What's at stake?
Fresno County’s current transportation sales tax, Measure C, expires in 2027. Community groups and government leaders have been at odds for several years over how to design a spending plan that reflects community priorities, but reached a “historic” compromise Thursday.
Fresno County’s regional transportation board approved a new plan late Thursday for its last-ditch efforts to save the county’s vital transportation sales tax, agreeing to give a coalition of community-based organizations more of a seat at the table in a “historic” compromise, officials said.
12 seats at the table, to be exact.
That’s the number of appointees the Transportation for All coalition will now have on the advisory committee in charge of recommending spending priorities for the next iteration of Measure C, the county-wide transportation tax that has funded local projects for nearly 40 years and which expires in 2027.
The move to merge the establishment-backed efforts toward renewing Measure C with community-led efforts marked a compromise that at times seemed unlikely to ever be reached.
A previous bid to renew Measure C in 2022 failed at the ballot box after a bipartisan coalition of anti-tax groups and social justice advocates — some of whom later formed Transportation for All — joined in opposition to the measure they say wasn’t inclusive of community priorities.
Supporters also called Thursday’s vote an opportunity for government and community to work together, instead of a nightmare scenario where each group tries to get competing ballot measures in November 2026.
“It wasn’t too long ago that a few of us couldn’t be in the same room together,” said Veronica Garibay, a coalition member and executive director of Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, “and I’m really proud of how far we’ve all come.”
11 members of the 16-person Fresno Council of Governments (COG) policy board — consisting of mayors representing each of Fresno County’s 15 cities, plus one Fresno County supervisor — voted in favor of the compromise Thursday, including mayors of the county’s two largest cities, Fresno and Clovis.
The decision wasn’t unanimous, however, with the mayors of Kingsburg, Reedley and Selma as well as Fresno County Supervisor Garry Bredefeld all objecting. Many of them took issue with the 12 committee members promised to Transportation for All.
“What is so special about this group?” Bredefeld said in one of several fiery exchanges with supporters of the proposal at Thursday’s meeting. “Is it that they threatened, publicly, that there would be another measure? That there was a possibility that they were involved in the failure two years ago?
“Every one of these community groups would want to have 12 members,” he added.
Supporters of the compromise pushed back that it’s not the number that matters — and that at the end of the day, the COG policy board and elected officials across the county will still decide whether to approve what the committee comes up with.
“At the end of the day, it’s going to take all of us to get this to pass,” said Lynne Ashbeck, a Clovis City Councilmember. She isn’t Clovis’ primary representative on the COG policy board, but she did help broker the compromise between the rival groups.
“I’m not promising perfect,” she added, “but I am promising our best chance.”
What’s in the plan?
Thursday’s approval gives the Transportation for All coalition one-third representation on the Measure C Steering Committee to COG’s two-thirds representation.
Up until now, COG’s steering committee was a 26-member body (with one vacancy), consisting of appointees by mayors of each city, as well as representatives from other groups like the Fresno Chamber of Commerce and the Fresno Cycling Club.
The steering committee is the group tasked with figuring out how much of the county’s transportation tax should be spent on different priorities, from road safety to potholes to public transit.
With the now-approved “One County, One Plan” proposal, that body will grow to 38 members with the dozen new Transportation for All appointees. Coalition member and Fresno Unified Trustee Andy Levine said the individuals who the coalition will appoint has yet to be finalized but should be by the time the expanded board meets in July.
Under the new plan, the steering committee will have to reach 70% approval in order to approve recommendations to the COG board.
The committee will also meet two times each month starting in July, and move on an accelerated timeline that aims to finalize a new Measure C recommended plan for officials’ approval as soon as mid-October, well in advance of the November 2026 election.
What did Fresno County mayors say about the compromise?
There was much debate Thursday over where the number 12 came from on the coalition’s part.
Kingsburg Mayor Brandon Pursell, Jr., floated a lower number like one or four, emphasizing that there are many organizations from his constituency that also wanted representation on the board, while he ultimately has only one seat for the city.
“Why does it have to be 12,” he said, “when you’re one community group?”
Mayor Jerry Dyer also voiced concerns about the formation of a “voting block” with the introduction of 12 more steering committee members from the coalition at once.
“I just want to make sure that whatever we do moving forward,” he said, “we don’t have voting blocks, because voting blocks serve to do nothing more than stymie a process.”
Levine told the COG board that 12 represents a subset of the roughly 35 members Transportation for All has on its equivalent of a steering committee.
He said it would be “disrespectful” to their coalition — which he stressed is “not a monolith” and represents a number of groups spanning the county — to have any fewer representatives.
Ashbeck called the focus on the number of committee members alone a “red herring.”
“Arguing about the number is arguing that … we don’t like these people, we don’t want them, we don’t agree with them, we’re afraid what they’re going to say,” she said, adding that the county needs the coalition’s 30-plus groups to get Measure C across the finish line.
Supporters of the compromise also drew attention to Transportation for All coalition’s outreach campaigns so far, drawing over 2,000 people out to community meetings over the past month, according to coalition members.
Comparatively, the COG-run community meetings drew roughly 65 participants, staff shared in a presentation Thursday.
“I went to several of those meetings in rural communities and the urban center of the city,” said Councilmember Miguel Arias, “and I can tell you that there was less people in those meetings than (there) are in this room today.”
Others spoke at Thursday’s meeting during public comment in support of the compromise, including Vivian Velasco Paz, a board member with the Central Valley Community Foundation.
Sanger Mayor Frank Gonzalez was absent from Thursday’s meeting and didn’t vote on the proposal.
Final plan to come in October
With the COG board’s approval, the steering committee will now move forward on the accelerated timeline for drafting a spending plan, as presented at Thursday’s meeting.
The expanded steering committee is scheduled to have its first meeting July 17, with continuing meetings through August and September.
The One County, One Plan timeline also calls for a “community-wide, big tent plan review,” which will serve as a final opportunity for Fresno County residents to weigh in on the plan before final approval begins in October.
The steering committee is an advisory group, and, ultimately, the COG policy board, Fresno County Transportation Authority board, as well as the local city councils and Fresno County Board of Supervisors have the final say over whether to approve the Measure C renewal plan.
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