Since first moving to the the Biggest Little City in 2006, just when the Great Recession hit, Tabitha Schneider, 53, kept being pulled back, and is now running for mayor. She says Reno could be so much better than it already is.
Schneider has had first hand experience helping over a 100 businesses incubating as part of her work with the Reno Hive. While growth is happening in several pockets, she says overall business can’t continue as usual.
Schneider raised a daughter as a single mother and was on welfare when her daughter’s father first left her so she says she also has first hand experience of understanding the pleas of those struggling in our community.
“I feel like a lot of people want to do something, want to see change, but they just don't know where to start. So I feel like I can bring the leadership to the city and bring collaboration to our city council that you don't see… I want to be the mayor for all the zip codes here, the houseless people, the people that live in the five million dollar houses and everybody in between,” she told Our Town Reno during a recent interview.
Schneider says she already has a wide range of people she interacts with. “I talk to mothers that need day care, I talk to businesses that are still suffering from COVID and aren't sure if they're going to make it, you have to go out and talk to people to see what they feel the issues are... I also want to hear what they think the solution is because it's easy to complain about the issues, but we also have to come up with solutions that work.”
Accessible housing, a sense of a lack of fairness and bad City Council decisions are at the forefront of her preoccupations.
What she views as a lack of transparency at City Council particularly irks her. “We have a lot of things that the council, our supposed leadership is voting on without public process. And that's very problematic. Democracy … is very fragile. So when you take public process out of that, that is very scary. Everybody in Reno should be standing up for that one. We absolutely have to listen to the public when when they have concerns about development going on in the city or issues in general.”
For one, she says the millions of dollars being spent on the Cares Campus could have been better managed.
“A lot of people in Reno will echo this, [that it’s] not a safe place for people to go. It looks like a concentration camp. There's barbed wire around it and people do not feel safe. So the 17 million that we spent on that could have gone a long way with building a couple towers in some of the vacant towers that are existing, that the city's looking at those towers right now to purchase. I just hope they don't purchase them and give them to Jacobs Entertainment where they get torn down…. There went another tower that could have had a possibility of being something for workforce housing or low income housing… So you have to get out of your office and go talk to people on the streets about what they need and then come up with a solution.”
Washoe County is now in charge of the campus, but Schneider said there could be more pressure on county officials.
“We have barbed wire around it who wants to go sleep at a place with barbed wire every night. We need to make it safe. You know, women don't want to go there and have a sexual assault at night. We could have gardening. We have tons of gardening groups in town. Why don't we have a bunch of people out there so they could do something constructive with their time during the day, you know, we need to have day programs out there,” she said of some of her immediate ideas to make that compound better.
Even though she has a donation page on her campaign website, Schneider says she isn’t for sale.
Schneider says she’s been passionate about change since high school, and that she’s often tried to make ends meet working for other campaigns.
“I feel like with the right leader, with the right person saying, all right, guys, let's come together. Let's make this change. Let's not talk about it anymore. Let's do it. You know? I've just always been that person and I've always been a leader. When I'm passionate about something, I feel like with people coming together, we can move mountains,” she said.
She says there’s a craving for change which explains the high number of opponents she is facing in the June primary to make it to the November run-off.
“People need to get out there and vote. I had a bunch of campaign managers come to me and say, ‘oh, you know, to beat the existing, you're gonna have to raise a quarter million dollars.’ And I keep saying, but why I don't want people's money. I want their vote. And May 28th is when early voting starts. And June 14th is the primary. If we want to see change, if people don't get out there and vote, then we're not going to have a change. We're going to get another dose of the same old, same old. And almost everybody in this world is sick of the same old, same old with politics. I don't want somebody's money. I want their vote.”
Schneider says people keep telling her she won’t win without more fundraising. “I want them to know who I am, and I'm not for sale,” she said in defense of her strategy. “You know, I'm not gonna have somebody give me 10 grand or five grand and say here, you know, but make sure when we bring this development project in front of you and I'm for development, I don't want to sound like I am not for development. I am for smart development and change and growth, but I don't want to be in somebody's pocket, where at the end of the day, they're not going on my door saying you owe me, you owe your vote to me because, you know, I gave you five grand for your campaign. I'm not for sale for any price, not for a dollar, not for a million dollars. I've worked hard for every single thing I have. I have an undergraduate degree. I have a master's degree. I'm a successful business owner. I still work a full-time day job beyond that. I want to be there to serve the people and that's not going to change.”
Schneider loves the uniqueness of Reno and feel it could slip away. “I post pictures all the time. If you go on my Instagram or my Facebook, it's covered with pictures of nature and people are always like, where are you on vacation? And I'm like, this is my backyard. You know, we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I never felt like I ever belonged anywhere or wanted to put down roots until I moved out here because we just live in the most amazing place,” she said.
She says as a steward she would fine comb the city’s budget to better prioritize. “I want Reno to be a model of how you do things, how you do things different, how you do them right. I hope I can be that one person, that one leader that brings that perspective to people that brings people a path forward, that we feel like we're together. We're not divisive, we're a community and we want to tackle these problems together.”
Note: A more complete version of our interview with more of this candidate’s ideas for change will be included in an upcoming Our Town Reno podcast episode so stay tuned.