It didn’t take long for new Lemoore City Manager Marissa Trejo to realize she had her work cut out for her. Marissa has served as the City Manager for the City of Coalinga since 2015. Starting work in Lemoore this September, the fourth generation local resident faced a city budget crisis that would require residents to vote on a sales tax hike in a matter of weeks.The community of 27,000 has had a structural deficit for years as operational expenses outweighed revenues. Would the community be willing to increase taxes?
The answer came in early November as Measure S, a one-percent sales tax hike, won big with 67% approval of voters.The measure is expected to bring in an additional $3,850,000 annually to the city’s general fund. Sales tax monies are not just paid by residents of the community, but tourists, visitors and nearby residents who shop in town such as the thousands who live at the naval air base.
Although Lemoore will have to wait until April 2025 for the new sales revenue to make a difference, Marissa Trejo was able to juggle the budget enough to soon open the community recreation center seven days a week not only for sports activity but the indoor walking track that is so popular in town.Currently, the center is open Monday through Thursday.
Then there is some good news on the ice cream front. While landmark Foster Freeze closed in town earlier this year, Lemoore now sports a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor that opened recently.
But the big news in town is the long-vacant Kmart building is in escrow with developer California Gold Corp who will purchase the 87,000 square-foot building, install a new Tractor Supply store along with other retailers.The building has been vacant for 6 years.
California Gold has rejuvenated multiple shopping centers around the Valley including construction of a new center in North Visalia that also includes a Tractor Supply.
Leprino shocker
Trejo and the whole community were shocked to hear in mid-November that the long standing cheese plant called Leprino East was announced to be closed in late 2025 with the loss of about 250 jobs. “Like everyone else, I first learned about it on Facebook when employees started posting the news.”
Later a company executive visited city hall and explained to Trejo the schedule to close the dairy plant.”I feel so bad for the families who are affected”, says Marissa.A Leprino official explained that the closure of the block-long Leprino East plant would not affect the operation of the much larger Leprino West plant that employs about 1000 workers. He explained that there were four main reasons why they were closing the Leprino East facility1. TheLeprino East facility dates from 1910 and is small and aging by modern standards.2. California’s business climate leads to higher costs.3 California milk production is down about 4% while other states are up 11%. Milk production is moving east, she was told.4 Leprino is building a sprawling new production facility in Lubbock Texas making the same mozzarella product as they do here and opening in January 2026.The Lubbock Economic Development Alliance announced Leprino Foods, a global leader in mozzarella, whey protein and other dairy ingredients, will invest $1 billion to build a state of the art manufacturing plant located on 258 acres. Marissa says she was disappointed that the company did not offer a transfer option for the employees to work at another Leprino facility.
Lastly, Trejo noted Leprino was putting the property on the market and was told the company was optimistic that it would sell, meaning another manufacturer would likely take over the operation of the facility in the future and bring some jobs back to the community.