Both candidates for Washoe County Sheriff agree that the community presence of local law enforcement must grow, but Reno Public Radio’s Michelle Bliss reports they offer different pathways for making that happen if elected in November.
At a debate Thursday night in Reno, hosted by KNPB and the Reno Gazette Journal, candidates Chuck Allen and Tim Kuzanek faced off in advance of the upcoming election.
Allen does not have experience with the Sheriff’s Office, but he’s served for decades with the state highway patrol and the Nevada Air National Guard. One of his priorities, if elected would be expanding the county’s reserve deputy program, which enlists unpaid volunteers to help the force.
"I want to train and equip sixty men and women to become reserve deputies and get them more involved in the community," Allen says. "I can get a reserve deputy to ride alongside with a full-time deputy. That way, instead of sending two patrol cars to a call for service, I can send one two-person team."
To increase police visibility, Allen would also have deputies attend meetings for neighborhood and citizen advisory boards, and he would form a Green Ribbon Panel for the county.
“I want a diverse composition of people from the community," Allen says, "from spiritual leaders to political leaders to elected officials to law enforcement to media and others, who meet four or six times a year to discuss issues surrounding Washoe County."
Allen’s opponent is Tim Kuzanek, Washoe’s current undersheriff who has been with the agency for more than twenty years. Instead of deploying more boots on the ground, Kuzanek says the key to improving the agency's service for residents is actually lowering the crime rate so that officers have fewer calls to take.
That has been the administration’s approach over the past several years during the recession.
“The Washoe County Sheriff’s Office over the past seven-and-a-half years cut 106 positions and over $21 million out of the budget," Kuzanek explains. "At the same time, we enacted data-drive systems where we use data to respond to and create crime reduction strategies.”
Kuzanek says using that data has brought the crime rate to a decade low because it helps law enforcement predict and, therefore, prevent crime before it happens with community awareness campaigns.
Earlier this year, the sheriff’s office also negotiated with the board of county commissioners to hire eight new deputy sheriffs. Kuzanek’s opponent Chuck Allen says, if elected, he would continue asking for more funding to beef up staffing. But for Kuzanek that isn’t a viable, long-term solution.
“I’m not asking for more money," Kuzanek says. "We can continue to find efficiencies by reducing the crime rate and managing the budget in an effective way going forward, so we can continue to enhance operations without increasing the budget in unnecessary ways.”
That budget is massive, more than $95 million annually, and Kuzanek says having institutional knowledge to navigate that fiscal landscape is critical for Washoe’s next sheriff:
“I’ve been in charge of that budget. There are literally hundreds of line items that one would have to go through, and that I’ve gone through, as we’ve cut, cut, cut over the past seven-and-a-half years. Now we are getting better; however, having a complete understanding of how the budget works and how it connects to the strategic plan is important and I can do that as sheriff.”
As a board member for the Nevada Humane Society, Chuck Allen says he does have experience administering a multi-million-dollar budget and that offering a fresh perspective to that process would be meaningful for the sheriff’s office:
“The first thing I’m going to do is look at the services that are currently being provided, number one, and look at making improvements on saving money, including reducing overtime. Those are some of the things I want to do, as well as finding funding to put more deputies on the street.”
Voter can soon decide who has the best plan for expanding local police presence in unincorporated Washoe County as early voting gets underway in just a few weeks.
