Reno: Redevelopment Director Mark Lewis Sacked

The latest casualty of the economy, says the City of Reno, is (now former, I guess) Redevelopment Agency Director Mark Lewis, who was let go in an allegedly cost-cutting measure recently undertaken by the interim City Manager’s office.

This incident was reported about a week ago by local bellwether Downtown Makeover reporting on a tip.  DTM was later able to refer us to a press release from Reno’s PR department, which was dated the day prior to the day that the news was reported on DTM.  It is unknown by me if the press release came out before or after DTM broke the news.

Regardless, something that was noticed and reported on by a website attracting hundreds of visitors a day was not followed up on in the mainstream press in so much as a mention or copy-paste of the release until a week later.

Mayor Bob Cashell, who one would expect to have had a hand in the sacking of one of the City’s highest appointed officials, is apparently out of the country and currently unavailable for comment.  Quotes from two councilmembers show that support for redevelopment conceptually, at the very least appears at least to have a dissenting voice on the council.

Still, this is certainly a grievous violation of public trust.

If it’s time to get rid of the director of the agency, then that discussion needs to be had openly in the public square.  When first hearing of this news, I was at first compelled to a knee-jerk reaction – a strong mayor form of government wouldn’t have this problem, I thought.  Then reading the RGJ article it occurred to me (as I was digesting that Cashell was out of the country) – it certainly could have.  All it takes is someone with a political agenda to depose an official for an effort to be mounted to do just that.

All well and good.  No strategy is static, no job is guaranteed, no approach is 100% infallible.  Here at The Urban Blog I’ve taken a very “the sky is not falling” approach to threats to redevelopment.

But that is beside the point.  The next time Reno City Council convenes, the first item on the agenda needs to be what to do about this.  The Manager’s office has overstepped its bounds.

Comments

[Kyle Weiss]

"Information as needed." I'm not sure why I'm quoting that, but I guess it is more "Better late than never?" I'm an optimist. Until the pitchforks and torches come out.

KW

[Mike]

Let's see how long it takes for RGJ to report that the Redevelopment Agency now can't afford to make it's yearly payments to the baseball developers without reducing the Agency to a shell of its former self (check out my latest post).
MAYBE this severe lack of money is what caused Lewis to be let go....perhaps the city felt well, if we have a baseball deal that we now can't afford unless we halt all redevelopment activity until 2016, perhaps the first person to let go in order to come up with the money is the person responsible for the baseball deal in the first place.
However that's just a cop out, and a scape goat to place blame things on. Truth is, Mark Lewis simply was directed by the council's wishes. No one twisted the City Council's arm to agree to give the developers $500,000 more a year as an incentive to construct Phase 2.
That being said, the city manager has the power to hire and fire any Personnel for the city, including the Redevelopment Administrator. She can do that without council oversight or approval. What she CAN'T do is combine Redevelopment and Community Development into one agency, but I've been told by council members that isn't going to happen, and can't legally happen.
I think this event goes even deeper than I am comfortable reporting publicly, but I'll email you though!

[Mike]

Shoot Ken I don't have ur email address can you shoot it to me at playtonium@yahoo.com?

[urbanblog]

Hey Mike, glad you dropped by. There's a whole big problem with the approach taken in Reno right now - it's awesome that it took a full decade to reappear, but here it is. Time to shake things up. In a way tragic, this latest bit with the RDA is also fortuitous - the RDA has spent itself into the hole of paralysis.

The government can't build everything, can't broker every deal... this stuff can't go on forever on a "case by case basis" Something has got to happen to open up the redevelopment process. Some public meetings probably wouldn't hurt, a little bit of process might be in order here. With 2 new redevelopment areas just having formed, it's not clear if there's an audit process or a systematic approach to redevelopment brokering, project management, any of that stuff. Plans commissioned are completely disconnected from any public commitment to realize them. Talking about things like the retrac corridor study that was done. One has to ask oneself I think, talking about the 83 city plan here - if it was 1983 when the city realized it wanted to buy the post office and turn it into something nice, why did it not start putting away money then for the project? And now that it's 25 years later, why is it that no such similar approach is taken to any of the other reports and plans that have come out over the years?