FREMONT — Fremont city officials are warning that economic growth may be stunted over the next year, even as some residents are demanding more funding for services for the unhoused following strict bans on camping in RVs or in tents.
The Bay Area’s fourth largest city proposes an operating budget of $422.6 million, with $277.8 million in its general fund, according to Fremont officials. At a May 13 meeting, residents asked the City Council to push money toward homeless services and other city programs.
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Liz Ames, the District 6 BART director for Fremont, asked council to show “promise” that homeless residents have a “housing solution.” She also asked that the city reduce the amount of police personnel tasked with removing homeless camps and temporary shelters.
“We don’t have a place for those folks to go and it’s just a vicious cycle of moving the homeless encampments around the city with no solution,” Ames said.
This comes as the city is fighting in federal court over its recently proposed homeless camping ban, which is one of the strictest in the state. The ban, which was amended to remove an “aiding and abetting” clause, could have punished someone for helping homeless residents by providing tents or other temporary shelter that the city considered camping “paraphernalia.” The city last fall also passed a RV camping ban, which requires large trucks and other “oversized” vehicles, such as RVs, move at least 1,000 feet within 24 hours and limits parking on city streets to just 72-hours.
“Our unhoused residents are facing almost daily crises. They need a safe place to sleep until adequate safe and secure shelters can be provided for all in need,” resident William Bain wrote to council in an email ahead of the budget hearing.
Both Ames and Bain asked the council to direct their attention and resources to Fremont’s five-year Homeless Response Plan, adopted on May 21, 2024. The plan outlines city goals to stop the growth of homelessness, increase pathways to housing and reduce the impacts of homelessness. According to the city’s proposed budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year, the city is planning to spend about $5.8 million on homeless services, with an estimated $2.7 million left to spend in a homeless services fund.
In an interview this week, Mayor Raj Salwan said there’s not much wiggle room left for additional funds for unhoused residents or the Homeless Response Plan. Salwan said the city is waiting on “a good chunk” — hundreds of millions in funds — from Measure W, a 10-year tax hike voters passed in November 2020. Fremont currently has its hands tied on generating any additional sources of funding for addressing homelessness, the mayor said.
“We just have limited resources at this time. At this point, we can’t expand on that,” Salwan said. “We want to do our part, but we’re also waiting on the county.”
Finance Director David Persselin told council during the budget hearing that while President Trump’s proposed tariffs are expected to slow down the nation’s economy, residents locally won’t feel the effects until later. Some businesses have been purchasing goods at pre-tariff prices and selling them lower than market prices with the tariffs, Persselin said. Once these goods are sold out – perhaps by the end of June – then prices will inflate more significantly and the local economy will likely start to slow, he said.
He projected the impacts of Trump’s tariffs won’t be felt until at least after the first quarter of the next fiscal year, either in November or December this year.
“It will be a while before we really know how things are playing out,” Persselin said.
The state through this year is also finishing recouping the $37 million in overpaid sales tax to Fremont, which began in 2022. The city was able to repay the majority of the accidental tax hiccup by drawing down its financial reserves from about $24.2 million to a meager $6.7 million, leaving the city of over 230,000 residents with a limited cushion in the face of any economic collapse.
“Won’t an actual recession leave us with nothing left?” Councilman Raymond Liu asked Persselin.
Persselin said the remaining reserves would leave the city with “at least a little bit of cushion” in a “full-blown recession.” He added officials would come back to the council at a later date if the budget needed rebalancing.
Salwan asked if any other federal money is on the chopping block for Fremont due financial decisions coming from the country’s executive branch.
“We’re definitely at risk,” Persselin said, noting that the feds have mentioned potentially cutting certain grant funding countrywide. “We are benefitting from certain grant programs in a number of areas – human services, public safety, capital projects.”
Fremont’s proposed budget shows that the city expects to spend about 94% of its money on police, fire and maintenance work. Police will be taking the lion’s share of nearly half of overall spending. Last year, the city spent over $118 million on police, with $123.5 million projected to be spent by the end of the fiscal year in June.
According to records obtained by this news organization, Fremont spent over $6 million on police overtime through last year, and nearly $2.1 million on overtime through the beginning of April. Beginning in January, the city offered a 2% raise and a double overtime pilot program in an attempt to retain and hire more officers, with officials citing difficulty in staffing the department’s force of over 150 rank-and-file officers.
Records show the city paid out about $1.4 million in double overtime through the beginning of April.