What better escapist fantasy for enlightened Fresnans to enjoy than a night at the Tower Theatre watching Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, that classic tale of a socialist affordable-housing developer overcoming a local power elite through collective community action?
Fantasy because it’s never going to happen here, and escapism because most people long to flee the harsh realities of unattainable homeownership, sky-high rents and unhealthy living conditions. They would welcome a true champion, but Fresno, as I wrote in this space 20 years ago, is Pottersville, George Bailey was never born and developers rule local government. The continuing results are sprawl, pollution and poverty.
Fresno’s latest cry for supernatural intervention came on Dec. 13, a week before the film was to be screened at the City-owned theater, when City Council President Annalisa Perea called a special Council meeting on just 24 hours’ notice. She insisted they had to vote immediately to approve an important tax-sharing agreement between the City and County for the Southeast Development Area (SEDA). Clarence the angel didn’t show.
Perea’s short-notice move to eliminate public participation was a true Fresno Christmas classic. I often refer to her as Perea 3.0 because she has followed in her father and brother’s footsteps onto the City Council, and her politics are no different than theirs. Developers, the Building Industry Association and the Chamber of Commerce always come first, community health and economic equity last.
The father and brother now both work as lobbyists, Perea 1.0 for local developers and Perea 2.0 for Big Oil. It’s anticipated 3.0 will run in 2026 for 2.0’s former seat in the State Assembly, which he abandoned a year early back in 2015 after derailing important climate change legislation and going to work first for Big Pharma and then onto the real money in fossil fuels.
Whereas Bedford Falls had father and son Peter and George Bailey to fight for affordable housing, Fresno has the opposite: multiple generations of developers and politicians focused on greenfield developments that don’t pay their own way and drain resources from the existing city. Developers aren’t charged adequate impact fees and their low-density, sprawl neighborhoods become subsidized by residents in established areas. They also receive disproportionate shares of transportation sales tax dollars for freeway and major road improvements.
Perea 3.0 didn’t act alone, of course. She was part of a negotiating team that included Council members Mike Karbassi and Tyler Maxwell and Mayor Jerry Dyer; they started meeting in early summer. A public workshop was never held on the proposal despite the six-month-long gestation period. Perea cynically commented the public had five more days to prepare comments for the following Tuesday’s County Board of Supervisors meeting.
Community-based organizations that participate in public policy development, which normally includes workshops and debates at City Hall, follow a process of meeting with impacted residents before taking a position and engaging with policymakers. And people headed into the holiday season are less able to attend meetings on short notice, nor can organizers solicit community input and participation.
Which is exactly what Perea and company were counting on. The Christmas Surprise is one of City Hall’s oldest tricks, going back to the dark old days of 1980s corruption and Operation Rezone and having continued clear through to Ashley Swearengin’s run as mayor. Major new developments, General Plan updates, environmental impact reports, etc., must suddenly be voted on before year’s end. Meaningful public participation is blocked.
Predictably, the only people to speak under public comment at the Dec. 13 meeting came from industry—the only ones who knew what was planned—and they were gushing in their praise and thanks. They all know what’s coming: “a proposed community of 45,000 homes that would stretch across 9,000 acres of farmland on the city’s southeastern edge,” Gregory Weaver reported in Fresnoland on Dec. 5. Clovis, just north of the area, is 15,000 acres in size.
Weaver accurately describes the development pattern that created Fresno’s affordable housing crisis as “stubbornly entrenched” and SEDA as more of the same. He wrote: “Single-family homes have dominated 90%–95% of Fresno’s residential real estate market for four decades, according to state data. As a share of the overall residential real estate economy, Fresno’s multi-family housing market is seven times smaller than the state average. Rather than address this imbalance, SEDA would likely worsen it. The city already has a ‘glut,’ according to Dyer’s housing plan, of nearly 30,000 single-family homes above what households need.”
Rounding out Perea’s and her fellow Democrats’ subservience to the leaders of Pottersville is their failure to act responsibly on climate change. As Weaver points out, “Beyond the market contradictions, the project faces mounting environmental challenges. SEDA would generate 510,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, according to the City’s environmental review for the project, nearly canceling out the 559,000-ton reduction the City committed to in its 2021 climate plan.”
Fresno’s political climate remains unchanged while the world’s climate changes—crashes—all around us. Today’s “leaders” look a lot like yesterday’s, which is not cause for optimism. They’re leading us off the same bridge George Bailey jumped from.
