Your guide to the candidates for Clovis City Council District 5 race

This year, the most competitive race on the Clovis City Council is in District 5. Three candidates, including incumbent Drew Bessinger, businessperson and Measure Y oversight committee co-chair Des Haus, and small business owner and paraprofessional Sarah Almond, are vying for the seat to represent their neighborhood on the council.

The upcoming election marks the first time that Clovis shifts from an at-large to a district-based voting system, meaning voters will choose the councilmember who lives in their neighborhood to represent them. The reluctant change was made in 2024 after receiving a letter from a Malibu-based law firm threatening to sue, and many of the city leaders and residents viewed it as an erosion of local control by the state and expressed concerns about how this move would affect the future council’s decision-making.

The Bee talked to three candidates to learn about their goals and priorities.

Sarah Almond

Growing up in the Midwest, Almond and her family moved to Clovis for job opportunities and have called it home since 2007. The couple owns a small solar sales company, and Almond worked part-time at Clovis Unified School District as a para-educator for kids with disabilities.

Almond said Clovis attracted her with its great school system and that residents enjoy spending time outdoors. The community, the safety, and the schools are what the “Clovis way of life” means to her, she said.

She was encouraged by her friends and community members to run for office, Almond said. Over the years, she had witnessed Clovis’s rapid development and experienced firsthand how her two adult children struggled to afford to live independently.

Almond advocates for responsible city planning and housing development, as well as investing in transportation and roads.

“A lot of the issues that we’re dealing with right now are from the previous administration’s lack of planning, and wasting money on litigation. But our current council isn’t hearing that,” Almond said. “My opponent talks about the great job of long-term planning that the city council has done, if we look back from 2010 to now, especially with affordable housing, they didn’t do any planning. Their plan was to fight it, and now we’re paying for it.”

Almond said she understands some residents are upset about the infill rezone program, but instead of fighting the state regulations then “let’s just see where we can insert four-story buildings,” the city should be proactively planning for affordable housing, she said.

“So many people are saying ‘Not in my neighborhood,’ but I think you can put nice-looking apartments without making it crazy,” she said. “I think Loma Vista is a good example of how all the developments should have been required to work, where they have the neighborhood, then there’s condos and apartments going in.”

The city needs options for everyone instead of $2.2 million houses, she added.

Almond also supports investing in better roads and safer streets, and she’s advocating for the continuation of Fresno County’s half-cent sales tax for transportation, saying it can help the city to increase investment in roads, public transit system, and upgrading to clean-air vehicles.

“We have trails, which is great, but not every trail goes all the way through. When that happens, like if you have to jump on a road to pick up the next trail, there needs to be, if not a bike lane, a shoulder, and have roads that don’t have that,” she said.

Drew Bessinger

First elected to the council in 2017, Councilmember Bessinger is now running re-election for his second four-year full term.

Bessinger has been in public service for over 50 years, serving on the city council after retirement is a calling, he said.

“When I finally retired, I have time to do things. Such as going to meetings that are important, and going to the meetings that maybe aren’t as important, but my presence is appreciated,” he said. “It also gives me the time to focus on issues that are very important, like pushing back on the state for the electric vehicle mandates that they’re putting on cities and counties, which are just disastrous.”

During his tenure on the council, one of the projects that he’s proud of is expanding the trails and parks, especially in the city’s southwest area, he said.

“They built a lot of apartments down there with no place for the kids to play realistically, so we have all these trails down there along our irrigation canals,” he said. “We did one at Peach and Ashlan [Avenues] that’ll connect the neighborhoods, and we did one behind Letterman Park, so that the older folks who live in the mobile homes and apartments will be able to walk to the dog park, and can get their exercise in.”

The southwest area is outside the District 5, but Bessinger said he thinks the council should not operated based on a district mindset.

“We’re only as good as our least successful part of town. If we can make southwest Clovis is the kind of place where people go ‘I’m going to buy my first house,’ if kids can walk along the creek bank and go to school, if we can do that, and we improve southwest Clovis, it’s better for us. It’s better for everybody,” he said.

Bessinger acknowledged that the city’s growth is inevitable and residents may see increased urban density. He stated that the city should carry out construction in a reasonable manner.

“We need to address the growth issues and try to do it in a logical way, where we’re not tearing the roads up and making people crazy with all the detours,” he said. “I mean the growth is gonna happen, but we have to do it in a staged way that makes sense.”

As a councilmember who had to handle the public outrage over the infill rezone program, Bessinger said it might be worth considering rezoning some of the adjacent land to mixed-use development.

“I think, we’re gonna make it more palatable by having mixed-use there. We’ll have buffers like the storage facility. It’ll be a great buffer between the houses and the multifamily housing,” Bessinger said. “But nothing is perfect, and we just strive to mitigate most of the issues.”

Des Haus

Haus grew up in the Central Valley and decided to settle down in Clovis because it has good schools and safe neighborhoods for her two daughters in elementary school.

Besides her day job as a legislation and policy director for an energy and engineering company, Haus is very active in the community. She serves on Clovis’s Measure Y oversight committee, Foundation for Clovis Schools, among other organizations.

This is Haus’s second time running for the city council. She appreciated the leadership from former and current council, but should be more representatives from the young families that called Clovis home, she said.

“I decided to run because I’ve been around legislation and politicians, different communities and municipalities, and seeing how not having the right people on the dais can really change the city, especially with Clovis being in districts now, it’s something new to us,” Haus said. “I believe that our former council has done right by Clovis in protecting what it was founded on, but I do believe that it’s time to get some new blood in the game.”

Her priorities are local control, economic growth and development and a safe community for children, Haus said.

“It all has to do with growth and compliance with the state, and that’s why local control is my No.1 priority, as much as I would love to say that public safety is No.1,” she said. “We can’t do it unless we have control over what we’re doing as a city, so that has to be No.1 with economic growth and development as well.”

She would like to see her two children grow up in a safe environment, enjoying “big city opportunities with that small-town home feel,” she added.

“I’m Latina, I grew up speaking predominantly Spanish in my home, and I’m very proud of my heritage and my culture. That’s something my grandmother instilled in me,” she said. “We used to own a restaurant and some businesses back in Huron and Coalinga, so protecting small business owners and helping them thrive in community has always been a really important thing for me.”

Supporting more businesses coming to Clovis could also gain revenue for the city, so there won’t be more tax measures pass on to residents, she said.

“My motto is ‘Clovis first, Clovis always,’ so even though we are in districts, I still want the community to come first,” she said.

To address the challenges coming with the city’s growth and population increase, Haus said she advocates for more transparency in the city’s planning process.

“You can’t build a house just on sand,” Haus said. “There are a lot of opportunities, but it has to be done right.”