Nothing wrong with use of Measure A
&
amp;#8200;funds
Dear Editor,
I am writing on behalf of the Council of Governments (COG) and
the San Benito County Measure A Authority regarding a recent letter
to the editor from Marvin Jones of Hollister. Mr. Jones questioned
the Authority’s use of Measure A sales tax funds.
Nothing wrong with use of Measure A funds
Dear Editor,
I am writing on behalf of the Council of Governments (COG) and the San Benito County Measure A Authority regarding a recent letter to the editor from Marvin Jones of Hollister. Mr. Jones questioned the Authority’s use of Measure A sales tax funds.
The Measure A Authority was established in 1990 after San Benito County voters approved a one-half cent sales tax for 10 years to fund transportation improvements. Measure A included a prioritized list of projects to be constructed with the sales tax funds collected. The intent of Measure A was to fund as many projects on the list as possible; however, depending on actual project costs and actual revenues collected, it was conveyed to the voters that not all projects could necessarily be funded.
In addition, the voter-approved expenditure plan noted that traffic impact fees would “be combined with the Measure A revenue for local road projects and improvements” included in the expenditure plan. Traffic impact fees were intended for development to pay its fair share from traffic impacts to the regional roads. Combining Measure A funds and traffic impact fees for projects recognized that those already using the roads should pay for road improvements and those moving into new houses should also pay for road improvements. The recent increase in the traffic impact fee is merely a result of increased construction costs, but does not cover the full cost of all of the projects on the list.
Throughout the 1990s, Measure A funds were used to construct the Highway 156 Bypass, traffic lights at The Alameda in San Juan Bautista, the San Benito Street Extension project, and the Westside Boulevard and Union Road Extension project. In the mid-1990s, COG began work on design and environmental review for the Highway 25 Bypass. In 1999, the sales tax ended and was no longer collected. At that time, cost estimates for the Bypass had surpassed those from 1989, and all remaining Measure A funds that had been collected were necessary to construct the Highway 25 bypass.
Mr. Jones asked if the San Benito County Council of Governments and the Measure A Authority were “double dipping” into funds from the sales tax and the traffic impact fees. The answer is no. Most transportation projects require multiple sources of funding to become a reality.
Further, San Benito County has a major deficit of funding to pay for the most critical transportation projects including Highway 25 north of Hollister.
Please contact the COG office at 637-7665 if you’d like any further information on Measure A projects and expenditures.
Lisa Rheinheimer, COG executive director
Reader questions the motive for converting Leatherback site
Dear Editor,
In regards to Marty Richman’s recent column: Wooow Dooooggiiees. Hang on Babalouye. Say What?
No. 1: Two desperately needed programs are foreclosure prevention counseling and new homebuyer education. For foreclosure counseling – only those persons who have a license in good standing from the State Bar of California can legally advise a person, counsel a person regarding his rights, duties and responsibilities under our law. This includes debtor-creditor issues, real property issues, real property secured transactions. Unless a person was qualified to give such counseling, one should not seek another’s advice. And who would be dumb enough to get advice from the people who helped put you into the frying pan.
Regarding homebuyer education – ditto. New or old, one should only seek advice from those legally competent to give it.
And as the chief trial counsel of the state bar’s office of trial counsel said recently at a CLE seminar in Santa Clara, if a licensee of the state bar aids and abets another person to commit UPL (unauthorized practice of law) – i.e., a misdemeanor – then he or she puts their license at risk.
No. 2: The City of Hollister buys the old Leatherback Corp. site for a downtown homeless shelter. No, you’re kidding, right? They wouldn’t be that stupid, would they? Al Martinez has had to turn away employers who would have brought good-paying union jobs to Hollister because there are no rail-served sites for the employer’s tonnage flows. The Hollister Branch Line is hanging by a thread away from abandonment, and we only have one revenue shipper on the Line, and UP has already sold DMB Associates’ subsidiary, San Benito Railroad, LLC, an option to purchase the Line (save and except the right to transport freight on the Line), and our City Fathers would be so dumb as to convert the Leatherback site into a homeless shelter? No, nobody could be that stupid, not in 21st Century USA. When our No. 1 need in SBC is jobs, you mean to tell me that the blockheads in city hall have opted to convert a tax-generating site, and job-creating site, into a tax-dependent haven for homeless hoboes, bums, drifters and vagrants? If what you say is true, then the recall petitions ought to be circulated ASAP, and the decision reversed by new councilmembers with a little common sense.
Joe Thompson, Tres Pinos
