Measure C renewal one step closer to November ballot. One supervisor called it a ‘fiasco’

The Fresno County Board of Supervisors with two key moves Tuesday gave a big push to putting the Measure C transportation tax renewal on the November ballot.

In a 4-1 vote, supervisors approved the spending plan that was written by Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer’s administration and approved last week by the Fresno Council of Governments.

Despite the new plan slicing away some of the county’s Measure C share, it gained the key support of Buddy Mendes, county supervisor and Fresno County Transportation Authority chairman, who is the crucial swing vote when the FCTA considers the spending plan at its July 20 meeting.

“The best thing to do, I think, is to forward this thing and let the voters decide,” Mendes said, citing the spending plan’s potential to repave neighborhood roads. “Let them decide if they want this or not.”

The 30-year spending plan, which economists estimate will raise $6.84 billion over its lifetime, has the power to fundamentally transform Fresno County’s transportation infrastructure by locking in how those dollars are spent until 2057.

Speaking only at the end of the supervisors’ two-hour debate about the spending plan, Mendes did not spare the board his criticisms of the city of Fresno.

“The biggest problem was the city of Fresno,” Mendes said, addressing the Dyer administration’s 11th-hour changes to the spending plan. “I don’t know if they were asleep. I don’t know what the hell they were doing.”

Playing ‘Santa Claus with the county’s money’

Supervisor Steve Brandau, the lone dissenter at Tuesday’s board meeting, described the Fresno city plan as “completely different” from FCTA’s original version that was finalized on June 30, and that it was too late to present a “brand new” plan that plays “Santa Claus with the county’s money.”

“This is a fiasco I can’t support,” Brandau said. “There’s some gross violations going on here about how to proceed, in my opinion.”

Critics of the new spending plan say that the achievements of the 2006 spending plan – which established funds for public transit and bike routes – would be erased by the committee’s recommendations to prioritize road repair and highway expansion.

The critics maintain that despite statewide efforts to reduce car travel, expand public transit and address climate change, the transportation agency executives and elected officials with the most influence on the Measure C update decided to spend most of the 21st century Measure C revenues on Fresno’s 20th century, road-centric infrastructure.

The plan being considered for approval by voters this November largely focuses on buying the labor and materials to repair and expand Fresno County’s thousands of miles of roads, while cutting public transit’s share of revenues by approximately 40%.

The plan’s proponents cite internal pollster work they say shows that road repair is Fresno County’s top priority.

Critics of the renewal process, however, are worried that the plan’s community engagement process was not thorough, and have called for a delay for Measure C’s renewal to 2024. The current Measure C plan does not expire until 2027.

In late June, as the details and ramifications of the spending plan became clear, the Fresno City Council and the Dyer administration took measures to push an alternative spending plan to address its public criticisms.

Citing the plan’s 38% revenue cut to public transit, Fresno City Councilmembers Miguel Arias and Tyler Maxwell expressed concern that the city would have to cut bus routes and FAX staff or other alternative transit projects.

As a result, on June 30 the city council included $500,000 for potential Measure C “education” in its annual budget and threatened to write its own citywide transportation sales tax measure for the November ballot.

By then, the city planned to oppose Measure C.

But in a turn of events last week, the city’s plan crafted the previous two days won approval from the Fresno Council of Governments, one of the bodies whose sign-off is needed for a Measure C renewal plan. By adjusting its allocation formula for a pot of $4.7 billion, the city’s plan would reduce the county’s share of Measure C funds by $185 million.

“We were hoodwinked at the last minute,” Supervisor Brian Pacheco said at Tuesday’s meeting.

Yet, Pacheco added, elected officials have a “God-given right” to make last-minute changes to even the most consequential spending plans.

“I like the sausage analogy ... if you learned how a hot dog is made, nobody would be eating hot dogs. Yet, it’s one of our favorite foods at the baseball game.”