Documented by Kristina Mansfield
Here’s what you need to know
- At last month’s meeting, the Fresno Council Government’s (COG) Policy Board agreed to move forward with the Measure C Group of 10 framework and anticipated placing the finalized summary document on the agenda as an action item at the Nov. 30 meeting. It has been put on hold until 2024.
- The Fresno COG voted (10-4) to adopt a resolution programming a $107.5 million 2024 Regional Transportation Improvement Program (RTIP) request to the California Transportation Commission (CTC), which includes construction funding for both the North Cedar and American Avenue Interchanges in 2025-2026.
- The board approved (13-1) an amendment to the Fresno County Multijurisdictional Housing Element Contract (MJHE) contract with Placeworks Consultants for an additional $210,125. The money will fund the remaining tasks needed to meet the Dec. 31 housing element plan deadline for participating jurisdictions.
- Deputy Director Robert Phipps was appointed as interim executive director beginning Dec. 23. The board also voted to hire a consulting firm to search for a permanent replacement.
Follow-up questions
- What are the latest developments in the lawsuits against the Highway 99 interchanges?
- Clovis Mayor Lynne Ashbeck said in a Clovis City Council meeting that the Group of 10 was not moving forward as presented at a previous Fresno COG Policy Board meeting in an off-hand remark during council comments. Will the Fresno COG clarify where the Group of 10 stands as it relates to the status of Measure C?
The Scene
The Fresno Council of Governments (COG) Policy Board meeting took place in person at the Sequoia Conference Room on Nov. 30 at 5:30 p.m. (2035 Tulare St., 201) in Fresno. A conference call line was made available for members of the public for listening purposes only. No comments were taken via telephone.
It was the last meeting of the policy board for the year. About 40 members of the public attended the meeting.
Fresno COG is a voluntary association of local governments – one of California’s 38 regional planning agencies that undertakes comprehensive regional planning. Fresno COG’s primary functions are transportation planning and programming.
As a state-designated Regional Transportation Planning Agency (RTPA) and federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Fresno County, Fresno COG must comply with both designation requirements. Fresno COG prepares a Regional Transportation Plan that looks 25 years into the future, and sets policies for transportation options and projects. Fresno COG prepares the region’s Federal Transportation Improvement Program, a four-year program of financially constrained transportation projects consisting of highway, transit, bicycle and pedestrian projects that are selected through an approved project selection process.
The Fresno COG also implements several Measure C programs. The federal Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) gives Fresno COG direct responsibility for determining how two federal program funds are spent within Fresno County: the Regional Surface Transportation Program (RSTP) and the Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality Program (CMAQ). You can find more information about Fresno COG’s roles and responsibilities, including at the state level, here.
Call to Order Chair Alma Beltran called the regular meeting of the Fresno Council of Governments Policy Board to order at 5:51 p.m.
Fresno COG Policy Board Members present:
Coalinga (Mayor James Horn)
Firebaugh (Mayor Felipe Perez)
Fowler (Mayor Pro Tem Juan Mejia)
City of Fresno (Council member Mike Karbassi)
Huron (Mayor Rey Leon)
Kerman (Mayor Maria Pacheco)
Kingsburg (Mayor Pro Tem Brandon Pursell Jr.)
Mendota (Mayor Victor Martinez)
Orange Cove (Mayor Diana Guerra-Silva)
Parlier (Mayor Alma Beltran, chair)
Reedley (Council member Mary Fast)
County of Fresno (Supervisor Sal Quintero, chair)
San Joaquin (Mayor Julia Hernandez)
Selma (Mayor Scott Robertson, co-chair)
Clovis (Mayor Lynne Ashbeck) and Sanger (Mayor At-Large Frank Gonzalez) were absent.
Fresno COG County Counsel Alison Samarin, Fresno COG Executive Director Tony Boren, Fresno COG Finance Director Les Beshears and Fresno COG Deputy Director Robert Phipps were also present at the meeting.
1. TRANSPORTATION CONSENT ITEMS, Items 1A-1F Items on the consent agenda are considered routine and un controversial in nature by the Fresno COG staff. They are approved by one motion if no member of the committee or public has questions. Items 1C and 1D were pulled for discussion.
Item 1C Increases the threshold for capitalizing equipment and leases with a useful life of one year or more to $100,000. The agenda had incorrectly stated the amount at $10,000.
Item 1D Santosh Bhattarai clarified to the policy board that the requested $24,000 is for half of the $48,000 (the original amount of the 12-month contract) needed to extend the contract six months between the Fresno COG and Replica, Inc.
The Items passed unanimously.
2. TRANSPORTATION ACTION/DISCUSSION ITEMS, Items 2A-2D
Item 2A Fresno COG Finance Director Les Beshears presented the 2024 State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP), a five-year transportation funding program that provides the Fresno region between $8 million and $10 million a year for major transportation improvements.
The California Transportation Commission (CTC) conducts biennial calls for projects, adding two years each cycle, Beshears said. He explained that the STIP includes a regional component known as the Regional Transportation Improvement Program (RTIP) and a statewide component administered by Caltrans known as the Interregional Transportation Improvement Program (ITIP).
Beshears said $64.1 million has been carried forward from previous STIP cycles and gave a breakdown of which projects those funds had been allocated to before presenting the proposed 2024 program to the Fresno COG for approval.
Beshears said the flagship project in the program are the south Fresno interchanges on American and North Cedar avenues, and that they were both previously cleared in the same environmental document and initially programmed in 2023-2024. Some $45 million had been previously programmed to the North Cedar Interchange in a prior-adopted RTIP. Beshears said in August, staff advised the Fresno COG that the funding strategy was to coordinate with Caltrans to include the American Avenue Interchange as the primary candidate for the 2024 RTIP target.
There is $43 million available in the 2024 RTIP target for the 2024-25-2028 cycle (bringing the total STIP program budget to $107.5 million). Beshears said staff is recommending $42 million be allocated to the American Avenue Interchange and $1 million be allocated to the Planning, Programming & Monitoring (PPM) funds.
“There was a lawsuit filed against the environmental document that has obviously delayed the projects,” Beshears said. “The city of Fresno has hired a consultant and Caltrans is working with their attorney and they are hopeful they can address the issues in the lawsuit. However, we need to keep going with this program so the city has placed a freeway agreement on the Dec. 7 agenda so we can adopt the agreement with Caltrans that will allow them to start working on the final design and acquire right-of-way.”
The freeway agreement for American Avenue is already in place, he said, adding that they will be moving both projects to 2025-2026 for construction.
Beltran then opened the floor to public comments.
- Joshusa Ders, a Navy veteran and marketing and communications director from Fresno Building Healthy Communities, spoke in opposition. “As a community advocate I am inclined to share with you the needs of the residents in the surrounding neighborhoods affected by the expansion project, and more freeway lanes are not one of those needs,” Ders said. “However, better sidewalks and surface streets, working streetlights and safe crosswalks are necessary, and these types of projects have been neglected and abandoned and underfunded for years. To prove this fact, I encourage those of you sitting on this board to visit the neighborhoods of Calwa and Malaga to see the dilapidated state of the streets, sidewalks that these community members depend on. Take the time to speak with those residents and then decide if more freeway lanes and the promise of jobs that will never be offered to them is what Fresno residents need.”
- Kay Bertken, a co-president of the League of Women’s Voters of Fresno, spoke next in opposition. “Our climate action committee has been looking into the effects of this interchange and what they might be to the Juvenile Justice Center that is right at the American Avenue area,” she said. “The air in that area is already some of the worst. It’s very hard for us to believe, especially given the confined status of young people near that interchange, and the staff of the Juvenile Justice Center, the health effects on them is probably a county responsibility. We’re quite concerned about that. It seems cruel to further impact those residents at the Juvenile Justice Center rather than to try to mitigate the burdens they are already carrying.”
- Mars Cruz, Youth Leadership Institute program manager, spoke in opposition.
“This proposal will perpetuate a lot of health inequities that south and west Fresnans have historically bore the brunt of from heavy industry without receiving any of the economic benefits. Residents within these communities already lead lives at greater risk for chronic respiratory and carcinogenic health complications, alongside the day-to-day negative impacts of noise pollution and traffic,” she said. “Additionally, the current proposal doesn’t equitably prioritize the revitalization and expansion of transportation initiatives that would actually facilitate positive changes in these communities. As someone who’s worked in many of the rural communities of Fresno County for social services work that also includes places like Kerman, Sanger, Reedley and Mendota, these communities, alongside those in south and west Fresno, feel neglected.”
- Natalie Delgado, policy advocate at Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, spoke next in opposition. Delgado asked that the Fresno COG not allocate $42 million to construct the American Avenue Interchange. “For the last year we have been advocating against the Highway 99 interchange because community members are highly concerned with the heavy-duty truck traffic and air pollution that it will bring. It’s mainly going to affect the small and overly polluted communities of Calwa, Malaga and south central Fresno,” Delgado said. “$42 million should be invested in community, not industry.”
- A student intern from Fresno Building Healthy Communities spoke next in opposition. She said the American Avenue interchange will hurt the community more than it will help, adding that the increase in traffic will cause more accidents and an increase in pollution. “I am one of the children that live nearby,” she said. “Please listen to us.”
- Kevin Capehart, associate professor of economics at California State University, Fresno and a resident of District 3, spoke next in opposition of the project. “Think about ways to use this money. This is not an investment in Fresno. This is a disinvestment,” he said. “Think of ways to help those we are currently hurting through the things that we are doing.”
Pacheco said she hears the public’s concerns with the American Avenue Interchange and asked the board if they can potentially invest the funds allocated to the interchange to specific cities that have been impacted by recent storms or have more urgent needs.
- “We’ve obviously heard from many concerned citizens that this is not what they want us to invest their money in. With that being said, and those comments being heard, what are our options?” she asked. “Let’s talk.”
Martinez agreed with Pacheco.
- “I see a huge investment on one side of the equation,” he said, “and all of our rural communities have a lot of needs. I wish to see some of this being invested in our communities, too.”
Karbassi said the rise in popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) and California’s strict pollution standards should offset resident concerns.
- “The idea that increasing capacity increases pollution, logically, makes sense. But we have more EV’s (electric vehicles) on the road than ever before. My car is one of them. We have some of the strictest pollution standards, standards for trucks, in the country right here in California,” Karbassi said. “So I’d like to understand exactly if that logic holds water anymore.”
Beltran said that Measure C failing in 2022 is the reason there are no funds available for the smaller cities to fix their problems and that they can’t reallocate the $42 million to those projects. They should focus instead on making sure that Measure C passes in the future, she said.
- “That’s a fantastic point, we don’t have those funds, but we have the opportunity to get these,” countered Pacheco. “We have $42 million that speaks to exactly your point. We don’t have that money – none of us have that money. But it’s here, and it’s stuck in one interchange.”
The next 10 minutes of the meeting transitioned into a tense back-and-forth between Fresno COG staff, Beltran, several mayors and members of the public before the board voted to approve the item (10-4). You can listen to the entire exchange here.
- The Reedley representative moved to approve; representatives of Kerman, Mendota, Firebaugh and Orange Cove voted no.
Item B Next, Jennifer Rodriguez gave the Fresno COG an informational update on the Safe Routes to School initiative.
- Rodriguez said beginning in August 2023, staff has been reaching out to and meeting with rural and urban school districts in Fresno County to collect an inventory of needs. She said there are still several school districts that have not provided the requested information.
- Robertson said Ashbeck was a pioneer on the project and asked what their respective city councils can do to help partner with their school districts to help make their school routes safer. Rodriguez said they’ve already been in touch with Robertson’s school district, and haven’t received a response.
- Pursell asked for an email that COG members can forward to their respective school boards to ensure Rodriguez gets what she needs in a timely manner.
Item C Fresno’s COG Associate Regional Planner Juan Rameriz presented an amendment to the funding contract with Placeworks Consultants to the Fresno COG for approval.
- The board approved (13-1) an amendment to the Fresno County Multijurisdictional Housing Element Contract (MJHE) contract with Placeworks Consultants for an additional $210,125. The money will fund the remaining tasks needed to meet the Dec. 31 housing element plan deadline for participating jurisdictions. Pursell was the dissent.
Item D Caltrans Deputy District Director of Planning, Local Assistance and Environmental Analysis Michael Navarro gave an update.
- He said his department is working on a project to restore nine tile mosaic murals alongside the Highway 41 in partnership with the Fresno Arts Council and funding from the Clean California Grant.
3. ADMINISTRATIVE CONSENT ITEMS
Item A 2024 Fresno COG Meeting Calendar
- The Fresno COG unanimously approved its 2024 meeting calendar. See it here.
4. ADMINISTRATIVE ACTION/DISCUSSION ITEMS
Item A Fresno COG staff Brenda Thomas presented an item related to an upcoming advocacy trip to Washington, D.C.
- Staff recommended the Fresno COG contract with Simon and Co. to provide representation at the federal level, advocate before the executive and legislative branches and serve as liaisons to the administration, members of Congress and other stakeholders in Washington, DC. during the Fresno COG’s annual One Voice D.C. trip, scheduled for March 17-21.
- The Fresno COG authorized the executive director to approve a contract with Simon and Co. for One Voice D.C. trip planning and implementation services not to exceed $15,000.
Item B Robert Phipps was appointed interim executive director of the Fresno COG beginning Dec. 23, for up to one year at an annual salary of $187,959.
- The board also voted to hire a consulting firm to search for a permanent replacement.
5. OTHER ITEMS There were none.
6. PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS There were none.
7. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 7:42 p.m. The next meeting for the Fresno COG is tentatively scheduled for Dec. 19.
If you believe anything in these notes is inaccurate, please email us at fresnodocs@fresnoland.org with “Correction Request” in the subject line.
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