Loe going for third term
Incumbent was Hollister’s first female mayor
After nearly 35 years serving the Hollister community, Pat Loe
still wants to make a mark on the county.
She has spent time on Hollister’s city council in the mid-1970s.
She was the first woman mayor of Hollister and is currently serving
her eighth year as a San Benito County supervisor, after being
elected to the position in 2002.
Loe going for third term
Incumbent was Hollister’s first female mayor
After nearly 35 years serving the Hollister community, Pat Loe still wants to make a mark on the county.
She has spent time on Hollister’s city council in the mid-1970s. She was the first woman mayor of Hollister and is currently serving her eighth year as a San Benito County supervisor, after being elected to the position in 2002.
Thanks to her experience, Loe said she thinks she knows where the county needs to go in the future.
“Anytime you have institutional memory on the issues, it’s a great help,” Loe said. “It gives you a pulse on what’s happening in the community and what’s important in the community.”
Loe is the incumbent in District 3 and is facing newcomer Robert Rivas in the June 8 primary. District 3 includes southwest Hollister, south of South Street and east to Memorial Drive.
During Loe’s time on the board, the county has started to streamline its business and built up a necessary reserve, she said.
The reserve allows the county to stay healthy in case of huge state budget cuts, Loe said. If budget cuts were necessary in the next few years, the county should be fine if it continues to streamline, she said.
“We need to streamline departments the best we can. We have joined three departments, eliminating top management, which saves quite a bit of money,” Loe said. “We have got to continue to be able to deliver the services to the public – that’s what government does. So we would have to continue to run a tight ship.”
To help, the county’s offices are finally in direct contact with one another, with their computers on the same server, she said. The server consolidation has taken nearly three years, she noted.
The new computer server allows the county offices to react faster and save a lot of time. The offices now only have to do things once, instead of each office having to redo paperwork.
“It’s finally paying off – although it is frustrating when the server goes down,” Loe said.
The new servers should allow the county to quickly identify what area is in need, including bringing in new business.
Because of San Benito County’s high unemployment rate of more than 20 percent, new jobs and new businesses are vital to the area and economic development is something the county needs to work on to improve, Loe said.
To do so, officials are looking into rezoning the county, to help identify what areas are good for business development, specifically where water and sewer lines travel.
“It would be a huge benefit for those who are moving in to know where to look,” Loe said.
Transportation is another issue that would help bring both jobs and business to the area. With only three major highways running through the area, the county has to make them safer, Loe said.
“We need to have roads available for people to come,” Loe said.
To do that, the county has spent the last few years making safety improvements to Hwy. 25, and Loe hopes to do the same to Hwy. 152.
“It has basically 100 points of entrance and that’s extremely dangerous,” Loe said “With all the speed and trucks in that area it makes it extremely dangerous. It’s going to be the next road that’s gong to be a blood alley.”
But more important, to bring new business to San Benito County, Loe said she believes it’s important that everyone who is involved with a business agreement gets into the same room, she said.
“We are going to try and streamline the project – we want to get everybody in the same room at the same time to talk about what issues the project could expect to encounter,” Loe said. “We can tell the owner up front – this is what we see and help them maybe avoid some of the hurdles.”
The county also needs to be careful with the Clear Creek Management Area and its relationship with landowners in the area, Loe said.
“We need to make sure the information is correct,” she said. “If people want to spend their free time on a motorcycle up there, that has to be taken serious. There are property owners up there – their rights have got to be taken serious.”
Pat Loe
Age: 63
Occupation: San Benito County Supervisor
Elected political experience: County Supervisor 2003-present, Hollister City Council, 1974-78
