Illegal dumping complaints keep growing, so new Fresno budget includes another litter crew

The city of Fresno is getting so many reports about litter and illegal dumping that an additional litter control crew is being added to the city budget, officials said Wednesday in announcing the $1.115 billion plan for fiscal year 2019.

"A litter crew is being added to address the increased requests for services relating to litter control and illegal dumping received via the FresGO app," said city manager Wilma Quan-Schecter.

The FresGO app allows people to report the location of debris. The city gets about 2,000 requests a week on the app "and a lot of those are litter," Quan-Schecter said.

The new litter crew will also do alley maintenance. It will consist of one utility leadworker, two laborers and a heavy equipment operator. It is supposed hired and ready to go on Oct. 1.

Also in the budget: additional concrete crews to repair curbs, gutter and sidewalks in each of the seven council districts. Crews will be working seven weeks each in each of the districts.

There's also funding to repave 85 "lane-miles" of streets; 38,000 streetlights will be converted to LED lights that use less electricity.

The proposed city budget includes $341 million in the General Fund for police, fire, parks and other core city functions. The latter figure is an increase of about 2.1 percent from last year.

The proposed budget must still be voted on by the Fresno City Council. Last year, the council approved the budget unanimously.

Mayor Lee Brand said the the new budget means that city services are approaching pre-recession levels. Police are authorized for about 830 officers, and will soon have about 820, the most since the 2008 recession.

In the budget proposal, the police department is not adding police officers but is getting money to buy 120 new vehicles. Police Chief Jerry Dyer said cars used by detectives and undercover officers are getting so old they must be replaced.

The budget also includes money to buy land to relocate Fire Station 10 near Fresno Yosemite International Airport.

Brand said when he was elected two yeas ago, he pledged to add 10,000 full-time jobs to the local economy by the end of his second term, or 2024.

"Believe it or not, we're nearly halfway there already," he said at a news conference at Fresno City Hall. "The two new e-commerce fulfillment centers just built by Ulta and Amazon, and the expansion of the existing Gap distribution center, together bring 4,000 new jobs to Fresno."

This story was originally published May 23, 2018 at 12:54 PM with the headline "Illegal dumping complaints keep growing, so new Fresno budget includes another litter crew."