Fresno County mayors OK final spending plan in road tax renewal effort. See details
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Council of Governments approved a future Measure C plan, now heads to cities/county.
- Plan allocates 65% to neighborhood streets, 25% to transit, 5% to regional highways.
- Debate focused on disadvantaged community funding, restrictions on road widening funding.
Two months behind schedule, a majority of the mayors in Fresno County approved a final expenditure plan in the renewal attempt for the region’s half-cent transportation sales tax.
Since its implementation in 1986, the Measure C tax has raised more than $2 billion locally and helped attract $8 billion more in state and federal money for highways, roads and public transit. Its current iteration will expire in 2027, so a renewal proposal must be finalized by August to appear on next November’s ballot for voter approval.
The renewal proposal’s spending plan, OK’d last week by the Fresno Council of Governments’ Policy Board, would dedicate the vast majority of Measure C’s revenue over the next 30 years to fixing local roads. It’s a departure from the current measure’s spending plan and the one for a failed 2022 renewal attempt, which critics say focused too much on regional highways and were created with little public input.
The policy board — made up of all 16 mayors in the county and District 2 County Supervisor Garry Bredefeld — approved the plan despite lawyers’ concerns that its language leaves too much room for taxpayer lawsuits. Bredefeld and the mayors of Selma, Reedly and Kingsburg voted no on the plan.
“I can assure you this is going to fail,” Bredefeld said during the meeting.
The rest of the mayors noted that the board’s time was quickly running out and that lawyers, though concerned, also said the document is legal.
“If we’re going to let a perfect measure get in the way of a good measure, I think we’ve got to rethink that,” Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer said.
The mayors approved the plan with two last-minute changes. One would allow jurisdiction to use Measure C dollars to pay for vehicles that work on transportation projects. The other lowered the minimum mandatory spending on poor rural communities from the level recommended by a citizen’s committee, at least until a study determines their road money needs.
Work on the plan began in April and involved a 38-member citizen’s steering committee and input from thousands of county residents, Measure C advocates said. Now, the plan will head to each city and the Board of Supervisors for approval. Then, a final package will need the approval of the Fresno County Transportation Authority and another approval by the Board of Supervisors for Measure C to appear on next year’s ballot.
But it’s unlikely there will be any more changes to the spending plan.
At this point, “the vote is either up or down,” Robert Phipps, executive director of the council, said during Thursday’s meeting.
Are Measure C’s road widening rules ‘short-sighted’?
Last month, the policy board decided how much of future revenues each of five programs would receive. Thursday night, it decided how those allocations should be used.
Together, the allocations and implementation strategy make up the spending plan.
If voters decide to extend Measure C, 65% of future revenues will go to fixing neighborhood streets, 25% to public transit, 5% to regional highways, 4% to increasing transportation access and reducing pollution, and 1% to administration and planning.
Thursday’s debate among the board focused largely on the spending requirements in some of the programs. For example, jurisdictions must improve their local streets to a rating of 65 in the pavement condition index, or PCI for short, before they can use 5% of their local streets dollars to widen roads. There are exemptions to the rule, but they require studies that show a widening project would reduce deaths and serious injuries “for all road users.”
Selma Mayor Scott Robinson said his city would never be able to improve its roads to a 65 PCI with the money it will receive, yet there is already a desperate need to widen roads there.
Mohammad Alimi, an engineer and manager with Fresno County’s Public Works and Planning Department, also said during the meeting that the widening requirements are unreasonable and “short-sighted.”
“This plan is for 30 years,” he said. “With the growth of the region, there is a need for capacity-increasing projects.”
Responding to Alimi’s concerns, Dyer said jurisdictions can charge developers fees for the impacts of their growth projects, which Fresno already does. He said Fresno uses those revenues to leverage state and federal money that can also help pay for needed road widenings from growth, so Measure C dollars will not have to.
Council reduced disadvantaged community allocation, pending study
The plan recommended to the council included a rule that the county would have to spend between 12%-15% of local roads allocation in unincorporated communities defined by state law as “disadvantaged.” In Fresno County, there are 36 communities identified as such, including several known as farmworking neighborhoods.
Alimi said the county’s unincorporated communities have less than 2% of the county’s roads and less than 8% of its population. Based on those numbers, Alimi said, they should receive 6.8% of the county’s allocation.
“Anything beyond that is basically taking money from other residents in the county,” he said.
But Alimi also said the county also has not performed a study to identify the road money needs of disadvantaged unincorporated communities.
Dyer moved to approve the spending plan but with a reduction of the minimum annual disadvantaged unincorporated community allocation to 7% until a study is performed to identify their needs. The change caused community advocates present at the meeting to walk out, but Dyer and Mendota Mayor Victor Martinez said they’re confident the allocation will shoot back up to 15%.
“The study is going to show that a much bigger percentage is needed,” Martinez told The Bee. “That is because these rural communities, unincorporated communities have been neglected for so long that they need so much work.”
