What's at stake:
After Wednesday night's vote, SEDA could soon be heading to the city council for a final yes-or-no vote.
Fresno City Hall Wednesday night once again was packed to the rafters with residents who wanted to weigh in on SEDA, and again almost nobody in attendance wanted Mayor Dyer’s $4.3 billion mega-development plan to move forward.
By a raise of hands in front of the commission, a total of five people supported the Southeast Development Area (SEDA).
Speaker after speaker opposed SEDA — farmers inside the plan boundary, residents ranging from downtown to the edge of the San Joaquin River, the superintendent of Central Unified, the president of Fresno Unified’s board, and even a sitting city councilmember — all asking the planning commission to recommend denial or send it back to planning staff.
There were ultimately more people on the commission who supported SEDA than the entire rest of the room, as the commission recommended SEDA to move forward 6-1, with Commissioner Gurdeep Shergill as the lone no vote.
A different commission, a different vote count
The last time SEDA came to the planning commission in November, it barely survived with a 4-3 vote. Commissioners who voted no said the missing financial plan was the reason.
But Wednesday night was ultimately a flex of Fresno’s strong-mayor system.
All of Fresno’s planning commissioners serve at the mayor’s pleasure, and since last fall’s near-debacle for SEDA boosters, two of the commissioners with no votes on the commission were replaced by Dyer.
Commissioners DJ Criner and former chair Peter Vang were replaced by Joseph Giles, a business representative for the Operating Engineers’ Union and Jaime Holt, communications director for the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, who previously served on the Planning Commission during the Swearengin Administration.
The plan for SEDA on Wednesday had no answers to financial questions raised by hesitant commissioners last November. The council-ordered financial analysis for SEDA’s first phase has still not been made public, with a public unveiling scheduled for September.
The newbie commissioners had been instructed to take in as little outside information as possible.
Holt, one of the new Dyer appointees, told the room that commissioners had been instructed by city planning staff — which also reports to Dyer — that their votes could not weigh anything they learned outside the planning commission meeting itself. Only the staff presentation and testimony entered into the public record could count, she said.
Holt disclosed, as if it were a conflict of interest, that she had met Monday with two non-planning staff about SEDA outside the meeting, and assured Planning Director Jennifer Clark that these members of the public “gave me no new information.”
Facing a booing crowd, Holt suggested the vote she was about to cast was close to meaningless.
“The developers would be here tonight if they thought a vote on this actually mattered,” she said.
Members of the crowd shouted back, “Have you read Fresnoland?”
The meeting grew rowdy, and planning staff’s energy grew lousy as the night drew on with questions from the commissioners about why there was no financing plan for the first phase, known as South SEDA.
Another Fresno resident, watching an atypically low-energy staff presentation, yelled:
“Somebody give that guy a Red Bull!”
What the public said
Bill Betts, president of the Betts Company, a local manufacturer, said Fresno was “driving growth to our neighbors in Visalia and Madera.”
The Fresno Chamber of Commerce spoke in favor. So did Invest Fresno and a business development specialist from the county’s economic development corporation, who vouched for the plan’s flexible research-and-development zoning.
But for the rest of the night, residents, students, education and union leaders spoke out in opposition.
Mark Marshall, superintendent of Central Unified, told the commission his board passed a resolution opposing SEDA in April, and asked the city to fund infrastructure west of Highway 99 first.
Debbie Bigum, who lives inside the plan area on a corner lot, said SEDA would incur six-figures costs for existing residents who will be required to connect to city water and sewer. Last year, the mayor promised a community benefit fund meant to cover these costs, but Bigum said the actual language in the new SEDA plan was written in language vague enough to be meaningless.
“The cumulative cost could be more than the value of the home,” she said. “It is not legally binding,” she said about Dyer’s benefit fund.
“In other words, it is just rhetoric… The cost is so prohibitive that the city could never accommodate the need, yet you’re willing to place the burden on us.”
Rod Wade, a southwest Fresno resident in his 50s, said life expectancy on his side of town runs 20 years shorter. With little in the way of grocery stores and banks where he lives, he said, the city needed to focus on investing in its existing neighborhoods.
“They want to build all the fancy stuff on the north side of town, but they want to put the trucks to bring the pollution to our side of town.”
Another SEDA resident, Alan Cederquist, joked that the commission had 50 reasons to vote no on the plan, but due to time constraints, he could only give them three: a $3 billion shortfall not covered by developer fees; growth projections assuming 117,000 new residents when the state Department of Finance projects Fresno’s population to decline, and the impact to enrollment at Fresno Unified schools.
Veva Islas, president of the Fresno Unified board, spoke for roughly 68,000 students. “You will hurt families,” she said. Manuel Bonilla of the Fresno Teachers Association said the harm starts long before a school closes — larger classes, fewer counselors, fewer nurses.
Councilmember Miguel Arias reminded commissioners who put them on the dais. “You’re on this dais because one person selected you,” he said, referencing Dyer.
“And that one person has made his agenda very clear.”
“It is deeply, deeply embarrassing that we are all here tonight,” said Fresno resident Josh Grant.
“How many times can we hand over all of our futures to the same five developers we always do? Planners need to plan, and not rubber stamp the mayor’s latest development deal.”
Commissioners press on financing and community benefits
The commissioners’ own frustration was real, but it just didn’t change anything.
Lyday asked whether the commission could simply wait. “Am I correct in thinking that we don’t actually have a financial analysis right now?” she asked. Planning Director Clark said the analysis would go to the council, hopefully Sept. 3.
“So essentially, you want us to adopt this and recommend,” Lyday said.
Commissioner Calandra, a former city councilmember, pressed on the community benefit fund.
“Without knowing that that actually has funding, how can we recommend this to the council?” she asked.
“There’s questions here that I think are policy issues that need to be answered before I can give a recommendation to the council.”
Calandra voted yes anyways.
Clark’s answer, repeated in several forms across the night, was that SEDA’s financial future was not the planning commissioner’s business.
The general plan requires new growth to pay for itself, Clark said. Because the SEDA plan says new growth will pay for itself, that was proof the plan is consistent with the general plan.
Whether the money actually exists is the council’s problem.
“How the city pays for infrastructure, pays for funds — that is the responsibility of the city council,” she said. “As it relates to the responsibility of this body, you have the responsibility to determine whether or not this plan, as a plan, is consistent with the general plan.”
What the planning commission does, known as consistency findings of a plan under state law, are supposed to rest on substantial evidence. In essence, substantial evidence means actual numbers which back up each claim.
But on Wednesday night, commissioners were told that the claim itself should be treated as the evidence.
Pressed on how SEDA would pay for itself, Clark listed mechanisms rather than a real plan — impact fees, property tax, Mello-Roos assessments, a public-private partnership. Picking one, she said, “would be premature.”
Commissioner Gurdeep Shergill, the lone no vote, kept returning to the neighborhoods already waiting for investment. West Fresno residents are still waiting for basic infrastructure improvements, he said.
“We have this huge plan, these beautiful pictures. Man, they look so beautiful. Why can’t we have it on this side?” The residents’ questions, he said, were not answered.
When Clark told the room the city couldn’t plan as though nothing would ever happen around it, she was booed.
“We are just planning,” she said.
Near the end, Lyday, in an explanation to the booing crowd, chalked up the staff’s answers to nerves.
“Some people are a bit nervous,” she said, “and perhaps can’t answer the questions how they would like.”
Chair Bray, by the end of the night, was fed up.
“If that’s what you really want [a no vote on SEDA], you should start a referendum to make Fresno County a no-growth county.”
With a 6-1 vote, SEDA is now teed up to go to the city council for potential approval.
