Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer will not be able to run for a third consecutive term after all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Fresno City Council tabled a proposal to place a measure on the November ballot that would have allowed mayors and councilmembers to serve for three consecutive terms on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Driving the news: Dyer and City Council President sponsored a ballot measure to allow for three terms in office while capping the total service time at 12 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Under the current rules, councilmembers must leave office after two terms but can run for another two consecutive terms after taking four years off. Fresno County Supervisor Garry Bredefeld provided the most recent example of that happening, having served on the city council from 1997 to 2001 and again from 2017 to 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The proposed ballot measure would have prevented any current or previous councilmembers from running for office after serving their three terms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dyer made headlines at the beginning of the week by saying he would run for a third term as mayor if voters approved the measure in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The big picture: Around 13 hours into Thursday\u2019s meeting, the council voted unanimously to table the proposal, keeping the measure off of the November ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Esparza, who had been the most vocal proponent of the measure, acceded after hearing opposition to varying degrees from councilmembers Miguel Arias, Nick Richardson and Mike Karbassi.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What they\u2019re saying: Richardson said it does not seem that former councilmembers returning to office is derailing democracy in the Central Valley. He said that while he\u2019s enjoyed working with Dyer and that it would be good for him to get an additional four years with the mayor, changing the rules because he likes it is the wrong reason to support the measure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not voting the person,\u201d Richardson said. \u201cIt\u2019s voting the principle.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Arias took issue with the short amount of time to assess the proposal, having only a three-day notice, saying that moving forward at this point would undermine the public trust.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fair to say that if President Trump was proposing to change the country\u2019s constitution with 72-hour notice, we would all be losing our heads and screaming that democracy was at risk \u2013 rightfully so,\u201d Arias said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After asking a series of questions to City Attorney Andrew Janz about the technical aspects of the measure, Karbassi made a motion to table the item since there is not enough time to bring it back to the council with any amendments before the Aug. 7 deadline to place measures on the November ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Karbassi then applauded Esparza for trying to bring reform as he is preparing to leave office after this year, saying he has political courage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI can stand on two feet and look people straight in the eye and say that this impacts me negatively or doesn\u2019t impact me at all, I know I\u2019m putting my colleagues in a tough position where it would impact you for better or for worse,\u201d Esparza said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer will not be able to run for a third consecutive term after all.\u00a0 The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-419090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419090","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=419090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}