John Gerardi Guest Hosts - Clovis City Councilmembers Bicker Over Measure C

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bickering on the Clovis City Council because of Measure C,
where Lynn Ashbeck, clova City Council member, was helping negotiate
a deal to give unprecedented levels of power over the
formulation of what Measure C will actually pay for to
left wing environmental groups. And I want to dig into

(00:24):
that because I think it's fairly outrageous and it's going
to have a major impact on it's going to have
an impact on the future of roads and transportation here
in the San Joaquin Valley. I am not Trevor Carey.
I am John Girardi, the executive director at Right to
Life of Central California RTLCC dot org. All right, let's

(00:46):
dig into this. This whole story has at its center
a group of organizations that I have often compared, Ah,
shall I compare thee to a summer's day. I shall
not compare them to a summer's day. I've compared them
more off too, vultures carrying foul that fly overhead, surveying

(01:07):
the corpses on a battlefield looking to feast. And it
is this collection of left wing nonprofit organizations, most of
them funded with money from outa town Fresno Building Healthy Communities,
Barrio Sunidos in certain cases, the Presdent Economic Opportunities Commission,

(01:27):
various others, all these different organizations that line up around
some kind of local governmental body to advocate faith in
the valley, or as I call it, heresy in the valley,
to advocate for some kind of all truistic sounding liberal

(01:50):
policy priority. But it's often with the hand extended palm upward.
I have this great altruistic liberal idea, but we can
only do it if you give me a nice, big
fat government contract. Oh, we don't need to have any
more police in Fresno, unified schools or police you know,

(02:16):
providing protection and security for the Presno Housing Authority. We
don't need those police contracts. Instead, we should have conflict
resolutions specialists working for those governmental agencies and colleage g wilkers.
What do you know our nonprofit could provide that if
you just provide us with a government contract for those services.

(02:37):
OPM other people's money, And very often that's what these
nonprofits do. They exist to get some kind of government handout. Oh,
we should defund the police. We should have fewer police
officers instead, more conflict resolution specialists that we president building

(02:57):
healthy communities or Barrios unidos or who whoever can provide.
That's sort of the mL some sort of left wing
cause and then a service they can provide or something
for them to do. For example, the Leadership Council for
Justice and Accountability is another one of these left wing nonprofits.

(03:18):
One of the things they like doing is suing people
with sequel lawsuits environmental harm lawsuits. And they're very much
involved in this debate over Measure C. All right, so
what's going on with Measure C. Measure C is a
Fresno County roads tax helps fund roads throughout the county.

(03:43):
Measure C is coming up for renewal. It was passed
with a local WILID initiative long time ago. It's going
to expire in twenty twenty two. They tried to renew it,
but you needed a two thirds majority to pass it,
and they couldn't get a two thirds majority. They only
got fifty percent of the voters to vote for it.

(04:04):
And there's concern because this is a big important source
of county money, a big important source of money for roads.
So this committee, the Fresno Council of Governments, is put
together and is tasked with drafting what will be the

(04:26):
new updated version of Measure C. They want to put
it on the ballot in front of the voters, presumably
in twenty twenty six. The Fresno Council of Governments is
a council composed of representatives from all the different cities
and municipal entities in Fresno County, so cities, and then

(04:49):
the County of Fresno the County Board of Supervisors. Pretty
much every city, most cities in Fresno County have one
vote on the Council of Governments. I think the City
of Fresno itself has three votes on the Council of Governments,
which makes sense city of Fresno's no not the vast

(05:12):
by far the largest population of any other city in
the valley, but Clovis, which has like over one hundred
and twenty thousand people this point, only has one vote.
And it's the Clovis angle that perhaps I'm most interested
in here. So what's going on with this Council of
Government and we're drafting what will be the next measure set.

(05:34):
Some of the group that opposed Measure C last time
and led to it not passing was this group going
under the name Transportation for All, and it was a
consortium basically of these left wing groups, and they didn't

(05:57):
like the environmental impact that measures or Sea would reek
would wreck on the valley. They wanted more Measure C
spending to go towards public transportation stuff like light rail
now is apparently a thing that they're interested in, which

(06:17):
it seems like another terrible boondoggle idea. I think we've
had enough of rail solutions in the San Joaquin Valley,
thank you very much, and basically having much less of
the spending go towards roads. What Gary Brettefeld does is
a remember the County Board of Supervisors. He's been very
vocal about this and he's been saying, I want eighty

(06:37):
percent of the funding to go towards roads. We have
a bunch of roads that need to be fixed. The
City of Fresno has like a billion dollar backlog in
road repairs that need to get done. We need Measure
C to focus on that. But the thought is, well,

(06:57):
if we don't give these liberal groups to see that
the table, they will introduce a counter initiative, something to
compete against Measure C. And because they are not a
governmental entity. If they introduce it, they only need a
simple majority for it to pass. It's much easier for
them to pass it. So they have the ability to

(07:18):
sink Measure C. If we draft a version of Measure
C that they decide that they oppose, they will sink
it by introducing their own ballot initiative. This Transportation for
All Consortium. So Lynn Ashbeck, who is not herself a

(07:42):
member of the Council of Governments, Vong Muanatua, the mayor
of Clovis, is sort of Clovis's representative. Lynn Ashbeck is
brought in to sort of negotiate between Transportation for All
and the Council of Governments, and they come up with
this solution for a steering committee. A steering committee is

(08:04):
going to draft the text of Measure Seat. However, the
steering committee needs seventy percent of its members to agree
to something. And guess how many seats on the steering committee.
These left wing groups have thirty one percent. They have

(08:24):
just over thirty percent of the seats. So as a result,
these environmental groups, who let me just reiterate this, they
represent nobody. Nobody elected them, nobody chose them. There was

(08:47):
never a local election where a group of citizens said,
all right, who are we voting for to be the
head of Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability, the head
of Building Health or fris Nobility Healthy Communities, and vote
for Sandra Saladon to be the CEO of President Building
Healthy Communities. Exactly zero people voted for these people in

(09:10):
charge of these nonprofits. And these nonprofits have twelve votes
on this steering committee. The City of Clovis has one
who no. So basically, in the drafting of Measure C,
the environmental groups have a veto proof majority. They have well,

(09:33):
excuse me, they don't have a veto proof majority. Excuse me.
They have enough seats to veto any proposal. That's what
they have. They can say, nope, we reject this proposal
from the Steering committee because it doesn't have enough for
our favored things, not fixing roads. Now, the Council of

(10:04):
Governments will ultimately vote on what Measure C is going
to be. They don't have to accept the findings of
the Steering committee. But guess what It's gonna look really
bad if the Steering Committee says we think that only
forty percent of the spending should be for roads, and
the rest should be for sunshine and flowers and rainbows
and buses and public transportation and light rail, which is

(10:27):
a rail made out of light. If the Council of
Governments just says no, we're not doing that, we're building roads,
well what's gonna happen. They're gonna look bad a president
Council of Government ignores community leaders on input and the
transportation for all people. If they feel snubbed, they can

(10:51):
just go out and do the thing we were afraid
of in the first place, which is campaign for their
own version of Measure C that they don't have to
get as neat, they don't need as many votes for
it to pass. So as a result that basically you've
got these left wing nonprofit groups elected by nobody, holding

(11:12):
the whole process hostage. And that's what Gary Bretdefeld said
about it. He said, yeah, this is a hostage situation.
We're being held hostage by these losers who've never been
elected by anybody I don't need. In Brettefeld's mind, and
in my mind too, I think there's as much reason

(11:34):
to think that Measure C failed last time because of
ornery old Republican voters like me who basically see attacks
and are like no. And Gary was talking about people
in his portion of Fresno County, his region of Fresno
County who all voted against him. He was knocking on

(11:55):
a lot of doors and trying to talk with him about, Hey,
we really need this road funding. So why are we
giving transportation for all like this controlling stake in the deliberations.
Why not give it to I don't know, a bunch
of ornary old conservatives from North Fresno or from Clovis
or something. I think that's gonna sink it as much

(12:15):
as anything. So Lynn Ashbeck, who was the person who
was sort of helping negotiate this whole deal where presdent
building healthy Communities, really insisted that they have this very
particular number of seats so that they'd have more than
thirty percent so that they can veto any proposal. Here's

(12:40):
some of the things Ashpec said. Ashbec pushed back against
comments made by Presno County Supervisor Gary Brettefeld after the vote.
Brettefeld said at the time that the Fresno Council of
Governments allowed itself quote in a sense, to be blackmailed
by the social justice group. ASHBEC says, don't believe what
you see that there's this environmental conspiracy. Ashbec said, well,

(13:05):
of course there's an environmental conspiracy. I mean, maybe it's
not a conspiracy. They want to spend less on roads.
We want to spend more on roads. They want to
spend less on roads. That's their conspiracy. That is not
at all what is happening. It's one hundred percent what's happening.
They have a certain vision of what they want measure

(13:26):
C to be. We have a different vision. So that's
very disconcerting, but we're going to keep working through the
best we can are We seems like you already did
the deal, you gave them the controlling stake, and now
we're screwed. Ashbec at it. It is not blackmail, It
is not a bribe. Nothing has changed hands. No one's

(13:49):
saying it's a literal bribe, or that it's a literal blackmail.
No one's saying that. Sandra selad On, has you know
a picture of Gary Brettefeld, you know, I don't know,
in a compromising position or something. He's not saying it's
literal blackmail. He's saying, in a sense, it's like blackmail.
They control the process. They're holding the whole process hostage.

(14:09):
They can say that they don't agree if we if
we want to spend too much money on roads to
their liking. These people who are have nothing other than money.
They don't represent anybody. They were never elected by anybody.
They don't represent. They don't have a constituency that these

(14:31):
people have twelve times as many votes as the City
of Clovis is wrong Clovis whose interests one would assume
Ashbeck would want to stand for and vindicate, given that
she's been a Clovis City Council member over the last
eight hundred years. She said Measure C is not dead

(14:52):
and will only fail because of government working against itself
full stop, where it's like hijack, blackmail, bribe are really
over the top. Ashpek said, people express things I think
out of I don't know what they're afraid of. What
we're afraid of is that we're gonna introduce a version
of Measure C that's not gonna pay for roads. It's
gonna pay for a bunch of other nonsense that we
don't need and not fix the things we actually need roads.

(15:16):
That's what we're afraid of we are afraid that you
have given control of the process to a bunch of
people that we don't want controlling the process.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
The assisted Trevor carry showing on The Valley's Power Dog.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
This whole Measure CE thing where you've got these nonprofit
groups who are now kind of in control of the
process through a deal negotiated by lenn Ashpek and then
agreed to by most of the Council of Government Governments.
I just don't understand it. I don't understand if this

(15:51):
is some kind of go along to get along thing
that we've sort of reasonably talked ourselves into a situation
that's completely insane, namely, giving a veto control over the
drafting of Measure C to a bunch of people who
fundamentally don't really want to build a bunch of roads.
I mean, that's it. That's the long and short of it.

(16:14):
And then getting upset when people on whose behalf you
made the deal say, hey, this is a crummy deal.
Why are we doing that? I Mean, here's my thoughts
on this one. What should be done is Okay, if
Fresno County introduces this ballot initiative to pass Measure C

(16:35):
for all the road funding, then okay, it has to
be passed with a two thirds majority. If some non
governmental entity introduces it, then it would just need a
simple majority. Is there genuinely nobody in Fresno County with

(16:56):
the ability to introduce and get enough signatures for a
version of Measure C that involves actually building roads? Because
let me tell you, if it's a fifty percent threshold
question and you've got over here a Measure C that
actually builds roads, and over here a lefty, nonprofit environmental

(17:19):
wacko version of Measure C where they won't have to
moderate things, I pretty much guarantee you the version of
Measure C where we're actually building roads is gonna win.
Because if you frame it like that, I bet you
could get a whole bunch of conservative voters who ordinarily
would not want to vote for any tax to say,
all right, I'm gonna vote for measure the actual build

(17:41):
roads version of Measure C, just to stick it to
the Libs trying to pass there not build roads, not
build roads version of Measure C. I need a catchy
name for that version Measure C. Measure CS like a

(18:03):
scam Measure C. I don't know measure c r ap. Okay,
there we go. Well, well we're gonna workshop that one.
We're gonna workshop what that will be.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
This is the Trevor Carry Show on the Valley's Power Talk.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
To talk about the cherry auction, the Presno Cherry Auction
and Miguel Arius basically wrecking it. So this was a
bizarre story from a couple of weeks ago. A lot
of the Trump immigration raids get started. Miguel Arius has
this more or less unfalsifiable claim that he makes in

(18:44):
a city council meeting. And that's important is that he
did it during a city council meeting in which he
expresses a lead. He had some information he had received
that the upcoming weekend this was about. Again, this was

(19:04):
about a month ago that an Ice immigration raid was
going to take place at the Fresno Cherry Auction, and
he felt compelled to warn our residents not to go
there to protect them against the wiles of Trump. Now,
couple things to think about with all this. First, is

(19:27):
this what I imagine might maybe work in California, although
I feel like the mileage from this is gonna not
be great. But I've heard this line now inklings of
this line from Miguel Arrius in these statements, but very
explicitly stated by Joaquin Arambula, who is himself running for

(19:51):
this specific city council seat coming up soon, I think.
In twenty twenty six. Jauquena Rambula was a member of
the California State Assembly who on the floor of the
Assembly about a month or so ago when the Assembly
was debating passage of the big budget bill, and Arambula

(20:11):
was very upset with the budget bill and the cuts
it had made to medical coverage for illegal aliens. Arambula
was upset at this. Okay, again, just so you're aware.
Joaquin Arambula, by the way, just for those who don't know,
way more radically left wing than I think he gets

(20:32):
credit for. I think there's this weird thing about members
of the House or the Assembly or the State Senate
who are from the San Joaquin Valley, if they're Democrats,
that they automatically get kind of hit with this moderate veneer,
this moderate sheen, this moderate vibe. Arambula is very hardcore left.

(20:54):
He's on the floor of the Assembly saying, I represent
these people, and these people are hurting, and I cannot
vote for this budget bill that takes away funding from
these vulnerable people that I'm obligat that I am here
to represent, and I'm listening to it, I'm like, well,

(21:17):
if they were citizens, yes, you represent them. If they
were legal residents, Honestly, it's a little harder for you
to say that that's the constituency you represent. But maybe
I mean, certainly if people are legally residing here, then
you don't want them to be mistreated and want to
be kind to them, all right, But is that your constituent?

(21:37):
Is that the citizens who it's not the citizens who
vote for you, hopefully, But to stand up there and
say I am here to represent the interests of people
who are not legally supposed to be here, that is
a bold thing to say. That is a bold thing
that really touches on some pretty fundamental questions of political

(21:59):
philosophy within a representative democratic form of government, about what
is the job of a legislative representative? Whom does he represent?
Does he represent only himself and his own views and
what he thinks is right? Does he represent the viewpoints
just purely he's a vector for what his stituents want.

(22:19):
I can't think of too many people who've gone, and
that's always been a debate, do you do the right thing,
do you do the thing that your constituents want. I've
rarely heard people issue the opinion of no, you're supposed
to do things that non citizens illegally residing within the
geography of your district want you to do. That's like

(22:42):
the approach that at least California Democrats seem to be
taking with regards to immigration, that this person is someone
whom I represent, seemingly without any distinction on the basis
of legality, illegality, or maybe even citizenship. Now, in fairness,

(23:05):
I'm kind of putting a lot of that on Arius
when he didn't explicitly say that, but he's seems like
that's kind of what he's saying. I would advise our
immigrant community that they should stay away from the Cherry
Auction this weekend, as they would put themselves in their
families in the most vulnerable position. Now, with all that said,

(23:31):
Arius warned that this raid was going to happen. A
ton of people didn't show up to the Cherry Auction.
The Cherry Auction was practically deserted, and the Cherry Auction
has like a lot of vendors who sell stuff there.
I've known people who go to the Cherry Auction pretty
much every week and they sell stuff and they make
money there. It's part of their how they keep their

(23:52):
business going. It's a source of income for people. And
no ICE raid happened, and all these vendors had to
take the hit of losing out on this business because
Miguel Arius apparently allegedly had some lead saying there was
going to be an ice rate. Well, no one lead.

(24:15):
That maybe just existed inside his head and his desire
to attract attention. I don't know. And this is the
problem with it. Two levels of unfalsifiableness are not able
to act on itness. Okay, One is that Arius won't
say who the sources. He's just keeping his mouth shut

(24:36):
on about that, and so as a result, it's an unfalsifiable,
all unfalsifiable claim. People say, well, you warned about this,
no one showed up, our business is all lost money.
And then there was no There wasn't even an ice rate.
And so Arius can say, well, that's because I, you know,
mission accomplished. I warned the community and Ice decided to
call off their raid.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
Bravo me.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
I did it. I protected our community. Congratulations Miguel Arius,
which is again, it's an unfalsifiable claim to make. No
one can tell if Ice did in fact intend to
go but decided not to because of Miguel Arius. There's
no way of knowing that. And there's no way of

(25:19):
knowing what lead did Arius have. Was it like a
really solid lead, like someone at ICE said, Hey, Miguel
warned the community we are going to carry out raid.
Was it a weird random rumor from some secretary overhearing
something that an assistant director said over lunch, maybe sort

(25:42):
of vaguely. We have no idea. The other level of
this is that he set it during a city council meeting,
and the kinds of speech protections that lawmakers have in
America while they are speaking in a legislative setting, like

(26:03):
on the floor of a state legislature, in a committee
or something, is really tight. So I'm not now this
request was given to Mike Carbosi's the president of the
President's City Council right now that he either censure or

(26:25):
remove or try to remove Miguel Arrius. And I think
Carbassi has taken the posture of well that there's really
not much I can do, Carbasi said quote. To be clear,
these statements were made by Council Vice President Miguel Arrius
during a public meeting, which is within his First Amendment rights.

(26:46):
The city Council does not hold the authority to compel
a member to submit his their resignation. I understand the
frustration expressed in the letter, but it is best that
the party's working out amongst themselves. This is not a
matter for the entire council. We need to stay focused
on ensuring we fix Fresno's roads, build more housing, and
ensure the public safety.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
This is that Trevor carry shown on The Valley's Power.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Talk John Girardi in for Trevor Carrey Country Country Music Monday.
It's a nice, nice thing to do. I didn't I
didn't realize Trevor did. Country Music Monday's brought to you
by the Clovis Truck Center. I just want to reiterate
again kind of how revolutionary it is this theory of
representation that some of our local politicians are doing in Fresno.

(27:30):
In their opposition to President Trump's deportation efforts. They've proposed
this sort of wild theory of whom they were elected
to represent. They're putting forth and Miguel Arius has kind
of done this a bit, but while King Rambula has
really done this. I stand here representing illegal aliens. I'm

(27:54):
here representing im quote, well, they don't say illegal aliens,
they say I'm here representing immigrants, broadly speaking, with no
distinction made between legal and illegal, between illegal legal residents
of the United States who are not citizens and American citizens,
and I represent them. I am here on their behalf.

(28:16):
It's a wild idea. I mean, the very origins of
democracy in the West, it had to do with and
all democracies have had to sort of deal with this,
to whom do you give authority to help make your
laws and thereby include in this ranking of citizen what

(28:42):
class of people do you admit there? And over time,
different cultures, in different times, different places have sort of
struggled with that with Okay, who has sufficient stake in
the game, That's really what it's come down to, very often,
who has sufficient skin in the game that we're going
to afford this person the opportunity to vote about the

(29:04):
future of our polity. And that has led in different times,
different places, different cultures to have citizenship based on wealth.
Within the Roman system, for example, some of it was
were you're born, there was your daddy a citizen whatever,
But the weight of your vote would vary depending on
how wealthy you were. And that wasn't purely just now

(29:26):
we're taking care of wealthy people. It also had to
do with military service. Basically, in a lot of Greek
city states, you got to vote if you fought, if
you had enough money to pay for your own armor
and fight, and you were going to do the fighting,
you got to vote. Why well, because one of the
main things we vote on here in our whatever Greek

(29:47):
police we're in, whatever Greek city state we're in, is
the question of whether or not we're going to war.
And in a small political community like in ancient Greece,
like in some ancient Greek town, it was the guys
all getting together, sitting down and saying, all right, boys,
we going to war? What oh I think we should?
You're not fighting, so shut up. No, you don't get

(30:09):
a vote. Sorry, you're not fighting, you don't have enough
money for armor. Why should we listen to you? Buzz off?
That was the attitude in ancient Greece and in ancient Rome.
A lot of Again, a lot of the weight of
your vote in ancient Rome had to do with how
much money you had and therefore how much stuff you

(30:30):
were bringing to the fight. Right, There were different classifications
in Roman societies, like the Equitez the horse guys is
literally what it meant. So the really wealthy guys, their
votes had bigger weight in government assemblies because they could
afford a horse. They were bringing a horse to the
Oh wow, you're bringing cavalry, all right, great, So it's

(30:54):
a question of how much skin do you have in
the game. And we still have a calculus like that
in America today. We have expanded the franchise far beyond
anything that you would have seen even in Athens at
the height of its democratic glory, and you know, in
the sixth or fifth century whatever BC far beyond that,

(31:20):
and we don't have things like we used to have
in America used to there are many states was said, nah,
you can't vote unless you're twenty one, or you can't
vote unless you own property. There was some stuff that
was being done not so subtly to kind of make
sure that black people didn't get to vote, like literacy
tests that somehow white people could always pass, but an
equally illiterate black person couldn't pass for some reason. So

(31:42):
there was a lot of abuses like that, But there
was always a sense of you have to have some
sort of investment in this political community and its ultimate
future if we're going to give you the right to vote.
And over time we said, yeah, women have a stake

(32:04):
in this. Ratify the nineteenth Amendment. Let's give women a voice,
give them the right to vote. The one group we
have not the two groups I guess that we have
not admitted and I don't think we ever will. We
have this sort of really maximalist approach to democracy that

(32:25):
we don't afford the right to vote to is fundamentally
either children just because they lack discretion, and the other
is non citizens why because we don't know if they're
going to live here forever. We don't know if they're
committed to this being their home. If you're just here

(32:46):
on a guest worker program, that's fine. If you're here
legally and taking advantage of this program, okay, God bless you,
that's great. If you don't have a long term investment, though,
in b being someone living here, then you don't get
to vote, and if you don't get to vote, a

(33:08):
member of the State Assembly or of the State Senate
fundamentally doesn't necessarily need to give a crap what you say.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Today's assist The Trevor carry Show on the Valley's Power
Talk