The 3 p.m. meeting agenda includes discussion of a future code amendment that would allow adult day care as a permitted use in certain zoning districts.
If approved, the agenda item would direct city staff to start developing use standards, such as parking requirements and appropriate zoning areas for future adult day care facilities.
The meeting will also showcase the final reading of an alcohol sales law change, toughening laws against those clerks who sell alcohol to minors.
If approved, the change would take the word “knowingly” out of Sparks city code.
“The current law is becoming unenforceable in certain areas,” senior assistant city attorney Tom Riley and Sparks Police Chief Steve Asher wrote in a staff report prepared for today’s meeting. “Store employees who intentionally have not checked an underage person’s identification before selling alcoholic beverages to them are being found not guilty of a crime."
However, at the law change’s first reading some retail association members were concerned about safeguarding employees who were given fake identifications.
“That to me, being a non-lawyer, (the change) doesn’t provide any kind of safeguard for someone who sold to a minor but was given a legitimate-looking ID,” said Tray Abney, director of government relations for the Reno-Sparks Chamber of Commerce.
“From the retail perspective, if you remove that word ‘knowingly’ you are removing protection from a business that may have legitimately made a mistake,” said Lea Tauchen, Retail Association of Nevada director of government affairs for grocery and general merchandise.
Since that time, language has been added into the final law change which legally clears clerks who thought they received a real ID, but were slipped a fake.
In other business, the council will also consider letting the Nevada Housing Division use the city’s $4.5 million state bond cap authority in order to finance first-time mortgages at the Marina Villas Condominiums.
According to staff reports prepared for the meeting, the city was given more than $4.5 million in tax-exempt private activity bond volume authority by the state. The city has transferred that authority to housing projects in the past. This year, a first-time homebuyer program through the Nevada Housing Division wants to have the bonding authority transferred to them.
According to staff reports, an affirmative vote would simply enable NHD to issue tax exempt bonds. The reports also state that the city bears no cost or financial risk for the bonds.
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