By Bob Conrad and Kristen Hackbarth
Nevada’s Attorney General last week ruled the Reno City Council violated Nevada’s open meeting law when discussion veered off track at the council’s July 22 meeting. That discussion was supposed to be on text amendments to the city’s skyway design guidelines. Instead, it was an opportunity for the University of Nevada, Reno’s Heidi Gansert, a state senator and UNR administrator, to share construction and design details on UNR’s proposed Gateway Skywalk project.
The AG’s office ruled that council violated the “clear and complete” standard which requires agenda items to clearly state what will be discussed during meetings.
“The clear and complete requirement of the OML stems from the Legislature’s belief that ‘incomplete and poorly written agendas deprive citizens of their right to take part in government’ and interferes with the press’ ability to report the actions of government,” the AG’s office wrote in its conclusion on the OML complaint.
City of Reno spokesperson Jon Humbert today said the city attorney would not comment on the open meeting law violation, its second violation in recent years.
In this instance, the city’s agenda item was identified as an ordinance introduction for “Skyway Design Guidelines Text Amendment,” proposing changes to exempt certain projects from review by the city’s Design Review Committee. The Reno City Council has been accused of altering, and removing, its rules to advance certain development projects.
The city’s skyway rules had been on the books since 2000 and mandated skyways be reviewed by the Reno Planning Commission and the Reno City Council as part of special use permits. The Reno Planning Commission had come out against the project.
“This whole text amendment has been, in my opinion, a compete disaster; and planning project by project with text amendments to our code and master plan, is in my opinion, a terrible precedent,” Planning Commission member Pete Gower said in June. “Because what happens is you make these quick decisions based on individual projects, not thinking about the ramifications of future projects.”
The AG’s office noted the council’s July 22 agenda item did not include notice the UNR skyway project would be discussed as part of the proposed rule changes.
“While the Council asserts that the basis of the agendized proposed text amendment was spurred by a pending special use permit application filed by UNR for a skyway project, the Council’s consideration of the UNR special use permit at the July 22 Council was not related to the proposed text amendment itself, but wholly separate topics…” Deputy Attorney General, Justin Taruc, wrote.
“What they did in last Wednesday’s meeting, by completely misrepresenting the very subject of the agenda item and allowing Heidi Gansert to have the floor, was completely unethical …”
After the city staff presentation summarizing the proposed changes to the skyway rules, Council member Neoma Jardon asked if anyone from UNR was present to answer questions. Gansert was available. Jardon then asked Gansert a number of questions about UNR’s proposed skyway project, with Gansert sharing details about the need for ADA compliance, beneficiaries of the project, and who the contractor and architect were.
Gansert said the rules needed to be quickly changed or it would cost UNR an additional $1.3 million. She said construction would start by November, with a completion date of March ’22. A visit to the site in late November showed no construction activity.
Following the July 22 council discussion, Jardon referred the amendment changes for a second reading, which was approved in a 4-3 vote.
“The city council did not act on the skyway at the July 22 meeting, but it did act on the text amendment, giving initial approval which laid the groundwork to approve UNR’s skyway project the following month,” said Lori Wray with Scenic Nevada, who filed the open meeting law complaint.
Public denied comment
Community advocates were outraged that Gansert was able to give a presentation, but nobody else was allowed to comment. Forty-seven letters of opposition had been filed against the proposed changes before the meeting — and just three in support — however, those weren’t read aloud.
Public comment rules were modified at the onset of the pandemic by Governor Steve Sisolak’s Emergency Directive 006, which suspended some open meeting law requirements. The city continued live public comment via call-ins to Zoom-hosted council meetings until mid-June when several bomb threats and racist, vulgar comments disrupted the meeting.
Now, public comment is accepted by phone or email before the meeting and included in the meeting’s record. That’s what Wray did prior to the July 22 meeting when she emailed her opposition to the skyway ordinance amendment.
After the meeting, Wray filed an open meeting law complaint with the AG’s office, citing her public comment concerns. The AG’s office, however, determined that Council didn’t violate that portion of the open meeting law, nor did the AG’s office mandate a re-do of that portion of the meeting.
“The remedy we sought in our complaint asked the AG to call for a new public hearing – a do over – on the text amendment, which probably would mean the city would have to walk back approvals for the UNR skyway,” Wray said. “But, instead, the AG’s office said that for violating the ‘clear and complete standard’ the council is required to include an item acknowledging the AG’s opinion along with attaching the written ruling on its next agenda.”
The next city council meeting is Jan. 13, 2021.
Concerns expressed at the time
People protested how the city handled the situation at the time.
“What they did in last Wednesday’s meeting, by completely misrepresenting the very subject of the agenda item and allowing Heidi Gansert to have the floor, was completely unethical (complaints have been lodged) and it’s clearer than ever that the public and professionals need to closely examine the design of this skyway, as the law requires,” Reno historian Alicia Barber posted on Facebook in August.
Barber was one of those who advocated for increased public input on the UNR’s skyway project.
“Four City Council members — Neoma Jardon, Devon Reese, Bonnie Weber and Oscar Delgado — seem to think they don’t need those expert recommendations, and don’t want them,” she wrote. “Subjecting the proposed UNR skyway to the evaluation of a professional Design Review Committee would not make the City of Reno a bad university partner, but a better one, demonstrating a desire to work together to achieve the best possible outcome.
“It would also demonstrate to the people of Reno that their City Council values the expertise its community can provide, respects the efforts of previous City Councils and stakeholders to set responsible procedures in place, and believes that welcoming formal public and professional input into its decision-making process is not an onerous burden but one of its most valuable, most essential obligations.”
In comments on Facebook after the meeting, Council member Devon Reese said Gansert was given an opportunity to talk because she’d been waiting in “the lobby” of the Zoom meeting along with 50 to 60 others, mostly lawyers.
He shared a screengrab of the meeting’s agenda as evidence of such opportunity, saying, “Anyone could enter the Zoom lobby. That’s how it works.”
However, there was no clear mention of a Zoom lobby on the city’s meeting agenda. Wray, today, said she had no idea how to enter the lobby or that there even was one.
Gansert recently announced she would be leaving her position at UNR to focus on the next session of the Nevada Legislature.
