What’s at stake?
The council approved allocating a record amount of funds toward legal aid for immigrants in the city facing threats of deportation on Thursday, as well as a new designated zone for vendors in the Tower District on weekends after a string of violent incidents on Olive Avenue.
The Fresno City Council voted Thursday to set up a $1 million legal defense fund to support immigrants in the city facing threats of deportation.
The agenda item, sponsored by Councilmember Miguel Arias, passed with an amendment restricting eligibility to residents of the city who have not been convicted of any criminal offense.
The legal aid comes amid a surge in immigration enforcement across California and the Central Valley in the lead up to the midterm elections.
Immigrant rights groups and advocates applauded the move on Thursday with 17 total speakers urging the council to approve it.
“There is no right to a court-appointed attorney in immigration court. That means when a Fresno resident is detained, they can be facing deportation in just a couple days with no one in their corner,” said Sukaina Hussain, the deputy executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center.
“Having a lawyer and having a fund that can provide support for this attorney can severely change that outcome,” she continued, “and can help keep families together.”
Hussain added in her comments that she hopes the investment isn’t just a one-time thing and that she hopes the city partners with “trusted” service providers in the community to offer the legal aid.
Two members of the public spoke out against the fund, including Neil O’Brien, who said that by creating a special legal benefit for one group of residents, the fund “creates two classes of people.”
Councilmembers approved the establishment of the fund 5-1 in a sweeping vote on the council’s consent agenda for the day with Councilmember Nick Richardson registering the lone “no” vote. Council Vice President Tyler Maxwell was absent from Thursday’s meeting.
Richardson originally pulled the item from the consent agenda for discussion, although Councilmember Mike Karbassi successfully motioned to move it back onto consent with the amendment restricting eligibility added on.
This isn’t the first time the city has allocated funds toward legal defense for immigrants. The council previously allocated $200,000 toward a legal defense fund five years ago in another split vote.
Karbassi voted against the budget motion in 2021 that created the fund, alongside a slew of other budget motions. He said in an email to Fresnoland on Tuesday that his vote in 2021 was as a result of promising voters he would vote against any budget that failed to add additional police officers and firefighters to the force, and that it had nothing to do with the individual budget motion itself.
New rules for vendors in the Tower District take effect Thursday
Following a tense, three-hour community meeting the night before, the council voted on Thursday to enact the last of several sweeping changes they say are aimed at enhancing safety in the Tower District neighborhood.
In their vote Thursday, the council greenlit the creation of a designated zone for vendors in the Tower District on weekends, located in the vacant lot on the southwest corner of Olive and Van Ness Avenues.
For the next 90 days, vendors in Tower will be restricted to that lot “between the hours of 6:00 p.m. Thursday to 6 a.m. Monday,” city documents say.
“We’re going to test this out for 90 days, see what works, see what doesn’t work, and hopefully continue to adjust as needed,” said Councilmember Annalisa Perea, who represents the Tower District north of Olive.
“We want to make sure that the vendors are safe as well,” said Mayor Jerry Dyer, “and so we’ve already put in increased lighting on the property, as well as (a) security camera, and we’ll have police presence on that corner as well.”
The council approved the pilot program 6-0 with only brief remarks from the dais and virtually no public comment either in support of or opposition to the new rules.
In an interview following Thursday’s meeting, Veva Islas, a longtime advocate for the city’s mobile food vendors, called the pilot a “positive step forward.”
“I had asked the city to do this a long time ago,” she said. “I have been a proponent (of) establishing designated areas for vendors where they can operate without worry about being booted or unwelcome there.
“I think that’s a positive step forward, especially in contrast to the last ordinance that was really trying to dissuade vendors from being in the Tower,” she added, “and really blaming vendors for the problems of the Tower.”
Islas also had some notes on how the city should ideally implement the program, which is set to go into effect immediately on Thursday night.
“I would say at the front of the line to have space in this lot should be vendors who have their food-handling certification, vendors who have their license with the city, vendors who have their permit with environmental health and vendors who are improving the food environment: that (are) making healthy options available to community members,” she said.
Some vendors, including Crystal Sandoval, operator of Casa del Sazon food truck, have several lingering questions about how the new lot will be run.
“Is it going to be first come, first serve every single time?” she said in an interview Thursday following the meeting. “Or are we going to be taking turns if other vendors want to sell?
“Can we park at that spot during the week as well, or is it only from Thursday and on?”
City council moves forward with pursuing new restrictions for sex offender housing
The council passed several other items on the consent agenda on Thursday, including approving a two-year agreement for the Advance Peace program amounting to $950,000 and a $4.3 million contribution toward an affordable, modular housing project for seniors along the Blackstone corridor to be built by Samuelian Group LLC.
Councilmembers also approved a resolution, sponsored by Karbassi, to explore the feasibility of introducing an ordinance to restrict the number of group homes for sex offenders in the city.
Fresno County passed similar legislation this year, although they were slapped with a lawsuit soon after in February, brought by the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws.
Richardson sided with the rest of the council in voting to approve the resolution but said he was skeptical whether the proposed ordinance would hold up against legal scrutiny.
He also pointed to a similar proposal brought forward by Councilmember Diane Pearce in Clovis, “specifically by someone else who happens to be running for office right now,” Richardson added.
Karbassi is in the middle of a campaign for the District 1 seat on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, while Pearce has said she’ll run for Supervisor Nathan Magsig’s seat if he wins in his bid for the state legislature this November.
“I think getting sued, when it comes to a violent sexual predator, is worth the risk,” Karbassi said in response to Richardson’s concerns.
