Officials are on the right track with planning for a revived motorcycle rally by hiring a qualified event manager, drastically cutting the law enforcement budget and – perhaps most poignantly – putting those hogs back on the main drag.
Going on five years after the last motorcycle rally – Hollister’s signature draw and a potential boon for an incessantly stagnant economy – it appears as though city leaders have finally grasped an approach that could keep this event running strong for years and possibly decades to come.
Government officials won’t be swinging disastrous T-shirt deals at the dear expense of taxpayers. Mobs of overzealous police officers – most if not all from out of the area during those prior rallies – won’t be strutting down the sidewalk looking for trouble where trouble isn’t to be found.
Hollister’s cherished tradition, instead, will be placed in the hands of a professional who has a multitude of experience with other major motorcycle rallies such as Sturgis and several others, a manager in Worldwide Dynamics CEO Mark Cresswell who is willing to start small – the right way, the more risk-averse way – and build from the ground up. It is more fiscally responsible, after all, to work under modest forecasts when uncertainty looms. It is more responsible to underestimate potential successes rather than overestimate prospective prosperity – as we learned in 2008. That is when Hollister lost more than $200,000 by getting into the T-shirt business at the rally while contending at the time that the venture could help save city jobs.
While the city lost a house in trying to save jobs by selling T-shirts of all things, Hollister’s retired police chief – enabled by council members and other senior officials – ultimately killed the rally by gradually spiking the law enforcement staffing and costs to ungodly levels.
The Hollister Police Department, now under new leadership, is cooperatively working within a reasonably established budget of $114,400 – about one-third of the security costs in 2008. Police officials, as pointed out by Mayor Ignacio Velazquez during Monday’s meeting where officials sanctioned the rally, deserve credit for accepting the established budget and working to develop a plan within those constraints.
Cresswell, meanwhile, deserves credit for seeing the logic in starting small with a two-day rally, without the Sunday that usually produces relatively paltry business. Again, it is better to start small and leave open growth opportunities for future consideration. Now, with just six months remaining, it is time to get to work. The event manager, along with city and business leaders, have a lot of planning ahead to ensure the revived Hollister rally meets expectations and sets a solid foundation for years ahead.
