From:
To:
Subject: Opposition to Agenda Item ID 25-1179
Date: Tuesday, September 9, 2025 11:17:21 PM
External Email: Use caution with links and attachments
OPPOSITION TO AGENDA ITEM: ID 25-1179
Approve the First Amendment to the Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with Fresno Chaffee Zoo Corporation through August 30, 2026
What even is the necessity for the City of Fresno to enter into an exclusive negotiating agreement with Fresno Chaffee Zoo Corporation that would expand the footprint within Roeding Park? I call attention to this agenda item and write in opposition for the following reasons:
The City of Fresno and Fresno Chaffee Zoo Corporation have failed to provide the public with an actual legally sufficient parking plan to account for the City and Zoo’s ongoing efforts to reconfigure and repurpose Roeding Park.
I have been publicly asking for the parking plan at City Council meetings and Zoo Authority meetings - to no avail.
Instead, the City of Fresno published (Easter 2025) a one-page schematic calling that the long awaited “parking plan”. To date, this is the only document in existence that has been provided by the City towards fulfilling its obligation to provide a parking plan, and it is woefully incomplete. There needs to be traffic counts, traffic movements, and other traffic data necessary to produce a parking plan.
For years, the Fresno Chaffee Zoo Corporation has publicly misrepresented the ratio of zoo visitors to the actual number and types of vehicles that enter Roeding Park each year. Since the Fresno Chaffee Zoo expansion, the City/Zoo have failed to perform any legally sufficient traffic study to warrant entering into any negotiated agreement for the expansion of parking or the building of two multi-level parking structures in Roeding Park.
For well over 10 years, I have performed numerous windshield surveys of the highest usage dates of both Roeding Park and Chaffee Zoo. With these traffic counts and windshield surveys, Roeding Park/Chaffee Zoo are only impacted less than 10-14 days out of a year. So why expand parking now, especially when the City is entering into a recession?
Employee parking? It is my understanding that Fresno Chaffee Zoo Corporation has a separate approved project for employee/overflow parking, so why would the City of Fresno even entertain the possibility of expanding their parking footprint within Roeding Park? The City of Fresno should be looking at overflow parking outside of Roeding Park on the other side of Olive Avenue and Belmont Avenue. Why doesn’t the City want to save green space? Or is this the part of the colonizing plan formulated by the past administrator that was not made public to come back years later (as he told many people) to take as much of Roeding Park as the corporation could get - for what…$1?
Community Outreach - In my 16 years of dealing with Chaffee Zoo and the City of Fresno, both have come up short when it comes to being good neighbors. Now I figure, the dog park was moved not because of the high level of particular matter (PM2.5 and PM10)
along Highway 99 or that the City acted upon the concerns of the dog park community - NO! It was because of the need to pave over Roeding Park!
And don’t forget the Puppy Love dog park users were “promised” shade structures before the opening - that’s almost two years ago now. So instead of wasting taxpayers’ money on negotiations, how about fulfilling your previous commitments to actual park users?
When Fresno Chaffee Zoo Corporation expanded into Roeding Park, you (City/Zoo) both failed to conduct actual
meaningful outreach to “communities of interest”. For example, the Roeding Park Small Dog Play Group and Central Valley Chihuahua Club whom have been in the park for over 16 years were never directly informed. We do not believe that either party will be transparent or forthcoming with community outreach efforts. Instead phone calls to community activists will not be made, and public notices will be noticed at the lowest minimum required by law - because this is how the City of Fresno disenfranchises community. The first go-around, no notices were placed in the park picnic areas or at the entrances, nor were park users notified (from the dog park groups to over 1,000+ park users whom annual rent facilities at Roeding Park).
In conclusion, the City of Fresno needs to stop looking at Roeding Park as merely cheap and easily accessible land for the benefit of the Fresno Chaffee Zoo Corporation and instead look at the long-term impact to the community for our continuing need for green space. I urge a NO vote on Consent Agenda ID 25-1179.
Lisa Y. Flores
Organizer, Roeding Park Small Dog Play Group
Former Member, AB617 Community Steering Committee
Retired, Associate Environmental/Transportation Planner
Community Engagement Consultant