Square Zero: Truckee Confronts Its Growing Pains
The Town of Truckee has received its first-ever report card.
A trio of reports recently wrapped up — a community opinion survey, the much discussed Baker Tilly townwide organizational assessment, and a review on development services — each focused on analyzing the town’s function from internal and/or external perspectives.
The results are both humbling and encouraging, painting a complex picture of the 32-year-old jurisdiction. Viewpoints vary: Residents want to preserve the natural beauty and small-town feel of Truckee, town staff is burnt out, and processual issues and mistrust are creating division across stakeholder groups, to name a few.
A promising result of this process is a growing consensus on concerns where there have long been arguments. Many have remarked on a sense of validation over the results, including the urgent need for further transparency and consistency, and the heavy amount of work spread across not-enough staff.
“[For] maybe the first time since I’ve been town manager, [I] feel like we’re sitting at like a round table and all together versus who is at the head,” said Truckee town manager Jen Callaway.
“Jen hired three different completely independent sources to use three completely different methodologies to come to findings, and those findings were largely in sync. I think because of that, we have now put to bed the situation,” echoed David Diamond, who worked as a consultant to create one of those reports, Truckee Development Process Findings and Recommendations. “If you still think this is not the situation we have, come forward and argue why all three sources, methodologies, were inaccurate or led to findings that were not legitimate.
“If we accept that three completely unique, independent sources have come to similar results, we’re at square zero. Now let’s focus on improvements here so we can stop arguing where we stand.”
The plan to address the collective 113 recommendations for improvement will take 10 or more years, Callaway estimates (multiple people have urged a faster timeline). But critical solutions are already underway, such as a permit-tracking software solution for the planning department.
“That’s a big lift,” Callaway said at the May 13 council meeting, at which the report results were presented. “That’s not an easy implementation. By the time we go out to identify the right solution, map out our processes, and implement them, that in and of itself is probably a year-long process. I think we need to acknowledge this [Baker Tilly] report’s going to be very valuable. It’s not going to sit on a shelf, and nothing happens from it, but it’s going to take time for the recommendations to move forward.”
Eleven other recommendations are also being actively addressed. Afternoon planning appointments are an example, with town planners now making themselves available to meet with the public Monday through Thursday from 1 to 3:30 p.m.
At the mid-May council meeting, council members were only asked to accept the results. A more specific action plan will be presented later this summer.
All said, there seems to be an atmosphere of positivity and encouragement over what’s to come, even with the Contractors Association of Truckee Tahoe. As reported earlier this year by Moonshine, CATT and the town have been at odds over the release of the Baker Tilly report results. CATT Executive Director Edward Vento said during public comment at the May 13 council meeting, addressing Community Development Director Denyelle Nishimori, who was present, “Denyelle, we believe in you.” Nishimori has been pointed to by many developers as the chokepoint for project success in the town.
Regarding the findings, Vento told the Ink he and CATT members feel validated: “You don’t want to say I told you so, but all the findings are what we’ve been saying for almost 20, 15 years; definitely since I’ve been here … But the important thing is, what do we do about it? How do we go about fixing it? And how can we engage constructively with the town to do this?”
Perfecting the process
As Callaway has said many times, the basis for the town organizational assessment performed by Baker Tilly was always to get a holistic sense of how the jurisdiction’s staff, services, and operations are functioning. Baker Tilly did indeed return with a comprehensive study, which highlighted severe understaffing (20 new full-time positions were recommended, though none in the planning department), over-communication, and appreciation for the town manager’s collaborative style and police and public works operations.
Others outside the town were vocal about their hopes for the assessment to address problems within the planning division, such as complicated steps, expensive fees, and predetermined bias for projects.
“We’re not looking for high-speed approvals where we’re cutting corners and we’re skipping things,” Vento said. “We still care about safety, and we still care about the community. What we’re looking for is just transparency, consistency, and customer service, good customer service. That’s what we’re looking for. And we haven’t had that.”
This discontent was a standout in the Baker Tilly analysis, with the consultant noting in the final report the “clear consensus” among both internal and external stakeholders that “the biggest organizational/operational challenge facing the town is its land development processes.” Also mentioned was the deep distrust and palpable anger among business community members of Truckee’s planning process, and “the perception of an adversarial relationship.”
Pete Gonda, Baker Tilly project manager, told council in May, “We feel the town would be best served by placing an emphasis on prospectively addressing negative perceptions around land development … At this point, perception is reality and rather than setting up a potential he said/she said situation about what number might be correct or might not be correct, the focus really should be prospectively on solution; how do we improve the situation?”
If we accept that three completely unique, independent sources have come to similar results, we’re at square zero. Now let’s focus on improvements here so we can stop arguing where we stand.”
~ David Diamond, AirDiamond Creative Consulting
Baker Tilly’s recommendations for addressing this area ranged from establishing performance standards for customer communication to holding a planning workshop focused on streamlining improvements to conducting comprehensive reviews of the development code and fee methodologies.
“There is some validation in terms of the amount of work and the constant feeling like we’re either putting out fire or we’re not able to be proactive,” Callaway said. “On the flip side of that, particularly in development services, that’s the one area there’s no staffing recommendations for. So that seems counterintuitive, right? I’ve got all this stuff to do, but we don’t get any staff to do it. I think that’s been frustrating.”
Diamond, through AirDiamond Consulting, was brought on in January 2025 for a more detail-oriented look: to draft high-level recommendations for improving the town’s planning process. This decision, to the tune of $49,200, ruffled CATT’s and others’ feathers in the name of transparency and redundancy — to the point that legal action was threatened, as reported in The Waiting Game: Delayed Town Report Fuels Contractor Concerns (read at moonshineink.com).
Hindsight has soothed the frayed emotions. Vento now calls the hiring of Diamond “a great move” by Callaway. “I thought she was smart in doing it. Wish she would’ve communicated a little better with us when she did it … It kind of caught us by surprise. But I think how she did it, great job to her. She deserves all the credit. That was really well done and really professional how she handled that. I know it costs extra money, but at end of the day, a plus for her, how she put all that together.”
Diamond held 80 in-depth interviews with developers, town staff, homeowners, and others to understand areas for improvement related to the planning, permitting, building, and code management processes.
“I’d met with staff, and I’d met with developers, and I’d met with commissioners and [council members], and I started thinking, I’m still looking for the bad guys. I’m still looking into this and there’s no bad guys here,” Diamond said. “And I’m thinking, okay, so this is pointing more and more toward process … This is where the failure is. It’s in the connectivity of these different stakeholder groups, their understanding of one another, their expectations of one another.”
This process issue revealed itself in multiple ways, including a lack of communication between parties — councilmembers not realizing they should stay involved with their appointed planning commissioners; the perception that applicants couldn’t speak with a planner until an application was submitted; to a lack of set priorities and heavy workload asks from elected officials.
One of the most significant process pain points brought up by Diamond was the determination of where discretion lives. Discretion allows certain parties to, within the confines of general legal principles, make their own judgment. As an example, town staff has “discretion over a number of design decisions,” Diamond wrote in his report, “based on personal interpretations of code and Objective Design Standards. While expected of their positions, this practice has been characterized by some developers as staff members pushing through only what they like. It has also led to what some developers see as inconsistency of decision between planners, and ‘behind closed doors’ decision-making that can significantly impact project costs.”
On the other hand, regarding approvals, the planning commission only determines whether an application checks the appropriate code and regulation boxes; the commissioners are interpreting policy, not defining it. They do not have discretion.
“The less discretion [planners] have, the better they feel because then they’re not put in these awkward situations,” Callaway said, reflecting. “But taking away some of that discretion also means the code probably becomes even more complicated and more prescriptive, which probably makes the process more predictable, and the code is clear, but it also makes it more onerous. So that doesn’t feel better, either. I don’t know that I have a balance in mind for that yet.”
Diamond recommended creating an independent design authority, similar but more expansive than the current Historic Preservation Advisory Commission, to review all town design decisions, thus increasing consistency of decisions.
What residents want
The first report presented the night of May 13 was the Community Opinion Survey, conducted by True North Research. Six hundred Truckee residents were randomly selected and contacted during the first week of April 2025, then asked a series of questions regarding their satisfaction, priorities, and concerns related to the Town of Truckee.
Residents, in general, have a high level of satisfaction of the town’s performance. Key factors those surveyed wanted to see the local government preserve are natural beauty, limited growth/development, and the small-town feeling (see figure 2 below).
“The overall theme … really flows down to residents being focused on maintaining rather than changing the character of Truckee,” Callaway pointed out at the council meeting. This is something long referenced by town staff regarding planning department complaints: We’re doing what the community wants us to do.
At the same time, there’s a recognized need for more workforce housing and economic variety from those same constituents (see figure 3 below).
“It’s important to recognize when you look at the results, what you figure out is you have people on both sides of this issue,” Timothy McLarney, president of True North, said to council. “You have some people who are very pro-housing, very pro-economic development; they want to see the development process streamlined. Then you have others who are at the other end of the scale. They are anti-development, they really want to limit growth and keep Truckee the way it is, and/or they have concerns about the type of development that is occurring …
“As a town, you’re stuck in the middle of these to some degree opposing views. Whichever way you slide, you’re making one group happier while making another group a little more disgruntled. It’s a challenging thing. You’re never going to keep everybody satisfied when it comes to issues of managing growth and development.”
Diamond doesn’t consider the situation as either/or. “We don’t want to atrophy, as I put in the report,” he said. “So, what we are doing, while we want it to be measured and we want it to be very carefully scrutinized … We want it to be efficient. This is not a binary situation where it’s like, because the townspeople are concerned about overgrowth, that we should not improve that process.”
He continued, saying that given an opportunity to oppose a new development, residents will; but look at the example of two grocery stores, Raley’s and Grocery Outlet, that were initially opposed and are now embraced by the community.
“You have to grow at least a little,” Diamond said, “because you have to account for when a business fails … Tahoe City has dealt with a lot of this. There is so much opposition to development that a business can leave a freestanding thing and nobody wants to move into it because it’s not ‘appropriate.’ Yet nobody wants to tear it down and build something because that feels like we’re going in the wrong direction. But then it’s like you start to lose the fabric of a vibrant community there.
“I think there’s a lot of development that Truckee would benefit from, that would not pull away from the character of Truckee, both in the commercial space and also in the residential space.”
Potential straws
A late-hour comment made by council member David Polivy at the May 13 council meeting portrays one of the possible hurdles with improvements to come: conflicting personalities.
Polivy spoke to what he sees as a deteriorating communication by CATT since Vento became its head 2 years ago. In previous reporting, Moonshine Ink included portions of a sharp-toned email Polivy wrote to Vento and CATT members earlier this year. In response to the council member’s comments from the dais, Vento began to walk out of the meeting, calling for any CATT attendees to join him. No one ended up leaving, though there was a clear tension among council members’ deliberation that followed.
“Personality issues really have the potential to derail this more than anything else,” Diamond said. “And one could argue that the reason we are where we are is because of personality issues.”
Both Polivy and Vento shared that they’ve remained open to communication with each other. The two met on June 3 to begin bridging gaps, which “went well,” Vento said.
Council member Anna Klovstad said she appreciated Diamond’s “brutal honesty” over the town and CATT’s relationship. “It was calling us out and the contractors association out as contributing to the challenges that we’ve been facing lately,” she said. “He even said it during his presentation, ‘Town, you have some work to do. You have some processes to clean up and we all need to participate. Contractors Association of Truckee Tahoe, this isn’t your mess to clean up on their internal processes — that’s the town, but how you either support or distract from that is going to make a big impact.’”
Klovstad also met with CATT during the first week of June.
“Right now, it’s kind of like after a breakup when you’re getting reacquainted,” Vento said. “That’s what we’re in the middle of doing, rebuilding that trust and assessing where the strengths are and where they need help. The framework will be built later … The only thing that could kill this [is] if some people start digging in their heels, [or] the town council [doesn’t prioritize its need].”
On the action-oriented front, next steps are being planned out, with council approval of a work plan to come in August or September. Callaway is creating a small stakeholder team to prioritize recommendations in short periods of time. For example, in the next 6 months, the town will focus on a few select issues; then the group will reconvene to determine the next projects.
There will be at least two CATT representatives, but aside from that, stakeholder membership is not yet finalized.
Diamond is putting together a second scope of work for the town to map out the implementation of his recommendations, though that partnership is not yet fleshed out. This is one of the ways Callaway is looking to add support for planning staff, so they don’t burn out from addressing recommendations and processing applications.
“There was some magic in how it ended up all coming together because it worked out that [the reports] all supported each other in some common themes,” Callaway said. “But it’s also coinciding with [the town adopting an already completed Fiscal Year 2025/26 budget], which makes it more challenging to incorporate things. We do have a number of positions proposed in the next fiscal year budget, and then we’ll have to figure out for the remaining positions what our priorities are and how we can phase and fund those.”
