Wesley Lowery’s 2016 book They Can’t Kill Us All makes the point that power is never given; it is taken. That is how Measure S reached the November 2026 ballot. Over the toxic opposition of businessman Brooke Ashjian and the Fresno County Board of Supervisors — especially Supervisor Garry Bredefeld and other right wing Republicans — the citizen-led initiative made it to the November 3, 2026 ballot for the people to decide how they want to spend their taxes.
Measure S (the S is for safety) would continue the half cent sales tax established under Measure C in 1986. If it passes, decisions about that money would move from a small group of wealthy and powerful individuals meeting behind closed doors to a more open and democratic process in which communities decide what they feel is best. For the past 40 years, Measure C revenue has largely funded outward freeway expansion, with minimal funding for the streets of Fresno’s older neighborhoods or the roads of the county’s smaller cities.
The allocation of Fresno city and county funds has historically been top-down. County government would let the public express its concerns but would not act on them. The actual decisions were made by steering committees of handpicked business leaders, and politicians, with little regard for public participation. The Measure C Renewal Steering Committee has been an example.
History of Measure C
Measure C was first passed in 1986. For the next 20 years (1987-2007), 75 percent of the revenue was used to build Highways 41, 168 and 180, and 25% went directly to local jurisdictions for transportation purposes.[1]
Those freeways let developers build housing and commercial projects farther and farther from downtown. Much of Fresno’s sprawl can be attributed to Measure C spending. While the city’s boundaries expanded with new subdivisions and commercial ventures ,neither the City nor the County invested in Fresno’s older roads or in the roads of the county’s other 14 cities.
Measure C was renewed in 2006 for another 20 years and expires June 30 2027. The 2007–2027 measure directed 34.6% of the funds to local roads, 30.4% to freeways, 24% to public transportation, 6% to “grade enhancement” of railroad intersections, 3.5 % to environmental enhancement and 1.5% to administration.[2]
How Measure C Funding Decisions Were Made
The 1986 measure created a nine-member Fresno County Transportation Authority (FCTA) Board to allocate and oversee the revenue. Two of the five county supervisors sit on it, alongside the mayor of Fresno and other mayors, Fresno and Clovis council members and urban and rural public representatives. Measure C also designated Fresno Council of Governments (FCOG) staff and its Measure C Steering Committee to handle regional transportation planning, technical analysis and program implementation. The FCOG is made up of the mayors of the county’s 15 incorporated cities and the chair of the Board of Supervisors.[3,4]
The 2006 renewal shifted some money from freeways to local roads, but the revenue stayed focused on freeway expansion and on commuters. Over the following 20 years, Fresno COG, with FCTA approval, kept directing funds outward while the streets of the inner city and of the smaller rural cities went unrepaired. As of 2026, there is an estimated $3 billion of deferred maintenance on roads countywide.
In 2022, Fresno COG attempted to renew Measure C a second time with the same emphasis on expansion. It formed a Measure C Renewal Steering Committee made up of politicians and appointees drawn mainly from the business community, with little involvement from other community members.
Transportation for All (T4A) Fights Back
Instead of accepting the same allocation of funds, a social justice community group called Transportation for All (T4A) formed and asked for more spending on local roads and less on regional roads. It included community organizations and environmental justice advocates such as Fresno Building Healthy Communities (Sandra Celedon, president), Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability (co-director Veronica Garibay), the League of Women Voters, Cultiva La Salud (led by Veva Islas) and Youth Leadership Institute (led by Yammilette “Yami” Rodriguez).
T4A said the freeways had contributed to Fresno’s sprawl and central disinvestment. When the Board of Supervisors and Fresno COG refused the changes and declined to work with the group, T4A launched a campaign called “No on C”. It was joined by the Central Valley Community Foundation (the region’s largest non-profit, headed by former Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin and by anti-tax Republicans in Northeast Fresno and Clovis. Measure C required a two-thirds (66.67%) majority because a local government agency had placed it on the ballot, and the 2022 renewal failed to pass despite receiving 58% of the vote.[5]
Fresno COG did not try again in 2024. It later formed another Measure C Renewal Steering Committee, an advisory group of 26 local politicians, business community members and industry representatives assembled by Fresno COG and FCTA staff, which first met in April 2025.
In May 2025, the T4A coalition began community sessions across Fresno County to identify the shared transportation needs of county residents, especially those in poorer and more rural areas. After months of meetings, it found that communities wanted repair and maintenance of local roads, more sidewalks,safe bicycle paths and safe routes to schools. T4A began shaping a community version of Measure C—one that would benefit more people countywide, not just those buying newer, bigger homes on the city’s ever-growing edge.[6]
T4A pressed Fresno COG to accept those changes and demanded seats on the Steering Committee. Fresno COG refused, and T4A warned that if its members were not part of the discussion, they would gather signatures for their own community-based initiative. The pressure finally got results. In July, 2025, under the “One County, One Plan” compromise, the Fresno COG Policy Board added 12 T4A members to the committee, expanding its roster to 38 and changing the committee’s dynamics.
T4A Attacked
Some original members of the committee objected strongly to having progressive community members at the table. The most vitriolic attacks came from Supervisor Bredefled and Ashjian, a former Fresno Unified School District trustee.[7] Ashjian, the founder and CEO of Seal Rite Paving and Grading, was demanding that 70%, 80% or even 90% of the funds be spent on freeways. After he was kicked off the committee, Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer recommended that his fellow Republican stay on as a City of Fresno representative.[8]
After 6 months of negotiations, the two groups on the committee could not agree on how to divide the funds among new roads, maintenance, public transportation, sidewalks and bike infrastructure. A majority of mayors approved a renewal plan in December 2025 over the objections of the county and a handful of cities, but the Board of Supervisors refused to put the plan on its agenda, and no measure reached the November 2026 ballot. Rather than work toward a compromise, Board Chair Bredefeld blamed the “radicals” in T4A, whom he repeatedly accused of wanting to take away people’s cars and have everyone ride bikes.
T4A Launches “Better Roads, Safe Streets” Campaign
On January 7, 2026, the 16-member Fresno COG Policy Board voted 9-3 not to move forward with renewal of Measure C. That left a citizen-led initiative as the only way to get a transportation tax on the ballot, and a citizen initiative requires only 50% plus one vote to pass, rather than the two-thirds majority a government-placed measure like Measure C required.[9]
On Jan. 14, the coalition launched the “Moving Forward Together” campaign, the citizen-led signature-gathering vehicle for the “Better Roads, Safe Streets” initiative, later named Measure S, with a goal of 35,000 signatures.[10] A rival initiative, “Fix Our Roads”—a 20-year proposal backed by former Supervisor Henry R. Perea and former transportation officials and endorsed by Bredefeld—never turned in signatures and folded.
Better Roads, Safe Streets would direct 65% of the revenue to existing neighborhoods in the county and its cities to repair and maintain roads, sidewalks, bicycle paths, pedestrian facilities and safe routes to schools; 25% to public transit, divided among Fresno Area Express (70%), Fresno County Rural Transit Agency (20%) and Clovis Transit (10%); 4% to regional road and highway projects; four percent to zero-fare transit for seniors, people with disabilities, students, children and veterans, along with transit innovation grants and clean energy, travel choice and future technology projects; and the remaining 2% to Fresno Yosemite International Airport and administration. A “no-sprawl” stipulation bars neighborhood road money from building new streets in “new growth areas” or “new town developments” until all of a city’s roads rate at least “fair” on the Pavement Condition Index (PCI).[11]
On April 14, 2026, T4A turned in more than 32,000 signatures to the Fresno County Clerk’s Office, an effort partially funded by the Central Valley Community Foundation and Swearengin. The formal name of the measure is the Fresno County Transportation Improvement Act. When county clerk James Kus found duplicates in the initial random sample, James Kus required that every signature be examined, which delayed certification until July 8, when his office certified more than the necessary 22,000 valid signatures for the November 3, 2026, ballot.
The BOS Creates Legal Problems
The Fresno County Board of Supervisors (BOS) was legally required to vote to place the certified measure on the ballot. 3 of the 5 supervisors, Bredefeld, Nathan Magsig and Buddy Mendes, opposed it. On a 3–2 vote at its July 14, 2026, meeting, with Democrats Brian Pacheco and Luis Chavez dissenting, the board asked instead for a 30-day economic impact study, to be presented Tuesday, August 11 – past the Friday, August 7 deadline. Had the tactic worked, it would have delayed a vote on Measure S to at least March 7, 2028.
Mayor Dyer and the Fresno City Council worried that without a transportation measure on the November ballot the City of Fresno could not repair it’s own roads and that funding for street maintenance and city transit would dry up. Dyer said Fresno alone stood to lose about $54 million a year in Measure C revenue for road repairs, public safety and public transportation.
The Response to the BOS Delay Tactic
Anticipating that loss and the expiration of Measure C, Dyer, City Council President Nelson Esparza and Councilmember Mike Karbassi introduced a half-cent general sales tax that would apply only within the City of Fresno, beginning after Measure C expires. Because the money would go to the City’s general fund, it could be spent on anything, though it was intended for road repairs. Called the Fresno Public Safety, Infrastructure Restoration and Essential Services Act, it passed the City Council and was presented to the county clerk on August 7, the day of the deadline. It appears on the ballot as Measure D, would take effect only if Measure S fails and would expire in 10 years.
Concerned about the supervisors’ delay tactic, Dyer, Clovis Mayor Vong Mouanoutoua and other mayors asked Sacramento for help, and Better Roads, Safe Streets hired a lobbyist. On August 3, 2026, Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, D-Fresno, and state Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced, rewrote AB 1923 as urgency legislation to strip the Fresno County supervisors of their role in placing Measure S on the ballot. The bill passed and was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in a record four days, Kus then said he would follow the state law and put the initiative on the November 2026 ballot.
The requested economic impact study came to the board on August 11. Defying the state in another 3–2 vote, Bredefeld, Mendes and Magsig voted to place the measure on the March 7, 2028 ballot instead and to sue the state, Kus and the Measure S campaign to have it removed from the November 3, 2026, ballot, arguing that the new state law violated the state Constitution.
The case went to court, and on August 31, before the final September 3 deadline, the judge ruled against the county. Bredefeld, speaking for the county, decided not to appeal. Both Measure S and Measure D will appear on the November 3, 2026, ballot.[12,13]
City voters now have two transportation tax measures to decide, and county voters have to choose between Measure S and letting the roads deteriorate further. The people behind it spent years trying to change which roads get built, which get repaired and how the people’s money is spent. They asked to be included and were denied. They forced their way to the table, and their model was rebuked again. Then they gathered the signatures to put their measure on the ballot themselves. The Board of Supervisors answered with a delay tactic and then a law suit; urgency legislation and a court kept the measure alive. This is truly an example of a community taking power to make the decisions it believes are best for it.
1. https://measurec.com/expenditure-plan/measure-c-1986-2006/
2. https://measurec.com/expenditure-plan/expenditures-to-transportation-programs/
3. https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Initiative/2021-026
4. https://www.fresnocog.org/continuing-measure-c/
5. https://amp.fresnobee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/marek-warszawski/article306027211.html
6. https://fresnoalliance.com/measure-c-conclave-convenes/
7. https://gvwire.com/2025/07/11/paving-power-and-politics-measure-c-committee-faces-shakeup/
8. August 12, 2026, recap of the history of Measure S https://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/election/local-election/article316813480.html#storylink=cpy
9. https://gvwire.com/2026/01/08/measure-c-dead-whats-next-for-fresno-county-transportation/
13. https://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/election/article317073699.html#storylink=cpy
