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Mike Harris Newsletter — November 9, 2026
📞 On Call with Mike Harris | District 3 | November 9, 2026
Good morning, neighbors,
Thank you, Merced. As of the county's latest posted update, Measure B is passing with 58 percent of the counted vote. I will save the deep breath for certification, but I won't hold back the gratitude: you looked at a hard question about this city's future and you answered it. Now the harder work starts at our end of the dais, and I want to show you exactly what that should look like.
The calendar is generous this week, too. The flags of the Field of Honor went up on the Merced College lawn over the weekend, and Wednesday afternoon the 22nd Annual Veterans Day Parade rolls west down Main Street, right through the heart of our district. A week that starts with your trust and ends with a flyover is a good week to be your councilmember. Let's get into it.
🗳️ Measure B Is Passing. Now We Earn It.
🔹 You chose "A Better Merced." Our job is to deliver it. With counting still underway and results subject to certification, Measure B held 58 percent support in the registrar's most recent update. That one-cent sales tax is projected to bring in roughly $18 million a year, with citizen oversight and independent annual audits built in. Here is what I believe our next steps must be: put Measure B under the watch of the Tax Transparency Commission, identify the immediate priorities, and build real project plans on two clocks, one for the next 1 to 2 years and one for the next 3 to 5. And at every step, community input stays at the center, starting with the 2027 Community Town Halls the council has been working to schedule for the 2027/28 budget. The moment those dates are public, you will read them here.
→ 💬 My take: I sat on the Tax Transparency Commission before I ever held this seat, and I can tell you oversight is not a formality. It is the whole deal. You placed real trust in this council on Tuesday. Trust like that is not a gift, it is a loan, and we repay it with accountability, transparency, and results you can see from your front porch.
👉 Read the city's Measure B overview
👉 See the FOCUS results coverage
🔹 The count is not done, and neither are two council races. The registrar's Friday report showed more than 25,400 ballots still to process, including over 20,000 vote-by-mail ballots. That is why I am not calling anything final. In District 6, John Bliss led incumbent Fue Xiong by just 40 votes as of Wednesday, 1,188 to 1,148. In District 2, Felipe Rojas-Flores was ahead of incumbent Yang Pao Thao. Further up the ballot, Congressman Adam Gray, Assembly candidate Brian Pacheco, and Senate candidate Esmeralda Soria all declared victory on sizable early leads.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: A 40-vote margin is the best civics lesson this city will get all year. Every single ballot still in that warehouse could move a race, which is exactly why the slow, careful count deserves our patience, not our suspicion. My thanks to every candidate who put their name on a ballot, and to the election workers grinding through those envelopes right now.
👉 Read the Times election wrap
🇺🇸 Veterans Day, All Week Long
🔹 The 22nd Annual Veterans Day Parade is Wednesday, Nov. 11. The opening ceremony starts at 1 p.m. at Bob Hart Square, a military flyover follows, and the parade itself steps off at 2 p.m., heading west on Main Street through downtown. Plan around street closures downtown Wednesday afternoon, come early, and bring a flag and a kid who should see one. I gave the Air Force eight years of my life, and there is no version of this week where you won't find me on Main Street for this one.
👉 See the Veterans Day week lineup
🔹 A field of flags on M Street. The Sunrise Rotary Field of Honor is on display Nov. 7 through 14 on the front lawn of Merced College, 3600 M Street: hundreds of American flags honoring veterans, active-duty service members, and first responders. The display opened over the weekend alongside the Run for the Fallen, and it closes Saturday, Nov. 14, with a 2 p.m. ceremony featuring music from college faculty, staff, and community performers, followed by a silent auction benefiting veterans, an art walk, food trucks, and children's games from 3 to 7 p.m., capped by a 7:30 p.m. concert band performance celebrating 250 years of American music. Walk through it this week if you can. Gratitude hits different at flag height.
👉 Visit the Field of Honor site
🔹 One veteran worth your reading time. The Times spent Saturday's pages on Bud Gantney of Merced: drafted out of a butcher's apron during Vietnam, 36 years of military service, a local business built from scratch, decades of Rotary service, and still riding motorcycles at 80. Our county is full of veterans who never stopped serving when the uniform came off. This week we say so out loud.
👉 Meet Bud Gantney in the Times
🚨 Public Safety
🔹 Storm season has its own front door now. The city's December/January Storm Watch hub is live, gathering wet-weather resources, prep guidance, and city service contacts in one place before the rain arrives in earnest. Pair it with the work already in motion: crews have been clearing the Bear Creek channel since early October, with forecasters still pointing toward a strong El Niño winter.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: Our neighborhoods south of Bear Creek carry the memory of 2023, and a career in emergency services taught me that the cheapest emergency is the one you prepared for in November. Ten minutes on this page now, gutters and drains this weekend, and your January gets a lot more boring. Boring is the goal.
👉 Browse the city's storm watch hub
💼 Economic Development
🔹 The Bob Hart Square fountain gets fixed, not filled with flowers. After leak testing traced the water loss to where the sidewalls meet the floor, and after conversations with downtown stakeholders, the direction from councilmembers landed on repair rather than converting the fountain to a planter, with staff pegging the fix at roughly $24,000.
→ 💬 My take: Two weeks ago I asked for a finished answer instead of another year of standing still. Repair is that answer, and it is the right one. A square that hosts everything from night markets to Wednesday's parade ceremony should have all its pieces working.
🔹 The roads checkup is officially underway. Following last Monday's status report on our roughly $310 million roadway network, the headline is this: an MCAG-sponsored pavement condition inventory covering every city street is in progress, with results due in the coming months, the first comprehensive look since 2018. Set that against the funding math city leaders have laid out, a road budget of roughly $8 million a year versus an estimated $15 to $20 million in annual need, and you can see why Tuesday's vote mattered.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: You cannot fix what you have not measured, and you cannot fund what you have not priced. Current data plus Measure B revenue plus honest priorities is how crumbling streets stop being a campaign line and start being a work order. I will be watching for that inventory like it is a lab result.
🔹 Downtown parking, the conversation has left the curb. Last Monday the council took up where the downtown parking discussion should live: a standing subcommittee, a new ad hoc committee, or back to staff. My position has not changed a single space: I care less about the org chart than I do about merchants and residents sitting at that table from day one. A downtown that is easy to park in is a downtown that is easy to spend money in, and I will bring you the details as the structure firms up.
🩺 Healthcare
🔹 Medicare enrollment, week four: the window closes four weeks from today. Monday, Dec. 7 is the deadline to join, switch, or drop a plan for 2027, 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 treat any unsolicited "Medicare" phone call as the scam it almost certainly is. If you have been putting it off, this is the week, before the holiday calendar swallows every free hour you have.
👉 Compare plans on Medicare.gov
🔹 For the veterans in your life, one number worth memorizing. The Veterans Crisis Line is free, confidential, and staffed around the clock: dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255. I spent a career on the response side of the hardest calls, and I will tell you plainly that the best ones are the calls that reach help before the emergency. A parade says thank you once a year. Checking in on the veteran down the street says it better.
👉 Learn about the Veterans Crisis Line
📅 Meetings & Community Events
🔹 Tax Transparency Commission: tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 6 p.m., Merced Civic Center. With Measure B passing, no room in that building matters more right now. This commission is where voter-approved tax dollars get watched, and I would love for them to have an audience this week.
👉 About the Tax Transparency Commission
🔹 Veterans Day Parade: Wednesday, Nov. 11, downtown. Ceremony at 1 p.m. at Bob Hart Square, parade at 2 p.m. down Main Street. Full details up in the Veterans Day section above.
🔹 Recreation and Parks Commission: Thursday, Nov. 12, 5:30 p.m., Merced Civic Center. The ten-year parks plan is adopted, and this is the body helping turn it from a document into dirt and grass.
🔹 Merced Certified Farmers' Market: Saturday, Nov. 14, morning, downtown Merced. Every Saturday, rain or shine, and the stalls are deep into citrus-and-squash season.
🔹 Central California Band Review: Saturday, Nov. 14, near Joe Herb Park. The street closures cleared the council earlier this month, so expect marching bands and proud parents in that neighborhood all day. If a kid in uniform with a sousaphone does not improve your Saturday, check your pulse.
🔹 Field of Honor closing ceremony: Saturday, Nov. 14, 2 p.m., Merced College. Music, a silent auction for veterans, food trucks, and an evening concert. One more chance to walk the flags.
🔹 City Council: Monday, Nov. 16, 6 p.m., Council Chamber, Merced Civic Center, 678 W. 18th St., second floor. The agenda posts by 5 p.m. this Friday, Nov. 13, and I will walk you through the District 3 items in next week's letter.
👉 View agendas, minutes, and video
🔹 Planning Commission: Wednesday, Nov. 18, 6 p.m., Council Chambers, Merced Civic Center. Housing and land use start in that room long before they reach our dais. Public seats are always open.
📢 Stay Connected with Merced
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☎️ The Direct Line
The homework is light this week, and most of it is the good kind: be on Main Street Wednesday at 2 with a flag in your hand, give the Tax Transparency Commission an audience tomorrow night if you can, and if you are on Medicare, spend one hour with that plan comparison before the holidays bury you. And here is my ask on Measure B: tell me your street, your park, your priority. Those project plans should be built out of your phone calls, not just our spreadsheets.
My number is (209) 385-6203. It is my personal phone, and I am the one who answers it. You can also reply to this email or write me at HarrisM@cityofmerced.gov. If a veteran in your life would enjoy this week's rundown, send it their way with a thank you attached.
See you on Main Street Wednesday, Merced.
Mike Harris
Councilmember, City of Merced
