Jerry Dyer’s first term as Fresno mayor enough to make him forget his former job | Opinion
Jerry Dyer’s four years and change as Fresno mayor makes his 40 years as a Fresno police officer and chief feel like a lifetime ago.
Not just Dyer’s lifetime but someone else’s.
“It’s like I was never in the police department ever,” Dyer said toward the end of an hour-long sit down with The Bee’s opinion crew (i.e. Juan Esparza Loera, Tad Weber and myself) after one of us committed the journalistic sin of tossing out a weighty question when the interview subject is already late for his next meeting.
Mea culpa on that. But after listening to Dyer discuss the priorities and potential pitfalls of his second term, digging into the fine details on several topics, it felt right to conclude on a wider lens.
So I asked Dyer, somewhat clumsily, what he would have done differently during his first four years as mayor if he possessed all the knowledge about the job he has today.
“I have to tell you,” Dyer replied, before making the off-handed and somewhat surprising remark about no longer feeling like a cop.
“I definitely wish I would have had all of the knowledge I have today when I first started (as mayor) because I could have probably accelerated some things,” he continued.
“And the other thing is, I wish I would have had the relationships that I have today with my council. We’re not only colleagues, we’re really good friends. You have to have those relationships to get things done.”
Dyer will need the council’s cooperation to accomplish many of the primary objectives he intends to see through during the final three years, nine months of his administration.
To keep abreast of everything going on in the city, Dyer carries with him a list of projects and topics printed on sheets of stapled-together 8 1⁄2 by 14 paper. The March list contains 46 items, accompanied by his scribbled notes in blue ink, including: the railroad grade separation at Blackstone and McKinley avenues, which Dyer hopes will be finished around the time he leaves office; sorely needed upgrades to downtown’s aging sewer and water infrastructure; terminal expansion and runway reconstruction at Fresno Yosemite International Airport; the pedestrian overpass over Highway 99 at Roeding Park; and new facilities for seniors, 911 emergency calls and firefighter training.
At present, though, no issue is more pressing than to close a growing budget deficit that Dyer indicated will surpass the $20.6 million shortfall projected last month.
“Based on some things, for example $1.2 million every year that we have to take out of the general fund for the landfill, and other things that weren’t built in (to the projection) we had exceeded $30 million in the red,” Dyer said.
“That’s my job as mayor. We’ve been meeting for the last three weeks, several times a week, hours at a time.”
Departments trimmed, jobs held vacant
Dyer asked department heads to come up with 5% cuts – some were “too painful” to enact – while purposefully and selectively leaving hundreds of city jobs vacant during the past year. Not quite a hiring freeze but nearly so.
“That’s going to be our biggest savings,” he said. “Had we not done that, the shortfall would have been much greater.”
Fresno would have faced deficits in previous budget cycles had the city not reaped the benefits of $170 million from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act over the last few years, funding that is no longer available. But because the city utilized some of that money to expand the police and fire departments, including new labor contracts, those costs must now be absorbed into the general fund.
Making cuts to police and fire is the last last thing any mayor wants to do. Which is why Dyer didn’t exactly shy away from a question about the potential for a public safety tax on a future ballot.
“We’ve done it for parks, right?” Dyer said before bringing up Clovis’ 1% general sales tax that starts April 1, more than 90% of which is earmarked for police and fire.
“I think those discussions are going to be had over the next few years. My job as the mayor was to reduce whatever expenses we possibly can in the city that’s tolerable for the people of Fresno before we do anything or have any discussions about revenue enhancements. And we did that this year.”
One complication, at least for the 2026 election cycle, is the tenuous status of Measure C, the long-standing county transportation tax that is set to expire in January 2027.
Dyer stressed the importance of renewing Measure C, which could get in the way of a city public safety tax because voters probably aren’t eager to approve two tax initiatives on one ballot.
Second-term emphasis on housing, SEDA
Another major emphasis of Dyer’s second term is housing. Fresno’s lack of housing stock, in the mayor’s view, has contributed not only to its homelessness problem but resulted in the loss of property tax revenues to places like Madera County and Clovis where sprawl is a way of life.
Numerous affordable housing projects, including one specifically for farmworkers, are currently at various stages of development throughout the city. At the same time, Dyer wants to get moving on a 9,000-acre expansion of southeast Fresno (known as SEDA) that has been mired in legal disputes as it undergoes environmental review.
SEDA has loomed in the background but will soon be a front-burner topic. Because if the Fresno City Council doesn’t approve the project’s environmental impact report by the end of June – a workshop is tentatively scheduled for May – the city must return $600,000 to the federal government it used to fund the study.
“The environmental review is just a first step,” Dyer said. “People are trying to push back on that, but we aren’t going to go from that to building houses. It’s not going to happen.”
Four years have passed since Dyer permanently exchanged his blue police officer’s uniform for the tailored blue suits he favors as mayor.
Long enough to feel like another lifetime ago.
