Jerry Dyer will be Fresno’s next mayor. He’ll start work quickly on transition process
Former Fresno police chief Jerry Dyer is poised – a week and a half after voters went to the polls – to become the next mayor of California’s fifth-largest city. And he’s eager to begin working on a transition in the eight months until his term officially begins.
The latest update of results Friday from the March 3 primary indicates Dyer has 50,362 of the votes that have been counted so far in the city. That’s about 51.7%.
And while Fresno County still has an estimated 1,200 ballots to count, according to County Clerk Brandi Orth, mathematically there aren’t enough uncounted ballots to deny Dyer the outright win and send the race to a runoff against the second-place finisher, Deputy District Attorney Andrew Janz.
Before retiring last fall, Dyer served 18 years as Fresno’s police chief, becoming a popular – yet divisive – figure in the community. Now he will succeed Lee Brand, who opted against seeking a second term as Fresno’s mayor. In the process, Dyer becomes the first person since Fresno adopted the strong-mayor form of government in 1997 to win a first term with an outright majority in the primary without heading to a November runoff.
“I’m deeply humbled,” Dyer told reporters this week in front of Fresno City Hall, his wife Diane at his side. “When I found out the (results) … I was in tears, and the first thing I did was fall to my knees and thank God for allowing me to become the mayor of this city.”
“I’m humbled because I know the people of Fresno put their trust in me,” he added. “And I’m humbled because I know it’s an awesome responsibility to know that I’m going to be able to lead the city of Fresno for the next four years.”
Dyer’s remarks were punctuated by a woman who rode by on a bicycle and shouted an expletive at him, but he continued unperturbed.
While his term won’t formally begin until January 2021, Dyer said one of his first tasks in a transition period will be to reach out to all seven members of the Fresno City Council, some of whom were harsh critics of the former police chief during the campaign. The fence-mending efforts, he said, are needed because Fresno residents “do not deserve a divided relationship between the mayor and the council.” The sentiment follows the central theme of his campaign of unifying the city.
“I want to learn what’s important to them in terms of their constituency, their districts,” Dyer said of the council members. “But I also want to reach out to various members of this community who have concerns with perhaps my leadership or the time I spent as the chief.”
“When there is communication that occurs between people who disagree on issues, at the end of the day they can agree to disagree,” he added, “or maybe have their minds changed as a result. ... I plan on doing a lot of that over the next eight months.”
Dyer characterized homelessness and affordable housing as immediate priorities he wants to tackle.
“I know there are some things in the works on the part of Mayor Brand’s administration, some good things to address homelessness. I plan on building on those,” he said. Among those is the development of “navigation centers” that provide services to the homeless.
Dyer said he hopes to enlarge such centers “so that we can bring individuals out of the environment into these navigation centers, into bridge housing so we can transition them into a normal life.”
“When we centralize services to those individuals, I believe we’re going to have a much better opportunity allowing them to be productive,” he added.
Dyer linked homelessness to the city’s lack of affordable housing, and said there are “many alternatives” that can be explored. “I believe we have a unique opportunity in the core of Fresno to maximize the number of tiny homes within this area,” he offered as an example.
Over the long term, “what we need to do is build,” he said. “Build, build, build in the city of Fresno.”
Other tasks at hand
The mayor-elect said that over the next eight months, he plans on spending lots of time in all of the city’s various departments to learn about their needs and what changes he expects to make once his term begins. “And there will be changes,” he said. “There are changes in every administration.”
Dyer said he will be involved, at Brand’s invitation, in the selection of a new police chief.
“Frankly, I don’t think there’s any police chief candidate in the country, let alone internally, who would take that position unless the incoming mayor is part of that process,” he said.
When Dyer retired last fall, the city ultimately hired one of his key underlings, Andy Hall, as chief. Hall did not apply for the job, but was appointed after a national search failed to yield a permanent replacement. The same city policy that forced Dyer to retire last year also applies to Hall, who cannot continue in the post past the spring of 2021.
Dyer also said he looks forward to working with backers of a possible ballot measure to implement a tax that would help restore services that were cut because of the city’s financial struggles during the 2007-09 economic recession. Many departments, he said, suffered deep cuts, including the police, fire and parks departments.
As police chief in 2018, Dyer was among the leading opponents of Measure P, a ballot measure that would have created an additional sales tax of three-eighths of a cent for parks and cultural arts in Fresno. The No on P campaign argued if Measure P passed, voters wouldn’t subsequently pass a public safety tax to boost police and fire services.
Dyer said Wednesday that he favors parks beautification, but added that he wants to advocate for “neighborhood beautification” as well.
“People live in those neighborhoods. They are deserving of having a neighborhood they can be proud of,” he said. “As mayor, I plan on delivering that to them. No matter where you live in Fresno, we’re only going to be as prosperous and successful as the worst neighborhood. We have to focus throughout the city.”
“I can tell you right now there are some neighborhoods in Fresno that at certain hours of the night closely resemble a Third-World country,” Dyer added. “It’s so important that we do everything for those neighborhoods.”
The next update of election results in Fresno County, including the Dyer/Janz race, will be Wednesday afternoon, March 18. Those results, and those released Friday by Orth’s office, remain unofficial until all ballots are counted and the election certified. Counties have until April 3 to complete their canvasses and certify the election results.
Of the votes counted and reported so far for the other candidates in the mayor’s race, Janz collected 38,911 votes citywide, or 39.9%. The remaining five candidates – Floyd Harris Jr., Bill Gates, Richard Renteria, Nickolas Wildstar and Brian Jefferson – collectively pulled in fewer than 8,200 votes, or 8.4%.
Janz took to Twitter shortly before 3:30 p.m. Wednesday to concede the race, offering his congratulations to Dyer.
The latest results also revealed, barring some unexpected swing with uncounted votes, that Tyler Maxwell is the winner of the District 4 seat on the Fresno City Council representing east-central Fresno. Maxwell, an aide to District 7 council member Nelson Esparza, will replace Councilman Paul Caprioglio, who is termed out after serving two four-year terms.
Maxwell’s opponent in the race, corporate communications director Nathan Alonzo, conceded the race in a Facebook post on Wednesday afternoon.
This story was originally published March 11, 2020 at 3:41 PM.
