Ever since Clovis Police Chief Curt Fleming provided the state of the Clovis Police Department in early November of 2021, the Clovis City Council has had public safety on its mind.
So much so in fact that the City Council decided to form a group through the Citizens Advisory Committee in which citizens of Clovis were armed with the task of figuring out how to keep Clovis’ vaunted title “Safest City in the Valley”. A written record on past meetings can be found at the inserted linkhere.
At the latest and last meeting of the Citizens Advisory Committee, the committee met back with the Council, in the same fashion that they had started. In an open microphone setting, speakers from both the City Council as well as members of the committee and even members from the general public were allowed to speak at length on their thoughts of the situation. That situation of course being, “How can the City of Clovis think of a way to keep its city safe?”
The obvious answer for the committee and through the work and discussion that they had was to hire more police officers and provide the Clovis Police Department and Chief Fleming with the amount of public funds that they had originally desired. In terms of paying for those funds, the committee suggested to the City Council the possibility of a tax, quite possibly a sales tax, that would affect every citizen in the city on an income basis.
Chief Fleming was asked after the meeting his thoughts on what the possibility of a tax would mean to the public. “I just wanted to educate everybody on the current position we’re at. If provided the additional resources, this is what we can do, if not we’re gonna keep doing everything we can to keep this city safe.” The position that Chief Fleming is referring to returns back to the report he filed to the City Council back in November in which he stated that Clovis PD was “understaffed” and cited budget cuts as negative impacts towards the police department. Fleming understands that the economic downturn of the “unknown times” as he called it would not work in his favor of providing more funds to his staff. “I don’t know if asking anybody for anymore right now is good. But I’ll leave that to the leaders of the city to make those decisions.
Mayor Jose Flores of Clovis heralded the committee for their efforts and repeated that he had “great faith” in the group. In making a decision, Flores stated that he had “so much” information provided from the committee through the “nuggets of wisdom” that the council had received at the meeting. He provided to the committee that the council would confide in debate over the issue and will discuss it at length. However, he did mention that this “question [was] still not over, it’s just the beginning.” He thanked the committee for providing them a “good beginning” and thanked staff for their assistance in the prior meetings.
The Council working with City Manager John Holt, who sat in on multiple Citizens Advisory Committee meetings, anticipates adding the topic to the City Council agenda for their first meeting in May which will take place on Monday, May 2nd at 6 O’Clock in the Council Chambers. It is likely that this predicted debate will have much to be discussed over, with the likely possibility of a future tax looming over the public of Clovis.