Reno 2026 is a plan which addresses key areas of issues facing the city and provides practical solutions that the current city council and mayor have not considered. My goal is to resolve long-standing problems which many you have read about in the news, and even more that have not been made public. Please take a look and take it into consideration. Thank you for your time. -Eddie
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Paying Down Reno’s One Billion Dollar Debt by 2026
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The Homeless Shelter
Paying Down Reno’s One Billion Dollar Debt by 2026
Did you know that this city is in debt over one billion dollars while owning hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of CITY OWNED SURPLUS PROPERTIES?
My plan, while we are in an economic upswing is to:
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Sell off all city-owned surplus properties—this will accomplish the following:
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Pay down the one billion dollar debt while saving the principle and high interest payments by retiring the bond and servicing debt.
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Create infill development, which is the cheapest form of development because you have your infrastructure in place which includes your roads, sewer, power, police and fire which in turn brings housing costs down, which lowers the costs of homes and rent.
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As a side note, reducing costs of homeownership and rentals is accomplished by bringing more housing onto the market which increases supply, answering the current extreme high demand. As an example, this year Reno’s rental market had only a two percent availability which caused rental prices to skyrocket.
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Creating a blight initiative clean up program through development. The build out from blighted properties formerly owned by the city will allow for the city to no longer be liable for these properties, have to pay insurance on said properties, be responsible to clean them up, and free up city employees to work on parks and other needed city maintenance and services without having to hire new personnel.
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Generate revenue without raising taxes or creating new ones. Putting these surplus properties on the tax rolls, which will be a change because these properties currently do not generate revenue because the city does not pay taxes on city-owned property. This will generate millions of dollars of surplus revenue without raising taxes while also creating funding for much-needed infrastructure which includes increasing sewer capacity and fixing our roads, as well as opening closed fire stations, and put more police on the streets. In addition to the revenue raised by these properties as just stated, the costs which are currently incurred from our city’s debt will be gone and the amount now going to debt payment will become revenue instead of an expense. This will amount to millions of dollars of surplus funding to go to programs actually needed by the city.
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Help stop the subsidizing of billionaires and be more responsible for your tax dollars. Millions of dollars have been given to the owners of the Aces ballpark which is a privately-owned business that this council decided to subsidize a million dollars a year. 3.6 million dollars has been approved to give to developers of the Park Lane Mall Development, which is also a private business, out of the City of Reno’s sewer fund which is financed by the public. These are just two examples, and both donate to the campaigns of current council members. On top of this, Reno’s city council seems to be able to find the money to spend on expensive art pieces and to rehab the arch when it wasn’t needed but they can’t find the money to reopen closed fire stations or fix public pools which were damaged by vandalism. Granted they did finally find the money for the pool but only after a year later and the kindness of local contractors and citizens in town funded the repairs for them even though they already spent upwards of a $100,000 on even more art for downtown. This is an issue of poor management of priorities, not of a lack of funding.
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The current city council’s plan is to give away these properties to their political allies and friends while also sending a tax payer funded lobbyist to Carson City to advocate getting rid of YOUR three percent property tax cap. This will raise your property taxes by 100-200 percent at the point of sale, thus SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASING housing costs for both homeowners AND renters by $300.00 to $500.00 or more a month. There are people who say that the homeowner should simply absorb this cost and the renters shouldn’t but anyone who has ever been in business knows that just like a gas tax, the buyer (or renter in this case) is the one that will pay the new costs. If you are a renter, this does concern you, unless you don’t mind your rent costs increasing. If there are increases in the cost of a house, either by the market, new taxes, or additional regulation, all increases in cost will get passed on to the consumer at the end of the chain. If that is a home buyer, then they pay more. If that is a renter, then their rent is higher. This is pure economics.
The Homeless Shelter
Are you aware that the City of Reno has spent over 35 million dollars on the homeless shelter when the placement and payment for this facility falls squarely under the Washoe County government’s responsibility. They receive all the federal grants and funding for social issues as well as receiving, at the last legislative session in Carson City, two homeless councilors to work for the county, not the city of Reno. Clearly this indicates where the responsibility lays. The question then becomes, “why did the city of Reno’s government get out negotiated and take on this issue?”
The downtown homeless shelter has caused blight in our downtown core, ran off tourists, created an unstable working environment for business owners and citizens, created enforcement issues for the police and increased crime rates, and caused the city council to create a “business improvement district” which assesses property owners additional fees to take care of what is, by law, a county issue.
The county has managed to pay the city only a small portion of the grants and funding that they receive for this issue while we are stuck with the enforcement, higher crime rates and extra costs that come with it yet they (the county) keep the rest of the money for their own purposes.
My intention is to strongly negotiate with the county government to make them take on their responsibilities regarding this matter and if that fails then we will litigate the issue in court.
In regards to moving this facility from the city to the county, currently the shelter sits right in the middle of the downtown corridor where there are alcohol, drugs, prostitution, gaming (which many spend substantial amounts of their checks on these vices) and other unhealthy distractions which hurt these individuals potential to overcome their difficulties. If placed in the county, with effective programs in place to help the homeless, it will get them out of these elements and have a much better chance at productively getting back on their feet. Simply put, without the distractions that the downtown corridor offers, we can better help these individuals as a society and not set them up for failure at the same time by perpetuating an unhealthy environment.