What does "Community Engagement" mean to you?
As most Reno Boards & Commissions remain on hold, it's time to ask some questions.
The sudden “90-day hiatus” of more than a dozen City of Reno Boards and Commissions as of May 1 took us all by surprise. And the public explanation was minimal, consisting solely of a City memo that was picked up by some media (& me).
We were told that the temporary hiatus will enable the City to conduct a comprehensive review of its community engagement strategies, in order to “ensure our strategies meet the needs and preferences of the community and staff resources are used to meet these needs in the most efficient way possible.”
More information was slated for May 7, when City Manager Jackie Bryant was scheduled to deliver a presentation to City Council about that comprehensive review. But that didn’t happen, since the Redevelopment Agency Board’s discussion of the Grand Sierra Resort’s arena project ate up much of the afternoon, leading to the postponement of multiple items on the Council agenda.
SIDE NOTE: Now that the Redevelopment Agency Board will be reviewing projects on a regular basis, can its meetings FINALLY be fully separated from those of the Reno City Council—on a separate day—so Council business doesn’t suffer?
We’ll likely see Bryant’s presentation at the May 21 Council meeting. The memo also said, “on June 4, the City Clerk will present an initial overview of our current B&C [Board and Commission] structure and identify the next steps in that review process.”
In the meantime, the City has scheduled a few in-person-only “Community Forums.” The first, with Ward 3 Councilmember Miguel Martinez, was held on May 6. The second, with Ward 5 Councilmember Devon Reese, was just announced late last week and will be held TOMORROW, May 13 at 5:30pm at City Hall.
That’s practically no notice, just like the previous one, with little information about what to expect there. Here’s how the May 13 “forum” was announced on Facebook:
I wrote for more information about these last Friday, and just received some answers from Jenifer Alvarez, one of the City’s Council Relations Liaisons:
“Neighborhood Advisory Board (NAB) meetings while valuable, require significant staff time and must adhere to Nevada’s Open Meeting Law (OML), which restricts community engagement to one-way communication during public comment. In the NAB format, presentations are made to board members for deliberation, limiting broader audience participation.
As an alternative during this period, Council Members have the ability to host Community Forums, an in-person engagement model that maintains the flow of information to residents while fostering more inclusive, two-way conversation. Because Community Forums are not subject to OML, they allow for open Q&A, dynamic conversation, and discussion of both agendized and non-agendized topics. Presentations will be made directly to the public, followed by a moderated discussion where all attendees, not just board members, are encouraged to engage.
Community Forums will only be held in person or virtually but not both, to minimize staffing needs and help the City better manage resources during this evaluation period.”
As the City begins its assessment of the “needs and preferences of the community,” I’d like to encourage all of us to begin to think about what “community engagement” means to us, and what we hope to gain from it.
And because my focus here is on land development and other actions that physically shape the community in which we live—let’s start to ask ourselves what we like, dislike, and hope to improve about the communication between the City and residents regarding the current status and future planning of our community.
The public bodies where those matters have traditionally been discussed are the Neighborhood Advisory Boards, or NABs. And I’d say it’s the NABs that have received the rockiest treatment of all of the citizen Boards and Commissions for years now. Does the City of Reno government still believe in them? And do you?
What is Community Engagement?
The citizen Boards and Commissions are just one component of the City government’s overall community engagement strategy, which also includes digital engagement, meetings, surveys, forums, and other opportunities for public input.
City Manager Bryant may not have given her May 7 presentation as scheduled, but you can read the Staff Report here and view her presentation slides here. Along with some data showing how effective they believe various forms of public engagement to be (like social media, their new podcast, newsletters, etc.), it includes this timeline:
The Council presentation seems designed to garner feedback from City Council, followed by discussion within City Hall, engagement with external “stakeholders,” an analysis of findings and the formulation of a new engagement plan. That may or may not include the reintroduction of all Boards and Commissions (including NABs) in their current form.
In order to get in front of that process a bit, I want us all to start thinking about what engagement with our City government really means to us. And that means separating out a few things:
How the City government gets information to residents (news, meeting announcements, information about programs and policies)
How residents’ concerns are expressed and conveyed to City government
How residents help determine how their neighborhoods will develop
How residents communicate with City Councilmembers and Planning Commissioners
How residents communicate with each other
These may or may not all be roles of the NABs, or even of local government. But if we’re going to have an informed discussion about the state of the NABs and their overall effectiveness in giving all of us what we need, then I think we need to understand why they were created in the first place and examine whether they have succeeded or failed in fulfilling the role that the City of Reno initially intended them to serve.
Why were Neighborhood Advisory Boards first created?
Back in 1978, when Reno had two daily newspapers, the Nevada State Journal first called for Reno to establish Neighborhood Advisory Boards. Their creation, argued the Editorial Board, “would allow citizens a voice in the destiny of their community.” At the same time, the paper advocated for the adoption of “growth management plans” for Reno, Sparks, and Washoe County (NSJ, 4/23/1978, p.4). The City of Reno didn’t have a planning department at the time (they did have a Community Development department).
As the NSJ editorial stated, “Growth has gone out of control in the Reno area, creating problems including lack of sewage disposal capacity, a housing shortage of crisis proportion, traffic congestion, air and water pollution, and rising crime.”
It continued, “Citizen participation should not end with development of a planning philosophy. Since a growth management system embraces a wide range of public issues, varying from preservation of environmental resources to the pace and timing of services such as recreation, streets and sewer lines, there must be on-going citizen participation.”
“Planning in Reno,” they said, “has been influenced almost entirely by special interest groups such as the Associated General Contractors. The voice of the people has gone unheard amidst the clamor of these special interests…..We emphasize they [special interests] should not be left out of the planning process. But the city councilmen [sic] must listen to the people who elected them.”
As a model, the editorial board looked to Salem, Oregon, which as a city of 80,000 in the early 1970s formed 15 neighborhood advisory boards that reviewed and advised their City Council on issues pertaining to their neighborhoods as well as the city budget and grants for state and federal funds. They also helped to create each neighborhood’s own master plan with the assistance of city planners.
Advocating for “a system of neighborhood-based government,” that 1978 NSJ editorial concluded, “If the City Council fails to establish neighborhood boards and does not begin work on a growth management plan, the citizens of Reno should organize in their own neighborhoods and demand to be heard.”
It took a while for the idea of City-run neighborhood boards to catch on. The idea came up again in 1983 when Reno City Councilmember Janice Pine promoted the idea of advisory committees “to allow citizens to comment on issues involving their areas” (NSJ, 2/27/83, 4C). Advisory boards were set up for a few Reno neighborhoods in response to specific development projects, and the City finally created seven of what they called “District Councils” in 1995, primarily to address issues of land use.
The District Councils were redefined as Neighborhood Advisory Boards, or NABs, in 1998 after a meeting between the City Council and the district council leaders, who all agreed that there was not enough information flowing back and forth between them.
The neighborhood councils expressed frustration that their comments on developments weren’t given more formal recognition, something that it was agreed needed to be addressed. A Reno Gazette-Journal editorial laid out some needed changes:
“As for the scope of these neighborhood advisory boards: They must deal with more than just proposed housing developments. Unfortunately, this seems to have occupied some of the boards most of the time. And while these projects are important, the boards should also tell the city about the neighborhoods’ feelings regarding a host of other issues, such as street maintenance, parks, snow removal, night lights and crime protection.” (RGJ, 2/13/1998, 11A)
The Reno City Council resolved to strengthen the new NABs by giving them an opportunity to determine the neighborhoods’ own priorities (RGJ 3/17/1998, p.5). To improve their effectiveness, the City also introduced multiple tools:
Mayor Jeff Griffin told staff to set aside money in the budget to be used for “projects that would help the community and also familiarize it with the board, such as cleanup projects and crime control.”
The Community Relations department planned publicity campaigns for the boards, including quarterly newsletters. They also agreed to produce minutes of each advisory board meeting and develop forms “to list neighborhood pros and cons on issues”—a precursor of the digital comment forms in use today.
Two new staffers were hired in Community Relations to coordinate the boards.
A once-a-year barbeque for each board’s neighborhood was contemplated.
NABs received funds to implement some of their own projects, staff facilitated their meetings, and they appeared to have run essentially the same way for sixteen years—until the City decided to eliminate them in 2014.
Why did the City eliminate the NABs in 2014?
Writing in February 2014, the Reno Gazette-Journal’s Anjeanette Damon explained that the role of the Neighborhood Advisory Boards had changed over the past two years. Since 2012, she wrote, NAB meetings had often been abruptly cancelled, and of the 90 that were scheduled, 37 of them had no attendance.
There were differing explanations for that decline. The former chair of the Ward 5 NAB said that “the city basically abandoned the boards” during the recent economic downturn, laying off the staff members who had been responsible for coordinating agendas and scheduling the meetings. Due to miscommunications, some members didn’t know when a meeting had already been cancelled, and councilmembers stopped attending the NABs for their own wards.
The City, however, had a different take, arguing that the NABs were not an effective way to communicate with citizens, that they were too frequent and too formal, and that too few residents attended to make them worthwhile.
In the meantime, the world had entered the digital age, bringing with it new opportunities for community engagement outside of physical meetings. After reportedly working for six months with NAB leaders and other residents, the City introduced a new engagement plan, featuring multiple components:
Each City Councilmember would hold a “Community Forum” four times a year for citizens to raise issues, point out problems, and interact with elected officials.
The City of Reno introduced a citizen engagement website and online forum called ThinkReno.org.
The City planned to hold “hot topic” meetings in neighborhoods to address major issues, as needed.
Here’s what part of the ThinkReno.org website looked like (courtesy of the Wayback Machine). It had tabs on the top for Discussions, Forums, Ideas, and Surveys. You can see an example of one of the online forums here.
I can’t tell exactly how long ThinkReno.org lasted, but not very long. I don’t know whether they ever introduced those “Community Forums” or “Hot Topic” meetings.
What did happen is that when Hillary Schieve, at the time the At-Large Councilmember, ran for Mayor for the first time in 2014, one of her campaign promises was to reinstate the NABs. Although she had voted along with her colleagues in January 2014 to eliminate them, she said that extensive discussions with constituents during her campaign had convinced her of their value.
As reported by Anjeanette Damon in December 2014, “She says it was a mistake that has contributed to the city developing policies to sell to the public rather than developing policies from public input.”
In March of 2015, Mayor Schieve signed a resolution to reinstate the NABs, and the City machinery and staffing revved up again, with renewed promotion, colorful iconography, and an outreach budget. You can view the links to some of that activity and promotion in the Brief I wrote back in January 2021 after the NABs had again been shut down, this time due to COVID.
You’re probably aware of the sequence of events since then. NABs were reestablished, at first virtually and then in hybrid form, at the discretion of individual councilmembers—some of whom attended their own ward’s NAB regularly, while others did not. Then came the redistricting process in 2023, when most councilmembers stopped appointing new NAB members to fill board vacancies as they occurred, figuring that the ward boundaries would be changing anyway.
Board membership dwindled over the next year and many meetings were cancelled for lack of a quorum. City positions dedicated to staffing the NABs were lost (and given the current budget climate, might never be reinstated). And even after the fall 2024 election, the NABs for the newly-reconfigured Ward 5 and Ward 6 were never constituted and have never met.
Which brings us to today, when it sounds like City Hall is once again questioning the effectiveness of the NABs, even as the City’s own dwindling resources, staffing issues, and wildly varying degrees of individual Councilmember attention have exacerbated (one might even say caused) the problems they face.
Have the NABs even stood a chance, under these circumstances?
What forms of community engagement would you prefer?
As neighborhood residents contemplate the future of our engagement with city government, let’s think through our frustrations regarding development in particular and ponder the nature of the problems we experience most:
Are residents being given enough information through the proper channels to know what the City of Reno is planning? And take The Barber Brief out of the equation for the moment—I obviously devote a great deal of time to gathering information from various City of Reno and media channels and disseminating it to you, but this was never intended to be a permanent initiative and it won’t last forever. Would you still feel adequately informed, were the Brief to go poof?
Are you satisfied with the City’s current use of social media platforms like Facebook, X, and NextDoor, and do you even see them? If you’re technically a “follower” of the City, do you regularly check those feeds for ongoing info?
Are residents given enough opportunities to provide input to City government about proposed developments and initiatives, in ways that seem meaningful?
Do online surveys, discussions, and forums reach a large enough percentage of city residents?
Do residents feel that their input, even when heard and received, is seriously considered by members of the Planning Commission and/or City Council?
Do residents feel they have enough opportunities to communicate with each other about issues facing their neighborhoods?
Do residents feel they are given enough opportunities to initiate their own plans for their neighborhoods, as intended when NABs were first created?
The answers to these questions can help determine the form of possible future solutions. For instance:
Would you value access to online forums where all residents can be part of the same conversations, visible to the public, City staff, and Councilmembers alike? If so, we might want to encourage reintroducing something like "ThinkReno.org” with its online forums and discussions that are available to everyone, rather than relying on commercially-run social media platforms like Facebook, X, or NextDoor. (If you look at the SpeakUp support page, you’ll see that the City has access to multiple “citizen participation tools,” including Discussions and Forums, using its current software.)
Do you think that Councilmembers might take your interests more seriously if you had more opportunities to meet them in person? If so, how can those meetings be structured to facilitate meaningful conversations about the issues?
Do you feel that neighborhood concerns are effectively transmitted from NABs to the Planning Commission and City Council, or do you feel like you have to speak or comment at each of those meetings in order to ensure your position is heard? What solutions might be introduced to eliminate the need to keep repeating the same comments and concerns over and over again?
Do you think that regularly scheduled, in-person, neighborhood-scale meetings are critical in order to generate a sense of shared community interests, to meet our neighbors, and to facilitate group actions to make our communities better? And if so, do we think that City government is best equipped to set the terms of those community groups, or would you rather help establish some of your own?
What does your neighborhood mean to you?
Obviously, the use of the word “neighborhood” in “Neighborhood Advisory Boards” is a bit of a misnomer, since each Reno city ward is a great deal larger than a neighborhood. But Reno also doesn’t have a lot of formal or informal neighborhood designations, as you see in larger cities like Portland or San Francisco.
We often refer to areas by the name of a development, like Caughlin Ranch or Double Diamond. Some business districts like MidTown have come to designate areas that are both commercial and residential. But a true sense of neighborhood community happens organically. And I think we’re seeing more and more of it all the time.
Over the past few months alone, we’ve seen residents bonding together over various developments being proposed for their neighborhoods, from downtown to the Hunter Lake area to Lakeridge to Rancharrah. You’ve met with each other, organized email groups, attended meetings, even waved and posted signs. You care about each other.
No matter your position on those issues, I think we can all agree that establishing a sense of physical community, connecting in a real way with the people who live around us, is more important than ever. And the key to building a strong community is to keep in touch with each other, not just sporadically, or at times of reaction or adversity, but on a continual basis, getting to know each other—yes, in order to raise our collective voices when desired, but also to talk about what we want to see and build in our neighborhoods. It can be challenging to try to orchestrate that kind of ongoing connection, but it’s easier when the task is shared.
Is this a job for the government? I don’t know. I think ward-based communication is key, but true neighborhood connection is just as critical. And the time to start thinking about all of this is now. If we can establish neighborhood groups outside of the government, we can keep track of how responsive our local representatives are to our neighborhoods’ concerns. And when local elections roll around, we can help educate others in our community about the candidates, and if we don’t feel they have been responsive, we can work together to elect representatives who we feel are actually representing our interests, whether that’s the incumbent or someone new.
Does that idea appeal to you? If so, maybe we can start to share resources for how to strengthen our own sense of neighborhood community in order to take some control over the situation as we ponder what we want our City government to provide for us.
What development projects are moving forward during this hiatus?
I want to thank Reno Planning Commissioner Manny Becerra, who posted this comment on my May 2 Alert about the sudden board and commission “hiatus”:
“While this pause plays out, I want folks to know: your voice/input still matters. You can still share input - positive, neutral, or critical - with the Reno Planning Commission and City Council, as we’re still reviewing projects and making decisions that impact your neighborhoods.
Public Comment Form links can be found below:
Planning Commission: https://www.reno.gov/government/boards-commissions/d-r/planning-commission
City Council: https://www.reno.gov/government/city-council
Keep showing up and speaking up.”
That’s more information than the City provided, and I’m very grateful for it, thanks.
On that note, if you want information on specific projects that are heading to the Planning Commission and/or City Council in the coming weeks and months, you can find a list of recent permit applications submitted to the city on the Land Development Projects webpage. Scroll down to access links to recent Development Projects newsletters, which include tentative dates for public review, and down even further to see a map of where the projects would be constructed.
BRIEF DIGEST: Previews and Updates - Week of May 12
Upcoming City meetings for the week of May 12, 2025 are listed here. Due to the hiatus, there aren’t many, just the Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility Joint Coordinating Committee (5/14) and the Financial Advisory Board (5/15).
So here’s a little overview and recap of some recent developments.
The current City of Reno budget
The City of Reno’s Financial Advisory Board will meet on Thursday, May 15 at 3:30pm. Their extensive agenda includes a financial report and budget update on Fiscal Year 2025 to date; discussion of the city’s current debt position, annual risk assessments of City departments, activities, and processes; the recommended budget and fee schedule for Fiscal Year 25/26; an audit regarding take home vehicles, and other audits. To register to watch/participate online, click here.
Here are a few recent stories about the City’s current budget situation:
City of Reno braces for millions in cuts ‘absent some miracle’ (Kelsey Penrose, This is Reno, 5/7/25)
City proposes 16% sewer rate fee hikes over next two years (This is Reno, 5/8/25)
City of Reno report reveals $1 million in parking fines uncollected (Bob Conrad, This is Reno, 5/8/25)
The Grand Sierra Resort’s Arena Project
You’ve likely heard that TIF assistance for the Grand Sierra Resort’s arena project was approved by the Redevelopment Agency Board (City Council) by a vote of 5-2. I was particularly struck by the number of individuals (four) who were given time for lengthy prepared remarks in support of the application; that no one was told to hold their applause during public comments or admonished when they did not; and that decisions about major expenditures were seemingly made on the fly. Are we setting precedents here, or were these just anomalies?
Reno redevelopment agency OK's property tax reimbursement plan for GSR arena project (Jaedyn Young, Reno Gazette-Journal, 5/7/25)
Reno council approves $61M in tax incentives for GSR arena project (Ben Margiott, News4, 5/8/25)
Shovels up: GSR Arena's public-money request passes redevelopment board via a 5-2 vote (Chris Murray, Nevada SportsNet, 5/8/25)
GSR arena approved: Here’s what was discussed (Kelsey Penrose, This is Reno, 5/12/25)
Miscellaneous Issues
Reno Police launch new "No Loitering Program" (Makayla Hardy, 2NewsNevada, 5/8/25)
Washoe County library budget secure through 2026, officials confirm (Bob Conrad, This is Reno, 5/11/25)
Be sure to check out my Citizen Guide for helpful resources and links to help anyone become more informed and engaged in issues related to urban development (& more) in Reno.
You can view this and prior newsletters on my Substack site, subscribe to receive each new edition in your email inbox, and follow the Brief (and contribute to the ongoing conversation) on X, Facebook & Instagram. If you feel inspired to contribute, you may purchase a paid subscription through Substack or contribute via Venmo at @Dr-Alicia-Barber or via check to Alicia Barber at P.O. Box 11955, Reno, NV 89510.
The NABs (if they are continued) need to start focusing on Policy over projects to stay meaningful. We in the design profession consider presenting to the NABs a necessary evil and we purposefully provide the least amount of information possible because we really don't care what an "advisory" board has to say. We deal with Building and Planning Codes, the NABs tend to deal with Emotion. Look at the Mayberry Jiffy Lube - a project that generates less traffic than the existing parking lot. 100% compliant with all codes, yet the neighborhood organized to stop the imminent slaughter of Jakub an Taylor trying to cross a street with LESS traffic, (this project was denied based on an arcane preexisting SUP that will be extinguished and the project will most likely proceed) By the time we present to the NABs, we generally have a code conforming project that has been vetted by Planning and the NAB meeting is just "noise reduction". The NAB comments are not heard because the do do not relate to a measurable standard - CODE.
I am in Ward 6 and I would *love* to help push forward any kind of initiative that helps our community actually communicate with each other. We need to establish a more thorough and organized community care system both in the individual wards and in the Reno/Sparks area as a whole.