Redevelopment Agency Board - Regular Meeting

Okay. Naomi, do you want to come sit over here?

Madam Clerk?

Are you ready? Yeah, okay. No, no, no. It's just up to you. I didn't know if you felt far away.

All right. Good morning, everyone.

What is that noise? All right. Good morning. Thank you so much for being here. I want to start off. by recognizing the amazing work of our first responders, our firefighters. They're still in this active incident, this very catastrophic fire. And as you know, we just came off of the bug fire. And so back to back events have been incredibly challenging. So I would just ask everyone, please, Keep them in your thoughts and prayers because they have just worked tirelessly and done an outstanding job protecting human life. And so I also want to acknowledge the victims of this fire and all the people that have been displaced. Fire is very personal to me, so I can understand how challenging and how their lives have changed literally overnight. We also have someone over here who's also been impacted by devastating fires, and she's been a tremendous advocate, and that's Hannah Hoop. Thank you for being here today. I really appreciate everything that you do and your advocacy when it comes to fires. So thank you so much. I also want to acknowledge all the jurisdictional teams for, you know, working together, working around the clock, nonstop. JW, you were absolutely my rock through everything. You're just amazing and kind and caring and compassionate.

As the meeting started, I can't hear anything.

So I just want to acknowledge you as my MVP. So thank you. There's so many people to thank I can't even begin I can't even begin and I don't want to forget anyone and Because now we we start a lot of the recovery And that's going to be long and difficult and people are going to need your support a lot of people are going to need your support and So if you could please, please do anything, please reach out to the Community Foundation. They are taking donations. We have a lot of work to do. It's a little overwhelming right now, but we have to keep everyone in our thoughts and prayers. Naomi, thank you for helping me. Sure. Well, we just had a couple of days where I'm just grateful, and my council members, and so thank you guys. I really appreciate your grace and your mercy, and I would just ask everyone else to please, at this time, do everything you possibly can to help our community get through this. There are 47 homes that were lost, and that absolutely is devastating. So we have a lot of work to do. Everyone is still jumping in action, so please know that it's extremely active, extremely active on all fronts, even from our state partners, our legislators, the county, so many. I also want to acknowledge the Floyd family. My heart goes out to them. And so please keep them in your thoughts and prayers too. Anyway, I just like a little moment of silence. I apologize for being emotional. But I guess for me, it's just very, it triggers a lot of emotions that I probably have suppressed for a long time. So anyway, just a moment of silence. So thank you everyone for being here today. And thank you. There's so many of you that have reached out and donated and just showed this community support. People like opening their homes to people they didn't even know. Didn't even know. They just said, come on, come into my home. It was really, really miraculous. But that's who we are. So I just want you to know how grateful I am for this entire community. The biggest little city is very special. So thank you to all of you. Thank you. Okay, give us a minute and I'll get in a better transition so we can get on with our meeting. So just a moment of silence, please. Okay. All right. As we shift into something to be extremely proud of, I have a very, very special guest here with us today. And I'm excited.

Is that a Blair? Yes. If I may, I just want to share that, you know, a lot of members in my community are still actively being affected by the fire. I know that my family and I were in a mandatory evacuation zone and we were evacuated from Saturday until Saturday. And it was very traumatic for myself, for my children, for my family, for my neighborhood to have police on loudspeakers on our streets telling people to leave. To find out later they were knocking on doors and telling people to leave and they couldn't get anything with their purse and go. And I just want to say, like, I... am heartbroken for the people in my community that lost their homes. And there are people that are still without resources that feel like they have been neglected by the communication efforts and resources. And I'm also just disappointed to see that there's so much compassion for other council members and my colleagues, but I didn't receive so much as a phone call from my colleagues. I know you called once, Hillary, but I tried to call you several times and sent you a text message asking you to call me. no one communicated with me so this is an extremely difficult time and i had to see homes in my ward with people i represent that had burnt down on social media before i was informed officially this has been extremely traumatic for my community and i i'm just um really really um devastated with the way a lot of this um played out for our community and um you know i i i hope that in the future um we can get a little um additional support and care, particularly from my colleagues, especially now that we have had two fires in a row. The evacuation process is getting significantly worse with each fire. I personally was probably one of the first to evacuate, and it took me over an hour to get from Military Road to Golden Valley to get on the freeway. Our only access point was closed from PAR to Red Rock for a significant amount of time while people were being told to evacuate this area. This communication, I know it was not handled by us. We were not the ones in charge. And our firefighters have done an amazing job. This is not a reflection on them at all. But there's been a lot of comments made by me. Maybe about a necessity for additional infrastructure for public safety. It's been largely dismissed. I've been reminded that there's been billions of dollars put into my community, which we're all grateful for. But the timing of having the majority of our major access roads under construction at the same time when we all have to evacuate is is just makes everything that we had to go through exponentially worse. So I just want to say, like, we're all devastated. I'm personally sick to my stomach about all of it and still having a difficult time sleeping because I'm so upset about it. There are people that can't get their medications that have evacuated that have been told to go get emergency prescriptions filled because they can't go home. but they cannot afford to pay for additional medications. There are people that are afraid to leave because they have large animals that they're not able to evacuate with. And so, therefore, they're at home and ran out of supplies. And the shopping that they were able to access ran out of supplies. No additional supplies were able to come to the area. We had a severe... breakdown of support for the people out here that couldn't leave for any number of reasons. And I know we want people to leave evacuation areas, but I think part of it is because, you know, if a fire gets close to a resident, there's only one access route. So we have to be proactive and evacuate people before it gets too close. But Because of that, a lot of people end up in a mandatory evacuation zone that maybe are a bit away. So they feel comfortable staying with their livestock, but then end up in a position where they have no power for days longer. are not able to get gas for generators, and their food has spoiled, their local stores are out of supplies, and it was extremely difficult, especially as a representative, to not be able to coordinate to get additional resources to these areas for them. So I just wanted to let everyone know, this is still ongoing for areas of my community. I know the majority of the areas have now been changed to yellow. People can go home, but there are still areas that are not allowed to come and go as they please. So just a reminder, this is not over for my community and we've lost many homes out here. So again, Huge thank you to the firefighters and everybody that joined in to help. But I think we also need to remember that there's other things that need to happen in a major emergency like this. So just wanted to say that as the war representative who, you know, Continues to have this happen and also was personally affected, you know, and the entire time having to answer questions to my children about whether or not our house had burned down. Okay. So thank you.

Thank you, Megan. Are you safe?

We are safe.

I just want to make sure that you're safe. Thank you very much. I appreciate your words. Okay. Now something to be very much celebrated. I have a very special guest with me and everyone I would love to introduce you to. This is Kayla Duncan, and she is Miss Nevada. And guess what? She is going to be competing on the national stage in Las Vegas in November. So hello, future, I said mayor, and then I said no, we need future president, right? Future president. We are very proud to have you here representing the great state of Nevada. I would love for you to start our meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance. And then I would love for you to tell everyone about who you are, why you're doing what you do. And Hannah, I think, did you, were you in pageantry? I thought, yeah. No? No? Why? That's right. You're a professional dancer and country extraordinaire. Anyway, we have been very supportive of a lot of the women that do compete. I think it's probably a very, very difficult job, way harder than my job. But please, lead us in the pledge.

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.

Great job. Okay, Kayla, I would love for you to tell everyone a little bit about yourself and your platform and, you know, how we can support you. So take it away.

Thank you so much. It's truly such an honor to be here with you all today. Hello, my name is Kayla Duncan. I am Miss Nevada United States, and I will be competing for the title of Miss United States in November. So I'm extremely excited and grateful for this opportunity to represent the Silver State on the national stage. I would say my story with my platform that I created called Beauty Within Bravery actually started right here in Reno. I was a college student at the University of Nevada, go Wolfpack. And I graduated with my undergraduate degree in psychology in 2020. And right now I'm pursuing my graduate education there as well. And I found a lot of support in the biggest little city here. One example of the amazing support I found was a professor that I had for one of my courses. And I spoke with her about being a trauma survivor. And she brought me into freestyle martial arts, which was the gym she owned at the time, and gave me my first lesson in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And as a survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence, that sparked a new era of healing and transformation for myself. I then went on to work at Uriah Faber's Ultimate Fitness in Sacramento for years. And that is a very well-known prestigious mixed martial arts gym that has housed many successful UFC fighters. I've been able to learn so many valuable skills about self-defense, which has caused me to feel my most confident after trauma. Now, through Beauty Within Bravery, I teach free self-defense seminars to the public because I want to give other people the gift that I've been given through this newly instilled confidence and sense of safety and security. I'm also very proud to be partnering with Safe Embrace, one of the many incredible organizations right here in Reno, to be able to help reach many survivors. It's for everybody. I have taught these seminars to kids as young as six. I've taught people upwards of 60. It's for men and women. You don't have to be a survivor. I always say that if you don't end up utilizing these skills, which I hope nobody does. I hope nobody ever has to be faced with an unimaginable situation that would cause them to have to use these preventative safety skills. But you can teach it to a loved one. You can do it for fun. I've had many people take the class and say that they were able to teach their mom or their sister more strategies to defend themselves in public. I've also had survivors tell me because of these seminars it was the one reason they felt safe enough to go to the gas station that day after surviving a trauma there. So this work is extremely important to me. I'm so grateful and excited to be able to expand it. My goal is to make this education as accessible as possible, and I want to help heal and empower other survivors the way that others have poured into me in this community in the past. Thank you.

Wow. So I'm taking it that we should not mess with you. You can kick some you-know-what.

I'm little, but I'm pretty tough, and I'm grateful for all the mentors that have poured into me to help make me so much stronger.

You are impressive, and we are excited that you are going to be representing us. What's the date of that? Typically, they air that nationally, so how do we all get to tune in and root you on?

Yes, so currently waiting on the updates in terms of live streaming or if it will be broadcast on television, but it will be November 12th through 15th in Las Vegas. So very grateful to be able to represent this beautiful state and be the hometown girl for that event.

Well, we're very proud because I can only imagine that pressure must be just enormous. But anyway, well, thank you for being here today, Mayor, for the day. So we're excited to have you. Thank you.

I'm originally from Northern California, but lived here for six years.

Okay.

All right. So are we calling Reno home then? Yes.

Going back and forth here between Las Vegas and Reno as well as visiting home quite often.

So you're Switzerland. I got you. Right?

Well, I will say when I'm in Vegas, I still rep my Nevada gear. It can be a little bit of hostile territory sometimes, but I will always proudly represent the Wolfpack.

Okay. Thank you so much. All right. I love it. Okay. I'm going to hand it back to you, Madam Clerk, because we need to call the roll.

Yes. So we are calling roll for the Wednesday, August 26th, Reno City Council meeting. Council Member Taylor? Here. Council Member Dewar? Here. Vice Mayor Martinez?

Here. Council Member Ebert?

Here. Council Member Reese is absent. Council Member Anderson? Here. And Mayor Sheeby?

Here.

You do have a quorum.

Okay, thank you so much. At this time, I'm going to ask council members to approve the agenda.

Oh, we need to take public comment first.

Oh, sorry. There was one other thing I wanted to do before we got there. All right, never mind. Go ahead.

Okay. 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. 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.

Good morning, Mayor. Good morning, Council. I'm here to share, you probably all have seen, Project Bear Hugs is responding. We originally were responding to Bug, Fred Mountain, and Stallion Fires while we were holding an event to help those that were affected and to honor Eddie and Shari Floyd. We saw the hawk fire start and we are responding to them as well If you know of anybody that are in your wards that have been evacuated that need help Please reach out to project bear hugs and we can give them items. We can give them support resources Any of that and that goes from short term all the way to long term So you can reach out to us either on our Facebook page website project bear hugs comm if you have any questions You guys can reach out to me there. I'm not going to give my public phone number, even though it's already public.

And just so everyone knows, Hannah's been doing this work for, I don't know, probably 15, 20 years?

Almost 14 years.

Is it 14 years? Yep. Yeah, it's impressive. You're really amazing, Hannah. What else, when you say, what are the things that people can donate? Like what would be most needed?

Right now, we're collecting anything from toiletries, baby items. We are collecting anything from animal food, animal dog boils, animal toys. That is a huge need right now. We are in contact with a lot of the families that have been affected, and we are giving them items. And those normally is like a box that we give a pillow, blanket, stuffed animal for kids, or a stuffed animal for animals. We give an activity for kids to do, whether it be a coloring book, something for elderly. We give them something that's not going to hurt their hands, anything like that. So we are collecting pretty much everything except for clothes, and we are not accepting anything used.

Okay, good to know. Are you still doing your show? Yes. I got your guest. All right. Thank you so much for being here.

Kamal Abuhan, followed by Terry Brooks, followed by Jerry the Pizza Man.

Hi. For the record, Kamal Abuhan. Pleasure to see everyone. This is actually a serious matter. Mayor Schiede, I loved your News Nation interview just recently. I thought you were absolutely spot on, so I'm going to just address non-compliance. I'm in fire zone 359. We just got lifted from, on August 24th, we just got lifted from yellow level two to white. Thankfully, everyone's starting to return. But I have a problem with my landlord. I have on a sheet here. They took it upon themselves to start a construction project during a level two. They blocked roadways on the property, coned off the ability for these residents to exit and enter the property, leaving one area, which is a very, very largely dense area where the people can come in and out of the property. Everything around is gated. When it comes to noncompliance and fire code, it's very, very important that we follow the rules. When you see a yellow or red, you either gotta get out or you gotta be ready to get out. I can tell you, when we got the order to get out, it was like August 21st or 22nd, you can hear the pets, meow, meow, meow. The people getting together, it was like nine or 10 o'clock at night, right? And you could just see the people were already getting ready. We were in the yellow zone. They were getting ready to get out. I was ready. That's why I have a camper and I'm back in my truck because it's real easy. I can live in it. Everything's already ready to go. I got one go bag, boom, I'm out. Came back from my ride in Mount Rose. I rolled my mountain bike in Mount Rose and I couldn't believe what I was seeing at the property on the 23rd. The mountain was still smoldering. You'll see it in the picture. The mountain was smoldering and you have the property manager coning off sections of the driveway. On the 24th in the morning at 0600, I get a knock. God bless my neighbors. I get a knock on the door. Hey, they're going to tow your car. They have tow trucks in a yellow zone on the 24th, in the morning of the 24th, towing cars. The car is designed as an egress. I'm a firefighter for maritime. I was trained in firefighting. I know what it's like to fight a fire using buckets where the people train up the hill for a two-acre fire. We hit the perimeter fire. The perimeter fire was out eight acres. Everyone was back in. They were back in their houses and the fire reignited to create one of the worst costly fires for that area in California. So I'm asking the city council, please take this seriously. I gave you the documents. You have the documents in here. We cannot allow, I went to the foreman. I went to my chain of command. I made the phone call to the police. I went to the landlord. I sent emails. I was laughed. I was kicked off the work site during a level two. So the culture is real, ma'am. Your noncompliance issue is not only with the residents, but it's also with our informal leaders. Thank you.

Sir, you said you have documentation.

Yes, ma'am. I gave you, I have a packet that I, it's a formal complaint. Okay, perfect. And you'll see, okay, just a minute. When you see a cone, right, and you're evacuating, I can't speak for what another person is going to do when they evacuate. There's no way to tell what an individual will do when the fight for flight is active, when your visibility comes down. That's why even if you see cones in this picture, oh, it's not really blocking. But I can't say how a person is going to interpret this. I can't say whether their flight will be, oh, no. They automatically think, let me get out of the way of the cones. Let me go to the one exit point. in a 200, what, populated by 300 people in less than half an acre. This is an absolute fire danger that's been precipitated by leadership, by informal leaders of our community, not the residents who want to shelter in place, as I've heard over the radio.

Okay. Right? Wait. So you have those documents. Is your contact on there? Yes, ma'am. Okay. I will be reaching out to you directly. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you.

Good job. Good job.

Terry Brooks, followed by Jerry the Pizza Man, followed by Steven White.

Terry, good morning.

Good morning. It's me, Terry Brooks, again. And today I'd like to share with you my lack of thoughts on technology and what seniors like me go through. When we worked for years at various jobs, we kept up with advancing technology, but later on when we retired, we said goodbye to technology. The older that we get, the more we get set in our ways and then begin to develop a senior no change phase. I don't have a computer, but I do have an abacus. That's all I need to multiply, divide, or do a minus or plus. I don't have or check email. I think it's a lot better to just open my mailbox and see if I've received a letter. Another thing that I don't have is a cell phone, but I do have a landline with an answering machine, so just leave a message after the tone. I don't have a microwave, but I do have a crock pot, even though it takes a bit longer for my dinner to get hot. I named her Gravy Crockett. She's the queen of my Wild Frontier kitchen. Just plug her into the socket, and her cooking is bewitching. I did have a car, but I only drove it once a week. When Gravy Crockett told me to get groceries, I'd say, okay, tongue in cheek. Now I walk to the grocery store, but carrying all that food on my way back makes me so hungry that I eat some of it while I'm walking back, and then I have to go back. I don't have anything against such modern technology, but I think that we have become way too dependent on technology. The older I get, the more I look back and see how technology has helped us evolve. But recently, I've seen how it's beginning to let us dissolve. I don't even have a typewriter. I just write on paper with a pen. That is, until my pen runs out of ink again. I would like to thank you all for listening to me today, and I look forward to coming back if my pen still has pink that day. By the way, I appreciate people sharing their kinds of self-defense with each other, because it helps a lot of us survive in various ways. I kind of developed my own weird self-defense method. So when somebody tries to threaten or assault me in some way, I just look them right in the eye and say, if you try to mess with me, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to write a poem about it, and I'm going to read it to you.

All right, Terry. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Jerry the Pizza Man, followed by Stephen White, followed by Damien Cole.

Jerry.

Come on up, Jerry. That's you, Jerry. Jerry Mifsud? Can you help him?

Thank you.

Did somebody ask you to help me?

Yeah.

You're looking younger every time I see you, Hillary.

I'm just getting shorter.

My name is Jerry Mifsud. Good morning, Hillary. Devin, you never looked more lovelier. City Attorney Carl Hall will be retiring this year. Carl Hall is the guy over there with the red head. He fell asleep in a tanning salon. Carl, good job. Like an attorney, he hardly talked, but that's all right.

And now, the end is near and I face the final curtain. My friend,

I'll tell it clear. I'll state my case of which I'm certain.

I was going to say I know those words.

I've lived a life that's full. I've traveled each and every highway. And more and more of this I did it my way. I've lived, I've loved, and I've laughed and I've cried. And I've had some losing, and now I see a side I find it all so amusing. But through it all, when there was doubt, I ate it up and I spit it out, and I stood tall and I did it my way. Bing! Okay. Now... My advice, and I want to give a bunch of advice before I retire and get that lifetime achievement award that I'm working with Brian on. Number one, all city council members that are overseeing an award need to be drug tested once a month. Number two, all city council members overseeing an award need to submit once a month a report on what they're doing. And I'll make you an offer. I'll give you your own radio show because I'm talking with American Matters' Eddie Floyd about having a city council member appear on the radio and take calls from people from their ward or the general public, this way offering some transparency. People need to feel that, that you're willing to be open and let them know what's going on. As far as the fire goes, some people stopped me on the way in and said, we're not hearing enough. So get as much information about what's going on. We know you're doing your best, Mayor Schieve. Mayor Schieve, you know you're doing your best. Come on, you know I put on a special cologne just to be here today. I want to thank you very much. Nice to see you, Vice Mayor Martinez. Have a nice day.

Jerry, that was very nice. That was my father's favorite song.

We're still here, and we're not done yet. That's me and my fellow seniors. Let's hear it for seniors.

Hey.

That's it? Okay, thank you very much.

Jerry calls them seniors.

Thanks, Jerry. Stephen White, followed by Damian Cole, followed by Kellen Flanagan.

She likes you. I'll talk to my attorney.

Okay.

You almost had to drag me up here. Stephen White here, notorious defender of your First Amendment rights to be an artist in America. After hearing what's been happening over here with the fires, probably what I'm talking about is a little bit trivial, but... You know, I've worked with young people for many, many years in the arts, and something that's important for us all to understand is that young people, when they're doing artwork, those works of art are a treasure to them. They don't want to necessarily sell their original works of art. Now, we run into a problem when we're writing municipal codes or putting information on the website or making signage about dealing with artists in the parks. And we use the words, artists are invited to display and sell original expressive works of art. That becomes a problem because young people, they read that and they think, well, I don't want to sell my original work of art. And so they're gone, and they don't get involved in all this. Trouble is, you see, the Ninth Circuit in the Second Circuit, a Ninth Circuit ruling in White vs. Barth, second sentence they say, we hold that an artist's sale of his original artwork constitutes speech protected by the First Amendment. But in the legal world, the word original is referring to it being original to the artist that created it. But in the art world, The word original means it's not a print. It's the original work of art. And so we've got to be careful when we use this language. You don't want to use the word original in the signage or any of that. Same thing with the word expressive. The word expressive has to be used in the proper context. Understand I ran into a lady the other day that does tie-dyed scarves. Well, she's the artist, she created it, they're one of a kind original, and they're expressive. But they're not allowed because they are functional and useful. So we have to change that wording to artists are invited to display and sell works of art that they have personally created and that have no other purpose than to be expressive. We need to put both of those words in proper context. And I'd rather see the word original not be used at all in writing these signings and that sort of thing. I'm all about getting kids involved in all this. And we need to do everything we can to encourage young people, let them know that they can do prints of their original artwork. They can take prints of their original artwork and even go to Costco and have them printed on canvas. They can do a print on photo paper at home, in their own home computer, and put it in an inexpensive frame from Walmart, and they'll have a work of art they can put on display and share with the community. But we want to be real careful using these words, original, and the wording that we use is very important. I've already talked to Mr. Hall about this, and Nathan, and we're working on these things. And finally, God bless all the people that are being affected by the fire. And one last thing I wanted to say is God bless the wonderful, beautiful, humanitarian Dolly Parton, who passed away. God bless all of you. Thank you.

Thank you so, so, so much. Someone shared a story with me about Dolly Parton when she was here many, many years ago performing in Reno. First of all, they said between every song she changed outfits, but she was rolling out, I guess, penny slots, and she insisted that they be penny slots pennies because she wanted to she said everyone deserves to win something and so she said they must be pennies must be pennies they were trying to force her to do you know bigger asks but she said absolutely not i'll only do pennies so i just thought that was so dolly to say everyone deserves to win something so okay come on come on up damien I know we've been in the midst of stuff, but I kind of had to pivot for a minute.

Yes. No, that's totally fine. Go ahead. Damien Cole for the Record. Good morning. Amanda Mayer, City Council. So I came here to talk about the signatures that I've been collecting regarding the walkway, but very briefly I just want to mention. So ever since the fire started, things pivoted. I recognized when I saw the plume of smoke like palm pages let off Something had to be done, so I started a stream that I had run for three days straight, providing community information to people, gathering people together, getting information disseminated. And so for three days straight, I said, I'm going to keep on doing this until we get at least to 50% containment, which took three days. So before I talk about this other thing real quick, I just want to mention some anomalies came about. One of them, which was extremely concerning, I don't want to divulge details because it might interfere with the ongoing investigation, but someone came into the chat early on in the broadcast that said some comments that were extremely disturbing, and I handed those off to authorities. So, no bypass. Everyone's been talking about Dickerson. We need to have the underpass getting to 4th Street over there. US 395 and everything above par, same thing. When access gets cut off, especially when the fire jumped the 395, you either had to go north up to Portola and Susanville, or you had to go south. There were no bypasses. Something I noticed is that during the reports I was giving, Authorities said that the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony Access Road to Spanish Springs over to Eagle Canyon was not allowed. That could have provided a very valuable bypass. Dirt road, who cares? Take it, get to Eagle Canyon, and then you can get to safety over there. and then head down Pyramid Way to get to downtown. So that's very important. In the minute that I have left, I just want to mention that so far there had been 500, switching over, 535 signatures so far. Six hours worth of in-person signatures that I have collected to clear the Truckee River bike path and the Riverwalk at 180 East First Street and I noticed something and also I submitted it to the 417 online and it's still going as of this morning. I have noticed that there are discrepancies in city code. Title VIII considers a fence to be a self-standing structure that's under code enforcement. Title 18 does not, which means that when the planning department looks at code, they say, oh, well, that's not a structure. And that's an issue because code that was merged in 2021 into development services as part of Title 18 that previously belonged to the redevelopment agency is considered by one department to be the law, and then another department is considering Opposing code to be the law so that that is minor in comparison, but Madam mayor if you do want me to give you the details about what was spoken about on that broadcast, please contact me directly I would rather do that rather than yeah. Thank you.

Thank you so much Damien Kellen Flanagan followed by Kendi Bartolome followed by Darcy Phillips Hi guys, yeah

Are you Kellen?

I'm Kellen Flanagan.

Are you related to, like, the Flanagans?

No. No? Uh-uh. I think I'm the only one I know here.

Really?

Positive.

I went to school with some really cool Flanigans.

Oh, did you? I grew up in Louisiana.

Oh, you did? Okay. Not the same Flanigans. Not the same Flanigans. But Reno's small, so typically we're all related in some capacity. I'll take it.

All right. Well, thank you for being here. Go ahead. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Nice to meet you, Miss Nevada, and thanks to the firefighters. This issue may seem a little bit insignificant compared in light of all the fires that we're having, but I'm here on behalf of just a small business. dilemma that we're having. And as you can see, I work at Grateful Gardens, local restaurant right here in Midtown. I think you guys have probably frequented there.

Oh, all the time.

I've seen y'all in there before, too. And we are just having a tough time parking on those side streets. Right now, it's a little bit of a whirlpool with the one-ways and the mediums, but we're happy with the changes that have been made in the city in terms of roading.

You're talking about the Midtown location?

Midtown location, specifically. And right now, there's two-hour parkings allotted on the side streets. which we had a pretty blissful era, I'd say about 10 years, where all the staff was allowed to park there without getting ticketed. And I'm not asking, that's the city's job is to ticket people, but now we are being ticketed. And I think our city's populace has grown to an extent where It's kind of hard to find parking for our staff members. Everybody in that lot, there's probably four other businesses in this complex and nearby businesses along these side streets as well. And for them to park in the lot, it takes up any parking spot for the guests that are coming in. So they're being pushed away. So I feel like we're losing... some potential customers as well as other businesses, because some of them house up to 20 employees. So if everybody's parking their lots and not on the streets, it's becoming a little bit frustrating for us, especially when you go out to your car and you have a $80 ticket on your windshield. So we're just here to ask for potential solutions. Maybe in light of the growth of the city, two hours can be extended to four or five or six, maybe on just the weekdays, because nobody's really walking around Midtown for five, six hours at a time. It's not San Francisco. But I thought that could be an idea. Or potentially a parking permit for employees in the Midtown area where they're allowed to park on the street. And that could be delivered or distributed with a small fee or something to... make up for that. I'm not sure. We just want some help for this dilemma because everyone's parking in the lot and it makes it tough for the customers to park there. It makes it tough when you have to go outside after a shift and pay half of your wages to the city. Absolutely. I think you guys can help.

Make sure you leave me your contact information. I will. Will you please give him my email address too? And just send me an email on that, too, please. But I will reach out.

Well, thank you for hearing me. Thanks, Kellen. Yeah, we look forward to hearing from you.

Okay, thank you.

I've got to get back. It's burning down, and we're getting our butts kicked.

Oh, that's right. That's right. Thank you.

Kendi Bartolone, followed by Darcy Phillips, followed by Danny Cleas.

Good morning, Councilman and Mayor Schieve. My name is Kendi Bertolome, and I wanted to talk about the Moose Ridge Neighborhood Project. I want to make it very clear. I'm not against development. I grew up there since 2002. My concern is whether the proposed increase from three units to eight units per acre is safe and sustainable. I witnessed firsthand this weekend how long it took. My home is less than three miles. It took me an hour to get to I-80. There were roadblocks, hundreds of cars, my six-year-old in the car crying, asking me what is going to happen. I wanted to ask this community in New Councilman to really think about is it worth increasing eight units per acre when it took us an hour to drive less than three miles. And I can tell you I've lived there and have seen storms, flash floods. I've seen on the end of Beaumont cars stranded because there is not enough snow piles to get to that area. There is insufficient amount So before you approve it, please consider the infrastructure, evacuation routes, roads. Consider the people who have lived through it. This is the third fire. I've lived there since 2002. Two weeks ago, 70 acres. This last weekend, more than 15,000 acres. This is real. I want you guys to reconsider how development is. Because we can't control how many cars are on the emergency. We don't get to choose how quickly we can get out. But we definitely can choose how we plan today. Thank you.

Can you just say what street, again, that you live on?

I live on Morgan. Morgan. Morgan Hill Court.

Thank you. Thank you.

Darcy Phillips, followed by Danny Cleas, followed by Dee Ann Radcliffe.

Good morning, council and mayor. I'm Darcy Phillips. I'm the executive director of Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful. I'm here for a couple of reasons. I wanted to thank council members Reese and Anderson for donations to us that are on the agenda today. We really appreciate it. We do hope that we will be called on by Parks and Rec and the county to help with some of the revegetation after the fire in parks and open spaces and the Forest Service areas. But I did want to say I have been sending you all quarterly reports about the work we've done in your wards. And I wanted to put on the record that in 2025, volunteers at KTMB participated in 186 cleanups in the city of Reno, almost 3,000 volunteers at a value of $236,000. in-kind donation. During 2025, volunteers cleaned up 200,000 pounds of litter, green waste, and invasive weeds. I can't even process what that looks like. It's such a huge amount. Installed over 3,500 plants and wrapped 60 trees for beaver protection along the river corridor. We also manage and maintain the sensory garden in Idlewild Park, a very fun pet project of ours. And we're out there every Wednesday working. I wanted to also tell you all that I'm going to cry. After 15 years of living here, my husband and I are moving home to Colorado. As you can tell, I'm very mixed about this. Happy, sad, sad, happy, depending on the day. But it has been an honor to be part of the machine that is KTMBE and all the work. And I look forward to watching it from afar and seeing the amazing work that continues. I will be here through the Truckee River cleanup on September 26th. And if any of you want to join us at a site in your ward, let me know and we can get you there. And I also wanted to just end with thanking you all for your support of me and the organization over the years. And we really appreciate it. So thank you.

There you go. Mr. Vice Mayor. Yeah, I just want to take a moment to thank you. You know how much I appreciate your work. And I'm devastated to hear you're moving. That's like an arrow through the heart. I know. You've done such a good job. But I know that you've trained people well, too, that will follow in your footsteps. Yeah. I did want to mention that the Urban Forestry will be sponsoring a tree planting on that same day as part of the KTMB cleanup. And I'm sure there's going to be other cleanups that maybe council members get involved in. Unfortunately, or fortunately, that same day we pre-picked to do our hazardous waste cleanup. And it's my last one. And I tried to move it once I found your date and found there was no place to move it. So I won't be at the tree planting event, but we will be collecting waste. That will be electrical and hazardous waste to keep out of the desert, out of the landfills. This will all be recycled. So just a shout out about that and the good work that you've done. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Danny Cleas, followed by Deanne Radcliffe, followed by Carlos Reyna.

Glad everybody left before I got up here. Danny Cleas, 53-year resident in North Valleys. Been here since 2017, since we had the flood. We spoke here for three and a half years, every meeting about infrastructure out there in the North Valleys. Still don't have it. Now you have a big old fire, third one in a row for out there. We had a small one, week later, we had the Bug Fire, French Fire, Stallion Fire, and now we have the Hawk Fire. How many homes were lost on the south side of Peavine? How many homes were lost on the north side of Peavine? Nobody knows. because there's none on the south side and all of them were lost on the north side. There should have been more protection on that north side, how that fire was going, than anything on the south side. City of Reno, you guys talk about each other, how good you guys are doing and everything else. I'll tell you what, we're proud of the men and women that were fighting the fire. We're not proud of how it was ran. Because if we left our property, we couldn't get back in. I'm diabetic. I had two shots left of my insulin. My pharmacy said I had to go clear to South Reno to get it. But if I would have went down to South Reno, I couldn't get back home. That is BS. Now, every time you guys pat your back, you know what? I am going to stand up and say, Reno has a problem. They don't like infrastructure. They want it done later. Well, it's been eight years after a flood, and there's still no infrastructure on that flood. Eight years later, they say, oh, we've got to get the people in there, and we've got to get the warehouses in there, then we get the infrastructure. Eight years later, where is it? Do they have to wait eight years for the fire? I hope not because my house still isn't whole. My work that I did to sue the city and win should tell you, residents do their homework. Another thing, this city is gonna be known every time you guys pat yourself on the back for something stupid that 2017, you guys caused the flood. No infrastructure. 2026, you guys are going to be known that you burned down 47 homes in the North Valleys because no infrastructure to protect our families. Another thing, they sat on Lemon Drive for four and a half hours of gridlock on Lemon Drive. And they had to go out of Dirt Road. They couldn't go down the freeway.

Thank you, sir.

That's BS.

Thank you.

B.S. And I'm sorry you missed it, Hillary. Because, you know, for once, I'd like to come here and say something good about this place. And I'm glad Megan started to get her voice back. But every time it's a disaster. And you guys are infringing on the county stuff. I don't live in the city of Reno. I live in the county. I couldn't get out because of city stuff. Four hours of gridlock on a two-lane road, and that new realignment for Lemon Drive wouldn't have helped it none because everybody's trying to go down a dirt road to get out of the valleys. Stupid.

Deanne Radcliffe, followed by Carlos Reyna, followed by Kathy Meade. I think the clicker's on the left-hand side.

Sorry, I didn't see. I didn't want to start until I had the clicker. Did you see? All right. Good morning, members of the City Council. Thank you for being here and for your service. Please lodge my comments and presentation on the public record. My name is Deanna Radcliffe, and I live in Verdi. I'm here to provide feedback regarding the Meridian 120 South project. Due to time limits, I'm only going to cover two topics. I have attended, over almost 10 years, every possible meeting regarding this project. Many properties have steamboat water rights and receive irrigation water. It is approximately 800 feet, foot on the top right, from the gate on the ditch to our properties. As you'll note, there is one access near the head gate, according to the planning document on the left. No clean outs and an annual flush. Note the lack of specificity. This puts all residents at risk. As you can see in the bottom right, this is not clean filtered water. Does it seem OK to you to have to walk two miles to maintain your irrigation gate? This is every month during the irrigation months, by the way. Two miles. OK. I would like to ask the city of Reno to work with residents to ensure that we have access to our irrigation water. I think 800 feet of a pipe run without clean outs and on annual flush puts every resident at risk. Let's talk about drainage. So this is Christmas Eve in 2025. Was that a big weather day in anyone's memory? The answer is no for us, but it sure was for the steamboat, as you can see by those two photos. So the Meridian 120 project, you can see the photo on the right, right? You'll note that flooding and that Meridian 120 project site. Obviously the property did not read the drainage manual submitted for the project on the left that notes area of minimal flood hazard. Yesterday I learned a lot of new information regarding the detention basin and wish that it had been shared with me or even available to the public. This is not anything available to any resident to look at. They are proposing an artificial catch basin with a 30-inch pipe draining to a one-acre detention basin. Those are big numbers, right? That's going to drain onto the backs of our properties. Again, they're going to collect water in an artificial catch basin. It will drain onto our properties. This transfers flows off-site from their site, number one, and puts the existing neighborhood at risk for flooding and damage. So again, I've been engaged at every possible venue I can. My dad, as the city of Reno fireman, showed up for 30 years. I've shown up at every possible time that I can, but my voice does not matter. Thank you for your time.

Mr. Just a quick question. Is this coming up on one of our agendas? Is this going to planning commission? I was just wondering if there was a coming action.

It's final map submissions. I am going to reach out to the residents who were sent a card to provide comments by this Friday. But again, the documents we saw yesterday are not available to the public. The City of Reno staff members would not share it with us. We had a meeting, right, and Verdi residents, but this is significant for us. I'm going to ask Angela to extend the comment period. It does not feel like the right thing to do. And it doesn't, it just does not feel okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you for your questions.

Carlos Reyna, followed by Kathy Meade, followed by Daniel Bolton.

This is what I didn't cover at the left council meeting about RTC. My name is Carlos Reyna. You know, since they came with that in the system, they have a separate bus stop for that one in the Virginia line. It's... I mean, it doesn't meet our expectations and needs because they have their own stops and they have their own separate bus stops. And they just make people mad about that. And sometimes there is two or three buses bumper to bumper running to each other because they cannot keep up with the gate jam and the traffic. And I wish you can do something about it. I already went to the RTC board meeting more than once and mentioned this, but I wasn't there. And yeah, I wish you can do that because it just don't meet our expectations you need. Having, in the same street, having two different routes, you know, with different bus stops, you know, this is, people get mad, you know, want to get over there, and then they say, that's not my stop. I stop at a, that's for the Virginia Line, or vice versa. If it's a Virginia Line, it's just a one, I don't stop there. Yes, I wish you can do that change, you know, in the future, about that, you know. That system they come up with, it's just, it's not our expectations, you know, our expectation is. And the next thing is about, like I mentioned, that the bus drivers, they make their own calls. Some drivers, they don't charge, you know. They don't charge, you know, they don't have to pay a fare. You say, go have a seat, have a seat. And some drivers, you know, they're pretty straight about it. Like I said, they make their own calls. And some drivers, you have to pay a full fare. Even if you have plenty of money, you have to pay a full fare. And that's not fair, you know. That's not fair for, you know, some of us, we pay a fare. Some of us, they don't pay a fare. Just have a seat, you know. You know, I wish you can do something to change your body, you know, because you just don't look good. And it's not fair, too. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Kathy Meade, followed by Daniel Bolton, followed by Beth Dory via Zoom.

Good morning, my name is Kathy Maid and I live at 2155 Warrior Lane. The city is in the process of the final approval for a development behind my house called Meridian 120 South. The developers of this project are solving their flood problems by using a 30 inch pipe to bring their flood waters down into a retaining pond they are building. and then shooting it out of an 18-inch pipe to the tiny V-ditch. It's an irrigation ditch between my house and my neighbor's house. We live in the county. This project is a city project, and it backs to my county project. This tiny little ditch is supposed to take all of this water, and then it will go into the county road ditches I have lived there for 15 years. We have probably flooded at least 10 times. The water that we get already, what they're going to put in here, the water will wash over the county roads. It will flood my property. I'm asking that we... The final comments for this project are supposed to be the 28th. I don't think we're ready. I spoke to the engineers with the city. They kind of agreed that they had seen things that they didn't realize were going on, and they were going to take a look at it. If we could extend the period for public comment, and I'm basically here today to put it on record that I think there's going to be problems. I think the city project is putting their problem onto the county. And I appreciate you guys taking the time to listen to me. And we'll go from there. Thank you.

Thank you.

Daniel Bolton, followed by Beth Dory via Zoom.

Good morning, Council, Mayor, Carl. For the record, I'm Daniel Bolton. I live in Reno. I'm here this morning to address an ongoing problem of us versus them, or rather, you versus the homeless, and the harassment and the bad policy of this council and your attorney's office, and the utilization of Allied Universal Security, Rangers, and RPD, to enforce unconstitutional and inhumane laws and codes to target the unhoused population that you all created. I have a solution. I'm not just here to complain. But this solution is going to require cooperation, maturity, and recognition. I'm not just a random homeless man. I have real power and a real solution. I won't be ignored or dismissed or invalidated any longer. Discrediting me is no longer an available weapon to prevent my success and keep me trapped in your system as a nobody because that's not who I truly am. I'm someone who you should absolutely respect and understand is the one person who has the ability to restore this city to what it was and greater. It's imperative that we schedule some meetings and devote some much needed time to reach an agreement before this war that you declared turns into revolution and gets out of our control. Changes need to be made and true solutions have to be developed. I had those solutions and changes that will work.

Beth Dore via Zoom.

Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Perfect. First of all, what a segue from the tragedy in the North Valleys to Miss Nevada. I love it. My comment is for G2, the planning commissioner appointment. The very sudden and surprising departure of planning commissioner Tina, who last year submitted a thin resume when she was appointed a commissioner. Of note, she did contribute to the Ward 1 members campaign. Fast forward to 2026, and we now have one applicant a real estate agent who just submitted an application and did not even bother to include a resume. Like Tina, she too has contributed to the Ward 1 members campaign. Those who are most likely to be passed over for planning commission is a licensed professional civil engineer with 30 years of roadway capital improvement experience. and a man with extensive planning commission experience in a different municipality. You all do a disservice to your constituents when you pass over more qualified applicants and vote for the less qualified but politically connected one. Don't you think in lieu of this fire and the traffic concerns noted in today's meeting, you should appoint the man who is a traffic engineer specialist and not a real estate agent. Thank you.

With that we have no one else signed in. We did receive nine comments which were general in nature or not directly associated with an agenda item prior to 4 p.m. yesterday Tuesday August 25th. 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. You think we're moving on to approval of the agenda?

Okay, thank you, Madam Clerk. Before I move in, I'm just going to ask Assistant City Manager Hodge to see if there are any changes to the posted agenda today.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Martinez. No, there are no changes to the agenda today. We will go through the posted order in order, and we do have an attorney-client meeting during lunch today.

Okay, thank you for the update. With that, we'll look for an approval. Motion to approve.

Second.

Awesome. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. With that, we'll look for an approval of the minutes.

Motion to approve. Second.

Great. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Okay. We'll move on to our consent agenda items. I'll look to see if there are any items you want to pull.

Yes, just B11, please, Vice Mayor.

B11. Council Member Taylor.

Nothing, Mr. Vice Mayor.

Councilmember Dewar? B-14. Councilmember Ebert?

Nothing for me, thank you.

Madam Mayor, are there any consent items that you would like to pull? We have 11 and 14 so far.

I believe 13.

13? Did you say 13, Mr. Sherman?

I believe 13.

Okay, my apologies. Okay, if there aren't any others, I'll look for a motion to approve the rest of the items. Motion to approve. Second. Great, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes.

For the record, I did not participate in the vote.

Okay. Thank you for that update. I think we're moving on.

I'm sorry, was there like a recusal or disclosure or just not in the room?

I'm going to look to Madam Mayor or... Just as a quick, for the record, John Sherman, City Attorney's Office. So item B13, there's a disclosure that the mayor has for item B13. So that's what's going on.

Understood.

Did we pull B13 from the block vote, though? Okay. And then, Madam Mayor, are you still abstaining from the remaining items?

Yeah, you, Madam Mayor, you're fine for the remaining items? Yep. So, yep.

Okay. Thank you for the guidance there. We'll go to item B11. I believe it was the first one that was pulled.

Okay, this is my item. Yeah. Mr. Vice Mayor, I just wanted to tell the story about how this very generous donation came through. because one of the members of our community that helped secure it is in the audience, Mr. DiLoretto. Maybe four months after I was elected, we went out. This was Council Member Taylor and our city manager, Jackie Bryant, and I went out to meet about Ward 6 issues. And during part of that conversation, I just happened to... bring up the fact that ward 6 was in immediate need of an extra apparatus whether it was a truck or an engine we had a ton of development that was coming to the area engine 12 has become one of our most highly taxed engines in the city and It's our only engine that we have in Ward 6, and it's a very, very busy intersection that it works within. And so just kind of planting seeds with some of the people in our community that could potentially bring some help to bear. And then, lo and behold, about nine months later, I get the news that this donation is coming in from the Duffield Foundation to extend banned the fire department, the fire station in ward 6, station 12, so that we can put another apparatus in that station. And so I just wanted to say that really extend my appreciation to the group that brought this donation to bear for us. It wasn't a direct ask. I was just able to go. Our team was able to go in and say, this is going to be in need in the next few years in Ward 6 and the community has helped us with the funding to expand the station and will house our additional apparatus. It's going to be an engine at this time, which is severely needed for Ward 6. So I just wanted to extend my gratefulness to the Duffield Foundation and also to you, Mr. DiLoretto, for helping us with how important a donation that was. So thank you very much.

Do you want to make a motion? Yeah.

Sorry, if there's no other questions or comments, I want to make a motion to accept this donation and approve.

Second. No, no, that's okay. I just wanted to say something. Mr. DiLoretto, I did not see you sitting over there. I apologize. I'm needing stronger and stronger glasses every meeting that I attend. So I want to say thank you so much for all of your contributions. is just one that you have done a lot of contributions on, especially in our buyer service and just the work that you've done and really, really taking care of us when we really needed the help. So, Mr. DiLoretto, thank you for being here and we're really, really grateful. And will you please tell the Duffield Foundation grateful we are and they've got something else coming too so I'm excited for that but just it's so much gratitude for all your assistance for decades you've done it for decades so I just want to recognize that that we're very very grateful for all your support because there are a lot of times that we can't make You know some of those difficult Funding decisions and you've been there for us. So thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you.

Thank you Yeah, since this may be the last time that I get an opportunity to address. Mr D Loretto publicly I too wanted to say my thanks for ten years I represented South Reno and I had many opportunities to drive around with you talk about issues with you and And you are a phenomenal community leader. It is well known in many fields, ones that you're maybe better known for, such as the Reno Rodeo or other focus points for you. But I know, too, what you've done for South Reno, bringing the entire... you know, development, Damani Ranch development, the Landscape Association, et cetera, you've made the place come alive and you've made it continue to look good. You and I have met often on the Damani Ranch Park and issues that are out there still and changes that are coming. So I, too, wanted to just, you know, I'll be off council in just a few short months, but I did want to take this opportunity to also give my thanks to you. Thank you.

And you throw one hell of a Fourth of July party for the community, don't you? Truly terrific.

I attended many.

Okay, I think we need a vote. All those in favor? Aye.

Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Now with that, we'll move on to B13. Mr. Shippen, I'll look to you to see, yeah.

So Madam Mayor has a disclosure that she would like to read into the record.

Okay. Fellow city council members and Madam Clerk, on item B13, Mr. Hicks, an attorney from McDonnell-Corono, represents TL Tallis LLC. In my private life, I have retained Adam Hosmer-Henner, a partner at McDonnell-Corono, on a civil matter unrelated to item B13 and Mr. Hicks. I've sought guidance from the city attorney's office and have been advised that I may have a commitment in private capacity to the interest of McDonald Carano pursuant to NRS 281A.065. That said, this item has nothing to do with my civil case. To the best of my knowledge, any action I take today on this item will not have any impact on me or McDonald Carano. I will be participating in this item. So, Madam Clerk, please accept this disclosure for the record. And I also want to be clear, again, Mr. Hicks does not represent me in any capacity. He is another attorney in that firm. So, I did want to put that on the record. Is that good, Jonathan? Okay. Thank you.

Madam Mayor, while we have this item open, and I didn't pull it, but I realized I'm glad you did pull it, or the attorneys pulled it, because I don't recall getting a briefing on this SAD, and maybe I missed it. I just want to understand. It sounds like it's for Towson Valley, and I just wondered if there's a staff person. Thank you. Because you came to us, finance did, with a preliminary thing, but I never heard specifically what the project was.

Matt Taylor, Assistant Finance Director for the City of Reno. This item came before you for the developer to do a deposit agreement with the city in June. This is the next step where you will be accepting their petition for the formation of the Special Assessment District.

Right.

And the developers are here if you have questions about what is being proposed.

Well, that'd be fine. I mean, if you'd prefer them to address it.

I can give you a high level overview. High level is fine. The whole project will entail about 2,500 homes. This special assessment district comprises 774 homes, and they'll be doing water, sewer, and storm drain projects within the district that will be financed with the special assessment bonds.

So water, sewer, does it include the roads? It does not. No roads. And... Do you know which villages are affected by this?

It is... Whoops.

And I mean, the developer is welcome to come up if that's faster, quicker. It might be. Okay. But no one from the developer wants to come up?

It's villages... 22 a 22 B 21 20 a and B 16 a and B Village 19 18 and 17.

Okay. Do these have names? Do these have me not yet? Okay, and can you do you have a map or anything with you that shows where that the Taos Valley project is very large and It would be helpful just to get a description is this It says here Sorry, let me find the item it said that it was the north side of South Meadows Parkway and west of Veterans. So I just, are these all individual assessor parcels? These are not obviously 700 parcels, right? So are they grouped in some way?

Yes. Thank you. Council Member Dewar, Josh Hicks with McDonald-Cronwell for the record. I do have a quick map we could throw up. That'd be great. If you want to see it. If you could put it on the overhead. Yeah.

It's just we have, we accepted your deposit, but we've never heard what the project is. So I just, that's why I want to know.

So while the map is coming up, just to answer your question about the parcels, that's the parcels as they exist today. They will be ultimately separated and segregated into individual homesites as we go.

That's great.

Okay.

And if you could blow it up, and if you on the podium could just point out which places. You can blow it up so that the green, we don't need to see the green.

So what you're looking at here is just an overview. So the red boundary is the project site.

Can you move that into the middle? That would be helpful. Well, the other way. And up. There you go. And if you could zoom in a little bit more. And just show us where South Meadows Parkway is and the new bridge.

So the red line along the right side of this, the east side, that's Veterans Parkway. And then South Meadow is down at the southern end of it. So if that helps you orient, that's Hidden Valley. You can kind of see the golf course up there in the top right corner.

So it's directly west of where Veterans is? That's right. Okay.

There's Alexander Lake right there. You can see in the picture.

Where are you pointing?

Right there. Yeah, just on the west side outside the boundary Huffacre Hills is that open space to the west of Alexander Lake?

Yeah, and do What I was gonna ask is there are there Do any of the roads in this area connect to veterans or is it? in other words is it access freeway where Residents are going to be going on to the freeway or are they're going down to the major exits like Mira Loma and And South Meadows?

They'll be using the major exits. There are some stoplights being put in. And then there's a secondary access road to get onto Veterans Parkway as well.

So are you saying they're going to add another access onto Veterans?

No, there's not going to be another access point added on.

Just the Mira Loma and the South Meadows? That's right. Gotcha. And then roads are not included. So is the developer paying for the roads and deeding those over to the city?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay. This is water and sewer, just for the 775? This is water. 774.

This is not water. This is sewer, stormwater, curb and gutter, and a box crossing.

Curb and gutter, but not the actual street that the curb and gutter's on. So are you going to come back with a secondary assessment district for the roads? Yes.

No, not in this particular area. There will be another special assessment district for different villages, but not for this particular area.

And have you anticipated, if I may, just one more question, have you anticipated what the cost per home is going to be for the SAD for this set of improvements?

It's approximately $1,000 per year was what the assessments will be.

$1,000 per year for all of this infrastructure, and then does that go for 30 years or forever? 30 years. Okay. All right, thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Mr. Hicks, I just had one quick question on the traffic signals that you were pointing to. I'm just curious about the traffic signal on Echo Valley If you can maybe shed more light on the timeline of that one.

Councilmember, I don't have the answer to the timeline on that, but I can certainly get that to you.

Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Any other questions, comments, disclosures?

One more question. Yeah. I know usually our staff say that this will come back several times, and I didn't know this one... The petition for the formation, but when when does this council make the final?

formations approved today the Developer financing agreement and the first reading of the ordinances are planned to come back on September 23rd, September 23rd Okay, and I guess one more question you have another what?

1,500 homes or so it's are you gonna apply for another SAD for those I

Thank you, Council Member Dewar. Yes, like I mentioned, there are two more special assessment districts anticipated for different villages in Tallis Valley.

Okay, and have you guys at this time, whenever we approve these, there's usually an amount that is a total amount that is attached to it. Do you know what, because that amount, you know, is not in this item, but maybe it was in some backup that I missed.

Yeah. Matt Taylor, Assistant Finance Director. The total amount of the bonds that they're requesting is approximately $9.5 million. $9.5.

Okay. All right. Thank you. That's helpful.

Thank you. I think there was public comment submitted. Madam Clerk?

Yes. We did not have anyone registered to speak, but for the record, we did receive two comments, and they were letters in favor.

Okay. With that, we'll look for a motion. Mr. Hall, do you have to read anything into the record? Okay, we'll look for a motion then on this item.

Motion to approve. Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Aye.

Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. With that, we'll jump over to C1, if that's okay with you.

I think I pulled B14. Councilwoman Dewar pulled B14, and I do want to actually take that, the additional consent items, after item C1. I have... Special guests here that have got to go back to work because they have big, big jobs. But we have two men here that need no introduction, and that is Mr. Perry DiLoretto and General Andra Berry, who is now the CEO of Liberty Dogs. And you have a very special guest here, and that's Maddie. Am I right? And you're also joined by Katie Freeman. Yes. This is such a special initiative, and I also want to give a huge shout out because this initiative is all about mental health, our veterans, just remarkable work. And I don't want to tell anyone what you do because it's so special, because I don't want to miss a thing, General Berry. You are now the CEO, and I just need to give a huge shout out to the wonderful animal lover and champion, David Duffield, because this was possible because he is such an animal lover. So I'm excited to have you here.

And I can't wait for you to show it to the entire community.

So take it away. And like I said, you are no stranger to our community. You do phenomenal work. And now this is the next chapter. And you just must be loving this. Do you love it?

I love it. I eat it up. I just want to be like Perry DiLoretto when I grow up. I know we all do.

We just all want to be like Perry.

First of all, Andre Berry, CEO of Liberty Dogs. And I just want to say, if you did not know, today is National Dog Day. And so Maddie made this special appearance. I mean, got off of her training schedule to come down here. Yeah, look at her.

She's tired. She's like, I'm not hanging out. She doesn't want anything to do with it.

And I also think it's important to say to each and every one of you, thank you for your service to our community. I know sometimes these jobs, you have a lot on your plate. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you do, and giving us the opportunity to come here and talk about Liberty Dogs. So having said that, first of all, when we talk about this organization, and as you heard earlier, this is Dave and Cheryl Duffield just being philanthropists and caring so much and giving back and caring about two parts of our community, canines and veterans. And one of the critical key things some people don't know is we provide service dogs to veterans at no cost. We also pay for the medical care. We also pay for the food. And so there's nothing like this in the world in terms of what we do. Our focal point for the pairing process is those veterans with PTSD and trauma and reintegration. But I always say this. There's nothing normal about what we ask these young people to do when they go downrange and when they deploy and then ask them to come back and be normal. And we have shown through research that this does work. But the key thing that you see up there, too, is if we don't have the support of our community, we cannot do our best work. So when I say in sincerity, thank you for your service, I really mean that. And for those of you who have been to the campus, I believe it's been everybody. So this is nothing like it. I always say this in the world. And if you did not know that Mr. DiLoretto was the builder of the campus, and so he's back here being modest right now. And if I had a medal, I'd give it to him. But he... It's a 27-acre campus. It's actually expanding a little bit more than that because we're adding some dog pens. 200,000 square feet of state-of-the-art facilities, purpose-built for veterans and canines. And one of the words I like to use, it provides a full experience from the time that you apply to be selected to the time that you come onto the campus. to the experience that you have there. And customer service is big for us. And there's so much that we can show now that it becomes a defining moment for the veterans in terms of what they're able to go through. And when we talk about our organization in terms of, we have approximately 118 employees right now. 30% of our employees are veterans. So we're a veteran-led organization in so many ways. When we talk about the need, And we've heard this term before, invisible wounds. I like to say that there's so many people that go through life what I call playing poker. You just don't know what's going on inside. And when you have a chance to sit down and talk to those who've been exposed to not just what happens down range, not just what happens when they're serving in the military, but what they carry and what they've been exposed to and what they're challenged with that sometimes we don't see. And navigating those systems to get the assistance and support that you need is not so easy. So we have learned through research that pairing a veteran up with a service dog has a major impact. There's so many, I tell people this all the time, this is a very animal-friendly community, but we also know that When you have someone who can support you, be there for you, have your back, interrupt, and care for you, it makes a huge difference. And I can't tell you how many veterans who I have talked to personally who have told me, this canine saved my life. And I like to believe we're in the business of saving lives. So we talk about creating a lifeline for a hero. We are the first US veteran organization to combine service dogs. We also created an integrated wellness program because My ask coming in the door was, how do we ensure that veterans continue to move forward in working on themselves so it's not always just on the K-9? So we have this course we put together, a one and three day course. It talks about resilience. It talks about mindfulness. It talks about mental health. It talks about taking initiative and moving forward in your life, providing them the resources. We've seen a great return on investment. Most of our classes have been from veterans in our Reno area, Reno-Sparks area. So we recognize that it does supply for them stability and the ability to move forward in life. Every service dog is trained to the highest standards. I think Maddie was our first dog. And when you think about anxiety, depression, TBIs, traumatic brain injuries, and all the things that happen that can't happen in your military experience, the service dogs are trained specifically for the veteran that they're assigned to to make sure that they can be intervening to get them in a better place, to pause that. And that has just been phenomenal for us in terms of the ability to have quality dogs that we will send out not just locally, not just statewide, but nationwide to work with and protect and save our veterans. So we talk about the programs that power our mission. I talked about the Warrior Wellness Class. We provide great tools, and I encourage as many of the veterans that can, or if anybody wants to just sit and learn the class, and we're hoping to do some partnering with some city organizations as it relates to the Warrior Wellness Class. Puppy Raisin. We're always looking for puppy raisers. You can be a puppy raiser. You can be a puppy raiser. You can be a puppy raiser. We can't be successful if we don't have puppy raisers. Cannot. It's a big commitment, but it's the engine that gives us the ability to go forward. Because the more canines we have, the more pairings we can have with our veterans. Service dog training and placement, we just recently trained a paired, we call it Pass the Leash, we all talk about, where we have paired some veterans with service dogs here locally. The shelter foster program, we get dogs out of shelters and train them. Matter of fact, the recent pairings we have were all shelter dogs. We work with two prisons right now. We're about ready to go to our third one. And the prisons are phenomenal partners in being puppy raisers for us. And I can't tell you the win-win behind those inmates who say, this changes my life. I get to have some degree of human touch. I feel like I'm giving back to a veteran in our community. So that's been great for us. And then our guardian homes, which really work with us in our breeding candidates and dogs that work in those programs. I can't emphasize this enough here. We cannot be successful without this great community. Cannot be successful. And so anybody who has the wherewithal or the space or want to support or want to play a role in this, want to be a partner, want to be an advocate, want to be a champion, want to be a supporter, want to have our back, wanted something to do, We're looking for puppy raisers. Now we can have volunteers. But a big thing is telling the story. Telling the Liberty Dogs story. Talking about what it's doing. Talking about the impact to our community. Talking about how it's changing lives. And not just of the veteran, but also of their families. There's a second, third order effect to what we're able to do as a part of Liberty Dogs. So everybody should have Liberty Dogs material to go out and share the story. Here's some milestones that we just have had. We just celebrated our first leash pass just this past Friday. Five veterans, five shelter dogs in our community who are getting trained to be full service dogs. We're preparing to prepare our first trained service dogs, which is the two-week course. And for those of you who may not have been on the campus, it's a full-service campus with not just veteran suites, not just a state-of-the-art kitchen, but a place where they can have peace, restoration rooms, where they can really have the time to get back in touch with, you know, somebody's recognizing as contributing to my moving forward in life. We currently have 127 dogs in our program, mainly golden retrievers. and Labradors are a mix thereof. We have put 118 veterans through our Warrior Wellness. I'll leave tomorrow going to a conference in Indianapolis, and it's going to be a representation of all 54 states, territory, and District of Columbia. And I'll get a chance to be like the champion of talking about what's here. I think we're going to get so much interest in what we're having here. Big news for the city of Reno. On September 14th, you don't want to miss it, at 10.30 a.m., we will officially announce the city's partnership with Liberty Dogs. I know you're not allowed to cheer or anything, but that's a big deal. Okay? Trying to follow the rules. And then we'll also get a chance to introduce the city's official Liberty Dog and reveal the name. We are beyond excited. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your partnership. Thank you for having our back and cheering us on. Thank you for telling the story. Major gratitude. On behalf of the Dave & Sho Duffield Foundation and all of our employees and all of those champions we have out there, this is a bright and shining gem for our community. There's nothing like this in the world, and we get a chance to talk about the great things that are happening right here in northern Nevada as we take care of those who've taken care of this great nation. Having said that, I will stand by for any questions.

Okay, if that's not inspiring, I don't know what is. You are, I always love hearing you speak. When are you writing a book?

Would I get, I don't know, I don't have any. Two or three in the morning, I don't know.

I just love, love, love what you do. That is so cool. I did not know we were getting our own, our very own City of Reno Liberty dog. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. I love it.

Any questions? Go ahead.

Council Member Anderson?

That's me.

Okay. I was looking over at both of you, so I apologize. That's okay. Okay.

Don't mind being mistaken for councilmember Taylor General Barry I'm just you're just like glowing with enthusiasm and love for this project and for the work that you're going to be doing and I hope that I'm doing the same for the fact that this is in my neighborhood in my community and The transformation of what this is going to do for Ward 6 when downtown Damani is developed. The culture and the vibe of this neighborhood and this community with the Liberty Dogs there. being integrated into that environment is going to be one of the most special things we have in this country. And it's a stone's throw from my house. And so I want to say thank you for your leadership there. The people in the community that have seen the development that has happened at Liberty Dogs think that it is homes for sale and it's downtown Damani. That is how fabulously this campus has been developed. It is absolutely stunning. No detail has been overlooked. And the most important thing that I want to say to you and to the Duffelds and to you, Mr. DiLoretto, I'm 51 years old. I've been in northern Nevada my whole life. And we've all heard how we do or do not take care of our veterans. This program is going to teach Reno and Washoe County at large how important our veterans are, how actually tactical things that everyone in the community can actually do to give back to the service that they gave us. That is an incredible gift for our community to teach us how to care for our veterans, but teach us how to care for each other, teach us how to, I mean, shelter dogs. You are... Picking shelter dogs out of shelters on the west coast and across the country To give them a new life and purpose not just a new life and purpose to be loved but a new life and purpose to love and I'm just I'm sure I could go on for many many minutes and that's when councilmember Taylor will throw something at me So I just want to say thank you for the opportunity Everybody here that brought this to Nevada and to northern Nevada because you are teaching us how to be better people Thank you.

So thank you. I would never throw anything at you, Council Member Anderson. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So proud, beyond proud, beyond words of this facility and the community. It just is a game changer for our region and for our state. My question for you is what's the cost approximately of this facility?

The cost approximately of this facility. Well, he was in the middle of all that. Give me the best guess. I'm sorry. What was the cost of the facility?

The investment. Let's call it an investment.

Okay. Did you catch that? What was that?

It's approximately $350 million.

About $350 million.

How many public dollars did you receive? No public dollars.

So this community, with some key leaders, provided this facility for our veterans with no public dollars. That's amazing. This community is amazing, and it's because of people like you and Perry DiLoretto and the Duffield Foundation, and we can't do it without you. So thank you.

Thank you. Sometimes I don't think people realize what we have here. And it's been talked about this morning, but when a community comes together, when you have people who care so much, so much, the Duffields are just so generous and have a love and care for our community, our veterans, and have done so many other things. And then you get the community pillar back there Mr. DiLoretto, and to come together to create this excellence. And when you see and hear what's happening on a regular basis in terms of veterans, and the right word was transformed, how they're transformed. I had a spouse call me and said, my husband had not talked to me about the war since the Gulf War until they went to this class that you gave. speaking more now, interacting more now, doesn't talk about being afraid anymore. I mean, I have stories. And when you're doing something this noble and saving and changing lives in a community that coalesces behind it, it's a story to be told. And we have not seen the return on investment that is happening in this community. It's going to be phenomenal.

And I wish Mr. Morgan was... Oh, he is still here.

He's back there.

I'm proud that the builders in this community support these kind of efforts. They're not just building our community with houses. They're building our community, and I don't know, but I can see you. Exactly. So the builders in this community are phenomenal. Thank you. Thank you.

He's a big supporter, too. He just likes to be in the background, but he's a good guy. Dan's shy over there. He's shy. Dan Shy?

Look at him. Now he's all red.

It's oxymoron. Dan Shy, okay.

That's so funny. He is, look, he's getting red.

All right.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Before you go, I'd like to lighten on as well. Well, first of all, General Barry, Welcome to our chambers. I've had the privilege of knowing you for quite a few years. And while I was surprised when you took this role, I was not shocked. And I was not shocked because of your past history both here at the City of Reno helping the men and women with the Reno Police Department. Moving on to the Nevada National Guard where I got to, you know, have tours with you, see programs with you, celebrate our guard and all the things they do, which they are doing right now, flying water to help us with the fire. I saw Emerson Marcus yesterday, Marcus and Emerson, and he, you know, said we're out there now, you know, and he had his camera in hand as he always does. And then I did have a chance to tour the facility. You were not there, unfortunately, that day. I came with a number of other electeds. And we were blown away, blown away by the quality, the commitment to detail, and what you really described, which I think needs to be mentioned again. It's not just about dogs, right? I mean, it's phenomenally about dogs, but it's about the entire life cycle of a veteran and what they're focusing, what they're dealing with, what made them commit to service in the first place, their experiences in their service, their life after their service and many of them, you know, the challenges that they faced and the fact that you're doing the mental health programs that you are to basically bring back the whole veteran and help them reintegrate to society if they've been closed up, get different kind of jobs, all of it is so important. I was first exposed to this kind of program about 10 years ago. A friend of mine back in Florida works with a Warrior Canine Companion, I think it's called. And she has trained dog after dog, mostly golden, mostly labs, golden labs. And I always felt that I never had the time. But I am about to be off council. I have a lot to take care of. But I know there's going to come a day that I may be able to help out personally, as you called for volunteers, and help raise these dogs. Because I've heard that is your greatest challenge, is getting the amount of dogs that you want into the program brought up. And our community probably doesn't have enough homes, and so you're reaching out all over is what I understand. So I've been blown away from day one. I think you know I've been chair for a decade of the Washoe County Animal Services. And I've gotten exposed to the shelter, of course, the issues that we have managing the population. The mayor and I, early in our career, worked to get rid of puppy stores in Reno, the spread to Sparks, so that we were not having backyard breeders and that we were adopting the animals out of the shelters. And that was something we were really proud of in the beginning. But to be able to be here at the end, And to be able to have this kind of program blossom in our community and be such a showpiece for the whole America. And my understanding is there may be others spread maybe to the other coast ultimately is just phenomenal. I do have an ask. And it's a small one in your world, but big to me. We've just gone through the fire, and we had an incredible shortage of staff in Washoe County Animal Services. They were running the shelter. They had a 30-cat hoarding situation that they had to deal with. The Livestock Events Center was filled. They could not use it to evacuate large animals. They had to pick one, Ironwood, 25 miles away, out Pyramid Way. They had to go out there and take care of all kind of large animals. There was another group, it's called the Least Resistance Technical Training, but it's all about moving large animals out of danger. They were evacuating animals and taking them out to Ironwood. Well, meanwhile, there was no one left to set up any kind of shelter for the pets of the evacuees. And so eventually I went and did it, right? And eventually Animal Services was able to bring extra supplies. And one of the things I want to work on post-emergency and that I could use your coaching on, and also probably Mr. DiLoretto, is I want to set up emergency volunteers that are ready to take care of animals. That could be your dogs. If a fire came to South Reno, if you have to evacuate, where are all these dogs going? If we have to evacuate the shelter, where are they going? If the livestock event centers shut down again, what's happening? I'd love to have volunteers that are trained in emergencies to immediately set up and help evacuees deal with the issues because many of them would not come to the shelter. They slept in their cars being told that animals were not allowed. in the convention center. Eventually, I worked with JW, and we were able to get this evacuation center open for animals. And there were at least 17 there at one moment. More later, and then fewer now as they're closing the shelter. But you see the issue, and I'd love to connect later with both of you about what we can do, because this is a whole new effort. But I think it'll help both your facility and our entire community with issues. And you're so trained for this, right? So thank you both. Thank you all for what you have done. I know that Duffields care tremendously about animals. I know. Back to you.

So when do we get our dog? The 13th? It looks like the 13th. 14th.

14th.

Can we make sure the dog's here at every council meeting? It's such a great mental health initiative. I love it, love it, love it so much.

I think that'd be your call. Oh, yeah. I love it, love it.

There we go. Okay, we're going to take a picture, if you wouldn't mind. I think Council Member Ebert has her hand up. Go ahead.

Yeah, I just wanted to say, General Berry, I had the pleasure of going to your retirement dinner, and I should have known better that that wouldn't be your actual retirement. I'm just so grateful to see you doing more in the community, and this is such a wonderful project. I'm such a dog person myself, and, you know, they're called man's best friend for a reason, and relationships with animals are so healing and I just think this is such a wonderful program and I'm so happy to see you, you know, still out here serving the community. You're so passionate about it and just really grateful for the support that you're providing for veterans. So just wanted to chime in and say thank you also.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Teacher here. I'm not in charge, but I'm used to giving orders.

I didn't realize that Megan had stopped talking.

So, yeah. Come on over.

Come on, Dan, Perry, Mike. Hey, Mike, Dan, Perry, all of you guys have worked on this project. Come on. Come on. Don't be shy. Get over here. Mike. Pawnee, come on. Yes, get over here. He hates it. Look at his face getting red too. Come on, Dan.

Come on.

Yeah, we're not leaving until you take a picture. Yay!

Katie, Rebecca will take her treatment. Oh, it's okay. I don't mind.

Okay, all right.

I'll hire you right after. I'll just go right after that, and it's on.

Yeah. Okay, ready? Here, everyone. Here, hold on a second.

Hold on. Let's all get in here. Come on.

Come on. Okay, is everyone in? In your frame? Okay, ready? One, two, three. Dogs. Suck it in. You got it? Awesome. Thank you. Okay, Perry, come say a few words. Speech, speech, speech. Speech.

Just very briefly, this is wonderful. This is going to go down as a really good day in our lives.

Oh, my gosh.

The day I met David Dusty and he explained his cold hair. I need you. It was quite an amazing conversation. So the point I want to make is there's a couple things that happened that we should not overlook. Number one, the day David told me what he wanted to do and he said, Perry, I need you to make this happen. And would you believe over the five years of this project, Dave and I probably had 12 meetings to talk about it. The direction was go make it happen. could not have happened without the city of Reno's cooperation. I want to compliment the city of Reno. I've done this with you before. Your staff performed excellent for us. We did our homework. We came in with what we needed. But there was buy-in by the city of Reno, and the cooperation on this was exemplary. So thank you for the leadership that you all provide to your city staff to enable that to happen, because it couldn't have got done without it.

Chris Pingree over here and his whole team. So there he is. Thank the man. Right there. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Pingree, you are amazing, young man.

Thank you.

Sorry, my hearing has been terrible, so I've been just trying to really follow. So has mine. Don't worry. I've been sitting back there adjusting my hearing aids.

My eyesight, my hearing, we're all in good company together. All right, you guys. Have a wonderful day. Let us know how we can help. Anything we can do. We're excited to get our dog, and we look forward to seeing you guys soon. Thanks so much.

I believe we're moving into item B14. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I pulled this item, B14, which is to highlight a very important program and our partnership with the state of Nevada on things that, if they weren't there, we can do what we do. And to my understanding, we are getting a $50 million loan, $50 million loan, And the fact that it's a loan is one thing, but the interest rate, I think, is incredibly low, like beyond belief low. So I just wondered if you could just briefly highlight it between you and our public works or in our, I guess it's our utility services, and just talk about it a little bit.

Sure, thank you. Vicky Van Buren, Director of Finance for the record. This item before you today is a resolution for intent for us to move forward with the application with the state revolving loan funds. You're familiar with this. This is the same process that we went through with the American Flats Project, Advanced Purified Water Facility, we did a similar process. They offer funding through the state program that has very low rates, and it's a drawdown program. So we spend the money, then we can draw the money down so we don't start paying for it until we've actually drawn it all down, which is one benefit. The other benefit, as you mentioned, the last one for the APWF, that one came in at 2.47%. Yeah. Can't go out on the market and get anything like that. It's a great value for the city. It really secures those funds in a way that we get the best bang for the buck for what we're doing, and it's a really good program. This item isn't issuing the bonds or getting the loan. This is just part of the application process for you to declare intent that you're okay with us moving forward with the application. This project is approved in the capital improvement plan for the year with this anticipated funding as the budget mechanism for it. And we have public works here if there's questions as far as like the project itself. Right.

Well, just a brief comment. I mean, it's a dewatering facility, which is not so sexy as they say, but just tell us about it for a minute, if you will.

For the record, John Simpson Utility Services. So, yes, the dewatering building out at Tomorf is being replaced. The existing building that's there is, I believe it's almost 40 years, it's over 40 years old now.

What is a dewatering building?

And so the dewatering building is the sewer process is... There's a waste product that is produced through the treatment of the sewer. The dewatering will take that waste and it basically puts it almost like a salad spinner and it pulls out all the water that's that's left in that um that waste material where we can um make it more compact and easier and and that material is transported away to a waste facility somewhere else and so um that's ultimately the the purpose of the dewatering building but um This has been in the CIP for 15 years. Right. It has been planned for a long time. We're excited to get this moving forward. I know the operations staff with Insidious Sparks has listed this as the number one item that they want to get taken care of out of the plant because it's a crucial infrastructure in need of updating. Okay. So we're excited to get this moving forward and appreciative of our Nevada Department of Environmental Protection that has this program in place to allow us to get this funding.

Right. I mean, because the alternative, going out for $50 million in bonds and having to go to the market and get money to do this, would be, you know, again, it'd be sitting on a shelf for another 15 years till we felt like we could pay for this kind of bond, and it would have come through the Debt Management Commission, and, you know, it would be competing with much more interesting projects like the Moana Pool and the Public Safety Center, things that people can see and touch and go to versus a place they will never go but is critical to their life, right? I mean, they take all this for granted. We... you know, we use our infrastructure and we're blind to it. But unless you have this stuff operational, we're not operational, right? That's correct. Yeah. I mean, I doubt anyone's going there. They're not going there to swim or, you know, visit with our police or anything, but it's critical. So thank you for being here. Thank you for making the application to the state. you know, thinking this through and finally feeling like we have the wherewithal to move forward. So thank you. And I don't know that there's any questions. I'm happy to make a motion to approve it. Okay, I'll make a motion that we approve applying for this financing through the Department of Conservation Natural Resources for $50 million.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Madam Clerk, I think we're moving on to item C2.

Yes, that's correct.

Director Van Buren.

Good afternoon. Vicki Van Buren, Director of Finance for the Record. Before you today, I have your monthly update for August. It aligns with the strategic plan through fiscal stewardship. And today I want to talk about the status of fiscal year 26, closing out those books through June 30. I do want to remind you that we are still recording some entries and preparing some reconciliations and some other items. So there may be some changes as we move forward, but we're very close to where the books are, and I have a good idea of where we are at this point for you today. The audit is currently underway. The auditors were here in August. They will be back on site in October for two weeks. They will finalize their audits as they're doing that. We will finalize the statements in November, and then those come back to you. The annual comprehensive financial report, the ACFR, comes back to you in December. So we're very busy right now with that, and we are also shifting gears toward budget and building budget for next year. as well. Topics for today again are closing out last year and then I have the special topic today of the medical internal service fund for you. So I'm going to stop after I get through the last year kind of results, and I'll stop for questions before I go on to the medical internal service fund, just to give you an idea. It's not a long presentation. I just wanted to give that little bit. General fund, I want to talk about this a little bit. Again, these are unaudited numbers. I pulled them as of last week on August 20th. There may be a few changes, but I don't expect anything material at this point. Right now, what you're seeing, the gold bar shows the FY26 estimated amounts, where we anticipated to come in as we built this year's budget, and then the actuals, where we actually are with these revenue sources. We've received all of the payments for property tax, C-tax, and franchise fees at this point, so these are updated. Again, I don't think that there are any material changes in here unless we find something through reconciliation or some other method. Property taxes, franchise fees, licenses, which are your business licenses, and charge for permits. See at the top of the bar up there, those all have negative percentages, just a little bit, not large, ranging from anywhere from negative .7% to negative 1.7%. And that's compared to where we thought we would come in for the year. So all of those are showing just slightly below. You'll see the differences listed on the bottom between those and the negative columns there. Sea tax is actually performing very well, consolidated taxes. Consumer spending is still continuing to be very robust and is driving this bus really well. Above estimates at 3.8%. And so with that one coming in a little bit higher and the others a little lower, we're in a very good spot still overall for where we estimated. So it's good news on this front. And then on the expenditure side, you can see salary and benefits. I talked about this last month. Salary and benefits are within .3% of what we anticipated. Extremely, extremely close. They are a little bit over than what we estimated, but we have revenues that are a little bit more, so we're okay there. And then service and supplies, this does include some capital in that, but just for presentation purposes, I included it in service and supplies. That includes the encumbrances that we currently have outstanding. And by encumbrances, I mean purchase orders So any contracts or purchase orders that we've already committed up to this point for last year, they have not been finished yet. We will encumber those funds and bring those forward. We are still in the process of going through those to see if it has been completed, we will close those out. and then that will be additional savings here, and that gap will get a little closer. Right now we're showing 2.2% above where we estimated, but that does include almost $5 million in encumbrances, and we're in that process of going through those, and not all of those will be brought forward, so that will get a little bit closer. Debt service on here, it's on track because we know what the schedule is for those. That's the Moana Pool, the Public Safety Center, and the Fire Apparatus Program in that debt service that we have here. So overall, fiscal year 26, the results, you know, they're coming in as expected. I don't have anything that I really want to call out to say this is, you know, out of the norm or anything going on, which is a good thing at this point. So it's really good to see things starting to level out and being able to predict them as we start to move forward. So looking ahead, we do have some major items that we're thinking about already for the current year and for next year. We are currently still working on the FLSA analysis and with the bargaining groups on that as well. We would like to have that wrapped up by December, by the end of this year. That is the goal. So we are still working on that. We have open collective bargaining agreements. We have Local 39. Supervisory and non-supervisory are currently open and in negotiation for the current year. Starting with fiscal year 28, we will have seven other groups that open up at that point. There's a lot of unknowns. We have a potential purse rate increase that would be for next year as well. Medical costs and workers' compensation. Over the last two years, we've seen a dramatic increase in the costs of those. A lot of it is geared because medical costs in general have increased. And then with workers' comp, State legislature has changed some things there so that we're gonna see some changes, I think, as we move forward. We haven't seen the impact of it yet, but future, we're starting to plan for that as well. Capital funding needs for next year. Current year we used some one-time funds that we found. Next year for fiscal year 28, we're already starting to look and try to figure out how we're going to fund those capital needs because we don't have really any one-time money identified at this point. And then the ERP system replacement is moving forward right now. Barry Dunn is working on the proposal on that as far as going out to figure out what type of system we need. and that information. So a lot of those meetings are going on right now with staff and we have to figure out what the actual cost will be with that and then figure out a plan for that as well. So these are the really big items right now that are on our plate as we're starting to look ahead and start to think about building the budget. September 23rd, I'll be back in front of you again for the next update. Again, I'll have results from last year unaudited, but they will be very close to final at that point because we're actually putting together these statements at that point to finalize them. So we'll really know at that point what the impact will be to the current year because if we're on track with all of our estimates and where we think we're going to be, there really won't be an impact to the current year budget. If we're not, then it would impact the current year budget and obviously beyond that. But at this point, everything's really coming in as anticipated. So with that, I'm going to stop right here if there are any questions here. Vicki, really quick, what did we budget for property tax?

Was it a 6% increase that we had budgeted?

Top of my head, I thought it was around 6%, but It's usually between six and seven and eight is what we've historically had. For the current year, I know for current year, it's only four and a half percent. We're starting to see some flattening. For last year, I think it was around six percent for that growth for last year, but the current year, we did see some kind of flattening, and so I think it's only around four and a half. Okay, thank you.

Council Member McTaylor?

Thank you. Vicky, I have a question about the consolidated taxes. So I think it was last year the state switched their system, and we started to see our C tax fluctuate differently. There was a couple of really low months, and then there was a high month. My question is, what are we doing to ensure that we are receiving the amount of C tax that is due to us? Is it through the audit? Is it through your team? And do we feel confident that that, we've seen it kind of level out over the last couple of months. So are we confident that things are, I guess, the fluctuation is gone and that now we can accurately predict with the new system in place? Yes.

You know, I just had a conversation with Taxation this morning. They are still having some challenges with some of the implementation because they're rolling it out over several years in different areas. We have seen it stabilize in CTAX. We did have the very first month for last year, July of 25, so it would still be part of fiscal year 26. That one was still a little weird because we had that overlap. We also had the the attack at the state, that cyber attack that impacted that, and that overlapped fiscal years. But following that, we've had very consistent allocations that look normal. We obviously do our own analysis on our side. We talk to other agencies as such. Taxation has also been doing some open forums where they've been talking about the process, talking about some of the challenges or things that They fixed in the system as well. But right now, everything appears to be on track. I think we have a good full year of information that we can continue to build on for next year, whereas we lost about two years there over this whole period where it's hard to do analysis from last year to this year in different timings.

So I guess for my understanding, I want to make sure that we are monitoring it, we are continuing the conversations with the Department of Taxation, and should there be a need to adjust or go after C-Tax that we thought that we were due, you're working with other agencies, that's an ongoing process that you're working? Yes, absolutely.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Council Member Dewar?

No, I'm sorry. Well, I just wanted to say I had a really good briefing, which is why I don't have questions. And I spent a lot of time asking questions there and really got up to speed. And so I just appreciate these briefings. I do because they really help, you know, get the understanding better than reading a staff report. So thank you.

Council Member Ebert, do you have any questions or comments online?

Not at this time, thank you.

Yeah, of course. I don't have anything. Okay. Director Ramperin, if you want to continue.

Thank you. I'm going to go on to the special topic this month. This special topic is the Medical Internal Service Fund. If you remember last month, we talked about the Fleet Internal Service Fund. It's a fund where we have separate accounting, kind of like a separate checkbook, if you want to call it, and we account for the services that are performed by the city, and then the city pays for it, through their department budget. So the city's providing the service and paid for through the city. In the medical internal service fund, again, I mentioned it's a separate fund, and we use it to manage the employee health benefits for the medical plans. And so instead of the city having a separate insurance company, like a box store, you go out and you buy insurance, the city actually self-funds the medical plan, and we do that through the employee portion and the city's portion of the health benefit premiums. So how does it really work? Similar to the fleet fund, we have to collect the money from somewhere within the city. We collect the money from the employee contribution and from the city contribution. So not all of it comes from the city in this case. The employee does have a contribution based on the health coverage that they choose. The city currently pays for 100% of the employee's healthcare coverage, and then they pay a portion of the dependent care coverage depending on what the employee chooses, and that's based on the collective bargaining agreement. Those are contributed to this fund, and then the healthcare costs for the medical claims, drugs, and the other things are paid out of this fund. This is an internal service fund because it spreads the cost across the city departments, so each department pays based on the employees they have and the actual coverage that the employees in that department are signed up for. We recalculate that every year during the budget process and we actually use the actuals for what this is costing. So what does it pay for? Really high level. We pay for the medical claims from the city and the city claims that come in. We pay for prescription drug costs. Those also come in. And we have a third-party administrator. That's UMR in this case. And so you go to the doctor. That explanation of benefits is generated. UMR is the person that determines what is applicable, what is our portion to pay, what is the employee's portion to pay. And then that is done through UMR, through that third party administration. The actual claims payment and the actual payment for the drug cost that is the cost of the insurance comes back to the city and is paid through this fund. That's the self-funded piece of this. This is not all... It's not all risk in. It is risky for the city because we are accepting the burden of knowing that we have to be responsible for all the claims that come in because we do not have an outside source of insurance. We do have a stop loss insurance that kicks in. So if we get a very large claim for a benefit, so say we have a claim that's a million dollars for something, some hospitalization or some kind, stop loss would kick in at $400,000. So The city would pay up to $400,000 and then stop loss insurance kicks in after that. Any other claims, the city is responsible for paying through this process. We have staffing and other costs that are associated with managing this fund. Staffing costs include the HR. They have dedicated people that work on this. We in finance have a portion of our time that's dedicated to this and other things. So that's really the cost. at a high level of what's in the fund. Why do we do it this way? Why don't we just go out and buy healthcare through a regular healthcare plan? We just pay a premium, we don't worry about what the claims are. Well really we do it this way for a lot of reasons. We have more control over the healthcare plan and U.S. Council obviously has more control in the city over what types of plans are offered and if the premiums are gonna increase or not. We have transparency on the cost of the benefits because we track it in a totally separate fund. We have flexibility of the plan designs, deciding what plans you want, what things you want in the plan versus this is what we offer and you get all of this in this package. We have the ability as the city to manage that. There's savings potential long term, so we do keep a reserve in this fund. We have to have a healthy reserve in this fund in order to ensure that we have money on hand in case there are very large claims or even though we have the stop loss insurance, you can have a lot of $50,000 claims. So we have to make sure we have enough to pay the claims as they come due because we are accepting that risk as the city. We have a lot of good data with the claims experience, so we know kind of not who's doing it, but we know what types of things people are using. Are they using more medical? Are they using more prescription drugs, other things? We get a lot of data from it in order to figure out what we think the future looks like as far as providing this. And then protection through the stop loss again. And we also have an employee insurance advisory committee. This committee is advisory in nature. However, they do have a lot of input. We do meet with them quarterly. It's comprised of a lot of city employees and a lot of representation from a lot of collective bargaining groups because benefits are important to people and they provide that information they receive from those meetings back to their groups so they can know what we're seeing, what it looks like, and what we see for the future for premiums or plans or different types of things. So that's a quarterly meeting and we get a lot of good participation in that. The last slide I have for you here is just the medical and terminal service fund history. So every year about this time of the year, we start to look at what do the claims look like, what's the cash balance in this fund, And do we need to look at changes to the plan or changes to the premium at this point? The reason we typically do it now is because we have a good solid year to look at for last year, for 26. We can look at trends up to that point. And we also know that open enrollment is coming up in the fall. So if we're going to look at doing anything, we would like to do it prior to open enrollment so employees can choose the best option for them. at that point. One of the things I want to point out on here, for about a decade, we did not have to increase premiums, or we only increased them very slightly. Back 2017, we increased premiums 5% across the board, and then in this January, we increased them 10%. But that's what we've done almost over a 10-year period. So that tells you how well this fund works. There are some years where claims will be higher and some years where claims will be lower. And then that remaining balance will stay in the reserve. So in that way, we're able to stabilize and keep the costs even for employees and for the city as a whole. So you'll see the top line, the red line, shows the claims. These are the claims going back to fiscal year 20. And then the blue line shows you the cash balance. Very steady, has been for almost a decade. up until about fiscal year 24. If you looked down at the bottom, fiscal year 24, we're starting to see a real increase in the claims. Claims totaled $33.5 million. Going into fiscal year 25, we went up to $37 million. Between those fiscal year 24 and 25, we saw a 10% increase in claims. That's one of the reasons that we increased the premiums in January 10%. We saw these trends coming and we increased. What we didn't anticipate is that for fiscal year 26, it didn't level out. It continued to increase. And it not only increased, it increased 20%. So now you're seeing that gap on the edge. So from fiscal year 25 to 26, we've seen the cost in claims increase 20%. Really, it's a factor of hospital prices that have risen. They've seen costs in labor go up, costs in supplies go up, the inflation that they're seeing on their side. It's coming through in hospital prices going up. There are newer drugs, expensive drugs in the prescription plan, so costing more. And, you know, usage is also a factor in it. People know their benefits. People are able to use their benefits, and they have really good benefits. And so there are a lot of things going on in this. We're currently working with HR and their team to – work with UMR and get some more analysis so we can look at what this looks like for the future, either changing the plan a little bit, increasing premiums potentially, or doing a combination of both. But now is the time really that we always look at it every year, figuring this out first because then that will impact the budget as we continue to move forward. Just wanted to give you a little heads up that this is the item on the radar as we're moving in this time of year. And then we will move on to full budget development after this. But this is going to be a challenge. I'm not sure, you know, I think when we met with the advisory group, I think the projections from the consultant that works on this is... somewhere around 5% or 6% is what they're thinking for next year, whether that's really true, because, again, there are a lot of factors in this. So we need to kind of find a happy medium and then continue to monitor what the claims look like as we go forward. So questions here?

Council Member Teague.

Thank you. This slide is very concerning, and it looks like it's not sustainable financially. We're The claims are going up and the cash is going down. So when you said that we have a consultant that is looking at this, are they going to be preparing some ideas for us to look at to close this gap a little bit?

Well, I said consultant. It's more UMR and the claims history. They look at claims history and they can tell us what happens.

It's not even necessarily about the consultant, Vicki. I'm wondering what are the plans? We need to come up with some recommendations to close this gap.

We are working on that. We are actively working. Monica's here if you have some specific questions for them. But Monica and Adri are here. I'm working with their team to figure out what we do here. I mean, clearly we could raise premiums to try to cover it. But I don't necessarily know that that's what everyone wants. And so we're working out what that looks like.

Our employees are our greatest asset. We need to invest in them. I'm not saying that. But we can't have a shortfall like we're having in this. It's not sustainable.

We have a very rich plan. And there's potential for changes to the plan. And they're working on calculations on what that would look like. if we change the plan a little bit as well. So I think there's an opportunity for both. I definitely think there are probably going to have to be some plan changes and another premium increase.

When do you think that you would have some recommendations for us to look at or options?

We're planning the next, we called a special meeting. They meet quarterly, that advisory committee. Adrian just scheduled that this morning to meet with them in September. So we'll be meeting with them in September, going through this with the broker, our insurance broker. That was the consultant I was talking about, the insurance broker that brings us the analysis of the claims and what it looks like on the go forward. And so once we have all of that information and talk to the employees that represent their bargaining groups, find out what's most important to people. Because if we change the plan, they may lose some benefits that they really want. Maybe they would prefer to pay more in a premium. We really need to get a little more input before we can make some recommendations on it.

That sounds like a good plan for it. I'd be interested. It's for discussion only, so I'm going to be really interested in seeing what we bring forward. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. This was very helpful. Council Member Dewar.

Yeah, thank you. I too appreciate this presentation. This is another one I was able to get a little briefing on. Could you go back a slide or two to Right here. I thought this was really important. We could be getting our medical insurance through an insurance broker, right? And by managing it ourselves, I think we're really affecting payments to insurance brokers. In other words, a lot of people in America are very unhappy with insurance companies generally. And by taking them out of the equation and making it very personal between the city and our employees, I think we're doing them a good service. I really do. The second thing that you have here, so that contributes directly to savings. Because otherwise, if we did use an insurance broker, they would be getting money. They would be making money on finding us the right insurance coverages and those kind of things, right?

Right, you're cutting out the income piece of it of an insurance company making a profit off of it, yes.

Right, which I think should make our employees pretty happy, you know, that we have come up with a cost savings here. And the second thing is just this Employee Insurance Advisory Committee I think is also very important, because you pointed out they are more sensitive to changes in the insurance program. They may be willing to pay more to get this high level of insurance. They may be more price sensitive and want to take a cut in insurance benefits, medical insurance benefits, to be able to not have an increase in price. And I think they are a very valuable part of this communication and these decisions that we're making. So thank you for highlighting those.

Thank you.

Do you have anything, Council Member Ebert?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I worked in benefits for 20 years before coming here in different capacities, but I I'm really interested in making sure that we're getting the best possible plan. Like, there's other insurance companies besides UMR. I'm really interested in kind of going out and seeing what other plans are available. I know I've talked with Jackie about brokers that have been really helpful with other businesses in the past. There's different agencies that can help, you know, lower premiums. I'm not sure if a municipality can join anything similar to a PEO to help reduce insurance costs, but I want to make sure we're looking at all the different possibilities for different insurance plans. I don't know if we're locked into UMR, but there's other providers out there for sure. The other thing I'm interested in knowing is what kind of data do we have on the claims? I know that there's HIPAA regulations, so we don't want to know who did what, but do we have particular... high claims that are spiking our costs or like one-offs, or do we have kind of a trend of a certain health issue that's raising our rates because a lot of people are experiencing it? And I ask that because we could potentially work on a wellness program to help reduce those risks. And I'll just use the example of smoking, right? If you invest in smoking cessation programs, you can help reduce some of the rates for cancer treatments and things like that. So just want to make sure that we have accurate information to make sure that we're looking for the right area to invest in to help lower our premiums. You know, things like premature babies. You can't really help that, but you can make sure that we have good prenatal care, you know, for employees and their dependents. So just things like that. I'm not sure if we get that data from our insurance company now, but I think if we're not, we should. Just, again, to make sure if there's things that we could reduce through wellness programs, we should be doing that. Yeah. I think it would be worth an investment on that. I know that there's options to do biometric screenings with some insurance companies that, again, they keep your information private, but they use aggregate data to find out what kind of wellness programs you should offer for people. As well, so just want to make sure that we're not kind of just continuing what we've always done in the past Like let's really make sure we're we're looking for the best possible option Yes, thank you for that we are definitely I mean my answer to that is yes, we are doing all of the things that you're talking about mostly because we the things that

we thought were going to happen, you know, cost increasing 10% and potentially another 6% to 10%, and we get 20%. Because of that, we need to really do a deeper dive, and we're going to really do that over the next month, yes.

So is UMR providing any kind of reporting like that to us currently?

They do. They provide not names or anything, but they say you have a high claim related to, NICU or something else. So we are aware of things as they happen. And then they also do quarterly reporting to us. They may even do monthly to the HR department. But I see quarterly reports with the committee. They present at it. They are seeing an increase in the $40,000 to $50,000 range claim. you'll know that those are not, they don't meet the stop-loss threshold. So those type of claims are increasing, so we are kind of asking some more details on that as far as what's causing this, are these one-offs, is this something going on in that space? Because if you have, you know, a hundred of those type of claims, that's a big deal. You may not have a giant claim, but you may have a lot of smaller type procedure claims or surgeries or other things. And maybe there's something else we could be doing or having the plan different way to match what' s going on.

We are looking at it. and really focus on wellness programming as well because that' s preventative health care is the best way to go. Thank you.

Yeah, I just have one more thing. I have been hearing from police and fire, and it could be happening in public works and parks and rec, I'm not sure, that because of the extreme amount of hours that they're working, fatigue, we've got a lot of injured police officers and firefighters that I'm sure is contributing to these numbers in terms of claims and things. So I think that on the front end, I know that we're constantly working on staffing, we're constantly working on the number of hours that our employees are working. And a lot of that we can't really control because it really requires up staffing and bringing on new employees. But anything that we can be doing on injury prevention and what that takes, whether it's scheduling number of hours, required time off for rest. I'm sure that we're gonna be having a lot of injuries after the summer of fires that we're experiencing. So I don't really see that trend changing in terms of our claims, but we could be changing the way that we are working.

Thank you. That's a great point.

Are there any other comments? Yeah. Yeah, Madam Mayor.

Okay, great job as always. Couple things. Did Angela leave? She did? Did I miss her goodbye or what happened? Can I tell you what an asset that woman was? She's amazing, amazing. Of course. Trust me, I get it. I totally understand that. If there's some way you can connect us, that would be amazing. I just want to thank her for her service. She helped, I'm sure, all of you here at this dais many, many, many times. She helped me many, many, many times. What a wonderful woman. What an example of... Someone that knows this industry inside and out and is responsive and kind and caring so please Let's somehow connect with her so we can at least send her Something so that way she doesn't feel embarrassed, but we can at least thank her for her service and then explain to me what the employee insurance Advisory Committee is

Just an advisory committee similar to the other committees. Is that new or we've had it? At least a couple years.

What does it do exactly?

They meet quarterly, and there's a presentation from our insurance broker that goes through the type of claims that they're seeing. Again, no names, just the claims are going up, and this is the cost that we're seeing. Prescription drug usage, is it up, down? How's it compared to prior years? And then we talk from finance on our side. What is the fund balance in the fund? How is it? handling the claims that are coming in, do we anticipate any challenges with it, and it really keeps us on track on a quarterly basis of looking at this all the time. It's not easy to predict, so it's a really good thing that we have this committee to do this, and there's a lot of representation from the employee groups, the collective bargaining agreements, and so those employees are very involved, and they go back and they talk to their groups about it, and so we get a lot of really good input to the group.

Okay. All right. Is there ever any talk of getting rid of your pharmacy benefits manager?

Not that I've heard, but maybe Monica has one.

You know, there's like... I haven't heard that, no. Yeah.

No.

I don't know. There's, you know... A lot of the stuff that I've read about them has not been great. Not like ours per se, but like having those in place can be... What do they call them? Is it OPM? There's a name for it, but oftentimes... it can hinder us actually getting the best price when we sort of have a middleman.

So I've had a lot of difficulty with them personally, like continually ongoing, like with ours. Yeah. Like the people that work there are great. They're very friendly and helpful, but I like when I need prescription refills, I have to call multiple times for each prescription and it's, I am not really happy with the service they provide. I know Angela said she did a survey before employees and everybody else was happy with it. I think it's odd that I would be the only person that has this issue, but it's been extremely frustrating for me. So I just wanted to put that on the record, I guess. Thank you.

Put it on the list and we will bring it back up and talk about it.

Typically, those in general have, you know, they end up, like I said, becoming the middleman. And anyway, so I'm just curious.

Okay. No, we're certainly looking at everything. A lot of companies are taking them out of the equation. Suggestions.

Yeah. So anyway, okay.

That's it.

Back at you. Bye, Samara.

Thank you. I think that was just for discussion. Thank you. It sounds like a lot of members of the body, if you're okay with that, Madam Mayor, would like to go on break, and then we can continue with the agenda. We have a break for attorney-client, correct? Yes. Okay.

All right. Then we will go on break. Thanks so much. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Madam Clerk, I think we're going to reconvene our meeting. If you can get us on track, please.

Yes, I believe we are going into item D1 and we'll need to open the public hearings.

Okay. You said D1? D1. D1. Let the record reflect that the council is opening the public hearing on item D1. Madam Clerk, was proper notice given and any correspondence received?

Proper notice was given and we did receive one letter in favor that has been distributed.

Thank you. Do any council members have to make any disclosures at this time? Doesn't look like it. We will move on to our staff presentation.

Good afternoon. My name is Brenna Nichols. I'm a senior management analyst in the Public Works Department. Today I'm joined by J.D. Klippenstein from the Reno Housing Authority. Today we are looking at a resolution of sale and hearing of objections for 14180 Mount Charleston Street. This item aligns with the quality of life priority, specifically the affordable housing goal within that priority. Some details on this property. It's 0.35 acres, located in Ward 4, just south of the Reno Stead Airport at the corner of Mount Charleston Street and Cocoa Avenue. It's been leased to the Reno Housing Authority since 1994 at zero cost. A little bit more on the public benefit of this item. Stud Manor is a 68-unit affordable housing community. Its rents are capped at 30% of household income. And the clubhouse specifically supports youth programs, workforce development, and technology access, as well as a community meeting space. A quick timeline, we purchased this property in 1975. In 1994, RHA began leasing the property. Moving ahead to this year, in June, RHA submitted a letter this council approved. Two weeks ago, on August 12th, this council approved a resolution of intent to sell, and today marks the final action needed from council, the resolution of sale. And with that, here is the recommended motion to sell this property to the Reno Housing Authority for a nominal cost of $10 plus closing costs.

Thank you so much. I'll turn it to the body, see if there are any questions or comments. I'll make a motion.

I'll look for a motion, yeah. I move to adopt the resolution of sale to approve a purchase.

Council Member, you were had some time.

Yeah, yeah. Just wanted to say what this is going to be used for. I mean, just to say it on the record, because this is in my ward, and I think this is a great project there, taking a tour. It's a really nice location, very well maintained. So just real quick, what are we going to do with this spot?

Definitely. I'll have J.D. talk about that.

J.D. Kluppenstein, Deputy Executive Director for the Reno Housing Authority. Council Member Ebert, thank you for the question. So this property's going through a $20 million rehab, and the clubhouse is included in that. That's gonna be wrapping up at the end of this month. So there's gonna be a community kitchen, there's gonna be a computer nook. So this space will be used for community programming. Our resident councils will meet there. We also have a workforce development program that uses that space, so our staff meet with residents there. It's just kind of a hub of what is the affordable housing community out there.

That's wonderful. So can residents kind of use this space for programming that maybe they want to do? Maybe they want to have their kids get together and read books or something like that or schedule somebody to come out and talk with them with the library or something? They could do that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think both the scouts, the Girl Scouts troops meet there. There's some other programming as well that is offered. So our resident services team works really closely with residents to identify what the needs are and also what some of the programs that they're interested in, and then we partner with those agencies to bring it out there.

That's great. Well, thank you for that.

Of course. Thank you.

Council Member 2. I move to adopt the resolution of sale to approve a purchase and sale agreement to sell city-owned property located at 1418 Mount Charleston Street to the Reno Housing Authority for a nominal fee of $10 plus closing costs.

Second. Great. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Item D1 and move on to item D2. Let the record reflect that the council is opening a public hearing on item D2. Madam Clerk, was proper notice given and any correspondence received?

Proper notice was given and we did receive three letters in opposition.

Thank you. Are there any disclosures from any of the council members at this time? Now I will ask Mr. Shipman or Mr. Hall to read the ordinance.

Thank you. Ordinance Introduction Bill Number 7341, Case Number LDC 25-00065, Moose Ridge Zoning Map Amendment, Ordinance to Amend Title 18, Chapter 18.02 of the Reunion Municipal Code, entitled Zoning, Rezoning a 42.43-acre site located north of the Tournament of Moose. Ridge Drive, 115 feet north of its intersection with Foxtail Drive, from 42.43 acres of single-family residential, three units per acre, SF3, to 22.43 acres of single-family residential, eight units per acre, SF8, and 20 acres of parks, greenways, and open space, together with matters which pertain to or are necessarily connected therewith, Ward 5.

Thank you. I think it's up to you, Mr. Perotti.

Good afternoon, members of the council. For the record, my name is Leah Picotti, and I am an associate planner with the City of Reno Development Services. This afternoon, I am presenting an application for a zoning map amendment. We are calling this one the Moose Ridge Zoning Map Amendment. So this site is approximately 42 acres, and it is located in the northwest portion of Reno, kind of north of Somerset right there, Robb Drive and McQueen High. The request before you today is a zoning map amendment. However, I will point out that this request was submitted and is being processed concurrent with a tentative map for 46 single family residential units and a major site plan review for grading, cuts and fills, grading in the parks, greenways, and open space, and a major drainage way, which I'll get into here. Now, while the tentative map and the major site plan review are not necessarily something that is approved by Council, I think it's important to talk about it because it was unanimously approved by the Planning Commission back on July 15th, should the zoning map amendment be approved, because the tentative map and major site plan review have been approved, it's contingent upon approval of this zoning map amendment. So the request that you have before you is a zoning map amendment. And I want to just step back a little bit, because I talked about it a little bit in briefing. But we've been working on this for about a year and a half. And originally when this request came in, it was to go from single family residential three units per acre to single-family residential eight units per acre. And when we took that before the Planning Commission in July 2025, they said, hey, why can't we make a portion of this Parks Greenway as an open space since the majority of the parcel has slopes that exceed 30% and isn't necessarily developable anyways? And something that kind of complements that SF8 and Parks Greenway as an open space, as you can see below. So they came back with this. And so the request that's before you today is to go from SF3 to 22.43 acres of single family residential, eight units per acre, just on the southern portion of the parcel. And then the northern portion, that 20 acres up there, will be zoned parks, greenways, and open space. So the second request that kind of just goes with this is the tentative map for a 46-unit single-family detached subdivision. You can see the site on the screen right now, and you can see that all 46 of those units are proposed on the southern portion of that site. There is no development proposed on the northern portion of the site, and if this zoning map amendment is approved, then that portion of the site will be zoned park screenways and open space, which will preserve it in perpetuity. So with the tentative map, we also have an application for a major site plan review, and that's grading resulting in cuts greater than 20 feet and fills greater than 10 feet, grading within the park's greenways and open space, hillside development, and disturbance of a major drainageway. Again, this isn't necessarily part of what you guys are looking at today, but I think it's important to look at what has been approved and what's going to be developed should the zoning map amendment be approved. On the screen for you is a slope map. This just gives you kind of an idea of how the terrain on this site actually looks. So you can see the green area down at the bottom. That is the least sloped area under 15%, and that is the area that's going to be developed. Pretty much everything on that northern portion of the site is orange or red, which means it's above 30%. Looking at the overall site design, we have about nine acres of development area that includes all of the roads and the proposed lots. This will leave about 33 acres of open space, which will be parks, greenways, and open space, and deed restricted. It will accommodate 46 single-family detached homes with an average lot size of 6,000 to 7,200 square feet. It's important to note that lot size and density are not always the same thing. So while the lot sizes are slightly smaller than the subdivision to the south, which range somewhere in the 9,000 to 12,000 range, the actual density of this site, 46 units on 42.43 acres, comes out to one unit per acre. Point nine two acres, so it's almost one unit per acre. So the density is low but That's because the housing is all at the bottom and the rest of it is preserved in open space This application did go to the Ward 5 Neighborhood Advisory Board back in December, and there were concerns. And I kind of put this table together to kind of talk about what those concerns were. As you all know, we cannot condition a zoning map amendment, but we can condition a tentative map and a major site plan review. So the conditions that you're looking at today can't necessarily be amended, but I do want you to know that they have been approved by the Planning Commission and should the council approve the zoning map amendment, these would move forward with that tentative map. So we looked at density and compatibility. That was one of the concerns. And so the applicants have agreed to deed restrict the open space and also continue to work with Truckee Meadow trails. There are some existing pedestrian and dirt bike and Jeep trails that are up in that area. Some of them can be preserved. Some of them cannot. So they're going to work with Truckee Meadow trails to figure out which ones can be preserved and which ones need to be blocked off. Any of the ones that do need to be preserved, they'll work with Truckee Meadow Trails to fix those trails, correct any erosion and issues like that moving forward. Also, they are going to do rockery walls and riprap, natural landscape, backfilled with soil, and revegetated. And again, all those dirt roads will be maintained and revegetated. I think one couple of things I want to touch on here is there's been some current concerns about wildlife. So I did want to let everybody know that we do have a condition of approval on here. And this was the condition that was requested by Nevada Department of Wildlife. And that is that prior to the recordation of the final map, the applicant shall identify wildlife corridors and include wildlife mitigation and maintenance plan that will be reviewed and approved by the Nevada Department of Wildlife and city staff. Implementation of any mitigation or maintenance measures need to be reflected on the final plan. So any of those trails or any of the mitigation that needs to be done will be done in coordination with Nevada Department of Wildlife and will be reflected on that final plan. The other thing we're going to talk a little bit about here is fire safety. Now, I know that this is all on the top of everyone's mind right now, so I want to talk about the things that we've implemented here related to fire safety. So everything, all the conditions 7 through 13 are directly related to this, and I'm just going to read them so that we have that on record. So prior to the approval of the final map, the applicant shall provide plans that demonstrate that all landscaping complies with the International Wildland Urban Interface Code, that's the WUI code, adopted by the Nevada State Fire Marshal's Office. The Reno Fire Department requires that vegetation management plans be submitted to the State Forester first, and then the approved plans, along with any comments, will be submitted to City of Reno for review. The developer will establish a homeowners association or equivalent organization that shall be tasked to maintain requirements regarding the establishment and maintenance of fuel modification zones. All dwelling units shall be equipped with emergency fire suppression sprinklers that meet or exceed the standards outlined in the National Fire Protection Association 13D. All decks, roofs, and walls shall be constructed of fire resistant material. The development and the private roadways will not be gated or obstructed. And there will be all temporary access roads will be constructed in accordance with permanent fire department access road standards. The fire access roads may be engineered, compacted base material, which may or may not include paving. The road base shall support fire trucks, be resistant to wear from travel and weather, and shall be maintained as a drivable surface throughout the construction process. Construction activity may be prohibited by the fire department for failure to service and maintain those fire apparatus access roads Also, I want to point out too that I don't have a slide for it But I can put it on the overhead if we need to I'm just going to move back here so If we're looking at the screen, on the right portion of the screen, that roadway is going to extend out and go into the neighborhood that is to the west of this. That's going to provide another fire access, ingress, and egress, not only for the residents here, but the residents that are on Moose Ridge and Morgan Court, where the woman that spoke earlier was. So now she actually will have another way to get out of her subdivision should there be some other emergency situation where she needs to be able to leave. So this project is going to improve the fire access in this area. And with that, zoning map amendments are on the board. Planning Commission saw this on July 15th, got a unanimous recommendation of approval for that. And the recommended motion is on the board. The applicant has a presentation. I am available for questions and our fire department is here and available for questions as well. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Derek Wilson on behalf of the property owner. As always, that was a very thorough presentation from staff, so I'm going to do my best to not take up too much of people's time and not be repetitive. So I will move through this as quickly as I can. That's the site. So as mentioned, we're not maximizing development in any way. preserving nearly half the site as open space. So the goal here is not to maximize our unit count. It's to have sensitively sized lots that match the topography and the grading of the area. So the SF8 zone would allow us to do those more compact lots on the flatter areas of the site without extending our grading up into the steeper parts of the site. And as mentioned we have a tentative map already approved for this That's our technical description of what we're asking for right there. I think you're familiar with that Existing zoning Proposed zoning again. We're we're cutting it in half. We're only using the Lower angled developable slopes on the on the southern part of the site Master plan supports SF zone SF 8 zone in this area and we're next to SF8 zoning already. It's present in the neighborhood. So we're not bringing a new zone to that area. It's already present in the neighborhood. So that's the subject, that arrow, that yellow line is pointing roughly to the developable part of the site, the southern part of the site that's more easily developable, easily accessible from Moose Ridge Drive. And that's our layout, that's our site plan. Lots of parking, lots of access. We intend to maintain public access through the site, so hiking and bike riding and such can continue through the site. And we have parking, and we're prepared to put up a sign identifying that trailhead area. So we're in no way removing public access through this site and to the area further up the hill. So obviously fire safety is a big issue and we're sensitive to that and we respect people's concerns about that and we want to be a positive element to this. Earlier in this meeting today, it was stated that we need better fire infrastructure and obviously that's the case. We need that everywhere. I don't mean this to make light of any issue, but that's exactly what this project is doing. We're adding a fire access road that links two existing neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods function somewhat as a cul-de-sac. They're separate neighborhoods that come to an end. We're linking those, so it loops that emergency access. We're also interconnecting the water system, so the water system will connect through those neighborhoods as well, And that's requested by TUMWA. They want to see that additional redundancy in the water system. So we are improving emergency water supply and emergency road network with this project. And all that's going to be provided at private expense at the developers expense. That's not something the city has to take on. It's not something you have to wait for capital expenditures to come around. That's something that would happen with our tentative map. So that's the important point that I wanted to make. I don't think there's anything else that we're not aware of. We've done our best to communicate with the neighborhood. We had a community forum meeting. I went door-to-door and handed out project descriptions. So we hope we've done a good job communicating to the public what's going on. So that's the end of my presentation. I'm happy to elaborate as needed. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, do you have any public comment on this item?

There's no one registered to speak.

Thank you. We'll bring it back to the body. Council Member Anderson.

Yes, thank you for the presentation. This is a question for you, the developer. I appreciate the PGOS plan on the slopes. One thing that we know and what we've learned is that the vegetation in the PGOS in that specific area that you're going to be developing or you want to develop could be problematic. So what is the plan to make sure that you just don't have

that many acres of pgos that's overgrown and becomes sparkable on the edge of those houses so it would be a pretty simple matter to include in the hoa document for the site that maintenance of that area is required okay and inspected like have it inspected and things like that yeah there's a routine for that somerset does this they come around with with guys that cut They somehow get machines into those gullies and they cut some of that vegetation. So yeah, we'd replicate exactly that sort of agreement.

Okay, great. And then one other question. I don't know if you've gotten this far in your plan, but do you have a plan for fire-resistant fencing?

I don't recall if that was in the conditions, but we'd be happy to have that as a condition.

Okay, I'm just noticing that the fences, that they end up being... ignition points as well. So if you have the opportunity to use those materials, we would appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, yeah. Council Member Dewar.

Yeah, thank you. This is gonna be a really tough one for me. I support housing pretty much everywhere. You said that you were leaving part of the property as PGOS, and what I see is that you showed the slope map. The part you're leaving as PGOS is over 30% slope, and so it'd be very difficult to build up there. I'm not even sure if it's allowed. But that being said, here's my challenge, and this is really a conversation for council. Over the years, I have advocated for a couple things. I've advocated for more than two ways in and out of a development. I'm thinking of the Santerra development right now, which I voted against for a couple reasons. Six fires had started on that property. They were proposing two ways in and out to meet our code for for I think it's thousands of acres and 3,000 homes, something like that. And I was working really hard to acquire them a third access point through a bridge, which was ultimately closed and deemed not usable for egress even in a fire. We originally had, we were worried about fire there. And we had recommended using a house for a two-person crew, I think, temporarily. And I did not support this, but the developer suggested that they get rid of that house and just give us a couple hundred thousand dollars for an emergency vehicle down in South Reno. And I did not support that because I didn't feel like that addressed the fire safety over there at Santerra. And so today, we have $200,000 sitting in a bank for a future fire station sometime. which, compared to multi-multi-million dollars, not gonna get us very far. On other projects, looking at the infrastructure out in North Valleys, I recommended widening, extending Virginia Street before we ever began the road work on 395 so that there'd be an alternate route. That was not supported. The NDOT and RTC, et cetera, said, no, we have to fix this road first. And I absolutely did not agree. I felt like we needed an alternate route while we were fixing the road. There have been other projects, too, that I have recommended denial because of fire risk. And so I voted no. And today, I cannot support this project, and here's why. If you could put up the map, the first map I think you showed, shows this area would have been in the area that was first declared where the fire was. So there's maybe a bigger view of this, I think. The same map, but a bigger view, I think, on your maps. Is there not?

You mean closer?

Yeah. That's a good one. So to the left is Sandestin, as I recall. And the line for this fire went right along the interface of the yellow and the green. And everything north of there was in the red, and everything south was in the get ready to evacuate. This property would have been in the red in the original map that was posted. They are in the woowee. There's been numerous fires started up there, including this most recent one, which is right there. So until we figure out this infrastructure issue and how we evacuate properties, I don't know how to support this. We have a fire going on today. this whole entire Somerset had to evacuate, these people would have been the furthest out, would have had the longest egress. And I just, I don't know how in good conscience that we move forward and change the zoning. So let me explain one more thing and I'll hand it over. every property isn't designed to be everything like we're not recommending putting a Warehouse out there and we're not recommending putting a grocery store out there changing it to commercial It is registered today. I think as sf3 single-family three which says three homes per acre. That is probably a reasonable Zoning it says you can build and you can build three homes in this acre that would have been three people evacuating not 46 families three families What's that? You're saying no? And then there's how many acres?

Property's 42 acres. Right. So times three would have been 120.

120? Okay. But you've also pointed out that's incredibly difficult to build on over half of this property because it's over 30% slopes. So I think that it's probably half of that at least at the best. Sure. Okay. So let's just say 20 times three might be 60. Okay. And I just, I really, you know, that's what would be my recommendation is that we don't densify in this particular area that has had fire started, has a fire going on today, has very difficult egress, is at the furthest point from, let's say, the highway I-80 as compared to all the other housing around there. And that's where I struggle. And I struggle because for literally, and this is no hit to our fire department, but what I've asked for 12 years is that the fire department get more involved in these developments. And there's obviously a lot of recommendations that you've put on there. Right to deal with fire and you think about why are we putting so many recommendations on we don't put the same level of recommendations on every property That was like I think ten additional conditions or six I'm not sure how many they translate in because you read them into the record but the point is is it's a very Risky area to build in my opinion and I don't think we should be doing things to be moving people into this particular area So that's just my perspective Others may not share it, but it's been a long-standing concern. I have voted on fire over and over again. Even when the fire department said it's all right, you can build this. I've said I'm very concerned about the egress, and those are the things we're supposed to worry about.

Thank you, Council Member Stewart. Thank you. Yeah, Council Member Taylor.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I certainly appreciate my colleagues' comments. I'm going to ask if Chief Mindell can come up and maybe answer the fire question. I know there's a lot of emotion in making these decisions, especially right now. So I want to understand, is this a project that you have seen and your team has reviewed? And it looks like they could possibly do 100 and something homes and they're reducing it a little bit. I just want to hear it from your mouth what your thoughts are.

Yeah, I will defer to Captain Sean O'Brien who's reviewed the project.

Thank you.

Captain Sean O'Brien, Fire Prevention with Reno Fire Department. So this project, I mean, as we just went over the numbers, it's actually under. So if we were to take half and say 60, it's going to be under 50. It's 46 as far as the density goes. We are adding more access for our firefighters, which is good. The other big thing about this being the newer development, to your point, Councilwoman, it will fall under the new WUI standards that we have adopted. So these homes are going to be built to a higher ignition resistance standard than the homes that are behind it by our code with the vegetation management plan, which is going to provide a buffer. So any future fires, that's going to give our firefighters a lot of room to be able to work and protect these homes. On top of that, they will have the actual water infrastructure to help protect them as well.

So to Councilwoman Dewar's point, it sounds like you have been involved in this process and you are giving feedback and I appreciate you guys very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Madam Mayor?

Yeah, why don't you come on back?

Okay, you made some comments that I need you to repeat. You said wildfire mitigation plan, I think, or you said you were updating. Vegetation management. Yeah, vegetation management. You also said you were updating, or you had recently updated.

We adopted the 2024 wildland urban interface code for the city of Reno for the first time last year.

Okay. Correct. And it would be helpful to kind of go through that. But talk a little bit about what that, what you're saying there would be new standards that we didn't have before is what I'm hearing, correct? Correct. And those standards are what exactly?

So the developers are having a map, and then the wildland urban interface code has a table where we get to dictate, depending on the map, the ignition resistance of how the house is built. So things like now the house has to have a certain classification of roof material that's ignition resistant, one-hour rated walls, maybe even a six-inch flashing at the base, depending on where the house is located and the wildfire threat in the area. So they have a lot more development into the actual construction of each structure, including vents, gutters, doors, windows, things so that those embers, when we're fighting the fire and trying to keep it out of the houses, those embers that we can't stop that come over us, they land and they don't set anything on fire.

And tell me why this exit, I assume, triggers something that requires this exit, or now you're telling me, oh, you know, this will also provide another exit. Why are we approving that now and not a year ago?

Well, I would have to look at the map again, but With this section in particular being sprinklered, this additional access point that they're giving to us is actually, it's a benefit. It's not required by code. They're doing above and beyond for the fire reasons.

Oh, okay.

That neighborhood already has two fire access points. If we look at the map, and with these buildings being sprinklered, another one wouldn't be required, and they're adding that in for our ability to access it.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. That's you as the developer representing the developer saying we want to put in this extra access, right? Thank you. I really appreciate that. That is fantastic.

And I'm not here. He's doing a great job. I should shut up.

No, he is doing a great job.

I just want to clarify. There might have been an incorrect statement earlier. access road runs east from our project so it goes from our project to the neighborhood to the east so that was the only point I wanted to make it creates a loop between the Moose Ridge neighborhood and then the project the neighborhood today okay but you're here today saying you want to provide an extra access point correct yeah and you're here today telling me that you approve of this extra access point correct

Oh yeah, we'll take every access we can get.

So then here's, thank you so much. I'm glad you just pointed that out. So here's my problem. It shouldn't be that the developer comes in and says, here you go. We think this is a nice gesture. It should be up to us. to say, hey, council, wait a minute. This is what we need. That's where we can be proactive and it can help. And so let me ask you this next question. If we would have had 25 homes or even one home burn in any area, I don't care whether it's the North Valleys or Somerset, would you be standing here today saying this is a good idea?

I would say that everything that's been proposed meets code.

It means code. That's very different than if it's just because you can doesn't mean you should. And it's something that I've been frustrated with and wanted our chief to come back with out of the box thinking fire mitigation plans. I've been saying it forever and ever and ever. So much like Councilwoman Dewar, I could not get there. And this is not the answer, especially coming off. We are still in an event today.

If I may?

Yes, please.

And I'm not upset with you. Oh, no, I totally understand where you're coming from, especially in light of current events. I appreciate your honesty very much. The big part for me is, so we have ignition-resistant construction, so the houses that will be there are going to be built to the high standards. Also, with what we're talking about with the vegetation management plan for the property, that's going to give us an actual bigger buffer than they have by far for that whole neighborhood right now in fire protection. So when you add in an extra road, you add in the extra water, and then you add in this buffer that's going to be created by the vegetation management plan for defensible space, it actually does add to safety in the neighborhood.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right.

I'm going to send it back to you.

Thanks. Council Member, are you here?

Yeah, so on the, no, you guys can take a seat for a minute probably if you like. So on the map for the project, I don't know if you can come up, there's a page where it shows proposed emergency roadway in Tumwa, Water main easement. There you go. Is that yellow line going to become paved or maintained? Is it going to be a permanent feature?

Permanent paved emergency road.

Okay. Do you think that in the future that will become developed as well, that there will be additional houses put along that road?

I strongly doubt it. That parcel is owned by the city of Reno. So we have worked with the city of Reno, with Tama, with fire on this layout. So we certainly have no plans to try to acquire a parcel from the city of Reno.

Yeah. So because it's city of Reno, are you going to pave it?

It's at the developer's expense.

Okay. Okay. And at the other side of the project, is there any additional access or emergency access going to be connected?

The existing neighborhood to the east?

On the other side of the project. So there's one on that side.

Oh, sorry, the west end of our project. Yeah. No, no. There's very little development there now. That's a privately owned parcel. I've talked to that owner. He plans to build a family house there.

Okay.

So there isn't a complete neighborhood over there.

Okay. So I know it was mentioned that the density is lower for the area, but it's... The houses are densely shown in the map. They're really close together. Is there any concern for fire risk regarding that? I mean, I only ask because I know that there's a lot of insurance companies that are no longer offering fire insurance in the entire state. And I know that some people in my community were told they had to remove their trees, otherwise they would lose their coverage. So when you have homes that are close together and with trees and things like that, do you think that that poses a safety risk just from them being in such conditions? close proximity to each other?

I personally feel like that's a lower risk. We could get a technical answer from more informed people than me, but I think smaller lots, people tend to keep them clear. I've lived on a half-acre lot, and I can tell you controlling the trees there was a lot of work. I prefer a smaller lot. So I think smaller lots, people do a better job of controlling debris and tumbleweeds and dead trees. But the structures themselves, given the higher fire resistance standards we just discussed, I think they're lower risk than a lot of stuff that was built 20, 30 years ago.

Okay. All right. I do have other comments, but... Okay, fire if you could come up one more time You have a wingman at least he escorts you up there, right?

Yeah, um Would you say that with this development, by adding the vegetation plan, the fire resistant building materials, and then the additional space between this neighborhood and the neighborhood below, that you are effectively, and then bringing water? the extra access road, and then sprinklered homes. Would you agree that that's actually improving the break for the houses that are existing down here?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

Before you go. Yeah, Council Member Dewar.

Yeah, I wanted to understand about this road. So it's an emergency access, so there'll be a gate, is that correct? Or is it a regular open road?

That would be.

Yeah. To be a gate and it's like a breakaway gate or what kind of, how do people know this is a good way to go?

we would do whatever is current safety standards.

Okay. And is it a good way to go? Because when you pulled back, I think we had a bigger picture here. The lady who was here earlier today, she lives actually downhill from this point. So these people are higher. She's lower. It took her X amount of time. I didn't hear the full amount, hour, two hours, I don't know, three hours. How does this help? This gives these people two ways to go, right? They can come out of the main development or they can go east. But I'm missing the point about how it helps somebody else. Can you explain, somebody? A different map. Okay. So you've drawn it in because it wasn't part of the original plan? It's a new thing?

I just drew this in so that you guys would be able to see it.

Right, but I mean, was it added something required more recently?

No. So I think what we're saying here is that with this connection between these, whereas the woman who was speaking earlier was on Morgan Court. Right. So that's right here. Now, I don't know exactly how she tried to access, but we have Rob Drive over here.

Right. And we also... And Avenue Delinda.

I can go even bigger here if I need to. Okay, so we do have, I mean, you guys can talk about this.

So you see where this star is. I mean, this is just about as far away as you can get.

It is. But I want to point out that there's several ways to exit out here. So we have 7th Street. This, I think, is 7th Street. This is Mayenne. Yep. We have down here on Robb. We have Mayberry, I think, over here. So what this does is it gives people another avenue if they're trying to exit. from here, like let's say there was a fire, right? And people can't get out over here, then this neighborhood could then take this over and come down through this way. Same thing as this, they would be able to go around and take it down from there. So it's just adding an extra level of protection.

So let me ask our chief, Does you, you said something to the mayor earlier and I wasn't sure if I caught it correctly. You said sprinklering is not required, but they're doing it. Is that correct? No. Sprinkling is required. Oh, I thought you said it's not required under the new.

No, no. The road would not be required because they are sprinkling.

Which were this red road that she drew in is not required.

Access road would not be required.

Okay.

The spring clearing is required.

Okay. All right. I'm going to just explain one more thing. Up above this property to the north, there is a whole, there is quite a few, it doesn't butt up against the wilderness. It butts up against a number of private lots. And those private lots, it's one of these things where it's laddering. I saw this happen in South Reno. We approved one and then the one above it came in and the one above it came in. I don't believe this area on the flank of this mountain is a good place to add additional housing. It's not that I'm opposed to more housing. It's not like I don't like the plan or the density or the sprinklering or anything. I don't like the location. And I think that it opens a door for additional developments up the hill, which I looked up on the map. We had the meeting with staff. And as I looked, there was... Private property, private property, private property until you finally got to either federal or state or city-owned property. And so I think it's a bad precedent. I think we should stop right here and not continue to go. And I just don't think it's a good place to be developing. So I'll just leave it at that. Thank you.

thank you because I remember yeah yeah just to kind of piggyback off of some other comments made by council member Dewar and I believe where she views well so there's things that this development is doing that is not required by code right they're going above and beyond what's required Do you think that this council has a responsibility to maybe change the code to include these additional safety measures, especially given what's happening currently? This development would have how many access points? with this one it'd be three three okay so that development would have more access routes than the entire north valleys which is great right for them so do you think that you know in your opinion i'm trusting you guys to be subject matter experts here on fire safety do you think that council should prioritize making um some changes to the code to require more um access points and safety measures for development.

I'd be more than happy to meet with you and discuss the pros and cons of that, absolutely.

Okay. That's something I would like to request to be agendized, that we review this, especially with what's happening currently and with what I personally had to go through with evacuation and only having one road to get in and out of with 40,000 other people. So thank you.

We're going to do a much bigger after action, and it'll be a much bigger, broader conversation.

Well, yeah, it's not just about this particular fire, which was a nightmare to leave, but... I think code needs to make some modifications for what's required because... That's what I'm saying.

This is, like, a very big, big conversation. So, absolutely.

Chief, could you... You said three. I just want to get this on the record. You said there were three ways in and out of this. You just said three.

We have three access points.

My time's not up. Let me finish.

I apologize. Okay, yeah. So... Do you think that this project would be safer if there was less density than what they're showing now? Or you're totally fine, you think this is great, and it's not just, well, code says this is okay. Do you think that this is fine? You don't have any concerns about it? No.

With the construction that's going to be required, that's going to be stipulated by the WUE.

Yeah.

Whether they're on, you know, the third acre, half acre lots, it's not going to make much of a difference for us on the fire.

Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you.

Maybe we talk a little bit, too, about... Sorry, Vice Mayor. Is that okay? Yeah, of course. Okay. Talk a little bit about what's the, I guess, sprinklers versus exit roads, right? Those kinds of things. And give me some statistics on sprinklers and why we're giving one up for the other. Is there a reason that I'm not aware of? Tell us, educate us on this thought.

Essentially, depending on which study you look at, sprinklers reduce not only the damage to the structure, but the chances of injury and death by over 90%, most of the time over 95%. So fire code actually requires when you're building individual homes, what we consider, you know, our threes, uh, single, you know, single family homes. Anytime that you have an area like this and it goes over 30 homes without a secondary access for fire department, that it needs to be sprinkler. And that's the acknowledgement of the effectiveness of sprinklers. So if the roadway does get jammed up because people are while trying to evacuate, jam up the road, or there's a bad accident and then an emergency happens. The sprinklers, we understand and have faith that they will act and they will help people make sure they get out unharmed. Where if you add another access point, now we can all of a sudden go up to a couple hundred houses before we start talking about sprinklers. So our adopted amendments also have over 5,000 square feet or a six-minute response time. Again, that response time is based on the same concept. As we're expanding, as the city's expanding, if, you know, for instance, Station 12, as we brought up earlier, if they're building and it's going to be past the six-minute response time, then we want sprinklers there to make sure that the people in the house, if the fire does occur, that they're safe.

Okay. What's the response time now from the closest station?

For this plan, we have what we put on the LDC when we looked at it. It was seven minutes for both, for the two stations, for either Station 8 or Station 11. Both are about a seven-minute response time. Seven minutes? And that's to the beginning of the parcel.

Seven minutes? Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

And then, Leah, just confirm, how many homes...

Are we looking at 46 adding?

Thank you. 46 homes. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay. No further questions.

I had one follow-up or a one minute if I may. Yeah. Um, I I've gotten confusing information. Please stay up here. Um, Leah. Do we have three or two points of access? I'm now very confused. Could you put that up again?

On this particular site, there's going to be two points of access.

Okay, well, the chief said three, so I'm confused.

Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, we've got lots of them here.

Yeah, of course. Thank you. When I said three, where I'm looking at three is you're going to have a new road connecting these, yes? Yeah. So from us, From the fire perspective, we would kind of be looking at this whole area, even though this is, these 46 homes would only have two.

Okay.

But this area where the, you know, the Gallicombe. Down to a bigger road. Yeah, we have one there, one there, and then the new one. Okay. So we kind of look at that as one big cluster. I see. So that's why we're saying three.

Okay, and then.

From our perspective, it'd be three. From their lot, it's two. Okay.

And then on sprinklers, I just want to make sure I understand. It's always been explained that sprinklers are very good for a fire that starts inside the house. Right. And not so great for the fire that starts outside the house, like a wildland fire. Correct. Because you're not watering the roof and all the land. You're watering inside, in the kitchen where the fire started or whatever, right? I just want to make sure we're talking apples and apples here. Yes, we are. Okay. Thank you.