Washoe County's Vulnerable Population: A Bureaucratic Betrayal

West Hills Behavioral Health Hospital on East Ninth Street.

In a masterclass of municipal mismanagement, Washoe County has transformed public service into a cynical shell game, with mental health patients and seniors as unwitting pawns.

Enter the “$32,000-Man” County Manager Eric Brown, maestro of magical thinking, preparing to perform his annual strategic planning workshop on Tuesday, January 28, 2025 - a thinly veiled fundraising plea disguised as governmental transparency.

Agenda from January 28, 2025 Washoe County Strategic Planning Workshop.

The West Hills Behavioral Health Hospital saga reads like a budget horror story. Brown promised a summer 2024 reopening, then went radio silent. Initially claiming a $10 million rehab cost (along with all the other monies committed), whispers now suggest the price tag could balloon to $25 million or more. This, while Washoe County faces a budget crises, along with the City of Sparks and City of Reno, that would make a financial auditor weep.

Let's be crystal clear: The county purchased this aging infrastructure without apparently commissioning a comprehensive assessment. Their due diligence? Headline-chasing and bureaucratic back-patting. The result? A building that's become more attractive to thieves than to mental health patients, with break-ins so frequent that even obtaining accurate incident reports seems impossible.

On August 23, 2023 Manager Brown was interviewed by KTVN Chanel 2:

Brown commented that Washoe County Commissioners have voted to buy the shuttered West Hills Behavioral Health Hospital on East Ninth Street. On Wednesday, County Manager Eric Brown sat down with 2 News and said that the building's exact future isn't certain, but the county does plan to bring back the mental health services the facility once offered. “I know that there are a lot of things being said about what it is and what it’s going to be, take it from me, we don’t know yet. We do know it’ll be a mental health facility," Brown said. Brown wants to have the building ready for patients as soon as summer 2024, but one thing stands in the way: renovations.”

After hearing this back in August of 2023 Picon all bus laughed ourselves silly, an ageing infrastructure, and add in the additional hassles of a former hospital, and the county was “guessing” $10 million to rehab West Hills. Try a whole lot more will be needed for this building.

Brown and Commission Chair Alexis Hill's acquisition of West Hills looks increasingly like a vanity project with taxpayers footing the bill. Mental health services remain a distant promise, while the building deteriorates and vulnerable populations suffer.

But wait, Manager Brown bobbed and weaved with a big flourish of press when the county hired Julia Ratti filling a newly created position of Behavioral Health Administrator back in April 2024 (if you want a chuckle one day read through former State Senator Ratti’s Contribution and Expense Reports from 2018).

Alexis Hill, Devon Reese, and Kathleen Taylor look like paupers in comparison to Ms. Ratti’s political contribution fundraising skills.

The county likes to use the term strategic planning, but they sure don’t follow it. At Washoe County it’s more like strategic panhandling. Brown will undoubtedly arrive with his hand out, seeking "public-private partnerships" - bureaucratic code for transferring public risk to private profit.

The senior situation is equally appalling. After three weeks of cold sandwiches and administrative incompetence, at Tuesday’s meeting the start of a hot meal will probably be trumpeted as some grand achievement. Congratulations, Washoe County - you've managed the bare minimum of human dignity.

Cold, sodium laden meals from Washoe County Government Human Services Agency for seniors. These cold meals started on January 8, 2025 when the temporary kitchen had not received the required permitting, and continued through Friday, January 24th.

The real strategy here is clear: Exploit the most vulnerable, minimize accountability, maximize spending.