As a transplant to San Benito County more than five years ago,
you’d think that I would be used to the backward politics of the
area. This is far from true, as is apparent in the recent approval
of a hillside building restriction implemented by the outgoing
board.
Dear Editor,
As a transplant to San Benito County more than five years ago, you’d think that I would be used to the backward politics of the area. This is far from true, as is apparent in the recent approval of a hillside building restriction implemented by the outgoing board.
I am baffled at how supervisors can ignore the clear cut two to one defeat of the Measure G proposal and the outcries of most of the attendees at the public comment meetings. Why call them public comment meetings if you’re not going to listen to the public’s comments?
I’ve had the benefit of living in several different environments throughout my life, and I have yet to see a community like ours where the residents fight progress to the degree of the San Benito population. It’s time to take a good look around you, my fellow residents, and see the inevitable.
Hollister and the surrounding farmland has deep roots in open agriculture, views that go on and on and a sense of community where you know your neighbor by their first name. But that cannot survive forever. Hollister (and the surrounding towns) has become the bedroom community that you’ve all been dreading. Take a ride to almost any area in the populated sections of the county and you’ll see new home development. Or at least a billboard exclaiming either the development potential of a property for sail or a future housing project “coming soon.”
San Benito County is not the industrial/manufacturing Mecca that will attract a horde of investors. We have numerous vacancies that we can’t fill in the industrial sector, and that has nothing to do with the moratorium. So, by continually adopting restrictions that thwart residential building, we are cutting off our one sure (and eminent) source of income; new construction fees.
It is a certainty that San Benito County will (has) become a haven for those searching for affordable housing, and we are most likely destined to become a community that more resembles Morgan Hill than that of Tres Pinos (no offense intended, Tres Pinos).
Supervisors, help the county residents by listening to what we want, or at least give us the reasoning behind your decisions that defy logic. There are some of us that just don’t understand.
Everett Clark, Hollister
