By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Sign program expected to bring much-needed revenue to city budget
Pedretti Park
A new sign program will rent advertising space along the fences of Turlock’s Pedretti Sports Complex (KRISTINA HACKER/The Journal).

The City of Turlock is wasting no time in implementing new revenue generating ideas to augment the city’s dwindling coffers. A new sign program at Turlock’s Pedretti Sports Complex approved by the City Council on June 25 could bring in upwards of $167K annually.

Pedretti Park, located off Tegner Road and visible from Highway 99, has four softball fields and one baseball diamond. The new program will rent spaces along the fields’ fences to businesses and organizations for sign displays in one-year terms.

“I applaud you guys for thinking outside the box. I think it’s a perfect opportunity to gain some new revenue out there. That field is completely utilized and it’s been the jewel of our town and you can see it from the freeway. I’m totally excited with this,” said Councilmember Becky Arellano at the June 25 Council meeting.

There are two sizes of signs — 4 feet by 4 feet and 4 feet by 8 feet — and prices range according to the size of the sign and its placement. Advertising prices range from $650 for 4 feet by 4 feet sign located on left or right fields on Fields 2,4 and 5, up to $1,400 for a sign placed at centerfield on Fields 1 and 3.

The potential revenue ranges from $33,424 for only 20 percent of available space used, up to $167,120 for 100 percent of the space used. Space could fill up fast, as Parks, Recreation and Facilities Analyst Juan Vargas said he already has two businesses ready to go and others showing interest. All revenue from the program will go to the upkeep of the fields, taking the burden off the General Fund.

While many privately-owned sports fields have advertising programs, Vargas said that he couldn’t find any other municipalities that managed sign programs on park grounds. He based the pricing structure from what is offered at other area fields such as Rainbow Fields in Riverbank and Field of Dreams in Manteca.

Councilwoman Arellano had some tips for Vargas, as she has been in charge of the same type of advertising program at Turlock’s Julien Little League baseball field off Johnson Road.

The real estate is really crucial in this “advertising game,” said advised.

“It really can be a good money generator. But we need to stay on top of it so they’re not dilapidated and look horrible, that kind of thing,” Arellano continued.

While the Council members present at the June 25 meeting were all supportive of the sign program, there was some concern from a member of the public.

“We have a sign ordinance here in Turlock…a very good sign ordinance. It took about six or seven years to get this passed through the Planning Commission and the Council. There are many restrictions of signs in Turlock; we didn’t want to make our city a Las Vegas or a Stockton, California. So, there’s a reason behind it. We want to make some money, but we don’t want to make our city a dump,” said Turlock resident Milt Trieweiler.

Vargas said the Pedretti program would conform to Turlock’s sign ordinance. As long as the signs all face inward to the fields, they are in compliance with the sign ordinance standards.

There was some discussion of future growth of the program that could include electronic signs or rotating signs. Vargas said any change that has signage facing outward would have to go before the Planning Commission before being implemented.

There are some limitations on what can be advertised on the signs, including banning the promotion of “adult” goods or services, nudity, violence, firearms, alcohol or tobacco products and political information. These are the same limitations the City of Turlock uses for advertisements placed on city buses.

Councilmember Andrew Nosrati questioned the ban on alcohol advertisements and requested that City staff look into the feasibility of allowing the promotion of beer and wine — with a possible premium price put on those ads.

The Council approved the sign program with the current standards and asked City staff to revisit the limitations in six months.

 “Great job Juan and to the entire department. We just got finished with what we did with the budget and this is right after. This is exactly what we need to have our mindset in. I applaud you, the department and all the staff that had their hands in it,” said Councilmember Nicole Larson.  

Costa, Gray propose congressional bill to address critical physician shortage in rural areas
Costa and Gray
San Joaquin Valley congressional members Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, left, and Rep. Adam Gray, D-Merced, are shown discussing their bill H.R. 2106 in a virtual press conference on Tuesday.

BY TIM SHEEHAN

CV Journalism Collaborative

Two San Joaquin Valley congressional representatives have introduced a bill that could help address the vast shortage of doctors in the region, particularly in underserved areas. 

Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, and Rep. Adam Gray, D-Merced, say the Medical Education Act would, if passed, establish a program of grants to support expanded medical education programs in underserved areas of the nation.

The Valley could be one of the key areas that would benefit from the legislation. California has about 90 primary care doctors per 100,000 residents statewide, the federal Health Resources & Services Administration reported in November 2024. 

That’s more than the ratio in some states, and less than some others. The nationwide ratio is about 84 doctors per 100,000 residents.

But in the San Joaquin Valley, home to about 4.3 million people, doctors are much more scarce – about 47 primary care physicians per 100,000 residents, according to Dr. Tom Utecht, chief medical officer at the Fresno-based Community Health System.

That number is “a little over half of what is necessary to take care of a population,” Utecht said Tuesday in a video press conference. “We have the lowest physicians-per-capita rate in all of California, in the San Joaquin Valley.”

Introduced last month, the Medical Education Act is something of a placeholder for the time being until the Congressional Research Service can weigh in with financial estimates of what is needed in different parts of the country, Costa said. 

A companion version was introduced in March in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-West Virginia, and Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles.

At this point, the legislation does not specify how much money will ultimately be sought or how grants would be structured.

Costa said the shortage of doctors in the region “is combined with language barriers, cultural barriers and distances … and that would really go for rural parts of our country regardless where folks live.”

“If you live in rural areas, it’s just more difficult to have access to good quality health care,” he added.

Costa said the legislation, if it can survive a Republican-controlled House and Senate and a Republican president, “would be transformative because it would invest expanded resources to minority-serving institutions and colleges located in rural and underserved areas to establish schools of medicine and osteopathic medicine.”

The bill would also create an avenue for more historically Black colleges and universities, as well as Hispanic-serving institutions, to establish medical education programs, Costa said.

Gray noted that when he was in the state Legislature, he and colleagues “worked to get hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to expand the UC Merced campus, to ultimately secure the funding to put the first medical education building up on campus.”

Gray added that the UC San Francisco’s medical education program in Fresno “is an important part of creating the (medical) workforce of the future for the valley, but more importantly, solving this access to care issue that plagues Valley communities.”

At UC Merced, director of medical education Dr. Margo Vener said there has been a surge of interest in the university’s program that funnels students through an undergraduate program for their bachelor of science degree through a medical school degree in collaboration with UC San Francisco.

“All the students that we are enrolling are from the Valley and for the Valley, because they want to really make a difference in promoting health in their communities,” Vener said. That, she added, is likely to eventually translate to those would-be doctors to stay in the Valley to practice medicine.

“The data suggests that two factors really strongly influence where physicians stay to practice,” Vener said. “One of them is where they’re from, which, of course, is why we’re recruiting students from the Valley for the Valley just to stay (and) be doctors for their community. And the other factor is where you went to residency. Those are the two biggest drivers.”

That’s something that was underscored by Dr. Kenny Banh, assistant dean of undergraduate education at UCSF Fresno. “Regional campuses such as UC Merced and UCSF Fresno not only grow doctors, but they take those doctors, physicians and medical students from their communities in the region, and train them in those regions to go back to be physicians in those areas,” he said.

While the costs of the Costa-Gray legislation are yet to be determined, Banh said there are also costs associated with doing nothing to expand medical education.

“There’s health care costs, regardless of how we work it, if we don’t invest in having an adequate supply of physicians,” Banh said. “There’s a cost on the human that can’t access care” and doesn’t get to a doctor until a condition is not treatable “or with significantly worse morbidity and mortality outcomes.”

“And that cost is borne by health systems taxpayers, one way or the other,” Banh added.

But even if the Costa-Gray bill were to pass in this congressional session, the payoff of home-grown medical schools producing a bumper crop of physicians in the Valley or other deprived parts of the country would be years down the road.

“I think it’s really important to understand why we need to invest now for our future, because it takes so darn long” for a student to go from being a college freshman to a practicing doctor, surgeon or specialist, UC Merced’s Vener said. 

After a four-year bachelor’s degree, a student must then complete four years of medical school, which in turn is followed by a residency of three to five years.

“Then often people will do a fellowship to become, for example, a cardiologist or a gastroenterologist or something like that,” she added.

“If you start investing in just one student now, it’s going to take such a long time before they really are there to take care of you at that moment when you need them to be your gastroenterologist, your cardiologist, your emergency physician, or, dare I say, your family doctor,” Vener said.

That, she said, is why it’s also necessary to expand residency programs that can attract would-be physicians into the region in hopes that they will remain once they complete their training. “We need those doctors now, and that’s why this effort is important,” Vener said, “because this is what will both inspire people to stay, but also inspire people to really come and embrace the communities and serve them.”

In a related development, state Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, D-Fresno, recently introduced a bill for the University of California system to develop a comprehensive funding plan for expanding the current SJV Prime+ BS-to-MD partnership between UC San Francisco and UC Merced, with the goal of transitioning the program to a fully independent medical school operated by UC Merced.

“We have seen firsthand the impacts of medical workforce shortages throughout the Central Valley,” Soria said in a prepared statement. “AB 58 would help ensure the Legislature is equipped with the information needed to secure appropriate funding for the medical education provided for our community at UC Merced.”

— Tim Sheehan is the Health Care Reporting Fellow at the nonprofit Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. The fellowship is supported by a grant from the Fresno State Institute for Media and Public Trust. Contact Sheehan at tim@cvlocaljournalism.org.