Larry Cain has done a little bit of everything in his lifetime,
culminating with his position as city manager in San Juan Bautista.
From working on movie sets in Belize, being an accountant in San
Francisco and being the editor of a newspaper, he’s pretty
well-rounded in the ways of the world.
His three-year tenure in San Juan Bautista has brought some new
challenges and changes to the town, some of which Cain is pleased
with, and others he’s not.
Larry Cain has done a little bit of everything in his lifetime, culminating with his position as city manager in San Juan Bautista. From working on movie sets in Belize, being an accountant in San Francisco and being the editor of a newspaper, he’s pretty well-rounded in the ways of the world.
His three-year tenure in San Juan Bautista has brought some new challenges and changes to the town, some of which Cain is pleased with, and others he’s not.
In a question-and-answer interview, Cain addressed upcoming infrastructure plans, why the city is not happy with CALTRANS, and what’s going on with those pesky chickens.
FREE LANCE: Describe the progress of the infrastructure project the city is working on to improve the water quality.
LARRY CAIN: The engineering for the project is 95 percent complete. We’ve seen a better way to handle a couple things, so we’ve made some changes along the way. We are concentrating on financing construction which is a major process for getting final approval for the Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) grant (which is $3.8 million). We won’t start working on the physical aspects until the money is on hand, but the preliminary construction drawings are already in. When we know the money is committed, we’ll step forward and try to bid sometime in February. Construction will probably begin sometime in late March or April.
FL: What does the infrastructure involve?
LC: It involves putting in a water treatment plant that will use the blue valve water to reach a higher quality of water. It will give us the ability to lessen the need for water softening, and we can request for the cease-and-desist order, which has been placed on us to reduce the amount of chlorides in the water stream by July 13, 2005, to be removed. The water treatment plant is a part that drives (the infrastructure) because it has inadequate water storage. The roof is not acceptable to the Department of Health Services, and the transportation lines into town need to be improved.
FL: What is the city of San Juan Bautista doing to keep people living and working in San Juan, instead of having to find work outside of the city?
LC: The infrastructure project will put us in the position to hire people to clean out the lines and do emergency service work, which will be very costly. Right now, there just aren’t enough jobs to keep people (working) here, so we’re cooperating with the water district and two vegetable processors in the San Juan Valley to get some people work. If the two plants weren’t here, there’d be even fewer jobs than there is.
FL: What is happening with CALTRANS that the city is not in favor of?
LC: They want to build an expressway on Highway 156 from The Alameda to Union Road that will greatly increase the truck traffic. The City Council thinks it should be a four-lane road, but it shouldn’t be a major inter-regional route. An expressway would use up more land, and that land is prime agricultural land across the Valley. The Council feels that the expressway should be farther to the north so it doesn’t cause so much truck traffic right through San Juan Bautista.
FL: What kind of changes are occurring with the city’s volunteer fire department?
LC: The main problem with the fire department is that we don’t have daytime coverage, and if there is a problem that gets out of hand the state can fine us. The volunteer firefighters are highly trained and dedicated, we just don’t have the resources to have a full-time staff. We’ve asked the California Department of Forestry (CDF) to give us a proposal of what services they can provide for us. They’ve indicated that they will have that proposal to us by the end of September. Their services would upgrade our fire department, and we just received a grant (for $83,706 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency) that will also aid the department.
FL: What do you feel is the most important aspect concerning San Juan Bautista?
LC: Keeping peace and harmony in town, but of course, on any given day that all depends on the chickens. They’ve been hatching and gaining numbers so we’ve had to thin them out again. Many of the merchants like them, because the tourists like them, but other people don’t like chickens running wild all over town. It’s been a big controversy.
FL: What do you like personally about San Juan Bautista?
LC: It’s home. I like the Mission, I like the town’s small size, its quaintness and its people. Its history is that it has always been a place where the people pull together and get things done.
