Move to Marina may happen in one to three years
The Bureau of Land Management’s Hollister field office, which
has been in operation since the 1980s and now manages 284,000 acres
of public land, recently announced it will be moving its
operational base to Marina in the coming years.
Move to Marina may happen in one to three years
The Bureau of Land Management’s Hollister field office, which has been in operation since the 1980s and now manages 284,000 acres of public land, recently announced it will be moving its operational base to Marina in the coming years.
More than 30 employees, 16 of whom live in Hollister, will be affected by the relocation, though it could take up to three years before the move is made.
“This office has been here for a long time,” said BLM geologist Tim Moore, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees union Local 2152. “We hate to see Hollister left in the lurch.”
Moore said “stunned” BLM employees were informed of the impending move during a meeting on Dec. 10 at their Hamilton Court office, which is off Shelton Road in the Hollister Business Park, east of the airport.
Hollister Field Manager Rick Cooper said the planned move, which is necessitated by a need for more space and a desire to move operations closer to 7,200 acres of BLM land at the former Fort Ord, still needs to be approved by the agency’s national operations center in Denver, Colo.
“We’ve sort of outgrown the size of the [Hollister] office and we’re working to manage more property at Ford Ord,” he said, adding that the agency is set to acquire 8,000 more acres at the former Army base and also is acquiring 5,500 acres in northern Santa Cruz County. “There’s been a little bit more of an emphasis going that way [toward the coast]. We want to see if we can centralize and get our employees under one roof in Marina.”
From the Hollister field office, BLM employees monitor public land from San Luis Obispo in the south to the Bay Area in the north, with much of that land located in San Benito County. Local public lands, primarily in the southern part of the county, are open for hunting, gem collecting and off-road use.
BLM biologists monitor how endangered species, such as the red-legged frog and the kit fox, are affected by grazing, mining, or oil and gas production in San Benito and Fresno counties, Moore said. Archaeologists stationed in the Hollister office help protect cultural resources, such as consulting on Native American issues, and discuss right-of-ways and easements.
BLM law enforcement personnel also patrol the public lands.
All of those tasks are expected to continue after the office leaves Hollister, but moving the office farther from the majority of the land its staff monitors will have negative impacts, said Moore, the union representative.
“It will put our vehicles on the road for an additional hour, which means we’re spending more time on the road burning fossil fuels,” he said, mentioning that the BLM is seeking a new office in Marina, where it currently manages a day-use park at the former Fort Ord. “The environment suffers and our employees suffer.”
Moore said that the BLM employees who live and work in Hollister “have strong economic ties to the community by virtue of owning homes, [having] children in schools, as well as medical and other social connections.”
“Nothing’s been stated about letting people go” as part of the relocation, Moore said. “It’s an office move. But people may not choose to make the 70-mile commute.”
The union representing the employees is negotiating to mitigate the impact on them, Moore said, adding that advertising for space in Marina will begin after the first of the year.
“They diminished the value of this office by saying that the land over there [in Fort Ord] was a higher priority,” he said. “This move to close the Hollister field office was determined without any employee input.”
Cooper said there is no set time frame for the office relocation, as the move must first be approved, then the bidding – and later, building – processes must be done, which could take from one to three years.
“We’re not going to be leaving this place for some time,” added Cooper, who also lives in Hollister. “The policy within the agency is that you’re still within a 50-mile commuting distance, the agency does not consider that a significant enough change to provide compensation for employees,” though that does not close the door on some mitigation being negotiated.
Cooper said BLM will “still be able to effectively manage” the land under its purview, though he acknowledges there will be a longer commute time when the agency’s staff has to travel to San Benito or Fresno counties from Marina.
“It’ll definitely impact the Hollister folks, but with just a little under 40 people on staff, only 16 of those live in Hollister,” Cooper said, noting that the commute for some employees will get shorter.
