Overview:
The Fresno County Board of Supervisors also approved a pair of items for the University Medical Center building on Tuesday.
The third floor of the Fresno County Hall of Records was unusually crowded on Tuesday as two new members of the Board of Supervisors took their oaths of office.
Former Fresno City Councilmembers Garry Bredefeld and Luis Chavez were officially sworn into their roles as county supervisors on Tuesday, following their successful bids to unseat incumbents in November.
Supervisor Nathan Magsig also concluded his duties as chair for the board, and handed off duties to supervisor Buddy Mendes. Bredefeld will be the vice chair.
Bredefeld beat incumbent Steve Brandau for the District 2 seat, while Chavez beat incumbent Sal Quintero for the District 3 seat. Both challengers comfortably secured a victory, with Chavez declaring victory a week after the polls closed.
About 30 people were kept out of the supervisors’ chambers for the first half of the meeting as the room reached capacity. Members from Fresno City Hall were present at the meeting, including mayor Jerry Dyer, city manager Georgeanne White, and councilmembers Miguel Arias, Nelson Esparza, Mike Karbassi, Tyler Maxwell, and current council president Annalisa Perea.
Both freshman supervisors took time at the top of the meeting to recommit to campaign promises and inform their new constituents of what they plan to prioritize going forward.
Bredefeld said he’ll look to address issues like homelessness and “harmful policies from Sacramento.” Bredefeld said he plans to target policies “that hurt our children, make our communities unsafe, promote bigger government and weaken criminal laws.”
Bredefeld also said he’d look into ending the county’s needle exchange program, renovating or introducing a new building for the Hall Of Records staff, eliminating public-comment time limits at supervisor meetings, and introducing a ballot measure to add more ID requirements for voting similar, he said, to a controversial law in Huntington Beach.
The Huntington Beach law — known as Measure A, which was passed by local voters last year and is scheduled to go into effect in 2026. California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued Huntington Beach last year, arguing the city’s voter ID law conflicts with state law, and would disenfranchise poor, non-white voters. Bonta has suggested his office was open to continuing its legal fight with Huntington Beach, despite a judge throwing the case out in November.
The county’s needle exchange program has seen criticism from other Fresno leaders before, and the Board narrowly approved the service be moved into the county’s public health building in 2023.
Chavez addressed county employees — including homecare workers and social workers, groups that backed his campaign.
“I see you, I respect you, I appreciate the work that you do,” Chavez said. “You’ll have a voice with me.”
“The pandemic really changed me as an elected official,” Chavez later added. “I saw what lack of access to healthcare does to a community, particularly a community that was deemed essential but got treated as disposable.”
While campaigning, Chavez said that IHSS workers should be paid somewhere around $25-30/hour, an increase from the $20 proposed by his incumbent opponent in the race. Bredefeld said he’d look into the county budget to see what wage raise he would support. The Service Employees International Union endorsed both candidates and considered their November victories a win for IHSS workers.
Chavez’s campaign promises also included a commitment to add 1,000 homeless shelter beds in his first 100 days in office, giving him a mid-April deadline to meet the goal.
Fresno County finalizes deal on UMC building
The Fresno County Board of Supervisors also approved a pair of items for the University Medical Center building on Tuesday.
The 30-acre property will be split into four parcels, with three being transferred to the buyer Sevak Khatchadourian. Khatchadourian, of Boyd Fresno LLC, purchased the property in 2023 for $6 million. He was the sole bidder. The final negotiations for the property were finalized in August, and escrow on the property is expected to close following the Board’s motion.
The county will also enter a lease agreement with Boyd, allowing the county’s departments of behavioral health and social services to continue to work inside the property. The departments are expected to relocate by the end of 2025. The total estimated cost of the lease agreement is around $1.8 million.
The item was pulled from the consent agenda by Chavez, who recused himself due to the proximity of the property to his home. The item passed unanimously 4-1, with Chavez’s recusal.
Board retroactively approves district attorney applicaitons
The Board also retroactively approved the district attorney’s submission of two grant applications to the state to fund the county programs.
Last year, the district attorney’s office submitted applications to the California Department of Insurance to fund the county’s Automobile Insurance Fraud program and Workers’ Compensation Insurance Fraud program. They applied for a total of $2.3 million.
The agreement was unanimously approved through the consent agenda.
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