Reno City Council members on Monday got their first look at projected revenues and high-level expenses for the city’s 2024/2025 budget. They outlined to staff their priorities for the coming fiscal year. The discussion included questions about proposed fee increases, requests for more detail from city staff and suggestions for revenue generation.
Council members all put public safety and parks and recreation at or near the top of their lists of priorities. Council member Kathleen Taylor broke out her priorities into immediate, short-term and long-term projects and said code enforcement, abandoned vehicles and nuisance crimes, including those committed by people living unhoused, were the most pressing.
“The nuisance crimes, the homeless, the unsheltered—the [Reno Municipal Codes] that are not being adhered to in our parks, on our streets and in our city are causing a great deal of concern for our community,” she said. “When people call, they have to go to the non-emergency number, and there’s not enforcement in that space. I would love to see if we can allocate some resources to getting that taken care of.”
Council member Naomi Duerr said she didn’t see the need for more police officers but rather “tools that will help them do better policing.”
“I had a few cases in my own neighborhood and in nearby neighborhoods where the real issue was not a lack of staff,” Duerr said. “It was data management. They were not able to take the data of reported crime and be able to synthesize that and deploy the resources were there was likely crime. [Reno Police] Chief Nance is already on the path, and I want to support her on this.”
Council members were also concerned with funding for delayed and ongoing maintenance at the city’s parks and recreation facilities. Initial details in the budget proposal presented by the city’s finance director, Vicki Van Buren, included several new maintenance positions. Still, those would be for new facilities, including the Moana Springs Pool, not existing parks and buildings.
“We’ve been doing as best a job we can with the budget we have,” Council member Devon Reese said. “I think long term we’ve got to find a more sustainable path … the number-one concern I hear from folks is that we have access to great parks facilities.”
Duerr agreed, adding that she’d like to see a capital program to patch park pathways, address deferred maintenance and hire a parks planner to oversee the development of new and existing parks.
“We all know that if we don’t take care of something it will degrade … and people are depending on it,” she said. She pointed to Virginia Lake, where a project to stabilize erosion on the lake’s banks has been delayed for 10 years. She said that there had been more erosion at that time, and now there is potential for extensive damage to the walking path and trees surrounding the lake.
Within Van Buren’s presentation was a list of proposed fee changes, including revising parks and recreation fees to add a monthly membership payment option. Costs would also be based on a sliding fee scale based on household size and income.
The city’s parks and recreation director, Nathan Ullyot, said the quarterly or annual payment options excluded some households who could not generate the larger sum of money all at once.
“The sliding scale would provide a low monthly fee that they would have to pay rather than pay all of that up-front,” Ullyot said.
The proposal would provide discounts on the monthly fees for households up to 400% of the federal poverty level, with discounts ranging from 20-80% off. The new fees wouldn’t raise additional revenues for the department to address maintenance.
Other priorities identified by council members included implementing the city’s existing sustainability plan, increasing payments to the Other Post-Retirement Benefits Trust Fund, increasing the tree canopy to eliminate heat islands, especially in Ward 4, and reducing blight through improved code enforcement and collection of fines.
Mayor Hillary Schieve left the meeting before providing her priorities. Van Buren will return before the council on May 1 for another budget workshop.
