Good morning! It’s Wednesday, Sept. 16. This is Rob.
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Dome Fire: A wildfire sparked Tuesday inside Yosemite National Park and consumed more than 100 acres. YourCentralValley
Yeah, it’s racist: Recent survey asks about Fresno city council candidate’s age, religion and turban. The Fresno Bee
First amendment under fire: Fresno State’s Institute for Media and Trust is hosting a panel to celebrate Constitution Day this Thursday at 5:00 p.m. at the Smittcamp Alumni House.
Retirement cuts: Retired Fresno Diocese employees will no longer receive retirement benefits starting next year as the church tries to claw out from under more than 150 clergy sex abuse claims. YourCentralValley
$60 million: Fresno Pacific University says they received the largest single charitable gift in Central Valley history. The Business Journal
Claw-some! The Kingsburg Crayfish Festival returns this weekend. ABC30
1. Friant Ranch gets another vote
The longstanding Friant Ranch new town proposal returns to the Fresno County Planning Commission this week, the latest attempt to greenlight a new city on property owned by former Madera County Assemblymember Frank Bigelow.
The estimated $1.1 billion plan calls for 2,500 homes, most of them for residents 55 and older, on about 1000 acres. It would essentially build a new town, roughly the size of Fowler, just south of the town of Friant.
Supporters tout the plan as “the Central Valley’s first master-planned retirement community for Active Adults.”
Even so, the county’s environmental review for Bigelow’s billion dollar proposal concludes that such an ambitious undertaking would leave few lasting environmental impacts.
Friant Ranch previously was approved by the county in 2011, but was killed in a 2018 California Supreme Court ruling that found the environmental review was flawed.
Read the full Fresnoland story here.
2. The money race
Both candidates in one of the more bare-knuckle races for the Fresno City Council pulled in big fundraising dollars as the November mid-term elections headed into its home stretch, GV Wire reports.
Primary frontrunner Naindeep Singh collected $55,300 during the latest reporting period, which still easily outpaced his opponent, Rob Fuentes.
But Fuentes also appeared to pick up fundraising momentum in August, collecting about $29,800, including big donations from Karen Spencer and the city firefighters and teachers unions.
Both candidates have endured controversy since the June primary.
On Monday, the Fresno County Young Democrats called on Singh to pull out of the race because of his support of Harmeet Dhillon, who holds the top civil rights post in President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice.
Fuentes has drawn scrutiny over his previous ties to the Trump administration justice department and his work on ICE-related court cases.
3. Tiki bars, cigar lounges and the slow-moving bullet train
California’s High-Speed Rail Authority paid nearly $600,000 in “unallowable travel reimbursements,” CalMatters reports.
According to an investigation released Tuesday by the inspector general that oversees the agency, the questionable reimbursements reportedly included “questionable locations that appear unrelated to state business,” including “trips to gyms, a nightclub, an escape room, a tiki bar and a cigar lounge over a two-year period.”
“Paying for travel when it is not necessary or when it exceeds what is allowed by state regulations or the contract terms is waste of public funds and is behavior inconsistent with the Authority’s role as the steward of public resources,” the Office of the Inspector General report reads.
Matt Rocco, spokesperson for the high-speed rail authority, told CalMatters that the agency “takes these findings seriously.”
Today’s newsletter was edited by Danielle Bergstrom.
