Councilmembers respond to Dyer budget, want to ‘Rebuild Fresno’ with federal funds
A week after Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer announced his proposed budget, a group of Fresno City Councilmembers on Wednesday outlined their own budget priorities in a five-year plan they dubbed “Rebuild Fresno.”
The plan announced by Council President Luis Chavez and his colleagues Miguel Arias and Nelson Esparza — who represent the southern districts in the city — prioritized fixing neighborhoods and city infrastructure and improving and increasing the city’s housing stock. The councilmembers plan to use about $250 million from a number of new revenue streams, such as money from the American Rescue Plan, increased sales tax and property tax revenue, money from the new parks tax Measure P and eventually cannabis tax money.
“It’s no secret that Fresno is a city where our revenues have failed to match our gaping needs,” Esparza said at a news conference outside Greenberg Elementary School in southeast Fresno, where a paving project was underway. “We have nearly $1 billion in deferred maintenance in parks and infrastructure alone. These are structural issues that were decades in the making and are results of decisions that were made long before the three of us came to City Hall.
“However, at some point the leaders of today have to begin to turn that tide,” Esparza said. “And that time is now.”
At Dyer’s budget announcement last week, he highlighted historic investments to the police and fire departments to boost staffing. His proposed budget also included neighborhood beautification projects and $12 million in street repairs, $3 million in repairs for curbs, gutters and sidewalks and over a dozen new positions in the city’s public works department.
But the councilmembers said the council already previously approved the firefighting positions and adding positions to the police department is meaningless if they’re not filled.
Furthermore, the councilmembers said their plan for neighborhoods and infrastructure goes farther than the mayor’s by planning five years out and using a city project-labor agreement to put residents to work.
“We know that we always talk about ‘One Fresno,’” Chavez said, referring to Dyer’s campaign slogan. “I can tell you that we can’t get to ‘One Fresno’ unless we rebuild Fresno, and it’s going to start with rebuilding a lot of these neighborhoods that are over 100 years old.”
In an interview with The Bee on Thursday, Dyer said he shares many of the same priorities as the councilmember in “Rebuild Fresno.”
Dyer’s budget presentation focused on money in the general fund, and he, too, hopes to use American Rescue Plan money for infrastructure projects and neighborhood beautification, he said.
His staff reached out months ago to each councilmember to identify their priorities, and many of what the three south Fresno councilmembers discussed Wednesday has already been in the works, Dyer said.
“We have been pushing neighborhood infrastructure from the onset in my administration,” Dyer said. “I am 100% committed to the infrastructure in especially these older neighborhoods.”
This story was originally published June 2, 2021 at 1:50 PM.