FRESNO (KMJ) — Fresno City Council has approved spending tens of thousands of dollars to fix a mistake made on the description of Measure P, after a shorter 41 word version was printed in the ballot when a longer 74 word version should have been used instead.
“It seems that the City of Fresno, in our clerks office, made a mistake by sending multiple versions of the ballot language to the county clerk,” said Councilmember Steve Brandau.
“It was a mistake that happened inside the city clerk’s office, which reports to Fresno City Council, not the mayor and his administration.”
During the Fresno City Council meeting Thursday morning, Brandau directed blame at others involved in the approval process as well, including the ‘Yes on P’ group. Brandau also asked why Fresno City Council did not act sooner to resolve the issue when it was first alerted on October 10th.
“The following day we had a council day, that was October 11th Thursday. After closed session, there was a special side meeting where the city attorney, the city clerk, Council President, and Councilman Baines, met to discuss this issue…they wanted to discuss what should the city do going forward.
“They had that discussion, the rest of us at this point didn’t know about it.”
Council President Esmeralda Soria defended the timeline, telling her colleagues that they tried to expedite the issue when it first came to light.
“As soon as we figured out that we needed to quickly move forward with this, we called a special meeting and I took leadership on that to make sure that we were brought forward to address this sooner rather than later.”
Other members of Fresno City Council raised fears that printing and mailing a ballot correction could be considered an endorsement of Measure P, and that the money used could be spent elsewhere. The original motion was to approve a $50,000 cost, but estimates during the meeting cited an $85,000 cost to correct the issue.
The item was approved 4-3.
Hear the report from KMJ’s Dominic McAndrew as it aired:
