What does $1.9 billion buy? See what Fresno council approved in record city budget

A record Fresno city budget of more than $1.9 billion for the 2022-23 fiscal year will add more police officers and firefighters, increase resources for parks and street improvements, and provide more money for housing and shelter programs over the coming year.

The Fresno City Council unanimously voted to adopt the budget Thursday afternoon, after city finance officials worked overnight and into the wee hours of the morning to finalize the documents for approval. The fiscal year begins Friday.

The spending program is the largest budget in the history of the city of Fresno, Council President Nelson Esparza said. “This budget hits all the right notes,” he said. “It focuses on housing, infrastructure, public safety and parks.”

“We’ve passed not a good budget, but a great budget,” Dyer said after the vote. “I really believe this budget demonstrates the values that each and every one of us have.”

The budget was the result of negotiations between Mayor Jerry Dyer’s administration and council members to iron out differences between what the mayor proposed and spending issues identified by the city council during budget hearings in June.

Dyer said his original budget rollout was balanced between revenue and spending. Over the course of budget hearings, council members offered 94 different motions for specific changes or additions that threw the plan out of balance by about $60 million.

“But we were able to sit down over this last week and tirelessly look at each of the motions, find out if we could delay some of those projects,” Dyer said. “Council members were very flexible and willing to set (some of) those aside for a later time.”

Among the highlights:

• More than $234 million in spending for the Fresno Police Department, including adding 37 new police officers to boost the total sworn force to 888, the largest number of officers in the department’s history.

• Just over $100 million for the Fresno Fire Department, which will allow for putting 103 firefighters on duty each day across the city compared to 88 per day two years ago, Dyer said.

• The city’s Parks, Recreation and Community Services Department is getting a record $108.7 million, after the city received about $58.3 million in the first year of revenue from Measure P, a sales tax of three-eighths of 1% to support parks and cultural arts in the city. Measure P was passed by voters in 2019. The money will allow the city to acquire land for new parks, increase maintenance of existing parks, and develop more recreation facilities including sports courts and fields.

• About $308 million is budgeted for the city’s Public Works Department. “We will be investing this year around $60 million into our neighborhood streets and sidewalks in Fresno,” Dyer said.

Around $60 million toward housing

The city also is bolstering the money it puts toward housing programs from various departments. “One of the things that we worked closely together on was the importance of housing ― $40 million that we are going to put towards housing in our city, on top of the normal dollars that we allocate, which is around $20 million,” Dyer said. “That is a sizable investment and I believe it shows how much we care about people in our community.”

“We want them to have shelter, we want them to have rents that are affordable, we want them to have a roof over their head and be able to own a home,” he added. “Without additional housing, our efforts to address homelessness are going to be limited.”

Several homeless people and their advocates, however, were critical of the city’s efforts, saying that too often when they are forced by the city’s homelessness task force to move from a place, what little they have in material things are confiscated and discarded instead of held for later recovery.

“The task force took away my wife’s belongings, they took away my phone,” said John Fuller, one of several homeless people who addressed the City Council on Thursday. All told of having their things thrown away rather than being put into storage.

“Every time they hit us, they throw away our clothes and food,” Fuller added.

A homeless woman who gave her name as Deborah said that the city is wasting its money on a special task force.

“Just because someone falls on hard times does not make them lesser,” she said. “We don’t need more policing, we need more care centers” where people can take a shower or get meals and other resources.

City Manager Georgeanne White said Fresno has received more than $170 million in 2021-22 and 2022-23 from the American Rescue Plan Act, a federal stimulus program aimed at recovery from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. While that’s a considerable sum, it’s revenue that is not likely to be sustained beyond the next year or two, leaders acknowledged.

“We’re grateful for the one-time dollars, but they’re one-time dollars,” Dyer said. “It is important that we not become addicted to that influx of dollars or money into our city because I know that is a mistake a lot of cities make.”

“We tried to utilize those dollars as much as we possibly could for one-time projects that hopefully will free up dollars for other things,” he added.

Esparza agreed. “Ongoing costs are largely covered by ongoing revenues,” he said.