Two candidates are running in the Nov. 3 election to vote on a representative for District 4 in the Clovis City Council’s first district elections.
District 4 stretches across northeast Clovis, roughly north of Bullard Avenue and east of Sunnyside Avenue, out along Highway 168 past Harlan Ranch. It also includes the city’s landfill island about five miles north of city limits.
Read more about where candidates stand on key issues below.
Matt Basgall
- Job: Clovis City Councilmember and former Clovis police chief
- Age: 59
- Residency: Shepherd and Temperance
- Notable endorsements: Clovis Public Works Employees Affiliation, Clovis Peace Officers Association, Fresno Deputy Sheriff’s Association, Clovis Firefighters
Who is Basgall?
Basgall’s family moved to Clovis when Basgall was 5. Apart from a few years in Fresno and a couple of years away at school, Basgall has lived in Clovis most of his adult life.
Basgall joined the Clovis Police Department in December 1990 and stayed almost 29 years, working as a sexual assault investigator, a neighborhood corporal and a youth services sergeant before serving as chief for the last six years.
Basgall retired in December 2019, earlier than planned, after Basgall’s wife was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She now shows no signs of cancer but will be in treatment for the rest of her life, Basgall said.
The Basgalls have been married 35 years. Both of their daughters graduated from Buchanan High School.
When the Great Recession hit in 2008 and 2009, Basgall was a lieutenant. The department went from 116 officers to 91, and its command staff was cut to four people, Basgall said.
“From going through the most amount of crises that you could possibly imagine going through, I learned everything I could possibly imagine learning during that time frame, from budgets to personnel issues to staffing issues,” Basgall said.
Because the remaining officers had to work extra shifts, injuries rose, and the department was effectively down to 75 officers, Basgall said. “It just is a vicious cycle when you don’t have enough staffing.”
Why is Basgall running?
Basgall first ran for council in 2022 to get a public safety measure passed. After retiring, Basgall wrote letters urging the council to form a citizens advisory committee to look at the police department’s needs. As chief, Basgall said, the warning was always the same: “We’re at the breaking point when it comes to what our people can do. We were maxed out.”
“It was always the same thing, we’re going to get you four to six officers, but budget would never allow for that to happen,” Basgall said. “I think Measure Y was the big, big reason why I ran in the first place.”
Measure Y brought in about $30 million in its first year, and voters approved it with 70% of the vote, Basgall said. Without it, the city would have faced a $5 million hole in last year’s budget and would not have hired any more police officers, Basgall said.
“Nobody likes taxes. I don’t like to promote taxes. But if we want to talk about local control and being able to control our own destiny with certain things, I think that’s one that we definitely should invest in.”
Asked how Measure Y got over the finish line, Basgall said: “Well, I would say not one individual carried it over the finish line.” “It took all five of us as council members to agree to do this. If we wouldn’t have had a 5-0 council, this wouldn’t have passed.”
Before running, Basgall said, he asked the police department’s leadership to tell him if they weren’t comfortable with it.
What does the ‘Clovis way of life’ mean to Basgall?
For Basgall, it comes down to residents backing their police department. “Public safety is only as successful as the public allows it to be. So if your community doesn’t support your police department and they don’t call you and they don’t tell you when crime is happening, then you’re not going to have the success and continue that community, that Clovis way of life,” Basgall said.
Basgall pointed to citizen surveys rating the department above 90% year after year, and said Clovis is continuously the safest city in the Valley, “And that only happens because the citizens want it to happen.”
Response times are part of it: the department’s goal has been to reach priority-one calls in under five minutes. But officers also need to spend at least half their time on proactive work, Basgall said. “When you get so busy that you can’t be proactive as a police department, that’s when you really start to have more problems.”
How does Basgall view the switch to district elections?
Basgall said one of the biggest concerns about switching to districts was whether council members would look out only for their own part of town. “When we become possessive of just our area and not thinking about the whole city, then that’s going to be an issue,” Basgall said. “Now do I only care about my part of town, or am I caring about the entire city?”
“I don’t think that’ll happen right away … but it could,” Basgall said. Over time, council members running for re-election could start to focus more on their own areas.
What are Basgall’s priorities for District 4?
Water and sewer for the city’s growth to the north.
Basgall said the Northeast urban village would likely be built within the next decade – requiring lots of new infrastructure.
“As far as the northeast …, it’ll be within 10 years, most likely … Because they’re already starting to look to build the homes,” he said. “I always bring up water and sewer, and everything on the north is going to be a huge challenge,”
The major cost will be building a new water treatment plant to serve the north, at a cost of $50 million to $100 million, Basgall said. “Who’s paying for that, right?”
“The reason why it’s not talked about a lot is because nobody knows how to pay for it,” Basgall said. Basgall said he believes the city won’t have the bonding capacity to help build it until 2032, and noted that he and the council are already being proactive about this new growth. They will start tackling how to pay for it after the first of the year, he said.
“If we can’t make that work, then we can’t grow,” Basgall said. “It can all look great on paper, but if you don’t have water and sewer, none of it matters.”
Measure Y money will also let the city put a new fire station on the north end, near Minnewawa and Teague avenues, where Lennar, Bonadelle and DeYoung developments and an elementary school are coming, Basgall said.
Response times in Harlan Ranch are sometimes slower because it’s the farthest point of the city, Basgall said, but they’re getting better now that more officers are on the street and the police department has opened a new beat on the north end.
How should Clovis grow?
Asked whether Clovis can reach 200,000 people and still be Clovis, Basgall said yes, with a condition: “I think it can, but it’s also, like I said, it has to be done in a controlled manner.”
“Anytime you get bigger, there’s always a risk of losing something,” Basgall said. Keeping Clovis what it is means maintaining public safety, infrastructure and parks. The city lost some of that during the recession, when the police department fell to 91 officers and its favorable rating from residents dropped from the 90s to about 75% because there was nobody to respond to calls, Basgall said.
Growth also has to work around traffic. Shepherd Avenue has been shut down three or four different times for different projects, Basgall said. Each development pays to widen only its own piece of the road, leaving the rest for the next developer.
“If the city had the ability to bond 100 million dollars and could put that out, we would be able to run Shepherd and clean it all up and have it done in one swoop and then have the developers reimburse the city. But we don’t have the bonding capacity.”
The city used up its bonding capacity in the recession and has to pay off those bonds before it can borrow again, Basgall said.
Would Basgall support a homeless shelter in Clovis?
Basgall said he doesn’t support a homeless shelter being built in Clovis – saying adding beds alone isn’t the answer. “It’s a bigger problem than just saying, let’s build a shelter. You build a shelter and what are we getting out of that? I mean, are we really helping people to get them off the streets, or is it just a temporary solution?”
Instead, Basgall pointed to the police department’s new liaisons for unhoused people, including a full-time staffer who goes out with mental health professionals to find placements for people.
What about water rates and taxes?
The council passed a water rate increase last year to help cover the cost of aging pipes, after rates hadn’t gone up in roughly 20 years, Basgall said.
Basgall would not support raising water rates again to pay for construction. “I wouldn’t want to raise people’s water rates any further, especially right now,” Basgall said. “If it means that growth has to slow in order to figure that out, then so be it.”
Basgall also would not push for a new tax. “That’s not something I would bring forward to try and push,” Basgall said. “Where we’re at right now, I don’t see us having to do that, to push any other types of taxes or anything like that.”
To pay for a new water plant, Basgall suggested a Mello-Roos district, in which buyers of new homes in the area pay for the facility over many years, or developers finding a way to help pay for it.
What have previous councils gotten wrong?
Basgall said he doesn’t have any problems with how the council has voted on issues that affect the district.
“I don’t think it’s wrong at this point – it is what is is and we just need to make the best of it,” he said.
Who are Basgall’s top donors?
As of Sept. 30, the top donors to Basgall’s campaign in 2026 include:
- $5,000 from Todd Cook, of the Cook Land Company
- $5,000 from Clovis Firefighters Association PAC
- $2,500 from the Clovis Police Officers Association PAC
- $2,500 from Valley Housing Affordability Advocates PAC, a group of local suburban developers
- $2,500 from Steven Spencer
- $2,500 from Richard Spencer
- $2,500 from Debbie Agostini, co-owner of Agostini Restaurants, who runs several McDonalds franchises
Brian Wilson
- Job: Retired fire captain
- Age: Not provided
- Residency: None provided
- Notable endorsements: None provided
Who is Wilson?
Yes, this is the Brian Wilson who shows up at Clovis City Council meetings. “Yeah, that’s me. I’ve been attending on and off,” Wilson said. (Not the former Giants closer, and not related to the famous Beach Boy leader singer: “No, and I don’t sing.”)
Wilson’s involvement goes back to the early 1990s, when he said he joined residents fighting a push for smaller lots that instigated the FBI’s Operation Rezone corruption investigation. Wilson said the group helped elect new council members who wouldn’t cow to the big developers.
“We were able to flip the city council and get that fixed,” Wilson said. “We knew something was up. We just didn’t know what was up.”
After Fresno and Clovis’ leaders got popped for bribes by the FBI, Wilson stepped away. “When the city’s going great, you want to see one person sitting in the chambers there, and that means everything’s great.”
Wilson came back about three and a half years ago, after a friend who builds pools said new backyards were too small for them. Wilson also sat in on a citizens advisory committee on policing and walked away alarmed.
The city was building tiny lots again, without a plan to staff the new areas without adequate police, he said.
“I was shocked that Clovis had kind of slipped so far into the hole with their law enforcement,” Wilson said. “We were back down to like ’97 level of policing in Clovis. (‘97 was the year before the FBI got developer John Bonadelle on a string of bribes.)
Wilson said Basgall, as police chief, “could have been a little bit more boisterous about it.” Wilson credited the current chief with taking the problem public: “And I was shocked because it was kind of hidden.”
Why is Wilson running?
Wilson believes in term limits, because “power too long skews your perspective,” and said: “I figured a new voice on the council.”
Wilson said the campaign started when Wilson believed Basgall was leaving the race, and continued after Basgall got back in.
“I’m a man of my word. I’m going to follow through. I already told people I was running.”
“No one else stepped up in District 4. So I basically just stayed in. If somebody else would have stepped up, I probably would have not done it. But I think somebody ought to have a choice when they go to a ballot box,” Wilson said.
Wilson also said the council needs younger members. “We’re all old on the council now. We need some young people on there.”
“I’m not really that political,” Wilson said.
How does Wilson view the switch to district elections?
Wilson liked having five council members to lobby.
“If I had a problem, I could go to all five of them, and I could sway them a little bit,” Wilson said. “I’m worried that the districts will change that over time. I’m hoping it won’t because I think all the city council works for the entire city.”
What are Wilson’s priorities for District 4?
Roads, starting with new development that improves only one side of the street. “I don’t like the roads only getting half done. You can see that going up Fowler Avenue where you’ve got development on one side, all these ranchettes on the other side,” Wilson said.
Wilson’s fix: “You tell the developer, no, you take over the whole street. You take from side to side. If you want to be the first one in the neighborhood, you develop both sides of the street to our standards, period.”
Whoever later develops the other side would pay back its half, Wilson said.
Wilson also wants the city to take on county roads that Clovis drivers depend on, like Behymer Avenue, which Wilson called “the new east-west freeway of Clovis.”
“It’s barely a cow trail,” Wilson said.
The county owns those roads, but “it’s our citizens of Clovis that are using those roads,” Wilson said, and the city, county and developers should split the cost of fixing them.
Wilson objects to the city’s plan to bring water, but not city-standard roads, into a county island of ranchettes near Sunnyside, Nees and Fowler avenues.
“That’s a slippery slope in the long run, because they do it here, and why can’t I do it in mine?”
At the north end of the district, residents near the planned Vista Ranch development are worried about traffic on roads that aren’t being improved, Wilson said.
“We’re not fixing them, but we’re going to add in a whole 3,000 more people out there.”
Farther northeast, the land itself is the obstacle. “When you get up in those pre-foothills, I’ll call them, just that kind of range starts going uphill. That’s going to be another hurdle on how they handle sewer, water,” Wilson said. “You have to have lift stations. It’s a lot more infrastructure.”
Wilson counts the water system as public safety: “Fire Department can’t put out any fires without water.” Citywide, Wilson said, Old Town’s pipes need work: “The infrastructure in that ground is probably 100 years old.”
How should Clovis grow?
“I think we’re probably growing at a little fast pace now, faster than I would want to grow. But we’re probably about right, just a little on the fast side,” Wilson said.
Clovis will eventually run out of room, Wilson said: “At some point we’re going to run into Sanger. We’re already into Fresno.” Wilson’s ceiling: “A number is tough, but 300,000, probably being our max.”
“I’m not talking next week. I’m talking in 60 years.”
Wilson wants more manufacturing, to lean less on retail sales tax that can fall off in a downturn.
“We don’t really build a lot of stuff here or make a lot of stuff here, except for beer.”
Would Wilson support a homeless shelter in Clovis?
Only one run outside government.
“It has to have the right locations. I have no problem with that,” Wilson said. But “I’m not for permanent housing on the … state government or the city government side. It needs to be handled by community groups, non-government organizations.”
“If a church wants to put one up, I have no problem with that,” Wilson said, while acknowledging: “I don’t know what the answers are. I don’t have an answer to that, I’m perfectly frank.”
What has the council gotten wrong?
Besides police staffing, Wilson questioned the council’s recent vote to drop several parcels, including two in Harlan Ranch, from the sites the city is rezoning for housing because of a lawsuit. He’s worried the city is handing power over its rezones to the state and its judges.
Wilson said some probably never belonged on the list, but worried about the ramifications. “I’m a little concerned with the ramifications because when you change something a court order … told you to do, I don’t know how the judge looks at that,” Wilson said.
“It could be a special master in charge of all zoning. It wouldn’t be anyone from Clovis.”
Who are Wilson’s top donors?
As of Oct. 1, Wilson did not report any contributors to his campaign.
