Clovis and Sanger mayors say they have no interest in SEDA — undercutting Dyer’s push for approval

Mayor Jerry Dyer has spent a year urging Fresno’s Planning Commission to approve his SEDA mega-development without a funding plan, warning that delay could hand the land to Clovis or Sanger through the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission.

Both neighboring mayors now say they’re not interested. Neither city has asked LAFCo to take the land. And the LAFCo executive officer who would review any such request calls the scenario “about as close to impossible as one could get” for Sanger and unlikely for Clovis.

The Planning Commission meets Wednesday at 6 p.m. at City Hall to decide whether to recommend SEDA to the City Council — the second time commissioners have weighed the plan. The Council sent it back in December demanding a financial plan for the first phase, called South SEDA. Dyer’s team has not delivered one.

On the table: 45,000 new homes in southeast Fresno, carrying a $4.3 billion infrastructure price tag.

“What worries me, that if we don’t approve an environmental impact report [for SEDA], that LAFCO may take this away from us as a growth area,” Dyer told The Fresno Bee in June. “And when that happens, who’s going to get it? Clovis or Sanger.”

Planning Director Jennifer Clark and Planning Commission chair Kathy Bray have echoed the claim. “If we don’t pass it, LAFco will take the land and give it to Clovis or Sanger and they’ll develop it,” Bray said last year.

A review of city, county, and state records — along with interviews and written statements from officials in Clovis, Sanger, and Fresno LAFCo — shows the argument does not hold up.

“The city’s plans do not include any of those areas in SEDA,” Clovis Mayor Vong Mouanoutoua wrote in an email to a southeast Fresno resident. “In order to change any planning area, it would take the property owners, not the city, to make such a change. The process would be many, many years.”

Clovis is drafting a general plan for the next 20 years of growth. SEDA is not in it. The city already has three growth areas with 53,000 zoned housing units ready to go, meant to handle growth needs into 2047. After that, the state projects Fresno County’s overall population to decline.

“There is no expansion of the SOI [sphere of influence, which is where a city can grow] as part of the General Plan Update, which is currently underway,” said Chad McCollum, a spokesperson for Clovis.

Sanger faces the opposite problem: the city is growing north, not west toward SEDA. Sanger’s adopted growth area is the North Academy Corridor — roughly 285 acres in north Sanger. The city’s footprint can nearly double in size without ever looking toward SEDA.

“We have no plans to develop anything other than what we have already annexed,” Sanger Mayor Frank Gonzalez wrote.

Even if either city changed course, LAFCo requires proof the city can actually deliver services to the land — water, sewer, and other infrastructure. Annexations must be contiguous; a city cannot take an island of land miles from its border.

Sanger’s wastewater system is in a declared state of emergency. The City Council voted unanimously in July 2024 to declare a crisis at both the city’s domestic and industrial wastewater treatment plants. A state review documented more than 100 violations across the two facilities from 2020 to 2022. A new plant, City Manager Nathan Olson told The Fresno Bee, is “years out” — possibly in the next 15 years.

“Sanger is less likely — about as close to impossible as one could get,” wrote Brian Spaunhurst, Fresno LAFCo’s executive officer — the person who would review any SEDA request.

Clovis is closer but still constrained. The sewer mains that carry Clovis’s wastewater south to its treatment plant are already short on capacity in places, according to city consultants. There is no room left in the roads to lay bigger ones. The pinch point runs along the city’s southern edge — the side that faces SEDA.

Even without SEDA, Clovis’s general plan committee is already asking whether a third waste treatment plant is needed to service its three existing growth areas. Adding a fourth by reaching for SEDA would make that plant “a near certainty,” according to planning memos. Clovis residents would need to sign off on higher tax rates to build it.

“While Clovis is more realistic than Sanger, the fact remains that the financial burdens pertaining to infrastructure that exist for Fresno would also be about the same for any other city to develop in this area,” Spaunhurst said. “The costs of infrastructure do not go away simply because it is a different city that is responsible.”

“I have yet to see any data or interest from Clovis that shows they would be the better option.”

LAFCo requires a Master Service Delivery Plan — a document showing SEDA’s sources of funding for infrastructure costs. Fresno has never submitted one for SEDA, according to LAFCo.

“They have not submitted anything directly to us for the MSDP,” Spaunhurst said.

Mention of that plan appears in the LAFCo resolution that will be in front of the Planning Commission on Wednesday, highlighted alongside other documents like the SEDA Specific Plan.

The first phase of SEDA has a $440 million funding shortfall, according to a city-commissioned report in May 2025. Its infrastructure will cost $672 million, and developer fees will cover only $233 million. Who will plug the shortfall is still unexplained.

Dyer’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

David Fey, the former Fresno LAFCo executive officer, said the Planning Commission should not decide through fear of losing the land. Both Sanger and Clovis have thousands of acres of raw land already inside their spheres, with infrastructure far closer to ready. Neither town has an obvious reason to make a dash for an unfunded project with organized opposition.

“There’s already a ready-made buzzsaw,” Fey said, “and it’s all the folks who are against it.”

The Breakdown

• The Fresno City Planning Commission meets Wednesday at 6 p.m. at City Hall to decide whether to recommend Mayor Jerry Dyer’s SEDA development plan to the City Council — 45,000 new homes in southeast Fresno, carrying a $4.3 billion infrastructure price tag.
• The Council sent the plan back in December demanding a financial plan for the first phase, South SEDA, which has a $440 million funding shortfall. Dyer’s team has not delivered that plan.
• Dyer has argued Fresno must approve SEDA or risk LAFCo handing the land to Clovis or Sanger. Both neighboring mayors say they have no interest in SEDA and no plans to pursue it.
• LAFCo requires cities to prove they can deliver services — water, sewer, infrastructure — to new land. Sanger’s wastewater system is in a declared emergency. Clovis’s sewer mains are already short on capacity, and the city would likely need a third treatment plant (requiring voter approval for higher taxes) to handle its existing growth areas, let alone SEDA.
• Fresno has never submitted a Master Service Delivery Plan to LAFCo showing how SEDA would be funded, according to LAFCo’s executive officer.

What This Means for You

The Planning Commission’s recommendation will shape whether the City Council approves a development plan that carries a $4.3 billion price tag without a stated source of funding. The commission was told to decide through fear of losing the land to a neighbor — a threat both neighboring mayors and the LAFCo official who would execute it say is not real.

If the commission recommends approval based on that claim, the Council will be voting on a plan whose financial burden remains unexplained and whose justification for urgency does not hold up to scrutiny. Your vote for mayor and city council in future elections is a vote for who decides whether Fresno takes on billions in infrastructure costs without a funding plan — and whether the city’s financial projections can be trusted when they conflict with what neighboring officials and the county agency itself are saying.

What You Can Do

The Fresno City Planning Commission meets Wednesday, August 20, at 6 p.m. at City Hall to vote on whether to recommend SEDA to the City Council. Public comment is part of the meeting.

What to Watch

The first phase, South SEDA, has a stated $440 million shortfall after developer fees, and no stated plan for closing it.

Here’s the question the material does not answer: if Fresno approves SEDA without a Master Service Delivery Plan showing how the infrastructure will be funded, who actually pays? The city has not submitted that plan to LAFCo, according to LAFCo’s executive officer. The Planning Commission was asked to recommend approval in December without it, and is being asked again Wednesday — still without it.

The justification for urgency — that LAFCo might hand the land to Clovis or Sanger — does not match what those cities’ mayors, their infrastructure capacity, or LAFCo itself say is realistic. If the real reason is not the threat of a neighbor taking the land, what is it? And if the city is willing to misstate the LAFCo risk to move the plan forward, what else in the financial projections should a voter take with skepticism?