.

Okay, so that I think is maybe part of the area where people are concerned is that you may only have a relatively small number. Can you repeat that number actually, please? 29. 29.

ALPRs and then we have, I believe, seven or nine PTZs.

Okay, so...

Seven.

Fleet cameras, those are the ones on the vehicles? Yes, ma'am. Okay. So it doesn't sound like a huge amount of cameras, but the police department actually has access to far more cameras in that amount, correct? They're just not technically City of Reno cameras.

Depends on what the public decides to share with us. Yes, ma'am.

Okay. So do you have, like, record of other cameras being used? And I only ask because on Military Road, there's been at least three cameras.

Those yesterday, ma'am. Sorry to interrupt, but we looked those up yesterday. I believe those were private contracting vendors, the mobile surveillance trailers that you routinely see with people when they're doing construction work to help abate the... destruction of property, the theft of materials, tools, copper wire, everything that normally what will happen in a construction zone is they will contract with a private security vendor to bring those out to protect their investment. And that's what those were.

The problem with that is there is a badge printed on the side of the device and you're driving by. It implies potentially that it's law enforcement. I do have more... Things to ask so yeah, we'll come to you in round two.

I want to mr. Martinez We've gone through one round if you want me to continue through the item. Is that what you want me to do?

Yeah And then I'll just for the record you need to step away. No no no I just wanted to identify the badge that was referenced because our team did go out there yesterday and identify that and I know it says security, but it's I'm just saying it's a jet again security live video surveillance And it's got like a makeshift badge on there. Yeah, it's not it's not a city.

Yeah, I understand But when people are driving through there, it's difficult to see it says call 9-1-1 for an emergency People are driving past and has a badge and it's got multiple cameras. It says live surveillance And there's multiple cameras on them. It's kind of on ominous and there's at least three on the street and Well, my time is up, so I'll do second round.

I'm gonna give you a chance to catch your breath, Mr. Martinez, and I'll ask questions and then come to you for your first round. I wanted to first start off with one of the public comments that was made by Mr. Ebert who had some specific questions about very specific things. I'm not asking about the answers to those questions, but how does someone like him get an answer to the question? Do we have like a town hall format? Do we have, I don't know, an event? We have had events like at Old Town Mall. We've had events at a couple of the different churches here in Reno. where it's kind of like just an open forum to people to resolve those questions. I think there was an event that happened in Ward 4 in maybe January or February. So I'm trying to figure out how does someone get a question answered? when they have one?

Great question, sir. Cory Salfrino, for the record. I think there's an opportunity through our advisory board and through our impact panels with people that are spread throughout the community, throughout the NABs, to have those conversations. Historically, when we've had symposiums on law enforcement, whether it was on use of force, whether it was bias in policing, whether it was in whatever the political hot topic of the day was, outside of the first year where we hosted it at the University of Nevada, Reno, which it was extremely well attended, every year thereafter, law enforcement outnumbered the public 20 to 1. How do we get the community to come together and identify a space where we can have those difficult or courageous conversations outside of the police department, maybe with a softer uniform because we do understand and are cognizant of the fact that sometimes the Uniform Act does a barrier to individuals irrespective of their immigration status. So some of those questions that he was talking about where we don't partner with ICE to go out and do ICE immigration, they are a federal partner, they are a law enforcement entity, and when people commit crimes, those are irrespective of immigration status. So I think there's opportunities for us to be more vocal on social media, to tell the story that we're doing each and every day, to reach out through our impact panels to different community events, to show up to get that return on investment every time that we do show up in our community to make sure that that message is heard, that message is seen, and that we're communicating it clearly. So the more that we can put forward facing on our website, we will continue to do that. The city's tech services department has done a wonderful job in IT in helping us rebrand our page and put more data on there for the public to find without having to do a FOIA or records request with the voluminous amounts of requests that come in and those get delayed. It's not a deception tactic, it's not a time tactic, but I think the more that we put open facing, the ability that our public will be to see that will quell the rumors.

Well, and maybe put a pin in the idea, just that I'm thinking that there have to be simpler ways for a very simple question to get asked and answered. And so maybe that's like a teletown, I don't know, Ms. Dewar is fond of teletown town halls. Maybe there's another way to do it using technology. I'm going to, because you did answer very robustly, I'm just going to take a privilege to ask my second question, which has to do with the emerging technology issue. And you've got two great slides. Slides, I guess it was 11 and 12 primarily. And look, what I want to say, because it may be beyond the scope of what we're going to be able to talk about today in its entirety, but what I want to say is that there is a national conversation that's going on without regard to political persuasion, left, right, center, about emerging technologies and privacy, right? And so we have a strong tradition in this country because of our constitution and some history with England that led us to form a document that has a bunch of freedoms in it that allow us to have security in our homes, our possessions, all the Fourth Amendment law that you well know. And so as that has changed, as technology comes along, people admittedly have questions, and they have strong opinions about it. And so I'm not sure we'll fix everything today, but I do think you've given some information here that does help. I wanted to understand something. It was sort of related to a question that Ms. Dewar and Ms. Ebert picked up on about And I think you did clarify that Flock is a brand of those ALPRs. And those ALPRs, you've identified the 29 or so plus the seven that are a flex, one that has Pano and it can do some things. Those are in very specific areas, right? They're in areas where you have determined based on needs that we either have high frequency of crashes, something's happened there to require those. What is the idea that we've got enough and where they are today is where they should remain? Is it that we need to evolve with the technology? What is the hope and vision for the force multiplier that you asked about?

I think that's an excellent question, sir. Corey Solferino for the record. As we are driven or driving our agency forward on intelligence led policing and evidence based practices those cameras were initially deployed based upon. Information from our crime analysts that we're looking at our high frequency crashes that were our high crime areas were in public space that's where they were first deployed but we know that crime trends change we know that people get out and commit. different crimes if they're not reformed and they take those areas other where I think we have to continue to look at the data we have to continue to trust our analysts and we continue to let evidence and intelligence drive where they're where they are placed where we're getting our best return on investment.

Well, I think Ms. Anderson said something that I'll stop with and end my first round on, and that is there has to be a high degree of trust placed in you to represent the issues that we believe are important at this dais. We set the policy direction, but maybe do not carry out the day-to-day operational issues and certainly cannot substitute our judgment for yours. But I want to make sure you understand that our expectation, I think, as a body, I'm speaking for myself, but I think my colleagues would agree, is that if we're going to use these types of technologies, that we do have the rules in place and the policies in place to prevent or minimize, to whatever extent we can, their abuse, that we know how it's being used. And I think you did give a good explanation of smaller entities versus larger ones. But I have more questions that I'll ask in round two that are really about those policy focuses. And I just don't want to mislead you to believe that I have said, hey, I am all in for these, or no, I am opposed to these. I struggle with this issue, quite frankly, because I think there are issues on both sides that make some sense with me and resonate. And so I continue to want to understand and know what the limits of these policies are so that we can craft better policies. I'm going to come back now to my right, and I apologize and give some indulgence. Ms. Anderson, did you have a second round? Thank you I just this isn't really a question as much as it is a little bit of blah blah blah about trust and

And this is another robust conversation that I've been having within my family, my family at large, which we're all from Reno and we've all been here watching the world change and watching really the community's ability to change and trust the people that are in charge. And unfortunately, in the last 10 years, we've stopped trusting each other. We've stopped being concerned about our neighbors. We've stopped being concerned or interested or even moderately curious about why somebody may have the opinion that they have. And so this is a huge opportunity for us as a community to really rally around the reality that people don't trust each other anymore and we can't do our jobs well unless we earn that trust. And so Together, through oversight, policy, enforcement, and accountability, we have got to earn the trust for Reno. We have to remember, Mr. Reese, I think, or it may have been Ms. Doerr, when you thought, wow, that's a low number on 29 ALPR cameras. Reno has the lowest number of these cameras in the community at large. And we need to remember that Reno's responsible for Reno. And so if there are cameras or policies or officers or communities that are violating policies that are not Reno, we need to hold Reno accountable and make sure just because other people are doing it wrong, that doesn't mean we are, but we have to be accountable. So that's all I'm, I just wanna say that. We're starting at zero trust in our community on this issue and we just have to earn you know, earn our way up to being able to be considered, these tools being considered appropriate and successful and that we are protected from how they could be used inappropriately. So that's all I'm just asking you.

Yes, ma'am.

And the acknowledgement that we all have, we all have a responsibility here. Everyone in this room has a responsibility here to earning and growing the trust of the community. And I look forward to doing that with you.

Thank you for the comments, ma'am.

Ms. Taylor, I'm going to come to you, and I'll come to you, Mr. Martinez.

Okay, I have a quick question. I heard this the other day, and I was interested in seeing it on your slide. The technology to improve timely domestic violence arrests, that really surprised me. Can you explain that a little bit? And then I just wanted to say, I think also... On the two fatal hit and runs, unfortunately, one was a five-year-old boy over at Reno Housing Authority in that area a couple weeks ago where that technology was able to help with that. Identify a vehicle, yes, ma'am. Identify a vehicle. Okay, thank you. And then, so could you tell me a little about the domestic violence aspect?

I can. Corey Sulfrino for the record. Thank you for the question, ma'am. It gives me an opportunity to highlight the good work that it does because you can't just randomly run a plate. You have to run it. And either put in a case number and or a CAD number that's affiliated with a call for service. So a lot of times what happens, unfortunately, is when we arrive at a call for service, we arrive and we find the victim, suspects, GOA, gone on arrival. As we start doing our investigation and we determine that we have probable cause for an arrest, there was one specific case that happened no less than a week ago where we had a domestic battery strangulation interruption, a 911 interruption. and domestic battery. We had the suspect identified, but he was gone on our arrival. We knew the vehicle that he was driving, our officer, rather than trying to just submit that case to the district attorney's office, wait for a review to get a warrant, and then that subsequent warrant come back and then go out and try to play a game of... catch the individual at work or on the way home or wherever business he is. He decided to enter that code into the ALPR, found out that the vehicle was heading westbound or just past a westbound location off of USA Parkway, positioned his vehicle off of Wells, waited for it to come back into the city of Reno, affected a traffic stop and took that domestic violent suspect into custody. There's literally 20 pages of documents that I have sitting on my desk or back over here in the corner of success stories like that one continually from police officers, men and women doing good work for noble purposes and putting people behind bars that victimize people in our community.

And I think it's important to have the balance. We have privacy issues and we all have concerns about the safeguards. But I also think it's important to talk about the good that these can do. And I was really impressed with the information that I received on the domestic violence. And then the last thing I'll say... We were at your awards and promotions ceremony yesterday, and the work that you and your team and Hunter are doing is really important, and we are really a better community because of it. And I know that you are working hard on the transparency and with the trust, and as Councilwoman Anderson said, it is our responsibility to make sure that you have the tools that you need. So thank you. Thank you, ma'am.

Mr. Martinez.

Thank you so much, Council Member. Thank you, Chief, for the presentation. Sorry I couldn't be here, but I know you and I have had a conversation before this, and we talked a lot about things, and I just wanted to focus my time today on a couple of things that I wanted to put on the record. I think from your perspective, just understanding what these last... What did you say, 90 days has been like for you? Officially, yes. Officially, 90 days. How it's been for you and how are you working on some of the interpersonal relationships that you have to build within the department to make sure that you're successful?

I think, thank you for the question, sir. Corey Solferino, for the record. Honestly, it's my opportunity to get out from behind my desk and work an extra couple days a week to get to know the men and women, because it's important to know the stories behind the badge and the stories of the men and women that are walking the halls. And I have had friends at this organization before I came over, but truly getting to see the rank and file, we're young. We are young. We're young as a law enforcement community in this entire region, but specifically at the Reno Police Department, and that's infectious. I love my old dogs that are still out on the beat and out on the patrol, and I apologize, sir, for making you cough. That's what I heard. Sorry. But it's refreshing, and it makes you remember why you got into this profession, to be around the youngsters and to give them guidance and really empowering our supervisors. We've got the first of what I hope is several over the course of the next year supervisor trainings to get back to the lowest level. a common denominator where our sergeants are mentoring, guiding, and training our officers, where they're literally taking them under their wing and going, come here, son. Come here. Come here, young lady. This is the way that we do this job. We are customer service at its finest, and that's what we really want to get back to the basics in that regard. So for me, it's been rewarding to get out from behind my desk and walk the halls and attend as many briefings as I can. I'm not good at graveyard anymore, but despite that, I'm going to go out and work some shifts with my people. I've got my BDU uniform on and my body camera so I can go out and shack some calls because I think it's important because the job has changed. And if we're trying to rule that from the executive offices without understanding, well, back in my day, that job hasn't happened in a decade. We need to figure out what the true exposure that our men and women are going to. And it's a city that has a lot of issues with mental health and with co-occurring disorders and our officers and how are we treating that. So being able to listen to their story, to work with all of our directors from across the city and across the county to find out how best that we can make our community safe because I do want to take you know the bike path along veterans and hit the river and bring my wife and my daughter downtown and go to the eddy or go to any of our local amazing business districts and support local business and I understand that some people don't feel safe doing that so it's our responsibility collectively as a community to listen to those concerns and figure out we can address the problem not arrest our way out of the problem.

looking at my list I think I' m just going to start with mccarren you had some great statistics up here my question if you could go back to that slide team. My question is really You've got the statistics, and you're doing a lot of work there. But is it a overall comprehensive thing? Or is it just, well, we happen to do DUI stops on McCarran one week, or we happen to have to respond, which is reactive to these crashes. Or are we doing something you mentioned, special enforcement ops? So that's what I'm really wondering about. And I'm asking on behalf of my constituents, I've shared with you videos that they have sent me over and over about speeding motorcycles, street racing, on McCarran, and your answer has generally been, We're not really equipped. I think your answer is we're not really equipped to address speeding motorcycles But then you've also told me a different way approaching It is that you approach it after they've stopped speeding and then but then you've said but we're really focused on street racing in other locations So I just wondered what's the status and I'm asking on behalf of them who are going to ask me I want to be able to give them a succinct answer about where we stand on McCarran

Corey Salfrano, for the record, thank you for the question, Councilwoman Dewar. Part of that has to do with our grants that are coming up here after this. Right, I saw. And some of our Office of Traffic Safety. So those are for specific targeted enforcement, whether it's joining forces for DUI impairment, whether it's seatbelt enforcement, speeding enforcement, and then some of our drag opportunities. So honestly, we're. We're looking at the data. I'm trying to let intelligence-led policing drive those missions.

So if you have crashes in a particular area, that's where you want to focus. Or if you have a particular speeding in a section of McCarran, that's where you want to focus. Is that it?

Yes, ma'am.

And do you think that we need to do more? In other words, it's reactive. We got a grant for this. We're getting a grant for that. But is there a way to... You mentioned to me that you had an officer coming back in NHP, now Nevada State Police. No, not happening. Okay, well, maybe in the future we could have improved coordination with NDOT or NHP or State Police on this road. How can we make that happen?

We've continued, of course, for the record, we've continued to do that in a multitude of jurisdictional priorities, 4th Street, McCarran, street racing. We had that horrific accident that was highlighted earlier this summer based upon that. Friday and Saturday nights, those consumed a lot of our officers, and we had dedicated personnel handling that despite all of the other calls for service that routinely happen in the city that take precedence over those proactive measures. So when those... priority calls for service come in, any of those enforcement efforts that we have going on that pull our resources away deter from that. So if we're trying to grow our traffic division, which we are, and Lieutenant Uterbity's been identified to lead our traffic division moving forward because we've done some re-organization within our department and rather than having one lieutenant answer to two different bureaus uh lieutenant uturbity is leading that he's building that division back up that unit has been decimated over the course of the last 10 years exactly the whole 10 years i mean i've been here 12 and i've the patrol has been a constant discussion and i was so delighted to hear since you've been here about reorganizing patrol refocusing people on the street because

Even though the crimes are horrific, the crashes are horrific, other things you're dealing with, whether it's theft or murder, are horrific. They're affecting a person, a family. The speeding seems to be affecting a wider swath of people. And it seems to really get people's ire up, right? They're mad. And it creates rage in them. And then they want to fight back against bad drivers or speeders or people tailgating. And so that's why I think it's so important, your decision, to change the emphasis to patrol.

Thank you, ma'am. And just one second, I apologize. Please, go for it. For the record, you hit on a couple key points that I just want to highlight that. Number one, I think that just society in general, not just speeders, they've gotten angry when they're driving. And The fact that we've had brandishing of weapons, that we had a homicide earlier this year that resulted from a road rage incident. People need to leave earlier. We're a growing community. You can't get from one side of the city to the other in 30 minutes anymore. Or 15, like the theory.

We're not a 15-minute city anymore.

And people need to have patience because they're letting their emotions take over decisions that will literally have lifelong impacts. So as Lieutenant Uterbity continues to grow that community, team and his traffic division and we address the community's needs we're also looking at policy decisions too because you saw that 262 collisions yeah those aren't quick that was in one month yes ma'am well that was in a year that was for mccarran in a year but the snapshot was citywide that was 254 crashes in a month just in july not just traffic that's the entire reno police department okay but it begs a better question when my traffic unit is doing that When they're doing crashes that routinely take 45 minutes to two hours, depending upon the complexity of the investigation and how long that we can get tow apparatuses there to clear the intersection safely, that's time that they're not out there doing traffic enforcement. So we're looking at policy decisions that free them up to go out and do the enforcement piece and Just like I had as a K-9 officer, unfortunately, some of my patrolmen and women over here are going to yell at me, but we might have to get back to our rank and file doing accidents and not traffic because traffic has a specific mission and we're trying to make our community safer and drive down those speeds. So we're looking at everything. We're not trying to make emotional decisions. We're trying to make good business decisions that help our community.

I really appreciate your answer. Thank you, ma'am.

Ms. Ebert.

we're gonna hold to the two and two rounds plus the one okay so there's real concerns from people about how many cameras are really there and I'm not saying that that is your responsibility to find out because if they're not yours they're not yours right so I'm asking the city manager maybe that is something that we can find out and address because I really I supported the the cameras On the first vote, because I do have so many issues with speeding and accidents in my ward, and I know that we do not have enough law enforcement officers to patrol everywhere we need it all at once, and I was hopeful that that would help catch people that maybe were In hit and Reds scenarios since then there's been other cameras that I don't support You know, it was a no vote on the cameras at the on the Truckee River. So that's not your responsibility I think this is just kind of Opening up a can of worms right now to talk about that. I'd like to have that agendized to talk about Sorry, can I get clarity?

Are you asking how many cameras RTC placed on military road?

No, just I You know, can we get an accurate tally? Like what cameras are on? What cameras does RPD have? How many cameras are coordinating with RPD? How many cameras are on the river? Because I feel like there's a sense that we're becoming like a police state and I don't want that. And if the perception is wrong, then we have a PR problem. And if it is, then maybe we need to address it. So I don't know if that's something we can agendize later. And I'm not putting this on you, Corey. This is just something that opened it up. And so just for the record, we understand how many we have at RPD.

You have that number here. I just want to make sure that the ask is for how many Reno-owned cameras.

Just... How many are in Reno? And I don't know how to specifically ask that because we have RTC cameras. We have, you have private individuals that have cameras. Yeah. And I'm not, I'm not asking for ring cameras. That's way, you know, that's a whole other thing. But, um, To the public, they're not discriminating between a flock camera, an RTC camera, a ranger camera on Truckee River. All they know is that they're seeing more and more cameras, and I know I am too. The ones from RTC, I'm like, I didn't receive any notice about that. I didn't. You know, we didn't vote on that. It's just kind of there. So if we could just maybe have a broader discussion about the cameras in general. And again, we've had so many comments about people that are upset about feeling like we are becoming a police state. And I know that I personally don't support that. And I would like to have more information about that. you know, crimes that have been solved, tickets that have been written, things of that nature, more statistics about, you know, crimes that are solved with this information. Make sure it's worth the public's frustration. You know, we need to really look more at the bigger picture. That aside... I did just want to talk about the town hall we had. That was before your time. It was on Ward 4. It did coincide with a terrible, tragic event of an officer-involved shooting where a person unfortunately lost her life. It's a horrible, horrible tragedy. And that town hall really became a space for people to express their frustrations about that and provide feedback to RPD. So that was a space where RPD showed up, but it didn't really provide an opportunity for people to ask questions in general about what RPD is doing. with regard to like traffic mitigation or crime safety and things like that. It ended up being a very specific avenue of questions. But I do like the idea of town halls and I am so grateful that you guys are coming back to the NABs. That was something that stopped under Chief Nance And it was an area of friction between us. I met with her monthly, and I asked every time for her to bring that back. And I'm just really appreciative that you have brought that back. It's so helpful for the public. Because it's one thing to say, oh, Don't listen to social media. They're inflating the amount of crimes. Everything's okay. But it's another thing to be able to show the data and compare maybe even year over year or throughout the awards. I just want to thank you for that. It's so helpful. Also, I know that you've done some different research. Traffic enforcement things throughout my ward. There are some areas that need to continue having different things in some new areas I'd like to connect with you on we have a lot of areas of just long straight roads without lights We get a lot of racing and donuts and out stuff out there. So it was out there because of the straightaways Yeah, yeah, but I know that you've been responsive and I know that We can't just divert all the resources to one area so I know you're working on it. I appreciate that. But just want to make sure the community knows that we're discussing and it's coming down the pike. So thank you for that.

Thank you, Ms. Ebert. Mr. Solferino, I'll just my last full round. I want to focus on slide 12, if you could bring it up, please. So one of the things that you said sort of. stayed with me and that was you understood that the state of Nevada in the next legislative cycle may be taking up the issue broadly of ALPRs, right? Sounded like you had been talking with some folks who may be introducing legislation which would impact that. And you said something that was important to me, which was that you want to be out in front of the issue, meaning you want us to be the gold standard for the issue and not be, I guess, behind the bus. So when is that regulation, you think, within the next month or so, you think it will be in a position where it can be shown to us? Okay. Okay. And so that's good. What I will say is when I have listened to the national conversation and I see like Florida and Texas to particularly maybe more conservative is the word we'll use states where their governors are saying, hey, we're concerned about this technology. And you have very liberal states, we'll just pick on Vermont or something, and say their governors are also having the same question. We're kind of a purpley state. We kind of are all over the place. Western land use Democrats are a pretty interesting group. I want to understand, like, how do you thread that needle? Because you've heard each one of us say, hey, we think there are valid uses for such technology. They do assist you in solving certain types of crimes and deterring crimes. But we're concerned about the unintended consequences or the abuses. So how do you think that that is going to be a needle that we can thread here locally? And I think Ms. Anderson makes a good point, right? I don't think we have to own the baggage for every community where there was an abuse, but it does give people a pause when they hear stories about like police officers who have stalked their exes using the technology, right? So what are the kinds of things that you anticipate being safeguards for that type of thing and how would we know?

Thank you, sir, for the question. For the record, I think we set the standard because that's what we do. That's what we've done in Nevada. So when you had the George Floyd incident and you had criminal justice reform and you had the special session in the summer of 2020, all of the recommendations were things that the Reno Police Department, Washington County Sheriff's Office, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department were already doing. That's our goal here, too, is we have a broad law enforcement correlation of public safety professionals across this state that work together in legislative years and non-legislative years to ensure that this technology that is moving forward is overwhelmingly supportive of stopping Crime of identifying victims preventing future victim ology. So just like we do with e-bikes just like we do with everything else It's an opportunity for education because there's a ton of misinformation out there But what I want people to not lose sight for is the accountability piece that there are safeguards You can't just randomly log into this system without us knowing who you are Why are you logging it in? What case number was it affiliated with? What CAD call was it affiliated with? What were the purposes of this? Why did you run this plate three times within a three-hour span? Were you looking for a DOMBAT suspect? That's where the accountability piece comes in. That's where the oversight comes in.

And a DOMBAT suspect is what, a domestic battery?

Sorry, domestic battery. Yes, my acronyms. I apologize. In 27 years, you can't take the acronyms out of the kit. I apologize. that we can get in front of that I really like the sheriff out of Sacramento had a great public. Release yesterday with respect to a LPR technology and finding a homicide suspect with what they're doing in Palm Springs. We do it better here in Reno. We have an opportunity here to highlight the technology, to highlight the professionalism of our department, but to show the public, too, how we're using it responsibly and those safeguards that we've put in place so that they can ensure through randomized audits, through password protection, through more than three or four, whatever the standard is that we identify that flags an individual that focuses our efforts towards that to inquire and ask those questions why. That's how we're going to.

Well, and I think Ms. Ebert makes an important point about the proliferation of private cameras. It's hard because the public sees a camera. They don't necessarily know that it's, and I'll tell you, yesterday as I drove into my neighborhood, I drove through the streets to get into my home and I noticed like a grouping of cameras. And I know what they are and understand that they are not yours. But the interesting thing too is, and Ms. Dewar said, or no, maybe Ms. Ebert said, it's like, tell us what crimes they're solving. And I was going to give just one example from recent Netflix, which was this, the Moscow, Idaho college murders. And the way that that case was solved, it was the stitching together of ring doorbell, private cameras, HOA cameras, Moscow, Idaho cameras, which were all able to be connected and they could actually trace Brian Koberger's route and for the crimes that were committed there. And I think without those ALPRs, that certainly would not have been a crime that would have been solved, or maybe it would have taken 10 years, or the justice delayed model. But I do think there is something there to be said. And maybe, Ms. Bryant, to put a finer point on it, it's like maybe the information is, yes, we have 39 at the City of Reno, or was it 29? 29. 29, sorry. I just don't have the slide up. And we have the 29 plus seven, so a fairly limited number. But when you take those plus what school police are using, Sparks, Washoe County, RTC, private homeowners, when they all become stitched together, then you start having that panopticon that people are concerned about. And so I want to make sure that you understand that we would like to know what is going on there and obviously we're not trying to make decisions about that would impair your ability to conduct your job, but maybe that's the question is like how many people signed up to give you access to them, just a number and then how we work with other agencies because I mean hopefully that's what's happening is there's almost no place that you can go that there isn't some camera. Now other societies, Europe for example, if you go to London, their camera technology is vastly different than ours and on a whole different level because it is facial recognition and it does ID suspects and it's a very different kind of thing. They have a different tradition of Fourth Amendment than we do, right? So those will be my comments for now and now we'll turn our attention to our speed round. I know you've got things you've got to get back to today. So if anyone has any last one-minute comments, you're on the clock now. We'll start with Ms. Anderson. Vice Mayor Martinez.

Yes, just quickly, just because of some of the comments that you have brought up, and then I know the work that you have done with some of our local community groups that are helping our immigrant population in this region. I think there was a public comment about some of the policies when it comes to arrests. And so I think from my understanding, you don't necessarily pursue somebody in the interest of applying immigration or federal law. You're looking at the safety of the public. And so when someone is detained and they are checked into the system, It's my understanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has 24 hours to put a hold on them to be able to be reviewed and continue any further investigation. Is that understanding correct? And can you highlight some of the work that you have done with any of the community groups that you work with?

Thank you for the question, sir. Cory Solferino for the record. I have worked with the Latino Stakeholder Council, Pastor Manera and his congregation, Claudia Castaneda, Sandra Quiñones, and just so many wonderful people because of my former role as being the undersheriff at the Washoe County Sheriff's Office and the detention facility and those relationships because ICE does have a partnership, has had a partnership as far as office space within detention facility because we do not run a 257G program in northern Nevada. So what we've always said is our officers are even further detached from that in the sense that they don't do immigration enforcement. They affect local crimes and state law. So unless you've committed a crime, our officers would not detain based upon an immigration detainer. there's an actual warrant. If that's a warrant, that's different because a warrant is something that's actually governed. And I think sometimes warrant and detainer get used synonymously and they're two different things. So when somebody that may have questionable immigration status commits a domestic battery or DUI or crime in our community isn't arrested. If they are booked at 9-11 Par Boulevard and if immigration is up there and if immigration wants to put a hold or a detainer on them, They have a 24-hour window. If in 24 hours they don't follow that up with a warrant and they've satisfied local charges, those individuals are released. That's more of a sheriff's office function, not a Reno Police Department function. So our department is further removed from that just to the facts and circumstances known to those officers when they're making those encounters. But we only affect local city violations and state violations. We don't have anything to do with immigration enforcement.

Yes, Senator, thank you for that. With your experience, I'm sure you were able to provide us with a more full understanding of the process. And with the passing of hands with individuals, our community members sometimes don't understand those jurisdictional lines. I just want to make sure we got that on the record. Thank you so much.

Ms. Taylor, I'm going to go to Madam Mayor, who has joined us electronically. And I apologize, she hasn't had any opportunity yet. So I'll come to you after that. Madam Mayor, I know you logged in. Can you hear us? Can we hear you?

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you now.

Okay, thank you so much. First of all, thank you so much, Chief Solferino. And I think it was mentioned. This was brought to council before you were in that position. So I appreciate that. your transparency because I don't believe that this was transparent at all at the time that it was brought forward, what it was, what the implications were. And I have very strong feelings about it because I have my own personal experience with being stalked and tracked. But, you know, obviously that was very deliberate on my property. And on my vehicle, so you know it does give me probably a little different perspective, but I do appreciate the transparency and I think there needs to be so much more transparency around. in the sense, and I'm not sure, because now I'm watching different companies come forward with different technology and ways around that, but I also look at it in a sense of like the public record aspect of it that, you know, people being able to abuse it. And we have records of public records of people requesting certain documents. And the reason I point that out is because it should be very detailed of who is looking at it. And I know you've sort of touched on it, but it certainly shouldn't have the access available that it does in this capacity. And I think that that needs to be very, very scrutinized for sure. But You know, I've also seen where people reach out continuously if they've been in an accident or they've had a crime committed where they're trying to get more pieces of that puzzle to try to figure out exactly what happened. And then I also think you have the problem of facial recognition, and we've seen how that has gone down. Very, very wrong. And it causes the city to have liability. So this is a much broader conversation. But I will tell you, I have very strong feelings about it because I know what it feels like. But I want to really commend you in the sense of being super transparent about this. because i think the public deserves it but also i don't feel that we have the transparency level as a council to even have an idea of what was going on um and then you know i i find it interesting sometimes we have areas that are really challenging. Let's just take McCarran, for instance, right? If this was so successful, then why don't we know exactly, you know, what what is happening on McCarran or You know, I think if we need to see the data of these outcomes. And so I just think that it's done very poorly. I think Flock has also admitted to, you know, some unintended consequences of sort of the technology. I was watching something with the founder the other day. And so I think there is a lot to unpack here. But I'm glad we're having, I think we need to have a broader conversation. But they certainly alarm me because I just know what that's like when you feel like your rights have been violated. But I want to commend you for being so much more transparent because this was really brought to us in sort of a brush off of, oh, it's, you know, very casual. There was no transparency around it. So I thank you for you know, constantly willing to have this conversation and what does it look like moving forward, if at all. So thank you. I appreciate it very, very much.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, for the comments. Corey Salfrano for the record. I'd just like to follow up a couple things because I think you hit on some great points. Specifically, the last couple of legislative cycles, Las Vegas Metro and Clark County, ourselves, our law enforcement coalition has looked at hard red light cameras. We don't have the ability. ALPRs don't record speed. They don't record any of that stuff. So we can't really do any speed enforcement on McCarran. We can't really do any red light enforcement on McCarran with specifics to that, but we can identify. We indicated two hit and run suspects, but in areas where we didn't have cameras, hit and run suspects, we still have two crimes that are open right now trying to identify who those individuals were. As we start to continue to gear up for the legislative session and look at where we can find efficiencies to bring people's speeds down on McCarran, I'm absolutely open to that. I know I've been working with Councilman Reese and Councilwoman Dewar on that and some things that were highly effective that I worked with Chair Hill. At the time when she was on the Washoe County Commission and was chair for Incline Village is digital readback fine signs through RTC and posting those. When people see how fast that they're driving, it has a natural inclination to bring speeds down. So we were very successful up in Incline Village doing that. I would like to champion that same effort on McCarran coupled with enforcement to bring those speeds down to get things under control.

Thank you so much. Ms. Taylor, can I come back to you now?

Yeah, I just had a quick comment. Going back to the downtown public safety corridor for the manager and the chief, do you need anything else from me or do you have everything you need?

I understand the request. I'll work with the attorneys on what that might look like and probably do a policy briefing to see if it meets your needs and then we'll proceed from there.

Thank you very much.

Okay, Ms. Stewart.

Yep, thank you. My speed round is about two quick questions. So since you've been chief, have you heard about an app called MyRPD?

I believe you asked me that last time, and that hasn't been around. I believe that we checked with Noah Gallup, and that program has been removed.

Right, so I still have it on my phone.

It's not supported. I apologize, ma'am.

Yeah, I didn't know it was discontinued, but we spent a fair amount of money supporting it. You mentioned Noah Gallup, I recall, and there were software developers in the department as well as external to the department. It was a pretty big deal. It was well touted. That kind of app can be useful if it was done right and tied into your current data because people can see what crimes you're pursuing, where the speeding is, where issues are with an app. And so I understand it hasn't been supported, but as you get into the office, it's something you may want to take another look at or it may be not worth the money. So I just want to bring it to your attention. And the second issue is You and I talked a little bit about heat mapping, so that's where you have incidents that are clustered. This is separate from cameras. This is just... And it just happened again. So just for people's reference, in my neighborhood, I'd had a series where nine 911 calls were made over a two-week period, and another one was made. And there was no recognition by the watch commander, is that the person, that there was a cluster. And so they really weren't responding or staging facilities. police officers there. When I brought it to your attention, because I finally did, not your attention, predecessors, they were able to catch the next person within two blocks, within five minutes. Was it like swatting call, ma'am?

Like they just kept calling 911 and hanging up?

No, no, no. The people were knocking on the door at 11, and it just happened again last week at 3 in the morning. And 911 officers actually came to my neighborhood at a door. I mean, I only found out about this retrospectively. My main point here is just having the data so that you can identify where trends are happening, whether it's theft or house home invasion or whatever it is that will help you do patrol easier and better. I want to support that. I think it's so important. Thank you, Ms. Dewar. Thank you.

Appreciate that. Ms. Ebert. Oh, I'm sorry, sir. Oh, did you have a response?

I did. Corey Salfrano for the record. Thank you, ma'am, for the comments. And I think Director Shadle and I have some homework to do because what I would love to do is that heat mapping that you're talking about is to put a lot of that data forward facing on our webpage moving forward. So when Hexagon comes online, that is one of our priorities to do that so that people know that what's happening in their areas. We're also working on a comprehensive NAB report that We're trying to correlate, because I apologize, police districts and beats are different than wards. So we're trying to make a overall report for the wards about what's happening in their areas so that that is useful information that you can take back to your constituents and what hot spots are happening in those areas.

And when do you think Hexagon will be on?

I'm hoping by the first of the year.

Wow. Okay. Thank you.

Ms. Ebert.

Yeah, I'll try to be quick. Okay, so we're using cameras. They're not infallible, right? We have an agenda item today, C2. There was a woman arrested with mistaken identity. It's not the first time that we've had this. She was identified through different things, but also there was surveillance of somebody going to a gas station. probably before your time in RPD. But I'm just letting you know, and it's an example because it's on our agenda today, where this person was arrested, mistaken identity. Is there going to be an extra layer of we need to... really make sure that this information is correct because I've heard of several cases of people being arrested incorrectly based off of camera footage. I would like to know what the plans are for additional... I'm sure people... all the time if they get arrested say it wasn't me right so there's that but is there going to be an extra level of scrutiny um regarding cameras and then the next piece i'm just going to try and get through it quick um Something I've heard from my community is we have cameras around. Why are people still not getting tickets for registrations? So my question is, when does RPD look at the data? Is it when you get a Reno Direct complaint? Is it when there's a call about a crime? Are you not looking at it until something's reported? Because there are many people driving with expired registration. There are people driving without license plates. this kind of information collected by these cameras could tell you where to put enforcement to get these people ticketed to hopefully change this because you'd see where they're driving, correct? So how are we using this to know where we need to do enforcement? When are we looking at it? Just kind of...

there's a lot to go with that. And I'm going to try to unpack it really quick for you, ma'am. So Corey Salfrino, again, for the record, first question with respect to how do we unpack that? I think these are the unintended consequences of moving a majority of the traffic code from criminal to civil.

I understand that.

And so people aren't doing that. So we have robust discussions with our legislative affair teams to try to address that because cameras shouldn't be used for that type of low-hanging fruit. I mean, there's serious crimes happening in our community, priority ones, twos, and threes.

Mm-hmm.

And not saying that our people aren't taking traffic enforcement seriously, but the cameras aren't that methodology that we would use to go do an expired registration ticket for that vehicle. Those are things that are happening in front of our men and women when they're doing proactive enforcement. Our traffic enforcement's out there. They're pulling the vehicles over, and they're either giving them a fix-it ticket. They're giving them a warning, go get your vehicle registered. some of the unintended consequences of taking that from criminal to civil was so that it didn't disproportionately affect the lower socioeconomic class. Because if you couldn't pay for your groceries and couldn't pay for your insurance or your registration and not trying to make an excuse, that's where the conversations came from. So that's kind of that perpetual cycle. As we try to identify methodologies moving forward to help people navigate those processes, because we do understand that's a big issue, but that's a more pervasive issue than the Reno Police Department. That's the state of Nevada, that's DMV, that's the state police, and that's our coalition moving forward because a lot of our service requests do come with those constituent concerns about unregistered vehicles. But I can tell you, and this isn't any knock to any of the other agencies out there, the volume of work that the Reno Police Department does in comparison to other organizations out there is tenfold i mean we are busy our calls for service so when we're out there trying to identify victims from crimes or we're trying to identify suspects to prevent future victimology that is the primary focus of those cameras not for low-level civil infractions that wouldn't rise to the level of using that for and I would even have some concerns using it for traffic enforcement in those spaces because there's specific legislation that hasn't been approved in this state for red light cameras for speed enforcement cameras and that would be almost using it for those types of angles and I don't think that that would I'd have to consult with my legal team but that is fantastic to get on the record thank you that is fantastic to get on the record because that is a question that I get all the time and I guess if I had to boil it down it would be the question would be

When do you use the information on the camera? Is it reactionary? Are you using it for proactive enforcement? Or is it you're aware of a specific issue and then you review the footage of the camera or you watch it in real time? What triggers that reviewing of what the camera is doing?

Corey Solferino for the record. I think it's situation specific. It's when we have an incident. If we have a critical incident at that area, it's calling in resources. Do we need to de-escalate our response? Do we need to escalate our response? We have parades and civic events that happen throughout our community. It's making sure that our public is safe. Our protest zone for Believe Plaza and those areas, making sure that everybody has the First Amendment right to exercise their free speech and that they're allowed to protest peacefully and that they're protected and not targeted against antagonists. I mean, so every opportunity where it comes up to identify a person of interest that was involved in a violent crime or a property crime or making sure that hot August nights goes off without a hitch or that Bruising blues are making sure that we are being that force multiplier because I don't have enough to put 20 officers downtown How are we tracking people that might be victimizing purse snatching? battering individuals in our community in our private or in our public spaces and Yeah, that's the primary use of those technologies.

Okay, so You're five minutes and so it's your questions are super important and this is such a big topic that I want to give everybody a bit of time But I would say if you have additional questions chief Solferino is always available And and you would be able to convey those maybe through your now but I'm going to close out by just my last comment Which will be my last comment and unless Madam Mayor has anything, but I'll say this, Chief. First of all, thank you for the report and presentation. It was a 90-day look back, right? And ultimately, I know there was a lot there, and we have had a very hot bench here today, so to speak, because it is an important topic, and certainly we do get questions, like Ms. Ebert said, each day about very specific things, and we want to be able to convey the information that you want, and without you doing your work, we can't do that. So I am hopeful that you and... Madam manager and and the mayor would have a presentation very similar. It doesn't necessarily have to be every 90 days I think it was a nice good check-in with you at 90 days But I think being able to be available to the nabs I want to thank the men and women of the Reno Police Department who do every day show up and Just do a Herculean task, which is to keep this community safe I know that you have a lot of fans on this dais even when we have questions and the questions can be somewhat hard and sometimes uncomfortable and it is no reflection that we don't support the work that you're doing. It's that we want to make sure that we're doing it in a way that's consistent with our shared and collective values. So thank you for that. I'm going to close this item out, but it looks like we'll need a motion on it. And so I'll look for a motion. Okay, I have a motion from Ms. Dewar, which is the acceptance.

To accept the report. Discussion? The update.

Well, hold on a second. I have to get a motion and then a second.

Okay, let me start again. I move to accept the Reno Police Department's 90-day update and provide... Well, I'm not providing particular direction, but you've heard our questions. Okay.

And do I have a second? Okay. Now discussion on the motion.

Oh, I was just going to thank Corey, Chief Solferino. I know I came out with a ton of stuff and I just want to say thanks. And I ask you all these things because I respect you and I am, um, you know, appreciate you. And, and I know that you're going to work hard on all this stuff. So I just want you to know, uh, I wasn't trying to do any gotchas. I appreciate your info and you, you got some really great information, um, out there in the public. And that was really helpful to me. So thank you for that.

Well, Ms. Ebert, you asked questions that I got information from, so thank you for that. Any other discussion at this time? Hearing none, I'll call for the question. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Mr. Vice Mayor, with your indulgence, can we take a 15-minute recess? That would be great. At 2 o'clock, we have a time certain. Dr. Kingsley is here, and I think we have another... item that is a time certain. I'd like to get Dr. Kingsley on before D2, unless that's noticed some other way, simply because he's got a very busy day. So can we take 15 minutes? That'll give us the time for a comfort break and then come back at two o'clock promptly and hear Dr. Kingsley's presentation. Thank you so much.

The Moana pool. The upstairs has a big gym, which was beautiful. The pool's inside and out. There was a little playground. That was fun. It was probably one of my favorite places to go.

John Chipman. So close and yet so far. Can you ret...

The sign shop, the road departments, to see their leadership and to see their support and their infrastructure, that was very cool. They do all their maintenance here in-house, which I thought was fantastic. It's a really beneficial, eye-opening experience. One I had never been exposed to is the water treatment plant.

I did not know that this specific place even existed at all.

The tour of the...

For me, I've been president for four years. I've really made a commitment to work very closely with the City of Reno, with the Washoe County Commission, with the City of Sparks, with all of Northern Nevada to really emphasize what we have here. I grew up in Northern Nevada. I grew up actually in Sparks and went to grade school, high school, and this incredible university. It was an incredible place to grow up and I'm really proud of this community. I truly believe that a great university needs a great city and a great city needs a great university. And it's very rare to have the proximity of a university to a downtown Reno, and then also essentially have the two grow up together. This university was founded in 1874 at Elko, moved to Reno in 1885, not too far from where I'm sitting. It was this university that grew up on a hill overlooking the city for everyone to admire and just an example of what we can aspire to. I personally believe this should be a university town That people are really proud of this campus and what it is and the opportunity for their sons and daughters to come here and get an incredible education. This is a destination where students can become whatever it is they dream about being. and have an incredible experience, feel safe, make lifetime friends, get mentored by some of the best faculty in the United States of America. This is an incredible place, and I've said over and over again, it shouldn't be a secret anymore, a well-kept secret. It's my personal belief that the future of this university is growing south into downtown Reno. If I had a magic wand, I would create a university district You know, we renamed, working with the city, we renamed Center Street from the Truckee River forward to the University Way. And I would love to see on both sides, east and west of that street, restaurants, student housing, faculty housing, graduate student housing, where all the community comes. This is something you'll see in a lot of great cities where there are these districts. The city has made a lot of investments. through the years to make it a beautiful place where people again can recreate and eat and just go for a walk and what have you. When we were in high school, everyone used to cruise Maine and there was all this activity and I can see that happening again. Laurel and I, my wife, we really enjoy coming downtown to to go to the restaurants, go to the special events, the hot August nights and everything that's happening. And if you haven't been downtown for a long time, I would really encourage people to give it another opportunity to come because I think they'll be pleasantly surprised.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My name is Adam Cates and I am the director of community engagement for the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts. The Pioneer Center is the hub of the performing arts in our region right here in downtown Reno. We are the home to some incredible organizations from the world-class Reno Philharmonic Orchestra to Art Town who brings in incredible performances from across the world.

I think we're ready to get started. We can call this meeting back to order for the Reno City Council meeting today at 2.02 p.m. We're going to keep going with the agenda that we had approved prior to taking the meeting, so we'll start with C3. I believe that's you, Dr. Kingsley. Welcome to chambers.

Thank you. Let me just...

Sorry, give me a second.

Good morning. So this is part of my biannual here to just come and present on the first and second quarter of public health and just what we've been delivering to our three jurisdictions. So to provide a quick summary and then answer some questions. Again, prevention, strategy for impact, and advocacy, you know, our purpose and value that we have a regionalized public health services that we provide. So I'll just go through. You have the report. I'm just going to highlight a few things through them. We just finished developing with the District Board of Health setting our priorities and just set our strategic goals for fiscal year 27 to fiscal year 30. Part of that strategic plan, we have a very developed strategic plan with green light, red light, orange light, you know, as we're going through and developing those objectives, one thing that leaning towards that I've identified is that, yes, we do so much of this, but really what is the impact of that? So we want to start measuring the impact of we do this many inspections, what does that mean impact-wise for our community? So moving towards that, but also completed our last strategic plan. on those, and so continuing to work towards interventions and all those points, just highlighting there where we are for that's for part of my, the Office of District Health Officer. Air quality management. During quarter one, quarter two, we've identified in areas, especially in Verdi, so we opened up a new monitoring station in Verdi. We recognize that when we have regional fires, smoke a lot of times comes first over to Verdi. It was an area that we identified we didn't have robust data to be able to collect and monitor our air quality. So we were able to, after through a several year process, find funding for it and being able to build and open the Verdi monitoring station and that is now open and operating. And I just always like to point out the great work that air quality does as part of permitting. They are part of the permitting process for many of our businesses here and construction companies. And they're always, with their plan reviews, they're about 3.2 days, but they're always about 99% timely. So they do some amazing work for our community. For clinical and community health services, just a few things to point out. There's a lot that we do there. We had our successful back-to-school vaccine clinic recently and continue to offer a vaccine for children as well as vaccines for adults. Our TB control, we are noticing that we have... Now about 50% of those individuals that come to our clinic are uninsured. So we have seen that rate increase from about 42% to 50% over the first part of this year. Now we're all watching Medicaid, Medicare, and the concerns we have with coverage. So we are seeing that. Public health many times is the stopgap. So we are currently the only clinic that offers same-day services and appointments. for women in our community for reproductive and sexual health needs. So we have about 44 open, we keep 44 open a day so an individual can walk in and get same day treatment through an APRN. Also wanted to point out WIC in order to, as we continue to manage our budget and being able to manage these more difficult times with our budget, we identified cost savings and one was to close the Moana Clinic, currently down south, Through that, we actually increased our participation, and so all WIC staff has returned to 9th Street. But we continue to deliver the same services to those clients, as well as we are currently in the process of setting up contracts with county library. And we should be back in that area where we can offer sometimes two to three days a week. We'll be there to be able for anybody that has access to care challenges, so that we were back in that area again, but in an affordable way. But also reporting just on WIC, with the recent fires, many individuals who lost electricity in their homes had recently purchased their supplements and their foods for the month. They had to leave it, and they lost that food. And so we contacted state, and they thankfully allowed them to go back and repurchase for the month for the food that they lost. So they were able to be covered. And our state partners were wonderful, and they promptly did that for those that are using WIC access. environmental health services. So continuing forward we have a pilot underway instead of just showing up for surprise visits we do announced visits to allow them that time and also a in conjunction with our active managerial courses that allows those individuals to come in and be prepared and have that customer service approach to us working with our communities so that they feel supported and and that they can have the correct tools to be able to deliver safe and healthy food to our community. We have noticed, though, over the last that four foodborne disease complaints have increased over this quarter. Usually, for the past several years, we've been about eight a month, and we've increased to 14 a month. So we're looking to identify why that is occurring and how we can work with our permitted food facilities to identify. What is actually occurring? We also do have a grant that we recently started where we are able to go out and we're sampling PFAS So forever chemicals and it is those that allow us access We go to the residential wells and we test those of the 39 in the first two quarters that we tested 13 did come up positive So just trying to identify that and identify where we can again with our land development our septic and wells our Our septic is up with a small indication that we have had an increase in homes being built that are on septic for overall. So population health, we did close out our last flu season or what we call our respiratory seasons. So looking at those numbers, we had 509 flu hospitalizations, 70% of them were unvaccinated. So we had 26 deaths last year attributed to flu. So that is one where we can lean in towards impact. If we could drop that down to 30%, then 40%, you know, if they were vaccinated, had potential of not going to the hospital, and what would that be an economic impact? They're not at the hospital, they, you know, on our healthcare system. So this is where our flu campaigns are important, and we can actually have an economic impact as well as towards education. kids are able to be in school longer, they don't require care or parents to stay home with their children when they're sick, but hospitalization especially, looking at that. So flu season is starting. Last year we had a lot of bouts of whooping cough at our schools, and we hope that the summer break broke that cycle, but unfortunately we did have a case at TMCC High School a week ago, so. It looks like it's going to be around for a while. When we're looking at our school vaccination rates, we are about 94%. So we just got a report card for Nevada. 95 is really our good zone where we can be at. So we're continuing to monitor in that and helping individuals that don't have the Tdap or tetanus shot, what a lot of people call, for whooping cough. But continuing to monitor that and address that as promptly as we can. We have our EMS oversight that we continue. We recently just renewed the franchise agreement and continuing to ensure that they provide quality service to our community members on delivering that essential EMS service for them. Last, just to kind of go over, this is just recent, added this in, but the Hawk Bug Stallion fires. Nevada joined Hawaii and California, so it's not a very common thing, and this is the first in my career but a local public health declaration of an emergency. And we know that declarations basically allow us to be able, both states and federal government, to release resources and funding that allow us to respond to these tragedies or the impacts that are caused within our community. So I was contacted and I was very grateful for the county DA that day as we worked through it in order to declare that emergency declaration here, which helped the state and their declaration approached the federal government to be able to request for assistance. So that declaration is there. It's also for our community, but overall the declaration is that there could be toxicity within those structures that were burned, and we want people to be aware of that because it could impact their health. What public health does during these, we are an integral part of the response, but what we do is we set up contracts and coordinate with all health care centers And so when evacuation occurs, it could be a home of just eight beds. It could be an Alzheimer's home or it could be a recovery home. Those individuals also need to be evacuated. So it's important making sure that they have a plan to be evacuated and they know what they need to do from transport. So when this does occur, we work with REMSA as well as our EMS, but also RTC and emergency evacuations. We contacted 41 facilities. During the during the hawk fire we're and we're able to reach 30 of them but overall we had to back for 584 residents were evacuated during the fire. And then we worked with repopulation afterwards, and they have all been repopulated. And so those healthcare homes were closed, as well as the freestanding ED in the North Valleys was closed during that. So we helped coordinate that, but a lot of the work that goes into it is the pre-work to make sure that everything is planned and we're able to respond to it appropriately. with that so other side things that occurs anytime electricity goes out is that our is that our permitted fields facilities lose power which means they lose refrigeration and freeze so anytime there's a loss of power or a loss of water we have to go re-inspect and coordinate with our permitted facilities to make sure they have the correct resources to open their businesses again and I already mentioned WIC so just Quick things on that. So we're at 10 minutes. So I might get this. There's a few things to point out. I have the community health needs assessment. So that was just recently released on August 30th. It's wonderful for our partners to be able to have not only shows the needs that were identified in our community for that, but any nonprofit can use it to be able to apply for grants and also inform our community health improvement plan. I also wanted to notify that we are beginning workshops to address fees. We hired a third party that came back with an assessment and that can be provided, but we're starting community workshops before our business impact statement for both our air quality and environmental health fees that we're doing, and so we're looking for any widely spread knowledge that we are doing those fees, and that is on our website where those workshops can be identified time and location. I will stop there and open up for questions.

Thank you so much, Dr. Kingsdale. I'll look to my right. Council Member Anderson, do you have any comments or questions? Okay. Council Member Taylor?

I do. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. And I wanted to start off with a comment and actually a compliment. Thank you very much for working with our development services team and the coordination. I believe that through BFAC I hear some coordination efforts, but our team has said that you guys are working together very closely. The second thing is I'm wondering if I could ask for your help on something, and it might be working with our city manager's office and legal team and maybe parks. We're having some public safety challenges with food distribution in our public parks and our public places, and I understand there's a whole bunch of things that happen around that. But I believe that if we all get together and figure out what the best solution is to keep our public places and parks safe and the people safe and the public safe, that we can come up with some solutions. Is that something that you would be willing to work on?

Yeah, and we've touched on it before, but happily to be great partners with that and anything where we can lean in both on solid waste, which we permit, as well as food, so.

Okay, I would really appreciate that. And we're just seeing some trash issues and some leftover food issues. And obviously we have concerns. We want to make sure that people are receiving quality food. So I will ask the city manager and the attorney's office to work with you and your team and see how we can come up with a solution. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. Council Member Reese, do you have any comments or questions?

I don't have any comments, but I'll say for the benefit of the body, I am the chair of the District Board of Health, and I'm so very grateful for the presentation. If ever there is a question that arises in your ward or neighborhood and you need a specific issue, happy to help facilitate it. But thank you, Dr. Kingsway.

Thank you. I think I see Council Member Ebert online. Do you have any comments or questions on this item?

No, not this time. I've been listening in the back, but I was having a hard time hearing it, so I joined you.

Okay, great, just making sure we covered everything for my part. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for the partnership. Thank you for coming twice a year, I think, to give us an update on everything that's going on. I'm gonna dive a little deeper into the community health needs assessment that you talked about and see where we can plug in some of that information.

Brought three of them, and so I'll drop them off over here. But they're also available on our website as well as Renown. This time we partnered with Renown. And so we conducted this together, both on our website. That is available. And overall, next is as we go into the community health improvement plan, which many Reno entities are involved, invited to participate in, and where we go to make a change and impact to improve the health of our communities. So thank you. I'll drop those off.

Thank you so much. Appreciate you spending some time with us. Thank you. Thanks. Madam Clerk, we'll close item C3 and move on to item D2, Lighthouse Sierra SPD Ordinance Amendment. Hello.

You ready to go?

Yes.

All right. Good afternoon, members of the council. Jeff Foster, associate planner for the record. I will keep my presentation very brief, get out of the way so you can hear from the people behind me who you really want to hear from. All right, so the Lighthouse Sierra Specific Plan District, case number LDC26-108. The project site is about three acres in size. It's located on the west side of Talbot Lane, south of South McCarran Boulevard. It's currently developed with a single family home that was built in 1950 and will be demolished. And the request before you is a zone change from large flat residential one acre to specific plan district. As we zoom in, we can see that we have office uses to the north and to the east across Talbot. You have a private school to the west and single family residences in Ranchera to the south. The key issues that staff analyzed during this process are the overall development plan and development standards as well as compatibility with surrounding zoning and development. The master plan land use is suburban mixed use, and on the screen are 10 goals and policies from the master plan that are in support of the proposed request. The zoning district, large lot residential one, does not conform with the master plan designation, and the proposed change to SPD with neighborhood commercial-based zoning will bring that into conformance with the master plan. The proposed SPD supports a mix of uses, including residential, commercial, and other employment and service-oriented uses. In comparison with other zones allowed under the SMU master plan designation, including mixed use suburban and general commercial, the SPD would allow for a more appropriate mix of housing opportunities and utilize mixed use and residential adjacency standards to ensure compatibility with the residential to the south. Moving on, here's a comparison of the existing and the proposed zoning as well as the uses that are allowed under the two zones. Here are the recommended findings for an SPD zoning map amendment. Staff can make all recommended findings. And here's the recommended motion. The applicant's representative will now be making the presentation, and then you'll hear from the lovely people behind me. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Carter Williams, for the record. I'm with RBI Planning and Landscape Architecture representing the applicant Lighthouse Living Foundation. And before I begin my presentation, I wanted to give the executive directors, Greg and Linda Schaffer, an opportunity to introduce the foundation, their mission, and how we got here to this property and this project.

Good afternoon, my name is Linda Schaefer and I'm a director of Lighthouse Living Foundation. And I want to begin by thanking each of you for giving us a designated time slot today. It allowed many members of our community to be able to be here and we're so grateful for that. I want to tell you what an honor it is for me to represent the community behind me, and I want to thank each and every one of you for being here today. I know that many of them went to a lot of, all of them went to a lot of trouble to be here, so thank you. I will also keep my comments brief as their voices are much more powerful than mine. but I wanted to give you a little bit of background. I'm going to explain briefly the why. My husband Greg Schaefer will explain the what, and then Carter Williams of RVI will explain the how. It's important that we convey to you that this project could not just be anywhere. We have found the perfect location for this project to be, and that's what we want to explain to you today. Our family story began 25 years ago when our third and youngest daughter, Samantha, was born with cerebral palsy and intellectual and developmental disabilities. That started us on a different parenting journey than we ever expected. In looking back, I wouldn't miss a moment of it because it introduced us to so many incredible people that we're very grateful to know. Fast forward 22 years, and Samantha graduated from Galena High School, and she was accepted into a post-secondary certificate program at the University of Nevada in Reno called the Path to Independence program. It's a two-year program. She thrived in that program. She considers herself an alumnus of the University of Nevada, Reno. And her second year there, she decided she wanted to live in the dorms with other peers and experience what life was like away from mom and dad. She did that successfully. And when she graduated from that and came back home, She began to wonder, what's next for me? We began to wonder the same thing. She had seen her two older sisters go to college, graduate, move away, find a job. She wanted the same things as her older sisters. So Greg and I began to think, what is available for her where she could live more independently? It's important you know some statistics as well. These statistics are national statistics, but they also correlate to statistics in Reno. Approximately 5% of the population is born with intellectual and developmental disabilities. That translates, according to Google, there are around 235,000 residents of Reno. If you take 5% of that, that's close to 12,000 individuals just within Reno that are affected by developmental disabilities. 75% to 80% of them live at home with mom or dad or a family member until that family member can no longer care for them. One half of family caregivers are over the age of 50. We fall into that category. 10% are over the age of 75. There are huge concerns about long-term housing availability as well as stability. So as we were looking for where could be the next place for SAM, we recognize that there is a large gap in housing options currently in Reno and Northern Nevada. There's the family home, as I mentioned. There are group home options, which can accommodate usually between two to four individuals. Or if an individual has enough support and the desire and the skills to be able to live in just a regular community in a city apartment complex where they might have support coming in, or they're able to rent a home and have support coming in, there's that option. But all of these options tend to have more isolation go along with them. Most of the individuals in our community do not drive. They rely on friends or family members or public transportation to get wherever they need to go or want to go. So they often spend a lot of time at home and don't have as many opportunities to be out in the community or spending time with friends. Mother Teresa, one of her quotes is that the greatest poverty is loneliness, and many of our community members do experience that to a large degree. I want to end here and turn it over to Greg with just a quote from a study done in June 2024 by the Gwynn Center here in Reno. It was commissioned by the Nevada Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities and it states, What makes the DD community, and that DD stands for developmental disabilities, what makes the DD community's housing crisis unique is its seeming invisibility to the general public, policy makers, and legislative bodies. While other communities such as veterans, the homeless, and people overcoming addiction, which are all very, very worthy populations, have aggressively entered the public arena to describe and advocate for their needs, the DD community's needs are less recognized and understood. So I'll leave you with these three things that I want you to know about the community behind me and others who are joining online. Number one, they are diverse. They come from every ethnic background. They span all socioeconomic levels. They come from all parts of our city. They're engaged. Many volunteer. or they work, or they go to school. They're parts of community organizations and clubs, as you'll hear from them. And third, they all seek community, just like the rest of us. They want to be a part of something bigger. They want to be around their peers. They want to be engaged with the community at large. With that, I'm going to let Greg tell you a little bit about the what.

Good afternoon. So I guess I'm here to tell you the what. So once we discovered that there was a housing gap for the community that we're now trying to serve, my wife and I went on a two-year spree going around the country and interviewing and observing different organizations and how they went about their housing solutions for this community. And I come from the business background, so it's really exciting when you talk to people that open the kimono all the way. They show you everything. They tell you everything. They share everything. In the business world, you know, you play your cards pretty close to the vest. They lay them on the table and they walk you through it. So we were able to benchmark, better known as cherry pick, good ideas that we thought would work here in Reno and ones that we thought wouldn't. So we formed a 501 , faith-based, in 2022. The Lighthouse Sierra project, we intend to build in two phases. The first phase has two buildings associated with it. The first building is the main building, three-story building. First floor is all common space, has a few other additional items I'm going to tell you about real quick. And the second and third floor are the residential units. These are full apartments, roughly 700 square feet, with its own bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, and dining area. Your basic small one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartments. There will be some two-bedroom. The second building is kind of exciting. It's a makerspace building. So one of the things that our community loves to do is they love to do things with their hands. Well, it turns out I love to do things with my hands, so that works out pretty well. So we just started off with just a building to start producing different options for them for painting, for building, for doing anything that they wanted to. bring the community in with them. Well that took off and grew to where we've now added a second and third floor to it because we've added housing for staff members. So it'll have four units for housing for the staff members that are working there. Some of the amenities that are associated with the main building are a dining hall. Our community if left to their own druthers would eat a bag of Cheetos for breakfast and a bag of Doritos for lunch. And that didn't seem like a good idea over time. So we're bringing in a dining hall with a certified nutritionist and trying to make sure that we're doing right by them. Another thing it would have are treatment rooms. So when outside services come in, they often don't have a dedicated place to be able to perform services with their clients, who would be our residents. So we're setting up designated rooms to be able to do that. Some cool stuff is it will have a 100-seat theater. Our residents love movies. So a request of my daughter when I was asking her, name one thing that you would really like in this. And she said a movie theater. And at first I thought, give me a break. But it turned out this is going to work Wonderful. Our architects who are here today were able to incorporate the theater and opening it up to an outdoor amphitheater area with removable exterior walls. They've done some great work on that. And the last thing is a coffee shop. a forward-facing coffee shop that will bring the community into our facility and give our residents the opportunity to live and work on site. Employment for our community is very difficult for them to find, so this would give them a great opportunity to be able to work and live within the community. Bottom line is, and I'm trying to get done here. I know we're over time already. This has the opportunity to be a jewel in Reno's crown. This is going to be something that you're going to be able to bring people in and show them, look what Reno did. This is going to be pretty cool. This is going to be pretty cool. I have an ask at the end, but I'm going to hold off on that and let Carter come up and tell you some of the technical details.

Mr. Vice Mayor, is it okay if I have just a few highlights? So like Jeff indicated, this is a request for a rezoning to a specific plan district. It establishes development regulations specific to the property, and particularly it establishes a new use for supportive housing. facility for adults with disabilities. Included in that, there's also the opportunity for a mixed-use component to add neighborhood amenities, like a coffee shop or retail, but that also provides employment opportunities for people living within the facility itself. And then there are additional site and use regulations to ensure compatibility with the neighborhood. So from a non-conforming zoning perspective, eventually the city will have to bring this zone into conformance with the underlying suburban mixed-use master plan. The options available that are for conforming districts are fairly intense. It doesn't mean that this is the reality of the situation, but the specific plan district gives us an opportunity to provide an upfront plan that is more compatible and consistent with the existing neighborhood. WE CHOSE THE NEIGHBORHOOD COMMERCIAL ZONE AS THE BASE FOR THE HANDBOOK BECAUSE IT SUPPORTS LIMITED RESIDENTIAL AND SMALL SCALE COMMERCIAL USES CONSISTENT WITH THE GOALS OF THE PROPERTY. FROM A COMPATIBILITY STANDPOINT, WE INTRODUCED INCREASED SETBACKS, REDUCED HEIGHT AND OTHER DESIGN STANDARDS AND LAND USE RESTRICTIONS FOR THE COMMERCIAL COMPONENT OF THE SITE. BUT GENERALLY THIS PROJECT ALLOWS FOR A GREATER LAND USE MIX CONSISTENT WITH THE MASTER PLAN for both the benefit of the neighborhood and the residents of this subordinate living community. The conceptual site plan is on the screen, and Greg discussed some of the features. This is a potential outcome, but generally it The handbook ensures that the development is pushed to the north away from the residential. The amenity areas act as a natural buffer between the residential and the proposed development, and there is a commercial or maker space proposed adjacent to the roadway to kind of activate that corridor along Talbot Lane. My neighborhood compatibility standard, as buildings get closer to the residential, the height decreases. So that's something that doesn't exist currently in code that we introduced with this handbook. There is a landscape buffer with screening trees and a solid wall that is established along or will be established along the barrier between that existing neighborhood and the proposed project. And the commercial development is to be pushed to the northeast of the property and getting buffered by distance screening and buildings. Operating restrictions are also in place for specific commercial uses. The supportive housing use that's being proposed with this handbook is the primary goal for the property. There are standards that encourage it over other uses. And generally, it's a land use that's intended to promote independent living for the residents that live there. It generates less traffic and less parking than other residential or assisted living communities. And then the small-scale commercial is integrated with the site, as stated before, for employment opportunity. That concludes my presentation. Our team is available for any questions.

Thanks so much, Mr. Williams. Councilman Anderson, do you have any? Okay, no.

We do need to open the public hearing as well.

Yes. Thank you so much for the reminder. Madam Clerk, let me just find my place here. Let the record reflect that the council is opening the public hearing on item D2. Madam Clerk, was proper notice given and any correspondence received?

Yes, proper notice was given, and we did receive one email from Ms. Shaver, but it did contain 19 letters of support. How many letters of support? 19 letters of support that were forwarded.

Thank you. Do any council members need to make any disclosures before we move on? Okay, thank you. Do you have any public comment, Madam Clerk?

We do. Do we need to have the ordinance title read in first?

Yeah, Mr. Hall, Mr. Shipman.

Ordinance introduction, bill number 7342, case number LDC 26-00108, Lighthouse, Sierra, SPD. Ordinance to amend title 18, chapter 1802 of the Reno Municipal Code entitled zoning, rezoning a 3.03 acre parcel from large lot residential. One acre, two specific plan district. The parcel is located on the west side of Talbert Lane, 575 feet south of South McCarran Boulevard, and has a master plan land use designation of suburban mixed use or two.

Thank you.

And real quick, it looks like Council Member Ebert is absent as of 2.37 p.m. Apologies. She's here in Chambers. Awesome. All right. So for public comment, Bill Schrimpf, followed by Roy Harvey, followed by Rebecca Harvey.

Good afternoon. As always, thank you guys for being here and for doing the job. Appreciate it. I'm here today as the War II Neighborhood Advisory Chairperson, which is where... One in this process where these folks began their journey, they came through and gave a presentation very similar to what you saw today. And something unusual happened. All of you have your own nabs. And the thing that was unusual that happened was we were trying to change, they wanted to change zoning on a lot, and nobody was there to complain or in opposition to the project, which is pretty unusual. That doesn't happen a lot. Even if you're talking about moving a fence a few feet, there's usually at least one or two people that are like, hey, no. These folks sit between like a Ribeiro development and Ranchera, and so there's a lot of interest there. And nobody came out to talk in opposition of it. In the NAB, we asked them questions like, hey, did you talk to the people in Ranchera? Because their property's gonna be right next to these residential homes. And they said, yeah, we did. And actually, the layout that you see, There's a revision based on some of those conversations. They actually flipped it so that the housing was originally next to Rancherra, and they just mirrored it so that it's less impactful to the folks living in Rancherra. So good neighbors. This is the kind of stuff that in the NAB we like to see, or at least I like to see. But it's really unusual to see no opposition to something like that. As Mr. Foster alluded to, this is a great project, great place for this, because we have some small commercial office on one side, and we have single-family residential on the other. And this is, it is an SPD, but at its core, it is kind of a low-density multifamily type of project, which is what it is. So it's a really good kind of transition use of that land. So that's very good. On a personal note, one of the things that did come to light in my travelings around is I had opportunity to meet one of the people who sold this lot to Lighthouse. It was one of the five people that made that decision. This lot had been in the family for, I don't know, 50 or some odd years is my understanding. And being right where it's at, I'm sure you can imagine there was a significant amount of interest in the lot. They received several offers. The folks who were making that decision got the Lighthouse offer and one of the other offers. And they went with the Lighthouse because it was mission-oriented. It wasn't, to my understanding, the most money on the table, probably not by a long shot. You think about where it's at between Ranchera and Ribeiro. And here we are, these folks on this lot, to do this good thing. It's really needed in this community, so I hope you continue to find support for it. A lot of wonderful stories coming your way. Thank you again for being here. Have a good afternoon.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Roy Harvey, followed by Rebecca Harvey, followed by Don Clark.

Good afternoon, Mayor Hillary and the members of City Council. My name is Rebecca Lynn Harvey. I am 26 years old and I am an official ambassador for the Down Syndrome Network of Darwin, Nevada. And I am a member of their Self-Advocacy Committee. I'm also a member of the event planning committee for the governor's council on developmental disabilities. And last but not least, I am the president of the Ohio Friends Club. Sure. I like the idea of living independently with my friends and not being with my parents. You know that's true. I would love this type of housing for me and my friends. like Desiree and Caroline, who I play baseball with, and Carly and Sammy, my two best friends, who I go to rave with. Rave is a respite place we go to on Mondays. I am very grateful for Greg and Linda to help build this property for me and my friends. Thank you, guys. Thank you for allowing me to speak today, and I hope you approve the Health Living Project. Thank you.

Good afternoon council members. My name is Roy Harvey and I'm Rebecca Harvey's father, the young lady who just spoke. I'm here today to ask for your support on our project. I just want to talk about one is being a parent of a special needs child. When Becca was born, I knew nothing about special needs, but her mother and I quickly got spun up. And one of the things that we helped develop was the Down Syndrome Network of Northern Nevada. But it was a group of parents that all got together and saw the similar need. What do we do? Where do we go? Who do we talk to? What services are there? There weren't really any at that time. And what was provided was either city or state. But there was no cohesive bond between those organizations and our group and our families. So we helped provide that. And as time moved on through Rebecca's life, we realized that, you know, the school district provides a lot of great things, and there's this safety net that's provided for them through the teachers there at the schools and the principals and the programs that are offered, and it was a great experience. We're very, very thankful for it. It even migrated into UNR's Pathways Independence Program, also fantastic. But once you leave that level, what do you do next? It was always our concern, like, where will she be? Who will she be with? All our family members are my age or older, so that doesn't really become an option after some point. So the models that our folks have now, it's very limited, and they wouldn't have the opportunities that we now as parents provide them, shuttling them back and forth, helping them coordinate events, et cetera, and giving them the best opportunities In the community, so they can have their greatest life. We as parents want them to have the same things as you want for your children. There's no difference. We want them to be successful, to feel independent and successful in their own rights, whether that means having a job or not, whether that means calling up a friend and just hanging out. We're not, that's what they want to do, like everybody. So that's what we want to see with this project is provide that wonderful opportunity. So hopefully that you all will support this idea and give us the zoning change that we need so we can move forward on this project and give them the future that they all want and deserve. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Don Clark, followed by Caroline Pedraza, followed by Ron Falstad.

Hi guys. I'm Don Clark for those of you that know me a little bit. We're the architects for the job. I don't get the t-shirt because I stole some Cheetos, but I do get the hat. In the four plus decades I've been doing this in this community, and I've done a lot of different things that have been interesting, this is one of those that are magic. You know, you do a lot of work. We do a lot of affordable housing. I've done things like Victorian Square and Bartley Amphitheater and things like that. But very, very, very, very seldom does someone walk in the door and all you want to do is figure out how to take care of them. And you're going to see a lot more in the next bit of time of those that have earned the T-shirts. to something that's really pretty special. And we did listen to the neighbors in the design. We did listen to the community in the design. We'll continue to do so. But the real privilege is just to be able to be a part of this community. It's kind of like turning something on its head that nobody even knew, those things that you don't know that you don't know. We didn't know about this. And we got the privilege of them walking in the door and saying, would you be interested in all that our whole office could think of as how can we play? And so this is really something special for everybody. I mean, Naomi saw it in our office, and this is one of those that pay attention to it and help it any way you can. Thanks.

Caroline Pedraza, followed by Ron Falstad, followed by Amanda Clark.

Good evening.

Good afternoon, council and mayor. My name is Caroline Pedraza. This is an opportunity for me and my friends to live independent from our parents as if they are gone. What would the special needs have? We have our... groups that we do. We have the Lighthouse. I'm a member of it. I'm also a member of the Reno Optimist Club. And I'm also an ambassador for Special Olympics. My mom and my niece are my support for having this opportunity for me to live on my own with my friends and this project that we're doing. Thank you.

Ron Falstad, followed by Amanda Clark, followed by Sam Schaefer.

Thank you for this opportunity. My wife and I have known Greg and Linda for about 10 years, and they started with this idea, and they started talking about it. And like any idea, people can be talking about it for 10 years and nothing happens, but they put feet to it. Greg talked about him visiting, I don't know, five or so different communities around the country. They started looking for property, and they are the most tenacious people I know. They are going to make this happen, and that's what you need as a leader, as someone that has a vision. And that's the second thing. They do have a vision, and they're not giving up on it. In fact, the vision becomes more and more focused. So this is an incredible opportunity to see something come to fruition that has the ability to really affect so many people. It's potentially 90 here. But what they've talked about is when this works, they would like to expand it to other cities so that people start coming here to see how to do it right. And you guys get a chance to be part of that. Thank you.