We write with concern about our city’s misplaced priorities and inconsistent environmental stewardship. Recently, when sheep remains were discovered at the Fremont Amtrak station, our Mayor quickly labeled it “disgusting and vile,” commanding the Chief of Police to investigate. Yet, when five tons of dead fish were removed from Lake Elizabeth during the July 4th weekend, city leaders didn’t express similar outrage or call for an investigation.
These fish perished due to oxygen deprivation in overheated waters—a preventable ecological disaster resulting from years of the city and county allowing the lake to silt up and become increasingly shallow.
While we appreciate the city plans for aerators and pausing fish restocking, these reactive measures highlight a disturbing pattern of environmental negligence and lack of coordination with the County Flood Control District. Mutual finger-pointing followed by inadequate remediation leave the fish in peril.
The city’s selective outrage extends to how we handle homelessness. Deploying police—who along with fire services consume 76% of our city budget—to relocate unhoused individuals merely shifts the problem elsewhere. Instead of criminalizing homelessness, we should focus on social services.
Fremont must align its budget priorities with neighboring cities, where public safety consumes less than 60% of general fund expenditures. Fremont’s current three-year labor contract brought a 17% cumulative salary increase that strains the city’s finances and the July 2025 contract negotiation is expected to raise labor costs. We seem to have wolves on one side of the bargaining table and sheep on the other.
The city budget also faces investment fluctuations affecting pension obligations. These factors combine to put the city on an unsustainable fiscal path and the inevitable result will be either higher taxes or deteriorating public services—more potholes, fewer parks and trash-lined streets.
Our community deserves leadership that demonstrates social values, fiscal responsibility and environmental stewardship—not selective, sheepish outrage that ignores the larger ecological, budgetary and social challenges we face.
William Yragui
Fremont
