How your BID assessment works
A plain-language guide to the Standard, Premium, and Premium Plus service zones, how your annual bill is calculated, and what you receive as a result of your assessment.
The City of Reno already provides baseline services to every property downtown: streets, basic sidewalks, general police and fire protection. Your BID assessment does not replace any of that. It funds a second layer of service, on top of what the city already provides, focused specifically on the 110 blocks of the downtown BID.
Every property in the district pays into the standard base zone. Properties along the district's busier corridors pay into one or two additional zones, because those blocks receive more from the BID.
Three zones, stacked
Each zone creates more value for stakeholders.
Premium Plus
The Virginia Street corridor — weekly power washing and additional daily services. Premium-plus properties also fund $100k per year for additional beautification and activation.
Premium
Downtown's core blocks — added patrols, concentrated litter, graffiti & weed removal. Additional city maintenance such as landscaping maintenance, pressure washing, street cleaning, touch-up painting, and more.
Standard
Every property in the district — safety ambassadors, on-demand spot cleaning, crime deterrence, downtown marketing & economic development
Each tier includes everything the one below it gets, plus more. Premium Plus doesn't replace Premium service, it adds a second layer on top.
Standard
45.1% · 962 parcels
Premium
52.2% · 1,115 parcels
Premium Plus
2.7% · 58 parcels
How the district's 2,135 assessed parcels actually split across zones today — Premium is the most common, not Standard.
| Service | Standard | Premium | Premium Plus |
|---|
| Safety & hospitality ambassadors (24 hours/day 7 days/week, walking & vehicle patrols) | | | |
| Homeless outreach & social-service ambassadors | | | |
| On-demand spot cleaning | | | |
| Downtown marketing & economic development | | | |
| Daily litter, weed & graffiti removal | | | |
| Cleaning of public furniture & fixtures | | | |
| Scheduled power washing | — | 4×/year | Weekly |
Source: Downtown Reno BID Engineer's Report (Kristin Lowell Inc., January 2018), Section B.
How your bill is calculated
The math, in three steps
1
Every property pays a base fee, calculated as your property's assessed value × the standard rate. This funds the Standard layer for the whole district.
2
If your property has frontage along a Premium corridor, add your frontage in feet × the Premium rate. Properties with no Premium frontage skip this step entirely.
3
If part of that frontage sits inside the Premium Plus zone, add that footage × the Premium Plus rate, on top of the other two amounts.
Rates are set annually by the Downtown Reno Partnership board, within a state-allowed range of 0% to 5% change per year. They've stayed close to flat since the district's first year; the board actually voted a 5% reduction in FY24/25 in response to pandemic-era economic pressure, and this year's rates carry that same reduction forward.
Where assessed value comes from
Step 1 above uses your property's assessed value. The Washoe County Assessor sets that number, not the Downtown Reno Partnership. Here is how the County gets there.
1
Land is valued at what it would sell for on the open market, based on comparable land sales, location, zoning, and how the land is used.
2
Buildings are valued at what it would cost to rebuild them today, minus 1.5% for every year of age, up to 50 years (a 75% maximum reduction).
3
Land plus buildings is the taxable value, which can't be higher than the property's market value. Nevada then sets the assessed value at 35% of taxable value. The BID formula uses the assessed value.
Illustration, not a real parcel: $100,000 of land plus a building that would cost $300,000 to rebuild and is 20 years old (30% depreciation, so $210,000) gives a taxable value of $310,000. The assessed value is 35% of that, or $108,500. At the Standard rate of $0.0047756 per $1, that commercial property would pay about $518 a year in the base fee.
Questions about how a property was valued go to the Washoe County Assessor's Office at (775) 328-2233. The Partnership uses the Assessor's number as is.
Sources: Washoe County Assessor's Office (value notice and real property appraisal pages); Engineer's Report, Assessed Valuation Defined.
A few adjustments to know about
- Non-profit owners (501c3) who occupy most of their building can request a 50% reduction by applying to the DRP by April 1.
- Very large parcels are capped: assessed value above $50 million doesn't add to the standard fee. Only the first $50M counts.
- Rental apartments pay the full rate; owner-occupied condos and single-family homes pay a reduced residential rate that is 85% of the standard fee and excludes marketing and economic-development costs.
- Property owners facing financial hardship can apply to the City of Reno for a hardship determination, which postpones assessment for 5 years, or until the property is sold or transferred.
Source: Engineer's Report, Section F — Property Use Considerations.
Three real examples
Actual parcels from the district roll, rounded for clarity.
Standard zone
Residential property, no Premium frontage
Assessed value$72,107
Standard rate (residential)$0.0040593/$1 value
Annual total$293
Premium zone
Residential condo unit, 2 ft of Premium frontage
Assessed value$94,018
Standard portion$382
Premium: 2 ft × $10.98$22
Annual total$404
Premium Plus zone
Commercial property, 101 ft of Premium Plus frontage
Assessed value$570,121
Standard portion$2,723
Premium: 101 ft × $10.98$1,105
Premium Plus: 101 ft × $18.88$1,900
Annual total$5,728
Zone boundary map
Source: City of Reno GIS, BID FY25 parcels. Note for internal review: the source export carries two overlapping legend sets (a maintenance-grid line layer and a parcel-fill layer) for the same three zones — worth simplifying to a single fill-only legend in ArcGIS before this goes in front of residents.
Assessment composition
Who carries the assessment, and where the money comes from. Pulled from the parcel roll, mirroring the pivot charts in the workbook.
Commercial carries the bulk of the assessment
Total assessed across all zones, by property category
Commercial76.4%$3.17M
Residential11.5%$476K
Other*12.1%$501K
*Other = City of Reno, University, non-profits, Washoe County, RTC, and similar civic parcels, most billed at half rate.
Share of total by zone
$4.15M total assessed district-wide
Standard40.8%$1.69M
Premium39.2%$1.63M
Premium Plus20.0%$828K
Premium Plus is only 3% of parcels but 20% of the dollars, since it carries three fee layers at once.
Category mix within each zone
The same Commercial / Residential / Other split, broken out per zone — matches the three per-zone pivot charts in the workbook.
Standard
$1.69M total
Comm. 75.7%
Res. 5.1%
Other 19.1%
Premium
$1.63M total
Comm. 66.3%
Res. 23.9%
Other 9.8%
Premium Plus
$828K total
Comm. 97.7%
Other 2.3%
Premium Plus has no Residential parcels at all — it's a purely commercial/civic zone.
Rate history, FY18/19–FY26/27
In FY24/25, the Downtown Reno Partnership's 17-member board voted to reduce the assessment formula by the maximum 5%, in response to ongoing economic challenges from the pandemic and fluctuating interest rates. The same formula carries into FY26/27, this year's rates.
| Zone | FY18/19 | FY19/20 | FY20/21 | FY21/22 | FY22/23 | FY23/24 | FY24/25 | FY25/26 | FY26/27 | Applied to |
| Standard | $0.005061 | $0.005027 | $0.005027 | $0.005027 | $0.005027 | $0.005027 | $0.0047756 | $0.0047756 | $0.0047756 | Assessed value |
| Premium | $10.87 | $10.87 | $10.92 | $10.98 | $10.98 | $10.98 | $10.98 | $10.98 | $10.98 | Linear foot |
| Premium Plus | $18.88 | $18.88 | $18.88 | $18.88 | $18.88 | $18.88 | $18.88 | $18.88 | $18.88 | Linear foot |
Year-over-year rate change: Standard dipped 0.66% in FY19/20, drifted down another 0.01% in FY20/21, then dropped the full 5% in FY24/25. Premium ticked up slightly in FY20/21 and FY21/22 (+0.50%, +0.54%) and has been flat since. Premium Plus has not moved off $18.88 since the district's first year.
