The little council that could

Not that there’s any suspense. Sometimes you have to sit through a whole more than three-hour production of Selling Bonds to Finance the Trench just, well, because. You already know the ending. The vote will be 4 to 3. The pro-trench crowd—Mayor Griffin, Councilfolk Dave Aiazzi, Pierre Hascheff and Sherrie Doyle—will win. You even rightly predict that the penultimate moment will include an impassioned speech by Councilwoman Jessica Sferrazza-Hogan on the importance of letting the people vote.

The only thing you were really wondering is what song, exactly, would guitar-playing citizen activist Sam Dehne rip off during public comment.

The discussion got off to a late start. Doyle was missing. Delayed.

“Can you believe they’re going to hold this up for their fourth vote?” former councilwoman/mayoral candidate Candice Pearce complained. The room was jammed with construction workers, suits and trench critics sans petitions.

(Fun side note: Downtown resident Janet Clark manned a trench vote petition booth at the Home & Garden Show over the weekend. The mayor and his wife came to visit the booth next door, a low-flow toilet display. “His face was beet red,” Clark told me. “But he ignored us.")

Doyle finally appeared. The 90-minute public comment circus began. Dave Howard of the Reno-Sparks Chamber of Commerce said he was “frankly tired.” Dehne worked the crowd for two minutes and 45 seconds of his public comment time. Then he sang a few bars of “They’ve been working with the railroad all the live long day,” turned and pointed to the council: “And where’d all the money go? They’ve got it!” Then “ding” rang the three-minute timer. Perfect. What an act.

Then came the gritty discussion on the sale of $115 milllion in bonds (and a $50 million loan from the feds) to finance the depressed railway. Yes, the bond insurer reneged on an earlier agreement, so the bonds aren’t technically insured yet. But an agreement with another insurer (at $4 million, no longer $2 million) is almost a done deal. And yes, we’re selling bonds before July, when the bids from four construction firms come in, but we have to take advantage of those famed low interest rates. (With every quarter-percent interest hike, the city can plan on spending another $4 to $5 million.) Sure, the bond is now $15 million more than it was two years ago, and the debt will need servicing for 40 years instead of 30 years. It could end up costing an extra $88 million in interest (unless it’s possible to pay down the principle early).

And yes, folks have been circulating a petition to put the whole issue to a public vote, but really.

Take a deep breath.

The good news with the ReTRAC bond biz is that the city isn’t putting any of its general fund on the line to back the bonds (as it is with the downtown events center bonds). And even if revenues don’t come in to make the payments, no one’s going to go raising taxes in Reno to pay for the trench. And in the best-case scenario, the whole 40-year bond can be paid off 18 years early—in 2024.

And we have Hascheff’s word that, when the bids are read in July, if the city can’t afford to move ahead, it’s over.

"There’ll be no need for a public vote."