The Carson City supervisors revoked Frontier Motel’s business license in May 2021 after city staff discovered rodents, bedbugs, exposed electrical wiring, and rooms without hot water or flushing toilets. (Photo: Faith Evans/Nevada Appeal)
In August 2021, an abandoned, dilapidated RV parked in its final resting place on Conestoga Drive in North Carson City. Complaints made their way to the Code Enforcement Division, but the vehicle stayed right where it was, an eyesore with smashed-in windows.
On Oct. 4, the RV caught fire.
The fire department responded to scene, and the city ended up hauling away a burnt shell. It’s a situation that upset city officials just as much as it upset the residents.
“I’m as frustrated as your customer is,” said Hope Sullivan, community development director, at the Board of Supervisors workshop Friday.
She shared the story to open a topic that generated lots of discussion during the meeting – code enforcement and abatements.
Currently, Carson City has no budget for abatements, which means city staff have no resources to correct code violations like abandoned vehicles. The Bureau of Land Management has a contract to haul away abandoned vehicles, but it has not made the details of that contract available to Carson City.
“If we’re going to address these things, we’re going to need a budget to address them,” Sullivan said.
She told the Appeal on Monday that the RV on Conestoga Drive opened her eyes to the challenges that the city is facing in its code enforcement division.
Even bigger than one burnt RV, there are 17 Carson City hotels that staff suspect are housing extended-stay residents without following the building or fire code requirements to do so.
It’s a booming business — five of those hotels have sold in 2022 alone, and nine have sold since 2020.
Sullivan said the city estimates 10 percent of hotel residents have added deadbolts to their doors so management cannot access their rooms, and 25 percent have non-functioning smoke alarms.
Last year, the supervisors revoked Frontier Motel’s business license, after city staff discovered rodents, bedbugs, exposed electrical wiring, and rooms without hot water or flushing toilets.
Though Frontier may be an extreme example, Sullivan emphasized the city must devise a way to get all hotels into compliance with the code. Either the hotels need to stop taking extended-stay residents, or they need to update building infrastructure to accommodate those residents safely.
The board seemed receptive to the idea. Supervisor Stacey Giomi said he had responded to a hotel call once as fire chief. A unit had caught fire. When he arrived, he noticed sheetrock coming off the walls and ceilings.
“As the fire chief, I felt it was not safe for people to live in that building,” he said.
Still, he and the other supervisors expressed worries about displacing residents in the process of enforcing building and fire safety codes on Carson City hotels. Combined, the 17 suspected code-violating hotels have close to 700 rooms.
Sullivan suggested developing a path, possibly a five-year plan, to bring the facilities into compliance and displace the fewest number of residents possible.
The board expressed interest in discussions and possible city action on setting an abatement budget and creating a code enforcement plan for extended-stay hotels.
That wasn’t the only topic of discussion for the day.
Another fire that the supervisors are trying to stomp out: city buildings are getting cramped.
The courthouse, Health and Human Services, and City Hall are all suffering from a lack of adequate space for staff. District Attorney Jason Woodbury said he has employees in cubicles engaging in conversations that should be behind closed office doors.
The supervisors deliberated several solutions, including expanding the courthouse out onto the front patio area or consolidating some city staff into the old Kmart building on North Carson Street.
The board moved to accept bids on the Northgate property from nonprofit organizations.
The supervisors also heard a brief update on American Rescue Plan Act funding. The city has spent close to $161,000 of the $20.8 million available, and $3.7 million remains unallocated.
Some big-ticket items slated for funding include an emergency operations dispatch center for the Fire Department, restrooms at local parks, and water, sewer and broadband infrastructure upgrades throughout the city.
One component of ARPA funding has already come to fruition. The sheriff office’s new body scanner is up and running, and Deputy Chief Financial Officer Pam Ganger said that staff “already (have) some funny stories about what they’ve seen on the scanner.”
Several city officials in the audience exclaimed simultaneously that those scanner stories are off the record.
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