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Council: Flag policy stays the same
Rainbow flag
The City Council voted 3-2 on Tuesday to not change the City’s current flag policy, which means the rainbow flag cannot be flown on City flagpoles.

The rainbow flag will not be flying at Turlock City Hall anytime soon, as the City Council voted 3-2 on Tuesday to not change the City’s current flag policy.

The issue of whether or not to change the City of Turlock’s flag policy to allow for the rainbow flag — and/or flags from other community groups — to be flown on City poles drew a standing-room only crowd to the Council meeting.

After hearing hours of comments from community members both for and against the change in the flag, Mayor Amy Bublak, Vice Mayor Gil Esquer and Council member Becky Arellano voted not to allow a change in the flag policy, with Council members Andrew Nosrati and Nicole Larson opposing.

“I don’t think governments should be involved. We’re here to accept, we’re not here to promote per se. We’re supposed to let everybody have their own personal beliefs, take them home. Our thing is to be inclusive. What inclusive means is everyone does what they want to do within the laws, but at the same time, we get to do that within our own homes and in our own vehicles,” said Mayor Bublak.

“I think we’re living in one of the most divisive political times in our nation’s history and I think this is a result of that, this meeting right now. It’s sad; it’s really sad. It’s sad because as a woman who identifies as a Christian in a happy heterosexual relationship…I don’t feel threatened or that my religious beliefs will be under attack if I see another group that has had historical, factual marginalization, factual discrimination…,” said Councilmember Larson.

Dozens of community members spoke out both for the change in flag policy and against it.

Those who spoke out against the change in flag policy cited a variety of reasons for their opinion ranging from the policy opening a door to any and all groups who wanted to fly a flag and the problems that could incur; to upholding the American flag as inclusive of everyone and there’s no need for other flags; and a number of community members said the City should support religious beliefs that condone homosexuality.

“The American flag is a symbol of pride and freedom for all Americans. The American flag is something that all people no matter gender or sexual orientation can stand behind because it represents the sacrifice that so many men and women gave for the freedoms and liberties we all benefit from. If the City chooses to fly the rainbow flag in support of LGBTQ rights, they will be opening up a can of worms. The City will be put in the position of having to determine which flags to support that they will be willing to fly with the possibility of opposing views of other groups to be expressed. It would best serve the City of Turlock to stay out of choosing which individual groups to support. As a City, we should support freedom for all and limit flags to the ones we already have,” said Michael Ness.

“Why would you want to consider poking a finger in the eyes of the majority of Christians, Muslims, Jews and other religions and even secular people who live in this community. Why would you want to consider offending a large sector of the population of this city?  Americans have learned over many years the importance of tolerance, but what would be tolerant about flying a LBQT flag? You would not be asking us to tolerate certain defined sexual behaviors, as a city you would be asking the entire city to celebrate those various sexual behaviors with flags flying over this city. Flying a flag honoring homosexual behavior and bisexual behavior and the practice of surgically altering the sex of people is the real question under consideration tonight,” said Kenneth McVay.

“I don’t want to see that over my city. I don’t want to drive around my city and have to deal with anything like that,” said Rachel Scott.

Those in support of changing the flag policy to allow for the rainbow flag — and possibly others — to fly at City Hall said it would be a symbol that the City supports all the residents of the community and stands against hate.

 “We’re in the 21st century and still fighting over the same issues of equity. This is not about sexuality.  This is not about lifestyles. This is about people. People who are who they are and we need to respect people for who they are. The State of California flew this flag for an entire month (holding up a rainbow flag), without any hesitation. How many of you went to Sacramento complaining about this flag? It’s been flown over your Capitol,” said Gladys Williams.

Community member Michelle Park first requested the City of Turlock fly the rainbow flag in August.

“When I first brought this on Aug. 24, Straight Pride had just happened and it was a terror attack against my community. People in my community were targeted and hate speech and violence were thrown at them. So, I had asked the City to raise the Pride flag in an effort of solidarity and healing, a gesture of healing right after that. I believe the Pride flag could have been raised then, that very next week which was Gay Pride. I believe that this stonewalling has created a platform for hate, which concerns me greatly,” said Park.

 

 

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.