The Free Lance offers a Top 10 stories of the decade in San
Benito County.
Following are the Top 10 stories of the decade in San Benito County, as published in Tuesday’s edition.
10. Gavilan College site selection
In January 2006, the Gavilan College Board of Trustees voted to purchase land in San Benito County for a new satellite campus, with the intent that it would one day grow into a full-size community college complete with a library, performing arts space and athletic facility.
An 85-acre plot adjacent to the Hollister Municipal Airport was identified as the preferred site, but an oppositional front grew contending it would induce sprawl, hinder the future of the airport and deprive downtown Hollister of many economic and cultural resources. After forming a committee to work with local residents, Gavilan backed away from the airport site and began looking elsewhere, ultimately choosing the location at the intersection of Fairview Road and Airline Highway.
9. Highway progress
In 2000, San Benito County suffered a wake-up call when there were 13 fatalities on Highway 25. A slew of accidents and deaths led to the “Stay Alive on 25” campaign and prompted a slate of safety improvements, which continue today and include installation of median barriers and the eventual, expected widening of the highway.
The extension of Highway 25 through the city – the long-awaited, 2.4-mile bypass – also reached completion in 2008. And it wasn’t just Highway 25 getting improvements, or at least plans for them, this decade. Work is under way, though delayed by litigation, on plans to widen Highway 156. And the state in August 2008 finished the flyover at the intersection of highways 156 and 152, an area that had been particularly prone to accidents.
8. Sarsfield’s troubled term
District Attorney John Sarsfield served perhaps the most controversy-laden elected term of the decade. Elected in November 2002, Sarsfield in 2004 faced allegations of an inner-office affair from then-supervisor-elect Jaime De La Cruz, a sexual harassment suit filed by two women in his office, failed recall attempts and the poisoning of his family dogs.
The outspoken district attorney throughout his term continued to make headlines for reasons outside of the criminal courtroom. Sarsfield sued the anonymous group Los Valientes – which had conducted and compiled a private investigation against former Supervisor Richard Scagliotti, which critics dismissed as a witch hunt – and its attorney Mike Pekin while alleging he violated the civil rights of eight government officials and local business owners through extortion and by filing false lawsuits.
In 2006, Sarsfield was defeated handily in the primary by District Attorney Candice Hooper.
7. E. coli outbreak
The E. coli outbreak – announced Sept. 14, 2006 – eventually sickened more than 200 people and killed three nationwide. It was traced to spinach processed at San Juan Bautista-based Natural Selection Foods.
The federal and state investigation into the E. coli outbreak found traces of contamination in water and cattle and pig feces here in San Benito County on Paicines Ranch within a mile of a Mission Organics spinach field. Investigators did not directly link the outbreak to Mission Organics and provided no explanation of how the contamination occurred.
The leafy green industry and legislators developed conflicting ideas of how further outbreaks should be prevented.
Within four months, the state and industry developed the California Leafy Green Marketing Agreement to increase safety practices among handlers of produce such as spinach and lettuce, and the industry has fought to win back leery consumers.
6. Hollister’s fiscal downfall
Amplifying the pressure on city council members to end the rally was the unraveling of Hollister’s financial well-being throughout a decade of continued annual deficits and cutbacks. With leaders prior to the sewer spill relying largely on building impact fees to fund operations and lend what became an artificial level of security to an artificially inflated reserve fund, it didn’t take long following the moratorium’s onset for the city’s fiscal outlook to implode.
Though council members eased off on a 2003 plan to cut 36 workers, including several department heads, the ensuing years were underscored by the invariable job insecurity that came with being employed at the city. The workforce shrunk and services declined, setting the stage for the Measure R in 2006, which failed, and Measure T in 2007, which succeeded, attempts at raising the local sales tax by 1 percent.
5. Biker rally canceled
It became the signature event of San Benito County and how many people across the country identified with Hollister, the “Birthplace of the American Biker.” It also became the focus of year-after-year debate among city officials over its liability to taxpayers.
The biker rally that started in 1997 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the so-called “invasion” officially ended in 2005 when the nonprofit went defunct that launched and organized the event. After 2006, when some bikers showed up but not nearly to the same level as they did before, the city sanctioned a private promoter to run the Hollister Motorcycle Rally in 2007.
Horse Power Promotions and owner Seth Doulton resurrected the event, but to the chagrin of many residents and visitors who criticized the changes made to the offerings and set-up – namely, the motorcycles being moved off of San Benito Street, replaced by an endless row of vendors selling T-shirts and other merchandise.
After one more attempt in 2008, the event ended once again. It became too costly for the promoter, who had to pay the escalating law enforcement tab that reached around $350,000 for the event.
In 2009, a group of local residents revived the tradition in a sense – though promoters expected a scaled-back attendance – by hosting the Gypsy Tour event at Bolado Park.
4. Measure G growth-control initiative
Before DMB and before Del Webb, which proposed the massive senior citizen community here that failed at the polls, there was Measure G when it came to the growth debate. In 2003, a group of residents calling themselves the Citizens for Responsible Growth submitted a measure, necessitating voter approval, that would restrict development in unincorporated county limits.
They called it the Growth Control Initiative, and it later became known as Measure G. Most controversially, the proposal was to change zoning to a slew of properties – by requiring no more than a single unit per 20-acre parcel on may of them – in an attempt to highly restrict future development.
An opposition soon mounted, and the No on Measure G committee had an answer for the Citizens for Responsible Growth. Lines were drawn, political battles ensued, and the clash of perspectives resulted in one of the most heated debates in recent history for San Benito County.
In March 2004, residents overwhelmingly rejected Measure G at the polls, as it went down with 69 percent voting against it.
3. DMB comes and goes
DMB Associates publicly laid out a plan in 2005 to build a planned community of 6,800 homes on 4,500 acres along Highway 25 near the Santa Clara County border. The multi-billion-dollar Arizona-based company touted its idea based on the premise that San Benito County residents would decide what this new town of sorts would look like.
DMB hosted an array of local residents on out-of-state trips to other planned communities. Its representatives over the better course of the decade became well acclimated with business groups, nonprofits and political leaders.
They marketed the project as a way to grow progressively, as a community. They contended it would add a significant level of economic development to the county, that it would be a structural boon to government coffers.
DMB’s proposal, to no surprise considering the project’s size and its potential effect on the growth rate here, was met with heavy opposition as well. Residents questioned the speed at which it would be developed. They questioned whether it was the right area and whether a majority of the sales-tax dollars would leak into Gilroy or Salinas. They questioned the schematically-drawn nature of such planned communities.
Ultimately, it didn’t reach its anticipated, countywide vote. DMB earlier this year announced it was pulling the plug on the project. The company blamed the move on the poor economy, and instead focused its attention on a proposal for a 12,000-home development in Redwood City.
2. Michael Rodrigues found guilty
In June 2007, then-Sgt. Michael Rodrigues of the San Benito County Sheriff’s Office shot and killed an unarmed, drugged man on the side of Highway 156. Though he didn’t face criminal penalties for the decision, which was backed by the sheriff and deemed justified by the district attorney, the controversy sparked vast attention surrounding the 25-year office veteran.
Around that same time, women started coming forward. One after another, victims reported how that same deputy, who’s name is about as well known as the mayor’s in San Benito County, had raped them.
Four cases went to trial. The jury found Rodrigues guilty of raping three women, a total of four times between 1999 and 2006. A judge put him away for 60 years to life.
Along the way, however, the story took twist after turn after twist. Going back to the 2007 shooting, we learned that Rodrigues’ then-11-year-old daughter, who had been allowed to ride along in the patrol car, witnessed the shooting and reported to investigators she saw her father fire his gun at Israel Guerrero as he ran away. Sheriff Curtis Hill, though, deemed the girl “mistaken,” while the official police report purported to confirm Rodrigues’ story that the man had advanced toward him and he felt his life was in “imminent danger.”
It was just the beginning, and now, two and a half years later, the story has come full circle. Rodrigues will spend the rest of his life in state prison. Justice is served. For Guerrero’s family, though, the pursuit continues because they’re suing Rodrigues in federal court over the shooting.
1.Sewer spill and moratorium
Blame it on a gopher, as city officials did at the time, or blame it on lacking foresight by Hollister’s leaders. The sewer spill in 2002 and subsequent building moratorium that followed was the biggest and most enduring story of the decade in San Benito County.
Not just because 15 million gallons of treated sewage poured into the San Benito River in May 2002, after a breach in a berm burst at the wastewater ponds. The environmental impact was a start, a relative blip.
The economic consequence was a disaster, the residual effects of which continue on today.
Contractors were forced to leave town to find work. Businesses interested in developing here had just about no choice but to walk away. If developers had Hollister on the radar before the state-mandated building moratorium implemented in September of that year, they didn’t anymore.
From an economic perspective, the recovery couldn’t even begin until the city reached a slate of ambitious milestones set forth by the state, including the completion of a new wastewater plant to handle the capacity – and more – that built up during the Silicon Valley commuter population boom in the years prior to the spill.
From the government end, the infrastructure cleanup became city leaders’ primary focus for most of the decade. Initially, Hollister officials projected the new plant would get done by September 2005. But it became more complicated, and more costly, than first envisioned. Plant construction started in late 2006.
The moratorium that was supposed to last for three years stretched into 2008 when the project was completed. In December of that year, the water board that once chided Hollister leaders for blatantly neglecting a significant problem had high praise for their efforts toward finishing the sewer plant and establishing the necessary infrastructure for future growth.
The city’s gates once again opened to developers. Since then, building business in Hollister has been slow moving, but the potential now exists to recover that had been washed away for six years.
