Talk about wasting our tax dollars. There is no good reason to have county islands within the borders of the city of Fresno. It's time to annex every neighborhood that causes the inefficient delivery of public services, such as police and fire protection. If you live in an urban area, you should be in the city. If you live in a rural area, you should be governed by the county. It's that simple.
It is costly to have city police officers and county sheriff's deputies criss-crossing the urban area to get to calls for help. The same for the various fire agencies serving the metropolitan area. More importantly, these inefficiencies could harm public safety.
Public services are expensive enough without compounding the cost by having pockets of county jurisdiction within the city. Fortunately, there's a new state law that is helping the city to annex small pockets of county neighborhoods.
The law that was passed in 2005 allows islands of 150 acres or less to be easily annexed. City officials say 12 of Fresno's 21 county islands are small enough to come under the law.
Annexing county islands makes sense for every taxpayer.
It is possible to use Specific Land Use Plans to give the neighborhoods design input and protection. Old Fig could have a specific plan that protected their rural feel. this would actually give them more qualtiy of life protection than they have now. It's a great process and the plans are adopted by ordinace rather than by policy like all other plans. Residents could keep the feel that they want while erasing the archic lines that exist between city and county.