Sue Smith, a former Ward 4 City Council member in Reno from 1987 to 1991, enjoys the UNR campus where she used to be a student, the beautiful fall weather we’ve been having in October, the local arts and theatre community, and so many aspects of the Biggest Little City, but there is one current negative amid all these positives: she believes our local governance needs to open up again.
“I see more and more in the current Council that the public is being taken out of the process. The neighborhood advisory boards, I was on a Neighborhood Advisory Board after I got off of Council, and we would have a project presented to us before it went to the Planning Commission, and we could make comments, and changes were made based on the meeting at the Neighborhood Advisory Board,” she said. “I think now the Neighborhood Advisory Board is really informational. You have very little opportunity.”
Smith says she feels it’s gotten worse since the pandemic. “The council got used to, I don't know how they were making their decisions, through their phone calls or whatever with each other, but they do not seem to be interested in involving the public in decision making.”
Smith mentioned a controversial apartment complex going up on the corner of Washington and Riverside in the Powning District (see recent photo below). A previous approval in 2006 was for an 11-unit condo, which turned into 34-unit project necessitating the uprooting of old trees across from the Truckee River.
“They just seemed oblivious,” Smith said of public commenters. “Now they want to say that this was approved by a previous Council, but it wasn't, it wasn't approved to be what it became by a previous Council. And they, some of the Council people, when you go to the meetings, and especially at this one that I observed, they were an advocate for the developer. And that is very disheartening when you're there for a public hearing to feel like their minds are already made up and they're actually telling you why.”
Memes and angry social media comments have been circulating of late locally after the council members had no votes for Lily Baran’s bid in the Ward 3 selection process to replace outgoing council member Oscar Delgado, despite overwhelming outpouring of support from other community members during public comments.
“Maybe in the selection process, there's a bias about who you would appoint and you want to appoint somebody who thinks like you. It seems like maybe that's human nature, which would be the reason that appointments are not the best way to get the new City council members,” Smith said. “I also understand their argument that to have an election would be a process that would take a lot of time when [we are in] the middle of an election. So we'd have to wait, We'd have that absent seat for that period of time. So it’s a difficult question, but I do think that what's happening with three of them being appointed, [Devon Reese initially, and Kathleen Taylor to replace Neoma Jardon] within their own group is really like, it's like they're generating their own thought process over and over again. “
Smith also finds it strange Jardon and Delgado quit their terms two years in right before the 2022 midterms.
“It kind of seems nefarious because, it's like they get to a point, their successor is appointed by all of their friends, which there does seem to be camaraderie. And then that goes into the cronyism, I think we're all experiencing from the people on the city council. So it's highly suspicious. I don't know that anybody has exact proof of what's going on, but I think we're all feeling a little bit like our council members are feathering their own nests and not necessarily looking out for the interests of all of us in the Valley.”
Smith says she misses the time of former Mayors Barbara Bennett (in screenshot above), who inspired public involvement, and then Peter Sferrazza, during whose time she was on council.
Bennett who won her only term in 1979 was often unpopular with business owners as she was concerned by out of control growth and how it impacted water and air quality, as well as access to affordable housing, issues that sadly have been talked about but not effectively impacted by local leadership.
Bennett, who had a rough life, at one point raising three teenagers after barely surviving a heart attack, got an ethics policy passed in 1982 and pushed to include citizen participation in government.
“I had been involved with city politics because of a project that was built next to my home that did not comply with building codes,” Smith said. “And it was right at the time that the city council had changed. “In that election, Barbara Bennett and Pete Sferrazza were elected. And so there was a change. We started having more of an emphasis on planning. At that point, the planning was being done through Washoe County, so Reno did not have any real say.”
Bennett, she remembers, always met with people and gave them opportunities to be involved.
“Her issue and how she got involved is she lived in a trailer park on Oddie Boulevard. Trailer parks were a temporary use. At any time a developer could come in, tell everybody to move, and the trailers were not easy to move, and she was able to get that law changed and got herself elected to being the mayor.”
Currently Smith says residents and local media should pay more attention to what the city manager and city attorney are doing.
“When I was on the city council, we were paid $9,000 a year. You gave direction to the city manager, and the city manager ran the city, and that was how that was done. It’s become more complicated, but it really does make a big difference who your city manager is. Of course, then, the city manager is supposed to take direction from the city Council. The other one that I would think is not paid very close attention to is the city attorney. And we currently have a city attorney that is trying to take away public standing in any public hearing. Really what it will do is it will make the only one that has standing be the developer. And so it'll take away appeal … all of those kind of things.”
Smith who had been a social worker and then went into commercial real estate says she’s thought of running again, but has stopped short of doing so.
“I’m not going to do that,” she said. “Life moves on. I've got six grandkids and I've got other things that I'm involved in, but I certainly try to give … a piece of my mind on a regular basis.”
To those disillusioned with current practices, she says they should not give up hope, while still pushing for change.
“You can be involved on the outside as well as on the inside,” she said. “You need to educate yourself about how the system works and take your anger into actually educating yourself as to why things are happening.” She says this was the approach Bennett once took, and that eventually made her victorious as mayor, even though she had lost previous elections for other posts.