With Fresno County’s Better Roads Safe Streets transportation sales tax proposal all but officially dead for now, Fresno City Councilmembers are contemplating a general fund sales tax for the November ballot.

This development isn’t surprising as consultants and elected officials on the left and the right have talked about Fresno County cities going their own way for weeks. Success in politics requires plotting two and three steps ahead. So when the Better Road Safe Streets backers bungled their signature-gathering campaign, whispers began.

Thoughts of alternative tax measures began to crystallize after Fresno County Board of Supervisors Chair Garry Bredefeld devised a plan to stop the initiative in its tracks. That gambit — board approval of a study on the measure’s impacts that would block it from voters this year — became reality served cold on Tuesday.

Now it’s onto the future.

“I’m opening to considering a stopgap measure for the city, perhaps something that would expire upon renewal of a countywide transportation tax,” Fresno City Council President Nelson Esparza told GV Wire on Wednesday.

Nelson said he needed to talk with Mayor Jerry Dyer and also investigate the legality of his sunsetting idea. Other councilmembers are considering a sales tax, too, City Hall sources confirmed to GV Wire.

Measure C Expiration Opens the Door

There are myriad possibilities — not just for Fresno but also the 14 other incorporated cities.

With the current Measure C half-cent transportation tax set to expire in mid-2027, might local leaders eye that money and decide they know better how to spend it?

For 40 years, transportation tax backers have preached the importance of better roads throughout the county. But not all cities face the same challenges. Some might want a piece of the pie for public safety or parks. And some might want to decide which streets and sidewalks in their communities get fixed.

In Fresno’s case, the council and Dyer must work quickly on a tax amount and length to get it on the ballot. They also must evaluate the potential affect on their relationships with county officials and leaders in other cities.

Better Roads Safer Streets Is a Hot Mess

Better Roads Safer Streets faces high hurdles after the study is completed and the Board of Supervisors ships it to the March 2028 ballot as required by law.

One, the rival group Fix Our Roads now has more time to fundraise to put its vision for a road tax before voters.

Two, as Supervisor Nathan Magsig exposed at Tuesday’s board hearing, Better Roads Safer Streets is a hot mess of priorities reflecting progressive wishes with a long history of local failure.

Be assured that Better Roads Safer Streets opponents will saturate voter media with images of empty buses and bike lanes next to towers of $100 bills. Now imagine a beautiful walking trail with a red X superimposed and the words, “Not Funded by Better Roads Safer Streets.”

Voters Have a Nose for Phonies

Former Mayor Ashley Swearengin has a good batting average. But as the tax proposal’s chief architect, she botched it a thousand ways to Sunday.

The initiative’s biggest flaw: Few people who can afford a car will park it and take a bus or ride a bike to work. It’s too hot most of the time for a bike, and a car is more convenient and dependable than FAX — regardless of how many hundreds of millions of dollars are poured into it.

Voters also have a nose for phonies. Swearengin doesn’t bike to meetings. Nor do the leaders of her allied environmental justice groups. I had a GV Wire reporter last year ask members of a committee assembling the transportation tax proposal how they got to the meeting. They either ignored the question or said they drove.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Dyer appeared frustrated and resigned to defeat. He, too, bears responsibility for the pending lapse of the tax. When he lent his name to their effort, he should have insisted on calling the shots. He has the horsepower to do so. His endorsement was one of the initiative’s most valuable assets.

Instead he fell into a swamp of incompetence and bad ideas without an escape hatch.