Good morning! Happy Monday, Sept. 29. It’s National VFW Day and National Coffee Day!
😎 Highs in the low 80s today, with a “slight chance” of rain in parts of Fresno County this morning.
🥒 The California Fresh Farmers Market Association is hosting a Pickle Party Encore from 5 to 9 p.m. this Tuesday at the River Park Farmers Market. More info
🚚 More trucking rules: The Trump administration launched another crackdown over the weekend, tightening the rules for commercial truck drivers. ABC30
🍁 Fall foliage, in California? Here’s the best time to visit Yosemite National Park for some of the best leaf peeping in the nation. The Fresno Bee
🥳 Fresno’s annual Guelaguetza festival, highlighting Oaxacan culture, brought out hundreds. KSEE
1. Fresno enters the public banking chat
A group of local and statewide poverty-fighting organizations want Fresno to reimagine how it does its banking, Julianna Morano reports for Fresnoland.
Fresno, which ranked ninety-seventh out of 100 in small business lending in a national study just over a year ago, lags behind the rest of the country in providing its residents access to capital.
Some proponents believe a model relatively new to American soil (with the exception of one state) could change that.
That example is what’s known as a public bank.
Unlike the Chases and the Wells Fargos of the world, public banks are owned by local governments and operate as nonprofits.
Their deposits are made up of local tax revenues. They offer loans to finance local needs, such as affordable housing and infrastructure projects. As loans get repaid, it generates more revenue for future local projects.
Eric Payne, Central Valley Urban Institute executive director: “We know that Wall Street isn’t going to give us the pass that we need. It’s going to have to come from us.”
2. Friant Roulette
“Tens of thousands of drivers cross the intersection at Friant Road and Shepherd Avenue every day. And if they’re lucky, they make it out safely,” KVPR reports.
The north Fresno intersection has been called “Friant Roulette.”
Dan Wells and his son decided at one point to set up two security cameras right above their tall brick wall in their backyard to monitor the intersection and document.
“Their videos started going to a YouTube channel named “Friant Roulette” three years ago. Since then, they have posted nearly 100 videos and amassed over 14,700 subscribers. Some people tune into a livestream that runs 24/7 and catches real-time tragedy.”
Dan Wells: We were hearing a lot of accidents, a lot of sirens, a lot of problems that were going screeching, breaking, and crashing behind our fence. About every week, we’d catch something happening.”
3. Council to file claim against Fresno bus drivers union
The City of Fresno plans to file an unfair labor practice claim against the city’s bus drivers union for what councilmembers described as union negotiators reneging on a signed deal, Fresnoland’s Julianna Morano reports.
The Fresno City Council voted 4-2 on Thursday, directing the city attorney to file the claim with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board against the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1027.
Two councilmembers say that after the city and ATU Local 1027 had reached a tentative agreement over a new bus drivers’ contract, negotiators for the union went back and campaigned for their members to vote down the agreement.
That’s something they said they’ve never seen before. Union leaders have yet to respond to the claims from the city.
Today’s newsletter was edited by Danielle Bergstrom.
