Oft-Mocked Fresno Finally Gets Some Respect

When it came to civic inferiority complexes, Fresno took a back seat to no one.

The municipal resume in years past has included soaring homicide rates, urban blight so extensive that graffiti spread all over town, triple-digit summers and motor oil-thick winter fog.

That’s not even counting the time the city was ranked least livable out of 277 nationwide. Or the nighttime soap opera a few years back that lampooned the place as the kingdom of the raisin.

That was never the whole story of Fresno, hometown of author William Saroyan and heart of the world’s greatest agricultural empire. But getting the other side of the story out hasn’t been easy.

But that’s changing. The community was recently named an All-America City for the first time since 1967. Sponsored by the National Civic League, the competition each year selects 10 cities as models of problem-solving and community-building. Fresno was the only California city honored this year.

“This means an awful lot to Fresno,” said Mayor Jim Patterson. “What people are feeling is we’ve moved from ridicule to recognition.”

They’re feeling so good that the town will throw itself a big party Friday. They’re closing off a major downtown street. There will be dancing, music, food. City buses and police cars are being plastered with the red, white and blue All-America City shield.

The civic league has a rich tradition, having been founded in 1894 by Theodore Roosevelt, Louis Brandeis and other progressives.

The honor brings some much-needed verification that Fresno’s efforts in recent years to combat its problems are on the right track.

“Ten years ago, this city was in free fall,” said Patterson, who flew to Louisville for the competition. “The homicide rate was out of control. Capital was fleeing.”

He credits thousands of people who stopped complaining about the city’s problems and started pitching in to make things better.

In recent years, Patterson said, crime has fallen at twice the national and state averages. Since 1994, auto thefts are down 66%, homicides with firearms are down 75%, and total crime has been cut in half. At the same time, the number of police officers in the city of 400,000 has nearly doubled to 700.

Business is booming. Three new freeways have opened in the past 18 months. The city and volunteers have planted 18,000 trees.

Carla Glazebrook, an aide to Mayor Patterson, remembers the days when graffiti was everywhere.

“It left you feeling that everything was out of control,” she said, as she prepared Friday for a reunion with the rest of the city’s team that competed in Louisville, Ky. There were more than 70 entries.

Now, she said, “you drive the streets and notice a canopy of green.”

“I am always proud to say I’m from Fresno,” she said.

Police Chief Ed Winchester said the influx of resources that allowed him to hire hundreds of officers is only part of the story. “It takes everybody getting involved, and we’ve had wonderful participation,” he said.

Now, he said, “it feels great” to be police chief of Fresno.

The city’s application to the award committee described three programs exemplifying the city’s problem-solving skills.

Hope Now for Youth has helped put hundreds of gang members to work. Care Fresno is a partnership among 40 local churches and the Police Department that is cleaning up crime-plagued apartment complexes. The third venture created a park with recreation equipment that could be used both by the disabled and the able-bodied.

“There is a renaissance in Fresno,” Patterson said. “This a very different Fresno from a decade ago.”

The award, he said, is a “symbol of what the city used to be, how it went astray, and how far it has come back. It’s a national confirmation that we’ve turned the corner.”