Data centers, Flock cameras and Reno's budget take center stage in tense mayoral forum

Candidates for Reno mayor sparred in a tense forum hosted by The Nevada Independent on Wednesday, disagreeing on everything from data centers and Flock cameras to how to right the city's precarious budget situation.

In an hourlong event moderated by Indy CEO Jon Ralston and reporter Eric Neugeboren, City Councilwoman Kathleen Taylor and former Nevada treasurer and Lt. Gov. Kate Marshall each said they would bring a new vision to leading the city, while knocking the other as maintaining the status quo. 

It had all the hallmarks of a classic debate. Candidates sometimes did not directly answer the questions and often spoke over one another. Taylor also at one point flipped her position on the controversial Flock cameras in a two-minute span.

But above all, the debate reinforced the different visions and backgrounds of both candidates. Though the mayor is a nonpartisan position, Taylor highlighted her conservative background,  while Marshall touted endorsements she received from prominent Democrats, including many living in Southern Nevada.

Marshall and Taylor were the top two vote-getters in the June primary, with Marshall coasting to first place. It's the first time in 12 years that the mayoral seat is open after incumbent Hillary Schieve was termed out of office.

In a sign of how the candidates positions' diverged, moderators asked at the start how they would grade Schieve's tenure. Taylor, who has served on the council for four of those years, gave her a C- while "grading on a curve." 

Meanwhile, Marshall, who has focused much of her campaign on what she calls mismanagement of the city in recent years, said grading Schieve was "not relevant," and that "I don't think it's about what Mayor Schieve did. It's about where we go."

Read below for more information on how the event unfolded.

Data center disputes

Data centers have emerged as a pivotal issue in the race, with each candidate attacking the other over their data center record in TV ads.

The Reno City Council has approved two data centers in recent years, and the council imposed a moratorium on data center approvals in June, with Taylor the only vote in opposition. Marshall has often criticized data centers within city limits, while Taylor has said she supports regulations in areas such as water and energy use.

Marshall said she does not support data centers in Reno. She previously told The Indy that this is not a "complete answer" because other local governments could still approve data centers. Asked about this apparent discrepancy, Marshall said it's an issue for the Legislature next year.

"If they want data centers outside of Reno, outside of our city limits, then we need guidelines and guardrails," she said. "Guidelines and guardrails that talk about energy usage, that talk about heat, noise, pollution, land use."

Taylor does not support a ban on data centers, and said that "I would not support a ban on probably anything."

"When we say we're closed to business to one industry, what's next?" she said.

The most controversial project is the Keystone Data Center, located near downtown. It never reached the council after getting approval from the city's planning commission.

Taylor has said she would have voted against the project if it reached the council, but she also attended its groundbreaking. She defended that move Wednesday saying, "I support the businesses and the workers and the jobs in my ward." She said she wasn't sure if she had ever been to another groundbreaking of a project she did not support.

Taylor has also touted her support of data center regulations earlier this year, but she voted against starting the process of changing regulations in early 2025. Taylor said she did not support starting the process last year because data centers were already subject to the city's conditional use permit process, and that there were discussions on how to regulate the industry on a regional level.

However, both of those processes are still in place today — before the moratorium, data centers had to apply for a conditional use permit, and a regional board is still researching how to best regulate the industry regionally. Ultimately, Taylor said she supported the regulations this year because there was ongoing collaboration with the community, and the council instructed the city to develop the regulations quickly.

In a campaign attack ad, Taylor has also criticized Marshall for voting in support of a tax break for data centers as lieutenant governor. The $25 million incentive was for a Google project in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center.

However, the board Marshall sat on had no authority at the time to reject the tax break. Instead, she touted her work to get Google to commit to environmentally friendly policies but said the company never held up its end of the bargain.

"One of the reasons I say 'not in Reno' is because these aren't trustworthy partners," she said.

Asked how she would have approached the issue differently, Taylor declined to speak "in the hypotheticals."

A Flock flip-flop? 

Taylor voted with the rest of the Reno City Council in 2024 to approve a $450,000 contract with Flock Safety. The cameras have drawn growing scrutiny since and, at a Sept. 10 meeting, Police Chief Corey Solferino gave the council its first public accounting of the department's surveillance technology, which includes 29 Flock license plate readers. 

During the meeting, members raised concerns about oversight and misuse, with Councilmember Brandi Anderson stating: "We're starting at zero trust in our community on this issue."

At the forum, Taylor said she would back ending the contract, then softened that answer under questioning. 

"I would support terminating the contract with Flock," Taylor said. She added that license plate readers help solve crimes but that "Flock has not been a good partner with the people that they work with." 

Taylor added that the city is finalizing a detailed security plan for the cameras, which the council plans to vote on within the next two meetings.

But in an earlier response to a Nevada Independent candidate questionnaire, Taylor did not directly answer whether she supported the city's use of Flock cameras, writing that "our police officers should be provided with the tools and technology to solve crimes and keep our communities safe, while residents deserve to have their privacy rights protected. These two goals are not mutually exclusive."

Pressed on her conflicting answers, Taylor backed off her earlier pledge, saying, "Doing business with Flock is probably something that I would look at" and that she "would be interested in looking at terminating" the contract. She said this was not a change in answer.

Marshall took a firmer stance on the issue, calling Flock a violation of residents' right to privacy. 

She said the government is "basically creating a searchable database of ordinary law-abiding citizens," describing how the company collects plate information, time and location data that police can search.

Reno keeps license plate data for 30 days unless it is needed for an investigation, according to a city staff report, but images captured by Flock cameras can be accessed by other police agencies across the country through a shared network. 

"That moment crosses a line, and that's your right to privacy," she said. "You can have privacy and public safety. You should never have to choose."

Campaign questions

Both candidates faced scrutiny over who is backing their campaigns. 

For Taylor, that includes an endorsement video from Joey Gilbert, a Reno attorney who contested his loss to Gov. Joe Lombardo in the 2022 Republican primary for governor.  

Taylor deflected questions about Gilbert's support, pointing instead to her endorsements from Lombardo, police and firefighters. Ralston pressed her, calling Gilbert "a conspiracy theorist who thinks COVID was planned."

"He's a nice guy," Taylor said. "His daughter played tennis, and my daughter played tennis, and I mean, that's all it takes."

For Marshall, questioning centered on a campaign fundraiser she held in Las Vegas in late September. She said a former colleague offered to host the event, and that it drew Democratic leaders including Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley and former Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones Blackhurst. 

Pressed on why she needed to raise money in Southern Nevada, Marshall said those leaders vouched for her, and added that she'd take the ribbing. 

Marshall also defended a primary ad that showed headlines about city cuts to public safety, parks and other programs. Though no parks have closed, Marshall said the ad reflects a zeroed-out parks maintenance budget, police vacancies and eliminated training funds.

"You can go to the park, it's not closed, but there's a lot of weeds. The trees are dying," she said.

Taylor, meanwhile, has made housing the focus of a recent ad, pledging to "clear the permit backlog instead of studying it for another two years" and to say "yes to starter homes and senior housing." 

She pointed to her work as chair of the Reno Housing Authority, which with the city has built about 2,500 housing units over four years, and said she plans to bring back housing supply recommendations that failed in 2023 within her first two months as mayor.

Budget ideas

Reno officials have said the city is facing a long-term budget crunch, with revenues not likely to keep up with rising costs.

Asked about ways to right the budget ship, Taylor said the city should work with other regional local governments on distribution of consolidated tax revenues, consider regionalizing some police services and work with the Legislature to create a regional parks district that could funnel revenue into city coffers.

Meanwhile, Marshall said she would explore working with the Legislature on imposing a tax on vacant properties. 

However, all of those goals would mean the city is at the mercy of other governments. Asked what the city can do internally, Taylor was open to pay cuts and changing how much the city covers in employee health insurance premiums — which sits at 100 percent — but also noted this would have to go through the collective bargaining process.

Marshall was hesitant to support raising costs on unionized city employees and reiterated her calls for a full audit into the city. The city already has to do a full financial audit annually — which Marshall said from her time as treasurer is overly "glowing and glossy" — and the council regularly approves audits into specific programs. In June, for example, it approved programmatic audits into payroll, information technology and overtime.

Marshall said she would go to the Legislature to fund independent audits of financial records.

She also wants to add a grants manager position, but Taylor said "that's going the wrong way if we're trying to reduce the budget."