Delano City Council Member Mario Nunez Jr. is making his case for reelection. Following his first term, his bid as an incumbent candidate rests on the accomplishments of the council during his tenure. 

While Delano citizens might recognize the name of the former long-time police officer and football coach, keeping up with everything the City Council has done for the past four years may not be as commonplace. 

Throughout the course of this interview, Nunez utilized the opportunity to communicate his priorities, accomplishments, and future plans for the citizens of Delano. 

A Broad Agenda

Despite his extensive career in law enforcement, Nunez said he has not focused his council work on a single issue, describing a broad agenda that includes public safety, infrastructure, senior services, and parks and recreation. He has also linked those priorities to improving city services as Delano grows. 

“A lot of a lot of things that came forward when I first got on the council. Things like our seniors, infrastructure, our parks and recreation, and then of course public safety.” said Nunez. “I looked at a little bit of everything and asked how we can evenly spread out as a council. What can we do to push it around?”

This wide array of focuses for the City Council can be stated for all current members, however Nunez does have quite a bit of progress to point to in each of these subjects. The city of Delano has seen improvement in each of these stated areas. 

Public Safety and Surveillance 

The first and seemingly most prominent change comes in Delano’s public safety. Earlier this year the Delano Police Department cited a noticeable drop-off in crime between 2024 and 2025, noting statistics such as a 38% reduction in rape cases, 40% reduction in stolen vehicles, 24% reduction in larcenies, and a 47% drop in attempted stolen vehicles.  

One statistic that particularly stood out was the fact that there were no gang-related homicides in Delano at all in the year of 2025. Given Nunez’s extensive experience in local law enforcement, it seems natural that he is an open supporter of the city’s recent ramping up of surveillance technology. 

And though the technology, specifically the Flock Camera Surveillance system, is relatively controversial, Nunez attributes the reduction in crime to the system and the police department that operates it. 

“We have over 35 flock cameras, as well as more than 250 citywide cameras in Delano. These at one point or another have reduced crime by nearly 54 percent.” Nunez claims. “We haven’t had a gang related homicide in almost a year, and the impact is not only violent crime, but even our property crimes are down. I mean, when I was working patrol, we were getting six to ten stolen cars a day. Now we’re lucky to hit 15 a month.”

Despite the controversy, the cameras have seemingly assisted, or at least coincided with the reduction of crime throughout the city. Nunez described how the Delano Police Department has been using them to stop criminals in the process of or even before committing a crime.

“We had a group of retail criminals coming into Delano in a stolen vehicle. They’d been stealing from businesses up and down the 99. They had pulled into one of our business areas, and they were setting their heist up, getting ready to go. We had the alerts on the car, knew where it was and before they were able to go commit a crime, they were taken into custody. One of the guys we caught goes, “How did you guys know we were in town?” Because the system worked.”

When challenged on the idea of surveillance throughout Delano and the lack of privacy that residents may be concerned about, Nunez offered reassurance that the department has been doing all they can to follow the law. 

“Just like any system, there’s there’s flaws, but I can tell you here locally that our department and our city is following the law. We have state laws that do not allow us to share.” 

Roads and Measure B

Delano’s growth as a city is a topic that many citizens are proud of; however there are some drawbacks when it comes to the city’s relatively fast growth. The need for infrastructure within the city must keep up with or even outpace Delano’s commercial growth to avoid potential consequences. 

Traffic flow is one of the infrastructure issues Nunez said the council has worked to address. Council minutes show he moved approval of a $1.09 million signal contract for Randolph Street and County Line Road in August and a $672,780 contract for Cecil Avenue and Vassar Street in September. The votes approved the contracts, but they don’t mean the signals are complete. The projects appear to be a step in the right direction.  

“So, one of the things that we’re working on is traffic flow within our city. We have a huge issue with traffic flow within our city. Our city was built in the 1900s, and some of the roads were not as wide in what they should have been. Our city is now working on expanding it.”

While these signal construction projects are already in the works and are set to be complete well within Nunez’s prospective next term, there are still longer term projects he and the council seem to be laying the foundation for. One of these is the High Street Flyover which Nunez described as a longer-term effort.

“We’re about three years into our process. Our city has already purchased the property to build it on. A lot of studies have been done, but currently we’re waiting on Caltrans to come back on theirs (studies). Once we get everybody’s studies done, and then we look at the big funding projects that run anywhere from 50 to 70 million dollars.” 

One of the most asked about aspects of these projects is the source of their funding. Delano residents may be excited to see these projects improve their daily lives with streets they frequent, but also understandably wary of where the money seems to be coming from. 

“We were able to get (measure) B. Extended for an unlimited time, and those unrestricted funds to do what we need to get projects done here in Delano.”

To many, Measure B may only be something you slightly remember voting on in the past, or might not remember at all. However, Measure B is a 1% local sales tax that was extended indefinitely as a revenue source for the local government. It makes up about 20% of Delano’s annual budget, and despite accounting for one-fifth of revenue, Nunez states the council utilizes it in a different way. 

“The way our city works on it, we don’t count on it for daily use. We have a budget, and we stay within the budget that includes the money we normally receive. This is for those additional things we need. We have a sewer line that goes out? Instead of having to hit our general fund we got money in Measure B. Let’s fix that sewer line. A dumpster goes down, and we need a dumpster? And instead of hitting our general fund, we use that measure money. It’s not used for salaries.”

Senior Services and Recreation

His other stated priorities included Delano’s seniors and concerns about the Senior Center.  

“We had a lot of complaints out of our senior center that our seniors are their food and the recreation facilities were not up to snuff. We were able to advocate for them, and the Delano School District now cooks for them. Now their meals are way better and they’re much happier. Also, with help through Dr. Bains, we got an additional $250,000 funding to help offset some of the cost associated with that.”

Another subject brought up by Nunez was Delano’s parks and recreation services. 

“Times have changed, and people want to be more competitive and with different sports. So, as a council, we got together and told recreation this is what we want and this is where we’re going. We needed to expand, and we needed to get better. Now our recreation has almost quadrupled in the amount of kids who are now signed up. We have sports going on almost all the time, and our facilities are open a lot longer.”

Along with the recreation component, Nunez intends to specifically target Delano’s parks as the next area for improvement. 

“One of the projects I’ve been working on for about a year and a half is our parks. They are, in my opinion, mow and go. Really, nothing particularly exciting about our parks. We have all the amenities we need there, but we have no real attraction. But through help through our State Senator Melissa Hurtado we were able to secure almost 1.5 million and Assemblymember Dr. Bains received nearly $750,000, where we’re going to rehab all of our parks, and that has already started.”

Business Growth and Main Street

The most exciting topic amongst Delano citizens is the rapid influx of commercial industry arriving in Delano. And while many residents are waiting for potential “big name” businesses to anchor themselves in the city, Delano’s main street has seemingly not grown at any rate remotely similar to the development around Woollomes Avenue. 

In fact, Delano’s main street businesses have seemed to struggle for nearly a decade, but that isn’t due to a lack of offered help according to Nunez.

“As far as Main Street, we have had several grant items that the city has put together. We are not giving the business owners money, but we have low or no interest cost loans to them to fix their buildings, to upgrade your buildings, how to attract business to your downtown area, and for several years we put it out. We’ve walked Main Street, not only us but city staff promoting it to all the business owners and all the property owners. Not one person has taken us up on it. Some of these are low interest or no interest, or forgive. Nobody took us up on it.”

The attempts at reform pushed by Delano’s local government seems to have fallen on deaf ears according to Nunez. 

“I think our biggest problem is that most of these properties on Main Street, High Street, and Jefferson are not owned by local people. They’re owned by people who live out of town, and don’t have any interest in improving the properties. Although we do have businesses on Main Streets that do thrive, and some you know, are struggling. I don’t know what else the city can do, we can offer them ways to improve but we can’t just offer them free money.”

Moving away from the downtown area, the industry boom occurring around the Woollomes avenue area has become increasingly noticeable within the city. Nunez has stated that once he joined the council, it was the council’s priority to establish a considerable tax base, as that’s one of the metrics large commercial businesses use to evaluate places to expand. 

“Through council approval, I was assigned to work with ICSC (International Council of Shopping Centers), and I met with a couple of local developers. There I showed them what we have and asked what we can provide you? Showed them property we have around the city, and even some of our local business owners who have property and who want to attract business to us. So we were able to land a lot of these developers. One of the big ones that we were able to land and help secure was Target.”

The introduction of Target seemed to mark a new milestone in Delano’s growth, as local cities of comparable size such as Tulare and Hanford have had them for years. Nunez emphasized the importance of residential growth that Delano is experiencing as a good thing that will further commercial development. 

“One of the biggest things is rooftops. The more rooftops you bring in, people move into our town and when they move into town, they start shopping locally so we got to give them something to shop.”

Nunez states that businesses need specific benchmarks to be interested, and the reason certain businesses aren’t here yet is simply because Delano has not grown into the size they prefer yet. 

“I’ve heard other candidates talk about why don’t we bring in this particular store, this particular restaurant, anything like that. They have specific things they’re looking for. They’re looking for population. They’re looking for our income base, and if we don’t hit that, they won’t even look at us.” 

In terms of residential development, Nunez wants to focus on partnering with a plethora of companies that can bring competition to new housing within the city. 

“We are working on bringing in more rooftops, and what we want to do is look for investors who want to build more houses instead of having one company building houses in Delano. You know, of course that’s going to shoot our cost of housing up. But if you have multiple housing projects with multiple different developers and investors, then it evens the playing field. Not only does it even the playing field to where it brings the prices down, you get a better quality product to come in because they want to give you the best house they have available at a better price, and we all win from that.”

Council Cooperation

One of the more interesting aspects of Delano’s City Council is the role, or lack thereof, of politics on a national level may affect decisions. While most citizens may think of a highly partisan makeup given the current members, the council actually does cooperate on the vast majority of issues, especially when the issues align on the aforementioned topics. 

“So I’m pretty sure you’re aware that on our council we have two Democrats, two independents, and one Republican, and we’ve put political parties aside, and dealt with Delano. We haven’t always had a lot of unanimous votes. We’ve had four-to-one votes and I can count on my hand probably a few three-to-two votes. But for the most part we’re on the same page because we all care about Delano, and we all want the same thing for the city. That’s what it should be about, we should not be worried about the national agenda. We can deal with the national agenda at the national level, but in Delano, when we’re working on Delano, we need to work on what’s best for Delano.” 

This sentiment may be one of the best cases for Nunez, as this council, particularly in the last two years, has been especially productive in supporting Delano citizens. 

In terms of Nunez’s case for reelection, this article will hopefully assist any citizen hoping not only to see Nunez’s priorities but also to understand Delano’s local government and its focus on helping its citizens.