In June 2024, Fresno City Hall was in the middle of a busy budget process — on top of being embroiled in a police chief scandal. The same day the Fresno City Council approved a then-record $2 billion budget, councilmembers also quietly passed a major policy change without any public discussion. Then-Councilmember Luis Chavez — along with Miguel Arias and Nelson Esparza — …

The Fresno County Board Of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved a new law limiting the number of sex offenders that can live in a single-family home, following complaints from Old Fig Garden residents. The law caps the number of sexual offenders to six per home, matching regulations set by the state, with property owners facing fines totaling over $50,000 for successive violations, a six-month jail sentence and potential litigation from the county.

Roughly 1,500 retirees on Medicaid who receive medical coverage from Fresno Unified have lost access to Community Medical Centers following unresolved negotiations. In the last board meeting of 2025, the Fresno Unified Board of Education approved a contract with insurance company Aetna to maintain healthcare coverage for around 6,200 retirees and dependents. However, at the time of the board meeting, contract negotiations between Aetna and Community were still ongoing despite a deadline of Dec.

Jury selection gets underway later this month in a wrongful death trial in which the family of a 41-year-old Fresno man says he died after city police and county deputies restrained him face down on the ground. Alleging wrongful death, gross negligence and constitutional violations, the family of Joseph Perez is seeking unspecified damages from the city and county of Fresno and the parent corporation of the ambulance company that responded to the scene in 2017.

It’s been a long year for English learners in the central San Joaquin Valley. From shuffling leadership in multiple local districts, rising test scores in the classroom and looming federal policy shifts, 2025 marked a year full of change for multilingual learners. But the year started on shaky ground. In January, the Trump Administration rescinded a law that prohibited federal immigration officers and agents from entering schools, hospitals and places of worship.

Just as it promises to be at the federal level, 2026 will be a critical year for politics in Fresno. This time next year, both local chambers of government — the city council and county board of supervisors — will have likely gone through a radical shift in their make-up, as many current office holders either term out or aim to pursue higher positions in California’s electoral system.

The U.S. Congress adjourned for its holiday break without taking action on legislation to forestall the expiration of tax credits that help subsidize the cost of health insurance premiums under the federal Affordable Care Act. The expiration of those tax credits on Dec. 31, combined with the absence of legislation to take the place of that financial assistance, has created cost uncertainty for health insurance customers.

Fresno is betting that teaching kids to ride bikes safer could help transform one of America's deadliest cities for cyclists. The city's Parks and Recreation Department received a $325,000 state grant to launch a youth bicycle and pedestrian safety education program. It’s a first step toward the kind of community-based training, Fresnoland reported this year, credited with building cycling culture in Bay Area cities like Palo Alto.

` Fifty years after Hmong families fled war and rebuilt their lives in the Central Valley, a new chapter is taking shape – one of rising influence. After a special election in 2025, Brandon Vang emerged as the first Hmong American elected to represent District 5 on the Fresno City Council. That win made him the second Hmong person elected to the city council in Fresno, California’s fifth-largest city, following Blong Xiong’s trailblazing victory in 2007.

For the first generation of Hmong Americans born in the Central Valley, growing up in the 1980s and ‘90s meant facing poverty, racism, and the pressure to blend in. Many slipped into gangs as they tried to survive. Still, others fought to keep the culture alive by creating programs for the next generation that uplift the Hmong identity. In south Merced, where See Lee grew up, survival meant navigating danger in neighborhoods marked by gangs.

There’s only so much you can learn about a community from its power players, insiders and political influencers. Fresnoland went deeper in 2025 with a new series of profiles focusing on people not typically in the spotlight — the filmmakers, the painters, the food truck owners and the conservationists putting their stamps on our rivers and murals and lunches. Here’s a (very) short (and totally incomplete) list of some of the most interesting people we met in 2025.

In this special year-end recap episode of Fresnolandia, Jordan and Dani discuss the year in local news coverage. Together, they unpack the most impactful stories of the year, starting with Fresnoland’s sustained coverage of the Southeast Development Area (SEDA) plan and how reporting on infrastructure costs and fiscal shortfalls helped shift public understanding of suburban growth. They also examine the CEMEX mining proposal along the San Joaquin River.

Looking back at Fresnoland accomplishments in 2025, one of the efforts of which I’m most proud was our decision to go even deeper into our neighborhoods. We wanted to explore the often untold or forgotten stories of the store owners, the artists, the cooks and history makers that shape our community as much and sometimes even more than powerful politicians and rich developers.

Instructors at State Center Community College District are seeking hefty raises in a move they say is needed to stay competitive with neighboring school districts. The State Center Federation of Teachers (SCFT) Local 1533 has been in contract talks with the central San Joaquin Valley community college district for almost a year. Union leaders say the goal of the proposed raises, which would boost salaries for both part-time and full-time faculty by roughly 11% in its first year, is to stay competitive with College of the Sequoias in Visalia and other central San Joaquin Valley districts — with higher pay scales that SCFT say keep luring talented people away from State Center.

A former program director is suing a Fresno-based community development company for wrongful termination and accusing its president — prominent former City Hall politician Oliver Baines — of whistleblower retaliation. Giulio Sanchez, a Fresno-based attorney representing the company — the Central Valley New Market Tax Credit Fund — said the company wasn’t aware of the lawsuit until contacted for comment by Fresnoland this week and confirmed the case has not been served.

Fresno Unified held its last board meeting of the year and approved a retirement incentive that they said could save the district tens of millions in the next five years. An early retirement incentive by the district in collaboration with Public Agency Retirement Services (PARS) was presented at a meeting early in October. Projections by PARS from October estimate that 459 retirements could save the district $35 million over five years.

A southeast Fresno mega-development known as SEDA is now on shaky political ground Thursday after residents packed City Hall to the rafters to tell the Fresno City Council that the project’s $3 billion shortfall and its potential to hollow out Fresno Unified with school closures was unacceptable. In a 5-2 vote, the City Council asked the Dyer administration to conduct more studies on SEDA’s financial viability and future impacts to schools and other subjects over the next six months.

Most Fresno County mayors voted Thursday evening to officially approve the expenditure plan for the renewal of Measure C, the transportation sales tax, planned for the November 2026 ballot. Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer led the charge, with Clovis Mayor Vong Mouanoutoua in support along with the county's west side mayors, in a 10-4 vote. The plan was modified to reduce the county's required expenditures in disadvantaged unincorporated communities.

The Fresno City Council approved changes to the city’s anti-encampment ordinance that, at least on paper, gives law enforcement more tools to punish violators of the law. The amendment codifies loitering as a violation of the ordinance and gives the city attorney more tools to pursue penalties against reoffenders of the law, among other things. The amendments, which were part of a package of items that included other changes to city code, were approved in a 6-1 vote, with north Fresno Councilmember Nick Richardson dissenting.

This story was originally published by The Merced Focus. The war was secret. The journey was forced. The arrival was quiet. Fifty years later, the Hmong story in California’s Central Valley is loud with life. It echoes through farm fields, school gyms, courtrooms, and city council chambers. This month, the Hmong community will gather at the Merced County Fairgrounds to celebrate the New Year and mark the half-century anniversary since the first Hmong refugees arrived in the United States. 

For many, the holiday season highlights the pressures of consumer culture and economic inequality. Local efforts to share resources, support small businesses, and rethink traditions offer both relief and a model for stronger community connection.

A little over a year ago, Ariel and Derek Williams weren’t sure how they were ever going to pay down their PG&E debt. Then came Fresno County’s first-ever guaranteed basic income program. The Williams were one of the families selected to participate in the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission’s program that provided no-strings-attached monthly stipends of $500 to 150 families over the course of a year, starting in July 2024.

On a 40-degree December day in Clovis, two dozen high school students in firefighter gear steady themselves before carrying and climbing a 24-foot, 100-pound ladder. They balance the ladders on their shoulders and place them against a two-story building. “Going up,” they yell. Next semester, students will extinguish burning cars and break down doors with axes, debunking the Hollywood shows that they can kick them in to gain access to a building, said instructor George Mavrikis, a former fire marshal, investigator and firefighter for 30 years.

On this week's Fresnolandia podcast, Jordan and Danielle speak with Martha Guzman, an energy and environmental policy wonk who has held positions as a Commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commission, appointed by former Gov. Jerry Brown; and most recently as the Biden appointee to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency west coast office in San Francisco until January. Guzman, a Sacramento native, has also spent a lot of time in the Central Valley, working earlier in her career for the United Farm Workers' union and co-founding Communities for a New California, an advocacy nonprofit.

The Fresno City Council on Thursday is expected to adopt a handful of changes to city code, with most aimed at granting the Fresno City Attorney more power to pursue legal action against violators of its anti-encampment law. The updates to city code will come through a single item with sweeping consequences, which passed its first hurdle for approval at a council meeting…