Fresno County’s efforts to study privatizing their library system appear to be caught in a holding pattern. Not only does the move lack the required supermajority of the board to push any future efforts forward this year — they’ve now backed away from a public workshop, letting the new crop of supervisors take it up after the November election. Instead, county officials will post the study about the possible privatization move on their website later this fall, county spokesperson Sonja Dosti confirmed Tuesday.

Jamie Gomez’s work on a habeas petition helped free a man from immigration detention. But the case didn’t end when immigration enforcement released him. A district court granted a temporary restraining order that led to the man’s release. Gomez then continued representing him in immigration court, with support from Centro La Familia, where his case remains ongoing. The man was reunited with his family in Fresno, including his six U.S.

Money, construction, and a lawsuit are at the center of the latest public fight inside the State Center Community College District. State Center attorneys have been defending trustee Rob Fuentes against an anonymous complaint filed with the California Fair Political Practices Commission in July. The complaint, signed by the anonymous group the SCCCD Avengers, suggests Fuentes violated the Levine Act, a state law designed to prevent elected officials from weighing in on decisions involving major campaign donors, also known as “pay to play.”

Everything starts with a tractor. That’s the mantra of grape grower Albert Smith, whose family has been farming in southwest Fresno for generations.  “ Everything you do starts with a good machine,” Smith said. Purchasing new equipment, however, can be an exorbitant expense, especially for small-scale farmers like Smith. Modern tractors can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But what if growers could borrow or test out machines, rather than risk a big purchase?

After a vigil was held in August in front of Fresno High School to honor the death of Daniel Padilla, Kristina Holmes-McIntyre received an email from Superintendent Misty Her, who wanted to meet and listen to concerns from parents in the district. Holmes-McIntyre, a parent of three kids at Fresno Unified schools, has spent the last year rattling the cages of anyone at Fresno Unified who will listen.

An embattled Fresno Taqueria owner is absent from his flagship restaurant again.

From Chinatown to Old Armenian Town to Germantown and the diverse communities of West Fresno, they all have stories. Before the 99 or 41 freeways were built, these neighborhoods were places of culture, history and belonging for communities banned from living in the housing tracts being built on the north side of town through a good part of the 20th century.

The Fresno Bee laid off up to 40% of its workforce today as part of a nationwide sweep of papers in the McClatchy Media Company. The Bee's labor union lead worries the cuts are part of a push to have AI write Fresno's news.  Seven reporters and one editor were laid off Thursday, according to Josh Tehee, a Bee reporter and co-chair of the Bee News Guild.

When you grow up surrounded by farms, it’s kind of a no-brainer to want to buy your produce directly from the neighbors who grow it. Hence why so many born-and-raised Central Valley-ans have so many memories of farmers markets. Back in olden times (gather round, kids…), farmers markets were even cheaper than supermarkets, cutting out the middleman as they do.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 8, Aleksey Dvorkin sat down and wrote to the leadership of Granville Homes, one of the largest homebuilders in Fresno, to say that its financial statements could not be relied upon. Granville's reviewed reports for 2023 and 2024, he wrote, "may have been materially misstated." He was the company's controller, by his own claim the last certified public accountant at Granville, the man whose signature outside accountants were supposed to take as assurance that the books for some of Fresno’s biggest subdivisions were accurate.

Fresnoland's guide to the best 'little treats' in Fresno (sweet edition).

A local judge appeared skeptical of the arguments made by Fresno County against a bill passed by state legislators that placed a transportation tax measure on this year’s countywide ballot, superseding the power of the local board of supervisors in the process.  Attorneys for Fresno County and the State of California made their final arguments before the court on Friday ahead of a ruling that will decide whether a signature-led tax initiative to replace Measure C, the county's 40-year-old transportation tax, makes it onto the November ballot. 

A Fresno councilmember will ask his colleagues to begin writing a citywide ban on data centers, a step that would strip power the city’s Planning Director currently has to approve one. The resolution, from Councilmember Nick Richardson, directs staff to prepare an amendment to the city's Development Code defining data centers -- including facilities built to train and deploy artificial intelligence -- and prohibiting them throughout Fresno.

Former employees of Bulle, Fresno’s newest high-end restaurant, disputed recent claims by the restaurant’s owners, telling Fresnoland that bounced paychecks and unpaid vendors have been a much larger problem than Bulle co-owner Tom Miller acknowledges. Since Fresnoland first broke the news that the city’s newest and seemingly swankiest restaurant was cutting ties with its founding chef while also bouncing paychecks, tensions at Fresno’s fledgling fine dining restaurant have grown increasingly public. 

A Fresno County Superior Court judge has set the date for the climax of a legal battle that will decide when exactly a controversial countywide transportation proposal goes before local voters. Judge Jonathan Skiles ruled at Tuesday's hearing that he will hear the case between the County of Fresno and the State of California on Friday afternoon, in a case that will see filings and arguments submitted swiftly as both parties look to conclude the lawsuit ahead of the rapidly approaching deadline to finalize what the November general election ballot will look like.

Sixth-graders in Fresno Unified might have to figure out a way to pay for an annual science camp field trip after what at least one parent described as the district leaving schools “high and dry.” As part of Fresno Unified’s budget cuts, field trips for transitional kindergarten through sixth grade students were eliminated for the 2026-27 school year, leaving it to schools and families to figure out how to fund trips many students look forward to.

The dust has mostly settled on the judge disqualification spree this week in Fresno County’s lawsuit against the State of California, their own elections clerk and a local transportation tax campaign, and Judge Lisa Gamoian has emerged as the likely arbiter on the critical case that will directly affect voters’ ballots this November. Gamoian will rule on the lawsuit Fresno County filed on Aug.

Fresno City Hall Wednesday night once again was packed to the rafters with residents who wanted to weigh in on SEDA, and again almost nobody in attendance wanted Mayor Dyer’s $4.3 billion mega-development plan to move forward. By a raise of hands in front of the commission, a total of five people supported the Southeast Development Area (SEDA). Speaker after speaker opposed SEDA — farmers inside the plan boundary, residents ranging from downtown to the edge of the San Joaquin River, the superintendent of Central Unified, the president of Fresno Unified's board, and even a sitting city councilmember — all asking the planning commission to recommend denial or send it back to planning staff.

The Fresno City Planning Commission meets Wednesday at 6 p.m. at City Hall to decide whether to recommend to the City Council Mayor Jerry Dyer's SEDA mega-development plan. On the table: 45,000 new homes in southeast Fresno, carrying a $4.3 billion infrastructure price tag. Last November, the planning commission recommended a thumbs up to the city council. But the city council…

Fresno Unified trustee Keshia Thomas issued a public apology on Monday to Don Arax, a former coach of the district whom Thomas falsely accused of using a racial slur against her son. The statement comes a day after the Fresno Teachers Association called for Thomas to resign, citing a loss of public trust coming from Arax' defamation case against the trustee and the district.