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State of the City: Progress made on fiscal crisis, challenges ahead
Mayor unveils new City motto, logo
amy bublak state of city
Turlock Mayor Amy Bublak gives her first State of the City address at a public event held Thursday at Stanislaus State (FRANKIE TOVAR/The Journal).
Kristina Hacker
Updated: Feb 22, 2020, 1:29 AM
Published: Feb 21, 2020, 1:25 AM

In her first State of the City address, Turlock Mayor Amy Bublak highlighted successes over the past year while touching on key issues impacting the City including financial stability, water, roads, economic development, homelessness, public safety and volunteerism.

The Mayor also took the opportunity at the public event, held Thursday at Stanislaus State, to unveil a new logo and motto for the City, create a new award to honor exemplary citizens and present a key to the city to a local humanitarian.

“Turlock, like many communities across California and the nation, faces many challenges today, some we inherited and others we openly take responsibility for and are expected to start solving. The single greatest task is addressing the challenges we face to our community honestly and openly. Our job, my job, is to present the path forward. As your mayor, I work with my colleagues on the City Council to find ways to reach consensus on most of the most pressing issues,” said Bublak.

“Balancing the budget and restoring fiscal responsibility, while regaining the trust of our residents, remains my top priority as your mayor,” she continued.

Bublak said she and her colleagues were able to stop the previous practice of deficit spending by reducing the City’s operating budget by over $4 million and implementing a balanced budget. She also pointed to the recent adoption of a new public employee healthcare plan that sees City workers paying more out of pocket for their medical care.

Along with cutting expenses, the Mayor talked about avenues of bringing more revenue to City coffers.

She thanked Assistant to the City Manager for Economic Development and Housing Maryn Pitt for her efforts in bringing businesses to Turlock and talked about a group of local mayors who are working together to recoup more of the property tax dollars coming from their respective communities.

“Much of your property tax that is collected by the City does not stay in Turlock. This is unacceptable. It’s why I’m fighting for a more equitable solution, that will not unduly burden county government, but help our city government provide some of the essential City services our residents expect and deserve,” said Bublak.

When it comes to water — and the surface water treatment plant that is currently in the works — Mayor Bublak said she will continue to involve herself “in all aspects” of the project by seeking guidance from the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts regarding how best to meet Turlock’s water needs and “directing our water experts to develop more cost-effective alternatives to the water plant such as rehabilitating our water wells or recruiting new water plant partners.”

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Turlock Mayor Amy Bublak presents a key to the city to Letters to Santa Charity founder and Turlock resident Justin Crone (KRISTINA HACKER/The Journal).

She also said she would be directing City staff to look again into purchasing treated water from the MID surface water treatment plant.

“I promised the citizens of Turlock that I would do everything possible to limit their water rate increases as they relate to the SRWA (Stanislaus Regional Water Authority) project. While the cost has been lowered for the project, I still want to make sure we do everything possible to provide Turlock residents, farmers and businesses with safe, affordable water,” said Bublak.

Bublak went on to highlight the recent progress the City Council has made with improving Turlock’s roadways, specifically with changes in how utilities and others are required to patch roads and adopting a roads strategy that puts a priority on neighborhoods streets rather than main corridors.

“This is positive, but we must do more,” said Bublak, adding that the City and residents will need to have an “honest conversation” about what funding options are available to fix local roads.

Bublak went on to tout the lowered unemployment rate in Turlock over the past couple of years and recent retail, housing and industrial developments.

 When it comes to homelessness, the Mayor said the City will continue to work with Stanislaus County, nonprofit agencies and local businesses to find solutions.

“It will take all of us working together to take care of this vulnerable population. This is a priority for our Council this year,” she said.

The Mayor also touched on the serious budget cuts to Turlock’s public safety departments.

“We know this situation is not sustainable as we look at this year’s budget. Communities like Turlock, Ceres, Keyes and others must explore strategies that will allow each community to leverage its financial resources as effectively as possible,” said Bublak.

The Mayor took the opportunity to applaud the local U.S. Army Recruitment office and other organizations that stepped up to adopt a Turlock park and also encouraged other residents to volunteer their time to make the community better.

According to Bublak, the good works of Turlockers and the stories of residents like Turlock Junior High student Michael Valdez who turned a bad experience into a movement against bullying, inspired her to create a new award.

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U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Jeremy Levens sings a song he wrote about Turlock at the State of the City address event on Thursday (KRISTINA HACKER/The Journal).

“Based on our history as being known as the ‘heart of the Valley,’ I would like to announce my intent — with the support of my Council — to create the Heart of Turlock award. This award will be given annually to citizens of Turlock who perform exemplary acts of grace, justice and kindness, just like Michael and his mom did,” she said.

Along the Heart of Turlock award, Bublak also presented a new logo and motto for the City  — Turlock: The best of the earth and each other.

The unveiling of the new motto for Turlock was followed by a musical performance from Staff Sergeant Jeremy Levens. The Army recruiter said when he came to Turlock four years ago, he had a vision of what living in California would be like. He said he was glad he was wrong.

“This song is kind of the heart of what Turlock’s been to me this time that I’ve been here,” he said.

The song was an ode to Turlock and mentions its high schools and popular roadways.


Along with being the first State of the City address for Mayor Bublak, Thursday was also the first time she has presented a key to the city. This symbolic gesture was given to Letters to Santa Charity founder and Turlock resident Justin Crone.

“On behalf of our City and our Council, we really appreciate what you have done, you and your family have been so special to so many people that otherwise wouldn’t have a Christmas…that they have great memories of and that’s so important to Turlock,” said Bublak.

The charity, now in its 11th year, has grown exponentially helping to provide 2,137 students with not only gifts that include a new coat, shoes, socks, underwear, pants, a shirt and a toy, but also contribute to a turkey dinner for their families.

In total, 720 families were helped by the charity 2019. There were 700 children in Turlock who benefitted from Letters to Santa, including students from Julien, Wakefield Elementary School, Cunningham Elementary School, Crowell Elementary School and Dennis Earl Elementary School.

In addition to the students helped each year, Letters to Santa also identifies a family in need who may benefit from a bit of extra help. Last year, the organization helped a homeless Turlock family find housing when they were living in their car.

Letters to Santa raises funds each year through both a golf tournament and dinner.

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Mayor Amy Bublak unveils a new motto and logo for the City, Turlock: The best of the earth and each other (KRISTINA HACKER/The Journal).

“Eleven years ago, we came up with this crazy idea at the time to try and give back a little. Long story short, we raised $7,600 that year and helped about 65 kids and we thought we were doing something pretty great. And then this great community stood behind us and wanted us to do more — so we kept doing more. So, year one was $7,600, this year we made about $290,000…I have a really special board of directors that I couldn’t do this without and through the years it’s gotten bigger and bigger and bigger,” said Crone.

For video coverage of the State of the City address, visit TurlockJournal.com.
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.
Published: Apr 2, 2025, 4:48 AM

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.