Imagine Fresno County is like a big playground where everyone’s trying to get around—many kids are running, some are biking, and very few are riding the bus.
Measure C is like the piggy bank we all chip into to keep the playground safe and fun. It’s a successful special tax ( ½ cent) that’s collected more than $2 billion since 1986 to fix paths, roads, and provide buses and delivered millions more in matching state and Federal funds.
The current debate is how much to spend on roads. Common sense says it’s around 90%.
Why? Because if we look at the math, we have 1,019,000 people in Fresno County and 647,102 cars – approximately one car for 1.5 people.
Forty years of evidence proves that we’re spending more on empty buses, even when accounting for inflation today, and not enough on the paths and trails where most kids play.
I have yet to see a full bus.
Right now, busses receive about 24% of all Measure C funds.
Why does this matter? Because the Fresno Council of Governments – which features mayors from every city in the County and a representative from the Board of Supervisors – just installed 12 of the most left-wing disrupters to the Measure C renewal steering committee who are hoping to double that figure to 50%.
All reasoning has left the building!
The math shows we should change Measure C to only give 10% to buses and use the extra money to fix our roads and build more walking trails, especially in the busy parts of Fresno, Clovis, and nearby areas where tons of people live.
It’s just common sense.
The Big Picture: the City of Fresno has 550,000 people, Clovis has 125,000, and the areas around Fresno (The unicorporated areas inside Fresno) have another 150,000.
Yet these areas don’t receive their proper percentage of funds per capita. If we are paying the most why are we not receiving the lion’s share?
Our roads are falling apart so bad that Fresno County’s “path score” dropped 14 points, and we need $1.7 billion to fix them.
That’s like needing a mountain of gold coins to rebuild our playground!
Clovis needs help too, with roads like Willow Avenue packed like a dodgeball game gone wild.
We also need more walking trails, like safe side paths where kids can stroll without tripping and avoiding dangerous traffic. Fresno is one of the most dangerous places to walk, like a playground with no guardrails. In places like West Park, people are begging for trails, so they don’t have to dodge cars like they’re in a video game.
The 2020 Trails Plan says we need paths to connect schools and parks. If we spend more on trails, kids can walk or bike safely, and we won’t need cars for every little trip.
Some “grown-ups” say cutting bus money hurts the planet, not true!
Remember: Measure C gives 24% of our piggy bank to buses that people don’t ride. In the City of Fresno, only 2% of kids ride the bus, like a few kids huddling in a corner of the playground while everyone else is racing around. Clovis’s buses are quiet too, and even the rural buses for 360,000 faraway kids only get 4%. If we lower the bus money to 10%, we’d have about $14 million more every year.
That’s good government that’s good for our people.
Either we fix our roads with a new and improved Measure C or we are going to need more dentists in the valley from losing teeth while hitting all these potholes.
At some point the kids on the playground have to say: “Can’t we just have good roads?”
