The March 3 Fresno County Board of Supervisors (BOS) meeting opened with a typically zealous invocation, delivered by Pastor D.J. Criner of Fresno’s Saint Rest Baptist Church. Criner maximized appeals to “father” and “father god” (“Father, we are here, father god; father, give them [the supes] wise counsel, father god…”) and fervently emphasized “Jesus” (“I pray they hear you, in the mighty name of Jesus…in your darling son Jesus’ name, I pray”).
Christian evangelical or fundamentalist prayers, with few exceptions, open every Board meeting, all featuring repeated appeals to a higher paternal authority, making our merely human supervisors not only implicitly subordinate to divine guidance but also its recipients.
The meeting was short (about an hour and 10 minutes) and relatively unremarkable: no temperamental outbursts from Supervisor Buddy Mendes (District 4), no declarations that trees cause air pollution from Supervisor Nathan Magsig (District 5) and no pre-rehearsed soapbox diatribes from Chair Garry Bredefeld (District 2), other than his brief declaration of what appeared to be County support for the war in Iran.
But any sense of calm was upended by the specious content of a press conference held by Bredefeld two days after the meeting. More on that below.
Brisk, Thankfully Boring Decisions
Effectively functioning government should not constantly draw our attention, not to speak of our outrage. It should percolate securely in the background. Until the unwarranted news conference held in the interim between March meetings, the BOS was on the very cusp of boring, having made these routine decisions on a variety of items:
- General Services Department: two heavy-duty mechanic positions added to fleet service.
- Master fee schedule amended to increase environmental health fees (e.g., dog licenses, food inspections, solid-waste facilities inspections) by 3%–8%.
- Water conservation stage imposed on two districts, CSA 39AB and WWD 40.
- Quarterly report received from the director of the Department of Social Services regarding the Transitional Shelter Care Facility (“Mod C”), a temporary emergency shelter for traumatized youth. On budget, no concerns.
- March 1–7 was declared Weights and Measures Week, though it is recognized nationally. Melissa Cregan, agricultural commissioner/sealer of weights and measures, was present to accept the honor. Cregan’s staff inspects more than 24,000 devices—such as gas pumps, grocery-store scales and the like—annually, to ensure accuracy.
Radley Reep: Watchdog of County’s General Plan
A few blips in the boredom ensued: First, an appeal was approved unanimously for a property owner to overturn the Planning Commission’s denial for a variance to allow the creation of two 2.5-acre parcels from an existing 5-acre parcel in an ag zone in District 5 for the purpose of building family homes.
When public comment was opened on the matter, Radley Reep spoke. Reep is a retired Fresno Unified School District teacher who for many years has closely monitored the County’s land-use policy and its implementation.
Working independently and at times with groups such as the League of Women Voters, he has researched and publicly criticized the County’s handling of its General Plan, arguing that the County often fails to implement its programs, comply fully with state planning requirements or provide transparent progress reports.
Generally, Reep’s criticisms are not acted upon by the Board, who have typically proceeded with staff recommendations and approved planning items despite his objections. His comments therefore function largely as a persistent critique of County planning.
At the March 3 meeting, Reep said, “I don’t trust the Board to do what’s right under the law.”
He accused the Board of “inventing evidence” to satisfy the required conditions to overturn the denial and grant the variance. He asked them to demonstrate their support of the General Plan and to accept the Planning Commission’s decision regarding the denial.
Addressing Reep, Magsig responded with a sardonic “Do you believe you’re ever wrong?”
Supervisor Brian Pacheco (District 1) then said that generally he is in opposition to Reep, that he made some good points, but pointed out that the applicant for the appeal had made the request for the variance before General Plan changes that would have precluded its granting.
Furthermore, the area in question is “water challenged,” making it unsuitable for agriculture and more appropriate for a residence. And, added Pacheco, the Board has granted such appeals “many times” when the purpose is to create homes for the landowner’s family. Hence, he supported the appeal, he said. Magsig agreed, as did Supervisor Luis Chavez (District 3).
Mendes, alluding to Magsig’s snarky remark to Reep, and perhaps intending a witticism but falling flat, said, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
Just When You Thought It Was Safe
Magsig appeared chuffed to relate that he had recently attended the National Association of Counties (NACo) in Washington, D.C. He reminded everyone that he is chair of the NACo Finance, Pension and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee. While in D.C., he met with “three Congressmen,” though he didn’t disclose which ones, and with them discussed funding for County projects.
Pacheco had no committee reports but complained that California state law AB 939, which requires construction and demolition debris to be recycled rather than delivered to a landfill, was causing tremendous hardship on “regular people” because they were being turned away from the dump after hauling their debris there. Therefore, they simply dumped their trash on a County road, leaving the County to bear the expense—$1 million per year, per Pacheco—of hauling it away.
It’s an issue “we need to address,” he noted, calling for a solution to the problem he said was “created by the state of California.”
Pacheco, a Democrat, appeared to be joining the chorus of remarks generally hostile to the state government made routinely by the MAGA Republicans on the Board.
Magsig responded that he was “glad you brought this up.”
County Administrator Officer Paul Nerland said his staff was working on a solution and that this was “another example of state law affecting the County,” implying malevolence on the part of the state legislature. No one mentioned why roadside dumping had been tolerated so long or why the public had not been better informed about the law.
Bredefeld said he attended “Blue Run,” a local police fundraiser, adding that “this Board loves our law enforcement, in spite of the vocal minority that opposes them.”
Not missing a chance to draw ideological lines in the sand, he thus implicitly divided the discourse into two camps—us and them—while managing to pre-frame dissent as illegitimate and unrepresentative.
With the phrasing, “this board,” he presented a unified institutional identity, even though the Board is made up of individuals who sometimes disagree. Furthermore, the possessive “our law enforcement” reinforces in-group identification.
Next, he presumed to do the same regarding the war in Iran: “Our military is in our hearts, fighting a courageous battle against the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. We fully support them to end this terrorist regime.”
Does the board typically issue such statements about international affairs? Did he use the editorial “we,” or was he authorized to speak on the County’s behalf? Though later a representative from Bredefeld’s office clarified that it was simply “his opinion,” observers would not have known the difference.
What Constitutes an Urgent Matter?
During the general public comment period, two women from Del Rey spoke about a long-standing dangerous intersection where several traffic fatalities have occurred. They asked the Board for a remedy, something they have been doing for years without results.
Mendes said he had met with them several times but that it was difficult to get the public works department to prioritize the issue, seeming to characterize some of the necessary steps, such as conducting a traffic study, as burdensome.
“This Board can’t just make them put in a four-way stop,” he said dismissively, though he added that he would continue to apply “pressure.”
The women spoke movingly about the loss of their family member, who left behind a 10-month-old son, now a teenager. Bredefeld said he was “sorry for their loss.” Some of the fatalities, and the subsequent requests for action, date back more than a decade. Why should it take the County so long to address what is clearly an urgent matter?
What, indeed, does the County regard as urgent?
In Bredefeld’s case, urgency seems to lie in culture wars and manufactured crises, issues that lend themselves to hastily arranged press conferences designed to inflame residents with psychically triggering rhetoric, provoking an intense surge of primitive emotions like fear, anger and anxiety.
His latest escapade was a March 5 presser not on behalf of families who have suffered losses in County traffic fatalities and who have been demanding safer streets for more than a decade, but to express outrage over the legal use of human compost on a section of County land near Friant Road along the San Joaquin River Parkway, something that happened to come to his attention only recently, though the compost has been in use for well over a year.
In his histrionic assessment of the matter, Bredefeld appeared to describe the practice as if it involved ghoulish chunks of body parts flung about and strewn willy-nilly. He pronounced the use of the compost “stupid,” even while acknowledging, according to the Fresno Bee, that he knew nothing about the process that converts human remains into compost.
A Washington-based company called Earth Funeral describes the method as “natural organic reduction,” offering it as an alternative to traditional burial or cremation. Human composting is legal in more than 10 states, including California, under AB 351, which was signed into law in 2022; regulations for operating facilities will be in effect by 2027. Until facilities exist in California, the use of compost created in another state is legal.
In this otherwise uneventful stretch of County politics, Bredefeld has managed to seize on this non-issue for the purpose of provoking outrage and giving himself another opportunity for pointless grandstanding. The Bee has reported that the County, at Bredefeld’s request, has already drafted a cease-and-desist letter ordering the San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust to stop using the compost.
Bredefeld, who sits on the board of the San Joaquin River Conservancy, a separate entity from the trust, will likely introduce an ordinance at a future board meeting that would prohibit the use of the compost countywide.
