Madera mayor faces three in election. How the winner could shape city’s future growth
Madera’s mayor took a page from a traditional campaign playbook early this month when he addressed potential voters during a local candidate forum. He pointed to the city’s current budget and contrasted it with the one in place when he was first elected to the City Council in 2018.
“I would ask the residents of Madera ... whether or not you’re better off than you were six years ago,” said Mayor Santos Garcia, a known progressive who is seeking a second term.
His three challengers in the November election think things could be better for Madera residents and answer no to the incumbent’s rhetorical campaign question.
- District 1 Madera City Councilwoman Cece Gallegos is confident that her eight years on the City Council have earned her the mayoral seat. She says she works harder than every other candidate.
- Madera Unified Trustee Lucy Salazar, a school board member since 2019 and also a realtor with her own business, notes her experience voting on decisions that impact 20,000 students.
- And government revenue consultant Wayne Padilla, who worked as Madera’s finance director until 2005, says his professional experience makes him the only candidate who could step into a city manager role if it were necessary.
Whichever of the four candidates wins the election will lead the Madera City Council for the next four years, a time frame likely to see large housing and commercial development plans materialize in town. The city is awaiting the construction of multiple master-planned communities that intend to add thousands of homes, and also the completion of the long-awaited North Fork Mono Casino and Resort west of Highway 99.
Elected officials expect the casino project to bring good jobs to Madera and spur more retailer interest in a town that has historically struggled to attract and retain stores that residents want. U.S. Census data shows the city’s population has grown about 11% since 2010. The mayor will have to balance the priorities of a population slated for continued growth, among them issues related to homelessness, infrastructure and local jobs opportunities.
The Fresno Bee interviewed the four candidates and also attended the Oct. 1 candidate forum to report this story. Below is an overview that includes the candidates’ backgrounds and their responses to key questions the winner of the race will have to deal with in office. The Bee used random digital selector to decide the order in which to present the candidates.
▪ Fact: Madera County voter registration has increased 18.5% since 2020. That’s more than any other California county, according to the Secretary of State.
Lucy Salazar
- Age: 64
- Birthplace: Fresno
- Occupation: Realtor and small business woman.
- Education: Business college/accounting
- Offices held: Current president of the Madera Unified Board of Education
- Endorsements: Madera Young Democrats, National Women’s Political Caucus
Salazar says she is not the type of politician who just kisses babies and takes a free dinner.
“I bring the dinner,” she told voters at Madera’s candidate forum Oct. 1. “I bring the decorations, I decorate, and I clean up.”
She said her job requires her to travel Madera’s roads, and that she has found unpainted crosswalks and curbs. The city is lacking in beautification and civic pride, its infrastructure is aching and its City Council is divided, said Salazar, who has been a member of Latinas Unidas de Madera (Madera Latinas United) for 20 years.
“I am ready to ensure that we are accountable to our citizens,” she told The Bee.
On the question of how she would work to diversify the city’s economy, Salazar pointed to Madera Unified’s performance in training students to enter the workforce.
“We’re preparing our students for vocational training: construction, electrical, plumbing,” Salazar said. “If our citizens want to get educated, they have free resources through adult training they can get.”
Raising the city’s income level could cause residents to move to Fresno, she said, so the city should also focus on creating more housing to keep them in Madera.
But she criticized the city’s disbursement of information about The Villages at Almond Grove, a master-planned community set for development in District 1 that could add more than 10,000 homes at full-buildout. Mayor Santos and Councilmember Gallegos told The Bee that the city has planned its developments very responsibly.
“But what is the plan for the general plan that the current City Council has for that area?,” Salazar said. “How are we doing with electricity?
“The builders that are going to go out there, they’re going to have to pay those fees to get all the infrastructure built out there.”
On the issue of homelessness, Salazar said the city should be getting its fair share of the county’s help, because the city is where most of the county’s homeless population lives. She said “we have to stop enabling them … and we have to work with the different agencies to see which ones are actually (providing) the right help for these homeless people.”
Salazar said many homeless people return to the streets after treatment, so there should be more housing options. “But even if we house them, we need to house them separately,” she said. “Some of them just need a hand getting the right tools … and some of them have mental issues.”
Cece Gallegos
- Age: 57
- Birthplace: Madera
- Occupation: Madera Unified School District teacher
- Education: Madera High School. Bachelor’s in Liberal Studies from Fresno State University in 1985.
- Offices held: District 1 Madera City Councilmember since 2016.
- Endorsements: U.S. Congressman John Duarte, City Councilmembers Elsa Mejia, Steve Montes and Jose Rodriguez, Madera Unified School Board Trustees Gladys Diebert and Israel Cortes.
Gallegos has taught at Madera Unified for 32 years and was first elected to the City Council in 2016. That year, former Madera City Manager David Tooley received more than $337,000 in total pay and benefits as the city ran a budget deficit. He resigned in 2018.
“I was tired of seeing the status quo, I was tired of seeing the good ol’ boys and I really ran on that – to change it,” she told The Bee.
Gallegos lost a bid for the District 3 seat on the county Board of Supervisors in March against incumbent Robert Poythress. But she said she is ready to be Madera’s mayor.
She said the city will acquire jobs with the reopening of Madera Community Hospital and the arrival of the casino. Gallegos said she told the casino operators a few months ago that “we have to make sure we are hiring our employees.”
“They promised to hire our local community members,” she said.
During the local candidate forum, Gallegos said she will work with Madera’s congress member and state legislators to seek funding to create an entrepreneurship mentoring program in the city.
“Mentoring our young entrepreneurs and giving them the tools that they need to be successful, that’s really important,” she said.
Gallegos told The Bee that the city’s planning for its major residential developments has been very responsible. The community that intends to add more than 10,000 homes will be in District 1. She said the city is building a 2.5 million-gallon water storage tank and has space next to it for another tank of the same size.
She noted that full build-out of the city’s pending communities is years away.
“When the rest develops, we’re ready for it,” Gallegos said, “and increased our capacity in our wastewater treatment plant for this.”
Gallegos said she wants the city’s pending anti-encampment ordinance update to include “more of a commitment to the mentally ill.” She said dealing with homelessness has been difficult for the city because the Fresno River, which runs through Madera, attracts many people.
“Those are the concerning ones because they become very aggressive, even to our officers in the bottom of the river,” she said. “Financially, it’s the county that holds the bank on homelessness … We are trying to do what we can do in the city and being a partner with (the county.)”
Santos Garcia
- Age: 68
- Birthplace: Casa Grande, Arizona
- Occupation: Retired U.S. Postal Service letter carrier
- Education: One year at Fresno State University, but left to raise a family of five children.
- Offices held: Mayor of Madera since 2020. District 5 Madera City Councilmember from 2018-2020.
- Endorsements: City Councilmembers Anita Evans and Artemio Villegas, State Sen. Anna Caballero, State Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, U.S. Congressional candidate and former State Assemblymember Adam Gray, Madera Democratic Club, Building Trades Council.
Mayor Garcia notes that the state of the city’s finances are far different than they were when he first was elected to the City Council six years ago.
“We were paying $335,000 a year (to the previous city manager) under previous City Councils,” he told voters during the Madera candidate forum as he motioned toward Gallegos, who was first elected eight years ago.
Gallegos also notes that she was in office during the city’s financial strengthening.
“We were in a deficit of $1.7 million six years ago,” Santos continued. “We changed that in 2018 after I was elected.”
He said he wants to continue the work he’s done. Like Gallegos, Garcia told The Bee that the reopening of Madera Community Hospital will mean more jobs.
The city’s first retail cannabis store opened this summer, and Garcia said Madera will add jobs as more of them begin to open up. He also touted the upcoming casino as a “game changer.”
“We’re looking to diversify our ag economy and build new industries in our community so that people can get good paying jobs,” he said, “because if we build those 10,000 homes – and they are going to be built in stages – who’s going to buy them if they don’t have a good paying job?”
Garcia also said the city has become well-equipped to handle the addition of those homes.
“There is no lack of water,” he said. “We have sufficient wells and we’re in the process of building another water tower.”
He said the developers will have to fund the infrastructure for the upcoming residential projects and be reimbursed with the revenue their home sales generate.
“We’re not going to be able to put in water and sewer and then impose (the cost) on a residence,” he said. “If they (developers) want to build those projects, they’re going to have to fund those projects.”
In terms of homelessness and new anti-encampment rules, Garcia said he does not want to criminalize homeless people. He reiterated that the county receives funding to deal with this issue, so the city has to partner with the county and nonprofits like the Madera Rescue Mission.
“We’re partnering with them to do triage for the folks who are coming in so that you attack the issues they have at the source,” Garcia said. “We can build housing, we can kick them out of our parks, but that’s not going to solve the issue.”
Wayne Padilla
- Age: 61
- Birthplace: Madera
- Occupation: Government revenue consultant to cities and counties across the state. City of Madera’s finance director through 2005, and has worked as such for Modesto and San Luis Obispo (Finance and IT Director). Has worked as assistant city manager for Chowchilla.
- Education: Bachelor’s in accountancy from Fresno State University. CPA license earned in 1989.
- Offices held: None.
- Endorsements: None at this time.
Padilla left his city job in 2005 because he was “disgusted” with City Hall’s lack of concern for the needs of residents, he told The Bee.
He kept his home in Madera and commuted to his jobs in Modesto and San Luis Obispo. But that outside work taught him the value of community engagement, he said.
“And what it means for the council and administration to take to heart the needs of the citizens and its businesses,” Padilla said. “I want to bring that home. We do not have that engagement at all.”
He said he wants to create regular public forums that inform residents and let Maderans provide the city with their own vision for the town’s future. Padilla criticized the city’s economic development efforts, saying Madera has landed some major employers by luck, not because it markets itself as a desirable jurisdiction.
“We need to come up with a portfolio of information that is available to all of these site locators that allows them to make predetermined decisions about whether Madera is an attractive environment,” he said. “We need to ensure not only the local school district, but also the community college is poised to pivot as needed to provide job training.”
“We need to promote their growth and their development, and hope they can bring more research facilities, which will bring those high paying jobs,” Padilla said, noting the college’s plans for an agave distilling program.
He is also critical of the city’s pending 10,000-home development, which includes commercial space. Padilla said that will compete with the city’s downtown, which he wants to push revitalization efforts in.
Padilla said the city could accomplish that with fees that make ownership of dilapidated buildings difficult for owners who refuse to make upgrades. He envisions a mix of residential and commercial spaces downtown, which he said would be a great place for first-time business owners to open shops.
In terms of homelessness, Padilla said he would not mind seeing an authorized homeless encampment for Madera like the one in Tulare, which provides tents and services. He also thinks the city should ban “single-serve alcohol” sales.
“Make it difficult impossible for folks to go and buy a 40-ounce or a pint of hooch,” he said. “We have businesses catering to this alcoholism that we need to stop.”
Padilla added that the city needs a more comprehensive approach to providing services to homeless people, but also cautioned against enabling them.
This story was originally published October 14, 2024 at 5:30 AM.
