Whose “vision” is being advanced in your name?
This week, I’d like to draw your attention to some important upcoming meetings, and also some recent City actions that I’m afraid have gone largely unnoticed. As regular readers know, one of the primary reasons that I began writing the Brief more than two years ago was my concern that important decisions were being made by the City without sufficient public engagement, or even awareness—and that in some cases, the City was actually dismantling processes that had ensured that certain development-related actions were subjected to proper oversight and expert review.
Another problem that has emerged over time is the difficulty of realizing when certain items are even coming up for discussion. That can be an issue, for instance, with items included on City Council’s “Consent Agenda,” which can all be approved in one fell swoop without any public deliberation. It can happen when agendas don’t clearly identify specific topics that will be under discussion. And it can happen when decisions are made by committees that aren’t generally on most residents’ radar.
The City is dealing with a wide variety of issues all the time, as you can easily see with just a quick glance at the official City calendar of upcoming meetings and events. There are NAB meetings, and committee and commissions meeting on topics ranging from urban forestry to business licensing to human rights. For the most part, the City assumes that simply having a meeting listed on its website (and allowing for public comments there) constitutes sufficient opportunity for residents to weigh in on a decision, and it’s generally up to residents to track topics of interest to them.
That’s been made more difficult, however, with the massive decline in local government reporting, which once provided much more thorough advance notice of what our public bodies would be considering in the near future, and didn’t just report on their actions after the fact, as happens so often today. Reviewing the agendas and staff reports for every upcoming City meeting is possible, certainly, but who has the time, if it’s not literally your job to do so?
Providing advance notice and context about upcoming items related to our built environment has been my focus here, but it’s not my job, and sometimes even I don’t recognize something that’s happened until after the fact. So today, after a quick look at what’s coming up at City Hall, I want to draw your attention to two items that I’m afraid have largely gone under the radar, including the potential cancellation of the long-planned creation of a sixth City ward—something that should be of interest to all Reno residents, no matter where you live. Viewed as a whole, these topics raise a lot of questions for me about whose vision is being promoted in the public’s name.
More at The Barber Brief.
The Barber Brief is an independent e-newsletter and blog written by Dr. Alicia Barber on the Substack platform. It is reposted by This Is Reno with her permission.
