Fresno City Council approves Measure C tax plan for fall ballot, but it wasn’t unanimous

This story was produced by Fresnoland, a nonprofit news organization that partners with The Fresno Bee.

The Fresno City Council voted 5-1 on Thursday afternoon to put Mayor Jerry Dyer’s Measure C transportation tax spending plan on the November ballot, despite a request by California Attorney General Rob Bonta that the council delay its approval until a better public process and environmental review was conducted.

Councilmember Miguel Arias was the lone no vote; Council President Nelson Esparza abstained from the vote.

The county tax plan faces its final vote Friday afternoon when the Fresno County Board of Supervisors is widely expected to approve putting its renewal before voters. The current plan isn’t set to expire until 2027.

“Local politicians failed Fresno County residents, yet again,” stated Sandra Celedon, president and CEO of Fresno Building Healthy Communities in a released statement. “... Even a cautionary letter from Attorney General Rob Bonta went ignored.”

Despite months of criticisms about the nearly $7 billion, 30-year spending plan from various communities and the 36-member Fresno Coalition for Responsible Transportation Spending, the council members justified their support for the plan by emphasizing its workforce development benefits.

Councilmember Tyler Maxwell said “putting people back to work” during a “recession” was his strongest motivation for his support to renew Measure C this fall. Fresno County’s unemployment rate sits at 5.8%, a 32-year low.

“The money we have divided among the different (spending categories) is not necessarily the proportions I want,” said Maxwell, who has been one of the plan’s biggest critics for its 40% cut to public transit. “But ultimately, there are too many good things in here that I can’t ignore.”

Despite AG’s letter, councilmembers stand firm on support of Measure C plan

The elephant in the room on Thursday afternoon was whether a letter from the state’s attorney general would convince the City Council members to withdraw their support of voting for the Measure C plan.

The spending plan, which will allocate hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to highway interchanges for new industrial and warehouse development in the state’s most pollution-burdened neighborhoods, drew a critical eye from Attorney General Bonta in a letter made public on Thursday morning.

Bonta called on the council members to delay their approval of Measure C’s renewal until they made steps to “incorporate adequate public input and carefully develop this critical measure.”

Among Bonta’s concerns were the plan’s cuts to public transit, the city’s lack of clarity regarding the environmental impacts of new road projects, and “a lack of adequate public process.”

Friday is the deadline to finish the intricate approval process that places Measure C on the November ballot, and Bonta’s letter was a strong push to get the council to hold off renewing Measure C until 2024.

But at the council meeting, Councilmember Esmeralda Soria said that while she appreciated input from “outside state officials,” she knows the challenges of her constituents most intimately.

Soria said putting unemployed or underemployed people to work as soon as possible should be prioritized. She also downplayed the ability for Measure C to have a decisive impact on the public health challenges created from “poor planning way before my time.”

“I also believe that Measure C is not the panacea for fixing the significant challenges that not just the City of Fresno has, but also Fresno County,” Soria said. “I’m not going to sit here and tell my constituents I’m going to fix all the problems that everyone else created for me.”

Arias withdraws support, citing inadequate funds for safe school routes

The major commitment that the proposed Measure C spending plan makes is to local road improvements. It is projected that the proposed measure will deliver up to $1.6 billion to the City of Fresno for local street improvements.

Councilmember Arias, however, took issue that only 20% of the street improvement funds can be used to build and repair sidewalks.

Arias said that Mike Leonardo, the executive director of the Fresno County Transportation Authority, was imposing a limit on how much the city could spend on sidewalks.

Referring to Leonardo as “some bureaucrat in some place, an unelected individual,” Arias said the plan, as designed, would leave the county with more kids without safe routes to school over the next 30 years.

“It’s basic math; There’s no way that a million dollars a year can satisfy the dozens of schools that don’t have sidewalks and safe routes now,” he said. “They would just permanently have no sidewalks.”

Leonardo said the decision to cap the share of street improvement funds going to sidewalks came from a discussion with Scott Mozier, Fresno City’s public works director, and that his staff ran with Mozier’s 20% ballpark figure.

Arias said that Measure C is not ready for voters to consider this fall.

“There seems to be this artificial push to get this before the voters without spending the time that’s necessary.” Arias said. “I don’t know when it became a standard to ask voters to renew a tax five years before it expired.”

This story was originally published August 11, 2022 at 9:16 PM.