The Fresno City Council unanimously voted<\/a> to close two loopholes in the city\u2019s contracting laws and also establish the city\u2019s first ever public transparency portal that would make city contracts, along with a number of other city reports and disclosures, easily accessible to the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n About four months later, city officials may be close to fulfilling that promise.\u00a0<\/p>\n The public transparency portal appears to be functional through a beta test page<\/a> on the City of Fresno\u2019s website. So far, it allows members of the public to search for the name of companies and contractors to view their city contracts and agreements.\u00a0<\/p>\n It also allows members of the public to search for city ordinances, resolutions and city council minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Thursday, Interim City Clerk Amy Aller will lead a workshop for city officials and the wider public<\/a> about her office\u2019s progress so far in creating the transparency portal.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re going to be working on honing in on some more specific categories and making sure that things are ported over,\u201d Aller told Fresnoland in a Wednesday morning interview. \u201cFrom where we started to where we are now, we are very close to having something that\u2019s going to be very usable for the public.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Aller said getting to this beta test stage required rounding up tens of thousands of documents in different city systems. She added that it also wouldn\u2019t have been possible without collaboration with the city\u2019s Information Services Department.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is going to be an ongoing project, and as people begin using it and we start getting feedback, we\u2019ll be able to make more specific adjustments,\u201d Aller said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since the portal is still in a beta test stage, not all of its features and city disclosures are up and running just yet. Some of those disclosures are already listed elsewhere on the City of Fresno website<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, the resolution that city officials approved in January required those documents to be available \u201cat a single location on the City\u2019s website accessible to the public and searchable.\u201d<\/p>\n The beta test page also returns search results for the salaries of top city officials by specific calendar years. However, salary documents for top officials beyond the 2021 calendar year don\u2019t show up in search results.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aller said the portal is not complete yet and she said the team behind it will be incorporating feedback. Eventually, the portal will be at a stage ready for feedback from the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re there yet, but that\u2019s definitely something that we want to include as a way to get information as to how the system is working,\u201d Aller said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The current beta test version of the public transparency portal, Aller said, was the result of months of work across different city departments.<\/p>\n Back in January, city leaders began talking about a model of transparency at the City of San Diego \u2014 which was prominently featured in Fresnoland\u2019s investigation<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The City of San Diego\u2019s website has an accessible and easy-to-scan website listing all consultants with city contracts over $25,000 going back more than a decade. Its website doesn\u2019t require searching for any information, and clearly lays out all contracts year by year along with the value of each along with a project description, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fresno city leaders even talked about San Diego\u2019s model for transparency on the dais a few months ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n Councilmember Miguel Arias, who sponsored the January reforms to create a public transparency portal, told Fresnoland in a Monday interview that he thinks Fresno\u2019s transparency portal should have the same level of information as the model in San Diego.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019m going to look for is how close does the portal, as currently designed, meet the ultimate transparency test that we should be striving for,\u201d Arias told Fresnoland. \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t, then on Thursday we\u2019ll say we want additional features and then go ahead and proceed.\u201d<\/p>\n Arias added that the public transparency portal should accessibly list all no-bid contracts along with the contractor\u2019s name, the date it was approved and its total amount. The resolution that city officials approved in January only requires contracts worth less than $100,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those limitations would exclude contracts like the ones that former Councilmember Luis Chavez gave to a consulting company run by political consultant Alex Tavlian.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0170.jpg\")
Councilmember Miguel Arias came forward with a proposal to reform the City of Fresno\u2019s transparency with city contracts at a January 29 Fresno City Council meeting. Omar Rashad | Fresnoland<\/p>\n