Potential changes to regulations of Live Entertainment and C-scale Noise & more
A preview of the June 11 Reno City Council meeting, updates, and the latest news
The June 11th meeting of the Reno City Council will be their last before embarking on their annual summer break and reconvening as a body on July 23.
A critical question facing City Council this week is whether to initiate text amendments related to regulating live entertainment and/or C-scale noise.
We also have meetings of several public bodies this week. In addition to the Reno City Council and Redevelopment Agency Board, they include meetings of the Senior Citizen Advisory Committee (Tuesday); and of the Civil Service Commission, Financial Advisory Board, and Historical Resources Commission (all Thursday).
Check the Current and Upcoming Meetings webpage for those agendas and packets.
In this Brief I’ll also be highlighting the status of the citizen Boards and Commissions and a new survey intended to help rebrand the Reno Redevelopment Agency.
But first, let’s catch up on what happened last week.
Outcomes from the June 4 Reno City Council Meeting
You can read the City’s June 4, 2025 Reno City Council Meeting Highlights for brief updates on decisions regarding the Park District idea, Rancharrah, StoneGate, Signage, the appointment of Planning Commissioners, and other items, including Council direction on Boards and Commissions (more on that below).
This is Reno has a video overview of the week here: What’s driving news in Reno, Nevada for the week of June 6, 2025 (video)
And here’s This is Reno’s detailed coverage of the Council meeting:
The City’s Sign Ordinance including Digital Signs
“Despite public protests, the ordinance was approved and will allow the Washoe County School District to install digital signage on their Reno campuses and keep them lit from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m., regardless of whether school is in session.” (Duerr and Ebert opposed) - Reno sign ordinance approved on second reading
Reno Fire Department & Reno Police Department overtime utilization
“Reno Police Chief Kathryn Nance and Fire Chief Dave Cochran defended their departments’ reliance on overtime during Wednesday’s City Council meeting.” - Reno public safety chiefs defend overtime use, council seeks more transparency
Short-Term Rental (STR) regulation
“Reno City Council members on Wednesday veered into discussions of business licensing, corporate landlords and accessory dwelling units as they directed staff to begin crafting ordinances to regulate short-term rentals.” - Council takes on short term rentals, veers into licensing for all rentals
This is Reno also posted an Editorial: Parks district effort worthy of support
And here’s coverage of an item from the Reno Planning Commission’s June 5 meeting:
Rezoning a site near the intersection of Mt. Rose & Plumas Streets
Proposed rezoning for site near Plumas, Mt. Rose streets moves to city council for vote (Fox 11 6/6/25)
Next, let’s look at what’s on this week’s Reno City Council agenda.
PREVIEW: Wednesday, June 11 Reno City Council Meeting
You can access the full June 11 City Council agenda and all materials here including the link to watch/participate online. Keep in mind that I primarily highlight items with connections to development, so be sure to skim through the agenda for others.
TO COMMENT on any Reno City Council item for June 11: You can speak in person; submit an online form at Reno.Gov/PublicComment; email comments to Publiccomment@reno.gov; or comment live via Zoom.
There are 30 items on the Consent Agenda, but I’ll just highlight one:
Item B.4 - Award of contract to demolish the CAC buildings at 315 and 335 Record Street
As the Staff Report indicates, “The property is under an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement (ENA) with Ulysses Development Group, who will reimburse the Reno Development Agency for the cost of demolition [not to exceed $700,000].”
NOTE: This also appears as Item B.2 on the Redevelopment Agency Board agenda.
Item C.1 - Presentation from the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority (RSCVA) on 2024 tourism research findings
This is a guest presentation and you can view the slides with lots of stats here.
Item C.2 - Potential direction to initiate new regulations for Live Entertainment and/or create a C-scale noise ordinance
According to the Staff Report, these topics stem from the Zoning Code Clean-Up:
“…discussion included concerns from bar operators and businesses that want to see more flexibility around the live entertainment regulations. Public comment also included frustrations by residents living in the downtown area related to excessive noise from crowds, bars, night clubs, outdoor concerts, stereos, vehicles/motorcycles, and generally intoxicated individuals.”
Staff now seeks Council direction on initiating text amendments for two purposes:
1) Initiation of a text amendment to Title 18 to update the live entertainment regulations would begin a public input process to collect feedback like this:
Should outdoor live entertainment hours be permitted by-right past 10 p.m.?
Should indoor live entertainment hours be permitted by-right past 11 p.m.?
Should by-right approvals for live entertainment be restricted to specific areas of town?
What additional live entertainment regulations should be considered?
Other topics that arise out of the public input process.
2) Separately, initiation of a text amendment to Title 8 to regulate noise on a C-weighted decibel scale (dBC) would lead to a public input process related to the low-frequency sound impacts associated with music and nightlife activity. Public feedback related to this topic might include:
Should the City adopt a new C-scale noise ordinance?
How would the noise ordinance be enforced?
Should the C-scale noise ordinance be city-wide or specific to entertainment districts?
Should the existing A-scale noise ordinance be amended?
Should different levels of noise be permitted in entertainment districts?
Other topics that arise out of the public input process
Recall that live entertainment was the subject of a couple of “Community Forums” held by the City a few months ago, as I last discussed on March 21.
If City Council initiates text amendments on one or both of these items, staff would then initiate “several months of public input and community feedback.” There’s more information in the Staff Report, so if this item interests you, please be sure to read it.
C.3 - Presentation and discussion on possible nonprofit organization registration requirements with potential direction to staff
As the Staff Report explains, City Council requested a discussion of registration requirements for nonprofit organizations in the City, including licensing. Staff could start gathering community feedback and drafting an ordinance if directed to do so.
C. 4 - Updates on the 83rd Session of the Nevada Legislature
The Staff Report has no actual updates, so I guess we’ll get them at the meeting.
D.1 - Public hearing and potential approval of the 2025–2029 Five-Year Consolidated Plan and the 2025–2026 Annual Action Plan outlining the use of federal funds from the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), HOME Investment Partnerships (HOME), and Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) programs.
There’s much more info on this whole planning process in the Staff Report.
D.2 - Case No. LDC25-00048 (7720 Security Circle Zone Change)
As explained in the Staff Report, the Planning Commission was able to meet all the findings for this zone change and unanimously recommended Council approve it.
And now for some issues I’d like to highlight this week.
The Status of Citizen Boards & Commissions
In their June 4th meeting, City Council received a presentation from the City Clerk with a surprise request to pause the meetings of most citizen Boards and Commissions for twelve months in order to conduct a comprehensive review of them.
TWELVE MONTHS!
I’m going to cut to the chase here and state that while I think a comprehensive review of these public bodies is a fine idea, a 12-month pause on their meetings is not.
You can read This is Reno’s coverage of the item here: City clerk, manager ask for year-long suspension of nonessential boards (updated)
The City Clerk suggested the 12-month pause for these “non-mandated” bodies:
And here’s her outline of how the 12-month review would proceed:
I need to be clear that the Staff Report for this item did not include the suggestion of a 12-month pause or this proposed outline.
This proposal is supposedly unrelated to the 90-day pause on the staffing of certain Boards and Commissions enacted on May 1st by City Manager Jackie Bryant, who in this meeting distanced herself from the City Clerk’s proposal. Here’s what she said:
“I didn’t pause Boards and Commissions; I said I need staff not to work on them for 90 days. They certainly could have gone on without my staff if it were possible to do that, but I needed to reorganize some stuff, and I’m almost done with that. So I don’t want to conflate that with a resolution for me. So I just want to make sure that any resolution being requested is not about my pausing staff on certain boards and commissions for up to 90 days. I want to make that clear for the record because I feel like there might be some kind of confusion around that.”
I know I certainly conflated the two. And while I can understand the need to undertake a review of Boards and Commissions, they should not be unilaterally paused while that review is underway. In fact, continuing to convene them is the only way to openly and effectively involve their board members and commissioners, as well as those who regularly attend their meetings, in that comprehensive review. The City Clerk’s office can still conduct its analysis, formulate recommendations, and conduct a Strategic Priorities workshop with Council as outlined above.
City Council already concluded that the Neighborhood Advisory Boards and Recreation & Parks Commission should be exempted from the pause, and that meetings for other bodies could be held at the discretion of the City Manager. But just this week we’re already seeing “Special” meetings of several of those “non-mandatory” bodies that have important business to conduct, so the idea of some sweeping pause seems not just unwise but unrealistic and confusing.
It’s also, in some cases, impossible. For instance, as a former member of the Historical Resources Commission, I know that the HRC must meet four times per calendar year for the city to retains its status as a Certified Local Government, which is what allows the City to operate an HRC and a Historic Register. Lose that designation, and you could lose both. So right away, you can pop that Commission back on the list of mandatory Boards and Commissions that need to meet at least quarterly.
Overall, I think this is a well-intentioned idea, but not one that City Council should support. The pause has to be formalized in a written resolution that they would adopt in July, so now is the time to let them as well as the City Manager and City Clerk know how we feel about it. You can find all of their contact information here.
Rebranding the Reno Redevelopment Agency
The City has just issued a survey to assist the consultants hired to rebrand the Reno Redevelopment Agency (RDA). You can find the link to it here.
From the time this “rebrand” was first contemplated, I have not understood the need. This is a statutory agency focused on redevelopment, after all; it’s not Burger King. I just went through the whole survey, and was astounded to see questions like these:
What kind of city do you want Reno to become in the next 10-15 years?
What are the biggest challenges facing Reno’s urban areas today?
And then there’s this one:
What should the role of Reno’s Redevelopment Agency be? (Pick 3)
Great questions, right? But here’s the problem.
These aren’t branding questions. They’re questions about what the RDA should do, what types of projects it should prioritize, what problems it should try to solve, and what type of city its actions should strive to create.
In other words, this is the public survey that the City should have conducted before they relaunched the agency and adopted all the documents to govern it—documents that were created by an outside consultant last year with no public input.
And now, the public is supposed to tell the City what we think the role of the RDA should be and do, as though that’s just a matter of rebranding?
Wouldn’t that perhaps have been a good thing to do before the RDA adopted its “Participation Programs and Processes”? Or created a whole rubric for how the Agency would evaluate applications for redevelopment financing? Or started to accept those applications? Or evaluated its first high profile applicant?
There’s also a question on how to “position” the RDA—as City Builders? Storytellers for Reno? A visionary team? A catalyst for new ideas & information? A convener of information? A preserver of Reno’s history? A partner to residents & businesses?
But even that is disconnected from what the RDA actually does. What do the documents already tell us that it does? Who are its staff, what tools do they have, how do they interface with others, and what are they actually empowered to do?
Do we want the RDA to be an advocate for preserving historic buildings? I certainly hope so! But if that response isn’t in the top three, will the RDA not prioritize it?
The most important characteristic of a successful brand isn’t that it makes you look or sound good or sell more stuff; it’s that it’s TRUTHFUL. Any new RDA brand has to align with what the RDA actually does, or else you’re just creating two parallel tracks: what the RDA does and what it SAYS it does.
So as I look at this survey, it seems to me that one of two things is true:
This isn’t just a branding survey, but is actually a visioning survey that will help determine what the RDA will actually do and prioritize (in which case we should be told that, it should actually do that, and it should be called something else); or
This is just a branding survey and its outcome won’t actually change the RDA’s role and priorities (in which case, it shouldn’t be asking what people think the RDA should do and prioritize, since that’s already been decided).
Either way, something is being fundamentally misrepresented here. Marketing folks love to say that “Perception is Reality,” but this rebrand needs to be firmly grounded in reality for that perception to be accurate. And I’m not seeing that in this survey.
Tuesday, June 10: RTC “Sixth Street for All” meeting
The RTC will hold public meeting about the “Sixth Street for All” project on June 10th at the Washoe County Senior Center from 4-7pm. There, residents can learn about the project to improve safety on the Sixth Street corridor from N. Virginia Street eastward to the intersection of E. Sixth Street and E. Fourth Street. All public meeting materials will be available online starting June 9 at SixthStreetForAll.com.
Friday, June 13: Council Connect meeting with Ward 5 Councilmember Devon Reese
NEWS DIGEST: The latest in local urban development
Landscape Maintenance Districts (LMDs) - a This is Reno special series
Miscellaneous development-related news
Reno is losing millions in uncollected parking fees, report finds (RGJ 6/6/25)
What’s being built on Mount Rose Highway near the Summit Reno mall? (RGJ 6/6/25)
121 California Ave building goes up for sale (formerly Sundance Books) (Downtown Makeover 6/2/25)
First permit submitted for 215 West 4th, the Bonanza Inn conversion to The Breeze (Downtown Makeover 6/6/25)
Sign permits for 960 South Virginia reveal more tenants (Downtown Makeover 6/6/25)
And that’s a wrap for today. Have a great week!
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.