Black History Month Blacklash
Reno City Council endangers historic Nevada black church for developer
Bethel A.M.E. Pastor marshals support at City Hall on Feb. 28

Confidential —> Hush, hush!
All the News You Never Knew You Needed to Know: Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

Eee-yo-leven!
Barbwire wins 11th Nevada Press Association award

Breaking News—>

Rent control legal under Nevada law

WE WON! City of Reno votes down Ballardini Ranch annexation

Ballardini Ranch: Love's Labours Lost. Again.
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-20-2020 Sparks Tribune

We Don't Need No Education Part XCI—>
DO NOT risk your kids at Golden Eagle Park
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 11-6-2019 Sparks Tribune

Tale of 2 city halls: Cancer kids & brain damage
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 10-30-2019 Sparks Tribune

Priorities for butt-, rent-, birth- and gun-control
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 4-17-2019 Sparks Tribune

DAY OF THE DEAD
Relieve Rent & Pillage: Save SB398 & AB399
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Special Online Legislative Edition / 4-12-2019
Fairness for tenants dies 4-12 unless lawmakers throw it a lifeline

Politics does not reward the shy
Rent justification and a death penalty for corporate depredation
Fairness for tenants dies 4-12 unless lawmakers throw it a lifeline
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 4-10-2019 Sparks Tribune

HISTORY IN THE MAKING Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak delivers the keynote address at César Chávez Celebration XVII 3-27-2019

Recognizing the red flags of instant replay
The ghost of Ballardini Ranch haunts Reno developments
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 2-21-2018 Sparks Tribune

We Don't Need No Education
The neverending series

Happy High Holly Days to all
Merry Christmas/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Festivus/Chanukah
Hope you and yours enjoyed enthralling Thanksgibleting.
HAPPY NEW YEAR / Feliz Año Nuevo
Frohe Weihnachten und beste Wuensche fuer 2018

Window of opportunity: 48 hours for human rights
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 10-11-2017 Sparks Tribune

Las Vegas 2017: Fire is the devil's only friend
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 10-4-2017 Sparks Tribune

Happy Thanksgibleting to you and yours

Toxins, turkeys, takeovers and true Nevadians
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 11-22-2016 Sparks Tribune

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 2
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 11-15-2016 Sparks Tribune

Environmental champion Marge Sill dies

Downtown good ole boys never know when to quit
BREKHUS BREXIT: BAD MOON RISING OVER CITY HALL
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-25-2016 Sparks Tribune

Oakland Rapists: Softshoe fascism on steroids
Nevada adopts official state religion: The NFL
Also: Bernie Sanders and Trump Jr. blow into Reno
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-18-2016 Sparks Tribune

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
A minor penance for the Ballardini Ranch betrayal
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-20-2016 Sparks Tribune

Report: Rise in poverty threatens to further weaken Nevada education system
Ian Whitaker / Las Vegas Sun 7-7-2016

Senior citizens hit with exploitive rent hikes in Tesla boomtown
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 6-14-2016 Sparks Tribune

Hundreds play in Nevada on toxic, cancer-causing, brain-damaging artificial field turf
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 6-7-2016 Sparks Tribune

Taxing issue: Washoe County Commission funds Koch anti-public lands political group
Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 6-9-2016

Nevada utilities continually consume consumers
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 5-31-2016 Sparks Tribune

True love, machine guns and My Sharrona
EPA opens investigation of toxic field turf, epidemic in Nevada
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 3-22-2016 Sparks Tribune

Community Teach-In for Gun Sense – 3 March 2016, 5:30 p.m.
Bethel AME Church, 2655 Rock Blvd, Sparks NV
RSVP to Temple Sinai

Nevada workers strike megabucks Tesla battery plant
2-29-2016 / Updated 3-1-2016

Michael Moore begs President Obama to visit the poisoned people of Flint, Michigan
Sign the petition!

Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend traditional event schedule

In Sparks, politics isn't personal, just business
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-12-2016 Sparks Tribune

If you can't trust Dear Abby, whom can you trust?
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-5-2016 Sparks Tribune

Open season on law-breaking dangerous drones
Barbwire by Barbano/Expanded from 12-29-2015 Sparks Tribune, Updated 12-30-2015

Barbano on statewide Nevada Newsmakers TV show

Hope you and yours enjoyed Happy High Holly Days!
Christmas/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Festivus/Chanukah/Thanksgibleting

Love and laughter to you and yours
Almanac for Thanksgiving weekend

On artificial turf, don't breathe unless necessary
Toxic turf all over town
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 11-24-2015 Sparks Tribune
Updated 12-2 and 12-8-2015

Sorcerer's apprentices work cheap in Nevada
Want minimum wage plumbers and electricians building your house?
Barbwire by Barbano/Expanded from 11-17-2015 Sparks Tribune/Updated 12-8-2015

Clinton and Sanders records on Nevada environmental issues compared
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 11-12-2015

Water wars: How politics beat science in the West
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 11-5-2015

Fighting over public lands: Does the public care?
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 11-5-2015

Barbano on statewide Nevada Newsmakers TV show

Strange bedfellows and nubile wenches
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-29-2015 Sparks Tribune

Making it: Do casino jobs provide a way into the middle class?
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 9-17-2015

César Chávez Celebration XIII / Celebración de César Chávez XIII
Tuesday 31 March 2015 / Martes 31 de Marzo 2015
Event Highlights at Circus Circus Reno

Support the return of a community TV channel
High noon for the high desert outback of the American Dream
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 3-24-2015 Sparks Tribune

St. Patrick, I need a green energy beer
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 3-17-2015 Sparks Tribune

True confessions from the back of the bus
Reno newspaper pushes new casino redline under guise of "university town"
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-7-2014 Sparks Tribune

The bitch is back: 1875 homes planned for Ballardini Ranch
By Joe Hart KRNV TV-4 / 6-2-2014

Negative Optimism: Making the best of being worst
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 5-8-2014 Sparks Tribune

Mayday!
Taxes smolder while citizens do slow burn
May Day in Reno, D-Day for teachers' union tax petition
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 5-1-2014 Sparks Tribune

The Obamacare Bitcoin online vote exchange
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 4-10-2014 Sparks Tribune

In search of the modern day Barbara Bennett
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 4-3-2014 Sparks Tribune

Solar-powered insurance drones from hell
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-2-2014 Sparks Tribune

They don't do anything until somebody dies
University of Nevada-Reno and downtown Reno theaters demonstrate how little was learned from the Las Vegas Hilton and MGM disasters
Remembering Sen. Joe Neal's landmark high-rise fire sprinkler law
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 12-12-2013 Sparks Tribune

RENO, Nev. (12-5-2013) — Former Nevada Assemblymember and Washoe hospital trustee Vivian Freeman dies. Groundbreaking legislative advocate of recycling and mining reclamation was 86.

Barbwire: Nevada not really a state
No, we were not Battle Born in Kenya
Top 10 reasons Nevada lives in 19th Century
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-17-2013 Sparks Tribune

Assemblymember Peggy Pierce, D-Las Vegas, 1954-2013

Dirt cheap
Congress gave the new state of Nevada 4 million acres to pay for schools.
What happened to them?
Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 7-18-2013
We Don't Need No Education —> The Neverending Series

BOONSOGGLE
Massive flood danger: how this sorry state got to this sorry state—>
Watersports 2012: Reno-Sparks-Washoe governments blew millions, learned nothing and did even less after the killer floods of 1986, 1997 and 2005

Washoe County worker morale plunges amid union-bashing
Poor county commission decisions cause destruction of staff levels, services
Incline Village litigation, Pioneer Inn purchase and Ballardini Ranch settlement singled out
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review / 12-22-2011

     RENO, Nev. (12 Dec. 2010) — A sewer line project including a larger pipeline to serve future development at the Ballardini Ranch soon will be completed in southwest Reno.

     RENO, Nev. (18 Nov. 2010) — In early November, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported that "revenue raised through the latest round of sales through the South(ern) Nevada Public Land(s) Management Act also will provide $1 million for construction of a trailhead and trail system at Ballardini Ranch in southwest Reno."

     That may have been great pre-election PR, but it obscured the fact that the property in question was never at issue in the campaign to save more than 1,000 acres for public use (documented in detail at this website).

     The acreage to which the RGJ referred was remaining property the Caramella/Ballardini (actually Pershighel) families had retained, basically the ranch house area, which was never part of the condemnation acreage in question. Washoe County used an earlier announcement of the option to acquire the additional land to create a public impression that some portion had been "saved" — but that was just PR and political sophistry.

     The out-of-state developers scored much more than they would have gotten by going thru the normal approval process plus a $13.5 million bonus from the taxpayers — money the county had to borrow. They got planning and zoning concessions as part of the final deal that may someday allow a new mini-city and perhaps even a high rise hotel casino on that property — something they never would have gotten thru normal channels.

     Had the county commission stuck by its original decision to acquire the ranch, the people would very probably have prevailed in court.

     Then-Commissioner Pete Sferrazza cast the only no vote on the settlement. He said he could have supported it if the public could have gotten something out of it. The public got nothing but debt and the developers got carte blanche to do whatever they wanted on the last large undeveloped swath of the Truckee Meadows.

     The settlement called for the price of the additional acquisition to be driven by the highest and best use of the land IF it were used for something else like a casino, NOT as unimproved farmland, which it was at the time and probably still is.

     There is justice in the world —> As with so many other big projects, the vagaries of economic change bit it in the ass.

     Keep up the good work and the good fight.

     Be well. Raise hell.

— Andrew Barbano

     Be well. Raise hell.

     Subcomandante Cero