Superstitious Sips: Why Friday the 13th Coffee Perfectly Captures Reno's Civic Engagement
Shaun Mulling the ‘fly in the ointment’ for Councilmember Devon Reese. Watch the June 4, 2025 meeting where Reese does ponder if business owners with a number of rentals shouldn’t have to pay a ‘fee’ - something people can ask Reese about on Friday, June 13th.
Eliminating citizen input while brewing up council coffee klatches at the City of Reno.
The City of Reno has discovered a brilliant new approach to public engagement: eliminate it entirely under the guise of fiscal responsibility. The city's moratorium on Neighborhood Advisory Board (NAB) meetings represents a masterclass in democratic doublespeak—claiming to save money while simultaneously launching a replacement program that serves the same purpose but with far less citizen input and accountability.
The official line is cost savings, but the real savings appear to be in avoiding the inconvenience of actually listening to residents who might have opinions about how their neighborhoods are managed.
Perhaps the most offensive aspect of Reno's NAB elimination is the city's dismissive attitude toward the meetings' attendees. It’s been murmured that "only older folks" attend NAB meetings, as if this somehow delegitimizes the entire process. Since when did being older disqualify someone from participating in local government? Since when did having the time and civic engagement to attend neighborhood meetings become a liability rather than an asset?
This ageist dismissal reveals a stunning misunderstanding of democratic participation. Older residents often have:
Deeper institutional knowledge of neighborhood issues
More time to research problems and proposed solutions
Decades of experience seeing what works and what doesn't
A long-term investment in community outcomes
The wisdom that comes from watching municipal promises versus actual results
If anything, the participation of older residents should be valued as a resource, not dismissed as irrelevant. But Reno's leadership apparently prefers younger, busier residents who are too distracted to ask tough questions about city performance.
Enter "Council Connect"—the city's replacement for neighborhood advisory boards. Instead of formal evening meetings where working residents can attend after their jobs, city council members are now hosting coffee shop chats between 9 AM and 10 AM on weekdays.
Let that schedule sink in for a moment. The city eliminated NAB meetings for a year to save money and because "only elderly folks" attended, then replaced them with morning coffee meetings that exclude anyone with a traditional work schedule. Unless you're retired, unemployed, work night shifts, or have an extremely flexible job, Council Connect is essentially inaccessible.
This scheduling choice reveals either complete tone-deafness or deliberate exclusion. Working parents dropping kids at school? Sorry, you're at work. Small business owners? Too bad, you're opening your shops. Government employees? Ironically, you're at your city jobs. The only people who can regularly attend 9-10 AM coffee meetings are... wait for it... retirees and people with flexible schedules.
So the city's solution to "too many elderly people" at NAB meetings is to create a replacement program that primarily serves elderly people and the independently wealthy. It's like complaining about rain and then scheduling outdoor events during monsoon season.
The cosmic irony reaches its peak with the scheduling of Councilmember Reese's coffee event on Friday the 13th. Whether intentional or accidental, the date perfectly captures the ominous nature of Reno's approach to citizen engagement. What better day to bury meaningful public participation than on a date traditionally associated with bad luck and superstition?
Friday the 13th for a civic engagement event isn't just poor planning—it's poetic justice. The date serves as a perfect metaphor for what residents can expect from this new approach to public input: bad luck for democracy and superstitious thinking about citizen participation.
The city's cost-saving rationale for eliminating NABs deserves serious scrutiny. What exactly are these crushing expenses that require eliminating citizen input? Meeting room rentals? Staff time to facilitate discussions? Basic administrative costs for democratic participation?
If Reno can't afford the minimal costs of neighborhood advisory board meetings, perhaps the problem isn't with citizen engagement but with budget priorities. The same city that finds money for consultant contracts, car allowances, and various pet projects suddenly discovers that facilitating citizen input is too expensive.
NAB meetings, whatever their flaws, provided formal structure for citizen input. There were agendas, minutes, regular schedules, and established procedures. Citizens knew when and where to go to be heard. Issues could be tracked over time. Follow-up was expected.
Council Connect coffee chats offer none of these accountability mechanisms. No formal agendas, no official minutes, no guaranteed follow-up, no regular scheduling. It's the difference between a town hall meeting and running into your councilmember at Starbucks—one is democratic participation, the other is accidental networking.
This shift from formal to informal engagement isn't just about style—it's about accountability. When citizen input happens in coffee shops rather than official meetings, there's no record of what was promised, no mechanism for following up on commitments, and no way to track whether concerns are actually addressed.
Reno's elimination of NABs in favor of coffee chats represents a broader trend toward reducing meaningful citizen participation in local government. By making civic engagement more informal, less structured, and less accessible to working residents, the city has created a system that looks like public input while actually limiting it.
This approach serves the city's interests perfectly—officials can claim they're still engaging with citizens while making that engagement less convenient, less formal, and less accountable. It's democracy theater rather than democratic participation.
The Friday the 13th date might be an accident, but the bad luck for civic engagement is entirely intentional.