RENO — “The Hot August Nights Board of Directors has every intention to keep this event in Reno.”

So says a resolution that has been submitted to the Reno City Council for today’s meeting.

Prior to the 2010 event held earlier this month, local leaders expressed both fear and anger that Hot August Nights added another venue in Long Beach, Calif. They worried that the event might move out of northern Nevada entirely.

The dispute was aired publicly at the July 14 Reno City Council meeting when city leaders grilled Hot August Nights Executive Director Bruce Walter about the event’s future. Walter told the council that the reason for the addition of the Long Beach, Calif. portion of the event was to capitalize on Souther California’s significant car culture.

He also assured them Hot August Nights is committed to northern Nevada.

“We would never leave this area,” Walter said. “We love this area. This is home. We are just looking for other funding sources so we can keep strong.”

The end result of the July 14 meeting was a promise by both sides to discuss a long-term contract after the end of this year’s festivities. With two weeks having passed since then, an item at the end of today’s city council agenda calls for a “discussion and potential direction to city staff” regarding the Hot August Nights event and a possible contract.

In preparation for that discussion, the Hot August Nights board of directors passed a resolution and submitted it to the city on Monday. The resolution, after making the aforementioned pledge to stay and touting its contributions to the community, says the board pledges to work with the city toward a “mutually beneficial agreement based on sound information and shared knowledge and a partnership built on trust and mutual understanding that will help keep Reno the original home of Hot August Nights.”

Neither the resolution nor an accompanying statement is specific regarding a contractual commitment to not move the event out of the Truckee Meadows. In the statement, Hot August Nights board president Chris Killian said the nonprofit is working on a survey to assess event’s economic impact in the area — information that would be vital to the financial terms of an agreement.

In a letter dated Aug. 19 and addressed to Reno Mayor Bob Cashell, HAN attorney Ann Hall wrote that Hot August Nights officials want to meet in a closed-door session with the city council and city attorney to negotiate an agreement. “The presence of press and political pressures would interfere in an open meeting,” Hall wrote.

“We have never seen a draft agreement or proposal and we cannot ‘negotiate’ when we are ignorant as to the proposed terms,” she wrote.

Reno City Attorney John Kadlic said any meeting between the Hot August Nights board and a quorum of the City Council would be required by Nevada’s Open Meeting Law to be held in a public forum. Individual members of the council or the mayor may meet with individual Hot August Nights representatives, he added, to discuss the matter one-on-one.

Walter said Hot August Nights will not send any representatives to today’s meeting.

Reno City Council member Jessica Sferrazza said Tuesday that she would like to see the city and Hot August Nights reach a five-year agreement. She said the public pressure that has come about from this controversy is a good thing and that the public has a right to view any contract negotiations with Hot August Nights.

“The community supports this event overwhelmingly,” Sferrazza said. “I’ve gotten a ton of phone calls and e-mails from people who want this event to stay here in northern Nevada. It’s not the (Hot August Nights) board of directors that made this event. It’s the community that made this event.”