City, FUSD create inconvenient reality for McLane convenience store owner

DO AS I INSIST

Balance and privilege lie at the heart of the Quick Mart controversy.

It seems everyone feels sorry for Gurvinder Ghuman. Faced with a promising but expensive business opportunity, he leaped before he looked. Simply put, recouping a quarter-million-dollar retail investment is hard if all you’re selling is candy and Camels. He had to get that beer-and-wine license.

Dirk Poeschel helped Ghuman even the odds at City Hall.

Mayor Swearengin is one of about 515,000 Fresnans who wants to see strong neighborhoods in every corner of the city. She also wants gutsy entrepreneurs like Ghuman to thrive. Her city manager will soon bring that balancing act to the City Council.

“I’m going to be recommending that we come forward within the next 30 to 60 days to craft a policy that is consistent with the general plan that looks at the concentration of liquor stores,” Rudd told me. As the Jan. 6 planning commission hearing showed, Rudd said, “I don’t know if the staff has a real clear understanding of what the direction or preferences will be of some of the council members.”

Christine Weldon, “supervising agent in charge” at Fresno’s ABC office, has a balancing challenge, as well.

Weldon said ABC guidelines for the census track with Ghuman’s Quick Mart calls for a maximum of five off-sale licenses. The number of off-sale licenses in the track prior to Ghuman’s application – six.

At the same time, Weldon said, the license application process has the flexibility to balance regulatory intent with community desire. It’s a complex process that involves many players – the state, City Hall, other government agencies, the public. In the end, she said, the 600-foot rule isn’t set in stone.

In fact, Weldon said, there’s a good chance that Ghuman’s application for a Type 20 license will get ABC’s blessing. No one sent in a protest, she said, and the deadline for doing so is long gone.

Which brings us back to Fresno Unified School District.

I spoke with Miguel Arias, the district’s chief information officer, on Tuesday. I asked: Why didn’t the district send someone to the Jan. 6 hearing to raise a ruckus?

Arias said the district had already sent a letter of opposition (apparently the one from Friesen dated December 2014). He said such a letter had been sufficient in the past for the district to get its way on land-use issues. He said the district assumed such a letter would be sufficient in this situation.

“We didn’t know the city had changed its policies,” Arias said.

I asked if this policy of “Fresno Unified gets its way at City Hall simply by sending in a letter” had been memorialized in the municipal code.

Arias didn’t answer me. He said he would dig some more into what happened from the district’s end.

I could have told him what happened.

In a democracy of separated powers, don’t assume you’re privileged.