What this means:
The city’s soon-to-be-open park will be named “Southeast Fresno Sports Complex” following a 6-1 approval by the Fresno City Council on Thursday.
The name was met with a local organization lobbying to get the park named after their ex-CEO, who they feel was instrumental in getting the park built in the first place.
The new 49-acre park in southeast Fresno will be named the “Southeast Fresno Sports Complex” following Thursday’s city council meeting. The council approved the naming 6-1, with council Vice President Miguel Arias dissenting.
Southeast Fresno councilmember Brandon Vang, who first announced the park name proposal at a news conference last week, said the name is an accurate representation of what the park will be. He added that the decision to name the park as a sports complex instead of tying it to a single person would be the best way for everyone in the region to feel represented.
“This is the best way for everyone to feel included and part of the community,” Vang said.
The name was met with criticism from a small coalition of residents who felt the proposed title was “too generic.” The coalition, spearheaded by the South East Fresno Community Economic Development Association, said the park should be named after Jose Leon Barraza, their ex-CEO and a local community advocate who they feel was instrumental in getting the park built in the first place.
They also called it another example of city leaders taking credit for the work and achievements of the local groups and residents who really made it happen after years of effort.
The new 49-acre park will be on 2155 South Peach Ave., and includes a slew of amenities — like an array of facilities for basketball, soccer and baseball, walking trails, a community garden and more. For years, southeast residents had to get across town to enjoy a city park.
The park naming was initially scheduled to be approved by council without discussion. However, Arias motioned for the council to discuss the issue publicly.
Vang, who represents the park neighborhood, followed Arias’ motion by attempting a procedural vote to keep the issue off the discussion agenda, but failed to win enough support from his fellow councilmembers.
He mulled abstaining from the public discussion vote after getting confirmation from city attorney Andrew Janz that he did not have to explain his position if he didn’t want to, but he voted anyway.
Vang said at the meeting that he was happy that the council decided to punt the naming of the park until after the district could fill its councilmember vacancy. In a March special election, Vang won his election outright against multiple candidates, including Barraza.
He added that the need for more green spaces in the community was a top priority he heard while on the campaign trail. Like most of the councilmembers, Nelson Esparza deferred the decision to name the park to the newly elected southeast representative.
“It goes to show just very generally that elections have consequences. We have a new member that is going to be very consequential to what the new name of the park will be,” Esparza said. “We have a tradition…where a lot of us here will defer to the member of that district to lead things in their respective district, and represent their community accordingly.”
There were 110 comments submitted virtually ahead of Thursday’s meeting, with the vast majority of the comments supporting Vang’s proposal, according to city attorney Todd Stermer. The few comments in opposition were not in support of Barraza, but instead in the lack of transparency in the naming selection process and in the broad nature of the name.
“Additional sports amenities can be named once built, this can honor our community leaders and show how we all can come together to create one great park,” read many of the submitted comments.
Not many public comments took place at Thursday’s council meeting, though most were in support of naming the park after Barraza. Among those seven commenters supporting Barraza was Sanger Mayor Frank Gonzalez.
Multiple councilmembers recognized the hard work Barraza undertook to help get the park to completion.
Arias said that he hoped the city could come to “a happy medium” in the park naming process since the new green space “would have never taken off if it wasn’t for Jose Leon Barraza.” He said his many inquiries led to the city moving its feet toward getting the park construction off the ground.
“For many years the city was doing the easiest thing to do, which was to look the other way, and hope that somehow the 49-acres would handle themselves,” Arias said. “And for valid reasons: competing priorities, tight budget years, the difficulty of working with the federal government, the proximity to tracks.”
He added, “We asked the community to take over the park, adopt the park, and they embraced it.”
The city has policy in place to have council hear proposals to name facilities, like the many amenities the park will have, named after individuals. Councilmember Tyler Maxwell said he’d be open to having a facility in the park named after Barraza, if such a proposal is brought forward in the future.
