About 65% of funds<\/a> in the new plan would be spent to fix local roads \u2014 a significant increase from past versions of Measure C. But supervisors like Bredefeld want at least 75 to 80% allocated to local roads, plus even more specifically designated for regional roads outside of the cities.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m not supportive of the plan because there\u2019s not enough money being spent to repair streets,\u201d Bredefeld said in an interview Wednesday. \u201cThey spend significant amounts of money on public transportation, and the plan essentially is to get people out of their cars and to force them to ride buses, bicycles or electric scooters. This is simply unacceptable to me, as somebody who knows my constituents want their roads fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Proponents of the renewal plan had asked that the Board of Supervisors put the plan up for a vote at a meeting in early January to gauge their level of support. But Bredefeld, the board\u2019s new chair, declined to add it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said very clearly, the county doesn\u2019t take orders from the COG,\u201d he said. \u201cThe process, typically, is that it goes before all the 15 cities \u2014 all the city councils have to vote on this \u2014 and the county would typically go last. They were insisting the county go first, and that was unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
And despite an eleventh-hour plea from Bredefeld calling for the mayors of Fresno and Clovis to meet with the county to hash out a new deal at a special Jan. 7 Fresno Council of Governments meeting, the mayoral majority was resolute that the county missed their opportunity to negotiate as the steering committee\u2019s work concluded in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe supervisors have failed to engage in the preservation and the renewal of Measure C,\u201d said Councilmember Miguel Arias, \u201cand left the community no other option but to pursue its own initiative with a bottom-to-top process, one that focuses on local roads and local communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Mendes and Bredefeld disputed Arias\u2019 characterization of recent events Wednesday, saying the coalition and mayors refused to negotiate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty hard to negotiate with people when they don\u2019t want to negotiate,\u201d Mendes said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Without a majority of supervisors in support, the mayoral majority\u2019s plan couldn\u2019t get on the ballot through official channels. So they voted, in the messy and contentious special meeting earlier this month, to officially end the government-sponsored approach to renewing Measure C, which would have required a supermajority, or two-thirds of voters, of support at the ballot box in order to pass.<\/p>\n
If the new transportation plan gets enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, it just needs a simple majority of voters \u2014 50% plus one \u2014 to pass.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mayor Jerry Dyer, one of several mayors speaking in support of the citizen-led effort Wednesday, said that his preference would\u2019ve been to follow official channels to get Measure C renewal on the ballot until it became clear in recent weeks that that was unlikely.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we can wait around for another jurisdiction to decide what they\u2019re going to do. I think we take matters into our own hands, and that\u2019s what you\u2019re seeing here: a citizen-led initiative,\u201d Dyer said, \u201cpeople saying we\u2019re going to make sure that we continue to have safe streets, safe roads, potholes filled and public transit for all throughout Fresno County.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arias said the change in strategy isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s good for us,\u201d he said. \u201cI think the days of three old guys dictating the future of public transit and transportation for a million people are behind us.\u201d<\/p>\n
In order to qualify for the November ballot, the coalition needs roughly 22,000 signatures from residents. But it\u2019s shooting for closer to 35,000, said Andy Levine, a Fresno Unified trustee and member of Transportation for All, the coalition of community groups and leaders.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re going to aim to secure those signatures by April, Levine added, to allow enough time for the Fresno County Clerk\u2019s Office to qualify the measure by the August deadline.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a sprint,\u201d he said. \u201cHonestly it\u2019s going to be a 24-7 kind of thing because normally, you know, you hope to have a little more time than we\u2019re going to have.\u201d<\/p>\n
But \u201cthe fortunate thing\u201d is they have a dozen community-based organizations and several Fresno County mayors in their corner to help lead the signature-gathering, Levine added.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear whether the renewal plan\u2019s opponents on the Board of Supervisors are going to help pursue a rival ballot measure in November, a possibility that proponents of Measure C fear could jeopardize its renewal<\/a>.<\/p>\nBredefeld said he\u2019s not yet sure whether that will happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there may be other members of the community that share the same view as I do, and several other mayors do, that this plan that they\u2019re supporting doesn\u2019t address the needs that they have in their cities in terms of fixing streets and roads,\u201d Bredefeld said. \u201cSo there may be another citizens group. We shall see if that unfolds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials at Wednesday\u2019s news conference acknowledged the possibility but asserted that only their renewal measure will reflect the needs of Fresno County residents as expressed through a robust public engagement process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they do put together another measure, it\u2019s going to be just to help their own groups,\u201d said Mendota Mayor Victor Martinez, \u201ctheir own people, not for the entire county of Fresno, not for every city, not for every community, but just to serve themselves. And that\u2019s not what Fresno County residents deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What\u2019s at stake? The coalition aims to secure at least 22,000 signatures from Fresno County residents between now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":{"0":"post-134072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-fresno","9":"tag-fresno-headlines","10":"tag-fresno-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}