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Mike Harris Newsletter — October 12, 2026
📞 On Call with Mike Harris | District 3 | October 12, 2026
Happy Monday, Merced,
Saturday was downtown at full volume. The farmers market carried the morning, and by 11 the Food Para Todos Harvest Festival had taken over West 18th Street with a car show, a Kid Zone, live entertainment, and more neighbors than parking spots. To everyone who organized, volunteered, or simply showed up: thank you. Days like that are the city we keep saying we want to become.
This week's letter is mostly follow-through. Last Monday's council votes are signed and moving, ballots are sitting on kitchen counters all over town, and the registration deadline is exactly one week out. Here is where everything stands.
🗳️ Three Weeks to Election Day
🔹 One week left to register, and one bookmark for every ballot question. Ballots have been arriving since last Monday, and Election Day is three weeks from tomorrow. Two pieces of housekeeping while that envelope waits on the counter. First, Monday, Oct. 19 is the deadline to register or update your registration for this election, so if you have moved, changed your name, or have a brand-new voter in the house, two minutes online settles it now. Miss it and you can still register conditionally in person, but why make it harder than it needs to be. Second, for drop box locations, vote center details, and everything else, the county's Nov. 3 election page has the answers in one place.
👉 Register or update your registration
👉 Visit the county's Nov. 3 election page
🔹 The most complete Measure B story yet, with both sides on the record. The Merced County Times published a deep look Friday at the one-cent measure, and it does not read like a campaign flyer. You will find the hard numbers: our sales tax moving from 8.25 to 9.25 percent, roughly $18 million a year raised, a road budget of about $8 million against an estimated $15 to $20 million annual need, and a planned Fire Station 56 in north Merced that still needs staffing money to open its doors. You will also find the opposition. My colleague Fue Xiong, the lone no vote on placing the measure, argues it comes too soon after the Measure C extension.
→ 💬 My take: I laid out my yes three weeks ago, and nothing in this piece moved me off it. But I want you reading the strongest version of the other side before you fill in a single bubble. Questions about your money deserve skeptics, and I say that as a career one.
🚨 Public Safety
🔹 Bear Creek clearing went from promise to signed agreement. The vote happened last Monday night: the city's stretch of Bear Creek, from Crocker Dam to Campus Parkway, is now part of the county's larger vegetation clearing project, with the shared costs and faster schedule that come from joining forces instead of going it alone. Right behind it, the council adopted the resolution recognizing the threatened local emergency from the developing El Niño, which lets the city move quicker and reach for outside help when the storms arrive.
→ 💬 My take: Votes do not clear a channel; crews do. The update I want to hand you next is a start date, and until I can, consider me the impatient one in the room. If your block took on water in 2023, the prep list from two weeks back still applies: gutters, drains, garage floors, alerts.
🔹 A $278,182 boost for our firefighters, at no new cost to you. The council also formally accepted the federal Assistance to Firefighters Grant for our fire department last Monday. You know my broken record here: outside grant dollars are how a city with Merced's budget stretches into the services Merced's size demands, and every win like this one strengthens the case for a full-time grant writer at City Hall.
💼 Economic Development
🔹 Downtown's Monday votes: parking that pays, and a highway that grows. Two more approvals from last week land squarely in District 3. The El Capitan Hotel is leasing 59 spaces in the Ralph Shannon Parcade at $2,520 a month, which turns idle stalls into steady city revenue while keeping a downtown anchor hotel competitive. And the $1.22 million engineering agreement for the Highway 59 Phase 1 widening, bridges over Black Rascal Creek included, starts the clock on a corridor that moves goods, jobs, and eventually tax base.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: None of this is ribbon-cutting material, and that is the point. Quiet decisions like these are how a downtown earns its keep, and how a city grows revenue without reaching deeper into your pocket.
🔹 The MAC turns 30, with the paperwork and the party landing in the same week. Last Monday the council approved a new five-year lease keeping the Merced County Arts Council at home in the Multicultural Arts Center. Three days later, the Courthouse Museum opened "The MAC at 30: A Canvas of Community," an exhibit marking three decades since the old Montgomery Ward building on Main Street reopened as a 28,000-square-foot arts center in October 1996. The lease itself is a smart structure: the city keeps ownership of the building, the Arts Council carries utilities, maintenance, and staffing, and the public is guaranteed 30 free gallery hours every week.
→ 💬 My take: The MAC is a big reason downtown wears a state Cultural District designation, and thirty years of galleries, theater camps, and dance classes is exactly the college-town fabric I keep pushing for. See the exhibit at the Courthouse Museum, then go walk the real thing on Main Street.
🩺 Healthcare
🔹 Truck 51's cardiac monitor cleared the council. The up-to-$60,000 LIFEPAK 35 purchase was approved last Monday. With roughly 70 percent of our fire department's calls being medical, this is not a gadget. It reads a patient's heart right there on scene, long before an emergency room ever could. Approved is step one. In service is the step I actually care about, and I will keep an eye on the gap between the two.
🔹 The volunteers behind Saturday's festival feed Merced kids all week long. On Friday, The Merced FOCUS told the story of Food Para Todos, the same group that threw Saturday's Harvest Festival. Their week-in, week-out work is quieter: rescuing fresh produce from grocery stores and school districts, then delivering bins to more than 30 home daycare providers across Merced, with a goal of reaching 50 by the end of the year.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: About a third of this county's children rely on CalFresh. Produce landing in a daycare kitchen instead of a landfill is nutrition, dignity, and prevention in one trip, and prevention is the kind of healthcare that never needs a siren.
🔹 One profile worth your coffee break. The FOCUS also profiled Antonia Sierra-Martinez, a promotora de salud on the west side of our county who has been the neighbor people call for help since she was a child. When we celebrated Merced County's vaccination numbers last month, promotoras were part of the quiet machinery behind them. This piece puts a face to that word.
📅 Meetings & Community Events
🔹 Indigenous Peoples' Day is today, Monday, Oct. 12. Before Merced had a Main Street, this Valley held thousands of years of history. Today honors the people who lived it first and the descendants who carry it forward.
🔹 City Council: Monday, Oct. 19, 6 p.m., Council Chamber, Merced Civic Center, 678 W. 18th St., second floor. The agenda posts by 5 p.m. this Friday, and I am watching for the staff report on arts spending that is due to the council by Oct. 19. Come speak, or watch from the couch.
👉 View agendas, minutes, and video
🔹 Planning Commission: Wednesday, Oct. 21, 6 p.m., Council Chambers, Merced Civic Center. I sat on that commission before I ever sat on the council, and I can vouch for this: the decisions made in that room reach your street years before anyone notices. Public seats are always open.
🔹 Merced Certified Farmers' Market: Saturday, Oct. 17, morning, downtown Merced. Every Saturday, rain or shine, and the fall produce is showing off right now.
🔹 The Vista Ranch Pumpkin Patch is open for the season. Opening weekend drew families from as far away as Mariposa and Los Banos out to Highway 140 for locally grown pumpkins, food, live music, and family activities. If your porch is still bare, you have a local answer.
🔹 Distinguished Climate Speakers Series: Monday, Oct. 26, 3 to 5 p.m., Lakireddy Ballroom, UC Merced. Climate scientist Jonathan Foley takes the stage up the road. A world-class speaker series ten minutes from downtown is a college-town perk worth using.
📢 Stay Connected with Merced
🔹 Get city alerts on your terms. Subscribe Merced lets you pick the topics you want, from emergency notifications to city news, delivered straight to you. Between a wet winter forecast and an election in full swing, this is two well-spent minutes. If you sign up for nothing else, sign up for the emergency alerts.
👉 Sign up for Subscribe Merced
☎️ The Direct Line
Two deadlines own this week: your voter registration by next Monday, and your ballot whenever you are ready, after you have done the reading, the Measure B piece included. If anything on that ballot has you stuck, or if you have an idea for what Saturday's festival should add next year, call me. I answer my own phone.
My number is (209) 385-6203. You can also reply to this email or write me at HarrisM@cityofmerced.gov. If this letter was useful, share it with a neighbor who would use it too.
Make it a good week, Merced.
Mike Harris
Councilmember, City of Merced
