According to last week’s Free Lance, the City of Hollister is
falling behind in its General Plan goals.
According to last week’s Free Lance, the City of Hollister is falling behind in its General Plan goals.
Uh, oh.
The same thing happened 10 years ago when the last General Plan was put together.
What it means is that the vision of Hollister laid out in the plan may not be implemented because the corresponding legislation hasn’t been put in place. The legislation involves specifics of zoning, a sign ordinance and a land-use plan for the airport.
Looks like another chance to wring our hands and bemoan the status quo.
Luckily, I see some reason for hope. One is that Bill Avera, Hollister’s Development Services director, was involved in the formulation of the General Plan and knows how important it is.
And how cool it will be if it can be implemented.
Same goes for the members of the Planning Commission, most of whom were involved in the development of the General Plan.
But in the meantime, the usual work of the commission goes forward; every month there are several map approvals or other approvals that the staff and the commission must consider.
In the case of the ordinances for the plan, the staff will develop them, then eventually they’ll go to the City Council to be voted on before the lifting of the building moratorium in 2008.
So we’ve got a skillful but overworked planning staff, a planning commission that only meets once a month, and a City Council that is already concerned about being able to vote on all the recommendations in a timely manner.
What can you and I do to help?
Maybe if the planning staff would let us know what their benchmarks are, we could help keep them on track.
For example, they could set up a chart that showed what they hoped to accomplish by each of several dates. They could enlarge it and set it outside City Hall.
It would be like one of those fundraising thermometers, but a bit more complicated.
Then we could have a little ceremony each time they met a deadline. The planning staff would get a little break from their hard work, and interested citizens could come out and cheer them on.
Standard milestones could be met with a trumpet serenade, or cookies. Really significant ones could be celebrated by firing a cannon.
Silly, you say? But it’s not. Implementing the general plan is really important, and we need to make sure the people who are doing the work receive the accolades they deserve for getting the work done on time.
But it’s their job, you say? Yes, it is their job. But it affects all of us, and since we can’t help by doing the actual drafting of ordinances, I think we should help by celebrating their successes.
