Police training scandal, housing crisis, heat mitigation and city hall tensions

In this May 7, 2026 episode of the This Is Reno podcast, hosts Kristen Hackbarth and Bob Conrad dive into a packed week of local news, ranging from controversial Reno Police Department training records to growing frustration over city spending priorities, homelessness statistics and the future of the historic Lear Theater.

Episode description
We unpack new details surrounding questionable training records involving command staff at the Reno Police Department. Ongoing investigations are examining whether mandatory police training requirements were properly completed and documented, according to several sources. Training records obtained by This Is Reno were called “bizarre” by members of local law enforcement.

We also discuss criticism over Reno’s proposed police budget increase, public frustration with surveillance technology partnerships and calls from residents to prioritize housing, mental health response services, and community investment over expanded policing.

The episode covers Washoe County’s developing heat mitigation plan, renewed controversy over the future of the historic Lear Theater and ongoing concerns about how local officials present homelessness data to the public.

Throughout the show, we highlight a growing disconnect between local government leadership and frustrated residents who feel their concerns are increasingly being ignored.

Also included is our May Day protest coverage and the acting Reno Police Chief’s response to resident concerns about Flock license plate readers. 

We conclude by reflecting on rising tensions in Reno surrounding affordability, governance, policing and public trust. Across multiple issues, residents increasingly want greater transparency, accountability and involvement in decisions affecting the community.

Stay current on Reno news by subscribing to our free daily newsletter. This Is Reno Newsletter

This summary was generated with the assistance of AI and edited by us.

Transcript

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Welcome back everybody. Today is May 7th, the year 2026. Kristen, let's just jump right in. We've got a lot to discuss. We'll see how much we can get through this time around. I'll start, you know, some of you, well, I know a lot of you saw my report on the, quote, bizarre training records tied to the Reno Police Department's command staff, which people say are directly tied to why they're on paid leave to the tune of approximately$2 million is what we're told at the city. This is, the$2 million is what's costing us to have the Washoe County Sheriff's Office run the Reno Police Department and keep some folks on leave. So what we found out was through some records requests, we got the training records that are allegedly what's at dispute here. And those records show some very interesting things. I did run them by some folks who have experience in police work in these kinds of trainings and the state requirements for these trainings, which come from the commission on peace officer standards and training. And I will just say upfront that the chief of police and her command staff at a couple different points in time did these so-called executive training days, one of which occurred on a Sunday in 2024, I believe, and another on New Year's Eve day, our most recent New Year's Day. And what these records show is what my sources tell me are some bizarre and dodgy things. One of which is a, the day that they did it, which was New Year's Eve day, which is also the day that those records are due to the state. So it's kind of like doing your homework at the last minute. And on New Year's Eve day, police chief Catherine Nance and members of her command staff accounted for two hours of less lethal weapon proficiency, one hour of arrest and control tactics, one hour of use of force policy review, one hour of firearms proficiency number one, and one hour of firearms proficiency number two for a total of six hours. People said to me that that is very unlikely that they could have done all of that in one day for the amount of hours that they claimed. I mean, they might just be real fast shooters. I haven't been in a quick draw competition with any of them, but maybe they're champions. Well, let's just look at one course description and then we'll talk about the timing. Arrest and control tactics. For example, I'm just going to read the description that's listed on their training sheet for their employee profile. Arrest and control tactics. To demonstrate annually a minimum level of proficiency in the use of arrest and control techniques, including without limitation, techniques related to applying handcuffs, taking down suspects, self-defense and retention of weapons. If the officer is authorized to use an impact weapon, chemical weapon, electronic incapacitating device, or other less lethal weapon, at least annually demonstrate a minimum level of proficiency in the use of each such weapon or device he or she is authorized to use. Minimum standards is what we're aiming for here. I have a problem with that. Think of the education that our teachers have to get and their continuing education presumably they have to get every year. I think it's going to be far more advanced than what people with a license to kill have in our community. So that's issue number one. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of other professions that really take training very seriously and to know that people carrying guns and allowed to use lethal force have minimum requirements and they're potentially not meeting them is a little bit scary. You and I go to a conference every year, Kristen. It's about anywhere from three to four days long and we sit in these conference rooms for hours on end learning all sorts of things at beginning to advanced levels and we're not even... What's that? We don't even need to. We don't even need to. We just want to to try to be better at what we do and in most professions there is there are continuing education requirements and apparently in the state of Nevada those are fairly minimal if you're a police officer. So arrest and control tactics and by the way I'll just tell you a couple different things that people told me. One is to show minimum level of proficiency for example for firearms proficiency could just be pulling your weapon out drawing it and taking a shot. They say that the post standards are so loose that that is how they could be interpreted. So that's I think problem number one with this. Problem number two is documenting six hours of training when we got the surveillance footage which shows them entering the training facility in North Reno at about 11 a.m and leaving just about 50 minutes later. And people have told me yes it's possible they could claim six hours of training that day had they done their training elsewhere presumably why they would go to the training facility the public safety training center and sign up for these classes or do this executive training day claiming six hours but only being there presumably for less than an hour does not make any sense. So that drew some concern from our readers people were very shocked by this and I will just tell you a couple of the sort of contradictory responses I got from people who have worked in law enforcement and are currently working as as police. These trainings some of these can be taken online for example racial profiling that can be done online. I will say though that even at Nevada Post which does audit these trainings to some degree they found that somebody took a pepper spray training online when it's required they do that in person that was not in the Reno area that was in a in a rural part of the state but a post audit found that a rural police officer took a pepper spray training off online rather than the mandatory in-person training. So how these are being done does not seem to be for lack of a better word policed very well from what I've seen. I think there's more to this story I will be revisiting some of this. The other issue is that these are pass fail classes also a bare minimum if you show up and you go through the motions it sounds like maybe you're gonna pass. I will tell you that people have said this was this is a wake-up call not just to local police but also statewide that their post trainings need to be buttoned up quite a bit because what what we found at least the surface or initial impressions are pretty to quote one of my sources dodgy at best probably fabricated at worst and that's what's being alleged with the command staff at the Reno Police Department is they were not being honest with their post trainings based on the records we've received to date that appears to be the case maybe maybe not we don't know yet there are two investigations presumably ongoing one from the AG's office and another that I believe is an administrative investigation. So the trainings are questionable and somebody told me that again because it's minimal proficiency it's possible they could demonstrate this stuff in a very short amount of time but why they would claim specific hours like this I think is some I think it's a legitimate question. So yeah and I think you know some people might say well they're command staff they're not actually on the streets day to day in these situations you know when was the last time that Chief Nance was out you know cupping someone and putting them in the back of a patrol car but I don't think that that's necessarily the point if you can't rely on your command staff and the people in leadership to be faithful to the requirements of their profession then then what sort of message does that send to the rest of the force? The timing the days they took this were called suspect the the amount of hours documented was called suspect I was told that it used to take for firearms proficiency one and two an entire day just for those two classes and they're claiming them as an hour each. And again this isn't personal time that they're using to do this I mean training is part of the job so they get paid to do this training right? I would think they're probably salaried I don't know that for sure. Right yeah you don't have to take a day of personal time to to do your training you do your training during your work hours. Correct and people actually have to be at this facility for them to do their training as well there's theoretically a range master that that goes there and people to open the building and so on and so forth. So I will just I guess close this with with one quote which is from a source who called this documentation bizarre if they're getting through weaponless defense in two hours can you really assess four or five people in two hours? That doesn't seem like you can reasonably assess that I think that's a fair point I think we're going to be learning more about this hopefully I think people deserve to learn more about this and if this is as people have told me a problem across the state that people are just kind of waltzing through these required post trainings then we have a big problem and some of the post audit stuff and discussion from the post commission that I've read seems to imply that that there are even bigger problems as well so yeah to be continued. And I would say that one of the problems potentially is also that leadership from law enforcement is the post commission so when you have the people who are policing the police and they're also held to those standards how good of a policing are they doing? Yeah the post commission is comprised of basically police chiefs from across the state. The fox is in the hen house. I believe there's one citizen on the group. So speaking of police since we're talking about that there was a lot of discussion at the Reno city council meeting yesterday on May 6th regarding police and the amount of money that is being spent on police. 37 percent of the general fund budget for the city is spent on police. That's not even dispatch that's just the police department and there were there was a whole group of democratic socialists that came out to the council meeting yesterday and really pushed back on police spending. They want a there's a nine million dollar budget increase for the police department for proposed for the next fiscal year which starts July 1st. City finance director Vicki Van Buren said that that that increase is kind of a twofold it's it's increased labor costs so when the city was feeling a little bit more flush with cash they negotiated contracts with the unions increased salaries with cost of living increases and and better benefits and we did a whole report on that but that has had a planned increase to the budget every year more than even just you know basic cost of living increases. So there's that and then the city has been kicking the can on vehicle maintenance fleet maintenance for their patrol vehicles. They decided against doing it last year and now the time has come where they really have to do that and it's it's more than just buying a vehicle because of all the systems that are integrated. I mean each police car is basically the office for that officer and so those are very expensive vehicles to replace so they want to increase this budget but the democratic socialist group pushed back against it and said you know we need to be spending less money on policing that the policing that we have is not working that they brought up the training issue and said you know they even read part of my article read part of the article and they pointed to the fact that you know police are supposed to be doing de-escalation training they're supposed to be doing training on how to work with people in mental health crises and yet people are continuing to get shot like Michael Johnson on the Wells Avenue bridge. They pushed back and said we need to have more community support services we need to have housing we need to have reasonable cost of living here we need to have services and parks and and things for the community and less policing and there were a number of public comments submitted offline as well you know through through the online portal regarding the same topic and the city the city council members decided to proceed I mean on one hand they're kind of I guess handcuffed by the union contracts that were negotiated and so those are already agreed upon so they have to continue with those the city is not in a financial crisis to the point where they can open those contracts again and renegotiate them they will be expiring soon so they will be renegotiated and that's actually I believe that's in the budget is to contract somebody to help them with negotiating those hopefully they do a little better this time but yeah the city budget not too much has changed there was a review yesterday of all of the fines and fees that are being charged and council member Megan Ebert called out the fact that you know fees that developers often pay are going up minimally home builders businesses those fees are increasing a couple of percentage points based on consumer price index but in a past year the fee for development appeals and zoning appeals increased from I think a hundred dollars up to about twelve hundred dollars it was this huge increase and it was huge yeah what a way to what a way to discourage people from appealing yeah there hasn't been an appeal since and one of the reasons that the city said that they increased that is because that's what Washoe County charges however you know that's the one that's one of the avenues where residents actually have an opportunity to appeal a decision forging changes of zoning and Ebert called out the fact that most of those changes are happening in her ward and she also has a community of people who can't financially afford to pay that fee and so by increasing the fee to twelve hundred dollars her her constituents have effectively been disenfranchised from from being able to appeal those those zoning decisions and that's where a lot of warehousing is going in a lot of data center proposals and it it affects their quality of life and so and you know council council member Naomi Dewar has also railed on that and they agreed to lower that back down I think to two hundred two hundred and fifty dollars something a little bit more reasonable but yeah Dewar raised a lot of really good points in that discussion and she did question a lot of what those public commenters had raised she she brought those questions uh up and asked about why are we partnering with flock safety yes and all of these sort of AI platforms for our policing yes and by the way you know there was a protest on Friday which really pushed this this issue as well we can I'll cut to a little video of it where they explain why they were protesting and it really has to do with this issue of the city budget we're here today because today is international workers day is part of a decades-long tradition of workers coming together and standing up for our rights as the working class and as the people that actually make our communities great and we specifically this year are targeting our protests and our action towards the city budget which has been corrupt and mismanaged for far too long for decades on May 1st workers have banded together against the ruling class that seeks only to exploit us just this year a bystander saw Michael James Johnson jr an unhoused 27 year old in distress standing on a bridge and feared that he may be suicidal worried for his well-being the bystander called 9-1-1 and because it's the only so-called support that was actually funded the police were sent to do a check on his well-being but there is no unarmed response to mental health calls and so seven rbd officers surrounded him in a circle and shot him six times rbd spent more money on practice ammunition than on training their officers so we're thinking about the city of Reno accepting money from the trekking river fund 16 000 and they're putting over a hundred thousand into surveillance cameras along the river to protect water is what they say indigenous peoples never use surveillance indigenous peoples never utilize generative ai to protect the water i think that it's ridiculous that we are told time and time again when we come with actual evidence-based solutions that we don't have enough money meanwhile they cough up millions of dollars for police budgets mismanagement on may 6th which is this upcoming wednesday the city council will be discussing the budget we're calling for as many people as possible to come there and tell them what you actually want to tell them what they want to be funded and tell them where they can get that money from because i know a little department that has a lot of the budget which is what the police department when this was brought up at council again a lot of these same folks spoke during public comment a council member asked the acting reno police chief cory selfa reno about some of this and he actually responded but he didn't actually address any of their concerns in fact he kind of waffled around it i'll play a little bit of a clip for what he said a lot of people in the audience this morning were concerned about the percentage of increase i think we've had that explained that a large portion of that is because of you need fleet vehicles to be serviced and we've kind of been limping along for the last year because we cut that the year before i just want to make sure that you've had enough exposure to the the budget process where you feel comfortable in a policy position so if something were to come up here where we act on anything that we hear whether it's a vendor change with flock or it's a procedure change or maybe it's a we would like you to look into another program do you feel like you have the flexibility within the budget as it's presented that you would be able to move with policy for the record cory self reno not a manager madam mayor members of the council yes i do for lack of a better term i've heard the public's concerns and i'm going to rinse and repeat what we do with the sheriff's office you know i manage 170 million dollar budget up there we're looking for efficiencies and as the cost of technology and the cost of doing business does go up obviously how can that be augmented with boots on the ground people get hurt people cost money obviously you saw our salary and benefits are a significant portion of that budget so how can we use technology to augment that and look for efficiencies across the board as we're looking for our new cat rms system are there efficiencies there when we come online with that that allow us to remove personnel into technology space and reduce that benefits package so yes i do feel that christina and her team have done a wonderful job of getting me up to speed in the short nine weeks that i've been there but i know where we're going i've got good direction we're working on regional collaborations so we can use the full force of the police department on the street and then where we have regional abilities to collaborate with teams and initiatives and space uh to cut down the costs of our budget we will do so kind of sounds like political word salad to me what do you think you know i think um the city is going to do what the was brought to tears by the fact that you know they said that they had been to meeting after meeting after meeting and citizens had commented and commented and commented and provided feedback and it it almost doesn't matter what the community says during public comment council members are going to vote the way that they want to vote and so i i i find that really disheartening and and sad i think there's evidence to support them saying that they do show up to council a lot they do raise a lot of these same concerns for many many years this is not a new issue you know i think the amount of money they're spending on some of these policing platforms is definitely a new issue but as far as whether or not their input is taken seriously it the impression is i don't think that it is well where is it council member reese said that the they were silly yeah they were being silly because it's an election season yet they've have been saying a lot of these same things for as we just mentioned many many years so yeah it's it's a interesting dynamic that these same kinds of issues keep getting brought up over and over and these same kinds of things keep happening and people say that their concerns are being validated when you know people with mental mental illness or mental health concerns are being shot and killed rather than having their illnesses being dealt with yeah okay on a lighter note we need to do a promo reel for kwnk radio what do you think kristin let's go you want to tag team this kwnk is reno's only non-profit non-commercial community radio station broadcasting online and at 97.7 fm kwnk is the only music oriented community radio station partnered with the reno bike project the holland project and wolfpack radio from jazz and punk to world music kwnk amplifies the community's voice taste music and culture through volunteer produced programming hear this podcast on kwnk at 7 a.m and 7 p.m on sundays thanks tom and everybody at kwnk we appreciate you all right kristin you want to talk about the county heat plan or the heat mitigation plan or the the world's burning let's not let it burn as fast plan you know reno is hot hot hot and that is not an understatement the state legislature actually is concerned enough about heat in washoe county and clark county that during the last legislative session they passed a bill that requires those two counties to include a heat mitigation plan in their master plans um we have been the fastest warming cities for a couple of years now and um so the county is looking for input from the community on they have a draft heat mitigation plan that will be folded into that master plan but they're asking for feedback on that um it's published online there's a survey that's open there's some really good information scientific information about what is contributing to the warming and they have ideas in there such as planting more trees more shade less parking lots less paving so if you have thoughts on what the community can do to reduce urban heat and mitigate some of the heat issues in the community go on to this is find that article and click through to the link to take that survey we did hear from quite a few people suggesting that we put a moratorium on data centers to mitigate there's that threat again yeah in fairness we were on this list well before the data center boom i mean i know we've had data centers in the area for quite some time but you can't do anything without tripping over a data center these days well you know this heat island issue i i think a lot of it has to do with traffic and and burning of fossil fuels it creates this kind of a for lack of a better term this you know atmospheric soup that yeah that just kind of uh hovers into our our basin here and our valley and contributes to this warming effect and yes the more buildings and blacktop we put in the more reasons for people to drive vehicles that we put into the city then you're going to continue having this heat island effect yeah and i think you know i think that there's other things besides planting trees that can be done and i think it's going to take coordination regionally i mean when you think about ground level ozone and you know the heat that comes from that and fossil fuels it's micromobility it's getting more walkable bikeable communities it's improving transit so that we have fewer people driving vehicles and more people taking transit it's um it's it's not permitting things like astroturf in the middle of a parking lot for a flat field i mean that was brought up at a city council meeting and you know washoe county can write into their master plan heat mitigation but if the city of reno is not on board as well and they're permitting urban heat islands to be exacerbated in the middle of downtown then you know it's not going to help much and so i think it's got to be community-wide and it's got to be bigger picture than planting a few trees yeah it's actually not that complex of an issue i'm afraid yeah more people more driving of gas powered vehicles more blacktop all that stuff contributes yeah all right moving on speaking about um heat let's talk about the meltdown over the lear theater which is ongoing yeah and this this meltdown was largely unnecessary in my opinion the uh the lear theater as we've discussed multiple times in recent podcasts i was kind of hoping we didn't have to discuss at this time but unfortunately thanks to a certain council member we do council member miguel martinez sent us a op-ed earlier this week essentially gaslighting everybody who had concerns about the city's vote on the lear for those of you who don't remember the city council voted to go for an rfp process to save the lear and that was all well and good well i mean people had concerns about that but you know that was sort of where the story was left but what council member martinez said or he implied that people were saying the council was voting to demolish the lear quote the body decided not to demolish the lear but to go out to the community and to seek to seek a request for proposals to identify a viable partner that will work collaboratively collaboratively to reactivate it when you say something like the body decided not to demolish the leer you're implying that that was somehow in the cards at one point actually you're not implying you're absolutely saying that and that was never in the cards it was a very strange op-ed i remember uh we got that in and you sent you commented what is this all about the other very curious statement in this was of course defending the fact that the the city's in a dire straits in terms of its budget but he said we remain positive proactive and solution oriented reno is a community of creativity and generosity again all those things are true but putting that within the context of the leer which has been ignored and continues to erode on some level for decades now it's kind of gaslighting would you agree yeah and you know to circle back to minimum standards it seems that that's kind of the city's attitude towards the leer and the community has repeatedly said we want attention focused on that we want this stabilized and you know the minimum of hey at least we're not tearing it down um you know it's on brand i guess but yeah i i was i was thrown off by that and i didn't think that we should run it but i think that it's important to have um different viewpoints and so we did run it because we wanted to share different viewpoints but i think a lot of people were very concerned that that viewpoint was not entirely fact focused it was very quickly uh we we received a very quick rebuttal from dr alicia barber who is reno's historian who generously donated her time to lead a community meeting i believe back in january about the future of the leer and she was also not very happy with the council decision to go to the rfp process she called it a shocking decision i believe was her her word and she very quickly wrote a second barber brief in three days which is unheard of and basically just said what on earth is council member martinez talking about demolishing the leer quote demolishing the leer wasn't even remotely a topic of discussion discussion on april 8th or ever well yeah it is on the historic register and you know this is this is precisely why the leer is always going to be on preserve nevada's most endangered buildings is because of even suggestions like this that oh it could have been demolished but you're welcome reno again here's what she said and and writing that council quote decided not to demolish it implies that its demolition was proposed and that city council decided against it if he's trying to clear up any confusion about what happened this does just the opposite uh very strange messaging from the council member and we and and by the way it was then followed up the next day by the timeline for the rfp process which was also criticized by dr barber that was also another very interesting thing so the the newly released request for proposals timeline i i forgot to include the word timeline in my lead and i said request for proposals which was not correct i i did make a correction on that this morning uh it was correct i mean that that process was also criticized because it it's kind of loosey-goosey and it doesn't really and it's a very tight timeline like basically it's i believe a bunch of stuff happen has to happen between now and june 1 again dr alicia barber says where is the community in this entire process great question there isn't even a historical resources commission meeting scheduled before june 1 do residents get to play any role in composing this quote request for concept proposals before it's issued or are we only allowed to see the final version once it's already out there who will comprise the selection committee great question does this proposed process require council approval or even any public discussion also a good question who is calling the shots here don't know but also a good question we did finally get a response more than a day after i believe about a day after we asked or you asked the city like what what's going on with this and the response we got back from the city was because the city is still in the very early stages of the process no assumptions are being made about what options may emerge or what level of interest may be not exactly what council member martinez said he said that we're a very generous community and philanthropists are going to step up and solve this problem at least that's what i took from his report opinion quote from the city the purpose of the rsp is to better understand what possibilities exist before determining what future community engagement or evaluation process may be appropriate so interesting you know what's interesting about this is i've been covering this for several years now and the city went through an entire study and they put together a report that showed that it could be turned into a performing arts center there were several different potential design options they had that and then someone came forward and said hey we'd like to lease the leer and do this other project with it and at that moment the community came forward and said hold up now you can't just give over the leer to this person who provided an unsolicited proposal you need to have community involvement and that's what really spurred alicia barber to have that meeting in january and to bring the community together the city council agreed to allow her to help organize that and at this point it just seems like they were placating the community giving them an opportunity and then saying that's great we're going to go back to what we had originally thought we would do which is just this rfp process and i think it's such a slap in the face and then to coat that in we have a very generous community and the community will have multiple opportunities to be involved while true also says that we have a very generous community we will give them opportunities to be involved we will ignore everything that they say and do what we want to anyway and that's the message that i'm getting from this whole process just having covered this leer story for several years and i can see the i can see why people are frustrated with this because this is a community treasurer and it's something that i think has enormous potential and you know up until now for the past 20 years there has been no philanthropic philanthropic interest very little anything with it and i don't know magically the city thinks that you know putting out their request for concepts is going to change that yeah the city's taken a very bizarre approach to this entire thing and i think it really just comes down to a lack of as we've talked about ad nauseum on this this show and podcast a lack of political will that is quite foreign in the silver state for making tough decisions i think people are in decision makers i think are are pretty note toast a lot of the time or they're selectively outraged by by things yes yeah speaking of things that i think are elected leaders if we can even call them leaders are elected people in the community are are doing the latest numbers on homelessness in the region came out this week and they were from the pit count which is the point in time count we have stressed over and over again kristin the pit count is a snapshot and by the way the county that that that does the pit count will also admit that what they won't do though is stop making grandiose statements about homelessness based on the pit count it's something we have fact-checked twice now we've editorialized on this a few times and yet the county still keeps making these pretty grand claims about homelessness even while the problem keeps getting worse before our very eyes year after year the latest numbers are not flattering they do show an increase in unsheltered homelessness out in the community but again these are not reliable numbers they are it's a count at a very specific point in time point in time count right that's what it's called it's not an comprehensive longitudinal look at homelessness year after year the county used to have those numbers on its dashboard it's built for zero dashboard they have vanished so we can't actually look at these numbers anymore fortunately we do have some screenshots that go back a few years so we we do have some of that information but here's the latest claim it's a repeat of the last two years washoe county commissioner clara andriola has stepped in for her colleague alexis hill who was misleading people the last two years on this issue she said unsheltered homelessness has been cut in half since the cares camp has opened not true cut in half based on pit count numbers possibly but that's not a reliable measure of homelessness so it's uh it's kind of a difficult situation when county the county keeps misleading people on this issue keep in mind that the county in 2021 reported an 875 increase in homelessness in the region and that was the same year that the cares camp is open there were 80 people reported during the pit count in 2017 as being homeless that number jumped to 780 in 2021 so it's a big issue you know how how this is uh being reported and documented but the the release of the most recent pit count data has the same number of people without a home or a shelter at 341 which is a 326 increase if i did my math correctly since 2017 so still big numbers from where we've been in almost the last decade and basically there's been about a six percent increase uh since 2023 again based on this pit count these pit count numbers which are not reliable they're not accurate but yet the county for whatever reason keeps trying to spin these numbers as if it's something to celebrate and they've gone in front of the legislature to do that and we've continually fact-checked this i mean even hud says these are not i mean it's just a little point in time it's not the whole year it's not counting people as they come in and out of the shelter all that kind of stuff so the the way the county's approaching this is just frankly very bizarre to me why they keep doing this year after year even when their own data even when the pit data isn't that great they still keep trying to say that look we've done a great job we've cut homelessness in half remember those headlines a year and a half ago yeah the wall street journal and reno or uh nevada national public radio i mean just absolute kind of bs commentary coming from the region and uh it's i don't know why they keep doing this but it's dishonest it's uh messing with statistics in the way that you're not supposed to and yet here we are the community can see it you know when you're driving around and you've got people panhandling at freeway exits and on medians and um you have you know i read the code reports every every week the code compliance reports have multiple instances of homeless encampments and people squatting and um homeless people you know defecating places and what have you i mean there's there's a handful every week and i've called it whack-a-mole it is whack-a-mole they move from place to place um to avoid the police and and to you know just get by and i think that to to say that the numbers are going down i think people can see that it's not and perhaps different people you know they they do tout the fact that they have housed they've moved people into permanent and transitional housing which is great um but people then continue to become unhoused and i think that it's a it's a long-term issue that they haven't yet solved they did they did admit and they did have a statement that was accurate in their press release which was quote limited affordable housing for low and extremely low income populations continues to make exits to permanent housing challenging for both sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness they did say that which is accurate but why they keep trying to spice up these numbers as if they're something greater than they are is just i i again it goes back to a lack of political will and a lack of reliable leadership in the region and there's very few politicians who will challenge these numbers and the way they're portrayed mike clark is one of the very few that i've seen meanwhile we have a commissioner who's running for governor who's constantly holding town halls and is selective in las vegas um and is selectively outraged by all sorts of things including when she's elected governor on day one her press release this week announced she's gonna put a freeze on rent i don't even think that's legal if i mean it's not even possible to do on the first day you're governor i mean that is just a bizarre world we live in when this is the kind of outrage we see when you're running for governor versus the spin you put in front of the nevada legislature last year about the region's homeless numbers people deserve to have honest information especially from government i mean isn't it the news that's always called fake news and full of crap and spinning stuff i don't mind that criticism by the way because you know for a lot of news that is the case or news a lot of people let's just say a lot of sources of where people are getting their information is somewhat suspect a lot of the time but people should not be accepting this kind of crap from government and until we get some honest local politicians who are willing to call that out for what it is i think we're gonna continue to see this kind of spin coming from places like washoe county government the city of reno and we don't see it as much from sparks but they're often not in the same kind of trouble that reno and washoe county are yeah they have troubles of their own well that's true but still we uh you know at least they're smart enough to keep their mouths shut most of the time when that happens anything else for the good of the cause it was quite a quite a quite of an interesting week is nothing like super big hit the news but just a lot of super relevant con context and sorry let me rephrase that a lot of super relevant issues that are bubbling up i mean that mayday protest there was a lot of passion there and i think people are starting to get pissed i mean going back to this issue of homelessness affordability how we're doing our budgets and government that was really on full display at not only the mayday protest but at city hall on wednesday people are mad i mean they were so mad that they were just dropping f-bombs and essentially just giving the middle finger to every single council person sitting up there i mean they were they're getting pretty loud and kind of what we're reading online in the comments is like this is going to continue to happen i mean it's they're not bringing pitchforks yet but it's coming it could it could happen yeah and until people are willing to at least honestly acknowledge what the problems are and how they how we got to where we are and then you know if we can't reliably do something about it at least say that or say here's the tools that we have we recognize they're limited but we're going to do what we can with what we have to really help people we don't even hear that final thoughts just looking forward to another fun-filled week of government meetings yeah all right thank you everybody who's tuned in and listened to us thank you for those who comment on our little reels on the social webs and all that fun stuff thank you thank you to those of you who actually listen to these on you know apple or i know there's a few of you who actually watch our long youtube videos which really surprises me because even i don't watch them after i publish and by the way pro tip put them at 1.5 play speed so they go by much faster oh yeah that's definitely the tip thanks everybody thanks to k wink and thank you to you for listening and as always please consider becoming a paying subscriber you get those kinds of reports like we talked about about the police training and things like that that we do publish behind our paywall because we're also running a business here and uh that's running a news media company is it's exactly what i signed up for but it's a little more difficult than i had envisioned so but you know we've been doing it for over 11 years now so well we started in 2009 but in full-time on a full-time basis since 2015 so all right everyone thanks so much and we'll see you next time