Phil Tenneson Lit a Torch at Washoe County

Picon sometimes is shocked by what City of Reno, City of Sparks, and Washoe County Government employees are called upon to do and we question why they do it.

Facebook has been blowing up due to Reno’s frequent commenter Phil Tenneson and his audacity to call out the propaganda being perpetually spewed by Washoe County Government and in this case, it is the video reboot about County Manager Eric Brown and the 1980 Olympics, or more to the point the Olympics that were held in the Soviet Union and the United States boycotted. This video is three years old and frankly, we have no idea why Washoe County trotted this back out. Plus we, and now Our Town Reno can’t verify the record County Manager Brown broke at a pre Olympic track event.

Most people might not know, or care, the United States lead the boycott, the largest in Olympic history due to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, it was 44 years ago. Come on people in 1980s were playing Pac Man and listening to George Michael, Madonna was just becoming a Material Girl, big hair was in as was the Brat-Pack, and a young Eric Brown had qualified to be on the U.S. Olympic Team.

Why is this important to the “propaganda team” at Washoe County that we have to relive County Manager Brown’s accomplishment three times. First there was the long version of the video three years ago, then the next year a shorter version, and now we just get to keep hearing about it and can watch either video on YouTube. Why? What purpose does this serve?

Picon who is always thinking about taxpayer money, ponders what this video cost the county to produce, edit and then edit again. Who did the work? Again, we ask, why?

We are enjoying Mr. Tennison’s online battle with Bethany Drysdale, the Media and Communications Manager at Washoe County who is engaging to defend her boss and his accomplishments in the unattended 1980 Olympics. You know, the Olympics he didn’t participate in.

Is this being promoted by Washoe County for a feel-good moment for County Manager Eric Brown, so we can applaud his accomplishments, and think, he’s not a bad guy. Does the county want people to think Brown is an Olympian? Hence people will lessen the missteps in the county’s Registrar of Voters Office, the homeless taking over at the 9th Street Senior Center and running senior citizens out of the facility, the lack of cooling centers, the ending of PRIDE events at the Washoe County Library, and the amount of taxpayer money being spent at the Nevada Cares Campus, all under this former Olympian’s watch.

While Ms. Drysdale is rehashing her boss’s Olympic accomplishments, she made some interesting comments to Our Town Reno, while admitting that Brown didn’t compete in the Olympics because the U.S. boycotted that year, she defended that does not take away from Brown’s accomplishment, and then said, “I think it is a very shallow, irrelevant attempt to undermine someone’s accomplishment with semantics.”

Well let’s talk shallow, and you want to discuss undermining someone’s accomplishments because that sort of sums up the email Ms. Drysdale sent to Governor Joe Lombardo about Tracey Hilton Thomas and Tom Green. Remember they both were Washoe County employees.

Really, Ms. Drysdale, guess we’re sweeping under the rug the comments you penned to Governor Joe Lombardo in April 2023 when he was faced with a Washoe County Commissioner appointment due to Commissioner Vaughn Hartung’s resignation.

No ‘semantics’ - no subtle shades of meaning, Drysdale was clear and direct. Ms. Drysdale called Tracey Hilton Thomas and Tom Green “dangerous people.”  Hilton Thomas, a retired Washoe County Employee working in what was then the Information Technology department,  and Tom Green a former Washoe County Sheriff’s Deputy. Both had lots of advancement in their careers with Washoe County, nothing negative during their time with the county, and both retired.

Drysdale called out Washoe Patriot groups, but were Ms. Thomas or Mr. Green part of a Washoe Patriot Group? And which group? Does Ms. Drysdale have proof, you know a pesky video, text messages, photographs, emails, recordings, to comment to the governor that if either of these people were to be appointed, “morale among Washoe County employes will plummet, and there will likely be a mass exodus of employees, if the Commission is taken over by the fringe element of the Party.”  

If Ms. Drysdale does have this proof, we question who paid for it, did she hire a private detective, like Mr. Green who owns Nevada Investigative Services to discover the proof, or was this information unveiled by Washoe County and was Drysdale but the messenger to the Governor? This is murky and should ultimately be explained by Washoe County’s Manager Brown, which we have been asking for over a year.

Our point, Mr. Tenneson, has an opinion about County Manager Brown’s Olympic past, and we have no idea why Washoe County would spend a highly paid employee’s time defending and promoting Brown’s 1980 track running past. What in the heck does running in the Olympics have to do with running Washoe County and is this a good use of taxpayer monies.