Six weeks after announcing the plan to replace Fresno County’s Measure C, organizers behind a new transportation tax intended to fix urban and rural roads say they have the signatures to qualify for the November ballot.

On Tuesday, the Better Roads, Safer Streets coalition submitted the necessary 32,000 petition signatures to put the tax before voters in November, said Veronica Garibay, co-founder of Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability at a news conference outside the Fresno County Clerk’s Office.

“It’ll repair our local streets and roads in our neighborhoods, the roads and streets we use to get to school, to work, to our homes, to our community centers, to basic services. It’ll make it quicker and easier and faster to get from Point A to Point B,” Garibay said.

Fresno to Get $75 Million a Year in Road Repair Funds: Dyer

Like the four-decade old Measure C, the Better Roads, Safer Streets initiative would use a half-cent sales tax to pay for road repair, public transit, and enhanced sidewalks, bike walks, and trails.

The group estimates that over the 30 years of the tax, it will raise $7.3 billion.

It dedicates 65% of funds to road repair, 25% to public transit, 4% to public transit innovation, 4% to regional projects, 1% to airports, and 1% to administration.

Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer said the measure will result in $75 million a year to the city alone. He says the city has $1.2 billion of deferred road repair needs and $300 million in deferred sidewalk repair needs.

“It will allow us not only to fix our roads but to fix our sidewalks, to be able to fix our worst streets first and fix them immediately — not repairing potholes, as we’ve seen historically, but long-term solution fixing our roads for good,” Dyer said.

Signature Gathering a ‘Sprint’

Fresno County Clerk/Registrar of Voters James Kus had long said qualifying a voter initiative would be a tough task. This late in the game, a voter initiative would need to turn in 32,000 signatures to his office by May so that the signatures can be verified.

Fresno Unified Trustee and Better Roads Safe Streets organizer Andy Levine called the effort a “sprint.”

“We were all over the county, all hands on deck, volunteers and groups of supporters all over the county were gathering signatures outside of grocery stores, at events, at their house parties, really wherever we knew voters were going to be. We were inviting people,” Levine said.

Alternative Transportation Tax Proposal Limited to Volunteers

The Better Roads Safe Streets organizers aren’t the only residents with a plan to replace Measure C.

Many of the people behind the original Measure C, including former Fresno County Supervisor Henry Perea, former Fresno Council of Governments director Tony Boren, and Fresno County Transportation Authority director Mike Leonardo have been presenting their own tax proposal to organizations and local governments.

Perea told GV Wire on Monday that signature gathering for the “Fix Our Roads” initiative has been limited to volunteers. He says he’s “confident” it will still qualify. He would not disclose how much money they have raised or how many signatures they have gathered.

“A lot of city councils have asked us for forms, we’ve put them out throughout the county, there’s people having their contacts gather signatures, we’re going to advance,” Perea said. “Grassroots is challenging.”

Kus told GV Wire in an email that no new committee has filed paperwork to support the Fix Our Roads initiative. If an existing committee was providing support for the measure, that might not show up until July’s reporting deadline.

Any donations will need to be disclosed.

Considering that the Fresno County Board of Supervisors will have to approve any voter initiative by August, any group will be hard pressed to meet deadlines.