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Jed Margolin
Virginia City Highlands, Nevada
June 9, 2007

Storey County Planning Commission Meeting
 

Condensed Transcript of the Deposition of
 

May 3, 2007
 

Peggy Hoogs & Associates
435 Marsh Ave.
Reno, NV 89509
(775) 327-4460
Fax: (775) 327-4450
Email:depos@hoogsreporting.com
www.hoogsreporting.com

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MEETING OF THE STOREY COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION
 
 

MAY 3, 2007; THURSDAY

Rainbow Bend Clubhouse

500 Avenue Blue de Claire

Lockwood, Nevada

Reported by: LORI URMSTON, CCR #51, RPR, RMR
 CALIF. CCR #3217
 

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APPEARANCES.

COMMISSION MEMBERS PRESENT.

DOUGLAS WALLING, CHAIRMAN
VIRGIL BUCCHIANERI, VICE-CHAIRMAN
LYDIA HAMMACK, COMMISSIONER
PETER MAHOLLAND, COMMISSIONER
AUSTIN OSBORNE, COMMISSIONER
LARRY PRATER, COMMISSIONER
BRET TYLER, COMMISSIONER

STOREY COUNTY STAFF MEMBERS PRESENT

DEAN HAYMORE, BUILDING AND PLANNING ADMINISTRATOR
PAT WITTEN, COUNTY MANAGER

FOR STOREY COUNTY

MARK H. GUNDERSON
ELAINE GUENAGA
ATTORNEYS AT LAW
5345 KIETZE LANE
RENO, NEVADA 89511

ON BEHALF OF APPLICANT, VIRGINIA HIGHLANDS, LLC

BLAKE SMITH
JOE CACIOPPO, RESOURCE CONCEPTS
GREG HAWS, PLANNING CENTER
ERIC HUBBARD, KLEINFELDER
ROBERT KAUTZ

RENO, NEVADA: THURSDAY, MAY 3, 2007. 6:08 P.M

CHAIRMAN WALLING: At this time I would like to call the meeting to order of the Storey County Planning Commission. Rainbow Bend, 3rd of May 2007.

Mr. Secretary, can we have a call of the roll for a quorum, please.

MR. HAYMORE: Virgil Bucchianeri.

VICE-CHAIRMAN BUCCHIANERI: Here.

MR. HAYMORE: Lydia Hammack.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: Here.

MR. HAYMORE: Peter Maholland.

COMMISSIONER MAHOLLAND. Here.

MR. HAYMORE Austin Osborne.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE:  Here.

MR. HAYMORE: Larry Prater.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Here.

MR. HAYMORE: Bret Tyler.

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Here.

MR. HAYMORE: Chairman Douglas WaIling.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Here.

MR. HAYMORE: We have 7 present. I have 7 members sitting. We have a quorum per the open meeting law.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Next item is the Pledge of Allegiance, please.
 

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(Pledge of Allegiance)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you. Next item is the approval of the agenda for this evening. Do we have an approval of the agenda as published?

COMMISSIONER PRATER: I’ll move to approve.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: I’ll second.

Mr. HAYMORE. Who was that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Larry

CHAIRMAN WALLING: All in favor?

(Collective aye.)
 

CHAIRMAN WALLING. All opposed?

Okay. The agenda for this evening has been approved.

Next item is the approval of the minutes for the April 13th, and if it’s correct, also April 19th.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: I’ll move to approve the minutes.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Do we have a second?

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: I’ll second. Are we approving both the April 13th  and the 19th at the same time or are we doing them one at a time?

MR. HAYMORE: That’s what Austin’s motion was.

COMMISSIONER HAMACK: For both of them. Okay. I’m seconding.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: All in favor?

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(Collective aye.)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: All opposed?

The unofficial minutes of April 13th and 19th have been approved. We will send that approval on to the county commissioners.

First item for this evening is special use permit by Waters Septic Tank Service, T.R.I.

(Agenda items 2007-058 and 2007-045 were heard by the Commission.)
 

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay. Next item, 2007-049, Master Plan Amendment by Virginia Highlands, LLC. Do we have a representative? Sir.

MR. SMITH: Thank you. Yes, Blake Smith representing the applicants and the managing partner of the Cordevista project.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Will you give us a little idea of what we’re doing here?

MR. SMITH: Well, yeah, abbreviated version.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Yes, please.

MR. SMITH: This is the second Planning Commission meeting for those of you that -- I believe some of you are here from -- or participated in the first Planning Commission meeting. This is the second one. And to move us through here, what I would like to do this evening, if I could, Mr. Chairman, is just note each

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one of these exhibits, because some of these are new to people. We also have three new ones that after the last meeting we thought would be beneficial to add. So with --

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Please.

MR SMITH: -- with your permission I’ll move along in an expeditated manner. And then after that, Commissioner Prater, you introduced a letter and some questions, I would like to have some of our consultants answer it at that point. And then from that we would move back to the Planning Commission for questions at that point.

So this microphone will not let me move necessarily across here, so what I might do is just point as we’re going along here. We made these large size displays for hopefully people to see, and if not before, after the meeting.

There has just been a lot of questions on the process and the public hearing and the entitlement process, so we introduced this board here which shows the three steps. What we’re proposing to do is go - what our application today is is a master plan amendment and a zone change. That would be step one in this process.

With that approval we would come back at a later

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date and do the Planned Unit Development or the PUD level of which we would go through the same process again which is the planning commissioner’s and the county commissioner’s approval.

Step three -- with the approval of that, step three would be down into the actual construction levels. And that would be the tentative maps and the final maps. And there’s been a lot of questions about water rights and when do you need your water rights and all that.

Water rights are required by the county and are delivered at step three level which is three different levels down from here from -- This is just a master plan amendment and a zone change. The water rights are actually delivered at the time of the tentative map and the final map which would be three planning commission and three county commission levels beyond this point.

The next board is a new one. We talked about how Storey County is in the center of northern Nevada and that it is surrounded by all the other counties and really is the heart of northern Nevada up here, but a comment was said in the last meeting about the same historical reasonable growth, everyone is looking for that.

We went back and researched it and from 1960 to 2000 the county has grown at a 4.9 percent compounded

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growth. If you take that 4.9 percent growth which it has been growing at for the next 40 years, the county would grow up to 41,800 people. That’s just at the standard growth rate that it’s growing at this time.

Our proposal, we are proposing 8,600 acres and an average between one and two units per acre. So if we multiplied that out, that would be about 12,900 residences. Industry average is about 2.7 people per home, which means that within Cordevista, and this is obviously an estimate, would be about 34,000 people.

If you take that - And that’s about the timeline that we’re envisioning this Project to grow would be over 40 or 50 years to develop it. If you did that, Cordevista will not even absorb all of the planned growth or the historical growth that Storey County would have at this point. With Cordevista and the current population you would be at about 39,000 people. If you grow the county at a historical rate of 4.9 percent, you would be at almost 42,000 people.

And again, that was one thing that we really wanted to know, because I think some people are taking the impression that this project is just explosive and it’s going to change a lot of things. It would basically absorb the natural growth rate that’s occurred in Storey County over the last 40 years.

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The next map over here is basically a locational map. It shows the northern Nevada region. It shows Reno and Sparks on the west, Fernley to the north, Stagecoach, Mark Twain, Carson City to the lower. And again, just emphasizing the fact that Cordevista -- Storey County is in the heart of all this, Cordevista is literally in the heart of Storey County. A locational map.

The next one talks about the Tahoe Reno industrial Park. It’s the largest industrial park in the world. It has been a phenomenal success. Dean, I think you touched on just a couple of things that are happening out there. It is a huge economic engine. It’s a -- it’s one of the  greatest things I think Storey County has approved. And the success of it the county is truly feeling at this point. The graphic here shows basically that they’ve encompassed on three sides of T.R.I and the location as -- as it sits within the county here.

The next one, which has the purple coloring in it, in the master plan it talks about the fact that there are really three logical areas for growth to occur, that growth being commercial,  residential and industrial. The industrial park has the lighter purple color and shows its areas where it will be developed.

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Some of the other areas, the Virginia Highlands and the Mark Twain and the Virginia City, are noted down in the lower left-hand corner. What remains is the center part. The darkest purple in there is Cordevista. And we’ve done a  topographical map of the entire county that shows basically there’s about, and I don’t have that figure off the top of my head, about 11,000 acres within the county that is flat enough to be developed. Cordevista has about 5,000 of those acres or basically about 50 percent of the remaining land within Storey County that could be developed resides within Cordevista here.

The other areas are sprinkled around the county here, but again, in the master plan it pointed to these areas to say these are the areas that will grow and that’s the reason literally why it is pointing to those areas is because it’s the flat land that is available to grow.

The next one talks about -- the green one here talks about the fact of where the developable areas are and the areas that we’d come in at a later stage and show the land plan. The green areas are areas that we would stay out of, the white areas would be the areas that we would come in and develop there.

The next one is the property ownership. What that

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is to denote in here -- Storey County is the -- is the single most -- or is the largest privately - owned county in the state of Nevada. Over 90 percent of the county is owned by private citizens versus the rest of the state is 78 percent of it is owned by the federal government. What this shows up here is that about 51 percent of the county resides within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Park, that the Virginia Highlands has about 15 percent, if you could help me on that, of the county. And Cordevista would reside with about five percent of the county.

And it’s an interesting statistic when you take a look at how the county is cut up. You can see Virginia City in the lower area and Mark Twain and Lockwood, but it is -- Cordevista is about one third the size of the Virginia City Highlands subdivision.

The next one talks about the existing zoning that we have here. It’s a very unique zoning.  Cordevista currently is zoned for special industrial. It’s a zoning that was tailored for some  of the previous tenants that were in there. Those tenants manufactured explosives, most recently they actually built the pellets that go into air bags within your cars. The zoning is what we feel is inappropriate at this point. It was a zoning that was good for the county for the

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past couple decades when there were needs and there were tenants looking for that. To continue on with the zoning like that really doesn’t -- in our opinion is not the appropriate zoning. With the industrial park and its 102,000 acres or its approximately 88,000 acres in Storey County, that will be the industrial manufacturing basis for the county.

Additional zoning, which is this heavy zoning or special zoning, which allows all the way up for munitions, explosions, open-air explosions, hazardous waste storage and  experimenting, we do not see that as appropriate for the county. We see that as the county has grown, as it’s grown with the Highlands, Virginia City, the industrial park  T.R.I.  being involved, that this land here should be changed from the special zoning, which is a dirty zoning I call it, at this point. It’s one that really has the uses that are not really in the --  are not great uses for land, let alone they are somewhat dangerous in their manners, is to come in here and put a mixed use. Our proposal again is to put a mixed-use project which would entail office, retail and residential within that, along with all the amenities and public services that come with those items.

The next board there has a lot of detail on it. It

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basically is some excerpts of the master plan amendment and how we would comply with the master plan amendment.

The next board there -- eight months ago -- that is a board that is a comparison between Cordevista, our project, and the Painted Rock project which was just approved by the planning commission and also county commissioners some eight months ago. It’s approximately 2,000 acres. It is zoned for mixed use, the same type of zoning densities that we’re looking for, about one to two units per acre. It’s located up on Interstate 80, about 2,000 acres, and it just shows the comparisons between those two.

We actually in the Cordevista board have added a couple ones that we have added to our applications that we believe make our application even a better application for the public and the county as a whole on there.

The next map is one -- there’s been stated concerns about location, that we’re right against current development or current housing in there. That one shows where Cordevista is. We took our uppermost corners, and as the crow flies, not necessarily as the dirt roads go currently, but as the crow flies, we’re about 3.9 miles -- from Lockwood to our property is 3.9 miles over several ridgelines. You can’t see the

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property from here. There’s existing dirt roads that go up there that are about five miles in length, but as the crow flies we’re about four miles away from it.

Taking the other corner, which is the Virginia City Highlands and Virginia City, and taking that distance, the nearest developments are -- We targeted the fire station being the logical one that most people knew. That’s about four miles from our corner, Virginia City being nine miles as the crow flies from the property there. Again, several ridgelines in between us and visibility is not possible between those areas within there. And that is --

I’m going to just jump over to here, project adjacency. These are some pictures on this board. We went up to the site and just stood in the middle of it and took some pictures. For those of you that haven’t had the ability to go on a tour, I would love to extend that to anyone that would love to go see the project, and one of our other projects that we’re developing, the Somersett project in the west side of Reno. But  this just shows basically the area, that it is flat. Most of Storey County, I think everyone looks up at the hills and sees the ridges and the hills and goes: Where could you develop? What this is showing is that this is actually a flat tabletop up in the mountains up

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there and this is where the Cordevista area is that we’re looking to develop.

The top part talks about T.R.I. being over one ridgeline in one direction and Lockwood being over the hill and down below and then Virginia City Highlands and Virginia City  being down behind these ridgelines but in the southernly quadrant from the property.

I believe I’ve touched on -- Well, okay. That flowed into this one. Okay. This -- Again, the pictures here, one of the major concerns -- And let me step back. We purchased the property almost three years ago and we have been trying to understand the property, we’ve done extensive studies on the property. We’ve also been trying to meet the people and understand what the concerns and the issues are of the county and the people here. And so we’ve been studying it for several years.

One of the largest concerns that comes from this local area here is the flooding of Lockwood. We’ve come back and taken a look at what our property delivers as far as when the rains come or the snow comes. The soils up there are such that they can only absorb or retain so much water and then it sheets across it, runs into the Long Valley Creek and runs down here to the river.

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What we’ve discovered out of this is we can retain an extensive amount of water on our property. And really one of the things that I’ll point in here, and you can see it down in the third picture down and below, what really is causing -- the more we study it, what’s really causing a large portion of the flooding down here are some of the conduits that were developed down in this area many years ago.

And so what we’ve looked at is not only retaining the water up on our site and holding that water, not using it but just holding it so that it comes down slower in here, but also is coming down and working with the bridges and the conduits in these areas. The water can come through here, the valley and the creek is actually wide enough to handle the water, it’s the manmade obstacles that are in here.

And so from our proposal what we would do is come down and actually take out the existing conduits and actually come back in with bridges or other types of things so that the water can flow through. There is enough mass. And I’ll have some of our consultants come down here. The water can get through there, it’s the manmade obstacles that have stopped it, So the combination of us holding the water above and changing out the lower manmade obstacles will alleviate the

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flooding down in Lockwood.

The next one is a large concern, we’ve heard it from day one that we’ve acquired the property, is water, are we going to use any of the ground or well waters in Storey County. The Virginia Highlands -- the next map is a new one that we’ve introduced. We understand completely that the water availability in Storey County is very limited.

What we’ve shown on this here -- And again, I want to say that we are looking to be conditioned in our approval that we use no groundwater or well water within the project. That’s to make sure that citizens that are using ground water or well water do not see us as taking that water from them, because we see -- and I think that it’s publicly spoken  about, but the more we look at it scientifically, there’s not enough water to service Virginia City Highlands as we see it at this point.

The first board in here shows that there are a total of 1,876 lots in Virginia City Highlands, 484 of those have been built on to date, about 20 -- excuse me, about 26 percent. There are 1,392 lots to be developed still in Virginia City Highlands. We have heard and spoken to people about the fact that their wells are drying up, that they’re having to dig deeper to  get

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that water And so we went back in the next graph, which is a new one which is the blue one there, we went back to 1947, all the way through last year and went to the state water engineer to -- And this is every well that’s been drilled in Virginia City Highlands. And you can see the very clear trend that’s occurring in the Highlands.

This is showing back in the ‘40s and through the ‘60s and 70s you were in the 200 feet levels, currently over the past couple years you have wells going down 1,476 feet to get their water. The light blue shows the sustainable water table. What that is saying is that’s where the water table is balancing out at that level. So you’re drilling to the dark blue in order to get the light blue in there.

And it is a very large concern. And I think from the planning commission and the county commissioners, even in the master plan amendment, you talk about specifically the Virginia City Highlands and how to help to the benefit of these people with their groundwater and well water systems up there. I believe that’s in section three of the master plan amendment there. But this is something that we understand and hear loud and clear, that groundwater and well water is something that we do not want to be infringing in or

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using. And so our development would import all the water and bring it in.

And what were saying with that, one of the benefits that we’re trying to extend to the county, to the government, to the people in there, is that we would size that water infrastructure such that we could possibly -- if the Virginia City Highlands did run out of water, that they could tap into that system for water, because what we’re seeing at this point -- And every indicator here shows that Virginia City Highlands will run out of water at some point. As they develop the last 1,400 lots up there, there will not be ample water in an aquifer for that. And so how do you solve that? We’re trying to offer one of those solutions to you of building an infrastructure system large enough that you can tap into and utilize.

The next one is people have talked about taking away the country feel and the lights of it. Our project that we’ve developed across town -- And again, I would love to extend an invitation to anyone to come see it -- is called the Somersett project. It’s located on the west side of Reno. One of the things that we have is a dark skies policy for the same  reason. We sit up in the lower hills of the Peavine area. What we do in there is we basically limit all of the lighting,

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all the street lighting and everything else. We only put street lights on major traffic intersections.

We utilized all roundabouts within the community because we didn’t want any stoplights or stop signs on the major thoroughfares so we utilized a roundabout system. So we put down lighting, every lighting within the community is pointed downward so that there’s no up lighting within. And we use a very sparse amount of them. We only put them on the roundabouts and on major intersections within the housing areas in there.

So within the community -- Our community there is 2,800 acres -- I believe that we have about 30 street lights within the entire community out there. And so what it does do is --  And this is an example. It was actually difficult. We went up and photographed it. It was so dark -- It actually works I guess is what we’re trying to say here. There’s one picture in the day and then there’s a picture in the evening. But it truly allows you to have that country feel, not having it look like the hue of light coming out of the community and actually the stars are bright and it’s very enjoyable with a country feel in there.

The next board -- and I can’t -- Rick, would you help me with that. The next board was a board of benefits. We have come through, and again analyzing

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everything that we’re doing here, and I’ll just go through some of these quickly. These are the benefits that we see to the citizens and to the county and also the residents of  Cordevista. What we’re seeing here is that the community, we would -- in our land plans which is step two, when we come back with a Planned Unit Development, we’ll come  back and actually show roads and show areas where they’re developed and we’ll show where school sites are, where commercial sites are, where a police station would be. All of that comes in the next level.

This level right now we’re saying we want to go from what we consider a mismatch of industrial zoning for the county right now to a mixed use. And at that level the next time  that we would come back, we would start to show the roads and the schools and all these other public services, the parks and where those areas go. But we do know at this point  that we can state that 40 percent of all the lands within Cordevista would be left open. And that’s a big thing. In Somersett we’ve left over 50 percent of the lands open.

And so what you do is you do take certain areas and you put the housing in those areas and you leave the other areas open. It’s a benefit to the people. It becomes the parks, it becomes open space, your trail

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systems, it becomes wildlife. And in these projects the wildlife -- And in particular a large concern here is the horses. We want to address those horses and make sure that we can coexist with them and also make it hopefully a net positive to all the wildlife within that.

In Somersett we actually took some very arid sagebrush land and turned it into a quasi wildlife wonderland. And we’ve seen a huge amount of an increase in wildlife into the project itself.

We already talked about the controlled flooding down in the Lockwood area. We’ve touched on the providing of the water sizing of infrastructure that we would bring into the project available for other communities. And I’ll extend it to Lockwood. I believe  Lockwood’s water system is stable and in operation, but again, this water infrastructure coming in, we would size it such that the Highlands could tap into it if need be.

Improved fire access and public safety improvements. Obviously with the addition of other fire stations or police stations, we would improve some of these service levels.

The other thing is diversification to the county. Right now the county has an extensive tax base that’s

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growing with the industrial park. The housing is located really in Mark Twain and Virginia City and Virginia City Highlands. This would be a net balance to it. And what we’ll do again at the next level, at the PUD level, we’ll come in with the land plans, we’ll also hire a third-party outside consultant that comes in and looks at that and says what is the taxes that will be created with this and what are the costs that it will cost to operate this, how many policemen will we need or sheriffs and how much will that cost and is there enough tax in this development to do that.

We’re saying that we would make it a net positive tax community, i.e., that it would not be a drain on the county, it would actually be a positive to the county when we’re done. And this economic analysis, it’s extremely expensive and complicated, but it would be  something that we would deliver at the PUD level to prove that up to the planning commissioners and the county commissioners at that point.

The wildlife habitat and corridors. I think we kind of touched on that. A couple other things here. The petroglyphs. The Cordevista project currently encompasses all 80 acres of what is a county-owned area of the petroglyphs. The petroglyphs, if you have not seen them, it is something that is to be seen. It is

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really a national treasure in my mind to go up there. There’s a canyon that has probably the highest concentration of petroglyphs maybe in the nation. I’m not going to say the world, but it is incredible. The land was donated to the county several decades ago. The county has been the steward of it. There’s a volunteer group, the Nevada Rock Art Foundation, that is currently right now up there trying to identify and log all these petroglyphs in there.

We are trying to assist -- We have caretakers on the property. We try and protect this to the extent that we can at this point, but -- and we do -- And there is public access to it. The problem with the public access right now without a plan or something developed around it is you have people that are coming here to enjoy and you’re having people go there to destroy also, which is sad. But it is something that the petroglyphs are very close to us.

We’re actually working -- we started talking with the county and working with the Rock Art Foundation. We have discovered some other areas adjacent to this that we would like to donate that land and include it into the 80 acres, so grow the 80 acre area in that area and then work with the county and the Nevada Rock Art Foundation to try and put a preserve over this and

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to put a management plan over it so that it could be managed and protected for generations to come, because it is something that is -- it is truly special and it must he protected and right now it’s trying to be protected but it needs a lot of help and it needs a lot of assistance, and we’re looking to try to help with the county and the Nevada Rock Art Foundation with that.

The last one I’ve touched on already is the zone change from something that is special industrial, hazardous wastes, explosives. That’s -- we don’t see that best for Storey County. We actually see commercial and residential as better.

The last one is one that we’ve done -- This is kind of leading edge for development. We’ve labeled it the Storey County Community Foundation. We’ve done this at Somersett. And what we do with that is we set up a transfer fee within the community that every time a  house is sold, and it includes the very first time, so when the first home buyer moves in, there’s a transaction, but it creates a fee.

And at Somersett what we did with that is we limited it to go back into Somersett, so Somersett at later days when we, the developer, aren’t there, that there would be a fund of money coming in that they

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could use to build new amenities if they wanted to. If there were other items that they wanted to add to it, another park or something else, there is a fund of money building up that the citizens within Somersett  can use.

What we’ve seen here over the past three years is there’s an extensive amount of’ items within the county that the county currently doesn’t either have the funds or the capability to do, and so what we’ve done with this is actually targeted Cordevista to set up again a transfer fee fund within the community, that that fund would go into a community foundation of which we’d let the citizens of the county identify where they wanted those funds to be directed.

We’ve heard about the Piper Opera House, Fourth Ward School, we’ve heard about flooding down here, we’ve heard about water infrastructure needs. You could utilize it for an extensive amount of things for the benefit of the county. It’s something that’s done with other communities, leading-edge communities. We’ve been very happy and it’s a great program and a great tool in order to accomplish things for when the developer is not there or for needs that are outside necessarily the rims of Cordevista.

And this is something that’s very special. I think

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that people should really understand this and look at it because it has the potential -- if we were to develop like we talked about at one and a half units per acre, it would generate -- A home sells about every seven years in America. This foundation would generate about $500,000 a year that would go -- dollars into the foundation which could be used by the county in whatever the citizens chose it to do. So it’s a non-developer driven -- it’s a developer -- How do I say it? It’s a non-influenced developer program that would be deeded over to the citizens and the citizens would use it. This would not be the developer directing these funds, the citizens of Storey County would go onto the board and direct where that would go from there.

MR. HAYMORE: Blake, traffic road system.

MR. SMITH: The traffic road system. We are looking at various alternatives. There is one that has come to us very, very, very, very loud and clear which is please don’t build a road down to the Virginia City Highlands and change their lifestyle. And also we’ve heard that from parts of Virginia City. So what we are asking to be conditioned in here, our approval, is that no roads would be developed to the south here.

We’re also working and examining other alternatives

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in here. There are three logical alternatives in here, one being down to the industrial park that we’re looking at. We’re also working with Waste Management on the northerly boundary going north and developing a road to Interstate 80. From that standpoint, it would probably end up in the Mustang area is where we’ve engineered and looked at that. And the third alternative is the possibility if -- if at a later date is a development of a road westerly to Reno. And that is one that has not been engineered out necessarily but is an alternative in here.

So there are basically three alternatives that we’re looking at, Dean, one of them that we’re asking to be conditioned. From the neighborhoods -- We’ve been at the Highlands, it’s been extensively asked about.

Now, we’ve been down in Lockwood here recently and one of the things that we originally said is not to utilize the existing roads but now we’ve heard from varying people down here is could we utilize the road so that the children could stop being bussed from Lockwood all the way around to Virginia City, could they come up and utilize the schools in Cordevista, could the area down here utilize a road to come up so that they could possibly enjoy the shopping or the

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parks or the amenities in there. So that’s one that we’re examining right now. It’s not one that we had really envisioned because of the traffic constraints down in Lockwood, that we had basically looked at it and said, no, we won’t build one. To the contrary, we’re hearing from that community at this point, would you look at it so that our children could stop being bussed for two hours.

It’s quite -- We’ve had some people come to us with their children talking about children up at 6:00 o’clock, they haven’t eaten breakfast because they get sick on the bus, they have to drive two hours to get to Virginia City and then it’s two hours coming back. And there is a -- 45 percent of the people in Lockwood have children. Those children are all being bussed up -- I shouldn’t say all, but the majority of them are being bussed up to Virginia City.

I, having three little children, have to respect and understand what they’re saying. If there was a possibility for them to come to one of the schools in Cordevista and make that a five-or ten-minute drive versus up to a couple hours, we want to respect that, and so we’re starting to take a look at that alternative also.

That -- I tried to keep that as short as I could.

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CHAIRMAN WALLING: Excellent. The graphics speak a lot for themselves.

MR. SMITH: Yes, and please enjoy them. There’re up here, and the reason they’re supersized is for people to see them and read them.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Before I turn this over to the planning commission for concerns and questions, in respect -- in the respect of private property, all of us in this room, our private property is precious. Nobody’s going to say anything against that. Cordevista shared with me an incident that happened several days ago. There was an uninvited  intrusion on their private property. It’s been their private property for three years. The operative word is “uninvited” as it would be with your private property. Under the guise of  looking at needing more details of this proposal. And the Sheriffs Department will not tolerate that anymore, as they would not tolerate trespassing on your private property. That’s just informational.

At this time I would like to share with the planning commissioners. Planning commissioners, questions of the applicant.

MR. HAYMORE: Doug, can I ask one thing? You had a consultant to answer some of Larry’s questions that all

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the planning commissioners got?

MR. SMITH: Yes.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay. Yes, that’s proper.

MR. SMITH:. There was a written seven questions delivered by Larry that -- or Commissioner Prater that we have responded to, but I would like to have each of the consultants come up for a minute or a minute and a half and just express an answer to that.

And, Commissioner -- or, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for that comment. It’s something that we would love to extend invitations and have anyone come take a look at the project. We have people living on the property to make sure that it’s taken care of. But people showing up and trying to barge into the property, we would just request, contact our office, we would be happy to give a tour at that point, if we could Thank you.

But then again, Commissioner Prater, I’m trying to think best on the way -- You’ve addressed seven questions. I might have each of our consultants come up and just give you -- You have a written explanation of each one of them. I don’t know if the easiest way -- if they could just summarize your question and then answer it back to you, would that --

COMMISSIONER PRATER: That would be fine.

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MR. SMITH: Very good. I believe the first question was on drainage. And, Joe, if I could ask you to come up. RCI --

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Excuse me. Could we have Larry just summarize his question?

MR. SMITH: Please. That would be great.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: My first question was relative to the statement in the original proposal, this is a quote, “That the detention of storm water on the project site will stop all flooding in Lockwood.” And at our meeting up in the Highlands. Mr. Blake indicated that all the detention that he had planned at this time would be on his property and there would be  no detention along Long Valley Creek. And a quick review of the maps and everything showed, my estimate, about 25 percent of the drainage down through Lockwood was in the Cordevista area. I see that it’s actually less than that, it’s about 18 percent in the report here. And my concern was how with only that much of the retention, how could they guarantee that the flooding would be stopped, how they could make that guarantee, and I asked for clarification.

MR. CACIOPPO: Hi, Members of the Board, my name is Joe Cacioppo with Resource Concepts. I’m a civil engineer. Mr. Smith asked me to take a look at that

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and a couple other questions.

Regarding the drainage, you’re exactly right, it’s a tall order to try to hold all that back, but the reality is the Cordevista project does constitute about 18 percent of the overall  watershed that contributes to Lockwood from up above in the canyon. Just to give you a -- I guess my answer to your question initially and then I’ll explain it, is: Is it possible to hold all that back? At this point in time we’re still analyzing things, but it looks like there is a possibility that we can hold that water back. Its going to take some creative solutions to do it. And I don’t want to pretend I have all the answers right now, but I wanted to give you kind of a history real quick of what’s going on.

There’s -- The overall watershed affecting it is just over about 48,000 acres. The project site is approximately 8,600 acres. Right now if you look at a hundred-year-storm event,  there’s an approximate flow coming down the hills of a little over 16,000 cubic feet per second. That doesn’t mean it comes down at that rate steadily, that’s the peak flow that’s coming down through there.

The project itself at full build-out looks like it would probably generate in the ballpark of 1300 CFS

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additional flow. That right there is easily attained on site. We could create detention or some other forms of storage, be it retention or whatever, to not increase the flow.

To increase -- or, excuse me, to decrease the flow and avoid flooding in Lockwood, there’s a couple things happening. And Mr. Smith alluded to that before. The Long Valley Creek itself right just upstream of the -- say the volunteer fire department area where you’re in the flats, that can handle approximately 8500 cubic feet per second without the water coming over the banks and flooding the community or flooding Canyon Road.

What happens a little further downstream is there’s those two big culverts down there and some necking of the Long Valley Creek just before it gets to the river which obviously decreases its capacity. And it has, I’m approximating, about 3 to 4000 CFSs of capacity beyond that.

So one of the recommendations we have is if we could at the very least allow Long Valley Creek to maintain its ability to transport water to the river, keep it at about the 8500 CFS level, it would involve maybe getting rid of those culverts, putting a bridge or some other kind of structure over it, allow that water to pass through. What that does is that allows

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us up higher to look at detaining as opposed to, say, 14,000 CFS, get us down to detaining much less than that, say about 9,000 CFS.

You know, that’s going to involve as we get into the land plan portion of this and whatnot looking at this a little deeper, it’s going to depend on how the configuration is and whatnot, but you look at all the tributaries coming down and what you can do on site, there’s a lot of possibility there, a lot of realistic possibility to do some serious detention basins and make it esthetically pleasing.

They’ve done some of that in the Somersett area where they have a series of basins scattered throughout that allow us to hold back the peak flow and release it at a slower rate. So what we’ve proposed -- and in this letter I think you’ve seen here -- Bear with me a second. I don’t spend a lot of time talking in front of people, so I’m trying to be as smooth as I can.

MR. SMITH: You’re doing good.

MR. CACIOPPO: You know, constructing a series of detention basins within the Cordevista development is what we’re looking at first, How much water can we physically hold back up there? Our goal is to hold back whatever it takes to not cause Lockwood to flood. The reality of that is I need to get a little farther

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into the analyses and we need to work together with some of the other consultants to find out what’s being proposed up there and how we can adjust things to allow that to happen.

I had mentioned before about coming downstream and increasing the capacity of the channel to what it can already hold. We’ve restricted it closer to the river, and if we can eliminate that restriction, that opens up a lot more possibilities for us.

And last, if -- kind of as a last resort, you know -- while we feel -- while we feel we can mitigate the flooding in Lockwood, if we can’t do enough up top to do it, the Cordevista development -- As I said, to hold back its proposed development, we would need to hold back about 1300 CFS. So they’re really going above and beyond what typically would be required of a development and they’re looking at trying to really solve the problems through here. But if we can’t do it on site, and we hope we can, what we’re looking at doing maybe is trying to get farther down in the valley up above Lockwood a little bit but get off the hill into the flats and see if there’s something we can do there with some downstream detention or retention facilities that, you know, as a secondary source could reduce that peak flow and allow it to pass through

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Lockwood.

So we’re looking at those kind of things right now. I don’t have all the answers, but at this point in time it looks feasible to do something that I’ve explained.

MR. HAYMORE: One question for clarification. Just one question for clarification.

MR. CACIOPPO: Sure.

MR. HAYMORE: Is that 1300 or  13,000?

MR. CACIOPPO: Sure. The increase from the Cordevista development would be 1300 CFS.

MR. HAYMORE: You’ve got 18,000 coming down.

MR. CACIOPPO: There’s 18,000 coming down right now in an approximately 48, 49,000-acre watershed area. But the Cordevista project itself is about 18 percent of that in terms of area.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Is it my turn, Dean?

MR. HAYMORE: I’m sorry.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Don’t be sorry. That’s good.

MR. HAYMORE: I just wanted to clarify.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Sir, a question. Have you ever. Have you been in this location when it has flooded, a flood period?

MR. CACIOPPO: I haven’t seen Lockwood itself flood.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Well, I’ll tell you what. You

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got to see it to appreciate it.

MR. CACIOPPO: I know. I can -- If you call me. I’ll show up.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: It's well documented through video and video photography, still photography. And increasing the flow, how is that going to work? That increased flow attempts to enter the flooding Truckee River. How does that work?

MR. CACIOPPO: Well, what happens right now is the water that’s trying to come down from the watershed, we’re saying right now it’s about a little over 16,000 CFS. When that peak flow starts coming down the hill, it’s coming through the Long Valley Creek, obviously flooding Lockwood and doing those kinds of things, but it’s experiencing  additional problems in that even though the creek itself can handle, say, 8500 CFS, it’s hitting those culverts and the restricted portion of the creek just before it gets to the river and starts backing up at that point. We haven’t looked at --

CHAIRMAN WALLING: The backup, sir, is the level of the Truckee River.

MR. CACIOPPO: The Truckee River rises and that, of course, creates some issues, but part of the issue is before it even gets to the river.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you. I appreciate it,

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County commissioners, questions of the hydrology man.

COMMISSIONER MAHOLLAND: Yes. I do have one just a little concern about trying to do any detention types of activities downstream of the project developments. It’s just always a scary proposition for me. I do think it's -- I'm glad to hear that you’re interested in removing some of the restrictions.  That would I think do a lot right there in and of itself, but I would have concerns about doing anything kind of midstream, so to speak.

MR CACIOPPO: The reason I brought that up is the project site itself is -- I’m not sure  which map to look as, so I won’t try to find it. But it’s fairly high up in the watershed, not all the way up there. There’s area of the watershed further up than Cordevista that passes through Cordevista, and all of that is obviously detainable, but there’s a strip of land between Cordevista and Lockwood down below that physically trying to detain that higher up in the watershed, you know, without being real creative would be a difficult task. And that’s why I brought that up as a possibility.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: If I’m correct, that area that you’re talking about between Cordevista and here

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is very steep canyons that go up hundreds of feet. So are you talking about building like a concrete damn or something that would be a serious project in itself that would involve many different entities, including federal government, is this what you’re talking of possibly doing?

MR. CACIOPPO: That’s not what I’m talking about at  this stage. I haven’t in all honesty contemplated doing something like that. What I'm talking about is just as you get out of the steep part of the canyons, say where the -- and others could probably speak to this a little bit better, but in the area like where on the map where it shows the landfill, just below that, it kind of flattens out, comes around the bend and flattens out a little bit before you get to Lockwood. That’s where conceptually I'm thinking you know, something could be done without getting folks like the Corps involved and making it a real big project.

MR. SMITH: And if I can just add. I really --  listening to this, what I want to make sure is it’s our belief through the professionals that we can retain on the 8,000 acres a substantial amount, not even going into Long Valley necessarily, and changing out these conduits, that that should solve it. What he’s talking about is if we find out that doesn’t solve it, the next

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level would be to go down into Long Valley and build something into there, but we believe from everything that we’re seeing that taking these conduits out and retaining on our site is enough to stop this from occurring up here.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Who would be building this bridge?

MR. SMITH: We would take that responsibility.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

MR. HAYMORE: Mr. Chairman,

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Yes,

MR HAYMORE: They are very correct on what we call pinchpoints and the FEMA flood maps and everything else. In ‘95 we had a bad flood here, the firehouse had two feet of water. Right across from the firehouse we had four feet of water running across Canyon Way. And when we started pulling those culverts out and putting the railroad car bridges in and the same culverts that were down here blew out, that reduced the flows. We did the studies and we knew 1900 cubic feet per second could go into the Truckee. Here we can have 4100 cubic feet if this restriction goes in. And we actually asked FEMA, the Corps of Engineers, to do a study. I hate to tell you this, folks. we looked at a

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bridge and it was cheaper to replace every house in Rainbow Bend than it was to build a damn, excuse me, a damn upstream.

We looked at building a damn up there at C-Mix for all that aggregate and the --  you have to have a cost ratio to look at it. And after they did the cost ratio, it was easier to wipe out the community than it was to build the damn, unfortunately. And that’s how the Corps looks at it. And Dennis and Shirley and Connie have been very involved in the floods. As I’ve been saying for five  years, don’t send your water down here because you’re building concrete up there. And we‘ve been fighting that and Dennis, Shirley and Connie have  been doing a good job representing the county.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Further questions?

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Okay. My second question -- You can take a break, Joe.

MR. SMITH: He’ll be back.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: This one was a concern of mine. The project scope states that the 8600-acre project will be a low intensity development that will range between one and two dwellings per gross acre. Based on an assumption of two and a half occupants per dwelling, the community could ultimately have a population of 43,000, or more than 10 times the

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county’s current population. Further, based on your gross acreage for the development density, the acquisition of additional undevelopable acreage could result in more population and increased density in the developable areas. My opinion, for us to have an accurate view of the scope and density of the project, we need to know the proposed maximum number of dwellings on the developable acreage only.

MR. HAWS: I do like to talk, so in order to be brief I have written a response that I would like to read. My name, Greg Haws. I represent the Planning Center. We’re the planning consultants for the project.

We are not at the stage in the project where we can give the number of dwelling units on the --

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: We can’t hear you.

MR. SMITH: Greg. you might step forward a little bit.

MR HAWS: One handed.

We are not at the stage of the project where we can give the number of dwelling units on the developable acreage only. As we continue planning and follow Storey County’s application process --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Slower.

MR. HAWS: Thank you. Sorry. I don’t really like

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to read, so I would rather do this without reading.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Whatever is more comfortable, sir.

MR. HAWS: I’m going to read it just so that I can (inaudible) --

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay.

MR. HAWS: The issue of density within specific areas of the project will be resolved, but at this level of the entitlement process the one to two units per gross acre is a number that we will not exceed. The master plan amendment and zone change that was recently approved for Painted Rock was not required to provide the information that you have requested from Cordevista. It is our hope that we would be held to the same standard.

There are no plans to add acreage. In conjunction with future phases of the approval process, the development agreement and, slash, PUD will contain conditions of approval that will define the maximum number of units on a specific number of acres. So in essence the conditions of approval will outline the maximum number of units on a specific area of acreage.

Did that answer your question?

MR. SMITH: Step two is when you really get to that.

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MR. HAWS: Yes, it is step --

MR. SMITH: I don’t mean to interject but, Larry, I think your question really is answered in step two when we come back with a land plan and say we’re going to put this many houses here and this many here. At this level, just the plan amendment and the zone change -- The next level when we come back to you really gives you that detail of saying we see more house in this area or in that area.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Well, my concern is that once we do make this-- if we  approve the change in the zoning and the master plan, we’ve opened the door and --

Mr. SMITH: You’ve opened it to step two.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: True.

MR. SMITH: But step two has a stop in it also, that you may not approve the PUD.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Okay. I see what you’re saying is that we could set limits on the density with the PUD at that point

MR SMITH: Absolutely. That’s really when you do it is at the PUD level when we come in and show you those land plans and everything. You’re saying yes, we agree with this over here or we don’t like that, take that out or we won’t approve it. That’s the next level. And that’s really --

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This is just a macro change, but there again, the PUD is where you as the planning commissioners and the County commissioners will look at it in a much finer detail and say we like it or we don’t like it and we’ll approve it or we won’t approve it. So just approving the master plan amendment does not ensure that the development will ever occur. You will review it two more times before that’s approved.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Yeah. The concern is, though, that if we’re too broad at this point we can open the door to where down the road, say it doesn’t work for you, you sell the property to somebody else, something like that, and then they have even bigger plans, that sort of thing that -- Well, go ahead.

Mr. SMITH: And I understand what you’re saying. Those are the -- We continue to try and put conditions. We’re offering conditions to you to say we will approve this master plan amendment subject to this. And I think your question is saying: Hey, what is the maximum dwelling units? We are saying the maximum dwelling units that we will have would be two units per acre in gross. That would be the maximum. And so that would be a condition of approval that we would ask you to put on.

Now. when we come back, we could never go beyond

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that. And where we put them within the community you would see in the PUD at that point and say yes, we like that or we don’t like that, but the condition of approval at this macro big level could be put on us as far as saying you cannot exceed this many units in here. And the detail would be delivered at the next step.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Okay. On the basis of that, you’re saying a range of one to two is a possibility that you could accept as a condition at this point, the lower limit of one unit per acre?

MR. SMITH: Put me on the spot.

MR. HAYMORE: Larry, let me -- And I’m not going to preside, but there’s a lot of things that have to happen to get to that, because we have to have a fiscal analysis and everything else the county has to look at. It’s got to be so it’s affordable where they can build it and it’s not a burden on the county. So there’s a lot of steps that go in to figure that.

What I’m hearing from the applicant now is not one but no more than two on 8,600 acres. With that is a mixed use, there’s a lot of things that go with that that at the PUD, having to come back -- And you guys have put a lot of hours in. Believe me, I’ve put hundreds of hours in with this, talking with the

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applicant and making sure they know the ground rules and making sure what their limits are and everything else. And a lot of that goes into where you have cluster developments and things like that, open space and how it’s built.

I think what I’m hearing the applicant -- I’m not going to put it in his words, that he says he won’t build more than two per acre. That’s 8,600 times two. So you know that at this point. But he is correct, once you get to the planned unit development you really get into more technical. When you get into the tentative map you really get into the technical, because they have to have the water rights and everything else to support that. The road system, the traffic counts, all those things have to be -- There’s a whole list of those 26 items that I have to make sure they address to meet the requirements of the NRS, our county codes and just pure plain good planning.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Okay. I’m not going to put you on the spot tonight then.

MR. SMITH: Well, no. And let me address it. One of the reasons why I’m hesitant -- I’m very comfortable saying two units per acre on the gross. The reason I’m hesitant is if you look at what we’re trying to fulfill is some of the housing within the industrial park. I

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think we’ve talked about getting obtainable housing for those people that are working in there. What that means is typically that you build a smaller home on a smaller lot that we talked about in the last meeting. That may mean we want to put some of those units in there and it might come out to be 1.2 units per acre.

If you come to our project in Somersett, we’re about 1.3 units per acre. We’re not one that tries to maximize and build a sea of homes. We try and build a nice community, and that leads into the park systems and the open space. That’s why we’re very comfortable saying 40 percent of the project would stay open. If we wanted to maximize it, believe me, we could put huge density on this type of flat land, tens to twenties multiples.

And so our proposal in current standards is a very, very low density of one to two units per acre. That’s extremely -- that’s a very low -- it’s almost underutilization of the land if you really looked at it. And so if you can understand why we’re hesitant on saying -- I’m very comfortable saying two acres per unit, but to say less than that would be difficult for us tonight.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: Mr. Chairman, that raises a question, if I may ask a question.

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CHAIRMAN WALLING: Sure.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: Mr. Chairman, the question this raises is when we’re talking about the PUD level, if we get to a PUD level, can we then legally put limits on making them phase in the project, say a thousand acres at a time and the specific number of houses at a time? I mean, I don’t know what kind of restrictions we are allowed to put in at the PUD level. If we can get a legal answer on that or something.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Dean.

MR. HAYMORE: Everybody can hear me, can’t they?

I’ve already told the applicant numerous times that it’s too big for Storey county to take the whole apple, we need to take it one slice at a time and that I recommended that if this went forward that we would phase it. They would have to come back in that fiscal analysis and where that phase is and where it starts, because they have hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure before one rooftop goes up, that they have to come in there and tell us where they want to start. Yeah, I would love to see a thousand acres. If you do it in a four phase, you’re talking 2500 acres at a pop, and then they go in and look at that and -- but for him to do it right and to -- No ifs, ands, buts, it’s money, people. To get the investments and the

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backers to come in and put a half a billion dollars in this, they have to know that they can do the whole 8600 acres.

You can put a stipulation that says, okay, come in here for the first phase, show us what you want to do, make the deal on how many houses are going to go in there, make a time limit, five years, seven and a half years or whatever, and see, let them prove to Storey County that they are a good neighbor, that they are a good partner with Storey County and come in and do that.

And I’ve told Blake that numerous times, come in, go back, I would tell him tonight, go back, figure out the first phase, come back and talk to us, instead of 3400 people, the first phase would be so many of these houses and you could start there. You don’t build the infrastructure when he has 11 section or 16 sections, you don’t build the infrastructure from the front to the back, you go from the front door and you work your way back.

MR. SMITH: And I will just acknowledge that, that that is something -- and Lydia, that would be something -- We couldn’t commit tonight, because that would be a PUD level again, because we need to run the economics and see what the infrastructure is and how

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many homes. And at that point we could step back and say, yes, if we can have the area approved in total like you’re saying, then we would go to a phasing and we would proposal that.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: But what I’m trying to find out is if in this level where we’re at now if we can put like Dean said a stipulation on that would require when you come back at a PUD level that we would phase it. Is there any legality issue in not being --

MR. HAYMORE:  What you’re going to say is that -- if you approve a master plan  amendment, that gives them the next step to come in for the PUD. At the PUD you come back with what you’re going to phase in. You might have a PUD for 8600 acres that gives him -- allows him to build that first phase. Come in and design the first phase and then let’s go talk the second phase. Because technology is going to change, economy is going to change, everything is --

Folks. you’ve seen more things change in your lifetime. I have, too. We don’t know what’s going to happen in ten years. If you asked me seven years ago that T.R.I. was going to be built out in seven years, first phase, I’d say you’re crazy. Now I’m dying, because I can’t stay up with it. I can’t believe it. And so first -- Actually in three years they sold out

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25 years of what we planned for. And that can happen here, too. And so proper and good planning and checks and balances have to be put in place.

MR. SMITH: I think -- To take the mystery out of it, yes, we would take that stipulation that at the PUD level as long as we were able to work with you as far as the economics and the infrastructure and those things, we would work with staff to come back with a proposal that we would accept some kind of phasing within that proposal to answer that for you.

MR. HAYMORE: And we have to do that just to be able to provide the services for Storey County. We’re growing so fast just for the services for T.R.I. and then throw this -- Painted Rock is right behind my door. They’re starting to talk, Painted Rock is coming. Folks, there’s other projects coming right behind the door. We have to look at it as the big picture also.

MR. HAWS: So to summarize that, an approval here for a master plan amendment gives us the opportunity to go do more research and more work. You have total control on that.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Okay, Thank you, Greg.

I think this is back in your ballpark, Joe. I got with one of the engineers with the Truckee Meadows

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Water Authority and on the back of an envelope we did a few scratches about just what it would take to get water up to the site. And you saw my numbers. Again, they’re just sketchy and everything, but it is expensive. I think you probably agree. And my question was that with the cost of delivering portable water to the project, will the developer be able to compete with other developments in the area?

MR. CACIOPPO: For the record, Joe Cacioppo, Resource Concepts, This will be a lot quicker for me, because I don’t have as much to say. But will it be able to compete with other developments? We believe it will be able to. It is an expensive situation to be in. Mr. Smith is looking at a variety of different options of how we can provide water, not just how we can provide it, but we’re aware that there’s going to be high infrastructure costs. I mean, there’s no getting around that. We’ve got to bring water up the hill. It takes  technology to do that. It’s all doable. It comes at a price.

But the benefit here, too, is that the operating costs of something like this -- we don’t anticipate -- in terms of other developments in northern Nevada, we don’t anticipate this being to that level in terms of operating expenses. So we feel that even though we

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have high infrastructure costs, there’s going to be lower operating costs and the net result -- And that’s going to take some homework on our part and whatnot -- is going to be  reasonable connection fees and reasonable rates and whatnot to make this a viable alternative.

There’s a lot of coordination that’s going to go into something like this. And I think Blake could talk about it better than I could, but just to give you a cursory heads-up, if you will, you know, this doesn’t necessarily -- The  developer needs to provide water to his development and make that work, but there’s potential here for some kind of county solution, you know, county participation. And when I say “participation,” I don’t mean stick the county with the cost, I mean that there’s a lot of dialog that has to go on.

And in doing something like, this may open the door for future developments and how do we make all that fit together and keep it -- you know, keep it affordable for everybody. You know, obviously he wants to sell houses and we have to make sure it’s affordable for people to move into a community like that. And we think that’s doable.

To give you hard numbers right now and say this is exactly how we’re going to do it, I can’t do that right

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now, but I just want to let you know that this is doable and we feel we can  compete with other developments.

MR. SMITH: You know, and if I can add -- Larry, if I can give -- because we don’t have everything designed and all, but I can give you some real life examples. In Somersett we have brought the water over ten miles away into the project. We built four major pump systems, we’ve brought it up about 750 feet from the river level, multiple water tank systems. It is the most expensive component in the development is the water infrastructure. You’re on track on cost here. But it is -- with the economics and the elements of -- or the economics of it, of spreading it across these homes, it does become viable. I can tell you from real life experience from what we’re experiencing.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Okay. Thank you. My next question is also for Joe. This is: Where will the development’s sewage treatment effluent be discharged? My concern there is that -- You know, like Virginia City’s goes into Six Mile Canyon, all of Truckee  Meadows’, most of the (inaudible) and most of the water in Steamboat Creek comes from that treatment plant. And just looking at it, it appears that Long Valley Creek would be the logical recipient of that flow,

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unless there’s something else out there that you’re aware of.

MR. CACIOPPO: Well, the sanitary sewer system is -- Again, it goes along with the water in that it’s something we have to look deeper into. But, you know, we’ve looked at and discussed some options, you know, can we take it somewhere, do we treat it on site, how do we handle this. And the reality is it probably winds up being some kind of localized system. You know, to pipe it somewhere else and do, you know, X, Y and Z with it, it’s difficult to say right now, but the reality I think is that it is some kind of localized system.

We foresee -- You know, you’re going to collect all of this and you have to treat it somehow before you either get rid of it or reuse it or whatever you intend to do. So there’s going to be a component of reuse in it, and it would obviously have to meet, you know, local and state standards and whatnot, but the idea is that if we can use -- you know the term would be, say, treated effluent  or recycled water, there’s a lot of terms out there, that we can reuse some of that, you know, in the parks, you know a variety of different ways. It doesn’t obviously become being drinking water or anything like that. It’s reused in an

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irrigation-type form at an acceptable level.

So in doing that, you know, we feel that how much gets discharged  somewhere else can get reduced. Again. I don’t have numbers on that right now and how that can be, but we think at this point it’s reasonable to say that we can treat it. It’s going to involve other issues like, you know, a comprehensive soils investigation to let us know, you know, which soils in the land planned areas are compatible and how do we treat it at that point. So I can’t really give you any more information right now in terms of that. Once we do more  studies as we go up the chain in approval levels, we can address these things at the appropriate levels.

Mr. HAYMORE: Larry, one of the other things that I’ve asked them to look at, and I’ve asked Painted Rock to look at, is grey-water systems, new technology out there. Ninety-five percent of your water, folks, your shower, your sinks and everything else, five percent is crap. And so the new technology -- We’re asking T.R.I. -- We got 80 percent recycled going on at T.R.I. We’re asking Painted Rock and we’re asking them to look at the new technology, to have separate lines for grey-water systems and purple pipe, we call it purple pipe systems. I’ll guarantee you that’s going to be a

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requirement from me, to look at that, that 80 percent is reused right there. Yes, it’s reused for landscaping, everything, you can de-ces, de-water. You’re going to start seeing that technology.

I got people out in the Highlands, we’re putting tanks in their daylight basements so they can reuse it. You can reuse that once, shower, you can refuse it to the flush the toilet a second time, things like that. There’s a lot of technology, and we need to use technology availability because of the water problems. And I’ve already told them that I’m expecting that. And Painted Rock knows that, too. I’ve already talked to Painted Rock.

MR. SMITH: I was just going to jump in on that, conservation. It’s a natural resource. The state of Nevada, the driest state in the union. Water in any use or capacity will be maximized to its extent. But I think in answering to your question, there’s really only a couple of -- well, there’s multiple alternatives, but to answer your question in the simplest form, we would process it on site I think might answer your question.

The only other alternative would be to pipe it back to the Reno-Sparks sewage plant which is feasible by gravity flow, but I think the costs would be overly extensive. So it would an on-site plant similar to

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what T.R.I. is doing. They’re treating it on site, creating effluent, reusing it. We would do the same within Cordevista.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Okay, Joe. I think you’re off the hook then.

MR. CACIOPPO: Thank you.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Number five, you have pledged no future access roads to Cordevista through Lockwood or through the Virginia City Highlands. My concern there is primarily that once the Cordevista development gets underway and the county’s population starts to shift over there, the political powers and everything like that, down the road when those people decide that they would like a quicker access to I-80, possibly through Lockwood or a quicker access into Virginia City, how can you at this point guarantee that those roads will not be built?

MR. HAWS: Again -- Do I have to state my name again? Greg Haws, Planning Center. The best tool that jurisdictions have to police that type of thing long term is conditions of approval. Conditions of approval are tied to the land and not the landowner. So even if the developer goes away, those conditions of approval stay with the land.

In conjunction with this project, Cordevista will

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request that they be conditioned that no roads be built south of the project connecting their project with Virginia City Highlands or Virginia City, however, with the caveat that if the residents of Virginia City or Virginia City Highlands request that, that would be the only way that would happen. Cordevista -- the residents of -- the condition would state that the residents of Cordevista could never request that. It would have to come from Virginia City or Virginia City Highlands. And that can be done --

COMMISSIONER PRATER: This is probably a question for our legal counsel then. Is that kind of thing enforceable?

MR. GUNDERSON: Absolutely.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Okay.

MR. HAYMORE: Now you want to hear the true story? You’re not going to like it, folks. When you do proper planning, we tie communities together for fire, sheriff. It just doesn’t make sense if we need to come through and tie it together and everything else. I’ll guarantee you we’re going to make them build firehouses, sheriff houses. We’re already working with Vince down in T.R.I. We had to move the firehouse five times because you can’t get insurance ratings unless we can have a firehouse within five miles of your

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residence. And that means five road miles. There’s going to be five miles in between you, but when there’s a fire out there --

And, folks, I drove it. Go out on Rocky Road. The ten acres and stuff are putting in roads way back there to open up the land and things. And I’m not going to sit here and not tell you that we’re going to look at it. And, yeah, you can put a stipulation and legal is right, and it needs to come from your community if you don’t want roads there and stuff, but if you have a fire and can’t get out, where are we going to push it? We’re going to push you out Lousetown, we’re going to push you out Long Valley.

Why has the road not been built now? The State of Nevada and the United States could not build a road because it’s too expensive there. Where the road makes more feasibility is to go Long Valley or the pole line, to go that way. But, folks, I got to look at everything. I got to look at reasonable. Blake tells me he doesn’t want to build a road and I says, you know, county commissioners don’t want it, that’s fine, but we’re going to look at all the different options.

MR. SMITH: Well, and I think, Dean, from that standpoint, there would never be any opposition from our standpoint for life safety purposes. And I want to

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clarify what you’re saying. When a fire happens or something else, how you typically handle that is you put a condition that there’s no daily traffic or anything like that, but you put a gate on it for emergency access so that the fire department can break through it or open the gate, people could be rushed through the Highlands out, but it’s not a road that you would travel daily.

That’s something we’ve talked about with Lockwood here. And that’s where -- it’s actually come back to us from a lot of citizens in Lockwood saying actually let’s look at it, because maybe we do want daily flow traffic for the schools and all that.

But as far as the southern one, I think -- And thank you for the clarity on it. We would condition ourselves. Now, if the county wanted emergency access and other things, obviously we’re going to be open to that. You have the ability to override anything that we put on the property from the government standpoint, so --

MR. HAYMORE: And he’s correct. As every one of you guys know, at the Highlands when we make you put access and grades and everything -- Basically what a secondary access road to the fire department is is a 16 foot -- 20-foot wide, but it’s 16 actually, with

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number two road base on it that will withstand a 50,000-pound brush truck. And that’s what we like to have so we can get out there to fight the fires in the Highlands on the back side of the petroglyphs. I’m not speaking for the fire chief, and don’t misquote me, just we got to plan for your protection, your quality of life and everybody’s out there. And so I’m not going to say that we’re going to make him put it in. There are already roads out there right through his Property.

You know how to get to the petroglyphs. They’re the best petroglyphs in the world if you ask me, and we haven’t been able to protect them. But we are talking about fire access just like we have now that he’s agreed right back here three miles, big gates on it, the fire department has the key and if they need to get up there, they get up there.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Any other questions relative to roads?

Okay. My sixth concern was the argument that Cordevista is required to provide a residential balance to the rapid commercial and industrial growth of the T.R.I. park and that good planning practices require such a balance. One of the concerns, though, that I kind of have is that -- we’ve said it several times

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here, that T.R.I. is developing well beyond or much quicker than anyone had anticipated and there doesn’t seem to be major concern by the companies going in there that there is no adjacent housing or housing within Storey County for an employee base. They seem to acknowledge that the Truckee Meadows, Fernley, Silver Springs provide the employee bases. And most of these companies, they do their homework before they do a relocation or development of this nature.

To date just recently we recently received a letter from Trammell Crow who I guess has done quite a bit of the development out there, but they’re the only one that I’m aware of. And so the kind of concern is that is this really necessary as a benefit to T.R.I., and I wonder if you could clarify that.

MR. HAWS: Greg Haws, Planning Center. To respond to your question, I personally have made several phone calls this past week and spoken with many of the business owners and managers of operations over at T.R.I. and they have expressed a concern that they are having a difficulty finding people who want to commute that far and that that is becoming a growing issue. I got verbal commitments from many of them that they would be willing to write letters of support of the project that state that they are concerned with the

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growing difficulty of finding housing in close proximity of the project.

How many have we received to this point?

They will be coming.

MR. SMITH: We’ve talked to a couple of them. I think their concerns -- Well, you’ve just expressed it, that the commute times, other items to it, will impact their abilities to hire out there. We’ve also heard from the other adjacent communities who are saying how do we handle all this traffic and everything if everyone is commuting back and forth through Interstate 80. And so there are some local issues and some regional issues that we’ve tried to address always in here. But I think the T.R.I. Park is -- I can’t describe it. It is phenomenal and it’s the greatest -- one of the greatest things in Storey County. And it -- in our opinion, and we’re seeing from some of the tenants, it is a need for some type of balance, something closer that they can get the housing and the public services and the retail to help service that.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Gentlemen, at this juncture I do want to make a statement of policy here. Any letters, e-mails, transcriptions on this issue, pro or otherwise, will -- are made part of the record along with petitions and such and will be -- which they are

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public documents and can be viewed by anybody. I would like to say once again, yes, your letters, your petitions will be with us, I guarantee it, and respected and they will not go away, I guarantee you. Thank you.

MR. HAWS: Can I just add one more thing? You posed a very good question about sound planning practices and who they are good for. I’ve had the privilege of working on many, many large projects around the country and on both sides of the table. I’ve represented prior developers and at the same time had the privilege of representing government agencies and counties and cities through their general plans, through master plans.

And as I thought about this question -- It’s a very good question -- I thought perhaps the best way to answer this question is maybe the converse. Inbalance is bad for home. As we’ve worked around the country the two primary issues that we run into are energy and quality of life. With the energy prices that are skyrocketing right now, commute distances become very, very critical. The quality of life, there have been hundreds of surveys done in the last 20 years about quality of life and what constitutes quality of life. The primary factor in establishing your quality of life

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is how much time you spend in your car going to work.

And so to answer your question of imbalance most communities suffer from the converse of what you have. They don’t have jobs. They provide the housing but they don’t have jobs in close proximity. And it’s a really, really large issue. It’s being talked about in every community across the country. This job/housing balance is a huge thing and especially in the face of rising energy costs that issue is not going away anytime soon.

MR. SMITH: Well, and let me just add one other thing, and it goes back to what we were talking about. We focused in on the employment and housing and the balance of that, but I think the project also delivers some other things that I think the county and the planning commissioners need to look at. When we talk about the fact that we can come in and help adjacent counties -- adjacent communities with resolving flooding issues, we can come in, we can provide the potential of water to the communities that don’t have water, we’re talking about improved fire access, diversification of the tax base, working with wildlife habitat and protection of the wildlife in here, and this board really goes into, the protection of the petroglyphs that can’t be protected right now, and again, I want to

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go back to this community foundation, the ability to try and raise a half a million dollars of not taxes but donations to the community every year, those are the things that I think that you as the commissioners have to look at and say: Is this a net positive to the community? And I think that you’ll look at it and say yes, it’s actually a huge positive to the community.

COMMISSIONER PRATER; Okay. My final question was relative to the planning  practices and effectively the zoning. I wasn’t involved in the creation of the master plan that developed -- wound up with the approval of T.R.I., but I can kind of envision how it occurred in that you look at the property out there, T.R.I. was surrounded by gravel pits, power plants, gypsum mine, relatively undevelopable mountain ranges, that sort of thing, and one of the things that was right there was the special industrial T.R.I./Aerojet -- or TRW/Aerojet property out there. And so to me it makes sense that T.R.I. was -- the industrial zoning for that was kind of a logical aspect of that.

Now we’re kind of being asked to reverse our thinking in that and place urban/suburban-type development that’s bounded on three sides by an industrial park and on the west side the existing forestry which is very low density. And to me this

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kind of smacks of spot zoning which in my understanding of planning and everything is largely discouraged, so I would like you to comment on that.

MR. HAWS: Greg Haws from the Planning Center. I would like to talk about spot zoning. Spot zoning occurs when -- by definition it’s when you’re changing a single piece of land within the context of a single land zone and it’s out of character with its adjacent zoning. Is that how you understand it?

If you look at the diagram -- Let’s see. Let’s go third back on the right-hand side, the one that says Tahoe Reno Industrial Park. You are correct, we are surrounded on three sides by T.R.I. and we do share our westerly boundary with forestry which has some residential uses associated with it. You could argue that we are (inaudible) between industrial use on the east and the west, but you could also make the argument that we are a transition area piece between low density residential as you move toward a very vibrant and successful industrial park. We provide the necessary transition and balance and we are  complementary to that zoning which provides our context.

(Laughter)

MR. SMITH: Let me say it in a different way. Let

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me go to the fourth one there. I think what Greg is saying -- And he articulated it in the letter. What he’s saying is Virginia Highlands is very low density. You have one house per 40 acres. We reside between one house per 40 acres and the largest industrial park in the world. And so spot zoning is where, as he articulated in there, if you had a housing neighborhood and you put a school or something in the middle of it, that would be a spot zoning, but what you’re seeing here is you have --

And I’m going to go back to the master plan that says there are three places in the county to develop going forward, we being one of it that has half of the developable property in the county right now. But if you look at the purple map again, you have the industrial park with heavy industrial, manufacturing, which is a very intense zoning, you have our property which we’re looking to put into a  mid -- actually low density, because low density -- When we get to one home per 40 acres, I don’t even know how to describe that. That’s beyond low density.

And so the transition area that he was talking about is going from 40 acres to one to two units per acre to the industrial park and one of the three remaining lands that can be developed. It does not --

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it is not spot zoning, it’s actually a transition zoning is what he’s saying. It’s not -- by no means do we see this as spot zoning. We actually see it as logical zoning for the remaining lands of one of the three remaining lands that the county has at this point.

MR. HAYMORE: Commissioner, can I explain real quick to everybody? Fortunately or unfortunately, I’ve been here 20 years, and I’ll give you a real quick explanation. We wrote a -- we got a planning commission together, wrote a master plan and did the zoning. In the master plan it talks about special industrial.  The reason why that got zoned special  industrial is because before I got here -- my second day on the job I red tagged High Shear. That was the explosion company out there.

They got a special use permit back in 1986 and they came to the county commissioners. I asked for a show cause hearing to have their special use permit removed. They came to a county commissioners’ hearing, said they wanted to be a good neighbor and that they would comply with their special use permit and the next day we got sued. That’s how good a neighbor. It took us about two, three years.

Larry, I don’t know if you were a commissioner at

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that time, but Virgil was involved in that. And so after coming out and defining what their special use permit allowed them to do, in the master plan we identified that we need to have a special industrial zone basically to follow their special use permit. And that’s how that got put there.

But at the same time, folks, all but ten acres, and the 40 acres were forestry zoned, and we came to you and you said you had to go through, pay your fee, a hundred bucks, get a special use permit to get to build your single-family house. You came to us and said: Rezone it for a state zoning so we can do that. And so we did that.

We actually created a special zoning for the Highlands. We created a VCH, one acre, ten acre, 40 acres, we came up with how many horses and dogs. Unfortunately, we had to talk about dogs. But believe me, I got dogs at home and they love me and I love them. As my wife said, I’m not being too good of a dad to the dogs because I’m gone lately.

But we created that zoning for the Highlands because that’s what you wanted. And we did it for Mark Twain, we did the same thing for Mark Twain. We actually came in with this development at Rainbow Bend. It was a special use permit for a manufactured home,

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99-year lease. We came back and made it a planned unit development so the people could buy their lots underneath their houses. And we did that for this community.

We did that for T.R.I. They came to us and I said 20 years ago when I took the county commissioners and the planning commissioners out to see where the county was, I said this is a natural. And they said: Here, go get a planning commission put together, get a master plan and zoning and go play with 4,000 acres. And I was told for 15 years I was stupid and it would never happen, everybody from Reno, everybody. And now you see what’s happened.

So that’s how the special industrial got set out there is we basically made a zoning to match the master plan, his special use permit. And believe me, folks, I put two guys in prison for five years out there and 1.3 million dollars worth of fines. And that’s why they sold it to Aerojet, Aerojet never did anything. They bought it, turned around and sold it to TRW. TRW opened it back up. But that’s how the zoning happened with the master plan and that’s how we identified it.

Look it. In ten years after our master plan, we were right on. Now this is changing the master plan quite a bit. It’s changing it. And the whole county complex

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is changing.

We got people bought land in Mark Twain, we got developers in Fernley that are building right up to the county line. We got developers -- I had to cancel a meeting today with Washoe County, right up to the county line below Virginia City of the original 40 acres of the Highlands in Virginia City called the Golden Project. We have that going on that they want to come and talk to us, not building in Storey County, but they want --

Good planning is to talk and be able to interconnect. So the only way they can get to their project is out through Castle Peak and that way and we don’t want them going that way. And so we won’t let them go that way. So they have to come in and talk to us, they got to go to Washoe County. And they got to tie a system in to go that way. Sorry.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Okay. I have one last question of Greg. Are you a consultant with --

MR. HAWS: I am.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: This probably then is for Blake really in that I’m sure you’re aware, Storey County does not have the luxury of a planning department similar to Reno, Sparks, Washoe County, like

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that. If this master plan, everything were approved, would you be willing to pay for the county to hire an independent planning firm to review for us your development through the process?

MR. SMITH: That’s an easy one. Yes. We do that currently. In the City of Reno we hire outside consultants for the city because of the burden that comes with it. So, yes, that is something that we would step up and -- whether you pay additional staff or you pay an outside company, that needs to be done, and so it would be done through the fee structure or whatever, the county would impose those costs on us. Now, whether you wanted to hire people or if you want to hire an outside consultant, that would be your election, but we would be paying those fees to pay for that, yes.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Ok.

MR. SMITH: One other thing that we talked about, Dean, T.R.I. when they went up there, they made a substantial investment. I don’t know what it is, but it’s tens of millions of dollars in buildings up there. One of the things that we’ve talked to staff about was the fact that upon the development level or whatever we have some office buildings up there that could be utilized by the county immediately for life safety,

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fire, consultants as far as the planning department. They are professionally built, multi-million-dollar office buildings on the site right now that we’ve mothballed, but they could be reenergized and brought back on line for the county.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Folks. I don’t know about you all, but I’ve been sitting here for two hours. Now, that does not count the ones in the back that have been standing. I would like to take a ten-minute recess and then we’ll resume questions and concerns. Thank you.

(A recess was taken.)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Folks, I would like to -- This is the end of the recess, please. Thank you. If you’re standing, please return to where you’re been standing. Folks, please return to your seats. If you’ve been standing, please return to where you’ve been standing. Folks, please. Before we resume with questioning by the planning commission, Larry, you’ve got a question on the petitions that have been submitted to us.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Yes. At the end of the meeting in the Highlands we  requested that staff have our legal counsel look at the petition and give us guidance as to where to go, the next step. So at this time I would like to ask Mr. Gunderson to give us some

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guidance on that aspect.

MR. GUNDERSON: Thank you very much, Good evening, everybody. Mark Gunderson. The planning commission has a job to do and it’s charged with doing that job through the Storey County ordinances. Petitions or allowing petitions or having petitions to direct the growth or development of the county is not permissible. You may take a petition or take the information from a petition, but it’s not a vote on what to do or how to do it. That’s the planning commission’s job, pure and simple.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: So the petition has no weight?

MR. GUNDERSON: That is correct.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: No legal weight.

MR. GUNDERSON: No legal weight. It’s just -- it may be advisory, the planning  commission can listen to it, but it can’t direct the planning process The planning process is to be directed by the planning commission and the county commissioners.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: How about a petition to remove the Board of Commissioners from office, can we do that?

MR. GUNDERSON: Whatever is provided for by law is

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certainly permissible. That’s one of those options.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: And what does that require?

MR GUNDERSON: Well I’m not going to get into that. That’s really out of the scope.

THE COURT: That’s not the question. Thank you, Commissioner.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: Yes. While we have legal here -- I don’t think I phrased my question properly before. The way I would like to phrase this is: Is there a way that we  could place a stipulation on at this particular stage saying that we will be putting  stipulations on for a phased plan only at the PUD level?

MR. GUNDERSON: You have the discretion to condition any approval that you have using any reasonable conditions at this level. You can do that. The question, though, is what you want to do, because remember, this level is really a larger policy question. And the larger policy question that you have to address under the master plan is: Do you wish to have this kind of development in this county and in this community and, if so, how? That’s the major question you have to address.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: Thank you.

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COMMISSIONER WALLING: Planning commissioners, further questions of the applicant. Hopefully we can try not to duplicate concerns and questions, please.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: I do have a question for Mr. Smith. It says in here in your response to Commissioner Prater’s issue regarding water -- you have written, “Our recommendations for Cordevista project is that in conjunction with Storey County you take the lead in working to develop the countywide plan to meet both current and future water needs in Storey County.” You wrote that after discussing the issue of having you call islands of communities in our county as it is, but islands having their own water system, Virginia City their own, et cetera, et cetera. It sounds like in your discussion here that you wish -- or is it possible you’re asking Storey County take the horns here in providing the water infrastructure and also planning your planning to get water to your development?

MR. SMITH: By no means. I think what we’re saying in there is if you look at how there are multiple -- By no means are we saying that. Let me just answer this. We are here to say that we will build our own water infrastructure system. What that statement talks about is the bigger picture that Storey County -- if we are developing such a large massive system, does it not

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make benefit or ideas that maybe we link into Virginia City Highlands or other things that you make a master system?

We’ve talked to staff for a year or two about the fact that because of all this -- and this isn’t for our own benefit but it’s really for the benefit of the community, of saying if you have all these different systems, is there a way that you can maximize them by having -- by having dialogs or other things that maximize the usage within the multiple sets of systems but not to burden. We are not trying to burden or pass on the cost to the county of our existing system -- our proposed system.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: Okay.

MR. SMITH: Did I answer that for you?

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE; Yes. I have another question. This one I’m actually going to ask Mr. Prater maybe with your experience with engineering. It says in here that your typical house uses 800 square feet or square acres of water a year and you at Cordevista have 250 to 300 per house. I imagine you’re talking low-flow water systems as well as possibly banning any landscaping and that sort of thing. Is that a reasonable number to say a residence can be lowered down to 250 for a project like this per home

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for water usage?

COMMISSIONER PRATER: I lived two years in Saudi Arabia in an American camp and they had two water systems. One was called the sweet water and it was a little tap at the sink that was used for all your cooking and drinking. And the second was the well water system which was used for washing and any kind of landscaping, anything like that. It was very efficient. It didn’t take too long to get used to it. You learn real quick you didn’t drink anything out of the tap other than the sweet water tap. But, yeah, there are ways to conserve water. I don’t know if you want to go to that extreme up there, but it is possible.

MR. SMITH: It is. And we have -- Joe can come up and speak if need be. In current day -- Again, I’ll go back to the state of Nevada, the driest state in the union. The natural resources of water you need to conserve, especially with today’s technology that can take it down as far as you can. You do want to -- In the PUD, in the CC&Rs that we would put on the community, you go all the way down to what type of plant species and how you can plant and all those things to try and conserve those water uses. And then also you have your low-flow consumption items and you

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also have your grey water, your purple pipe like we’re talking about. And so you do ring out as much as you can out of that one-acre-foot of water or whatever denomination it is that you’re using out there.

COMMISSIONER OSBONE: All right. Thank you.

MR. HAYMORE: Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Yes

MR. HAYMORE: I have one question that I think needs to be addressed and I know the consultant’s here. We got a letter at the last meeting on that there’s no contamination in the soils. You were going to do some more thorough investigations. Can you address the soils out there and any contaminations or problems?

MR. SMITH: Yeah. Do you mind coming up? This is Eric with Kleinfelder. Thank you for coming.

MR. HUBBARD: Hello, commissioners. My name is Eric Hubbard. I work with Kleinfelder. I’m an engineering geologist there and I can summarize what we know about the site.  We’ve worked on this site since before Blake acquired it. And as Blake mentioned, the last operator of the site was TRW, and they fabricated the little propellant capsules that set off your air bag in your car. They have -- And he mentioned that there’s also several  structures on the site. Two of those structures were used under very

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tightly controlled conditions to fabricate these pellets that -- these propellant units, about this big around. And those buildings were all under very tightly controlled conditions.

Two areas of the site were used as open burn detonation test areas. They’re about a hundred feet across, they’re double lined with -- to prevent any infiltration of stuff going into the ground.

All of the investigation we’ve done, we have looked at both properties that were acquired, the only environmental issues that we’re aware of through all the reports that we’ve done and reports that others have done are the areas where those things were blown up and tested on these hundred-foot pads.

The two pads again are double lined. We are in the process of cleaning those up right now. We expect that process will be done by the end of this year if things go well and whatever remains in there will be disposed of. Other than that, the property is essentially bare, unused land.

MR. HAYMORE: So do you have a technical report, more than one sheet, that you can provide to us?

MR. HUBBARD: We do. We have numerous reports that we’ve done for Blake and reports done by others and at Blake’s direction we’d make that available to anybody

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that wants to look at them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Does that include me?

MR. HUBBARD: Beg your pardon?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Does that include me?

MR. HUBBARD: Sure. You know, basically my obligation is to Blake. If he tells me that he would like you to have them, I would be happy to do that. I’ll let Blake address that.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: We would like to have them.

MR. SMITH: We’ll put them on public record. And what we’re addressing here are what are called phase one and phase two levels. Phase one is oversight review of the property. Phase two we’ve actually gone in with tractors and dug into the ground to see if there’s any contamination.

Other questions. There was a specific question of uranium which we’ve gone out and done an extensive -- another set of diggings to look and see if there was any uranium. And I think that was addressed and answered in the last one, that there is not. But we’re more than happy. It’s a very thick extensive set, but we’re more than happy to make them part of the public record.

Mr. HAYMORE: For the public, anything that comes into my office is open to the public record. You can

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come in and request it. I’ve had a few ladies come in and when I bring out about ten inches of documents they come back a different day. But anything that comes in under this is open to the public. That is the state of Nevada law. Thank you. And I would request those documentation.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Further Planning Commission.

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Yes.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: And copies for the Planning Commission?

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Anyway, Blake, Mr. Smith, have we addressed anything on the transportation issue as far as I-80 and the impact? I know the Industrial Park is going to have a huge -- and I know it’s really hard to model, but have you gone to that extent to see what kind of load that I-80 is going to incur from this?

MR. SMITH: Are you speaking about our community?

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Well, yeah. Its probably a bigger question for T.R.I., too. I mean, have any transportation studies been done?

MR. SMITH: It goes back to the PUD level. We would need to know how many homes we’re going to develop and then where are their jobs and where are the schools. You have what’s called an internalization

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traffic flow and then an external one and how many cars will actually go out of the community. To answer your question, we have not, because we haven’t gone to the second step of the PUD. We don’t know what to plug into it yet because we haven’t done the (inaudible).

COMMISSIONER TYLER: It’s almost a Vince question at this point anyway. Okay. Thank you.

MR. HAYMORE: To answer that question, T.R.I. had to do a traffic study so we know how big of roads they have to build and stuff and that would be something that we would have to have here, too, because we have to have the flows and everything else. They have to work with NDOT on NDOT’s flows and counts. And NDOT has come to the county and asked me and Pat to be involved in the regional study of this corridor out to Fernley, out to Churchill, Fallon and everything else. They’ve asked us to be part of that to look at it as a region, too,

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Thank you.

MR. HAYMORE: But Vince is back there. Vince, we did a whole ADT study and everything on your road systems and that’s how we came up with the master plan of road system and secondary collectibles and everything else.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, Tahoe Reno has

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done significant planning for traffic before the project was even approved, so yes.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: Chair, I have another question that goes off of that last issue.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Yes.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: If I’m correct, do you remember saying, last meeting and also in your documentation that your project Cordevista will accommodate about seven percent of all the workers at T.R.I. when T.R.I. is built out and when Cordevista is built out? One of the concerns I have is you’re talking upwards of 30,000 people driving on I-80 to Reno and Fernley as well as 30,000 people driving on USA Parkway on top of the already -- the traffic that will already be on USA Parkway from T.R.I. itself. It’s about the population of Carson City almost that will be funneled right down this one corridor.

MR. SMITH: I don’t -- Yes. The answer is yes. That would occur with or without Cordevista because of the employees going to the park. Those employees are going to be driving there anyhow. So a part of what we’ve looked at is trying to figure out how to mitigate and keep some of that traffic within the local area of Storey County, i.e., roads that would connect possibly to T.R.I., to Interstate 80, these other alternatives

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that spread that out. But as the park grows, and if the park grows to its maximum capacity, it could be that high. If the park does not grow all that way, it -- Obviously the economies are driven. When the park -- if it goes all the way and develops all 30,000 acres, you have the potential of having a hundred thousand plus employees in it. If it stops and only develops 10,000, obviously there would be that proportional amount of employees in it. But either way, the employees are going to drive up and down Interstate 80 or USA Parkway to get to those jobs within the park.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: That’s my concern, because you’ll be adding 30,000 people on top of that.

MR. SMITH: Well, it would be the same people.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: What’s that?

MR. SMITH: It would be the same people.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: Seven percent.

MR. SMITH: No, the seven percent was -- what that number was was if the park built out completely, all 30,000 acres developable, that there theoretically could be 180,000 plus or minus employees in it. Our residency would only take about seven or eight percent of the population of the employees there.

It wasn’t traffic driven, it was just saying that --

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What we’re saying is as the park grows that we would -- instead of people buying a home in Reno or Sparks or Fernley they would potentially buy it in Cordevista, but that same person still would work in the park, so he’s driving either from Reno or Sparks or he’s driving from Cordevista back and forth to the project.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: The reason I bring, this up, sir -- I’m asking really if T.R.I -- if the USA Parkway cannot accommodate Cordevista because you’re only taking seven percent away from the traffic coming from T.R.I. -- You just even mentioned yourself, two roads and possible other alternatives for getting the people in and out of Cordevista. What really are you talking about right now at this moment looking at for alternative routes? You’ve talked about an east/west route to Reno and then you just mentioned now possible other routes.

MR. SMITH: Well, I think its the same one, a possible route into T.R.I., a possible route north to Mustang, a possible route to the west to Reno, nothing to the south. I want to be very clear on that. But those routings there would be three minimum alternative routings that we could look at for the traffic flow on that.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: Thank you, sir.

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CHAIRMAN WALLING: With the Planning Commission’s approval I would like to open this up to the public. Ladies and gentlemen, is it okay with you? Thank you. Being open to the public, the first speaker would be Beverly Harry representing the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. Beverly, ma’am, Please.

MS. HARRY: Hello.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: You can use the mike here.

MS. HARRY: Hello. My name is Beverly Harry. I work with the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe as an environmental specialist and I would really like to thank the commissioners for giving me the time to speak.

I just wanted to inform the commissioners that the tribe has been working on its Water Quality Control Plan which contains the water quality standards for the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. So, as you know, this stretch of -- this stretch of the Truckee River is impaired, and through the progressive efforts of the tribe, they want to maintain the water quality within the river.

The foresight that the tribe has had working to enhance water quality has positively impacted the quality of life on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s reservation. So our concerns are mainly for the care

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of the cultural resources that are on reservation land, the quality -- the aquatic life and for the riparian ecosystem as well as maintaining the pristine environment of Pyramid Lake.

So the tribe respectfully requests that the commissioners look at the solid wastewater and flood management planning very, very carefully so that the impacts are not a detriment to the Truckee River. So I’ve brought along a copy of the Water Quality Control Plan for the commissioners to make copies of or to go on the tribe’s website and to look at the public notice that is out.

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Can you give us the website address?

MS. HARRY: Yes, The website address is www.plpt.nsn.us. So this --

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Once again.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: Once again. Say the site again.

MS. HARRY: I’m sorry. It’s www.plpt.nsn.us . And so the whole red lined copy is available on the tribe’s website. So I’ll go ahead and leave a copy with you.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you. Most important.

MS. HARRY: But we also would like to possibly advise the commissioners in actively planning

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accordingly to your resources available, not only for the land, and essentially not putting the cart before the horse but refraining from planning and then looking for resources later. I think that would really, really enhance the community foundation that he talked about, that you need to make sure that you have those resources available before you start this elaborate plan. So I hope that you’ll take all of the tribe’s concerns into consideration when you’re looking at your own master plan. Thank you very much for your time.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: It will, as this commission always has.

From Rainbow Bend, testimonial declaration from Ed Gilbert. Please.

MR. GILBERT: Yeah, Fine. You want me to use the mike?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Yeah.

MR. GILBERT: Fine. Thank you very much, Mr. Commissioner. I would like to -- as in my opinion I am in favor of this project. I think the benefits to the Rainbow Bend community -- it would be very beneficial both in the flood control and the potential schools that are going to go into the area. I have a question on the schools. Are these schools going to be kindergarten through high school all the way through --

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MR. SMITH: (Nods head)

MR. GILBERT: Some of our folks down here in Rainbow Bend have expressed their opinions that they would like a school closer to us than Virginia City, so this is another reason why I would be in favor of it.

Another question I would have -- Mr. Smith is it?

MR. SMITH: Yes.

MR. GILBERT: -- is you mentioned one to two houses per acre. Now, this does not sound like affordable housing. Most of your T.R.I. people are warehousing. What’s being planned for affordable housing? Are you looking at apartment complexes, low to mid income? You know, I don’t know if this is too early to get into this stage, whether this should be in the PUD stage or whether we can talk about it now, or give us an idea.

The other question I had is on the transportation. I agree that it would be nice if we had a way for our kids to go to school up there versus Virginia City but I don’t think Canyon Way is the answer. I don’t think Exit 22 is the answer. It hardly handles traffic with 400 houses down here.

MR. SMITH: Right.

MR. GILBERT: I would think a more better alternative, and you touched on it, would be down in the Mustang-type area, somewhere down in that area down

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there.

That’s my only comments, but I’m in favor of the project

MR. SMITH: Well, thank you.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you. Mr. Smith has agreed to hopefully keep track of these concerns and questions and answer your comments at the end of this period. And if he misses you, remind him.

MR. SMlTH: Yes.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Next speaker, Mr. Miller, Dennis Miller.

MR. MILLER: Dennis Miller, Lockwood, I’m also in favor of this project. Some of the reasons I shall give you is, number one, I would like to know how many gas stations are in Storey County. One. Where is it at? Virginia City. How many grocery stores, full grocery stores, are in Storey County? Zero. That’s correct. So I’m forced to spend every dollar, every taxable dollar, that I have basically in Washoe County, not in Storey County, because Storey County does not provide any services outside of Virginia City. That’s number one.

And the schools naturally, I live right across the street from a school pick-up, a bus pick-up, and, you know, I see these kids going at 6:00 o’clock in the

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morning and coming home at 6:00 o’clock at night. And it may be acceptable for some of the kids, you know, closer to the Highlands and closer to Virginia City but, you know, these kids down here spend a full day.

And also, I’m on the Truckee River Flood Project Coordinating Committee and we are very concerned with the flooding situation, as Blake knows. I’ve been talking to him quite a bit about the flooding situation. So I’m very concerned about the flood and anything that can help. I believe Storey County needs to grow. Storey County has not grown and it does need to grow some. And basically I’m in favor of this project.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

Next, Louise Pena. Did I pronounce that name right?

MS. PENA: Yes, you did.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you. Lockwood resident.

MS. PENA: First of all, I would like to thank you. I am Louise Pena. I would like to thank you for coming down here tonight for us. I did have quite a few questions but most of them they’ve already answered. I do have the concern of the one to two houses per acre mostly because if it’s affordable housing -- Like Ed Gilbert said, that’s not going to be affordable

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housing. My other concern is you have a half acre of property, that’s an awful lot of land for working homeowners to take care of and that would be something that would need to be done.

I am basically for this project. I think it would benefit all of us. For us that live in Rainbow Bend, it would actually probably increase our value of our homes because if they can get us schools where we don’t have to put our kids on buses to go all that way, it would be a great plus.

I was one of the ones that when they changed the schools and our kids no longer went to Washoe County schools, I fought very hard against that. My children did go to Virginia City. Not because I didn’t think Virginia City wasn’t going to be a better school. I truly believe a smaller school is best, I didn’t want my kids on that bus for that long.

So I think with that idea -- We’re not in competition with them as far as homeowners down here. We’re sitting right on top of each other. If you don’t want any land to take care of, you pretty much got it in Rainbow Bend. So it would be a plus to see this development grow. Thank you.

And I also like the flood control. Anything to stop that water coming down Long Valley Creek would be

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great. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you, ma’am.

Next person, Connie Butts.

MS. BUTTS: For the record, I’m Connie Butts. I live in Rainbow Bend. Most of the reasons that I’m for this project have already been spoken by some of the other people, so I guess what I would like to say is that I believe that growth is imminent. I mean, it is going to happen, we don’t have a choice. What we do have a choice now is to take a look at what I consider a quality project by someone who has the resources to work with the county, work with the residents and do it properly.

And so what I’m asking you to do is -- if you can’t say yes now, take your time, work with Mr. Smith, talk to him. I really want to commend you for the dialog that I’ve heard tonight. I’m very impressed as your constituent. I think you’re asking questions, I think you’re looking at things. I think Dean has asked a lot of questions and talked to the developer about a lot of things that need to happen.

So I guess what I’m saying is two things. One, Storey County is going to have to grow eventually. We have an opportunity to do it in a good way. There will be many benefits for us. Two, do we want to just sit

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back and say no, we like things as they are now and then down the road let  people look back at us and say what the heck were they thinking?

I think we have an obligation to leave our positions in a better state than what they are now. We should always look to the future. That’s what I do with the GID. I look to the future, down the road. When I’m not here, what are they going to want, what are they going to be doing? And I really think that we need to take a long hard look at that.

And I would like to see more of this dialog going on with this developer, because, as I said, I feel like this person has shown that he has the resources and the ability to do something that will really benefit the county. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

Okay. The first name Shareena Mir. Did I pronounce your name right? Ma’am?

MS. MIR: Yes.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Did I pronounce your name right?

MS. MIR: I’m sorry. I was listening to them.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Don’t listen to them. We can listen to you, please. Lockwood resident from the market.

MS. MIR: Yes. I am the little market on the

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corner and my name is Shareena Mir, like you said. I have a couple of concerns that my customers wanted us to address in this meeting that they were not able to attend, so I’m going to read this letter. I’m going to read this letter that’s written by a student that travels to VC. I’m sorry, I can’t disclose his name because I don’t have the parents’ consent. Here we go.

“The bus ride is a problem and it takes 45 minutes one way.”

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Louder.

MS. MIR: I’m sorry. “The bus ride is a problem and it takes 45 minutes one way along up the hill and down the hill each way. The ride is -- And it makes our stomach -- it upsets our stomach and it’s very hard to eat breakfast in the morning.

“When you get to the school the food is very pricey and the portions are very small. There is no variety for lunch menus, no extra activities, no transportation for summer programs. Washoe schools offer a wide variety of lunches, items and have open campus. At VC you have to pay for a pass off campus and then hurry up town to get something decent to eat for lunch.

“VC seems not so interested in the quality of teaching but just rushing the kids through grades. I would be for a local school and that is -- a local

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school that is more attentive to the students and the students’ needs.”

Now, this is a child that’s written this letter, a student at VC high.

This is the letter -- one of the letters that we had going out and one of the customers wrote -- he’s a Rainbow Bend resident and he has written that, “This is good for Nevada and great for Storey County.”

And then I have another customer that’s written in big letters “yes,” that they are willing for this growth to happen.

The reason -- the only reason that -- one of the reasons that I’m standing up here is because I have two kids in diapers and they grow very quickly. When they are being bussed off to school I really don’t want that to happen. I do not have the time, 45 minutes each way, to take off close my store down and run to VC to get my kids. This is something that we all will benefit in the future. And many of our -- many of the other parents don’t have the time or don’t have anybody who can go and grab their kids if they get sick.

The other thing is that the Storey County Sheriff, the only one we have here is one sheriff on duty at night. I had recently had my son and we had recently moved into the  neighborhood and somebody tried to break

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into my house 20 minutes before my husband got home. They didn’t realize that there was somebody at home because normally we’re at the store. My son was five weeks old.

And when I came up the hallway I saw this man outside by my living room window trying to get in ripping the screen trying to get into my house. I grabbed my five week-old son and I ran into the closet, grabbed a hanger as a weapon to defend ourselves. It took Storey County Sheriff 30 minutes to get there. Sparks PD came in 20 minutes later. Anything could have happened in that time period

And this is one of the reasons, you know, that I’m really enforcing this. I mean, it’s not a personal reason. I know I will benefit out of this, because I have a business and I’m the only convenience store in Lockwood, but on top of it, this is just something personal in our lives that we have to look forward now for us to enhance. And sooner or later, like  everybody understands here, this will happen. And, you know, that’s one of the things that I really wanted to point out. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you, ma’am. Very important points you brought out. And I think you could share -- Yes, it will be part of the record, I’m

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personally going to -- The student’s comments about the menu at the school, that will be passed on to the school board, I guarantee you.

(Laughter)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay. The last signed testimonial declaration is a Krista Faye Severns.

MS. SEVERNS: Yes.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Again, Lockwood.

MS. SEVERNS: Hi, everybody. I just want to say thank you for letting me have my  time. My name is Krista Faye Severns. I just wanted to speak to you guys, because I did go to the middle school and I did go to the high school. I went -- when I was younger I did go to the elementary school, and I can say that the food up there, it does suck, you do get small portions and it is expensive.

When I was going to school I used to get bus sick and I hated it. I loved to eat breakfast to wake up. Well, now I’m a mother myself, I have a two-year-old son, and I don’t want my son to be traveling all the way up to Virginia City when he goes to middle school, because it’s hard. I mean, I don’t think any of you guys would want to get up at 6:00 o’clock in the morning trying to get on the bus on time. And the buses don’t even wait long enough sometimes.

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And I think it’s -- it will be a great idea if Cordevista does -- you know it does go through, because when I was going up there I didn’t have a chance to get my GED because I was 17, I got pregnant and they said that I was a hazard and they didn’t want the other students to see me go into labor, so I didn’t get to take finals and it sucked pretty much.

So my question is: Is there going to be an urgent care out there, because there’s going to be other teens just like me that, you know, they get pregnant and scared.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: That’s a valid question.

(Laughter)

MS. SEVERNS: So would there be an urgent care?

MR. HAYMORE: Let me tell you right now Renown is looking at buying property out at T.R.I. to put in an urgent care at T.R.I. right now. They’re in negotiations of buying some property right now at T.R.I.

MS. SEVERNS: That’s all I wanted to ask was to see if there was going to be an urgent care. And is it going to be just a middle school or is there going to be a high school, is it just going to be one middle school and a high school, is it going to be put together as one?

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CHAIRMAN WALLING: Mr. Smith is going to answer that.

MR. SMITH: Do you want me to --

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Go ahead, you can review the folks from Rainbow Bend’s concerns and comments at this point, certainly.

MR. SMITH: Okay. Great, I guess you want me to address all of the comments right now?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Yeah, we’ll take care of the Lockwood portion of it.

MR. SMITH: Very good. If I miss one, please help remind me. I want to thank all of you for your testimony on that, I can’t tell you enough about children in my life, I have three little children. I’m involved -- I’m on the UNR Foundation. We’re very active with the schools within Washoe County. It’s something that’s a personal level, let alone a professional level.

So these testimonies are heartbreaking to hear those, and anything that we can do for the children is something that we want to do. Outside of just being a Developer, we want to try and help the children. They are our future. It is something that we need to focus on and make sure they get all the education and as good an education and extracurricular activities that they

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can have.

But that being said, the school systems, you had questions on the school systems. In the community, in the master plan community, we would go -- And this is on the land plan level. We would go in, and again it goes back to the densities and how many homes we would have, but you would go in and figure out how many homes that you would have and then you would measure that off of 25 percent of the homes typically have children, those children have different age levels and you would develop elementary and junior high and high schools off of that.

I cannot tell you how many there would be, but there would be one of each of those at least, in fact, multiple probably of the elementary schools within there.

As far as the urgent care, I couldn’t tell you today if there’s going to be an urgent care. I can tell you with that many residences that the hospitals and medical professions would want to be there.

It’s exciting hearing the hospitals are already looking at T.R.I. Within a residential community they -- I can almost guarantee you that there would be one within there also.

I’m going to go down -- We talked about schools and

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addressing that. The roads. Let me go back to -- I believe it was Ed questioned on the roads. We are looking at the roads, and there’s different alternatives. We’re in negotiations with and dialogs with Waste Management right now on trying to figure out how to get a road. We’ve actually engineered some in looking at it with them on how to get it up through Mustang without going through the waste dump and their expansion areas and other things. So this is something that we’re working towards on that.

The Lockwood area down here we’re trying to figure out, because we do hear where people are saying, can we get our children up there or can we go up and shop and those things. We don’t have an answer for that and I’m not sure that it works or if it doesn’t work or maybe it’s an alternative that comes down and around Lockwood. We just don’t have the answer to that, but it is something that’s been asked of us, and we’ll go take a look at. I couldn’t tell you if it came here, but I can tell you we are a ways down the road on the Mustang one already and dialogs and all that.

Obtainable housing, that was another question of yours. Our current project, Somersett -- And again, I would love to invite any and all of you to come up there. The project is targeted to be a middle-to-

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high-end project. Housing, there is not really -- Well, I can’t tell you what affordable is anymore. A house in this day and age, it’s escalated so fast in northern Nevada I don’t know what it is. But what we would do at the PUD level and coming back on the densities and other things is to go in and examine and see what the market is looking for. And granted, with the industrial park, there is a lot of hourly wages that would need to have housing to accommodate those levels in it.

So in this project, Cordevista, we would do all gamuts of the housing levels within it, starting at the obtainable level and then going up to the luxury level. We can see all of those markets in there.

To answer you, are there apartments, are there rental housing products like that, are there for rent things, there probably will be within it, because not everyone -- I lived in an apartment for eight years until I could afford a home. So there are stages of life where you go through.

Apartments sometimes have a negative connotation to them. We actually have projects and other things that are very -- Rental housing in today’s market can be very positive and very appealing in its design out there. The -- But I just want to emphasize, we don’t

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have the answer for it. but we would raise all those gamut levels or segments I’ll call them as far the housing.

Someone spoke about one to two units per acre. What we’re saying with that is that we would develop between eight and 15,000 homes within the project area. That doesn’t mean that it would be what is really classified as old style where you come in to half acres and they’re all squares and you put a road through them.

What you do in today’s development standards is that you cluster them, you put the homes in a tighter development area. Lockwood is a tight development area. But you put the homes in those tighter development areas, and they can span from very small lots to midsize lots to larger lots. We would have lots that would be very small with homes that allow for affordability on it and we can envision that we would go up to five-acre estates within the project. So you have all those gamuts. But what you do is you cluster them together and then what that allows you to do is leave a lot of open space so that you’re not building on every square inch of the property, you’re building in pockets I’ll call them or cluster areas and then leaving open areas for the wildlife or for the

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parks and trails and other areas in there.

So when we say one to two units per acre, we’re not talking about cutting it in and putting two houses on every acre, you would actually cluster them together, but you might have in some areas four or five units per acre, you might have in another area one unit per  acre, but that blended density is what we’re saying is what will come in at one to two units per acre on the overall.

Quality of life. I don’t know how to address that. We are quality-orientated developers. I always have a saying, don’t look at the quantity, look at the quality. And if you do that, if you measure the quality, if conditions are put onto us to make sure that we do quality, that will measure -- that will control the quantity. But we are a quality developer. In addressing that we envision this as being a true addition to Storey County and northern Nevada with the development of them.

We talked about bussing. Public service, life safety, we would develop within there all of the public services and facilities, those buildings for the fire departments and the police departments. Those are going down to response times like Dean was talking about. In our current developments we go to even

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shorter -- Six-minute response times is how they measure how close you build those facilities and all. So those are things that we would develop in there and would be available not only to the surrounding communities but obviously to Cordevista itself.

I don’t know if I missed a question or not. Did I miss one? I should look to the crowd.

MS. HARRY: I think you missed my question on water quality.

MR. SMITH: Yes, it’s imperative to all northern Nevada and the tribe, the water quality, it is something that we would work with the tribes. We’ve already been in touch with the tribes as far as talking about the cultural resources, making sure that we’re working with them. We’ve done -- I’m sorry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: I never heard anything.

MR. SMITH: Well, I want to introduce Dr. Kautz, if I can. Come on up, Doctor. Because it’s one that we didn’t touch on is the cultural resources. We had begun working with the volunteer groups on the petroglyphs. Dr. Kautz’s firm has actually walked and surveyed 6800 of the --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Where were we? Why weren’t we included? Why didn’t you --

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MR. SMITH: I’m going to let the professional --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Why didn’t we -- why weren’t we invited? I’m from Pyramid Lake. I’m the Cultural Resources Clerk for Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe.

MR. KAUTZ: This was private land that we were requested to survey. There was no federal involvement or anything like that. So we just went ahead and surveyed the 6800 acres. We have invited Pyramid Lake, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: That would have been me.

MR. KAUIZ: Well, about a week and a half ago we sent you a letter.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Then it’s probably still funneling through, you know, the mail.

MR. KAUTZ: It’s on its way to you. And we’re inviting your participation in the process.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: You know, we get invited a lot of times out with  Nevada Rock Art. Alanah Woody is a really good friend of ours.

MR. KAUTZ: Right. Alanah is involved in this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: And she passes things on to us, even if it is on private land.

MR. KAUTZ: I understand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: She includes us. But

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We didn’t hear --

MR. KAUTZ: But we don’t have -- the results have not been finalized, we don’t have a report or anything like that yet. When we do, you will be --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: You’re going to tell us what we already know? And if we don’t agree with that, then what?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: I think that was touched on in the last meeting also.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Well, I think if you want to be -- you know, if you want do it efficiently, I think you should have included us and waited for us to go out and had input.

(Clapping)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: We didn’t get any input.

MR. KAUTZ: We will share, you know, from the get-go, we will share with you all the information, we will take you to the sites and everything, but --

MR. SMITH: And include you -- There’s another 1800 acres that has not been surveyed, so let us bring you in right now.

MR. KAUTZ: We’re just starting the process in essence right now.

MR. SMITH: Let me say as a landowner, by no means

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was there an intention not to include you, it was us just getting ahead to understand the land. We understood there were petroglyphs and that there were natural resources around it, cultural resources, and that’s why I hired this gentleman to come out and say where are you seeing these cultural resources at this point. And he has logged those at this point, but by no means have there been -- We’re waiting to go out and survey the additional lands and then create that. So we would more than welcome -- A letter went to you some seven or ten days ago inviting you to come join in with us.

MR. KAUTZ: I don’t know why it didn’t get to you, but --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: There’s a simple way, the telephone, call people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: You said you sent one to Reno-Spark’s?

MR. KAUTZ: I did, and I spoke to Michon this morning.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: She generally passes information on to me. We’re first cousins and we work in the same field.

MR. KAUTZ: Well, she should be, yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: But she doesn’t have

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to, I mean, that’s not her job.

MR. KAUTZ: No, I understand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: You contacted her, why didn’t you contact us?

MR. KAUTZ: We did. And I’m sorry if you haven’t gotten it, and I’ll be glad to talk to you after the meeting and arrange for anything you need.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah, because our spiritual people love to go out  --

MR. KAUTZ: Well, we would love to have you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: -- and tell you what’s there, not vice versa.

MR. KAUTZ: Sure. No, I understand.

MR. SMITH: We want to extend it to you also.

MR. HAYMORE: Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Yes.

MR. HAYMORE: The tribes, I’ve asked for over 20 years to have the tribes come in and help us control the petroglyphs and stuff. Norm Harry, 20 years ago I sat down with Norm Harry when he was first chairman of the Paiutes and stuff. And I’ve asked UNR and everybody. And, of course, the bottom line is nobody has any money and things like that to come in. You got some money?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: No, but now we have

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me, you know, and I have -- I actually -- No, I am the staff for that department. But at least I have volunteers of people who will go out.

MR. HAYMORE: We appreciate that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Feed them lunch, we’ll be there.

(Laughter)

MR. SMITH:  I’ll buy.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: It does -- Cordevista I can see is looking forward to working with you in the future. Thank you, ma’am.

MR. SMITH: I don’t know if there’s additional questions from the audience I should answer at this point.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: No. I would like to move on to questions from -- concerns and comments from the people out of this most immediate area.

Virginia City Highlands, Bill Sjovangen.

MR. SJOVANGEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record, Bill Sjovangen. Let me say initially I am totally opposed to the Cordevista project. I make no reservations about that. I would recommend to the board if you -- if and when you vote on this master plan amendment/zone change thing that you deny the applicant and/or -- and also I would like to see this development

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go on the ballot along with any future developments that may come forward. And I think the voters and the taxpayers of this county need to be involved in this process and I would like to see it on a ballot. And that’s my comment, Thank you.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Can I get a legal opinion on that, please?

MR. GUNDERSON: You can’t put it to a vote.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Can’t hear you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: We can’t hear you.

MR. GUNDERSON: You cannot put it to a vote to approve or disapprove a master plan amendment. That’s a decision that has to be made by this planning commission and the county commissioners.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Can we get an opinion on the opinion?

(Laughter)

MR. GUNDERSON: Be my guest.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay. Thank you.

MS. de RENZY: Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Yes, ma’am.

MS. de RENZY: I signed up to speak, and I represent the Lockwood Community Corporation.

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CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay. All right. One second, ma’am, Denise?

MS. de RENZY: Yes, sir.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay, I saw LCC representing. I was not aware that it was a local entity. Accept that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: That’s a (inaudible) one, Doug.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Don’t get me in trouble.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: I’m being honest with you, ma’am.

MS. de RENZY: Lockwood Community Corporation.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you. Please.

MS. de RENZY: My name is Denise de Renzy, Vice President of the Lockwood Community Corporation, previously owned by Joe Conforte. I’ve lived here since 1979. I’ve been here through six floods, two fires. I voted against Rainbow Bend, I chose to have a dog track or a whorehouse. I’ve been on Blake Smith’s tour. He answered all my questions. Thank you, Planning Commission, for asking more questions that I never even thought of.

And I want to say that the people in Lockwood, and this is the low income area in my area, we need flood

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control. And if you’ve ever sat there and watched a fire come down Canyon Way, you’ll know what fear is. And I just want to say, yeah, that I’m for it and everyone in my community is for it that I’ve spoken to. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you, ma’am.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Did I miss anybody else from the immediate Lockwood/Rainbow Bend area? Thank you.

The next testimony is Mr. Dave Abel from the Highlands. Mr. Abel.

MR. ABEL: Hello. My name is Dave Abel, A-b-e-l, from the Virginia City Highlands. And I just have a couple of questions of Mr. Smith when he gets time to answer if he wouldn’t mind answering. And the first one is about the amount of -- As Dean mentioned, T.R.I. is going full blast right now. And how many employees will be hired by T.R.I.?

MR. HAYMORE: Currently what’s under construction and opening up next year, we’re anticipating five to 8,000 new employees.

MR ABEL: Okay. And Mr. Smith’s project will cover how many of these employees? That’s the question for him when he gets to the answer. And when T.R.I. is in full bore will this Cordevista project be able to

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fulfill the needs for T.R.I.? Where are they going to get the other employees?

The other question I have is as far as schools go, and that relates to the Painted Rock, is there going to be a school in Painted Rock when it gets going?

MR. HAYMORE: We anticipate that a school will be needed down there, but again, we haven’t got to those points of looking at the housing and the build-out in that next stage, but we talked to those developers and it’s fully anticipated that a school will need to be built down there, too.

MR. ABEL: So students from Lockwood could possibly go to Painted Rock also, correct?

MR. HAYMORE: Wherever the school district wants to send them, yes.

MR. ABEL: Okay. I think really that’s all. I’ll save it for other people.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you, Mr. Able.

Ray McPartlin. I appreciate you folks printing your names real clearly. Thank you.

MR. McPARTLIN: You pronounced it perfectly. Thank you.

Ray McPartlin, Virginia City Highlands. I wish we had a lot more time. I’ve got about 86 things I’d like to cover, but I won’t. Let me say that I am fourscore

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dead set against this project. And what has been presented I find interesting. A couple of points.

Number one, if I understood Joe, the consultant on the flooding, correctly with all the razzle dazzle, you can’t stop the flooding. If I read the facts, not the rumors, it says over 50 percent of the water that travels towards Lockwood can be controlled within the corners of the Cordevista Vista development. I thought you had 16 percent. How are you going to control 50 percent with 16 percent of the flow going through there? The answer is you can’t.

So all of you Lockwood folks that think that inside the Cordevista project alone they can control the flooding, you’re being sold a bill of goods. They might be able to reduce it by 16 percent. That means a ten-foot flood will only be eight foot six inches.

You talked about having to have all of this housing to support T.R.I. You also, I believe, used the number of 4.6 percent annual growth historically. Painted Rock has 400,000 homes. Using the same formula potential when it develops, that’s 10,000 people. At a 4.6 percent historical growth, that’s enough homes for the next 25 years without Cordevista. That also ignores the 1392 homes that can be developed in the Highlands. That’s another 5,000,  5,000 people that can

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be afforded homes. There’s plenty of homes at the historical rate.

Now, as far as having to have it for the new folks that are going to be coming in, Sparks is four miles down the road. That isn’t a long distance in terms of commute. That’s ridiculous. Anybody that’s lived any place else but here would love to have a five-or ten-mile  commute on an interstate to get to work, believe me.

(Clapping)

MR. McPARTLIN: I’m sorry. I lost my place here a little bit. Oh, schools. You folks -- I appreciate the folks that live down here having to have their kids trucked all the way around to Virginia City. Painted Rock might take care of that in the future with or without Cordevista.

As far as the schools, if Cordevista is developed, there’s going to be thousands of kids going to school in Cordevista. You’ve got a couple hundred kids going to school up in Virginia City. If you really believe they’re going to keep the schools in Virginia City open then, you’re nuts, because they’re going to have a high school down here with a thousand kids in it. You think they’re going to keep the one up in Virginia City open with 200 kids in it? They’re going to close those and

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all the kids from the Highlands and Virginia City are going to be bussed all the way down here to Cordevista, folks. So it’s going to be just the reverse thing except there’s going to be more kids involved.

I guess that’s basically all I have to say. I could go on and on, but, you know, this -- we’re being fed some statistics that are baloney, you know. And I wish we had time to go through each and every one of them so that you could see the truth in these things. Thank you. I appreciate the time.

(Clapping)

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Next is Kay Dean.

MS. DEAN: Hi. My name is Kay Dean and I live in the Highlands. Blake, I’m probably your nearest neighbor. My house is less than three miles from your proposed development, so I do have concerns, especially about the lights and you talk about shopping and urgent care centers and who knows what. So I do think this is going to affect me dramatically.

However, I do believe in planned growth. I think that that is important. What scares me is I do not think this is responsible. I think that in your little chart over here you only address Cordevista growth, you don’t address the Highlands, Painted Rock, as the other gentleman indicated, and you’re only using one and a

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half houses per acre and not two. So when you add all those factors in -- And you’re putting it over a 50-year plan instead of a 25-or 30-year build-out. So I have some problems with that.

The other thing is I don’t know if the Planning Commission is aware, a couple weeks ago the Desert Research Institute did a water resources workshop down in Reno and an independent panel -- Let me read just a couple paragraphs. An independent panel of scientists should determine the water supply available for growth in northern Nevada, a basic building block in regional planning, an official with the Desert Research Institute said Saturday. To get that valuable piece of information one regional water authority is now proposed and state legislation should be created. Under the current system developers turn over water rights when they’re ready to build their projects making water among the last things considered in the planning process, but every year the Truckee Meadows water basin is lowered by one and a half to two feet to supply water when the Truckee River slows in the fall and in some areas this is dropping by five to six feet a year. And this is fossilized water, it was created during the last ice age, and this is not going to be replenished soon.

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The American Institute of Architects has done a study that they have a lot of information, and this is one of the 12 areas they selected in the last two years, on sustainable living. They addressed green building practices, water usages. And there’s a lot of resources out there that I think our commissioners here should take advantage of and educate themselves about this, because there’s a lot of water experts out there, and they don’t seem to think that there’s unlimited water here in northern Nevada. They say water rights out there, most of them have been sold and the supply does not equal what they have already sold.

So there is a train wreck coming down the road, people. I have a grey water system that I put in on my ten-acre lot. I am very much an environmentalist, I believe in protecting our environment, but I think we need to do it responsibly. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you. Ma’am.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Mr. Smith, could you reply to these questions?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Wait, I filled out a form, too.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay. Now -- You brought up a good point. I can turn this off and say this. Folks,

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all your comments and concerns are valid. The testimonial declarations will be kept. I’m anticipating this is not the next -- not the only meeting that there will be. I respectfully ask that we let the Planning Commission make their decision, yay, nay, continuance, this evening, which would -- if it was a continuance it would enable more meetings in the immediate future. And I’m saying that with respect towards your individuality and your responsibility as a citizen of this county.

If you’re going to let me do that, it is going to keep this within a time limit that’s realistic. And I know emotions are running high, and we all appreciate that. I’m seeing another three hours And if another meeting as I anticipate will be scheduled, you will all have your opportunities again. Is that okay with you guys?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: No.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Can we schedule another meeting?

VICE-CHAIRMAN BUCCHIANERI: No, I want to hear some more of these. This gentleman here wants to recall the county commissioners, I want to hear what he has to  say.

(Laughter)

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CHAIRMAN WALLING: We already have. Folks --

VICE-CHAIRMAN BUCCHIANERI: I don’t know where he’s coming from. I would like to hear his input and a few more.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: With your permission, because we are your people and you are our people, I’d like to -- Mr. Smith to --

VICE-CHAIRMAN BUCCHIANERI: We could limit it. How many do we have, Doug, more speakers?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Counting is not that important.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: How many?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: How many? We’d like to know. We’ve been sitting here a long time.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Can you schedule another meeting and give us hope that eventually we will have our voices heard?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: This development deserves a lot of meetings if it’s to be done  correctly.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: But nobody is committing to having an additional meeting.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Are you guys counting here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Can you legally not hear those? How about an opinion from counsel?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: How many of those sheets that you counted out there actually have names

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on them and how many are blank’?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Sir, I’m not appreciative of that disrespect towards myself and this commission. Drop it.

Mr. Smith, would you please proceed with your comments on the concerns.

MR. SMITH: Thank you. And real quickly, but let me -- And again, I’ll ask if I’ve missed anything. Dave had spoken about a couple things about employees and, Dean, you had said that the potential of 5 to 8,000 employees in the next 18 months, I believe, within the park coming. So none of us know exactly what will happen after the 18 months, but that -- I think that’s the clarity that you can see. The potential is to be much more beyond that.

What our proposal is here, the master plan amendment and the zone plan change is -- I’ll go back to the master plan itself that states there are three areas that are in this county that are targeted and should be developed. Ours is one of the three and it entails about half of the developable area out here.

The scope of the -- how many jobs are coming and how many Cordevista will handle, that’s a variable that’s driven on northern Nevada, the business park, everything else. All I can tell you is that as

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northern Nevada grows or the business park grows that there will be additional needs and our project will be one of those to handle that need at that point. I don’t know if I’m answering the question right or not.

As far as the schools -- Well, let’s talk about Painted Rock. Painted Rock is identical to what we’re asking for. It’s approximately 2,000 acres as I understand it, approximately 3,500 homes. That equates to about 10,000 residences.

MS. ALDRICH: I’m leaving. This meeting is a travesty of justice. You know, we came here to speak and I’m very upset and I’m going to be writing you letters.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: Mr. Chairman, can I speak please?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Yes.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: As a planning commissioner I’m going to agree with the audience. One of the reasons we had this meeting here in Lockwood is because the meeting we had last time we felt was not giving these people, some of which who have disabilities and could not make it to the Lockwood meeting, that providing this meeting to these people was giving them the opportunity to speak.

If this meeting is continued to a community on the

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other side of the county, Mark Twain, we would be having the exact same problem that we had in VCH, the same problem. And I fully believe that we should continue this meeting, however long it takes. And if we maybe can put limitations on what people say and how long they have to say it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Including Mr. Smith.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: We’ve been listening to him babble for two and a half hours.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: That’s all I have to say.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay. You got it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Thank you.

(Clapping)

MR. HAYMORE: Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: That’s just what I was looking for.

Dean.

MR. HAYMORE: Mr. Chairman, maybe we can ask Mr. Smith to write his comments and submit them to us in rebuttal.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: That would help.

MR. HAYMORE: Would that be okay?

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MR. SMITH: However the Planning Commission would like.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay.

MR. SMITH: Let me clarify that.

VICE-CHAIRMAN BUCCHIANERI: I don’t anticipate we’re going to be voting on this tonight anyway and I just want to hear what people down here have to say.

MR. SMITH: And let me clarify two things. You’re asking for me to put in writing the answers to the future questions that are about to be posed, is that correct?

MR. HAYMORE: If it’s -- if it -- Folks, I don’t want to hash over -- And I’m not the planning -- I’m just the staff to these guys and I’m the staff to you. If it was brought up, if there’s new points, yes, we want to hear them and we will ask Mr. Smith to address them. He has -- If they’re written and everything else, I get them to Mr. Smith and ask him to respond to  them. A lot of this stuff is the same thing, and there’s new stuff. And every time we have a meeting there’s new things brought up and that’s good input. Yeah, if there’s questions that the audience is asking, they have the right to know. And the planning commissioners I suspect would want to know those, too. So I would ask that we hear the audience. And, folks,

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Chairman Walling has a had back and he’s already --

CHAIRMAN WALLING: No, no, that’s not a problem.

MR. HAYMORE: I’m just saying --

CHAIRMAN WALLING: My point, folks, was not to dilute your input. Please believe that.

MR. HAYMORE: So if you can do that and --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: With that said will you agree to and commit to and state that we will have another meeting? Many of us feel like this is it and if we don’t get heard then we are not going to be heard. So if someone up there -- And I’ve asked several of you and several people have said that’s a good idea, we should do that, but no one has committed to hearing us, whether it be tonight or at another time. I don’t want to be here until midnight and I know you guys don’t either. So will somebody make a commitment and say yes, we are going to meet again?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Part of our agenda is the determination of the next Planning Commission, where and when. And that will be decided at that time.

MR. HAYMORE: Let me clarify.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: That’s not the question. Can we have a meeting where  people can have their say without listening to a two-and-a-half-hour  presentation for a third time?

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: That’s what we’re asking for.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: This is a sales presentation, and you do a very good job of it, I will give you that, but this meeting was designed to hear from everybody.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Public input.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Not just --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: You need to hear our side of the story.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: We’ve heard the sales pitch, now we would like to pitch to the commissioners.

MR. SMITH: Let me offer this. And if we could do it this way. If people -- those that are here, I have to agree, if you’d like to put your comment in, I will respond in writing back and hopefully that can bring it to a state where the Planning Commission can bring their dialog back to the table, so if that is helpful.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

MR SMITH: And I’ll pass on responding to the questions this evening.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Next speaker, Daan Eggenberger, Virginia City.

MR. HAYMORE: He left, Doug.

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CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay. JoAnn  Aldrich.

MS. ALDRICH: How timely. Thank you for letting me speak. I really do appreciate it. I’ll try and make this brief so more people can talk.

Seems to me that we’re getting everything backwards here. We’ve talked all about the how we can do Cordevista and about roads and all these issues, and what we really should be talking about tonight is there’s a master plan amendment and a zone change on the table and that deserves talking about why, why do we need Cordevista, do we want Cordevista, what is it going to bring besides some perks from the developer. He’s going to do a lot of good for this county, but we are going to have growth in this county, we need infrastructure, we have problems. Those things are going to get taken care of. But I think we really need to talk about why.

Okay. There’s been an argument made that it’s incumbent on Storey County to provide housing for T.R.I. I don’t think so. Storey County has a history of taking on services that no other county wanted. For example, four out of the five coal-fired power plants located in Storey County provide one hundred percent of their energy to Washoe County. Storey County accepts one hundred percent of Washoe County’s sewage. Storey

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County handles all the garbage from Washoe County and from Lyon County. In addition, Washoe County continues to collect sales tax from Storey county zip codes despite years of ongoing legal efforts to recover those monies which total now about 7 million dollars or more. Storey County owes Washoe County nothing.

Okay. Here’s a fact, Current zoning of the proposed Cordevista location does not allow residential subdivisions. This project should be rejected mainly because it does not conform to the existing master plan. The existing master plan was written in 1994 and it should have been revised within ten years according to law. It’s never been revised or updated. That needs to happen before we okay a mega development here in the middle of nowhere that is very questionable whether people are going to accept it or if we even need it.

We have revenue from T.R.I. Why do we need Cordevista? There are plenty of places around this area for them to live. We might need a few more roads, but I don’t think we need Cordevista.

Another fact, Storey County does not employ a licensed professional planner with expertise to make a thorough assessment of the situation. For the Planning Commission to consider changes to the master plan

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without a professional evaluation by a licensed county planner is premature.

Looking at that public hearing entitlement process I would turn it on its head. First of all, does the developer have water, where from, is it a steady supply, and is it adequate? That should be the first question. If he doesn’t have it, we don’t have to go through this. We don’t have to sit at all these meetings, we don’t have to discuss it. That should be first. This is probably turning state regulations on its head but I’m just saying.

The second one would be the negotiation of the planned unit development which is a contract he’s going to sign. So we aren’t getting all these things that he’s going to do for us and all these things he’s going to -- he says that are not written that he’s not put the money up for. And I just think, you know, then we could get around to a master plan amendment and then a zone change. I think I’ll just stop there. But thank you very much.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

MS. ALDRICH: I’m giving them a list of recommendations I wrote that I would like to see this Planning Commission forward to the Storey County

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Commissioners. I’ll read them if they want or they can just consider them. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Read them.

MS. ALDRICH: Do you want me to read them?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Sure.

MS. ALDRICH: Okay. Number one -- There are four of them. The Cordevista development proposed by developer Blake Smith should not be granted a master plan amendment or zone change at this time since the project does not conform to current master planning.

Number 2. Storey County should take steps to hire a professional planning director with experience and expertise in handling large-scale development projects.

Number 3. The new planning director’s first assignment should be to conduct public hearings for the purpose of updating the Storey County master plan. The master plan was written in 1994 and should be updated every ten years. We’re behind.

Number 4. Storey County Planning Commission should not consider any other permanent changes to the master plan until a licensed professional planning director is on staff, Storey County master plan has been updated as required by law and a developer reveals the source of the water first and proves there’s a reliable and steady supply to serve the project.

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thank you.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you, ma’am. Jim Watson.

MR. WATSON: Thank you. Jim Watson, Highlands. I got an awful long list, so I’ll  try to make it shorter. Number one, as she said, why do we need Cordevista? We got a tremendous income coming in from the industrial center. We should be building a school for Lockwood right now, not three years from now.

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Speak into the mike.

MR. WATSON: Okay. We should be building a school right now with the tax revenues that we’re getting from T.R.I. instead of waiting three years for a developer to do it. We need -- they need the school down here.

(Clapping)

MR. WATSON: I can’t -- A lot of people in Lockwood, rightfully so, they’ve got this problem with the flooding and they got the problems with the school. This should have been  resolved. We have the means to resolve it without Cordevista and we should do it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Yes.

MR. WATSON: Another thing is before the Planning Commission rules on anything, the zip code needs to be resolved. We have to get a zip code for Storey County.

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Millions in tax revenue has been lost already and we’ll just lose more. So before any decision is made, that should be taken care of.

There is no provision, I’ve not heard anything, any provision, in Mr. Smith’s program about energy efficiency in the homes that are going to be built or in the commercial enterprises. There is nothing mentioned about energy efficiency. It should be.

Open space, 40 percent. What constitutes open space? Are we counting sidewalks, are we counting lawns, are we counting parks? Exactly what constitutes 40 percent of open space? I don’t know. And I don’t know if there’s any set criteria for that, but I’d like to know.

Taxes. As a realtor, which I am, right now there’s a transfer tax of $3.90 per thousand in Storey County. The additional tax -- once those houses are sold and are for resale, the additional tax is a real stumbling block for a lot of  buyers, they can’t afford the homes, they can’t afford the 2 or $3,000 transfer tax. That $250 that they would be paying, either the buyer or the seller, it would be a negotiable item probably -- Anyways, that would add to that burden. And on top of that, there is already within the state legislature I think a move – or within the county to increase that

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transfer tax considerably at this time, which again, when you go to sell your house, if you have to pay a 3 or 4,000-dollar transfer tax, whether it’s called a 250 donation or whatever, that’s a lot of money. And I’ve seen several deals fall apart because of it.

The other thing that I didn’t see anything about, and that is an actual physical survey of the properties to determine what species are there, are there endangered species there, are there endangered plant fauna there. And I believe the Paiute people would work well with that, and I think they should. But to my knowledge there has been no physical inspections. I’ve seen some documentation where it was mentioned.

And one thing really bothered me. It was mentioned that certain birds or whatever do their nesting there, but don’t disturb them during the nesting period, just wait until they’re gone and then do your dirt work.

So I guess that’s enough for now. Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Neil Siegel.

MR. SIEGEL: Thank you. Eight to 15,000 new homes calculates to half a child per household or 4 to 7,500 new Storey County students. At least three schools

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will need to be built, 30 teachers hired, ten plus support staff. And while we’re waiting for the Cordevista population to grow to support the schools, police and fire, what will be the financial impact on Storey County taxpayers?

Second thing for Mr. Smith. Water is a significant issue for northern Nevada. This region has witnessed 315 percent growth over the last 15 years. Reno-Sparks as well as Cordevista will have vested interest in securing long-term regional water rights. With this in mind, tell us specifically the rights you have secured to provide for approximately 24,000 plus Cordevista residents.

Second part, will you be using Somersett water rights for Cordevista? Third thing, are you basing your plans on proposed water authority legislation? And last part of the question is: how many golf courses are proposed in Cordevista?

Last thing, you premeditated and executed the purchase of land knowing zoning was not residential planned community. Explain to us why you believe it is your right to purchase land and exact a change of zoning that changes the look of a county.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

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Jed Margolin.

MR. MARGOLIN: I’m Jed Margolin. I live in the Virginia City Highlands and I’m against Cordevista. Big surprise. The first thing is about the water. Now, in Blake’s previous presentations and all his brochures and stuff he’s pledged that he would not take water from the ground. And so that made me wonder if he was saying he wouldn’t take groundwater from within his project or he wouldn’t take groundwater from anywhere in Storey County. And a couple of hours ago I found out the answer right here.

He says he would not use groundwater from within the project, which makes me wonder if he’s going to take groundwater from other places in Storey County, such as all those parcels that are owned by Storey County Properties Partnership which in recent years has made several applications for licensing so they could export their water from their  properties, including the (inaudible) Sierra plant right over there. And fortunately, it was denied.

So the question is -- well, the implication is he’s going to be importing his water from other places in Storey County. So he’s not taking it from the ground but he’s importing it from people who are taking it from the ground up here.

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The second thing is about flooding. Now, it seems like when this place was flooded last year, part of it was from Long Valley Creek and some of it was from the Truckee River.

(Multiple speakers said no.)

COMMISSIONER TYLELR: No, all Long Valley Creek.

MR. MARGOLIN: Okay. Good. Because the Truckee River is controlled by a regional authority. so good.

The thing about soil contamination, it sounds like what you’ve done is asked the previous owner, TRW Automotive, what they’ve done and for reports and that you haven’t even asked one of the previous owners which was High Shear which their employees were convicted of illegal dumping of hazardous substances. So has your consultant asked High Shear for a report of their illegal dumping  activities? What did they dump and where did they dump it?

And it sounds like there hasn’t actually been any real physical testing of the existing soil. Is that waiting for phase three? Has any of that been done?

And the question that’s already been asked is now do these open spaces include golf courses? And the thing about the dark skies -- Now, in those pictures over there, which of those pictures show your shopping centers at night? Do any of them? All of the shopping

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centers I’ve ever seen are very brightly lit 24/7.

And finally, I do want to thank Blake for not threatening to dismember the county which is what he’s done at his previous presentations and in his brochures. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Sue Jones, Virginia City.

MS. JONES: My first and foremost question – my first and foremost question is to the planning commissioners. The majority of the people that I’ve spoken to in Virginia City are concerned that the city of Cordevista is going to take our voting leverage from us. Therefore, should we not have a very big concern, a very big voice? And I just found out about these meetings on the sly. And I think that we kind of need to make a commitment to the Virginia City residents as well as here. And I respect that we came here so that Rainbow Bend didn’t have to come to Virginia City and the Highlands doesn’t need to come to Rainbow Bend and vice versa. That’s my biggest concern is that someone -- and I’ve asked several and maybe nobody --  no individual had the opportunity or the authority to commit, but I think before we leave tonight you do need to commit to those of us that did come down. And that

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was my major concern.

And, Mr. Smith, I have just I guess an opinion for you. In your opinion areas are not appropriately zoned. Were you not aware of those zoning conditions when you acquired the property? And now you want Storey County to amend those zoning areas to suit your needs.

This is -- and I mean no disrespect to you or to the commissioners. This is just an old paraphrase I’ve used for a long time. Don’t buy a house on a dirt road and bitch because it’s dusty. You came here. And I understand progress is going to happen.

And the people of Rainbow Bend, if you guys need schools and if you need urgent care and you need other things, don’t, as somebody else just said a little bit ago, hope that a developer is going to come in and provide those. Don’t sell your soul for a school. It needs to come from other areas. I’m not for or against you, Blake Smith, but I’m not comfortable with what you’re proposing.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you, ma’am.

Mike Perkins.

MR. PERKINS: Good evening, commissioners. My name is Mike Perkins. I’m a Vice President with Trammel

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Crow Company. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak. I’m actually speaking on behalf also of my boss, Par Tolles.

Trammell Crow Company, you may or may not know, one of the largest developers in the nation, had made a considerable investment in T.R.I. We’re currently around about -- or actually a million square feet of speculative industrial space in T.R.I. And we have noted a significant challenge in recruiting companies to this area because of the lack of housing proximate to T.R.I. So this housing, it’s been minimized in these discussions this evening, but it’s very important and critical for the success of T.R.I. and Storey County and the success of tax revenues and increasing those bases. So on that level I would like to really lend my support to Blake and his team of the importance of this project.

And on a more personal note, being very familiar with Somersett and the success that Blake and his team have achieved there, he stated that he built a quality product and I’m certainly in the development area and can attest to that fact. And you should be very lucky to have a developer such as Blake and his team to be involved, because you will end up with a very quality project. So I’m very much in support of his project

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and encourage your support. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Valerie Flatley.

MS. FLATLEY: Thank you. I’m Valerie LeBel Flatley from the Highlands. And on page 6 of the master plan, Public Services Objective 1.1, it says, “Provide efficient transportation routes between all communities in the county.” So I personally am very concerned about access between Cordevista and the Highlands. I know Mr. Smith has stated that that would be a condition of approval for his project, that no roads will be connecting Cordevista and the Highlands.

Dean Haymore has stated, wait a minute, we’ll have to have emergency access, which we all understand. But I don’t think -- I think we’re going to be a little naive here if we don’t think this is eventually going to happen, whether it’s in writing or not. And not that Mr. Smith’s intentions aren’t true and this is what he believes to be the case.

We’ve provided a forum here for him to change the master plan and the zoning. And if you guys approve it, if the county commissioners approve it, it’s a done deal. So there’s certainly going to be a way to change wherever is written that there will be no connecting

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roads into the Highlands. So I think it’s a very real concern. I think it absolutely is going to happen if this project is completed.

And as far as Lockwood and the flooding and all the concerns that they have, I don’t know why the county hasn’t taken care of them years ago and why Lockwood and Rainbow Bend haven’t expressed an interest in having schools and roads or flooding control corrected through the county. It’s not a developer’s responsibility to do these things. And if Mr. Smith weren’t here now, they would still be facing the same problems, so why hasn’t the county addressed those issues years ago? That I don’t quite understand. I think that’s it.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you, ma’am.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Henry Kilmer, Virginia City. It says, “I’m presenting expert testimony,” with a question mark. A little background on yourself, two seconds.

MR. KILMER: Henry Kilmer. I’m going to try this again. My voice is leaving me. Henry Kilmer, I’m from Virginia City. I have no special interest today. I’m retired. However, I’m former school superintendent here in Storey County as well as president -- I’m the

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board chairman of Piper’s Opera House. Given that, the way the plan is now, I’m  definitely against it. However, there are ways to correct that plan and slow it way, way down. If you slow that way, way down, maybe it is a possibility, because growth is going to come, folks, it’s going to be here, But we got to have it controlled. To put a big development in this quick is just not right. The schools can’t take it, that’s for darn sure, unless you build schools awful quick.

Let me talk about schools for just a minute. Small schools are good, big schools are not. If you look at that project when it’s developed all the way through, it will have a high school of at least 2,000,  2,400 kids. That’s just a percentage, it’s a common percentage. Assuming that the population in that particular area is low income or at least affordable housing income, there are  going to be more kids, because they’re younger families, they usually have more kids.

So elementary schools, they’ll probably need at least four elementary schools and each of those four elementary schools are going to have, oh, probably five to six, 7,000. I’m sorry, 5 to 600 each. Because you don’t want a big elementary school. Smaller schools

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are better, believe me.

Middle schools, they’ll need probably two middle schools and they’ll have at least 6 or 700 in each of those. That’s when it’s totally built out. That’s a lot of kids, folks. And we’re talking about one bus load of kids that comes down every day from Virginia City and goes back, goes back up and brings them back, one bus load, that’s all, So, I mean that’s pretty minimal at this point.

I don’t know why if the monies are there you couldn’t build them a small high school right here in Rainbow Bend or take those kids on up to Painted Rock if  they build a school up there.

I’ve got more but I don’t know if I want to go into that now.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Take your time.

MR. KILMER: There’s one thing I’m very sure of. The people up here do not want to pay for schools in Cordevista, anywhere in Storey County. Those schools have to be built with Cordevista money, not with anybody else’s money. I don’t think anybody in here wants to -- in Virginia City or in the Highlands wants to build a school in Cordevista for them at your expense.

Let me tell you how -- I think most of you probably

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know how the taxes work for building the schools. Building a school is definitely a local responsibility and it comes in different forms. It can come in a plain old property tax or bond levy, it can come in some kind of user fees, there’s a number of ways to do it but the local person has to pay for it.

Now, once the school is built, that’s simple then, there’s no real issue then as far as money, because the money is then paid for through the state and an allocation per pupil. So once the school is built, teachers and stuff are taken care of, that’s the state responsibility and some offsets county-wise. There’s only one county in the state right now that gives more money to the county than the county gets back from it and that’s Eureka, because of the gold mines.

However, in this county right now I think we’re about 50 percent of the money that we need to run the schools comes directly from our property taxes which are the same throughout and the other 50 percent probably comes from sales tax sales. There’s a couple offsets in there. Its not quite that simple but that’s generally it.

So I guess my point is this if the schools -- I’m sorry. If the project is slow moving where we have time to do things, okay, but if it’s not, then I’m

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definitely against it.

And there’s two other things I wanted to ask you about. One is: Where are the schools going to be built? Now, it takes at least 40 to 50 acres to build a high school, football field and stuff, at least that much. You need 40 to 50 acres for a high school, 2,400 kids. Middle school is probably 15 to 20 acres and elementary school at least ten. And the second question is: how are we going to pay for this? Thank you.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you Mr. Kilmer.

(Clapping)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Who else has not been given an opportunity to speak that would like to speak at this time? Raise your hand.

MS. MILLER: I just had a comment if its really --

CHAIRMAN WALLING: I’m sorry. You signed a declaration, too.

MS. MILLER: No, I didn’t sign one.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: I’m sorry,

MS. MILLER: He did, and I’m half of him. Shirley Miller is my name. The question I -- It’s more of a comment. When the Painted Rock issue came up the developer came out here and showed us pictures and stuff like that. Nobody was here, no one from the

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Highlands, no one from the -- All right, Gil, you were. I’m sorry. No one from Virginia City. No one cared. Why? Why did they not care then, why --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: We didn’t know about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: No one knew about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: As we stated earlier, no one knew.

MS. MILLER: The Planning Commission sends out all their notices. They’re published --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Where?

MS. MILLER: In the paper. It’s right here on the bottom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: On the bottom of what?

MS. MILLER: They’re right here. The Planning Commission posts these.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Where?

MS. MILLER: They post them at the Virginia City Post Office, the Storey County  Courthouse, Virginia City Firehouse, Storey County Building and Planning Department, Virginia City RV Park, Rainbow Bend Clubhouse, the Lockwood and Highlands Fire Stations.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: None of which I go to.

MS. MILLER: Okay. That was there, that’s there. There’s also the Comstock Chronical, the website

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newspaper. I look at these things.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: There’s also a thing called the United States mail that they should be --

MS. MILLER: Do you want to foot the bill for extra mailing?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: The Cordevista stuff was mailed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: By God, they did it (inaudible).

MS. MILLER: I (inaudible) Blake Smith.

(Multiple Speakers)

MS. MILLER: But nobody cares --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: What’s your point? What’s your point?

MS. MILLER: What I’m saying is if you’re so adamant about everything that I’m hearing, water, wildlife, people coming in, why are you just -- why are you picking -- or going after one development? How about Painted Rock?

(Multiple Speakers)

MS. MILLER: Right, it’s not near you. That’s the point. It’s near us. It’s on the I-80 corridor. And at one of our meetings someone said, and this was in the Highlands, we don’t care what happens along the I-80 corridor. And this was -- We were there, we heard

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it. I don’t think you’re being fair.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: This is not -- this is not our meeting.

(Multiple speakers)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Listen to me, (Inaudible) trying to make everybody happy. This is about a developer who got land cheap and is trying to make a lot of money on it. That’s what this whole thing is about.

(Multiple speakers)

MR. HAYMORE: Hey, folks, folks, folks, this is a public meeting. And I know emotions are high, but let’s keep it in control as we respect everybody’s opinion and things like that. With this, Blake, I think we’ve did a lot of comments and everything else that we’ve asked you to respond in writing. We’ll get that, Pat, I don’t know if we -- we’ll try to get it on the  web page. Is that okay, Pat?

MR. WITTEN: Yeah, whatever --

MR. HAYMORE: We’ll get it on it. And so I think we’ve had a lot of discussion and bring it back to this board for this -- I know the planning commissioners have asked me a lot of questions and a lot of concerns and have a lot of suggestions, too, so --

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: Mr. Chairman, I think we

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need to hear from the school district and the Sheriff’s Department and the Fire Department, what their concerns and their issues might be, before we can make any kind of decision here.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Mr. Chairman, I agree with Lydia, and I also feel that we should hear from Public Works, and I would like also a report, as much as you can do, I know it’s going to be difficult because a lot is up in the air, but from Pat Whitten as to the fiscal impact.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: I agree, yeah.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: But I believe every county department should give us some kind of information. We don’t have the luxury of county staff like the larger counties do who do compile that sort of information, so we’re going to have to look to the people who are hands on in this case to give us their views as to the impacts on the county and their perspective as far as fire, police, Public  Works --

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: Exactly

COMMISSIONER PRATER:  -- and the fiscal aspects. So with that I move to continue  this hearing until the next meeting and request that staff ask each of the Department heads to provide that sort of information to us.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: Larry, can they do that in

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two weeks or should we ask for a longer time frame?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Let’s make this in conjunction with the termination of the next Planning Commission meeting, where and when.

MR. HAYMORE: Mr. Chairman, let me let you know that I have right now for you a Sierra Pacific application that we have arranged to have down in Mark Twain on the 17th which is another very hot topic, and so we set that. Pat’s here. The folks in Virginia City want a meeting, I believe they should have a meeting. I believe we do not anybody want to go through all the stuff we’ve gone through for the last two meetings. Let’s get down to the meat and potatoes of it.

I would like to postpone this next meeting for about a month and have it up in Virginia City, If that’s okay with you guys. If Mark Twain feels it’s important, and I do believe it’s important, then we can put it on the agenda, because I haven’t put the agendas together. I have to have legal notices out per the notifications by Monday to the surrounding property owners. But just to give you information, that’s what we got coming up.

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Can we make that a discussion item in Mark Twain --

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MR. HAYMORE: Just a discussion --

COMMISSIONER TYLER:  -- instead of an action item?

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: Yeah, that would be excellent.

COMMISSIONER MAHOLLAND: What are the implications of doing a discussion item versus an action item?

COMMISSIONER TYLER: We don’t have to vote on it.

COMMISSIONER MAHOLLAND: But we can still hear the same level of public input?

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Right.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: With the continuation we have a motion. Do we have a second?

COMMISSIONER TYLER: I’ll second.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Any further discussion? All in favor?

(Collective aye)

COMMISSIONER WALLING: All opposed.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: Nay.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: The --

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: I opposed.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Oh, we have one -- and so noted.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: Would you like me to explain or --

CHAIRMAN WALLING: If you choose to.

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: We have had two town hall

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meetings, one in this community, one in Virginia City Highlands. We’ve done a tremendous amount of research on this project, I have and I know our fellow commissioners have. I respect very much the opinion or the vote that the commission is making at the moment, but I feel at this time it is time to make a vote on this issue whether we go one way or another, because we’ve made the research, we’ve had the town halls, we’ve had the presentations and I believe that we have adequate facts at this time to make a decision on this issue.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: But you just admitted you’ve not talked to the police department or the fire department or other agencies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: How could you even do that without even talking to your own department heads about it?

COMMISSIONER OSBORNE: I agree.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: That’s incredible. That’s mind boggling. This is a huge thing.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: It is. Okay. We’ve got a vote for continuance. We have one -- we have one nay.

COMMISSIONER TYLER: I would like to make a motion for the next meeting.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay. Show of hands, all in

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favor for continuation. And we have one nay.

All right. Lets move on to date and time and location.

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Mark Twain, correct, Dean?

MR. HAYMORE: Yes.

COMMISSIONER TYLER: And that’s at the fire station?

MR. HAYMORE: Yes. Do you want to put this item on there, too?

COMMISIONER TYLER: Yes.

MR. HAYMORE: Discussion only?

COMMISSIONER TYLER: As a discussion only item.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: What date is that?

MR. HAYMORE: The 17th. I believe.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK:  17th.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay.

MR. HAYMORE: 6:00 p.m.

MR. WHITTEN: For the record, Pat Whitten, County Manager. I think to answer Lydia’s question is a month enough, it all depends on the extent of what you want. We’re talking at some stages of the game having to bring in paid professionals and people that do this for a living, both economic modeling, planning, those types of things. I think if the Commission’s appetite and tolerance is for us to give you some very preliminary

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indications, these are the target areas we would be concerned with, for instance, in Public Works how are we going to maintain roads, who does the water and sewer systems -- I’ve seen charts and indications that GID is going to be involved. Here the county doesn’t maintain a single road in the Rainbow Bend subdivision, it’s all done by their GID. So I think we’re going to have to eat this elephant one bite at a time and give you probably some very preliminary information hopefully by the Mark Twain meeting, if that’s what you’re looking for.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: It’s mostly when we hear something we come up with more questions, so --

MR. WHITTEN: RIGHT. And it will be a work in progress I think, if that’s understood. I mean, there’s no way for us within two weeks of crunching under any scenario to be all encompassing, because most of us haven’t done this before. Dean has at least worked intimately with the tribe development but when it comes to a residential and type like this, we’ll be providing information and getting information and contracting for information for quite some time I would suppose depending on what the decisions are that you make and the Commission makes, if that’s all right with you.

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VICE-CHAIRMAN BUCCHIANERI; I don’t think two weeks is enough for even a preliminary presentation. I would like to have 30 days anyway.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: I think that’s why we’re saving items for discussion only, for the public to give more input, but I don’t think that Bret was trying to say that we want input from the county in two weeks. I’m just asking is a month or a month and a half or two months or what kind of time frame can we ask to have that meeting where we can get the input.

MR. WHITTEN: We’ll shoot for a month. And again, it will be a work in progress. I think six months from now you could probably be given the same answer with just more information on either side as to the pluses and minuses, if that’s all right.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Thank you, ma’am.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: I have a question. Aren’t you -- are you moving into phase or step two here without having voted on the master plan amendment and the zone change?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Good point.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Wouldn’t that have to happen first before you go into crunching all these numbers?

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COMMISSIONER PRATER: I’m not asking for a lot of number crunching at this point. What I need to know -- This development is going to have an impact on every one of these departments. I feel these department heads should be in the loop at this point.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: But you’re already assuming we’re going to have a development.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: No, I’m not.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: You need to vote on whether you want to develop those lands first with somebody.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: If we make this -- if we change the zoning of this land at this point, it’s going -- somewhere down the road it will have an impact on these departments. I would like to hear from these departments as to their -- what they foresee as the impacts. That’s all we’re asking for.

VICE-CHAIRMAN BUCCHIANERI: If we change the zoning now to planned unit development, we’re going to be forced to accept some kind of a planned unit development out there. We might be able to limit certain things like the number of houses and go into a lot of things. but we’re going to be then committed to accept something along the lines of a planned unit development.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: So these would be statistics and numbers that you  could use with anybody who --

VICE-CHAIRMAN BUCCHIANERI: Yeah, maybe it would be a good zone change if somebody comes in there and says, well, we got a planned unit development for 500 houses and a big park you know, or something like that even. So I think we don’t want to -- I think we shouldn’t even vote on that until we look at it a little more.

MR. HAYMORE: And so you know, going down to Mark Twain is to expose them to this so they know about it and if they come out. If they have concerns, then we want to hear their concerns and things like that, but they’re exposed. And then  I suspect the next one will be in Virginia City.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Are you going to send them notices like you all sent us?

MR. HAYMORE: I am.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Because they don’t know about it except for hearing about it from a few of us.

MR. HAYMORE: We’re going to send out a postcard notice with the special use --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: That would be great.

MR. HAYMORE: -- Sierra Pacific Power Company and

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we’ll put this on it for discussion.

I’m sure that you don’t want a big power line going right through your community, and that’s what’s happening with the substations.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Henry.

MR. KILMER: Assuming that we have a meeting down in Mark Twain and perhaps later one in Virginia City, I want to offer Piper’s Opera House for the meeting in Virginia City.

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Oh, very good. Well, thank you.

MR. HAYMORE: And understand, people, we have about enough room in the Mark Twain -- or Six Mile Canyon firehouse to do about these rows row of seats right here, so we --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: There’s no place down there to stand outside?

MR. HAYMORE: There’s not even room --

COMMISSIONER HAMMMACK: There’s no place there for them to stand outside.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Ed.

MR. GILBERT: Mr. Chairman, Mr. Smith mentioned earlier that he would be willing to hire an outside planning engineer to help you guys make decisions. Are we a little premature in asking him to do that along

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with the Fire Department, the Public Works Department, the Sheriffs Department to give you guys the information so that you can make an intelligent decision?

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Planning Commission, would you like it done that way?

COMMISSIONER MAHOLLAND: I think it’s a little premature still to go that route. And I would point out that the information we’re looking for from the departments at this point in time -- I mean, it’s kind of based on what we know to date on what the development is, which is really loose right now. And we’re not looking for hardcore numbers and statistics from the different departments, it’s hey, Fire Chief, come in, take a look, this is generally what’s being proposed, what sort of issues do you see right now.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: That wasn’t Ed’s question. Do you want professionals to come in on this?

COMMISSIONER MAHOLLAND: I think its a little premature still.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Okay.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: I agree.

MR GILBERT: Again, I would like to thank you all for the work you do do.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: I think when we get to the

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planned unit development stage -- I think that would be an important consideration when we get to that -- if we get to that stage.

MR. GILBERT: Okay. Thank you.

MR. HAYMORE: And I would say I’d help -- I am just swamped. folks, and, I’m sorry. I’m burnt out. I’m just trying to stay up with everything that’s going on. And you don’t know the pressure I got coming just to stay up with what’s happening every day. And I’m trying to give the best service I can to all the Taxpayers of Storey County.

(Clapping)

COMMISSIONER PRATER: Dean, I have a question for you. Have you requested assistance from the county commissioners?

MR. HAYMORE: Boy, have I. I’ve asked the county commissioners for a professional planner and our budget requested it and we did not put it in the budget. We’re really looking at professional outside consultants to come in. And we’re at the point where we just -- I just can’t do it all.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: I agree with you, that everything that seems to be in the works could easily get a little -- I wonder if we could agendize for the Mark Twain meeting an item regarding professional

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assistance for the Storey County Planning Department.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: Can that --

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Unless they feel it’s premature.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: I think we can discuss it at Mark Twain.

COMMISSIONER TYLER: Can we make that an action item?

MR. HAYMORE: I don’t think it’s premature.

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: It’s a good action, item, Larry.

COMMISSIONER PRATER: I agree. I would like to move that that be placed on the agenda for Mark Twain in two weeks.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Do we have a second?

COMMISSIONER HAMMACK: I’ll second that.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: All in favor.

(Collective aye.)

CHAIRMAN WALLING: All opposed?

All right. Decision, place, form has been determined for the next meeting.

Dean, we got any claims for this meeting?

MR. HAYMORE: No claims.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Any correspondence other than what we’ve previously received?

MR. HAYMORE: About a hundred.

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CHAIRMAN WALLING: That’s an answer. Thank you.

Public comment, anybody that would like to say anything?

MS. ALDRICH: I would just like to apologize for flipping out and thank Austin for standing up for us. Really. Not that I’m such a good public speaker, but I really needed to say some things and thank you for listening.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: Appreciate it.

Dean, anything that applies to staff?

MR. HAYMORE: Just trying to get that information. You guys have packets for Sierra Pacific. I’m trying to keep up to date, but as of today I think I got over a hundred correspondence just on the Cordevista. I’m trying to keep you as much up to date as I can. I will get you the written responses. I’ll work with Pat and get those posted on the Internet so people can get available on that. That’s it. It’s been a long night. Appreciate all you guys’s input.

CHAIRMAN WALLING: There being no further business --

(The hearing was concluded.)

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STATE OF NEVADA   )
        )   ss.
COUNTY 0F WASHOE
        I, LORI URMSTON, a Certified Court Reporter and
Notary Public for the County of Washoe, State of
Nevada, do hereby certify that on Thursday, the 3rd day
of May, 2007 at the Rainbow Bend Clubhouse, 500 Avenue
Bleu de Claire, Lockwood, Nevada, I reported the Storey
County Planning Commission meeting:
        That the foregoing transcript, consisting of
pages 1 through 169 is a true and correct transcript of
the stenographic notes of testimony taken by me in the
above-captioned matter to the best of my knowledge, skill
and ability.
        I further certify that I am not an attorney or
counsel for any of the parties, nor a relative or
employee of any attorney or counsel connected with the
action, nor financially interested in the action.
        DATED: At Reno Nevada, this 8th day of
May, 2007.
 

                    _____________________

                    LORI URMSTON, CSR #51