Please come!

The County has refined the agenda: the appeal hearing regarding the Colorock move to Pleasant/Steamboat Valley will be at 3:30 PM (or later) on Tuesday, November 28.  In summary, Gail Willey wants to move his wholesale rock operation into an area not zoned for industrial uses.  It will be a travesty for the neighbors and set a precedent in the county for gross violations of zoning.  This move has been denied by the CAB, then the Planning Commission, then the appeal to the Board of County Commissioners was denied, then the proposal to Board of Adjustment was denied.  On 11/28, Willey will appeal the Board of Adjustment decision.  This is truly the equivalent of putting a freeway in your yard.  Let’s give credence to the state motto “of Battle Born” and take the fight to the commissioners.  This is a fight for all of unincorporated Washoe.  Express your rage at the gross violations and non-compliances and stand with your neighbors next Tuesday.  Rumor has it that Commissioner Lucey is in favor of Colorock over the residents (voters).  Being polite and reasonable has had no visible effect on this council.  It’s time to make a little fuss and look toward 2018 for change.

Put it on your calendar: Tuesday, November 28!  The Board of County Commissioners will hear an appeal from the Gail Willey Colorock company to overturn the Board of Adjustment decision to deny their plan to move the operation into the Pleasant/Steamboat Valley area.  This is a travesty!  It has been denied by the CAB, the Planning Commission, the appeal to the Planning Commission, and the Board of Adjustment.  Now, they will appeal the Board of Adjustment decision to the Board of County Commissioners.  It is terrible for the neighbors and a scary precedent that any zoning rule can be overturned by the corrupt board.  It’s not that different than getting a freeway in your backyard.  Those masters-of-malfeasance (the county commissioners) will be led by our own Bob Lucey who reportedly supports this move.  I know we’re all exhausted from the unrelenting county scandals, but please attend the meeting and support your neighbors.  You may find it satisfying to assert yourself against the corrupt machine.  I’ll update you with the time when we have that detail.

Check out the updated “In the Media” page (LINK).  You’ll see that your perceptions about the slowing real-estate market and rage at the senseless development is shared by residents all over the county.  Tolles (developer) says “Houses aren’t unaffordable, it’s that wages are too low.”  Irony is still plentiful.

Few things are more scary than out-of-control development in Washoe.  The latest is the proposed change to zoning in the Zolezzi/Lenz area to allow higher density housing.  There is a neighborhood meeting scheduled for Thursday, 11/2, at 6PM at the Lenz elementary school.  Attend to fight the increased housing density in our area. Zolezzi_School.

We have begun to meet with experienced principals to discuss our strategy going forward.  The priority is to prepare for the 2018 election.  Our present challenge is to find a candidate with high ethical standards who could defeat our Commissioner; Robert Lucey.  Given the political demographic, we’re most likely to win with a Republican candidate who will need to defeat Lucey in the primary.  But, given the national political climate, we may see a higher than normal turnout by the Democrats.

I was pleased to see the Reno Gazette Journal publish my One View piece yesterday.  I was disappointed that the statements the commissioners made to me were edited out.  The commissioners themselves really made my argument.  The editor told me that they did not want to publish them since they did not corroborate them.  Links below are for both the published (edited) version and for the submitted (original) version.

Published in RGJ 10/30/17: RGJ_103017

Submitted 10/21/17: One-View_SCW_102117

I’ve seen no activity on the Ascente property in the last few weeks.  The tracked drill is still sitting on its transport truck at the end of Fawn Lane.

We have decided to refund the GOFUNDME account that was set up to pay for a lawyer to  support a petition for judicial review of the denial of our appeal.  Those of you that contributed should see an e-mail from GOFUNDME indicating the refund.  As it turned out, we were unable to get a local lawyer to take the case, and it was quite unlikely that we would have prevailed despite the derelict action by the County Commissioners.  We will soon be seeking funds to support the WRAP PAC looking to effect the 2018 county elections.  But, this is substantially different from the intent of the GOFUNDME account, and we were not comfortable simply applying the funds to the alternate cause.  Thanks to Ryan for his efforts to set up the account initially and to get the refunds distributed.

The Board of Adjustment denied the request by Gail Willey to move his wholesale rock operation from South Meadows area to Pleasant Valley.  By 4-1, they approved the staff recommendation to allow the nursery portion to move, but this was unacceptable to Willey.  My inference, is that the sole “no” vote was to deny the move of the nursery too.  If so, it’s more of a “hell no” vote.  The staff made the argument that the rural, bucolic area would be harmed by the rock operation as well as the scenic 395 corridor.  How come those arguments were dismissed for our area?  I suspect the reason is that there is a lot more money involved with Ascente.  In some sense, we should have expected the Board’s decision regarding Willey: it was consistent with the Planning Commission and the Board of County Commissioners decisions.

The Ascente effort is moving ahead with trenching to find earthquake faults and drilling to determine the soil depth and rock composition as they prepare to grade the lots.  LINK.

I’ve seen almost no articles, letters, or opinion pieces in the Reno Gazette Journal about development for the past couple of weeks.  I heard they lost their letters editor.  I have to wonder if the paper has decided to limit the criticism of development.

And, development we’ve got!  Take a look at the list of 103 development projects in the County that are being built or approved to be built.  LINK.  Pages 1-3 list the developments as of April while page 4 shows where they are on the map.

The Board of Adjustment meeting today will start at 1:30, but the discussion of the Willey industrial rock operation will not start before 3:30.  I should have noted this in the original blog post.  Steve

It’s another developer-abuse problem: having lost his request for a zoning change to the Planning Commission and his appeal to the County Commission, Gail Willey is seeking a special use permit to store and distribute landscaping rock from the Pleasant Steamboat Valley neighborhood.  If you can, please come to the Board of Adjustment meeting tomorrow to stand with our nearby communities in opposing this abuse.

Link to article

Details: Thursday, 10/5, 1:30 PM, County Bldg-A, Council Chambers

The corruption that allowed Ascente is affecting communities all over the county.  We need to stand with other communities, if we are going to stop this wanton destruction in pursuit of profit.

The Ascente preparations are moving forward.  They have been using a tracked excavator this week to cut trenches to locate earthquake faults.  Our first impression is that they are not following best practice and may not be making a good-faith effort to find the faults.  Since they fill in their trenches immediately, we can’t see what they’ve unearthed or whether the trench is deep enough to be informative.  They have also started drilling at selected locations to see how deep the loose soil and rocks are before they hit the base rock.  This will indicate how difficult it will be to excavate to level the roads and the lots and run the trenches.

We are advancing too.  We are planning a strategic meeting for the WRAP initiative.  Our PAC is now registered with the state.  We have updated our officers to include Kristin Hemlein, David Sater, and Steve Wolgast (me).  We are waiting for the IRS to assign an EIN number which is required before we can open a bank account.

There is a lot of new material in the “In the Media” tab about recent articles and letters regarding development and the housing market.  The housing market is slowing nationally, and anecdotal evidence indicates it’s slowing in Callahan too.

I would encourage readers to sign up for the blog.  Our plan is to issue about 4 posts a month, so we won’t fill up your “in box”.

Here’s a quick view of our status and efforts.

The effort to file a judicial petition has been abandoned and the deadline passed September 4.  We worked hard to find a lawyer to represent our case – most had conflicts due to the fact that they represent the developers in one capacity or another. The attorneys that did take the time to review our case, before declining to act – felt that there was enough evidence to support the board’s decision and that it would be a waste of our money to take the case. The lawyers’ statements to Julia were – if the Commissioners had a plausible reason that the project was OK, then they were not being arbitrary and capricious (the standard). The Planning Commission and their county staff said it was OK, so they are probably in a defensible position even if the information was false, or inadequate.  We are discussing what to do with the money in our Gofundme account for the legal effort.

A  number of specific permits will be needed for the construction work to proceed. these can be individually challenged.

Julia Gold will begin efforts to explore other options to see if preserving part of the property – most likely the southern part that is adjacent to Forest Service land is possible as soon as she gets through a couple of her own work related deadlines. If anyone is interested in working with her on this endeavor – please let me know and I will get you in touch with her.

Ascente seems to be hard at work to advance their project.  This week Lumos dug two trenches to investigate for faults: their initial work appears to be suspect.  Kristin and another geologist are tracking their efforts.

Ken and Todd have met with a county engineer to understand the project schedule and identify when specific conditions are likely to be met and documented.

The formation of the PAC is proceeding, but the steps have been time consuming.  Part of our current effort is to identify good candidates for our board from other parts of the county.

Hello neighbors! Its Ryan again. I’m writing you on behalf of Ken, Todd and myself. We wanted to thank everyone for all the hard work you have put into this fight against Ascente and have a good ol neighborhood BBQ to blow off steam on this whole issue. So anybody who has been involved or will be affected by this monstrosity are more than welcome to join us at Ken’s house.

5250 Shawna Ln

Friday the 15th, 5-9

Just bring something to throw on the grill, maybe a dish for potluck and your trusty lawn chair. If anyone can help with extra grills and tables, let us know. Just email me at ryanftd@yahoo.com

Hope to see you all there!