The Barber Brief has a fantastic post on the Redevelopment Agency, and more specifically, the Reno City Council's plan to add specific qualifications to be on the RAAB board, which appears to be primed to fire up again along with the Redevelopment Agency.
At the last discussion about this at a Reno City Council meeting, it was stated that the RAAB was composed of people like city planners, urban planners, developers and people with development experience or financial experience. Uh, no. That couldn't be further from the truth.
You can find the Redevelopment Agency Board agenda here. It contains three department items:
Item C.2 proposes to substantially revise the bylaws for the Redevelopment Agency Advisory Board (RAAB), including completely changing its composition by adding qualifications for membership.
I consider myself an expert in RAAB meetings, I attended over 23 of them over a five year period, from 2006 through 2011.
This board served as a CITIZENS ADVISORY COMMITTEE. Not a board of experts with qualifications. It's prior name to the RAAB was the CAC, or Citizens Advisory Committee. The name changed in 2009 to avoid confusion with the Community Assistance Center, which was actually a redevelopment agency project, also abbreviated as CAC.
The CAC board was comprised of folks like Dick Scott, who represented Newco (the Silver Legacy and I think Circus Circus or Eldorado at the time), and Jim Hunting, who was president of a bank downtown, and Jim Litchfield, or 'the river guy' as I referred to him, who owns the Reno Fly Shop downtown and consulted/spearheaded the whitewater park downtown. I believe Jim Galloway was also on the board, my memory is fuzzy on that one, he was the president of the homeowners association for the Palladio. At one time there were 13 people on the CAC Board. Michelle Attaway was on the board, and she was a property broker. Matt Orchowski was a downtown resident in the Montage, who was assigned to the board.
But what it was not, was a panel of redevelopment experts acting as consultants for the RDA.
Mark Lewis, Redevelopment Agency director at the time, took the CAC very seriously, and ANYTHING RDA-related would pass through this board on its way to both the Planning Commission and the Reno City Council.
Items passed through this board that weren't necessarily RDA projects, but were asking for 'asks' from the Reno City Council or approval from the planning commission. This included the Longs Drugs going into the Riverboat Building, Waterfront Towers abandoning First Street, Wingfield Towers needing Planning Commission and Council approval for being such a massive project in size, and more.
Even replacing the parking meters passed through the CAC/RAAB as an issue. And if the board wanted to get an update on a certain project, Mark Lewis would do it and provide it at the next meeting, whether it was an RDA project or not, as long as it was in an RDA district, it was fair game.
The RAAB/CAC essentially functioned as a NAB (Neighborhood Advisory Board) for the Redevelopment Agency. All minutes and comments from board members were forwarded to Reno City Council at the appropriate time, usually during the regular and consistent RDA updates Mark Lewis would present to the council, but also when a specific project such as the deal-points for Greater Nevada Field being built went before the council. And the Reno City Council took the advice of this board seriously. It factored into decisions the Reno City Council made. It was a vessel for not a panel of 'experts' but STAKEHOLDERS in downtown Reno, both residents and business owners large and small, who would be affected by whatever the RDA did.
It was a public checks and balances system, because after all, it was public money that was diverted away from traditional sources to fund these projects and idea, whether it was sales tax or property tax.
YOU CAN FIND A FULL HISTORY OF MY REPORTS FROM THESE MEETINGS HERE.
I urge the Reno City Council to go through these and learn what the RAAB/CAC actually was, why it functioned, it's purpose and more.
The RAAB was priority-driven, not project-driven, as was the RDA back then, with six-to-ten priorities that were consistently presented to the RAAB along with updates for each.
I urge the Reno City Council to launch the RAAB again, but make it stakeholder-driven and not 'expert' driven, as it was for years and years and years prior.