With two fourth place finishes in previous citywide mayoral elections, William Mantle, a raw data person who likes to ask questions, is now running for Ward 6, the new ward in South Reno with about 40,000 residents, high home prices, wild horses and plenty of new multi-unit apartment complexes.
“They are going up everywhere,” Mantle says of these complexes in his ward. “I mean, there [are] stacks and stacks and stacks of complexes going up with thousands of units, which was actually an argument I made regarding the redistricting that we've got all these units coming online, with thousands more people. It's going to tilt the population to the favor of Ward 6 compared to Ward 3 or 2.”
Like other residents he has his ideas on how to deal with horses.
“We have collisions too often about a dozen or so every year that obviously total someone's vehicle, and potentially injures those owners as well as unfortunately kills, you know, an innocent animal,” he said. “I would like to make sure that we can fence off those horses or control their migration away from our thoroughfare so they're not endangered, and neither are our citizens. We always have to focus on that. Traffic mitigation is a really big deal. We are building all those units, as I mentioned earlier, and that means more cars on the road every time.”
Easing congestion would be a priority for Mantle as well.
“Steamboat Parkway, which has been a major artery, is going to start getting bogged down with a lot of vehicles that it's never seen before,” Mantle said.
“So we have to look at our traffic patterns and reinvent some of them as that usage goes up, as well as ensure that people have the ability to evacuate if needed. And we are in a lower lying level of the city.”
Mantle would work for more fire stations, tree canopies and emergency medical services among several ideas he has for a rapidly growing Ward 6.
Speaking of the current City Council in general, Mantle would like to see a culture shift in terms of responsiveness.
“First and foremost, I'm tired of representatives who don't answer questions,” he told Our Town Reno during a recent podcast interview. “We don't know who they're meeting with or when they're meeting. We don't know when they're in office and they don't have the clarity, accountability and transparency that I firmly believe in is required to be in public office.”
Getting more services into Reno at large is also crucial to Mantle, with many residents struggling to get their needs met.
“We need specialists, we need doctors, we need counselors, for heaven's sakes, we need vets. It's horrible that I know too many people that have to go over the hill to Sacramento for regular simple medical procedures because there are no specialists in our area that could do a quick 15 minute injection that's costing so much time, money and affects our economy and their happiness,” he explained.
Mantle finds there’s a growing disconnect between our soaring demographics and ensuring our quality of life.
Part of his strategy to make it onto the November ballot or to win outright during the June primary, he says, will be knocking on doors and standing outside supermarkets and malls to discuss important issues with would-be voters.
Born in Eureka, California, Mantle coincidentally grew up in Eureka, Nevada, before going to UNR on a Millennium Scholarship, and settling on criminal justice after switching his major several times.
He nearly completed a PhD program in Nebraska, but after deciding academia wasn’t for him, he returned to Reno to work on crisis support teams, with the District Attorney’s office and now with the alternate public defender’s office as a legal assistant.
He initially lived in what is now Ward 6 with seven other people in a house, and then he took advantage of low interest rates at the beginning of the pandemic to buy a home there, which he feels extremely fortunate for.
As a council member, he says he would love to give more opportunities to residents to have a better life than they currently have.
“Ward 6 has a deep seated problem of a lack of spaces for people to intermix and exist, especially for our youth,” he explained at the conclusion of our interview. “I was talking to the assistant director of the Holland Project not too long ago and I praised them because it's a place where kids can be kids together... That doesn't really exist in South Reno. You're either at home or you're at school or somebody drove you maybe to the mall… That's it. There's nothing else for you to go do or be. And so I think these places are really essential that we need to look at, develop and invest in.”