Good morning! It’s Friday, Nov. 13. This is Rob.
‘Ready for something different’: Council candidate Naindeep Singh declared victory in the Fresno City Council D1 race, just days after opening up an insurmountable lead. Opponent Rob Fuentes conceded the race one day earlier. Instagram
Hello? Another day, another failure to release the police body camera footage of the bogus DUI arrest of Singh just 10 days before the polls closed. The Fresno City Attorney’s Office has been saying the footage would be released within a week for almost two weeks now. But maybe today is the day.
Baby boom! The Fresno Chaffee Zoo has seen more than two dozen births over the past few years. ABC30
1. Supervisors ignore ‘catastrophic’ warnings
Fresno County’s three Republican supervisors ignored “catastrophic” environmental warnings Thursday and rammed through a decades-long deal allowing the CEMEX to mine blast the San Joaquin River.
The supervisors said they trusted the actions CEMEX has promised to take to prevent environmental disasters and said they did not want to risk the job loss that could come if they rejected the company’s proposal.
A long string of CEMEX employees took turns at the microphone during Thursday’s hearing, discussing the stable careers and steady opportunities they said the company provides for workers.
The vote came after the key swing vote, Supervisor Garry Bredefeld, a San Joaquin River Conservancy board member, got CEMEX to agree to fund up to an extra $150,000 a year for the City of Fresno’s roads.
Thursday’s 3-2 fell exclusively along party lines, with the board’s three Republican members — Bredefeld, Buddy Mendes and Nathan Magsig — supporting the mine blast and the two Democrats, Brian Pacheco and Luis Chavez, casting the opposing votes.
Chavez criticized the vote, not only for its possible environmental concerns, but also for what he described as lame-duck politics. He said the board deliberately put the vote off until after the midterm elections to avoid more political fallout.
👉 Read the full Fresnoland story here.
2. ICE restrictions in Fresno?
Meanwhile, the Fresno City Council on Thursday announced a flashy step they said would restrict immigration operations from staging on city-owned property.
The 6-1 vote, with Councilmember Nick Richardson dissenting, prohibits ICE from operating raid operations on city land.
Fresno’s Republican mayor, Jerry Dyer, said he supported the move as long as “there’s not an expectation that we’re going to have armed police officers going out and confronting armed ICE agents. Because I can’t see any good come from that.”
More than 200 people have been detained by ICE in the Central Valley since early October. And legal observers from the Valley Watch Network, like Gloria Hernandez, have seen staging in downtown Fresno.
👉 Read the Fresnoland story here.
3. Council pauses vote on license-plate reader tech
The Fresno City Council temporarily hit the breaks on a vote to beef up restrictions on the use of licence plate reader technology.
Fresno city leaders have already announced plans to cut ties with Flock Safety, the company that became synonymous with controversial automated license plate readers for law enforcement agencies.
The discussion returns Dec. 3, at the next city council meeting after councilmembers said they wanted more community engagement ahead of the vote. It wasn’t immediately clear what that engagement might look like.
Fresno resident David Bueller: “These systems are not secure; their effectiveness is questionable at best, and quite frankly, we should not be using them, regardless of who the specific vendor is, whether it’s Flock or Axon or Motorola or whoever.”
👉 Read the Fresnoland story here.
Today’s newsletter was edited by Danielle Bergstrom.
