Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

I'm going to be able to order by attorney if you have a problem.

I'm going to be able to order by attorney if you have a problem. I'm going to be able to order by attorney if you have a problem. I'm going to be able to order by attorney if you have a problem.

I have pledged my allegiance to God, the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, for my nation, and for God, and for his soul, and for the kingdom of heaven. We will now move on to panel number three. We will have a minute to avoid all their time. We will move on to sets. Does anyone want to make a move? Do you have questions or anything?

Yes, I wish I could.

Yeah, okay.

So everybody in favor? Aye. We are now moving on to item number four. Let's see.

Are you all still for the record? I am here because of the fact that I got to watch how the hot fire progressed. how evacuations went stupidly, how Echo Bravo, Dirt Lemon Drive, all of Lemon Drive, all the way up Palace to go over into Golden Valley, bumper to bumper to bumper. It was horrible. My other issue is the fact that there was a live model in 2020 of how the hot fire would go. They knew how it was going to come over that hill, but yet the only area that was protected was the expensive area, the new area, Somerset. And the residents over here, again, were neglected. I watched because of where I lived. when the planes were taking off. If you look up on Peavine, you will not find from where Somerset, the hill comes over, it peaked at 1230, you will not find one red mark of retardant. That is wrong. And it's not the boots on the ground's fault for what happened. This has to do with management. This goes from commissioners to council all the way down. People need to make sure that you vote the right people in. Because I can tell you right now, I don't know if any of you had to be evacuated. And if you did, I'm sorry you were in that mess. I know how scary it was with the bug fire behind me. And then the hot fire in front of me. And then another fire on the other side of me by Golden Valley. It wasn't fun in August. And it needs to be changed. One way in. One way out and only having 395. We need to stick together. We need to say moratorium. Loud and clear no more building. Until they get us a 2nd, way out. And people who represent us better start looking at that. Thank you.

Thank you.

We will now hear from Veronica.

Good evening, everybody. Hi, my name is Veronica Cortez. They call me the lunch lady because I'm the lunch lady at Lemon Valley Elementary. I have been a lunch lady with Washoe County School District since 1999. I have fed our county's children from Incline all the way to Natchez. Veterans, I was at 12 years. I was at Elmcrest. Virginia Palmer was my elementary school, and that was my very first manager's job. I was born in St. Mary's, third generation Sun Valley. My grandparents came from Texas. Ranchers, agriculture. I've always lived in Sun Valley. Living in Sun Valley, even though we have the reputation that we do, it always prepares us for emergencies because we don't know if we're going to get burned. or shut up, or somebody's gonna break into our house. We're just always ready. So what I've done is I've created a nonprofit. I founded a nonprofit called Valley Amigos. And Valley Amigos teaches ranching, farming, and horseback riding. And when the system fails us, guess what we're doing? We're ranching, we're farming, and we're riding our horses. So this is what I do for the residents of Washoe County. I do it for the seniors. We have a petting zoo this weekend at the senior home. I do it at Rancho San Rafael. I do it out at Urban Roots. And we're teaching these skills that they're not teaching in the schools anymore. I love being a lunch lady. I love my foundation. And during this fire, I hate to say it, but we thrived. We had everything that people needed. When they evacuated all the animals out during an emergency, once the emergency was lifted, we brought the animals back. Valley Amigos ran our trailer 24 hours a day to get those horses back where they were. When the horses couldn't be put at the other places, they brought them to our ranch. I still have a Mustang on the ranch that we're trying to break to get it back in the trailer. I got three tree goats. Why? Because the place where they were at burned down and they had no place to go. So that's what we do. We rescue livestock. We rehome them. And you can count on us in a state of emergency. We have food. We have toiletries. We have resources all over because that's what the community needs. We can't depend on our leaders like the prior one said. Think about who's going to be elected into office. See what they've been doing the last year. Check out what boards they recently resigned from. because they might be the reason why we're in this situation. Thank you for your time and God bless you.

Thank you.

We will now hear from Rob Pierce.

I have been very active in the area for a number of years. I was on planning commission until I turned out. And a lot of other boards. These fires were awful. They were. They affected me, my family. They affected all my neighbors. We were asked to evacuate once. And the other time, we helped our neighbors evacuate. So I get it. I understand. And I'm telling you, I got your back. The reason I say that is because I was very active on all these fires. I went to all the meetings. I went to all the stuff. I was there. I was involved. In fact, I'm so involved that I set up a meeting with UNR's Cooperative Extension, the Reno Extension, to put on a meeting for next Monday at 630 at Granite Hills Baptist Church in which is 10350 North Red Rock Road. Please show up at 630. We can only have 200 people in there, so first come, first serve. If you do come, park on an asphalt or on the street on the side, but don't park on the church's dirt lot. What we're gonna be talking about is we're gonna be talking about how to navigate recovery after the bug and hot fires. We're going to include land restoration, erosion concerns, invasive weeds, wildlife impact, funding opportunities, and available services. This event is open to anybody that wants to know what available services are out there, and I would encourage each and every one of you guys to please come. We're not going to have a public comment period because it's going to be packed with top officials and things like that. And it's an informational meeting. But I think that this, if you were affected, may help you. Megan Kay from the UNR Walker Extension is the one that's putting on in conjunction with the Silver Knolls Community Organization, which I'm the president of. And so I just wanted to extend that invitation to you all and hope that you guys can come. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. All right. Would anyone else like to provide public comment? Seeing as no one does, we will now move on to item number five, Commissioner Capp's chair meetings and announcements. I do have some announcements to make. Next announcement I would like to make is, so there is a Tenants' Rights seminar series that some people might be interested in. It's being hosted by the Northern Nevada Legal Aid. They are giving the seminar. It is at the Sparks Library. That'll be on this, let's see, there's two different dates. For the English presentation, it is on this Saturday, September 9th. from 19, from 2 to 2.30 p.m. And it's, let's see, the address is 125 2nd Street, Sparks, Nevada. 775-329-2727. That is 775-329-2727. And if there's also a Spanish speaking presentation, it is on a separate date. It is on Thursday, September 17th from 6 to 7.30 p.m. The event is completely free if you would like to become more informed. about your tenant's rights. So the next announcement I have to make is, so I was given this, WASHA 311 called every resident with reported property damage from Hawk and Bugs, Stiles, and Fires. They requested a right of entry form for other approval for our community services to permit staff to enter residences properties and dispose of hazardous materials. Once the hazmat is cleaned up, then residents can begin the process of removing debris and ash. There are two handouts on the table over there. There is a FAQ about cleanup and resources, and there is a information on permits required to demolish and rebuild. You can contact WASHO 311 and you do dial 311 or you can email Washer311 at washercounty.gov with questions that you might have. So the next announcement I have is we have, I reached out to, well, Sally and I reached out to the Washer County Sheriff's Office about They're providing a presentation on the CERT Academy that they offer. CERT stands for Community Emergency Response Teams. They were actually very active with the fires, the recent fires. And so we're waiting on a response back from them. They are very interested. It's just they have or had their hands full and they're still recovering every day. I believe there was about 70 plus, CERT volunteers during the virus. So the other future presentations is we have the Northern Nevada Legal Aid. They will be presenting in October. And then we have the Law Library will be presenting about the Lawyer in the Library project program that they have, and that will be in November. will be here December. So now we will move on to item number six, public safety updates.

Good evening.

For the record, Derek Reed, the time chief with Hurricane Metal Fire and Rescue. I will start off by giving July statistics. We have a total of 487, 335, which were medical vehicles, accidents, 36, non-emergencies, 35, fire, 25, hazard situations, 25, wildland fires, 28. and Public Service 11. I'm not sure, is this on the back table?

It's attached to the package.

Perfect, okay. So on there, you'll see that there's safety tips for the month is home hardening and defensible space and an outdoor fire safety. And I won't get into any of the specifics, but I encourage you all to read it. Check out firewise.org. And livingwithfire.com will give a lot of really good information and tips on how to protect your home from wildfire. Any questions for me? Yes, ma'am.

If you have a neighbor that has logs from Washoe County Fire Department, all of the chipped...

Which is? Shipping program?

Yeah. And they're just in piles all over his backyard. Right. And it's right in my front yard. What are you guys going to take a look at that? Because that's not fire-wise and that's not fire-safe.

If it's located on private property and we didn't chip those piles. Chip those piles.

It came from you guys.

Okay. Have you talked to the property owner about what their plan to do with those chips are?

Whenever they get to it.

Yeah, I'm not going to be able to answer your question on that. If we chip something and it's on private property, it's the responsibility of the owner of that property to do whatever they plan on doing with them without having full context or information of what that situation is. I really can't comment on the situation. Any other questions?

Yes, sir. I just want to say that was Tammy Holt still. If you guys could please say your name.

Gentlemen in the back row. Sir, could you say your name?

Okay, thank you. The start of the Hawk Fire, I would imagine they were. I can't say for sure 100%. There was a lot going on that day.

But... On a typical day, they engage, yes. That's the short answer. That day, there was so much going on. To give you an honest, upfront answer, I would be potentially misleading you. Any other?

Yes, sir. It's Mark Sutton. You guys have the fundraiser barbecue coming up on Red Rock, the volunteer firehouse there.

That would be a volunteer function. You may be able to get some information from them. As far as the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District, even though that we're associated with the volunteer departments, I don't have any information on that barbecue.

I have a question.

Yes, ma'am.

Hi, Veronica Cortez. Are they saying what was the cause of this hot fire yet?

I knew that question was coming. It being under investigation, I can't speculate. I don't have an answer for that.

I know they're asking you to tell them wait.

Yeah, it's 1 of those things where, you know, it potentially could be a criminal investigation. I don't know most fires. 80% of them are human costs. So they're going to. Uh, you know, proceed and, you know. The sake of having all the right answers and not coming up with the. A decision right away, so you're welcome. Yes, sir.

That's the one again. The question I have is the hot fire was coming down Peabody and it crossed North Virginia Street and started burning the storage units. Were there any engines there at all to protect that from happening? Plus, when it jumped the freeway, which is quite a large area, were there any engines doing structure protection on that side?

On the other side of 395?

Yes.

So I can tell you they were structured groups in place that were monitoring those, but when we had actual houses burning, I would again speculate, so there was a lot going on that day, that actually I know for a fact that we had companies engaged on fire protecting homes in all those areas. The days to follow, I did have that division, day two, three, four, five, and we had engines and engine company presence over on the peppermint side. Yes, sir. We did have reports back from end of shift, you know, how did it go, what did you see, everything looks good. The storage units, I don't know exactly if they were engaged in protecting those, but when it comes to our incident priorities, it's life first, property second. So if there was potential life threat in those homes that mostly were evacuated, that's where our attention was going to be spent.

Can I just follow up? I understand what you're saying there with the structure protection, but we had over three hours to prepare for the fire to come down the hill and potentially cross the road. And to me, it seemed like when it crossed the road, it should have been taken care of right away. I mean, there should have been engines on the freeway there, but it jumped the road and caught the brushline fire. You shouldn't be able to put that out.

So you're saying there wasn't any engines there?

I didn't say that.

Okay.

If there was, you know...

Well, I'm not going to go there either, because I know we had engines everywhere. But again, there were incident priorities and life was our primary source of attention and targets opportunity. Yes, ma'am.

Tammy holds still for the record. My question is to command. Why was there I know on the Red Rock fire? Personally, one of the residents who got the red slurry to protect his home. Why was that not done on this side when it came to this fire?

So, that is also a question I'm going to answer it this way. When we have a historic fire like that, that's going to go down in history as 1 of the few fires. Maybe on account on 1 hand, the column fire waterfall fire drive fire. And maybe a couple others. These are historic fires where that kind of fire, moving that fast, taking that much acreage that quickly, and the complexity of houses, businesses, recreationalists, it absolutely, 100%, almost immediately overwhelms the resources that we have in place to take care of normal, everyday business stuff. And that's what I read off of you, you know, with fires, medicals. I mean, we have 335 medicals for the month of July. That is also our priority. So where slurry was laid, I can tell you that the way that air attack works is they circle above those air tankers and they communicate with operations down on the ground. And they did intel from the sky to the ground and say, hey, you're going to bump houses here in about 15, 20 minutes. Operations talks to AirTag and says, hey, we need to prioritize airdrops in this particular neighborhood off of this street. And then these air tankers land, they fuel up, they load up, and then they hit those targets of opportunity. I assure you that If slurry wasn't laid in one place, but it was being laid in another place, that that wasn't random. That was strategic in trying to save the most or what was being threatened immediately.

When the fire's moving south-southwest, the north side needed minimal protection. It was the other side. I have the information. I've done the research. We had it boxed in by 1230, but yet at 1230, it was on the top of the hill here.

Like I said, a fire like that, with the resources that are available, we do what we can, and that's You know, I can't answer to the anomalies of why there wasn't slurry in one place versus another. But usually being engaged in that fire, every resource that we had was utilized to the extent of what was being threatened immediately and what needed the attention at that moment in time. Doesn't mean that carnage wasn't going to happen somewhere else, but it was a race to try to save what was being you the cause of why it wasn't sorted where you're talking about but i can tell you that it just wasn't randomly dropped here and there there was a reason for it it was all in somerset which is the rich oak area and we were put out into the pastures all right thank you um ma'am yes ma'am say your name reagan eber um

Why did you think that all 47 of the homes that burned were on this side of Peabody and none were lost in Somerset?

Basically because that was the head of the fire, had the most velocity, the most rapid growth. Usually what we call the heel of the fire is where it starts and then it exponentially grows from there. So if you think of like a pie, it starts at the tip and then goes outward and when it comes back down so that we have a local wind in eastern Sierras and it's downsloping winds in the afternoon. That is predictable. We know that. But it doesn't mean we can defend against it because it travels so fast when it's so expansive and we only have so many resources. The brunt end of the population, per se, this happened in the Povell fire. I was on the Povell fire, too. It is predictable. Afternoon winds, they rip downhill. It takes fire with them. You can't keep up with it if you ran it, you know, you took an Olympic run and said, you know, let's have a race. Fire's going to win. That's how fast it travels.

So follow-up, making a record. Knowing that the wind blows that direction around, do you know why there wasn't a fire break put in? Okay. between the fire and the homes.

I mean, I think we all watched the fire come down the hill all day.

We knew what it was doing. I took a picture of it at about noon I went over the top of the mine and then spent the whole day watching it come down until I evacuated at like 7.30. So it's not like it was suddenly there. So is there a reason why there wasn't a fire break or anything put in between homes and the fire before we knew it was going?

So once the fire starts, that timeframe to put a fire break in is too late. If we put a fire break in, all it would do was put mineral soil down, or that would be the fire break, until the grass grew back. And that happens within weeks' time. It's fast, and that is the main carrier of fire is grass. When you have winds like we did, you could have a dozer line five blades wide, and it's still going to jump the fire line because of those winds, because it'll throw firebrands and rolling tumbleweeds that are on fire, even animals that... I hate to say it, but catch on fire, they'll run right across the fire break into the brush. Dust devils that turn into fire whirls, they'll pick up fire, go across the fire line and drop embers on the other side. It is an extremely difficult phenomenon, especially with eastern Sierras and the winds that we have, the grass, the fuel component, the dryness. There's only so much that a human can do if you're given the best equipment, including that air tanker sitting outside. It is extremely difficult. Mary?

Mary Pollard, for the record. I used to volunteer with Search and Rescue. We would be called out on fires to help evacuate people, to close roads, to do what we could so you and other trained personnel could fight the fires. I watched it. I was part of it. And you had really, to me, two completely separate fronts going on. And I cannot imagine trying to get that organized and done well. I'm also, you know, with the idea of the wind, everything else, wondering if the reason that They were dropping the liquid over here instead of. P vine was because of wind and problems trying to get it in the right location. All I can say is, thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you for trying to get everything together and thank you for saving what you did.

Thank you.

Man.

Nicole Spurgeon for the record. Before the fire, what did Truckee Meadows do to do their own fire wiseness and what are you doing now so that it is five times more likely until we see that another fire will come down there? So what are you doing to mitigate it now?

When we first started Turkey Meadows, or when Turkey Meadows seceded from the city of Reno, we started basically bare bones. Since then, we've developed programs and educational opportunities and also shared length through other areas for homeowners to self-educate and understand what it takes to keep their homes safe. We've started a chipping program. green waste program. We've done a lot of different programs to try to assist the homeowner into managing their property.

I must have misspoke. What are you doing on Peavoy Mountain that is owned by the government to mitigate fire in the future on both sides? What are you doing as the fire protection CEO to mitigate it now and before?

Well, that's a lot of acreage up there. I'm not sure what you're referring to, what we can do with that land. You know, some of it's BLM, some of it's Forest Service. It's not necessarily Trekkie Meadows dirt. But what we do know is that area up there will regrow grass and save restful fallow. Maybe some of the pinyon junipers will as well. That'll take some time. But if you look historically around The area, whether it's BLM Land Forest Service, when it burns, it goes bare if it nukes or if it completely burns off all the vegetation. And then the grass, the sheetgrass grows back. And again, the sheetgrass is the main carrier of fire. That is not something that the county is going to try to mitigate on Peabody Mountain because it's not our dirt. And it really falls Because of that, I'll be honest with you, because of that, it's incumbent upon you, the homeowners, to make sure that you're understanding the programming and the education to keep your home safe in those certain circumstances. If you have an HOA, you can use those funds to create your own fire break based on where you're at, like Spanish Springs, and then also educate doing programs, community projects, principal space programs would, you know, they give you that information. But as far as fee buying goes, that's really not a thing we can do about Forest Service land, BLM land, every piece of land that surrounds these communities, BIA land, that's, that's, that's like

of think of an analogy but i mean if there's a suggestion i'd like to hear it but it means that you don't work together we work together but what would be your suggestion how we handle that many acreage and well just put in pre-fire breaks and and try a limit like you did after the cows were out of the barn you locked it it said there's not off road there's not smoking there's not campfires but those rules came in after the cows left the barn now you lock the barn What are you going to do in the future to mitigate this from happening again?

There's really no way to mitigate nature regrowing once it burns. It's the natural cycle. You're talking about sheet graphs, the way that it grows and as fast as it grows. You think about your lawn. How often do you, if you have a lawn, how often do you mow that lawn? once a week, twice a week, we would literally have to, you know, like I said, with those winds, you can do a dozer line five blades wide and it's still going to jump that fire line. So you're contending with nature and trying to control nature and doing what it naturally does. The best thing to do is to learn how you can call defense and take care of your home and where it's at. What do you have under your deck? You know, where your trees, what kind of education are you using the green belt? Is it. Is it ever greens which are horrible.

So, let's start to kind of turn into this question. Thank you. We also have a public comment base and we're open to any suggestions that people.

Yeah, Catherine for the record and to Mark's question about the Red Rock volunteer barbecue fundraiser Saturday, September 26th, 11 a.m. 3 p.m. 1, 6, 1, 8, 0, North. If you want more information on that, you can see me. I'll give you the link for their website stuff, but it's my neighborhood. So.

To tie in your question to end, we'll always be dealing with fire. There's really no way to exterminate it. And that's why this particular organization called Living With Fire, it's learning how to live with it and how to defend yourself against it. It's just, it's always going to burn. It has pole bill, same dirt.

It's going to burn again. Do you think we should have done a better job defending ourselves? Oh, I don't know.

It's house dependent. Some houses burn down because they're not defendable. And there's other houses that are defendable. And then there's some houses that don't need any effort at all because there's no vegetation around the house. Or they follow the advice of living with fire and fire violence. It's helpful. I'm not saying it eliminates it. It's like trying to protect yourself from a cold. It's going to happen. But what measures can you do as homeowners? We need your assistance to help defend the public from the fire.

Basically, don't have any, like, open skirting around your property or openings in your work.

I guarantee you, go to these two websites, and you will find a ton of information that will help you defend yourself against firemen.

Earl, did you have a question? Yeah, I got it real strong, okay? Real simple one about. So, all the other fire happened and all that. Why, having worked that Somerset first fired up and the other following through into Mobile, that built up all that. Why was there not anybody patrolling that dog valley this way? There should have been a unit. From Forest Service, you guys got your hands. I applaud you for doing a good job. It's Trekkie Meadows. Not your job to be out there in the foot of those. You take care of the others, BLM, whatever else. The fact that that fire started at that end, then went where it went, left this whole area just blue. There was nobody you guys, like I said, catch up with. Why was there not anybody out there patrolling Busted, whoever caused it. We killed a red vampire. That was pretty crazy. That's what I understand.

I wish I could have the magic wand and create more personnel and fire trucks, but from a financial standpoint, we got what we got and we do a pretty darn good job with what we got. We do. But from a historical standpoint, it's like dealing with something with 9-11. You just don't have the resources. On something to that magnitude, And complexity, meaning homes, businesses, recreationalists. It's a stretch. It's harder. We were not running certain calls in town because we were trying to detect homes.

It just seemed way to the hell ahead. You know the dog bale hearing, how that gets crazy out there. Car depress and off-road, all that. And having worked all that low area firsthand, all into the truck and all that kind of thing, lost development, get out of launch, the Del Webb, all that stuff up there, that whole foothill range that comes this way, not you guys. Why don't we stop BLM or Forest Service, those two entities, whether or not they have units out there, oh, maybe we have high winds tomorrow, just like you say. well, these people are out here screwing around. They have no business out here. And they don't have it.

When we get 911 calls and we're being told, hey, I'm stuck in my house, we're sending somebody over there. When they say my house is about to burn, we're sending people there. If we feel a community is threatened, we will call for aircrafts. And if you look on Firewise, you'll see how many fires there are in the western part of the United States. There's flames everywhere. Those are the areas, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, California, we're competing for those same resources to lay that same return that you're wondering why it didn't get there. It's not a calm, easygoing fire season. This is one of the worst. So I guarantee you, it wasn't organized, strategic, prioritized. effort.

Ma'am? Louise Supron for the record. My question is, where can we find, if you can't tell us, exactly where the Peabody Fire started? Because I also wonder why the movement down toward 395 seems so slow. yet no retardant was requested for that area. Did the Peabine fire start at the very tippy top and go toward the Somerset area? Or which way was it trending? So that I, as a resident, can understand why the area close to the highway was not apparently not protected with a retardant.

so and and i'm going off what i watched on tv i heard the police chief oh i'm listening to the police chief rpd no not me i didn't say this on tv no no no you got your information from tv no no no not all of it i heard so the model that was stated that it would take three some hours for the fire to burn down the back side of peabody that was the model it didn't it burned down peabody in like 35 minutes It was fact. That is fact. We know that. Didn't have to watch TV or get on social media to learn that. I was there. I watched it. So speed at which that fire came down was so fast. It was faster than Povell. And I was on Povell too. So it's unpredictable to a certain sense of the speed on which a fire will travel based on wind, topography. fuel moisture. There's a lot of components there that line up that dictate how fast and how violent and whether we can even engage it or not. We can't send personnel with a hose line, a one-inch hose line, when there's 15, 20-foot flame lengths. Our personnel will perish under those circumstances. So they re-engage. They strategically try to find a place where they can Engage the fire bulldozers, they can engage fires if they're there. But those take a long time to get bulldozers in place to be able to create those defensible space.

You know, control lines aircraft so so what you're saying is the intensity of of the fire. Was on basically, um. moving toward or they thought it was going to move toward Somerset area. No one had a clue that it might go in the opposite direction toward our community. Is that what you're saying?

No, we did, but we didn't have the – it was predictable. We watched it. Where is it going? It's going on the other side of the mountain. When I say topography and winds, you have drainages all through Peabody. don't know which drainage that's going to go down and we go down this drainage this drainage and when you follow that drainage down it affects a completely different community as if it went down this drain so it's difficult to predict on where it's going to go generally speaking yes it's going that way but until it picks a direction and winds change you kind of have to go with the flow and and predict where it's going to go but again You're talking about 35 minutes once it peaks over with minimal resources. We send them where we can with what we got. All we can do is order through Minden, which is our central dispatch center, and beg, borrow, and steal equipment from other counties, some in California, some East Fork, Lyon County, Story County. This equipment takes a while to mobilize and get here. So what you're seeing is, you know.

What we're seeing is a great effort by you, and we really appreciate it. This is my first time with a fire. I am beginning to understand the dynamics and the timeline of events. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that has a question? Anyone on the board? I got one real quick.

Rob Pierce for the record. You were talking about Firewise, fire adapted communities. Maybe there's some people here that don't understand what those are. If you want to look at silvernoles.org, we are a fire adapted Firewise community. We can help you get started. We're already helping Palomino Valley, so we can help you. Check out our website for more information. We work with this guy. We also got a grant. So you can get a grant to help your neighbors, help your elderly trim out their trees, their fire breaks or whatever. So go to them or talk to me later. Thank you so much for what you guys are doing. Thank you.

Hello, North Valley's Pat. Lieutenant Nick Tone, Waterford County Sheriff's Office and the watch commander on the graveyard on the front end of the week, Sundays through Wednesdays. It's been a couple months since I've been here due to being out of town. And obviously the day I got back from town is when the fires kicked off. So I was the watch commander for the law enforcement side for the fires on the front end of the week. One thing I wanted to bring up, and I'll open it up to questions. I've had a lot of questions about what we were doing to address some of the higher risk activities that start some of these fires and have started some fires. So specifically, I wanted to bring up what you guys have probably seen on our social media pages if you guys pay attention to those or if you have social media we do a lot of enforcement for illegal shooting What we do now, the easiest way for us to handle it, is the areas where it is illegal to shoot, one of you guys or one of us that are out and about will hear gunfire out from a certain area, hear target shooters, it'll be reported or something of that nature. What we will typically do, as many of you know, we have a drone program now. The way our drones work is they do not fly around and patrol the streets. That is not what the drones do. The drones are sent to a call, a call for service, and they go to a specific place. They're launched and they go to that location to check out what it is we need them to see. So specific to illegal shooting or shooting in the congested area specifically. We will send the drone out. We will identify that person. We will see if they are, in fact, shooting in an area where they are not allowed to be. If the primary area of concern for North Valley is going to be the chimney road area on the other side of the hill, way up in Sun Valley. Typically, that's where we've had a lot of our fires kick off due to shooting. We'll go up, we'll identify that individual, see if they are, in fact, shooting in a congested area. Then as they come down, Or if we can get units up there, we'll make contact with them and take enforcement action. So that is their primary tool right now to safely address a lot of the shooting. And it gets us out there to get eyes on it. So in the event we need fire resources to go out there, we can relay that information to our partners at Truckee Meadows and make sure that they can safely address these issues. Some fires, if you guys saw social media from maybe two weeks ago, I believe, we had an individual that right outside of the jail by dispatch, when you're going up to, I believe that's Radge Gale, up to Dandini, there was an individual that lit that hillside on fire on purpose. So, we can talk about the wisdom of lighting a fire 25 yards from the jail, but. He was taken into custody arrested for arson. In this case, because it was the rush, I believe it was therapy. It's based on the way the laws are written. And that individual was taken. a very short drive to booking and he's in jail right now as well. As far as we know, there's no relation to any of the hot fire or anything else. But again, that is an open investigation and it could be criminal in nature depending on what the investigation reveals once it's done. So I don't have any information on the hot fire or the bug fire specifically cause or where that investigation is at. Any other questions? I wanted to bring that piece up. Great public interest. Anybody have any questions for me? Fire. Or anything pertaining to the sheriff's office.

Yeah, maybe they were for the record. I did have a question about the inmates in the jail that were evacuated. What was the plan for that or process?

No inmates were evacuated. It never got to that point. There is a plan. There's been a plan in place for 30 years. Okay. So there's plans in place for full jail evacuations, where to bring the inmates. We use outside jail. We use it out of prisons. We can use the livestock events center. We can use a variety of places. Plans and contingencies with the contingencies when we have a population at large. There's always plans in place. I know there was some social media buzz that we were evacuating the jail or the jail.

My friend's daughter is a school bus driver for school district and she was called in. To help evacuate people, so I don't know.

I believe they were called in. Yeah, but no evacuations occurred as to why they were called in. I have no idea. Okay. But no, the jail was never evacuated. But in regards to the question 1, if there is a plan, absolutely. That's always been the operations of the jail. There's always been an evacuation plan for wildfire, natural disaster, or any other reasons to pick them up with it. The jail may have to be evacuated.

Questions. Anyone else? Yeah, okay.

Hi, uh, still for the record. Being on the streets and seeing the type of evacuation and how it went. Considering how congested it was. Do you think that it was done correctly?

Well, it depends. There's a lot of different avenues I can take with that question in terms of getting a massive humanity out of a very small area. I think you do the best that you can. I don't think that there is a good answer or any of it. Because in some circumstances, for instance, I'll go to incline villages. I spent a lot of time there. We have the ability to take Mount Rose Highway and turned into 1 direction. And you'd have multiple lanes down the hill and get inclined evacuated pretty quickly. We don't necessarily have that ability here to take the freeways and have 1 direction out because we have to have people getting in. Kids are at home, animals are at home. We do have to have people get in to evacuate their loved ones and whatever else you need to evacuate. So, based on the construction right now, which just like you guys, I am Desperately excited for that to be done so that, um. With all the circumstances that we had the speed that the fire moved. I wish we would have had more time, but I think people did the best they could based on the circumstances. That is the epitome of controlled chaos. And to a point, you can only do the best you can do. And we also had to get resources there. We had all hands on deck families showing the roads, getting people out. kicking in doors of burning buildings, getting people out, working with fire to protect life. Again, we operate off the same exact conditions, life above property, and that's what we're doing for the first day of that fire. That was our priority. Anybody else?

Yeah. Louise Sufran for the record. A comment, and then you can make an explanation for the a bug fire and especially and also for the hog fire. I live in the Cold Springs area. So with the bug fire, there was a backup between exit 83 and 80 where 100 or more cars were blocked from going into Cold Springs because it wasn't to be done. However, information along that long line of cars between exit 83 and 80, no one was informed that they could go up and over the bridge to go back to Reno, and that was for the bug fire. Then for the hawk fire, we were told, the community of Cold Springs was told to evacuate, so I was getting out of there. However, Village Parkway was a parking lot going from exit 83 down Village Parkway all the way to White Lake. And yet again, no information was given or was known by the people in the cars. I asked people in front of me parked, you know, in their cars waiting to go to nowhere. And the people behind me, do you know anything? Where are we supposed to go? So my question is, Is it thought and considered that someone within the volunteer system or the officers go down that line of cars? You must be thinking, why are all these people here? Why aren't they doing what we would like them to do? Like go to California because the highway for Hawk was blocked from Cold Springs. That information was not relayed in any manner. And so I got out of line because I saw one other car get out of line and they went high tailing it to California. So I figured, oh, that must be what they want us to do. But no one told me. I had to kind of guess it. So what do you think about communication to the people who are trapped on the highway?

So I'll do kind of a clip-nosed version of an overview of how the communication works for these fires. In the beginning, it's going to be an incident command structure where the fire itself is going to be ran by the fire department. And we have the operational side and the law enforcement guys. Once evacuation orders are given, we make a plan for traffic, and then we go out there and do what we need to do. Both these fires hit a certain point where there's a thing called an IMT, an incident management team that comes in from out of state. And that's when you saw over at Rancho San Rafael where there's 600 firefighters, wildland guys that are camped out at the park. And then it turns into a much bigger operation. That's when we are sitting in the command post with NHP. We have communications with California Highway Patrol. Then we start making decisions on what to do, how to move traffic, how to move people, and what the goals are. The way we communicate out to the public right now is through a variety of means. Typically, the fastest way is using social media. And we throw it out there as quick as we can. Perimeter app picks it up. And if I'm not mistaken, I believe WatchDuty also picks up anything that Perimeter puts out. So that's sort of the flow. Perimeter is going to be first, and then WatchDuty is going to pick it up, and they'll put everything that's on Perimeter. And any press releases we have will eventually show up on WatchDuty. There's a delay. Of course, ideally, if we can send somebody down the line of all the different avenues, because village was just 1 of the roads from many communities that we're trying to get out. Of course, it's not the answer everybody wants to hear, but nonetheless. I can shake the deputy tree as hard as I can, but only so many deputies are going to fall out. I only have so many people we call in all of our shifts. Side note, a lot of the calls that we had for looting was people actually calling in our own detectives. They were driving around neighborhoods in their unmarked cars. So that was one thing we had. So, yes, I don't disagree. We have the ability to. Social media is the way right now. I know that there's a blind spot there for people who don't have a phone or may not be able to get that. Oh. But...

Go ahead. Social media is something that I will have to do because it's like, you know, the telephone. Got to do it. So now my very basic comment is when there are officers at the top of an intersection where people should be doing this or that, Rely on the citizens and, you know, speak to the first four cars and tell them, be a good citizen. This is what we want you to do. Tell the car behind you that's what the officers want you to do. Rather than, as I did, trying to get away from the hog fire, sit there for an hour and a half trying to guess what to do. You know, if if it had been a chain of of. Concerned citizens just sharing that down the line of the 100 plus plus plus cars. I think it would have flowed better. You officers can't do everything. But you did your best and thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

For the record. Yeah, so. As you travel across a state, if there's an accident or something, there's usually a bulletin board that says, for accident information, or listen to, or call 511, or listen to the station. Have you guys ever considered putting out these emergency broadcasts on 511? Because that's Envy Roads, right?

Yes, and NHP is involved. So if that should have gone out there, that would have been something NHP did. But that is another avenue we can throw out there. There's just limited characters, I guess.

Most people have radios. Not everybody can access social media, especially with a mouse. Just something to consider.

Sure. Does anybody have a question?

Hi. I don't have any complaints. Sorry. I don't have any complaints on how you guys respond to the emergency. Thank you guys so much. Both of you guys insinuated the first day was the difficult day. What about two, three, four, five that we were locked out of our homes? And

So the way that that decision is made, we defer to the fire department, that incident management team to tell us what roads, what neighborhoods are at risk. And at that point, we keep people out of neighborhoods to get out of the way of fire as well. That is the overall concern. So we defer to fire for all things related to fire behavior, what they think it's going to do, where their resources need to go. That's not something we're going to question.

immediate danger, you should keep us out of our homes. But this was for five days. We were locked out of our homes for the blood fire. I also locked out of my home for the, well, I was, because if I left, I wouldn't be able to come in, but I wasn't in a red zone for like four days. And my house was not in name.

Chief. For the record, therapy, part of the reason is we had power lines down, but we did have that area de-energized. We had propane tanks, gas, threat they had to be secured they had to be pulled off the road power poles had to be moved off of the road in some places so there's the initial threat and then there's a threat that comes thereafter we actually had to when the gas company came back in and the propane company came back in they told us you're gonna have an order of of gas So that, again, you're talking about ND energy, ND gas. They're also working all day and all night long with skeleton crews, right?

Blood fire as well.

I can't speak for the bug fire because it wasn't on the bug fire. I was on the hog fire. But if it's in the interfaces, if it's in the houses, there's the threat of the fire, and then there's everything thereafter.

I wasn't evacuated for the hog fire, but if I left my house, I had to go to who was evacuated, so I would have gotten from that pub. Bug fire, I was evacuated for five days, and my house was not in danger on the first day.

There's a containment issue just because of fire stops. I certainly mean, it's contained. That may have been yours.

I know it's not you. It's the politicians and whoever makes the decision.

Did you give us public comment near the end to.

I was hoping not to do that. Thank you so much.

Yes.

I did tell me hold still by the record. I didn't have 1 more suggestion for you guys and that is. Those of us that were not near the fire, because I live in the back lemon Valley off the limit drive. So the fire wasn't anywhere near me. I have electricity, but yet. Thank God, I'm not some other people who have medical needs and had to get out and then wouldn't be able to come back. That's an issue right there in itself. If we're not in danger and we're not causing problems, we should be able to get back to our homes. And with a hot fire, that was not going to happen.

So a couple things with that. People we have on the roadblocks, the way we operated, we got the National Guard in. The National Guard gave us a whole bunch of young soldiers on loan to help us with the blocks. Their direction was... to let people in appropriately. So, for instance, if somebody came up and they're like, hey, this is what I've got, I have to go get my medicine, we just let people in. We would allow that. Now, for instance, we have to scrutinize those on a case-by-case basis, because I will tell you, probably one of the biggest shouting matches I've gotten into in my career was with an individual over on the Davis fire who wanted to go in to get his tax documents, and I said no. And he was big, so it's a case by case basis.

So I'm talking about those that are actually living at home. Okay. If we wanted to go to the grocery store. In downtown, we could not get back. Oh, and we weren't anywhere near the fire because 395 was totally closed off. We had to take a dirt road, but they were giving people who were not in. fire area or the evacuation area a hard time about getting back to their homes.

Well, and in those situations, you can absolutely call one of us and we can look at it. It could have been a blind spot. It absolutely could have been. Because what we ended up doing on, I couldn't tell you what day it was, a couple days ago, we looked at different neighborhoods and we started checking IDs and allowing certain neighborhoods back in and opening up certain neighborhoods, repopulating certain ones in certain neighborhoods that weren't evacuated at all. But in order to get to those neighborhoods, of course, 395 is blocked. The Reno Sparks Indian Colony at one point opened up that thoroughfare to go through between Spanish Springs to get back into the country. That's an option. Obviously, that's not a great option for anybody based on road conditions. But you can always reach out and call us and do our best to get out to you. A deputy is not going to call you. It's probably me. So I'm not going to put that phone call on my deputy. They're busy. So that's something that might work. So if there's something like that, you're living on the backside, everything is kosher, and that's a concern. Based on our current sheriff and the way he wants things, we're very open. We'll try to be very, very transparent. And it may take me a minute, but I'll call you back.

Anyone else? Earl? Just a suggestion. Because of my location, Top of Lemon Drive and Ramsey being the very last one, I was right in the forefront There was no sign at all that the young lady brought up about being a coltsman. There should have been just as simple as a community officer, the guys you have doing community service come out, give different calls. Somebody, I was going to go out and start getting people to slow down. No problem being out there. I had a flag inside from way back. I think we had to slow down. Because I would just wake some of the crowd. watching that and seeing his darkness come out. All the lights, all the way back up, all the way down, lemon drop. Everybody trying to go out, shit could eat. All that, everybody, just like, you know, the natural reaction, get out, get out. It'd been very helpful that you put this in your report somehow to get either that, to say, Mr. Tibbs, we got this crap going on here. Would you be willing to be the citizen's, Stand by wherever you want to do that. And I would be more than glad to be out in direct traffic as a hard dude, or at least be a semblance of somebody just like here saying, Dave, I don't use social media. I refuse not to use it. So I don't need to draw on it.

Well, bring it full circle back to what we talked about before I even came up here. That is something we utilize as a volunteer. So I can let you guys know that all the comments and ideas are absolutely listened to because what I'm doing right now is in the business world to refer to the SWOT analysis where we go look at the strengths, weaknesses, the outcomes, and things that we can change in the future. You can have models, much like the chief said, and sometimes those things just don't work out. Plans don't necessarily work out until you actually test them. So we have things like the Davis fire. We have these two fires out here. There's a process afterwards, and there's a debrief where we learn from it. So certainly all suggestions are appreciated because you, much like my deputies on the ground, we were the ones on the ground then. certainly be listened to. So if you have any of those suggestions, email them in. That will go into our debrief that we have in our more strategic levels. So like the chief said, when all the cheatgrass grows back, if this happens, Excuse me, I said that backwards. Not if, when. We can have a different plan in place and we can actually deploy something to make it run a little bit smoother. Like I said, manage chaos, maybe manage it a little bit better in the future and actually try to get people out of it smoother. And hopefully by the next time that happens, there won't be so many orange channels out there or state flower.

Matt? My question is, for those of us affected by the Hawk Fire, how do we find out where the investigation is? Kind of like on Veronica for personal reasons, we're victims. So how do we find out about where you're...

If it's a criminal investigation, I have absolutely no doubt there will be a press release. If it turns out that the investigation goes down the path where it is purely accidental, maybe it's negligent, wherever the investigation goes. I don't know what the status is right now. So don't look into what I'm saying is inside knowledge. I don't know. But if any of those things happen, that's something that will be found out later. I know that investigation is not complete. And I know also with Truckee Meadows, they have their own fire investigators. So while we are the law enforcement arm, Truckee Meadows does have fire investigators that are working in that case as well. So that's something that ideally would probably be put out as the cause. And as I'm thinking back, I don't think we've ever not. Pull people for the conference Davis fire took a while. Once we found out who it was and the campfire and everything else, but eventually that would be put up to the bottom.

And we see from my question is simple 1. what is the email that we can give you all these wonderful suggestions? You just mentioned it. Send us an email. What is the email address? Please?

There's a couple of methods. You can either use 3, 1, 1, and it will get to me. So you can go that way as well. A real person gets it, and you can say to me, to the sheriff's office on Lieutenant Tone, T-O-N-E. And I can also, I don't know how many I have. I don't think I brought 27 of them. But I do have some business cards as well I can give you guys at the conclusion. So you guys can have my email as well. Does anyone else have a?

Please state your email. Just state it.

Sure. It's N, like Nora, T-O-N-E. Yes, at Washington, we don't go.

Thank you.

All right. Is there anyone else that that's a question? No.

I'm seeing that as well. I just want to say, thank you for all that you do for us.

And the.

Now on to item number 7, trucking, you might have.

Yes, thank you.

I just want to if I know. Test that's it.

1, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

Okay, so we're moving on to item number seven, Truckee Menace Regional Planning Agency.

Jeremy Smith.

Jeremy Smith will be presenting an overview of the agency, including its roles in regional planning and how the North Valley area is incorporated into its efforts. Thank you, sir.

I can be a pretty loud voice if it doesn't work. Okay. Okay. That's okay. I'll just make sure. Can you guys hear me okay? Yep. All right, great. Thank you. Yes, I am Jeremy Smith. I'm the director of the Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency. Really appreciate the opportunity to come out here tonight and talk about TMRPA. That's how we, it's a mouthful, Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency, so we'll go for TMRPA. We're sort of like TMRPA. Okay, so let's next slide please. That image is of the regional plan, which is our main document and our main vehicle for. Administering our role in what we call the trucking meadows, but really our jurisdiction. Is all of Washington absent that area, which is up in the hydro basin of Lake Tahoe. And also the tribal lands are outside of our jurisdiction as well. But all the rest of this brown thing you see is, you know, we're involved. The regional plan applies. And really most of what we do, though, happens down in this gray blob, which is called the TMSA, or Truckee Meadows Service Area. That's the area within which you either currently have municipal-type services like sewer water, or it's planned for in a 20-year time horizon. So it's a 20-year plan. And you can see that shape is then cast onto that map, that terrain map that is over there in the center. And the black outline represents the TMSA boundary. What you might notice is that, you know, there's different colors in there. The red, this is from a satellite image or a compilation of satellite images. It's really talking about intensity and density of development. So the red areas are most intense areas that are developed, followed by yellow, green, out to blue. And you'll even notice that some areas are planned those are really areas that have no housing still sagebrush no infrastructure there yet but are in the service territory there may be things planned in for certain areas there's nothing planned so that's kind of the lay of the land of in 99 almost 99 of the residents of washoe county live inside that black The agency was created by state law in 1989. And the legend is that there was the jurisdiction of Reno, jurisdiction of Washoe County, both digging up the same road to put in the sewer line on opposite sides of the street because their jurisdictions were there.

It was like, hey, guys.

And that's just an example. But it highlights what we're kind of here to help administer, and that is that we all work together to get the most bang for our buck, to row in the same direction, and really to coordinate the long-range planning of the region. We're not. particularly top-down. So we sit above the local jurisdictions in the approval process for very specific things. But it's really not like Jeremy calls everyone up and says, you will do this. That has never happened to me, by the way. But what we do is we work together, right, to understand and achieve consensus and then memorialize it in the regional plan so that once we all decide together collectively it's a good idea, there it is in the plan and we follow it. So that's sort of the structure. But we are sitting kind of at this upper level when it comes to master plans and facilities plans. So, again, created in 1989, first regional plan adopted in 1991, and then every five years thereafter, a new plan was adopted. In fact, we look at the plan every year, but every five years we have to do a substantive update, most recently updated in December of 2024. We work primarily with City of Sparks, City of Reno, and Washoe County. But we also have what are known as affected entities, which are organizations like the Regional Transportation Commission, Washoe County School District, Northern Nevada Public Health. So we have this group of, those folks have facilities plans. We all work together. The structure of our agency is that thing of heads down there in the bottom. We have three levels. At the very top, we have the elected officials, the regional planning governing board, and we have representatives from the city of Reno, the city of Sparks, the council, and also Marshall County Commission. So they are the ultimate deciding factor for agency and for any of the cases. But most of the work is done by what we call the RPC or the Regional Planning Commission. That's made up of members of the planning commissioners, you know, planning commissions from each of those different jurisdictions as well. And then finally, ah, this slide is old. We actually have a six-person staff now.

We have an admin assistant, which is really awesome and helpful. Next slide, please.

Okay, so kind of the main structure here is that the plan sits at the top, and that is where the policies are when we're doing this casework, which you can see at the right. So again, we have very, what our lawyer likes to call special and limited jurisdiction in terms of our regulatory authority. And it really comes down to those pieces that you see on the right. Master plan conformance rules. So if a jurisdiction wants to change their master plan, that's a vision document. That needs to be in conformance with our agreed upon vision in the regional plan. Like, so any change to a master plan come through our shop and go to that regional planning conditions. Likewise facilities plan with the regional transportation plans. There's an amendment. Oh, we want to move this road project into this timeframe or change this priority or change it. That also has to come in for conformance review. And then there's another 1 that's stipulated in state law referred to as projects of regional significance. And there are certain thresholds. So, for example, 625 housing units or more will trigger the review. so much 6,250 acre feet of water use, certain sewage amounts, student generation. And then there's also a section about energy for generation of energy 5 megawatts or greater, transmission 60 or greater. And it's further defined after state law by resolution of the regional planning commission. They have the power vested there in state law too. If there's regional significance tonight, and it can be added to this resolution. So. We've added a few or they've added a few things really, which is stuff like. Landfills, if there's going to be a new landfill that comes in to conforms with the regional plan. Or any modification of the Truckee river or any of the base of the river or distributive. That's another PRS project. So. Those are kind of, that's our regulatory authority right there, bundled into those three things. That's really all we do. And what it's really kind of designed to do is to make sure that a project happening in one jurisdiction, right, if it's big enough, or if it has some characteristics like changing the master plan, that the other two jurisdictions could be affected, right? If it's a small thing, if you're subdividing a house into a duplex, and you're in Reno, SPARCS probably doesn't even know about it. But if you're doing 1,000 unit subdivisions, and maybe you're near the border of another jurisdiction, We want to make sure that those any spillover impacts are considered right by the jurisdiction. So it's a venue for that coordination. So that's really at the regulatory piece button. Alongside that we're constantly doing staff level coordination. And well, beyond any of those entities as well, so just trying to really again, coordinate the effort, build consensus, build information. And then finally, we have actual amendments to our plan. Which happened typically, you know, substantive updates annually, but we have a couple of mechanisms that could happen throughout the year as well. The plan does change and I can say every 5 years. We have to update it with a rigorous review. We're doing our annual update coming in September to the regional planning commission. So if you want to get see that process, get involved. Have a voice, you can come to our September 24th meeting. And then our October 8th meeting, it's a public meeting like this. So we have a public comment. You can always send me an email as well if you want to learn more. So that is really everything in Chapter 3. The policies control those processes. But our policies need to be underpinned by a foundation of evidence. We want to make sure that we can point to why do we say the things that we say. And so we've been working on these foundational principles. Documents that contain information about natural resources about public infrastructure. I'm going to go into both of these and this is the 3rd we're working on. Now. We have a role to play in population forecasting. And houses okay next slide please. In terms of the policies that we use in chapter 3 of the plan, these are the 5 sections. So these are our focus areas. Population growth. Regional form, and that's really what's shown on that map at the right. Where do we expect to see that density and intensity? Where are we planning for that? What's our vision? Public facilities and services, how are we going to adequately plan to meet the demand of population growth and achieve a certain form? How do we protect our natural resources and serve them and utilize them? And then how do we coordinate together as a region? So these are the five policy sections in Chapter 3. And if you want to see all the policies, about 60 or so policies there, this is how it's broken down. So every conformance review utilizes these sets of policies in these veins to then get us to our recommendation in the review. Next one, please. Okay, so that was basically the overview of what we do from a regulatory standpoint, but we kind of have a three-legged stool. You probably know the old adage, right? How do you hold up the stool? Well, our regulatory component is one of the legs, and that we have to do based on state law. But for a long time, we really wanted to provide additional value add to the region, and so we've taken on a lot of work with data and analytics. That's another leg of our stool. We use geographic information systems, or GIS, a lot for mapping. To really do our work, and then the 3rd leg of the stool is that regional coordination aspect. Even beyond the regulatory capacity is trying to bring people together. So, in terms of data and underpinning the policies and the state law, that's what's written here. In. A state law that is called the title is contents of the regional plan. And so we better make sure that in our regional plan, we address natural resources. So this plan does that. And there's a state law kind of indicating that we're required to do it. Just basically bringing together natural resource information to serve that regulatory role and to provide information to the community. And we'll talk about this policy as we go through. So next slide please. So you can go to our website now and you can go access our natural resource plan document. These are the six main chapters within it. These are the topic areas. It's something like about, gosh, I don't know, 25 or 30 specific topic areas, maybe a little less than that now, but that we address with a narrative, right? A story about how does our region do this? Maybe it's wild horses or maybe it has to do with minerals and mining. or possibly recreation outdoor sports and so we've written and we've coordinated and researched to get that there's tons of links as well to learn more because we operate at a very top level if you want more detail we try to provide you the roadmap together so these are check that out in the natural resource plan next slide please And then also, as we were doing that work, one of the things we did is we reached out and said, hey, what kind of data about natural resources out there? What's available? We found thousands of references to natural resource data from earthquakes to the horse stuff, to snow, to the river, you know, whatever you might imagine about natural resources. And we brought it all together into a giant database that you can search on our website that links back to the categories of the plant. So if you're starting a research project or want to find out about something, this is a valuable resource. You can go to our site and you can just search for available data. And for the most part, we're passing it through. So one good example is like NDOW, the Department of Wildlife. They have great GIS data about mule deer habitat, sage grouse, antelope, you know, all these different, black bear, different kind of maps. Well, we just point you there so you can go find something. We're like, tell me about black bear. You can probably find the NDOW site in there. check out the data portal okay next one please so this was a lot of work and uh at the end of it we came up with four new policies that we wanted to put into the regional plan for the 2024 five-year update and that really had to do with source water protection so that's a voluntary program that was we are helping out with in collaboration with ndp the environmental protection agency some of the water authority and the Western Regional Water Commission, as well as RCI, which is an outside contractor contracted by NDEP to do this work. But it's to identify, map, and make available to people information about where our water comes from, basically. Where's our source water? What should we be protecting? What are the critical areas? And if you go to the website and see the map, what you'll notice is that it's all along the trucking units, tributaries, and the buffer. And anywhere we have municipal wells, There's also kind of a bullseye around that or an area around our wells. And also recharge areas are identified in there. So it's worth checking out. There's a voluntary plan online that we help with. So we put a policy in to say, hey, local jurisdictions, make sure you're aware of this and utilizing this plan. So they had to put it in their master plan and set out every, in fact, every business license right now, application at the city of Reno and at Washoe County, and I think Sparks is soon to follow, every single business license gets tested against that map. And so if you're applying for, like, the paint auto body shop or something, and you're in the critical source water protection area, it's not a hard no, but it does create an email to Tumwa, and then they provide comments specifically about that use in that area. So that we found was pretty cool. A similar project, but not to do with water, not to do with trails and trail connectivity. You know, we've got a lot of awesome trails in this region. But we don't necessarily have widespread regional connectivity trends. And, you know, trails often come in lockstep with development. So we've been working for years on a regional trails plan, truck and nose regional trails plan. To foster that connectivity and to make sure that we understand which trails are actually trails. That we have taken ownership of as a jurisdiction, like the forest service and city of Reno or Washington county and actively maintain. Because I know you guys probably all been out there. There's trails everywhere and there's roads, right? There's places to go, but there are certain there's a certain trail network. It's actually official. And maintain, and so. This plan highlights that and seeks to connect it in such a way that you can get all around town on trails and really build in sustainability, connectivity, and standards for the trails as well, like signage. Check that out. That's also, we asked the local jurisdictions to reference it in their master plan. Make sure they're using it, so we work closely on that. We created a tribal coordination policy, which really is designed to hold us as agency staff, our feet to the fire, to make sure that we're reaching out to both Pyramid Lake Pine Tribe and the Rio Esparza Indian Colony on a regular basis to coordinate and let them know what we're doing and hear about the work that they're doing. We not too long ago had Candace Stowell, she's a planner at the RSIC, come and do an informational presentation to some of our RPC members. And so we're actively looking to... To engage, I'm heading out to on 3rd, Wednesday evening this week to to me about. Data centers talk about that in a second, but that's happening. So we're actively working towards. Towards that, and in fact, two folks in this room have been helping me to come up with an idea to potentially get some representation in the liaison form on our regional planning governing board for a tribal member from either the tribes, or we don't know exactly how that might work, but just trying to elevate that tribal presence in that forum. So it's really exciting. And then finally, we've got natural resource consideration areas. We had this thing already. We've had it for a long time. It's called development constraints areas. You might imagine you can't build a home in a lake, right? So if you've got certain, maybe you can do a houseboat, but like there's certain actual constraints on development, right? That were development is prohibited. And these are specifically areas of greater than 30% slope, federal lands, 404 wetland lands, fires and lakes, and, uh, I like blanking on one more. Oh, AE Floodway is from FEMA. So if you're in the AE Floodway, you cannot build even with flood mitigation that's prohibited. So these are constrained areas. And just basically, if you have it on your parcel, you can't build there. You can't include that as part of your density. It's just out of it. Well, but then you may be in the AE Floodway, which is where the floodwaters move during a flood event. But that doesn't mean that you're not in the floodplain. And we were silent for a long time on, well, there's, you know, it doesn't matter because the FEMA map layer stopped right there. There's still a floodplain. And so we came up with this idea to create a companion policy to meet our state mandate to look deeper at natural resources. And if we can go to the next slide, please. And we'll go to the next slide. I just said that stuff. Right here, these are the pieces of data from our data gathering for that portal that we thought were authoritative, regularly updated, and an official agency right behind them. So now for every single case we receive at Regional Planning, day one, when we do our initial review memo, we evaluate it against all this information. And we provide that to the local jurisdiction for their development review. And in fact, we're working on a tool to provide it to everybody in this room so that you could take a parcel, your parcel, something you want to do, something you're interested in, put it into our map. You can go down and see these layers on a map. And you could get a readout of the interactions with all of this stuff. So pretty cool in this case. You know, I was surprised at how poorly mapped endangered species are. It's often handled on a case-by-case basis with like a survey. If you're going to do a development, the folks will go out there and identify if it's there. But there wasn't like very well overarching maps of even habitats for things like the Carson Wandering Skipper comes to mind. It's a butterfly that's endangered. So we actually had, with working with some grad students from UNR, we started creating layers based on iNaturalist. So we've actually created some data and have it in there now, and we can provide that. So it's like, it's a heads up. Hey, local planners, your site interacts with the habitat for the Carson watering skipper. Make sure you're thinking about that, you know, as you go through the process. So we're pretty excited about it. Next slide, please. It just has silly like 1980s style readout of these interactions, but it's very straightforward. But it talks about is there an interaction or not and how much coverage. And then of course, if you want to learn more, you can hit us up. So we can keep going. Next slide. All right, so that's on that natural resource document side. There's a lot more to read about and learn if you want to dig in. We also have this public infrastructure side. This is another part of our state law. There's that 278.0274. That's the contents of the regional plan. And so we took on as well a document that describes how public infrastructure service is provided in the region and actually brings together information about what we've done in terms of capital projects and what we're planning to do in capital improvement programs. Let's go to the next one, please. And keep going to the next one because that's unreadable. But here are the five areas that that last slide that was unreadable said that regional planning should be involved in. So there's really five infrastructure and service domains that are contemplated in all this work we do. About working with TUMWA and other small providers for potable water. It's about schools, and that includes charters and private schools as well. Stormwater and flood control and working with the flood project. Transportation, that's the RTC and the airports.

And then wastewater, which is really the three jurisdictions.

Those are the areas that we address in that public infrastructure plan. And you can go there and read about, well, how does the wastewater get collected and treated? What are the boundaries? Who's doing what? And again, links to learn more and find out. We did a tour of the big facility. It was fascinating. Okay, next one, please. So what we've done is we've tried to get a handle on dollars because that is sort of the low hanging fruit. Money has to be reported in annual comprehensive financial reports and in capital improvement programs. What are the local governments? What are we spending? What are the institutes spending on capital improvements? So that was our first kind of, and we've been doing this for now, this is our third year trying to accomplish this. We divided how we look at it into two concepts, reinvestment into existing areas that are built for existing residents and existing infrastructure versus new infrastructure for growth. So that's just kind of wanted to put that out there that that's a bit of a dichotomy that we use. Go to the next one. can go to our website and you can access this information in the dashboard for those same five domains and what you can find out is how much did we spend last fiscal year to actually build stuff and how much are we planning to spend in the next five fiscal years in our cips and what you can see is that this is the total up here and you can see that those colors i believe the uh Reinvestment is red and growth is gray. So we're actually spending more on reinvestment and planning to spend more in reinvestment in our community than we are to support growth. But of course, growth is a chunk as well. And then you can see kind of individually, if you go there, how much work we spent on water, schools, stormwater and flood, transportation, and education. wastewater and then what's the future forecast in those capital improvement programs and this updates every year and we're working on it right now they changed the time frames on us to october to line up with the fiscal year so you may not see like in the next two months you'll be able to see the last fiscal year we're not there yet so we got a change there But if you go to the document, you'll also see maps like this. Our next move is to keep this going year over year, but also take the actual project information, at least make it a dot on a map so that you can see on a map where all these projects are. And we can start to look at what parts of town are receiving what for how many dollars. And then, you know, it's a tougher conversation to figure out, okay, and then what does that actually do? because a dot on the map is one thing where maybe someone's building something but depending on what the improvement is the area served could be massive or it could be smaller right so we're constantly trying to get our arms around this information but bringing it together go to the next slide from all of these different entities. Every single one of these entities and jurisdictions does it differently. They meet the state law in their own way. Some have mapped information, some don't. Some have certain categories, some don't. So our role and what we've been trying to do is bring all that information together and synthesize it into a regional picture at a high level. And everyone so far has been really great to work with and doing an excellent job. Excellent. Next one, please. Okay, and what this helps us to do as well is support that regional plan performance review process that I talked about. Now we can actually utilize that when we're reviewing a project. So if somebody comes in and they have a brand idea to do 3,000 homes on some acreage somewhere, we're evaluating, okay, is the water service there? And if not, is it planned to be there? And if not, are you going to pay for everything that's necessary? And if not, then we would say that it's not ready. And it becomes a basis for us to say it's not ready. And typically we can work on these things and figure it out, you know, get there in the TMSA. But this is a big step that we brought in in 2019 that never existed before. Regional planning was always left to the concurrency management systems of the local jurisdictions. So now it's really like we trust that the jurisdictions and the organizations will be able to deliver service. But this now forces folks to say, which we think is really cool in those five domains. So step forward. We haven't had to recommend a denial yet, but I bet you when we do, it will be based on this. Okay, next one, please. All right, so that was those... two fundamental kind of underpinning projects that support the regional plan. Pretty cool. And working on one that's about population forecasting and housing, another kind of aspect of what we do. But probably this is, and then we got tasked with this, which is nowhere in the state law or regional plan or anywhere, but the regional planning governing board said, hey, TMRPA, we want you to help us roll in the same direction, coordinate our response to this emergent trend of data centers locating in our region. And it's such a new thing. We don't necessarily know all of the impacts. And it was worthy of research. I don't know that I would have woken up one day and picked it. Regional planning has no interest in data centers supporting them or not. We're just trying to really get our arms around what are the issues and how can we recommend some common sense and reasonable rules that are within our authority to apply when a data center comes to town and says, hey, we want to locate here. What are we mitigating for? Things like noise, lighting, water use, power use, that kind of stuff. Okay, so I think everyone's pretty familiar with the concept of data centers and that they're raging right now. And we're building or proposed to build a bunch of them in Story County, which is not in our jurisdiction. So we can come up with these recommendations. Hopefully, Reno Sparks and Washoe County will adopt that stuff into their ordinance. But we have no control over what might happen in Story or Lyon or other parts of the state. And we can only imagine it's going to be a huge topic of conversation at the upcoming legislative session. Thank you for asking. Let's go to the next one. Okay, so how do, what do we do? I mean, we've been doing research now for about a year and a half, but the regional planning governing board turned up the volume on us earlier this year in the spring. And so we came up with this engagement effort where we were gonna talk to everyone that we could in terms of from organizations to learn about data centers. When we talked to a ton of folks, folks in academia, economics, environment, Sierra Club, for instance, industry, labor, government, tribes, and the utilities to try to understand what's your perspective. And we asked them all the same questions. And so we got this map of perspectives. And as you might imagine, there was not always a consensus on what data centers do, what kind of tech is being used, are they good or bad? Oh my God, we never want them. But we did get an amazing set of information and we did look for those points of consensus. Let's go to the next one. We also, as part of this, engaged the public. And we went to a community conversation. It was the second one we held. We did it in August of this year. And we received a very emotional response from the crowd that they absolutely hate data centers and they want to ban them completely. Ban all data centers. And so I just want to amplify that that is a very significant message from the residents that they don't want it. The active people that are coming out to talk about this do not want data centers. And it was crazy. We put out a survey. We had 150 responses. We did that engagement. Everyone got fired up and started talking to each other. And then by two days later, we had 8,000 responses. And you can see the graph there. They were negative. They do not want data centers. It was the same for every single question we asked in the survey. And out of, you know, 4,000 or so text comments written in, the word cloud indicates what concerns were around, which was water, power resources, you know, environment, people. So while this is not our specific job that was asked of us, we were asked to create recommendations for what to apply to the data centers coming for approval. That doesn't mean that we can't highlight the very clear public sentiment that they don't want them at all. So that's going to be part of our final report as well. Next slide, please, Sally. Probably unreadable, but this is all online. You can access everything on our theater center webpage. But these are the organizations we talk to to get those perspectives in addition to that public meeting. So really widespread. UNR. It's also in the packet. Beautiful. Thank you. So, you know, labor unions, environmental groups, utility, the PUC, tribal governments. Like you say, we're going out to Pyramid Lake on Wednesday night, and that's the last one. Next slide, please. Okay. So there's a bunch of information that we're going to organize into a final report. We're working on it right now. And that will be available soon. Part of his themes, talking about things like what are the concerns and high points of energy, water, land use siting, economics, and a few other categories. What are the tension points? Where did we see people disagree and describe that? And where did they agree? And that led us ultimately, those interview process and the engagement to come up with a set of draft recommendations for what can local governments do? And I think it's really important to understand that just like I explained in the beginning, we have a very specific, special and limited jurisdiction, right? What does regional planning do? We do what we're charged to do in state law. There's only so much that local authorities can do as well. Local city authorities, county, they do not control power. That is NV Energy and the PUC at the state level. So if the power really is the highest, the biggest change, the biggest demand that data centers are pulling is power. It is by far, water is of concern always here in the desert, absolutely. But we have an incredibly well-managed water system and data center tech has evolved in such a way that water is not necessarily It doesn't have to be highly consumptive of water to achieve the data center goals, but absolutely the less water you use, the more power you need. Power is the big kind of, you know, infrastructure unknown in this whole thing. And it's massive in terms of the demand for power. So again, I can come up with recommendations for what city of Reno could do or city of Sparks or Washoe County, but ultimately also the state is going to have to do the steps at the different authority levels that are necessary. But nonetheless, we learned that. So we're focusing on the local stuff, but we're also putting out the information. We learned about what we've done in the state and some of the ideas for what can be done at both levels. So if we go to the next one, please, Sally. This is under review and changing. It's going to be a little different, but I'll just go through the 10 kind of focused recommendation areas that we're talking about. We're basically in the process of prioritizing them into kind of like, let's do this for sure. This would be a good idea and I want you to think about doing something like that. Siding and land use. We need to regulate these things by scale. How much power are they using? How much water are they using? How much light is there? How much noise? Make sure that we're siding them away from residential areas and just coming up with the right rules in terms of what sites should be selected for these data centers. Then we also don't know everything about what these impacts are. And so we want to make sure that there's monitoring so that we understand what are the real impacts. Maybe we don't know. And then transparently report those impacts so we all can see it. And then maybe revisit our rules after we learn more. Maybe the existing noise ordinance is good enough or maybe it isn't. And without us kind of watching it for a while, we're not necessarily going to know. I've been thinking about traffic studies. You guys probably look at the traffic studies here at the cabs from time to time, right? And I mean, how long have we been driving cars and doing traffic studies? We've learned a ton. We know about what traffic does and the kind of improvements we need to do and the conditions we need to set. These new hyperscalers, especially in data centers, are new. And we don't necessarily know exactly what the impacts are going to be. So we don't have that kind of benefit. So monitoring is super important, I think. Design standards, this is like... You know, the building design, sustainability measures, waste heat recovery, trees, that kind of thing. Planning and project review. This kind of goes with the 10th one, which is coming. But just making sure that we're engaging, again, as many folks as possible, recording. We have the expertise to make the right decisions when these things come forward. This one's come up a lot, this idea that what if this is a boom-bust cycle and data centers all of a sudden last for five years and then Elon's right and we're putting him on the moon or whatever's going to happen. What is the facility lifecycle and decommissioning plans? And how should that be part of the approval process, right? If there's chemicals, what do you do with them? You know, there are parking requirements. If all of a sudden you want to turn a data center into a warehouse, but you only have parking for five employees because data centers don't employ anyone, that's not great for the day it comes along. So thinking about that future. Next one, please, Sally. Two on water, we're the focus here really on understanding the water requirements clearly, making them part of the approval. If that's changing, is there a mechanism to bring it back for re-approval? Because we want to understand how much water is being used and how does that impact our regional water resources? This idea of community benefit agreements, a lot of divergence on this one because this gets now outside of the mitigation of impacts of the direct use. Now it's like you're bringing a data center. So over here, I want to park over there. I mean, I like the idea of getting some additional monies to have better amenities, but it's highly controversial. And like the economic development authority folks aren't super happy with that one. Another one that's come up a lot is generators, backup power, because it's like 51 months to power on average for NV energy. If you want to build a data center today, you're going to have to wait to hook to the grid to meet that energy demand. And so people are saying, well, I'll just build it with generators. We'll just have a bunch of natural gas generators and power right up and boom. There's already really strict standards on backup power generators and air quality, but we're kind of in uncharted territory with this. What if I just have 10 generators that all generate five megawatts and, you know, We're trying to figure that out. So thinking about how we approach that as a local jurisdiction is important. And then finally, just making sure that everyone's voice is heard and involved. So this is going to get refined. We're in process now. Stay tuned. Next, please. I think our survey is still open. It's past August, but I don't think we've closed it. Everything is on the website. We've deeply translated the survey into Spanish, and there's more work to do on that front. You can always share your thoughts with us. Input at tmrp.org. And that can be about anything. It doesn't have to be about data centers.

It can be about anything we want to ask about. We'll do our best. Almost there, and then I'll happily answer your question.

One more slide. I got some very specific questions in advance of this meeting about traffic or transportation improvements out here in the North valleys. Ask the RTC about them and they said. Chairman, we don't want you communicating for us. We'll come out here. And give those answers. These are the folks they recommended that you contact. It's in your packet. Get those questions answered. If you guys on the board have questions specifically. And they, of course, are happy to come out and talk to me as well. But they were very specific about, you know, the Project Rebel stuff. And we're living up here to the stratosphere, right? So it's much better to hear it from RCC directly. One more I think I've got. Just if you want to learn more about any of this stuff, there's a bunch of links on our site, tmrpa.org. You'll learn about our population forecast, our annual report, tons of metrics about unit growth and job growth and population growth and housing. Trucking Meadows Trails, that was the one I talked about. You can check that all out. And also our work in the affordable housing sector. So with that, the next one is... Questions, thank you very much. Yeah, you had a regular back.

Yeah, 2 questions.

Well, could you start from 1? Yeah.

So, where's the data center going to go?

Well, there's 3 that have been in the city of Reno so far. 1 is on Keystone.

It's being constructed and there's 2 on, I believe it's on North Virginia.

Up here, of course, it is. Yeah. Web.

And have you done all the research on the impact of time and now on the resources and the community.

Well, we are looking at those as presented. Absolutely. We've incorporated those impacts that we know. Again, we're recommending rules that can be adopted. We don't approve data centers at CMRPA, but we are trying to say, here's what they require. So how much water are they going to use? How much power? They're not generating trips, for instance, because they have very few employees. So the transportation side. But yeah, they're incorporated in. But those already went through before.

We're out of North Virginia. I'm happy to get you the exact locations.

I don't have them on the top of my head, but I can get them for you.

Okay, where's the third one going?

Well, the third one is the Keystone. It's right there by the train. Keystone is there.

Okay, so you said three. One's on Keystone, one's going into North Virginia.

Two are in North Virginia.

Where's the other one?

It's almost adjacent. I believe they're very close to each other in North Virginia. A couple parcels apart.

Okay, and you've already done the study on how it's going to impact the environment and the community.

Those approvals are done by the city of Reno. So what we're doing is an overarching study. They prompted us to get into this. Well, but no, we're not doing the study of those specific approvals that lives at the Sydney. Okay.

So what I'm hearing is. It's gone in there approved. Okay, yeah, it's going to be in regardless what studies show.

Those three are approved, and so these rules that we recommend, these ideas, could affect the future.

Thank you for pivoting where I'm going with this. I know you're clear with my question. They've already been approved. They're going in regardless.

Those three are, yeah.

Okay. That was what I wanted to say. Okay, yeah.

Now, those three were approved in 2024, 2025, before we even got involved.

And the community knew about those?

I can't speak to that process.

I wasn't involved. Did not know that. He did not have a voice. So those 8,000 responses that you were talking about earlier.

Yeah.

How did those 8,000 people hear about the survey?

Well, that just happened. And honestly, this work is in response to, I think, your criticism of this. We're trying to do something.

Because nobody knows what the hell is going on. And this is a huge impact on our community.

Can you provide feedback through the public comment on exactly everything?

If I have the... If I can locate it, it'll so at the end of this meeting.

I'd be happy to talk more to you about it offline.

So I'm too irritated. I just got blind something. Okay.

Well, this is not my idea. We're just trying to fill space and provide the information. And try to help forestall the impacts.

What's quite overwhelming it inside for 35 years. And this is the first I heard of that. From what I'm seeing, there's a couple of other people in this room that didn't know what was going on. That just blows me out of the water.

We're just trying to help.

That's a City of Reno issue. City of Reno approved it before regional planning ever got involved.

Yeah, there's a moratorium right now going on for a year from the city.

And nothing will be approved right now. Well, they can still hear you.

So nothing new. Does anyone else have a question? Thank you for your time. Thanks for listening.

Okay, for the record, so we've had this conversation, but I want everybody here to know. So, under the policy elements, public facilities does not include police, fire or public safety. That is not under your purview.

That's correct.

Yeah. Somebody else knows that. So, yes.

And that's that's related to the law.

Yeah.

Absolutely, it's not in the contents of the regional plan and also we don't have anything to do with managing. I mean, that is a very local fire. You guys heard from the fire department and the sheriffs, right? It's a local operation. So we're out of.

I just wanted to make sure because of those, like, projects of regional significance will get approved regardless of fire and police availability in those areas. Well, not necessarily attached to. Or findings, but.

That's correct. It still gets addressed, though, in the local process. It's not ignored by any means. When we look at the regional review, it's not a topic of our findings.

Make sure everybody knows who's Beth, I guess. I got more. Uh, for the trails network, are they identified by use as far as, like, bike only non motorized equestrian trails? Is there any breakdown of to how the trail? I know. Sorry. I'm standing my pensioners in my back. I'm dying. So, are the trails network, is there any way to have it? Is it identified in any way by what the trail can be used by? Or is it just a network? Like, is it all walking trails, bike trails, equestrian?

It's broken down on the map right now as dirt or paved system traded by jurisdiction, ownership. But that information is also in there to a greater or lesser degree depending on the part of town and the system that it's in. But that is the goal is to have those attributes so that we share the use. Exactly.

Okay. And then the last one I have is on the data center regulations. I didn't see it specifically in there, and I'm sure it's part of that, but to Pam's point, are human and animal health impacts being considered as one of the factors? Because there are so many unknowns because data center technology is so new. So whether it's sound or electrical generation or whatever thing that it's going to cause is that one of the other consideration no looking at neighborhoods but are we looking at like wildlife impact or like they're building and i know it's a story county not washoe but looking at the impacts on like the wild horses and the migratory animals that you know because we have to talk about um endangered species, and that's threatened species. Is there any point of that kind of conditions going to look into under the environmental impacts?

We do have a public health set in the themes, yeah, and the other concerns addressing public health. And we did speak with a really cool group called the Northern Nevada Clinicians for Climate Action. So they had concerns about data centers around climate impacts, but also about human health impacts. So we've got some information on that front. Yes.

That's fine.

All right, does anyone else have a motion?

Sorry? Brian Walters. I'm just curious on the listing that you had of all the different entities. Yeah, I didn't see end off in there since they're the ones that have jurisdiction over the.

The freeways we did not speak to end us. No, we didn't.

I mean, it was the.

Partners that you get in terms of the public infrastructure. Yeah, I'm sorry. That is a result of again. State agencies are specifically exempted from our. So we do coordinate with them, though. I had a conversation with them last week about this project that we looked at on Thursday last week. And so we talk to them when necessary. But the ROTC is kind of our conduit to end on primarily.

So the follow-up question. So how does that work with... Planning with, I understand that's a state agency. They're on board and all that intersection over the highways. But how does that. Link up with the planning here. Well, specifically in this, this region, because. It's just, you know, the 95 that goes through here.

Yeah. And it has to do kind of with where the dollars come from, but it all gets put into the regional transportation plan. And so the end on portions are identified. The RTC regional road portions are going to be in the local road. Portions are identified as well. and so it ends up in there but the funding you know in the project selection has different authorities so end up does its own you know like they decide right what what projects i mean in collaboration with the rtc but ultimately you know if they're going to spend their money to do it on their right of way they're going to make that decision and then it's reflected in the that's my understanding all right great thank you yeah ma'am

Hi, Veronica Cortez. Thank you for coming and explaining really fast, but explaining how there's so many boards involved and how you have to be part of this board and this board. It really explains where the appointments and the corruption is actually following through. So I appreciate that, saying it out loud. Also, you were talking about 60 policy elements that you have and categories and subcommittees and all this great work. Where does public safety fall with this? Because I missed that part.

Yeah, public safety is not within our purview at regional planning.

Excellent answer. And then, yeah, thanks for the information on working on the contents of the regional plan, because we do have legislative elections this year. So that will really help if we want to get to the limit of change. So thank you.

You're welcome. I actually do have a question. It's kind of a little bit different. So you said that you guys don't have any jurisdiction over Story County. Correct. And they have a bunch of state centers that are going into there. Yes. So their population is like 4,000 plus people. That's right. So my question is, like, are you guys taking into account that Washoe County and Story County are sharing aquifers and what they do could significantly impact our water supply?

It is definitely what we found through the research in terms of the water resources. We share the Truckee system. And so, yeah, the pool of water rights is there. Again, the technology that I've been told, I don't know, I'm not a build data center, but I spoke with a representative from Google, you know, and, you know, believe it or not, I don't know. But she said to me that whether our data center is five to 500 megawatts, we're not going to use any water to cool it. So they have closed loop systems. I find that hard to believe, honestly. But I think where the water concern comes from is from the evaporative cooling, which we're utilizing treated effluent. So there's that pipeline that goes from our sewer facility on Vista and Greg there that can ship effluent out to the tri-center. Right now, it's about 700 acre feet is being used, to my understanding, annually. support up to 4,000 acre feet. So the treated effluent could be used as a source for cooling, but there's some issues with that. Potable water might be okay for some targeted evaporative cooling things for small scale, but mainly the closed loop is what we're looking for and a recommendation we're going to do is that, you know, going to try to recommend to regulate by scale so if it's a small boutique data center maybe evaporative cooling might be okay if it's like a couple houses worth of water but if it's a thousand megawatt hyperscaler no right so that i mean that's what we're recommending ultimately we don't adopt the rules that's why we've been chosen because we're not the rule makers we're like a neutral objective party trying to bring accurate information that's all

You're talking about a closed loop.

I toured a data center out there. They do use a closed loop and they use ethylene glycol. And they say they don't use any power except for what they generate. That's what they said. So I don't know.

Again, I think it remains to be seen, which is why we're pushing the monitoring. We want to make sure that You know, we're addressing the impacts.

Earl? Earl Stemple went back. I was from the ground up. Most of what you're talking about, if you need to go there, they took over the whole acreage. It used to be called the one on that side of the river. Right next to 80. I was on that from day one, whether it was in a water truck or whatever I was doing to facilitate that construction. I also was part of a solar plant that went in next door to me called Turquoise Solar. It goes on the whole hillside. Yes. So, if you're going to present this, it's just a suggestion. You can use that as a model. Not the ones in North Virginia that are already given. They're very small, but they're that.

Sure.

That would give us to be like this gal here. I don't know. She had Bible questions. You can answer it better by having that in front of you when you present.

Thank you for that suggestion. Thank you. Seeing that there's 1 more. Okay. Sorry.

Catherine for the record with the glycol as an option, as Rob stated, and the alternative closed loop. Is there any special looking at, like, the regulation things that are being considered? Um, like, special consideration for fire. Or safety that way, like, upping their, their, like. Them providing whatever to make sure that our fire department, whoever is servicing that particular. Location is equipped to handle kind of like the questions like Tesla batteries are real hard to put out.

Yep.

So can we, is that something that, like, they would be required? That's a suggestion financially that they are responsible for making sure our fire department can deal with them.

Yes, we suggest that there should be training and education and preparedness to fight these fires, which operate differently. You can't put water on them for both the computer equipment and the battery energy storage. And with the chemicals like glycol, and I think there's some other ones they use, that's part of the decommissioning to make sure that those chemicals are removed appropriately. All right.

And is there a way to make sure that they're financially responsible for the cost of. Fighting those fires for, like, providing the equipment for the fire department, because it's a specialized service that we as taxpayers are not causing.

Yeah, that is that is a great question. I don't have an answer on that. I have to look at that. Thank you.

Um, so there's no other questions and. All right, final question. Let's take your name please.

My response to that conversation is, are you going to include that information that you just got, which is about taxpayers not being responsible for the specialized fires and hazards of these facilities? Are you going to make that part of your document? going forward. Yes or no?

We're going to research it, and if it's correct, then we'll put it in there. I mean, everything we try to do...

It's a question that I think... I can't say yes or no right at this moment. Actually, that's a question that should be posed, and perhaps the response to it is unknown, but it should be stated and included to make people aware.

I like that. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, I will make sure it's in there. How about that?

Awesome. Well, seeing as there's no other questions and thank you. Absolutely. Thanks for listening. So, we're going to skip item number 8. it's neighborhood development and other. There's nothing new on there, so we will now move on to item number 9 cap member commissioner announcements request. Does anybody have anything?

Yeah.

Okay.

Captain, you're safe for the record. I just want to say 1, thank you for letting me join the cabinet. But I do have some ideas for future presentations that I would like to see. That I would like on director for discussion. Sorry, I mean, this is that problem. So I would like to reach out to the RTC contacts that Jeremy provided since they've already been primed and given the idea to come up here. To reach out to to talk about enforcement on 395 with the construction. And just a general understanding of how that's being navigated because, like, people getting into the construction areas and then. Parking in the middle of the highway till somebody shows up isn't ideal for the rest of us. And just managing the traffic when it comes to that sort of thing. washer county sheriff's office hope team to do a presentation on homelessness and how they're addressing it in the north valley specifically i've done a ride along with them and they have a wonderful presentation if you speak with the sergeant um and then in dot again with an update on 395 and the upcoming projects and just so we kind of know where we're at what to expect and um If we could get, and I'm not sure who would do it, but if there's someone that could do a presentation on the approval process for new developments and what the input opportunities are for citizens along the way, I know this is one of them, but it's a very lengthy process. So like, what are the steps to get a development approved? And what are the opportunities for community engagement along the way? Like if we could have someone just kind of give us something off of what that looks like from purchase of the property and conception of like rezoning all the way through final approval of the development. I think information is power and the more people understand it, the less frustrating and scary it is. So I don't know who would present better for multiple organizations, but I'd like to see that.

So, that question has come up at a lot of the camps. And I've been working with the department on over development. And they're looking at putting together a complete video. That they'll put on the front page of the development hub that will show you from day 1. when the first, this is, I bought this property, now I want to develop it, there's a fruition of the property. So that's something that they are working on because it is a question that a lot of people do. Perfect.

I think that's the bulk of the plan. Does anyone else have any answers for us?

I do. Susan?

Yeah.

Okay. All right.

Okay, so we will now move on to item 10, general public comments. Veronica Cortez.

Hello, friends. Again, I'm not going to use the microphone. Veronica Cortez, the lunch lady. This time I'm going to talk a little bit about the elections that are coming up in November, general elections. These years election is going to be so crucial on the future of how we live. Of how we evacuate public safety. They've already showed us that our agencies are not worried about public safety. We're going to have to get citizens in there that drive our roads that work at our schools. They have children in the school. They understand what we're doing. And now, apparently, if you vote for the legislator, you're going to have to work with somebody who wants to work on the contents of the regional plan. Their hands are tied. Just like the insurances. I talked to the insurances after the hot fire. I got all this great information. Insurance can't do anything. Their hands are tied. You know why? By legislation. The state has everybody's hands tied. Look at your legislators, see what they've done for you. Look who's up for election. Look who's been working for you. I have been going to meetings for over a year. I am known by every single county agency in Washoe County as a lunch lady. I've had two meetings with the governor. He knows me as a lunch lady. He knows that Sun Valley doesn't have a store. We just automatically got 80M dollars for roads. During election season, so I'm not saying that it's motivated, but there's a lot of stuff going on and in case you've been following it, you're just going to fall into the trap. Do your research we have 2 events coming up for the legislator of district 27. Assembly District 27, we have the lunch lady, me running. We also have Heather Golding. She's an incumbent. We both have events tomorrow. Hers will be 530 Sun Valley Neighborhood Center. Mine will be at Pyramid at the Pizza Factory, also 530. She's interested in giving us ideas on how to run legislation. I'm tired of giving her my ideas. She has her chance. I'm ready to work for you. Insurance, DMV, regional planning. This fire was planned since 2025. They gave us an evacuation already. They told us it was going to happen. I was there. I was there about how you have to retrofit your home. I was there about building a space. I was there. I have been there. I knew this was coming, and that's why I was able to help. Please look into who's running for legislation this year. Look at your legislators, and please, if you're in District 27, vote for the lunch ladies. Thank you. Thank you.

THANK YOU ALL.

THANK YOU.

All right, maybe my name is Brian Walker and I'm running for Washington County commissioner for district 5. Just a couple of things I've been, I've attended this tab several times as well as several of the cabinets throughout. The district throughout my campaign and at the warm springs rule cap and the energy was there and they talked about the. make sure you get the wording right. It's the Green Cross program. So if you do have, say you have to have equipment to survive, an oxygen tank, or you have to keep your medicines cold or in the fridge, if you're a part of this program, then they'll actually be able to pay for a hotel room in the event of an evacuation. So that way you don't have to worry about thinking about how I can get my meds or if I have to go back and get them. But you can just call them, enroll in the program, and then that's a service that they provide. Or if there's a power outage, they can also provide generators. You know, they want to make sure that our communities are able to be kept safe. And then I just wanted to give the community an update. I am going to be hosting a free haircut event for the community out here instead. And I'm in partnership with Eddie Gomez, who's running for Reno City Council for Ward 4. We're going to have free haircuts for the community on Saturday, October 3rd, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and it's going to be at 13600 Stead Boulevard. Out here, so please come out, see what the legal is going to be providing food and we'll have that's for the community, adults and children. So just a way to get back to the key. It's not a fundraiser. I think it was just a way to get back to the community and provide the service to the community out here instead as well as the full this whole region. And thank you.

What's the date of that?

Saturday, October 3rd. From 10 to 1, thank you.

And Susie, did you want to provide a public?

I just wanted to say it was a public. Anyone that was in the fire, I just gave this to you. Nicole, Nicole, Jean Herman wants the residents of this district to call her. And if you want to come up to me after she's got information on a program that's coming, they're setting up now. in different states, but especially for District 5 and for the Hawthorne Fire, and it's been signed, of course, by the President and everybody, but you need to call her and let her talk to you and let her go over what she knows about insurance. She's got information on that. And she's got help for you if you've lost any kind of loss. If you've lost your whole home. Some people have only lost their porch or their automobiles. But you need to call her at 775-358-0555. And if you know of anybody, I can text it to you. There was a journalist in Reno who put out some false information. People were passing this around. And he called it phony. And some other people went on social media and said some other things. So it is a true and honest program. Any program that will help anyone out there. But don't believe what that journalist said because he's wrong and he's going to find out. But the county will announce this soon. And please call June Kernan. And it's for anyone that lost anything. Maybe a freezer full of food, anything taller. Can I text it to you? I'll give it to you. So that everyone can share it. Would you repeat the number? 775-358-0555. All right. Thank you so much for that comment. All right, Angie.

Uh, we will now hear from Melanie 7.

Can I say here that's fine. I don't know. I just hope I don't know if there's any things you guys can do. Um, I went to the county commissioners, but I was hoping. That they would do an after action report for the fires and the evacuations. As for the bug fire, we were evacuated. This doesn't affect me because I'm sorry, just like the mass and can't keep me away from my home and my animals. But I could have up to 100 animals at a time in bed and water. But they kept us from our homes for five days when there was only an emergency for the first night. There was no danger after that. There was nobody working on power lines. No structures were burned. None. Zero. And they kept us from our homes. So they kept us from working. Not me, but others. From working, from getting to their homes, getting to the medicines, getting to their freezers, get into their animals, whatnot. So that's something that did an after-action report for both the bug and the hot pack.

Awesome. Thank you so much for that. All right. Does anybody else have a public comment they would like to give? Seeing as no one else does, we will now move on to adjournment. Does anyone want to make a motion?

I'm into adjournment.

Second. All right. We're adjourned.