Everything to know about the candidates for Fresno County Supervisor, District 3

Sal Quintero, 76, has had a long career in local government. He spent 10 years on the Fresno City Council, between 1994 and 2002 and 2014 to 2016. He was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2016 and reelected in 2020, running unopposed.

In an interview with Fresnoland, he did not name a policy proposal on housing, environment, or labor that he would introduce in a potential third term as District 3 supervisor.

When asked about his top accomplishments over the last four years, he pointed to helping to disburse federal relief funds to local organizations in Fresno County, negotiating contracts with unions representing county workers, and helping to support the unincorporated community of Calwa with a $7 million infrastructure grant last year.

Quintero acknowledged that he hasn’t had a single community event or town hall to engage with his constituents since he was reelected in 2020.

On housing and homelessness, Quintero did not share any specific ideas or policy proposals. He did, however, point to what the City of Fresno is doing.

“There’s always the conversation of creating affordable housing. I believe that’s going to occur on its own,” Quintero said, referring to the city funding affordable housing projects.

When asked why Fresno County does not operate warming centers for unhoused people, Quintero pointed to Fresno County’s public libraries. However, he also acknowledged the libraries don’t extend their hours when the weather is bad.

“I kind of looked into that, but we don’t do the community [warming] centers or any of that,” Quintero said. “The county isn’t in charge of that — it’s a city or a town.”

More generally, Quintero said the Fresno Madera Continuum of Care is already addressing homelessness and housing issues in the region, and he didn’t have anything specific to share about how he could use his role to address both issues if reelected.

On the environment, Quintero said the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District is already addressing environmental issues in the county.

When asked about the continued gravel mining and potential blast mining near the San Joaquin River by global building materials corporation CEMEX, Quintero said he supports it. 

Despite the environmental concerns over blast mining — which would use explosives and drilling to extract construction aggregate — Quintero said he supports CEMEX because he fears construction costs would climb across the region without it.

CEMEX donated $2,500 to Quintero’s reelection campaign at the end of 2022. Fresno Bee columnist Marek Warszowski reported that donation and others came less than a year before the Fresno County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a new three-year permit for CEMEX to continue their gravel mining operation.

On jobs and labor, Quintero did not outline any specific ways to bring above-minimum wage jobs to his district or Fresno County.

Quintero was notably behind cracking down on food vendors outside the Cherry Auction in the summer of 2022. He called county enforcement to sweep food vendors’ carts and explain why and how to obtain the appropriate permits to sell food.

Quintero told Fresnoland that he does not see a need to reform the county’s process and policies for food vendor permits.

Regarding the unincorporated community of Calwa, Quintero noted that progress has been made to support their residents better. Last year, he and U.S. Rep. Jim Costa wrangled $7 million in federal and state funds for road and sidewalk repair.

Other candidates told Fresnoland that Fresno County is not properly using funding from the federal Community Development Block Grant to support Calwa and other unincorporated communities.

Quintero acknowledged to Fresnoland that in his two terms in the county office, he spent little time looking into securing CDBG grants for Calwa.

“I really haven’t vetted all that out,” Quintero told Fresnoland. “Little at a time, I kind of pick away at it.”

Luis Chavez, 44, replaced Quintero on the Fresno City Council in a 2016 special election and won reelection in 2018 and 2022. While Quintero was a Fresno city councilmember, Chavez notably spent six years as one of his staffers.

On housing and homelessness, Chavez said there are ways the county can address regional housing needs. For starters, he’d change the county code that he said blocks dense residential communities from being built. He added that increasing the housing supply is key to addressing the housing crisis.

“I really do believe fundamentally and philosophically that this is a problem that we can literally build our way out of,” Chavez told Fresnoland.

When asked about concerns over more suburban sprawl, Chavez reiterated that housing supply has to increase, but new subdivisions cannot be approved without plans for walkable neighborhoods, bike lanes, and other amenities.

Chavez also said that county supervisors sometimes forget they represent a large chunk of Fresno city residents, particularly in District 3. He said the county must provide services inside and outside the city.

“What I would like to see as a supervisor is for us to open warming centers throughout the urban piece of the city of Fresno and the rural communities,” Chavez said. “We know a lot of our farmworker community don’t have access to heaters; don’t have access to air conditioners.”

On the environment, Chavez spoke to CEMEX’s continued mining operations without an updated environmental impact report.

“This is one of those instances where you can’t trade profits at the expense of having a detrimental effect on wildlife that exists there and the beautiful river,” Chavez said. 

On jobs and labor, Chavez said he wants to establish a project labor agreement that requires a specific share of construction jobs to go to union workers. Chavez was among the majority on the Fresno City Council that worked to get a project labor agreement passed with the city in 2021, overturning Mayor Jerry Dyer’s veto.

Chavez said he’d place a project labor agreement threshold between $1 and $3 million. 

Chavez said he took particular issue with Quintero’s crackdown on food vendors in 2022. 

“What Supervisor Quintero did was wrong,” Chavez said. “These people should not be treated like criminals. They were just there making a living, trying to feed their family. The county, I think, needs to foster those small businesses.”

On the unincorporated community of Calwa, Chavez said it should be supported by the county through the Community Development Block Grant, a federal program designed to “benefit low- and moderate-income persons, prevention or elimination of slums or blight, or address community development needs,” according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Chavez also said that CDBG funds have made a difference in the city and can be used on the county level — it’s just that no one is taking the initiative.

“When I’m supervisor,” Chave said, “I’m gonna make it a point to prioritize repaving, giving them curbs, sidewalks so that senior citizens are able to move in their scooters and their wheelchairs.”

Miguel Arias, 45, has served on the Fresno City Council since 2018. Before that, he spent 11 years in different high-profile roles with the Fresno Unified School District.

On housing and homelessness, Arias told Fresnoland he is against suburban sprawl, noting that growth is supposed to be concentrated toward urban centers in cities, not in unincorporated parts of the county. He added that the county should refrain from greenlighting new developments.

“New $400,000 homes (do) nothing for the lady on a social security check of $1,000,” Arias said. “It does nothing for the single mom working three jobs and can’t afford that house. It’s a false narrative by developers.”

Like Chavez, Arias said the county should play a more significant role in addressing homelessness, especially since the county’s Department of Social Services gets state funding to do so. Arias also said the county should open up homeless shelters and warming centers.

“The county doesn’t care,” said Arias, whose current city council district hosts two of the city’s four warming centers. “The supervisors don’t understand that, and they can’t empathize with the people that they serve.”

Arias said unhoused people from Reedley and Kingsburg sometimes travel to the Fresno warming centers. He said county leaders should meet needs where they exist and that unhoused people shouldn’t have to leave town to escape a freezing night or sweltering day.

He also said the county should increase its total count of mental-health emergency beds.

On the environment, Arias also questioned CEMEX’s continued gravel blast-mining operations.

“From my perspective, CEMEX — their facility — should be shut down until an environmental study is completed until their impact is mitigated,” Arias said. “They’ve had so many years of no accountability at all.”

On jobs and labor, Arias is interested in establishing a project labor agreement at the county level — like Chavez — to guarantee union jobs at construction sites. Arias was part of the effort to install a project labor agreement in the city in 2021 and voted to overturn Dyer’s veto.

Arias said he would want to set the threshold for a county project labor agreement at $1 million. 

Additionally, he did not take kindly to Quintero cracking down on food vendors in 2022 and said the process for vendors to get permits needs to be revised.

“The shutting down of mobile food vendors, in my view, was an abuse of power by the supervisor,” Arias said, noting the county needs to make its permitting process more accessible for food vendors.

On the unincorporated community of Calwa, Arias said there’s an issue on the county level with the Community Development Block Grant federal funding and how it needs to make its way to unincorporated communities, including Calwa, Malaga, and others.

EJ Hinojosa, 34, is a musician and local music educator. He is in his fifth year teaching at Gaston Middle School in west Fresno. Before that, he taught music at the Roosevelt School of the Arts. 

One key item that Hinojosa is running on is a new county library for the Tower District. It’s been a topic of debate for the last few years, and Hinojosa said that’s just what the Tower community deserves.

“It creates space for art and music and theatre and culture and community,” Hinojosa said. “It would be an economic boon because something attractive like that would definitely be a benefit to the surrounding businesses.”

On housing and homelessness, Hinojosa said that the county needs to step in and fund affordable housing. That includes supporting its development in unincorporated communities and smaller cities like Kerman and Kingsburg.

“If they want to see construction in Cantua Creek or Biola or wherever, definitely,” Hinojosa said. “There are plenty of agricultural workers who are out in those parts of the county who need places to live that are affordable and attractive.”

Additionally, Hinojosa is open to discussing what rent control could look like at the county level. He does not have a specific policy framework but would be willing to engage in conversations about it.

“I think really the only way to tackle the cost of living issue is to build more housing,” Hinojosa said. “Rent control is not about bringing prices down in the housing market, rent control would be to prevent displacement of people from their homes.”

Additionally, Hinojosa said it’s a policy failure that Fresno County has no warming centers for unhoused people. “That is a dereliction of duty,” he said.

On the environment, Hinojosa also shared some concerns over the potential environmental impacts of CEMEX’s operations. He also noted that the multinational company provides jobs, and its resources support housing production in the region, which are both important to keep. 

“Sure, we’d like to have them stay,” Hinojosa said, “but they need to be good stewards of the environment here in Fresno County.”

On jobs and labor, Hinojosa said he thinks the county’s process for permitting food vendors needs revision, and he said he wants to create a public market that would attract county residents and food vendors alike.

“I think creating a space like a public market would be a benefit to those entrepreneurs to those local business people,” Hinojosa said. “It would be a safe and reliable space where they could come and have access to utility and security, and it would bring neighbors together in droves.”

Hinojosa also said the county’s social workers feel unsupported and under-resourced.

This subject came to light in October 2021 when it was revealed that foster youth were sleeping inside offices at the understaffed county building for child protective services.

“What I heard most from them (social workers) is that they need resources at their job,” Hinojosa said. “They need additional staff. They need additional space.”

On the unincorporated community of Calwa, Hinojosa agreed county supervisors need to do more.

“Maybe they need an urgent care,” Hinojosa suggested. “Maybe they need more bus departures and arrivals. I can tell you that they definitely need some road repai