If you ever cared for an infant you how selfish they are; they
are not impressed by the fact that you happen to have a headache or
that it’s 3 a.m. The signal goes out and the organism reacts
– feed me!
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If you ever cared for an infant you how selfish they are; they are not impressed by the fact that you happen to have a headache or that it’s 3 a.m. The signal goes out and the organism reacts – feed me! 
As we grow older, we learn to make choices. Eventually we mature, then complex reasoning accompanies most independent decisions we make as adults – we have options, we weigh the possibilities, we try to promote the good choices. At the same time, we mitigate or reject the bad ones. During all that, we recognize that few issues are completely black or white. 
However, that reasoning goes out the window when we have the opportunity to submit a wish list and that’s what was presented last Wednesday during the initial review of San Benito County General Plan update – the public’s wish list. The information was gathered during a series of workshops (including one I attended) and by tabulating answers from mail-in surveys. 
I won’t keep you in suspense any longer – the citizen’s preferences were clear – they want everything that was good and they did not want anything that was bad. I, for one, was shockingly surprised. 
The things they desired included good jobs, economic development, tourism, shopping, entertainment, excellent highway access, affordable housing, clean air and water, agriculture, open space and recreation.  The things they rejected included traffic, noise, pollution, big-box stores, new development, increased population, and higher taxes. In other words, for the future vision of the county, the citizens ordered the super-duper deluxe half-pound triple cheeseburger with mayo and giant fries – but they wanted it low-calorie.
So, I started working on a plan that would provide what the citizens wanted. Step 1 was to have a horde of tourists appear out of nowhere. They would get here, somehow, without using cars, crowding the highways and creating pollution and noise and they will leave the same way. This would be totally unlike the tourists in other places where people show up the “usual way” – they drive. 
Step 2 would have them spending money in the non-existent big-box stores they love without making a ripple in our local way of life. The local merchants would magically start paying Silicon Valley skilled manufacturing wages rather than the minimum wage normally paid by tourist-oriented industries. Never mind that they will have to sell thousands of postcards daily just to cover the rent, water and sewer bills. 
In Step 3, my imaginary tourists would pack themselves, without complaint, into our older, limited, motel space located, almost exclusively, in the city’s noisy sprawl area. Unlike all real tourists, they won’t want to stay in the first-class facilities with space and views and great amenities located near the points of interest.  They will be perfectly happy spending lots of money to stay somewhere that’s just like home. The other group will be the backpackers who will use the open space and gladly pay an occupancy tax for pitching a pup tent. 
That’s enough; you get the picture. As the saying goes, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. That is still true; therefore, like it or not, compromises will have to be made and the politicians, above all, will have to make them. Quoting Charles de Gaulle, “To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.” 
Hollister is overcrowded for its infrastructure and both the city and the county suffer from too much ugly and inappropriate sprawl. If things do not change, it won’t be long until before you’ll be able to walk across the entire county from rooftop to rooftop without ever touching the earth. This eats up valuable open space with every little advantage to either the businesses or the residents. 
Additionally, there has not been enough emphasis on planned communities – just standalone development.  We need added population, but a county that consists of only a single significant city is limited physically and unhealthy politically. It becomes a case of us versus them and the two plans never meet. 
At this critical time it’s essential for Hollister and San Benito County to work together to plan the future, and without the closest cooperation at all levels of government neither plan can possibly succeed. Anyone who believes that the details can be worked out at a COG meeting or two is sadly mistaken.
