The Reno City Council got religion last week when some sainted soul scuttled (or at least postponed) the assassination attempt against Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Commentary
The brahmins of city hall were ready to give carpetbagger Jacobs Entertainment a chunk of city land for purposes unknown.
Rev. Dr. Debra A. Whitlock-Lax, Pastor of Bethel AME Church in Sparks, sent up warning flares and sank the Jacobs juice job. With a little help from her friends.
Her Sparks church also owns its 119 year-old, National Registry of Historic Places progenitor. Alas, it stands near JacobsWorld downtown.
One Jeff Jacobs (who changed the name of the Sands Regency Hotel to his first initial — T-Rumpian, eh wot?), has bulldozed much of Reno’s West 4th Street into vacant lots.
His minions announced that they did so because the aging motels of yesteryear were infested with mold, vermin…and poor people?
Apparently, living on the streets is preferable to having a roof over your head. They have yet to make similar allegations against the church.
Only a cynic might suspect that Jacobs had ulterior motives. Vacant lots pay far less in property taxes and fees than improved land. But I’m sure that had nothing to do with evicting the descamisados (Spanish for the desperate poor, literally “shirtless ones”; “camisa” means shirt).
Was it just coincidence that the day after city hall was supposed to rubber stamp the land grab that Jacobs announced an “affordable housing” project a block or so from the Jhotel?
Jacobs is doing a deal with the Reno Housing Authority which manages low income housing government programs. The waiting list is usually two to three years, when applications are even open for additional names.
“As part of the deal, rents for units in the new affordable housing project will not exceed 80 percent of market rate rents,” the Reno Gazette-Journal reported on Feb. 29.
“The proposed new apartments are not considered low income,” the RGJ added. So “affordable” is just PR spin.
In order to acquire a 60-unit downtown apartment complex from RHA, Jacobs has promised spend $20 million on a 65-unit “affordable” (?) housing project in the same area starting construction no later than 2028.
Taxpayers should expect a lot more than five additional apartments for $20 million. I’m sure it will provide nicer accommodations, but the cost for each additional dwelling comes in at $4 million. Economists might say the marginal benefit is a bit expensive.
I’ve lived here since 1971 and I’ve seen developers come and go. They always make big promises. If something doesn’t happen as planned, chalk it up to unforeseen circumstances.
A year or two from now, Mr. Jacobs may get a monster offer from Wall Street megabillionaire speculators and retire to a private island. Empty Lots R Us.
Reno and Sparks have seen the future and it looks like apartments designed like minimum security prisons, emulating the fashion sensibility of Cold War Communist East Berlin. (Barbwire 11-15-2023)
Based on so many other big announcements that underwhelmed and underperformed, if they performed at all, city hall and the housing gods better hire some damn good lawyers to make sure that J doesn’t stand for jinx. Or “just kidding.”
WHITED SEPULCHER DEPT. As I reported last week, Jacobs lawyer Gordon Garrett sent me an e-mail asserting that my bulletin containing the rallying cry from Rev. Dr. Whitlock-Lax was “Completely false. I would appreciate the opportunity to provide you with correct information.”
I thanked him for his response and asked for the material. I’m still waiting. At Reno City Hall last Wednesday with news cameras rolling, Mr. Garrett was all sweetness and light. He even shook hands with the good reverend. Nary was heard a discouraging word. Alleluia.
Beware more skulduggery when no one’s watching.
HOPE FOR THE POSTAL SERVICE. President Biden has nominated former Boston mayor and secretary of labor Marty Walsh to serve on the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors. He is currently executive director of the National Hockey League Players Association, the athletes’ union.
Only a majority of the board can remove the postmaster general. The post has been held since 2020 by MAGA Postmaster Generalissimo Louis the Clueless DeJoy. His first official act was ordering that mail processing machines worth millions be junked. (I’m starting to feel a rash every time I type a “J.”)
Three decades or so back, a first-class stamp could get your letter anywhere in the country within two days. It now takes two days or more to just get from Sparks to Reno.
As noted in last week’s Barbwire, DeJoyless wants to move this region’s mail processing from Reno to West Sacramento, destroying postal voting in the process.
Just look at the past weekend with cars and trucks iced and sliding if they moved at all over Donner Pass. Accidents have been epidemic.
Other than the Tribune, northwestern Nevada newspapers are printed in California. With Donner closed, that has meant no papers for four to five days. Not everyone has the Internet, a marginal substitute for the speed and comprehension fostered by the printed word. That kind of delay can be fatal to mailed ballots which have very tight deadlines in order to get postmarked and counted. Washoe County’s voter registrar has warned us.
Just in whose interest might it be to keep people’s votes from counting?
Just in whose interest might it be to make it as hard as possible for the average person to cast a ballot?
I refuse to type the name of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
It all seems so unJust. Or a just a bad joke.
Vaxx up, stay safe, pray for Ukraine and almost 100 other currently war-torn lands.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbáno is a 55-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, CesarChavezNevada.com and MississippiWestnv.org/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
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