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Mike Harris Newsletter — November 2, 2026
📞 On Call with Mike Harris | District 3 | November 2, 2026
Morning, Merced,
Tomorrow is Election Day. Before you read another word, hear this one warning: if your ballot is still sitting on the kitchen counter, do not drop it in a mailbox. Our mail now gets routed through a processing center in West Sacramento, and county elections officials say ballots mailed this late may not get postmarked in time to count. Use a drop box or a vote center instead. The details are below.
It is also a working Monday at City Hall. The council meets tonight with a docket that reads like a District 3 to-do list: a status report on every road in this city, a decision on the Bob Hart Square fountain, and the start of a real conversation about downtown parking. And the Valley lost a giant this week. Dolores Huerta, whose farmworker marches once passed through Merced, died Wednesday at 96. Let's get you ready for all of it.
🗳️ Tomorrow Is Election Day
🔹 Skip the mailbox. Your ballot deserves better odds. The Merced FOCUS reported Friday that Registrar of Voters Melvin Levey's office had received about 28,000 early ballots as of Thursday evening, roughly 43 percent ahead of the same point before the June primary. Encouraging, except the county's electorate is 137,285 people, so a mountain of ballots is still out there. Here is the registrar's own playbook for the final 24 hours: return your ballot to one of the county's 15 vote centers or official drop boxes, or straight to the Registrar of Voters Office at 2222 M St. in Merced. You can also vote in person until 8 p.m. tomorrow. If you absolutely must mail it, walk it to the post office counter and ask for a hand-stamped postmark. About 1,200 Merced County ballots were rejected in June, likely because of the postal routing change, and I do not want yours added to that pile.
→ 💬 My take: You have done the reading over the past month, Measure B included. The last step is the easiest one: get the envelope out of the house. And if the registration deadline slipped past you, same-day conditional registration is still available in person. No excuses left.
👉 Read the FOCUS guidance on returning your ballot
👉 Visit the county's Nov. 3 election page
🚨 Public Safety
🔹 Two camera trailers, paid for by Washington, not by you. On tonight's agenda, the police department asks the council to accept $85,566 from the U.S. Department of Justice's Justice Assistance Grant program to buy two mobile video surveillance camera trailers, plus the cellular service to run them (I.1).
→ ⚡ Why this matters: Camera trailers go where the problems are: a hot spot one month, a festival crowd the next. They stretch patrol hours without stretching the general fund, and this is my broken record playing again: outside grant dollars are how a city our size affords the safety a city our size requires. Every win like this strengthens the case for a full-time grant writer at City Hall.
🔹 The clocks changed. Your evening commute changed with them. We all gained an hour yesterday morning, and the trade is that dusk now lands in the middle of the drive home. A career in emergency medicine taught me that the week after the time change is one of the worst of the year for pedestrians, especially kids walking home from practice in the half-dark. Headlights on early, slow through the neighborhoods, and if you walk or ride in the evening, make yourself easy to see. And thank you, Merced, for driving gently through Saturday's trick-or-treat hours. The costumes earned it.
💼 Economic Development
🔹 Downtown parking finally gets its own forum (K.1). Tonight the council decides where the downtown parking conversation should live: a standing council subcommittee, a new ad hoc committee, or back to staff for a future meeting.
→ 💬 My take: Ask any Main Street merchant for their top three headaches and parking makes the list every time. I care less about which box the discussion lands in than that it starts moving, with merchants and residents at the table from day one. A downtown that is easy to park in is a downtown that is easy to spend money in.
🔹 The Bob Hart Square fountain: fix it, or fill it with flowers (I.2). Also tonight, the council weighs two options for the square's fountain: make the repairs to get the water running again, or convert it into a planter.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: Bob Hart Square is downtown's living room, and Saturday night it hosts a few thousand of your neighbors for Pizzas and Pints. Living rooms deserve working furniture. Whichever option pencils out, my vote is for a finished answer over another year of standing still.
🔹 A $310 million asset that has not had a checkup since 2018 (J.1). City engineers report tonight on the state of our roadway network: an estimated $310 million public asset in 2026 dollars, last comprehensively assessed in 2018, with an updated countywide pavement condition survey now being coordinated through Merced County.
→ 💬 My take: You cannot manage what you have not measured in eight years. I have said since the campaign that crumbling roads are a symptom of a revenue problem, and this report is step one of the honest version of that conversation: current data, a priced backlog, and then a funding plan that does not start by reaching deeper into your pocket.
👉 Read the roads report item (J.1)
🔹 High-speed rail's CEO is out. The Merced FOCUS carried the CalMatters report Thursday: Ian Choudri, head of the California High-Speed Rail Authority since 2024, resigned late Wednesday amid a travel expense scandal, after state investigators found consultants billing taxpayers for first-class flights and after-hours outings. His tenure also saw the project lose $4 billion in federal funding, and the board had already moved to limit his contracting authority.
→ 💬 My take: No corner of Merced has more riding on this agency's judgment than District 3, where the downtown station question and the pending lawsuit over the proposed Highway 99 site are still live. New leadership is a chance for the Authority to reset its credibility, and resetting starts with answering the joint City-County letter we are still waiting on. My position has not moved: the station belongs downtown, where the law and decades of planning put it.
🩺 Healthcare
🔹 Three quiet contracts that keep people out of the emergency room (H.7). Tonight's consent calendar sends federal Community Development Block Grant dollars to three partners: $63,539 to Harvest Time for its Food 4 You program, $43,875 to Project Sentinel for tenant-landlord counseling, and $50,000 to the Merced County Human Services Agency.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: I spent a career on ambulances, and most true emergencies start long before anyone dials 911: an empty pantry, an eviction notice, a family with nowhere to turn. Food security and housing stability are prevention, and prevention is the cheapest healthcare any city ever buys. Better still, these are federal dollars doing the work.
🔹 Medicare enrollment, week three: five weeks left, so use one of them. The window to join, switch, or drop a plan runs through Dec. 7, and the homework has not changed: read the Annual Notice of Change your plan mailed you, call HICAP at 1-800-434-0222 for free, unbiased counseling, and hang up on anyone who phones claiming to be Medicare. This week's addition: the official plan comparison tools live on Medicare.gov, and an hour there now beats a December scramble at the kitchen table.
👉 How to compare and join a plan
📅 Meetings & Community Events
🔹 City Council: tonight, Monday, Nov. 2, 6 p.m., Council Chamber, Merced Civic Center, 678 W. 18th St., second floor. Everything above is on the docket, plus one item I want your voice in: the council picks dates and formats tonight for three Community Town Halls and a strategic planning session feeding the 2027/28 budget (K.2). Those town halls are where your priorities become line items, so watch this space. Next regular meeting: Monday, Nov. 16.
👉 Download the agenda packet (PDF)
🔹 Remembering Dolores Huerta. The labor and civil rights leader who co-founded the United Farm Workers died Wednesday, Oct. 28, at her Bakersfield home at 96. Her 1966 march from Delano to Sacramento passed straight through Merced, and six decades of her advocacy for farmworkers, women, and immigrant families shaped the Valley we live in. The FOCUS gathered remembrances from neighbors who knew her and others she simply inspired. Whatever your politics, a life of that much service has earned a quiet moment of our gratitude.
🔹 Commission corner, three in a row at the Civic Center: the Recreation and Parks Commission meets Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 5:30 p.m., the Planning Commission meets Wednesday, Nov. 4, at 6 p.m., and the Tax Transparency Commission meets Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 6 p.m. I served on that last one before this job, and I can promise the people watching how your tax dollars move deserve an audience.
🔹 Merced Certified Farmers' Market: Saturday, Nov. 7, morning, downtown Merced. Every Saturday, rain or shine, and the first market after the time change is a fine excuse for an early start.
🔹 Pizzas and Pints: Saturday, Nov. 7, 6 p.m., Bob Hart Square. Seven local pizzerias, ten breweries, 21 and over, and the square at its best. Grab tickets before your neighbors do.
👉 Get Pizzas and Pints tickets
🔹 The 22nd Annual Veterans Day Parade is next week: Wednesday, Nov. 11, down Main Street. The street closure cleared the council weeks ago, and eight years in an Air Force uniform means this date is circled on my calendar in ink. Bring a flag and a kid who needs to see one.
👉 Get parade information from the county
🔹 A Liberty Tree now stands in Courthouse Park. The Merced River Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution dedicated an October Glory red maple and memorial plaque outside the Courthouse Museum on Saturday, Oct. 24, part of the run-up to America's 250th birthday. The Times told the story Thursday, history lesson included. A living monument to liberty, planted in the heart of our district, is my kind of civic landmark.
🔹 Two more Saturdays to pencil in: tonight's consent calendar sets street closures for the Central California Band Review on Saturday, Nov. 14, near Joe Herb Park, and for the United Way's annual Christmas Parade downtown on Saturday, Dec. 5. Yes, I said Christmas. It is coming.
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☎️ The Direct Line
Three asks this week: get that ballot into a drop box or vote center by 8 p.m. tomorrow, give tonight's council meeting a look at 6, in person or from the couch, and flip your headlights on before the sky asks you to. If a ballot question, an agenda item, or anything on your block has you stuck, call me. No front desk, no phone tree, just me.
My number is (209) 385-6203. You can also reply to this email or write me at HarrisM@cityofmerced.gov. And if this letter would help a neighbor get their ballot in on time, forward it today, not Wednesday.
See you at the polls, Merced.
Mike Harris
Councilmember, City of Merced
