Fresno City Council approves $2 billion budget, preserves eviction protection

The Fresno City Council unanimously approved a record-breaking $2 billion budget Thursday after Mayor Jerry Dyer reconciled dozens of budget motions in a new proposal.

The revised budget kept the city’s Eviction Protection Program alive, prevented staff downsizing at two fire stations, included a number of road improvements and funding toward organizations supporting the local LGBTQ community. 

In total, 77 of the council’s 110 motions were included in the revised proposal. The vast majority of the adopted motions were cost-neutral, Dyer told the City Council.

Before the budget passed, over a dozen community members, most of whom identified as unhoused, called on city officials to stop funding the Homeless Assistance Response Team (HART) at the Fresno Police Department.

“The HART team, as everybody stated earlier, is quite heartless,” said one unhoused person during public comment. “They are perpetuating the contained homelessness by the sweeps that they do, the degradation, making everybody feel less than human.”

Dyer’s new proposal put $1.5 million toward the Eviction Protection Program, which keeps landlords from illegally evicting tenants. Although not quite the $2 million allocation that Councilmember Tyler Maxwell motioned for, the key homelessness prevention program is no longer up in the air now. 

“I’m grateful for Mayor Dyer’s efforts to help keep this vital resource funded in this upcoming budget,” Maxwell wrote to Fresnoland in a statement. “We feel confident that the current funding will be sufficient to meet our needs this next year.”

Speaking with reporters after the City Council approved the budget, Dyer said the full $2 million wasn’t required to preserve the Eviction Protection Program. 

“In a conversation I had with the city attorney, he felt that $1.5 million was sufficient for him to be able to continue with the eviction protection,” Dyer said. “That’s what ended up in the budget.”

Councilmembers Garry Bredefeld and Mike Karbassi’s motion to prevent staff downsizing at some fire stations was also adopted by Dyer, thanks to rerouting funds that would have increased the city’s retirement contribution for some employees. 

The city has two retirement systems, a separate one for police and fire department employees and another for all other employees. As it stands, the city is currently overfunding both retirement systems.

Karbassi and Bredefeld pushed against increasing retirement contributions for the police and fire retirement system in exchange for fully funding staffing at fire stations. 

“I’m relieved that we have just passed a balanced budget that also includes preserving staffing at 4 full time firefighters for Fire Stations 2, 16, and 17,” Karbassi wrote to Fresnoland in a statement. “It means a better response for residents in that area and greater safety for fire crews working at those stations.”

Dyer’s revised proposal added several infrastructure projects to the budget, including $3.8 million in council motions for specific road improvements. Four of them are in Karbassi’s district and the other two are in Council President Annalisa Perea’s district.

Those budget motions include the following:

• $570,000 for repaving Alluvial Avenue, east of Pacific Avenue
• $200,000 for slurry seal of Royal Coach neighborhood
• $700,000 for repaving Starr Elementary neighborhood
• $220,000 for completing road repairs on Marks Avenue between Sierra and Herndon avenues
• $764,000 for roadway paving in the Griffith/Crystal/Dakota/Hughes neighborhood
• $1,360,000 for roadway paving in the Cornell/West/Clinton/Crystal neighborhood

Last week, Perea motioned for $100,000 to go toward the LGBTQ Resource Center at the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission. She also motioned for $100,000 to go toward grants for local LGBTQ nonprofit organizations. 

Dyer adopted both motions, but at $75,000 for each. 

Dyer also adopted a budget motion from Councilmember Luis Chavez to put $700,000 toward the Mobile Food Vendors Association’s partnership on a project with Cultiva La Salud.

Details on this year’s budget reconciliation is available on the City of Fresno’s website. The full adopted budget document is usually made available to the public three months after council approval.

Police department’s HART team draws criticism

Public comment on Thursday lasted only a little over an hour, but most of it had to do with the HART team at the Fresno Police Department. Unhoused people and advocates called on city officials to stop homeless sweeps and destroying unhoused people’s possessions.

“They do nothing but throw people’s belongings away,” said Adrianna Torres, another community member who spoke during public comment. “They tear these people down. They’re verbally abusive, physically abusive.”

Local housing and homelessness advocate Dez Martinez also spoke during public comment, criticizing Dyer for creating the homeless task force while he was police chief. 

“I will address it as the homeless task force because it is not close to a HART team — it is the heartless team right now,” Martinez said inside council chambers. “They’re coming out there and they’re literally beating us up.” 

In response to criticism of how the city has handled homelessness, Bredefeld said homeless people should take control of their lives and stop demanding more resources from the city.

“Stop doing drugs, stop abusing yourself, stop complaining, accept responsibility for your life,” Bredefeld said. “Coming here every week — demanding that we give you more and more and we’re not doing enough and you’re just a victim — will never turn your life around.”

While sitting inside council chambers, Martinez objected to Bredefeld’s comments. Council President Perea gave Martinez multiple warnings to stop being disruptive before ordering her to be removed from council chambers. 

Martinez was escorted out of Fresno City Hall by two Fresno police officers.

Later in the day, Dyer spoke highly of the HART team and said its team members provide “an enormous amount of services” to unhoused people in Fresno.

“We spend about $15 million every single year on those that are in our shelters, plus what we spend on HART,” Dyer said. “So there’s a lot of services being provided, and I know it’s never enough for people that are in need.”

Fresno’s new budget process not all that different, mayor says

Fresno’s budget negotiation process was different for the first time since 2018. For several years, the Fresno City Council convened a committee to reconcile the budget with the mayor’s administration following budget hearings.

Instead of meeting with a committee this year, Dyer met with councilmembers 1-on-1 to reconcile the budget. In terms of accommodating the council’s budget priorities, Dyer said the budget process was largely consistent with years past.

“The system was to meet with council members, communicate with them, prioritize their projects, prioritize their motions, and then be able to bring back a balanced budget,” Dyer said. 

Last August, a Fresnoland investigation questioned whether Fresno’s budget process may have violated California’s Brown Act — a state law that requires transparency from local governments and public agencies. 

Three months after the investigation, the ACLU of Northern California and the First Amendment Coalition sued the City of Fresno over its “secret budget committee,” alleging its private meetings violated state law and should have been open to the public. 

Fresnoland also found that among California’s 10 largest cities, Fresno was the only one that claimed its private budget committee was exempt from state transparency law. Instead of making the council’s budget committee public, like most other large cities in California, the City Council opted to do away with the committee altogether. 

Dyer did not say much else about the budget negotiation process, other than meeting with councilmembers individually.