With two new hires, staff at the Hollister Redevelopment Agency
plan to move ahead with some big new projects.
Hollister – With two new hires, staff at the Hollister Redevelopment Agency plan to move ahead with some big new projects.
Development Services Director Bill Avera, who oversees the RDA, said the agency hasn’t had a projects coordinator since March and it hasn’t had a manager for more than three years. It’s been a long wait for an RDA manager, but Avera said the city didn’t ramp up its recruitment until after March 2006, once he was promoted from interim development services director.
“We decided there was going to be a concerted effort to fill these positions once I had this job permanently,” Avera said.
The new staff is absolutely necessary, he said, because without them, he’s been running the RDA on his own.
“I just couldn’t do it anymore,” he said.
New RDA Manager April Wooden said the agency has been fulfilling the city’s basic redevelopment needs and requirements. But without the staff, many projects in Hollister’s redevelopment plan just sat on the shelf.
Among Wooden and RDA projects coordinator Renee Perales’ first priorities are contributing to the development of the Hollister Downtown Association’s new downtown strategy plan, overseeing the renovation of Fire Station No. 1 and building 22 new affordable housing units on Fourth Street.
“We’ve got a very full agenda for a staff of this size,” Wooden said.
Some locals have taken a dim view of the RDA. The agency is budgeted to spend around $4.1 million fiscal year 2007-08, and critics say that money would be better spent on construction of the new wastewater treatment plant or combating the city’s recent service cuts. But Wooden said the agency can do a lot of good.
Individual redevelopment projects can have a “ripple” effect and improve the area around them, she said. For example, an upgraded fire station would be a big draw if the city wants to build a hotel or more housing downtown.
“Hopefully, because we do that, other good things will happen,” Wooden said.
Perales added that the dollars spent on redevelopment are taken from the city’s general fund.
“They don’t understand that there are only some ways we’re allowed to use that money,” she said.
Wooden and Perales are joining the city government as it struggles with dwindling finances, but Wooden said things will improve soon. Wooden has more than 30 years of experience in local government, and she can tell when a city is on the “upswing” or the “downswing,” she said.
“I definitely see (Hollister) as being on an upswing,” she said.
