Chavez’s election to county board means a vacant Fresno City Council seat. How to fill it?
If Luis Chavez prevails over incumbent Fresno County District 3 Supervisor Sal Quintero, the city of Fresno will need to fill the City Council vacancy created by Chavez’ election to the county board.
Chavez currently leads Quintero by about 2,400 votes in the District 3 race. His current term on the Fresno City Council runs through the end of 2026, and term limits prohibit Chavez from seeking another term. Under the Fresno City Charter, the District 5 city council seat representing southeast Fresno will be vacant for at least several months before a special election can be held to replace Chavez, according to Fresno City Clerk Todd Stermer.
“If elected to the (county) board, Councilmember Chavez may resign at any time prior to being sworn in on the board, and his resignation will be effective upon receipt by the city clerk unless a different date is specified in the resignation letter,” Stermer said.
Oaths of office for two new members of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors would be in the first week of January. Chavez told The Bee his resignation would be effective on Jan. 6 when he is sworn onto the county board.
The city charter requires the City Council to declare a vacancy and pass a resolution to call a special election no earlier than 90 days after the vacancy is declared. The City Clerk’s office is then required to publish a notice of a special election no later than 113 days before the election, “which would place this election sometime in early May,” Stermer said.
“Given the timelines of the special election, the soonest the vacancy would be filled would be in May 2025 … and (the) council would consist of six members in the interim time frame.”
But if a special election doesn’t yield a candidate winning an outright majority of votes cast, another special election would be required as a runoff between the two top vote-getters, to be called by the City Council no more than 30 days after the first special election is certified.
Chavez won’t put his thumb on the scale when it comes to supporting any potential candidate to replace him, at least not yet.
“I’m going to wait for the election to be officially certified before I weigh in on my replacement,” Chavez told The Bee on Monday in a text message.
Chavez was elected to the City Council in November 2016 in a special election to fill Quintero’s unexpired District 5 council seat, after Quintero was elected to the county Board of Supervisors earlier that year. Chavez was subsequently re-elected to full four-year terms in 2018 and 2022.
Also leaving the council at the end of this year is District 6 Councilmember Garry Bredefeld representing northeast Fresno. Bredefeld, prevented by term limits from running again for the council seat, opted to challenge incumbent District 2 county Supervisor Steve Brandau and leads in results from last week’s general election.
As of Thursday afternoon, Bredefeld had garnered 30,059 votes to Brandau’s 23,773 votes.
Both Chavez and Bredefeld were congratulated at Thursday’s City Council meeting by their council colleagues on their apparent election to the county board.
No special election will be needed to replace Bredefeld because the seat was already up for election. Either Nick Richardson, a businessman and officer in the Marine Corps Reserves, or local attorney Roger Bonakdar, will succeed Bredefeld and be sworn into office in January. In election results that were updated Thursday, Richardson holds a slim 259-vote lead over Bonakdar out of more than 23,000 votes counted so far.
The next update of election results from the Nov. 5 election are due to be released Tuesday afternoon.
This story was originally published November 11, 2024 at 1:39 PM.
