San Benito County voters overwhelmingly support commercial
growth and better master planning on the part of local elected
officials, according to an October farm bureau poll released
Tuesday night.
Hollister – San Benito County voters overwhelmingly support commercial growth and better master planning on the part of local elected officials, according to an October farm bureau poll released Tuesday night.
At a public meeting in the Veterans Building, the results of 400 randomly polled registered voters were revealed by San Benito Farm Bureau President Paul Hain and Competitive Edge Research Center President John Nienstedt, whose company conducted the telephone poll in October.
The Farm Bureau decided to hire Competitive Edge for $13,000 after controlled-growth initiative Measure G’s 70 percent defeat in the March election, Hain said. The Bureau has already shared the results with Hollister City Council and the San Benito County Board of Supervisors, and according to Hain neither group was surprised with the results.
“No one was slapping their foreheads when they heard the results. They all already knew all this, but it’s good to quantify things and to put a little more coal on the fire,” Hain said. “We want the community to be able to use this information to push forward in a new direction,” he said.
Results reflected split opinions on growth and an almost unanimous belief that the community’s leaders need to do better master planning, and most of the 50 or 60 people in the audience Tuesday night seemed to agree.
“I wasn’t surprised with the results,” said Jud Schutts, who attended the meeting with his family. “I came to see what the county is feeling, and I think this bears the proof that our leaders weren’t doing a very good job.”
One major area voters polled thought community leaders could improve upon was master planning. The poll shows 87 percent of voters polled believe the area’s sewage, traffic and other problems are a direct result of the county’s failure to plan effectively. The majority, 55 percent, of those polled said they generally oppose more growth and development in San Benito County, and 31 percent of those cited lack of infrastructure and public services as the main reason for their opposition.
While general opposition to growth beat out the 40 percent of respondent who said they support growth in general, support for growth in defined areas was strong. Of the 400 voters polled, 74 percent said they support growth in commercial and retail areas, while only 24 percent said they opposed it. And 78 percent said they supported industrial and manufacturing business growth, with only a 20 percent opposition.
But the controversial issue of residential growth in San Benito County remained slightly more evenly split, with 43 percent supporting it and 55 percent opposing.
Other poll findings included a 66 percent opposition to a Miwok casino at its previously proposed location near the Santa Clara County line, a 68 percent disapproval of the board of supervisors, and a 71 percent dissatisfaction with the city council.
“I think the (November) elections indicated that we were right on the money,” Hain said of the poll, which was conducted in mid-October 2004.
San Diego-based Nienstedt said while he was not familiar with the history of San Benito County politics, he agreed with Hain that the poll results rang true.
“I could have told you before the elections just from looking at these poll results that the incumbents were going to have trouble,” Neinstedt said.
November’s election saw three newcomers each elected to the board of supervisors and the city council.
Jessica Quandt covers politics for the Free Lance. Reach her at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or at [email protected].
