What's at stake?
The Better Roads, Safe Streets plan has filed the documents legally required by state election officials to begin paying staff, such as signature gatherers. As of Tuesday morning, there is no sign that this document has been submitted by the Fix Our Roads camp.
With elected leaders and transportation experts now placing their hopes for Measure C renewal in the rearview mirror, two competing measures have begun a race to take the 40-year-old policy’s place ahead of its summer 2027 expiration.
The Fresno County Board of Supervisors held a presentation for one of those plans at their Tuesday meeting, and ended the hearing no closer to a unified commitment than they were before.
Tuesday’s presentation involved the Fix Our Roads plan, a 20-year, $3.9 billion proposal that is the blueprint of Michael Leonardo, a former Caltrans and Fresno COunty Transportation Authority director, and a host of other former local and state-level transportation experts and public figures like Henry Perea, a former Fresno city councilmember and supervisor and current board member on the California High-Speed Rail Authority; and Alex Tavlian, a political consultant and lobbyist.
Leonardo, who presented the plan at Tuesday’s meeting, said it came together at the same time the Fresno Council of Governments was pursuing plans for Measure C renewal, following “a concern that that plan might not really address” residents’ concerns. He added that the top priorities the Fix Our Roads plan addresses comes after polls from the local transportation boards.
“Fix our roads, fix our roads, fix our roads,” Leonardo said.
He later added that the plan would “extend Measure C’s legacy” by “managing the system we have in order to increase safety and avoid LA-style congestion.”
In short, the plan posits itself as the only choice for voters who primarily want investments to go toward road repair.
“We invest much more significantly in roads,” Leonardo said, “and we invest significantly less in public transit.”
The plan allocates $3.2 billion toward its “fixing local roads program” — which could include road repair and traffic congestion relief services.
The significant investment in local roads, Leonardo said, also helps the county stay competitive for external matching funds from the state and federal governments, that could go toward a host of urban and regional projects.
This framing is not new, and remains the biggest point of friction that led to two separate measures coming before voters in the first place.
First approved by voters in 1986, Measure C added a half-cent of all county sales tax to fund regional road and transportation projects. The 40-year measure was scheduled to be renewed every 20 years, with its next renewal cycle set for this year’s election.
However, like a car crash in slow motion, efforts to renew the half-cent tax measure devolved after county transportation leaders failed to agree on spending priorities for the newest iteration of the measure.
Both the Fix Our Roads plan and the Fresno County Transportation Improvement Act — the competing, rival measure also known as the “Better Roads, Safe Streets” plan — are vying to succeed Measure C ahead of its expiration in summer 2027.
Supporters of the Better Roads, Safe Streets plan say they appreciate its investment toward alternative transportation options, particularly funding for public transportation and bike lanes.
Leonardo said on Thursday that the Fix our Roads plan keeps public transportation funding “at the current level.” He added, however, that the plan also invites local public transportation agencies to “reimagine” the way they provide services, possibly through consolidation or new, creative ways of providing services.
One example Leonardo gave was subsidizing ride sharing services like Lyft and Uber.
“And I’m not saying that’s the solution here,” Leonardo said, “but it’s just an example of out of thinking, ways to improve transit survive without necessarily putting a lot more enlarged buses on the road.”
Leonardo ended his presentation by saying he believes Fresno County will grow “by about two or three-hundred thousand people“ over the next 20 years. The Fix Our Roads plan, he said, is the only plan that can handle that growth.
“How are those people going to get around? It’s not going to happen with buses,” Leonardo said.
The Better Roads Safe Streets plan estimates providing more total revenue, about $7.4 billion, but also asks voters for a 30-year commitment — an ask Leonardo described as short-sighted.
Though it appears that the majority of the board was in support of the Fix Our Roads plan, Supervisors Brian Pacheco and Luis Chavez noted that Thursday’s discussion remained purely “hypothetical” with both measures still not having qualified for the November ballot.
“To me, it’s the cart before the horse,” Pacheco said.
Chavez added that, regardless of what measure the public chooses to back, “my main concern for next year is that we won’t have any funds for our roads. To me, I’m trying to find a process that gets us there.”
Fresno County Clerk/Registrar of Voters James Kus said at Thursday’s meeting that both measures have submitted the required documents to begin their signature gathering process — adding that such measures need about 22,000 signings.
Kus also said those signatures come before him, along with procedural moves by the board and his election’s office, by Aug. 7 to qualify for the November ballot.
The Better Roads, Safe Streets plan has filed the documents legally required by state election officials to begin paying staff, such as signature gatherers. As of Tuesday morning, there is no sign that this document has been submitted by the Fix Our Roads camp.
As he’s done in the past, Board Chair Garry Bredefeld on Tuesday blamed a group of “radicals,” composed mostly of community activists and members of local nonprofit organizations like Fresno Building Healthy Communities and the Central Valley Community Foundation, with tanking the original Measure C renewal plans.
Bredefeld also admonished about a dozen elected leaders like Clovis Councilmember Vong Mouanoutoua for what he’s described as, ceding control and power to these individuals, almost all of which are unelected officials and have no experience in public office.
In a 4-1 vote on Monday, the Clovis City Council voted to support the Better Roads Safe Streets plan. Some councilmembers at the hearing, which lasted over an hour, pushed back on similar claims.
“…it’s a great talking point, that they were crazy radical socialist communists, but it’s so not true,” said Clovis City Councilmember Lynne Ashbeck at the Monday meeting. “And nothing about the process was worse because they engaged. It was actually better.
“Our commitment was ‘One County, One Plan.’ We couldn’t deliver that not because of the people we disagree with,” Ashbeck later added, “but because of our peers…there’s not a lot of honesty going on. “
In the name of fairness, Tuesday’s presentation concluded with the supervisors inviting members leading the rival transportation measure to also come and present their plan to the county board.
Mike Lukens, a spokesperson for the Better Roads Safe Streets plan, told Fresnoland on Tuesday afternoon that the group “will definitely take them up on the offer,” and plans to work with the board to hold their own presentation in the future.
