Sparks Fly in West Fresno Community Meeting
By Mike Rhodes

City of Fresno plans to convert the Frank Ball Center in West Fresno into a Police Activity League (PAL) facility meet resistance at a meeting held last Thursday. Residents of the area complained about inadequate notification about the meeting, the lack of a public address system, the threat to the center and about the funding for the project.

The video (above) shows shows about 8 minutes near the end of the meeting and interviews with two community activists after the meeting was over. The main complaint seemed to be that the residents near the community center were not consulted before the decision was made to convert the facility to PAL. Nobody seemed particularly upset with PAL, but they did object to city staff making decisions about the future of the Frank Ball Center without holding meetings first.

City staff, in their presentation, showed diagrams of a new facility 5 blocks away. Staff said the new facility would be better than Frank Ball, that the staff would re-locate to the new building, and that many of the same activities would be available at Frank Ball. Several residents said that the site of the new facility would require their children to cross several busy streets, there were concerns about gang turf, and they said they would have preferred to have just fixed up the current facility.

Some residents complained that this is part of a pattern of city staff making decisions and “informing” the West Fresno community about what is going to happen, instead of communicating with them ahead of time. They also complained that there is a pattern of the city shutting down community centers in West Fresno.

Edie Jessup, from Metro Ministry noted that this is the second facility this month that is being taken over by the police. She said there is a Hmong Community Garden in South East Fresno that police are going to turn it into a sub-station.

In the end, as you will see in the video, the Assistant City Manager Bruce Rudd, was forced to agree that the city had made some mis-calculations and that they would hold another community meeting in three weeks - this time with a PA system, enough seats so everyone can sit down, adequate notification, and a pledge to turn on the air conditioner.

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