News - September 15, 2025 - by Ray Hagar

With the City of Reno facing a massive deficit and dwindling revenues from  taxes, the guiding principle of the next mayor must be "rooted in fiscal discipline," said City Council-member Kathleen Taylor, who is running of mayor in the 2026 election.

"Our city is really at a crossroads right now," Taylor said recently on Nevada Newsmakers. "You might know that we have a $24 million budget deficit as we start planning for FY (fiscal year 20)27.

"So, every decision that we make has got to be rooted in fiscal discipline," said Taylor, council-member for Ward One, which includes downtown.

Reno needs a more austere operating budget because the city's falling tax revenues could lead to problems deeper than just the looming $24 million deficit, Taylor warned.

"We (city officials) received a presentation last week that over four years, this (deficit) could look like about $74 million of revenue loss," Taylor told host Sam Shad. "It's hard to make up $74 million in revenue loss."

Taylor, however, cautioned citizens not to get the impression the city is fiscally irresponsible.

"We are trying to educate people that it's not necessarily that we're spending wildly or we're being irresponsible with tax dollars," Taylor said. "It really is a revenue problem. However, there is room to make sure that we are protecting taxpayers and spending appropriately.

"But our four biggest revenue sources, besides property tax, have declined over the last four years. So C-tax (consolidated tax), which is all the other sales taxes, has declined," Taylor said. "Our franchise agreements have declined. And our permits and fees have declined."

Taylor suggested ways to increase revenue but did not rule out budget cuts and layoffs.

When asked about layoffs, Taylor said:

"We've already had a couple of layoffs. We're going to have to make the hard decisions and we're going to have to say no."

Most of the city's budget is tied up in jobs, Taylor said.

"Eighty percent of our budget is fixed in labor. (Police and fire mostly). "Our number one responsibility is public safety, as a city. That's what people have said and what I believe.

"We're going to have some hard conversations and we're going to have to really figure out what our core services are, what are the basic needs," Taylor said.

"People want to feel safe in their streets, in their neighborhoods," Taylor said. "Families deserve a place to live. People want to visit our parks and feel safe and clean. And ... you want clean drinking water. You want to know when you turn on the tap that it's safe to drink."

She spoke of other strategies to save money.

"The city owns a lot of property, and we have actively been looking at that, and we're going to be selling some of our property," she said, adding the land sales won't fix the issue altogether.

"We don't have $25 million worth (of disposal property)."

Planned projects will be scrutinized, Taylor said.

"We are going to hold off on some of our one-time projects," Taylor said. "We are going to look at everything that the city does. All of our services, consulting services, the services that we don't receive funding for."

Services for the homeless may be impacted.

"The city right now spends about $7.5 million on homeless services, and we don't receive anything for that," Taylor said.

When addressing the issues of the homeless and vacant buildings downtown, she said, "tough love" may be coming.

As a community, we have a huge heart," she said. "We are here to help people. I think we're moving into some of the tough-love space, which is appropriate."

Owners of blighted buildings may also see fees increased, Taylor said.

"The mayor and I have been working very closely on the vacant buildings, the blighted buildings," Taylor said. "People say, why don't you have a blight tax? And we do, but it's more on the fee side so we can actually assess more fees through our code-enforcement program than we could a blight tax."

Taylor, a conservative running for the non-partisan office of mayor, already has two declared opponents.

Kate Marshall, a former Democratic lieutenant governor, and Reno businessman Eddie Lorton have also declared. Lorton also ran for mayor in 2014, 2018 and 2022 and is a conservative.

In 2022, Lorton beat nine other candidates to advance to the general election where he garnered 41 percent of the vote in a loss of incumbent Mayor Hillary Scheive, who is now term-limited.