Fresno Ballot Measure Update: Supes Stall, City Going It Alone

Fresno County’s 40-year-old transportation sales tax, Measure C, is set to expire next summer. After years of failed renewal talks, and a failed ballot measure, the county Board of Supervisors just walked away from the one chance to replace it county-wide before the money runs out. 

Two weeks ago, the Supervisors were given a choice: approve a measure for the fall ballot that already earned enough signatures, or stall until 2028 by requiring a study that most likely cannot be completed in time to meet this year’s ballot. Having already failed to get a measure that would have directed more funds to road and highway expansion for this year, the Supes decided to also scuttle the citizen’s measure.

Now the city of Fresno is rushing its own sales tax onto the November ballot, which will help the city’s residents if it passes but do nothing for anyone who lives outside the city limits.

A County Board Says No, a City Says, “Fine, We’ll Do It Ourselves”

With the clock ticking on Measure C a broad coalition of community and social justice groups, organized as Moving Forward Together and backed by former Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, spent the last several months gathering signatures for a citizen initiative called Better Roads, Safe Streets.

That effort hit a wall on July 14, when a 3-2 majority of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors voted to order a 30-day staff study of the measure’s impacts rather than simply placing it on the November ballot. Board Chair Garry Bredefeld, along with Supervisors Buddy Mendes and Nathan Magsig, made up the majority. Magsig spent more than an hour questioning the measure’s drafters before concluding it was too “prescriptive” in how it dictated spending. Board Vice Chair Luis Chavez and Supervisor Brian Pacheco voted against the study, favoring a direct vote to put the measure on the ballot.

The vote followed partisan lines with the board’s three Republican members preferring a study and letting a transportation sales tax expire versus two Democrats who wanted to let voters have the final say.

The practical effect of the delay is almost certainly to kill the measure’s chances this year. The county has an Aug. 7 deadline to qualify something for the November ballot, and staff told the board the 30-day study would likely take the entire allotted time—leaving no room to also call the special meeting that would be needed to place the item on the ballot before the deadline. Absent that narrow path, Better Roads, Safe Streets won’t reach voters until the March 2028 primary at the earliest.

Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer, a Republican, didn’t hide his frustration, telling reporters immediately after the meeting that he believed voters should have been allowed to decide the measure themselves. 

“I think this is voter suppression, quite frankly,” Dyer told Fresno’s ABC affiliate.

Mendota Mayor Victor Martinez, a Republican, accused the board of stalling the measure because members “really just don’t like us.”

Nine days later, Fresno city leaders held their own news conference. Unable to wait on the county, Dyer, City Council President Nelson Esparza, and Councilmember Mike Karbassi introduced a general sales tax measure of their own, the Fresno Public Safety Infrastructure Restoration and Essential Services Act. This act would have Fresno City residents pay the same amount of taxes they do now after Measure C expires. This time, the funds will go directly to the city. 

Esparza said the supervisors’ decision put “millions of dollars in road funding” at risk and put the city in a position where it had only a matter of days to draft an alternative.

“I would rather not be standing here,” Esparza said at the Thursday news conference, according to Fresnoland. “Measure C has served this county well over the decades, and I would rather have had a continuation of that, but that’s not where we find ourselves.”

Critically, the city’s proposal only applies inside Fresno city limits. It does nothing for Clovis, Mendota, or any of the county’s unincorporated communities and rural areas—all of which currently rely on Measure C dollars. 

Clovis stands to lose an estimated $6.34 million a year without a replacement, according to city spokesperson Taylor Danielson, and the Fresno County Rural Transit Authority is projected to lose about $4 million annually, per general manager Janelle Del Campo. Neither agency has announced service or staffing cuts yet, but both say they’re studying the fallout after the Supervisors failed them.

Two Very Different Taxes

Strip away the politics, and the two proposals, Better Roads, Safe Streets and the city’s new stopgap tax, look almost identical on paper: both are half-cent sales taxes, both are meant to replace Measure C revenue, and both would be paid by anyone spending money in the taxed jurisdiction. But how the money would be spent, who benefits, and how the tax is legally structured are entirely different.

Better Roads, Safe Streets, the citizen-led countywide initiative, would have applied a half-cent sales tax across all of Fresno County and dedicate every dollar to transportation. Under its spending formula:

• 65% would go to existing neighborhood streets and roads—pavement, potholes, safety fixes, sidewalks, and local infrastructure
• 25% would fund public transportation, including bus operations and transit service countywide.
• 5% would go toward regional connectivity—major roadways, arterials, and interchanges
• 4% would support “transportation innovation,” including EV infrastructure and discounted fares for seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities.
• 1% would fund administration, oversight, audits and planning

Because it’s a citizen initiative rather than a government-placed measure, it only needed a simple majority to pass, rather than the two-thirds threshold that has doomed prior county-sponsored Measure C renewals. (The 2022 attempt to extend Measure C, which needed a two-thirds vote, got “just” 58% support.)

The city of Fresno’s tax is structured as a general tax; the city has full discretion on how to spend that money. Politically, it would be difficult for Dyer and current leadership to spend that money on anything besides transportation, but they won’t be running the city forever and new leadership can do as they please. There’s no guarantee any of it goes to transit, and no requirement that a fixed share go toward bike lanes, sidewalks, or other active transportation projects the city’s own draft Active Transportation Plan calls for. City leaders have floated an annual independent audit and a possible oversight committee but committed none of the revenue to a specific purpose.

Esparza acknowledged the general-tax route was chosen mostly out of necessity. “This general tax is really the only pathway we could see here in the short term,” he told reporters, as quoted by KMPH, given the narrow window between the county’s vote and the city council’s final meeting before the ballot deadline.

Because it’s a general tax, the city’s measure needs only a simple majority to pass, but for a much narrower and less transportation-specific purpose. If approved, it would take effect July 1, 2027, the day after Measure C expires, and would sunset after 10 years or as soon as a countywide transportation tax takes its place, whichever comes first.

What Happens Next, and What’s Riding on It

For the city’s tax to reach voters at all, the Fresno City Council first has to approve placing it on the ballot. A vote is expected at the council’s last meeting before the filing deadline for the November ballot. Councilmember Nick Richardson told Fresnoland he’d heard nothing about the plan before the mayor’s news conference, a sign of how quickly City Hall assembled the proposal. If the council signs off, voters would then need to approve it by a simple majority in November.

There is still a chance that the Better Roads, Safe Streets proposal could make this fall’s ballot, but it’s wildly unlikely given the calendar and the politics. County staff have 30 days to complete their study of the measure, the same study the board majority ordered instead of an up-or-down vote, and the board chair, Bredefeld, controls the calendar for calling any special meeting that could still place the item on the ballot before the Aug. 7 cutoff. A majority of supervisors could also call such a meeting under state law, but with Bredefeld among the study’s chief backers, advocates are all but ruling it out.

The costs of the Supervisor’s inaction are steep and well-documented. County Public Works staff have projected that Measure C’s expiration without a replacement could mean roughly 90 layoffs among county road crews and engineers.

On the city side, Mayor Dyer has said Fresno stands to lose $54 million a year and as many as 217 jobs across its public works, capital projects, transportation, and airport departments if its own measure fails.