Good morning! It’s Monday, Oct. 19. This is Rob.
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Dome Fire: The 6,788-acre fire that sparked Sept. 15 is fully contained following firefighter efforts over the weekend. ABC30
Stealing from the homeless: The Cornerstone Church says thieves made off with at least $10,000 worth of donated items sometime last week, including clothing, shoes and laundry products used to help the city’s unhoused residents. KMPH
Kearney Park: Dinner theater takes you back to Prohibition Era Fresno with a five course meal, cocktails and a chance to solve the crime. The first show is set for Oct. 22. Fresno City & County Historical Society
1. Where’s the water?
Friant Ranch is a billion-dollar, decades-old proposal to build a new town just south of the community of Friant, aiming to grow to the size of the city of Fowler.
It could get its final approval Tuesday at the Fresno County Hall of Records, but as Fresnoland’s Gregory Weaver reports, plans for the community’s water supply are built on claims the federal government says are false.
To get through a drought, Fresno County’s analysis claims that the town can count on a multi-year supply of water stored in Millerton Lake.
But the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which controls releases from the lake, told Fresnoland that can’t happen.
Water can be held behind the dam for only one year, not multiple, according to David Hyatt, the Bureau’s resource management division chief.
Fresno County’s planning department has a history of approving foothill subdivisions whose water systems later failed, including recent attention-grabbing headlines out of Shaver Springs and Mirabella.
👉 Check out the full Fresnoland story here.
2. More Tower District violence
Two people suffered non-life-threatening gunshot wounds early Sunday in the Tower District, the fourth such incident in six months. No arrests have been reported, The Fresno Bee reports.
Fresno Police Chief Mindy Casto said a large crowd had gathered in the Tower District to celebrate the Zombie Crawl when nine shots were fired around 12:17 a.m. outside MIA nightclub on Olive Avenue near Linden Avenue.
“One very dramatically pulls out a firearm and fires those nine shots,” she said. “We’re very fortunate more people weren’t hit last night with the number of rounds fired in the Tower District.”
On Sunday, Casto told reporters that she expects an arrest to be made “not very long.”
The chief said the shooting was the fourth in the Tower District in the past six months.
MIA club owners released a statement over the weekend, saying in part: “Our management team, along with the Fresno Police Department, has reviewed surveillance footage showing individuals coming into view of our cameras from farther down the street before a verbal altercation escalated on the public sidewalk.”
Sunday’s early-morning violence comes amid a massive police department weekend deployment spree in the Tower District that The Bee says has seen policing costs explode by more than 900%.
A community meeting is planned later this week. More details here.
3. Fresno says no to Kings, again and again
Thousands of Fresno-area residents took to the stress over the weekend protesting Trump administration anti-immigrant campaigns that have hit the Central Valley hard with voting in next month’s midterm election already underway.
The rallies marked the second consecutive weekend of No Kings demonstrations in the region.
Last weekend, crowds gathered in Fresno and Kerman.
Protesters also assembled Saturday evening outside the Tower Theatre in Fresno for a second straight night, and in Clovis.
Protester David Alvarez: “It’s just a bunch of hard-working people that are being affected. Just our neighbors, everyday people that we should love and really just help them out. They’re people just like us.”
Today’s newsletter was edited by Danielle Bergstrom.
