Taxpayers in the City of Hollister have to suffer from the poor judgment and bad decisions made by our local city government. It is not organized, and we need better improvements.
They tell everyone to spend local, but yet they use so many out-of-town and out-of-state companies to do jobs and even supply the city buildings.
An example is the solar treatment plant, which the city spent $10 million to save money for our city, so it didn’t have to spend so much on electricity of PG&E, but yet that did not happen and the taxpayers are still paying for it. On the agenda they put that they want to do a $3 million buyout with the company that they made the deal with in the first place. At the same time we spent $5 million on tearing down a building a business that was abandoned. I’m not sure how the business deal went. But on a bad decision, why would you spend that much money to tear it down? They stated it would be worth more without the building on the property. Now they have the property and they are not making $5 million back. So they lost out. I tried to ask questions and look into it more but all I was told was “I don’t know”. That’s just how it is in our city.
Also when someone sues the city, does the taxpayer pay for the letter that the lawyer has to send to the persons? The law firm is the same for the city and the county. When I mentioned it to the lawyer over the phone, he was upset.
Another waste, they spent $40,000 to have to fill the positon for the new fire chief. They spent money having to find someone and they pick and choose who they want in their circle. The fire chief now lives in our city but they spent money on an agency to find him for $18,000.
They want to raise another half-cent tax again; are you the people going to go for this again? They haven’t done anything yet with the money now. They are having you believe they are by doing a little patchwork here and there. If it was me, I would have the roads done. If you don’t use that money you are going to lose that money. Just like the Leatherback deal; they had years to do this deal, and now they only have 60 days. If they don’t do it right within those 60 days, then they get nothing out of it.
It has been years that the city could clean up the weeds and cleaning them off of the sound barrier walls, and the mayor mentioned why hadn’t they don’t this yet? They want to hire another landscaping company to do their job, why is that? We have professionals and engineers working for our city, that are paid to do these types of jobs, but they would rather spend money on other companies to do it. Now they are talking about tearing down a sound barrier wall. It’s all just a waste of money.
It doesn’t matter what you own, or what you have. It’s what can you do with those tools you are given and beyond. What I see now is nothing. You can scratch your head, but it’s about common sense, and letting the community be a part of their own city and community.
So my view is that the city needs to stop making irresponsible decisions that are costly to the taxpayers and be accountable for their mistakes.
