Richardson: Mental health focus, veterans perspective needed for Fresno City Hall

Marine Corps reservist Nick Richardson is running for Fresno City Council in District 6, hoping to succeed fellow veteran Garry Bredefeld at City Hall. 

Richardson spoke with The Sun for political podcast series, The Stump, airing on Sunrise FM. 

The big picture: Richardson, a Fresno native, attended the Virginia Military Institute and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. 

• After serving on active duty for about a decade, Richardson returned home and switched to the reserves, where he serves one weekend every month. 
• Richardson runs a consulting firm where he investigates aviation incidents. He also ran a suicide prevention program and a substance abuse counseling and control program, which he said were teh most successful programs for the Marine Corps in the Pacific. 

What they’re saying: “I realized that this next term Fresno’s about to lose the only essentially non-Democrat on City Council, and they’re also about to lose the only veteran they have on City Council,” Richardson said. “We’ve got 15,000-20,000 veterans in the City of Fresno. It’s important that they have a voice. Things like mental illness and homelessness and struggling with employment – and those things disproportionately affect veterans, and they deserve someone who’s going to carry their voice for them.” 

• One idea that he is actively working on to support veterans and all first responders in Fresno is to secure lower tuition for their children for local private schools, part of a package to support public safety, especially the Fresno Police Department. 
• “We have to take care of the mental health of the police. We have to make sure not only in their benefits program do they get a nice little check when they retire, but they have to have the medical, the mental health benefits for them and their family – the care,” Richardson said. “The city actually taking care of and respecting then to make sure that they are fully equipped physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically when they go and deal with these problems around the city that we expect them to deal with.”