After Two Years of Complaints, County Schedules Last-Minute Kitchen Tour

Yesterday’s Senior Lunch was particularly bad - they promoted it as a Beef Bibimbap Bowl. The Washoe County Senior Meal is on the right - we Googled a Beef Bibimbap Bowl and took this photo off the internet. Which one would you want to eat? Also, a Beef Bibimbap Bowl is not just beef and rice - which is what the county served. So why allow TRIO to give these robust names to dishes.

Why was the Media excluded from "transparency" effort following years of quality concerns

Nothing says "we take senior nutrition seriously" quite like scheduling a crucial kitchen tour with two days notice during the Fourth of July holiday weekend, then excluding the media from what's supposed to be a transparency initiative.

That's exactly what Washoe County pulled off this week with their Senior Advisory Board kitchen tour of the TRIO facility where senior meals are prepared. The county sent out their notification on July 2nd—two days before a major holiday.

The timing would be laughable if it weren't so insulting to the seniors who've been eating substandard meals while County Commissioner Mike Clark spent two years complaining about meal quality before anyone bothered to actually investigate the kitchen producing the food.

Two years. Let that sink in. For 24 months, Commissioner Clark has been raising concerns about senior meal quality, and the county's response has been to schedule a hastily arranged tour that board members learned about during the holiday weekend. This isn't responsive governance—it's reactive damage control.

We had a senior resident send us this email exchange with Washoe County Human Services Agency in 2025.

Why wasn’t the media wasn't invited to this "transparency" initiative. Think about that for a moment: after two years of complaints about senior meal quality, the county finally decides to let board members tour the kitchen facility—but they don't want any independent observers.

One has to question if this is performance art designed to give the appearance of accountability while avoiding actual scrutiny. If the county was genuinely committed to addressing senior meal quality concerns, they would welcome media coverage of their investigation.

Instead, Washoe County Human Services Agency has created a closed-door process where board members will tour the facility, taste the meals, and then provide their assessment to the public without any independent verification of what they actually observed.

Email Commissioner Mike Clark forwarded to the press yesterday.

These are the same meals that Commissioner Clark has been complaining about for two years, and providing documentation with a whole bunch of photos, but now suddenly the county wants board members to sample them as if their palatability was somehow in question.

If the meals were good, why did it take two years of complaints to arrange this tour? If the meals were bad, why is the county acting like this is a fact-finding mission rather than a problem-solving initiative?

The taste test feels like an attempt to put board members in the awkward position of having to publicly critique food they've just been personally served by the facility staff. It's a setup that virtually guarantees diplomatic responses rather than honest assessments.

TRIO has been providing senior meals for Washoe County, but the public has had virtually no insight into their operations, quality control measures, or response to the ongoing complaints. This kitchen tour represents the first real examination of their facility after two years of documented concerns.

The fact that it took this long to arrange a simple facility tour raises serious questions about the county's oversight of contracted services. If commissioners are complaining about meal quality for two years, shouldn't someone have visited the kitchen after two weeks, not two years?

This isn't transparency—it's a carefully managed information control exercise. Senior nutrition is literally a matter of life and death for many county residents. Poor meal quality doesn't just affect satisfaction—it affects health outcomes, medication effectiveness, and overall wellbeing for vulnerable populations.

This kitchen tour fiasco fits a broader pattern of Washoe County's approach to senior services: reactive rather than proactive, defensive rather than transparent, and more concerned with managing appearances than solving problems.

When Commissioner Clark raises concerns about meal quality, the response shouldn't be a two-year delay followed by a hastily arranged tour during a holiday weekend. The response should ahve been an immediate investigation, transparent reporting, and swift corrective action.

The real victims in this bureaucratic bungling are the seniors who've been eating questionable meals for two years while county officials engaged in slow-motion problem-solving. These are residents who depend on county services, pay taxes, and deserve better than being treated as afterthoughts in their own nutrition programs.

This is senior neglect with a bureaucratic bow on top.