Fresno picks familiar faces to lead effort to improve services in diverse communities
Fresno city elected officials on Tuesday announced the hiring of three community liaisons to serve underrepresented residents, help connect them to resources, and make city government more accessible.
Earlier this year, Mayor Jerry Dyer and Fresno City Councilmembers announced the creation of the Office of Community Affairs in response to anti-Asian hate sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The three new liaisons will work in that new office.
“These folks that stand here today are going to be the ones that, oftentimes, the people in our community turn to when they don’t know where else to turn,” Dyer said at a news conference at City Hall. “These folks are going to serve as bridge builders to our community, to the various ethnic groups in our community, and they are going to be able to form relationships in our community, and those relationships are going to be lasting.”
Nearly half of Fresno’s residents are Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Additionally, Fresno is home to the country’s second-largest Hmong population and over 40,000 Sikh and Punjabi residents.
The three liaisons are familiar faces in the community: Sandra Lee, who previously worked for the Fresno County Department of Social Services and The Fresno Center; Alma Martinez, formerly a journalist and host on Radio Bilingüe in Fresno; and Harjinder “JR” Saini, who has worked in transportation, including for Amazon, and serves his local Gurdwara Sahib every Sunday.
Saini said immigrants and minority residents might be uneasy about getting involved in politics.
“So when they see somebody that looks like them and talks their language, the barriers are cut into half,” he said.
Martinez’s role is U.S. citizenship and immigration support; Lee is the Asian-American and Pacific Islander liaison, and Saini is the Asian-Indian and Sikh liaison.
All of the new employees are immigrants themselves. Martinez was born in Mexico and immigrated to Los Banos at 3 years old. Lee and her family fled Laos as refugees and settled in Fresno. Saini was born in India and came to the U.S. in 1995.
The three liaisons were hired from a pool of 150 applicants, Deputy Mayor Mathew Grundy said.
The Office of Community Affairs will honor the city’s diversity, Grundy said.
“We want people in our city, regardless of their ethnicity, their status, their socioeconomic background, to know that we are a resource, and we welcome them to use every single service that the city does offer,” Councilmember Nelson Esparza said.