Matt Johnson, Who Views Himself as the Outsider in Ward 2 Race, Promises to Be an “Independent Voice” on Reno City Council
With one Ward 2 Reno City Council candidate getting a party from the incumbent and the other getting massive contributions from construction companies, Matt Johnson sees himself as the outsider in an unpredictable contest which will eliminate one of the three in June.
“I think I've got a pretty good grasp on where people sit, what they're concerned about, those kinds of things. And then, I do have some support that'll be coming from former council people, former elected officials who are going to back me. So that'll lend some legitimacy to what I've got going on,” he said, feeling confident right now of his own chances, with nightly weekday door to door walks and weekends going around Ward 2, with people he talks to, he says, hungering for rational conversations.
“I would love to be an independent voice on the council. I think that the appointment history that we've had the last 15 years is deeply concerning,” he said of several current council members being initially appointed after predecessors left their seats midterm.
“I certainly hope to be somebody that takes an independent look,” he said, while pledging to be responsive to constituents. “I want to continue to be that person that listens, collects feedback, seeks out feedback. One of the things that I am hearing from folks that I'm talking to, when I'm out knocking doors, is the idea that the city council isn't great at listening.”
Johnson, 48, a McQueen High graduate who had moved to Reno from Texas as a child, believes the council as a whole has a feedback problem, with people showing up to council meetings, fired up and making public comments about controversial issues such as surveillance systems, when decisions have already been made.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to collect that feedback in advance … There's got to be a better system… I guarantee you there's cities out there that have thought this through so that you're actually gathering feedback ahead of time, so that you can make a more informed decision and you're not going to be surprised by all these people showing up who are who are pissed off,” he said.
Johnson says he’s feeling the pressure of the primary homestretch in a good way, sensing the rising energy of voters wanting their chosen candidates to succeed.
“Two weeks ago, people were kind of like, who's in the race?” he says of the Ward 2 contest in particular. “What are the issues? Now people are really paying attention,” he said during our interview earlier this week on the UNR campus.
This will be the first election in the redrawn Ward 2, which Johnson, a resident on Reno Avenue, describes as “the old southwest, going south to about Bartley Ranch, west all the way out past Patagonia to the neighborhood that's out there, and then it's kind of this big triangle that connects Caughlin Ranch, and then it has all these other little arms and tentacles to it as well.”
He says his own run is motivated by what he calls a personal history of service.
“I served in the Nevada Conservation Corps. I ran that program. I became the state director for AmeriCorps. When I I owned a small business, I got distracted from all of those things that I was involved in. And now that I decided to pass the torch of that business to a new company who's now operating it, I just felt compelled to try to serve my community in any way,” he explained. “And I really believe that my background with great management, with running a small business, with running conservation programs, I've seen it from the nonprofit side, I've seen it from the business side, I've seen it from the federal government side. I think I can bring a unique perspective that makes me well-suited to serve on the council.”
Johnson is already well known in the community for having operated IMBIB Brewery, known for its high quality beers, for nearly 10 years until 2025. He currently works as a fiscal project manager in the Nevada Tech Hub at UNR, looking over government grants for workforce development in the tech and recycling sectors.
One anecdote he likes to share concerns dealing with the City of Reno during the pandemic, a perspective which he says will help shape his decision making in regards to small businesses.
He says he would like to see the City help businesses more with the overall road map and checklist they need to follow to get going and succeed.
“We had multiple situations where we just got passed around from department to department, and then ended up right back where we started,” he remembers of his own experience. “It's frustrating because you hear the line that we support small businesses. Now, that being said, there are some great people at the city who really do want to help. It just doesn't feel like you get the attention that you need as a small business owner compared to a medium or large business.”
The anecdote he tells is about when his business was shut down, without any sales allowed, even online.
“Long story short, we were going to have to dump some beer down the drain,” he explains. “That felt really unnecessary because we had all these people working in the hospitals, We had all the firefighters, we had all the police out there risking their lives. And so what we decided to do was give the beer away to the frontline folks. It was going to be a drive thru in our parking lot. We were just going to hand them stuff through their car door. There was no interaction inside. And the day we were going to do this, the person who at that time was the head of the business department at the city called me on a Saturday and said, ‘You can't do this. We're going to shut you down.’ And our immediate response, we'd been closed for a month already, we were kind of like at our wits end, our response was ‘come on down.’”
With news channels present, the city didn’t show up and Johnson said his business ran out of beer in 45 minutes.
“We didn't get to give half the people that were in line beer,” he said. “It was so disheartening at that moment when we were trying to do something good for the community that we went through a very bureaucratic process.”
In terms of specific policies, Johnson promised to take budget challenges seriously (“we’re going to have budget challenges for at least the next eight years is my guess”), work to regulate short term rentals with a simple registration system (“what I'm hearing from people in the neighborhoods is without any sort of regulation on short term rentals, there's lots of noise issues, there are parking issues, there are safety issues. People feel like there's no transparency in how much money is flowing through that whole system,”) and push for the moratorium on data centers (“although I don't know how much it's going to matter at this point since several have been approved. Let's take our time. And I would say that's true with most types of development. I think we can slow down a little bit.”)
“How many people can we support with our water and our power and our open spaces before our quality of life starts to decline?” he asks as essential questions which need to be addressed before it’s too late. “What can we sustain here? And then let's make decisions around that.”
Other policies he will push for include making Reno more bike and pedestrian friendly. “The more we can do to encourage alternative transportation and respect people who don't have vehicles, who can't afford vehicles, who don't want to buy gas. The more that we can encourage people to use transit, walking and biking, the better for the community, the better for our heat island issues,” he said, experiencing these challenges himself as a bike commuter.
Johnson also considers himself an open space advocate, “so I want to protect our access to get out there,” he said. “I’d call myself an environmentalist and a conservationist. And I'm also a hunter. Some people think those are in conflict with one another. But I disagree.”
He says he was raised in a conservative family, while growing up to be an environmental activist.
“I want to be a city council person who puts place first when making decisions,” he shared as a concluding thought. “And what I mean by that is just thinking about if it's a development vote or whatever it is, like what is the community’s benefit?”
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