The Reno City Council on Wednesday heard a presentation on “Safe Scape” compliance updates, which featured council members arguing about whether businesses should be held accountable for crimes in and around their stores.
In January 2022, an ordinance was adopted by council members relating to the sale of alcoholic beverages in downtown Reno. As a part of this, the Safe Scape regulation that previously existed in the land development city code was carried over.
“These are all existing licenses in the downtown area that are required to have an annual inspection where we go through to make sure they’re meeting certain criteria in Safe Scape,” Lance Ferrato, the city’s director of business licensing, said. “We do a checklist, interviews with staff, then compile a report. All of these are recommended for approval.”
The city’s goal has been to reduce crime and blight in the downtown core.
To sell alcohol within the specific zone, a business must sell fresh or frozen perishable foods, limit alcohol serving sizes (such as outlawing the sale of single-shot bottles), create a buffer area around the business and meet city requirements on applications and compliance.
All businesses were given 18 months to comply with the new standards which went into effect in July 2023. Annual reviews began in October 2023. Between January 2022 and October 2023, compliance officers contacted businesses through correspondence and in-person visits to remind them of the new rules.
Council members told staff that during the annual review, they would also like to see calls for service for the preceding six months. Calls for service, which include medical and law enforcement requests, have recently been a determining factor in whether to revoke licenses for certain downtown businesses.
Wrightway Market’s alcohol license was revoked in 2023 after Reno Police and code enforcement officials said the market attracted crime. The business’s owners said it was the bus station across the street and other Fourth Street attractions that created the crime, not their alcohol sales.
While some businesses were noted to not be following the new rules on multiple business checks, such as selling hard alcohol in containers less than 375 mL, or having an ATM too close to the entrance, all reviewed businesses were found to be in compliance as of July 2024.
Most businesses were in compliance by May 2024 when compliance checks began, but several needed two or even three re-checks and only came into compliance earlier this month.
This, according to Council member Kathleen Taylor, is an indication that businesses are flouting the new regulations.
“We are spending a lot of time making sure people are in compliance when we’ve already been there one or two times,” Taylor said. “Is there a time we say ‘Forget it, you don’t get this privileged license?’’”
The purpose of the agenda item was to discuss the Safe Scape walkthroughs, of which all businesses reviewed were found to be in compliance, but discussions turned again and again to the topic of calls for service.
Taylor said that while calls for service are going down on average across all of the businesses surveyed in the downtown sector, the few businesses that aren’t experiencing a decrease indicate a problem.
Ferrato said that calls for service may not go down and could even increase depending on police initiatives happening at the time.
Taylor said that for businesses where calls for service continue to go up or remain unchanged and that also need multiple re-checks to come into compliance, the number of checks should be limited to two before the license is revoked.
“I want a clean and safe downtown,” Taylor said.
Mayor Hillary Schieve agreed, stating that she did not want to approve any licenses if businesses were not in compliance with inspections.
Council member Meghan Ebert said calls for service need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis because businesses are being treated unfairly for calls of service that they shouldn’t be held responsible for.
“I want to know what the calls for service were and where they were going to,” Ebert said. She gave an example that when the Lakemill Maxi Mart had its license revoked to sell alcohol, one of the reasons cited was calls for service. However, many of the calls were specific to the Lakemill Lodge, not the store. Calls to the lodge included complaints of human trafficking, stolen cars and medical incidents.
Ebert also said that denying liquor licenses does not stop the behavior, but rather, moves it to another location.
“Since Wrightway had their liquor license removed, now calls for service have increased at Fireside [Market on Fourth Street],” Ebert said. “The issue is the location, not a liquor license. It’s the proximity to the bus station. I think that’s pretty clear based off the data we now have.”
At the time Wrightway had its license revoked, it was pointed out that the crime being documented often had nothing to do with the market itself, but that the market was being targeted as the location when calls to police were made.
Council member Devon Reese disagreed. He said analyzing the calls for service by category isn’t necessary because he trusts the opinions of code and law enforcement officers.
“When police and code come to us and say ‘that business is a bad actor,’ … I trust our police chief and our police officers in this community when they tell us a business is a bad actor,” he said. Reese, in his private business, represents police as a union attorney.
Council attorney Jonathan Shipman warned council members a number of times that discussing the denial of liquor licenses based on calls for service was not on the agenda and could result in an open meeting law violation. He also cautioned against penalizing businesses for calling the police.
“Calls for service is complex because we don’t want to penalize people for calling the police or choosing not to call the police because they might lose their license,” Shipman said.
Council member Naomi Duerr echoed this, saying that business owners can’t control many of the calls that have been recorded such as car accidents, medical needs or suspicious vehicles.
“We do not want to keep people from calling police,” Duerr said.
This is the exact cause of a decrease in calls to Wrightway Market, according to the owners, who said after their license was removed they simply stopped calling the police for help for fear of it being used against them.
Schieve said she agreed that businesses shouldn’t be afraid to call the police, but said owners also have “responsibilities.” She said that if some of these issues stem from landlords not properly keeping up their buildings, leading to code or law enforcement issues, business owners should get out of their leases.
“I don’t want to penalize either, but there’s a responsibility on how you do business and who you do business with,” Schieve said, referring to business owners and their landlords. “You should want to rent from someone who will keep a building up to code. But I don’t want the city getting involved since that’s a discussion between the business and landlord.”
Shipman told council members it would be best to push the discussion to another meeting where it could be agendized properly. “It would have to be a thoughtful conversation; I don’t think calls for service alone is a good metric,” Shipman said.
Ebert became visibly frustrated by the discussions.
“Calls for service were used as justification for taking away licenses, and now we’re saying it’s not relevant currently,” she said. For the businesses who lost their licenses, they either had no code violations or they were rectified quickly after the violation was noted.
“We need to have a set of rules for everyone, and if we’re going to use calls for service then it needs to be included in Safe Scape and it needs to apply to everyone,” she added.
In total, 17 businesses were inspected and calls for service were compiled for each. On average, most businesses saw a decrease in calls for service and typically stayed under 10 calls within the six-month period.
However, other businesses, such as Fireside Market, Golden Gate Gasoline and Jackson’s on North Wells Avenue, received between 175 to more than 200 calls.
Fireside Market, in particular, had 211 calls for service, an increase of 121 calls. The majority of these new calls—109—were for a business check, up from 32 the previous six months.
Council members agreed to continue discussions at the next regular council meeting.
