Beleaguered though we are as a county for our beautiful real
estate, we still enter the new year with a choice. Perhaps our
last. On March 2, voters may elect to support San Benito County
Growth Control Measure G or do nothing. The last time nothing was
done at such a juncture was 13 years ago when Hollister Measures L
and M lost, ushering in a decade of bedroom development for which
the entire county is still paying.
Beleaguered though we are as a county for our beautiful real estate, we still enter the new year with a choice. Perhaps our last. On March 2, voters may elect to support San Benito County Growth Control Measure G or do nothing. The last time nothing was done at such a juncture was 13 years ago when Hollister Measures L and M lost, ushering in a decade of bedroom development for which the entire county is still paying.
Commuters, who make up almost half of our work force, pay in terms of long hours trapped in smog and highway congestion, pay in road rage and traffic deaths. Everyone pays for our costly but overworked police and fire services, our over-stressed schools and library, and (heaven help us) for the famous new sewage system that may increase rates by 100 percent.
The nine county Bay Area Council reported the other day (giving San Francisco a grade of D+) that, “More than half of the cities and counties in the Bay Area failed to produce enough housing in the 1990s even to meet their own natural population growth,” let alone that of new arrivals.
San Benito County’s city and rural areas helped to take up the bedroom slack and are still expected to do so.
“Unless cities and counties in the Bay Area approve denser development,” the Council warned, “the region will be 200,000 units short by 2020.”
The figure is probably conservative, given California’s population growth.
Gilroy is in the nine county Bay Area, while San Benito County, like the Central Valley, is part of the remaining agricultural midland covetously eyed by developers. Santa Clara County has not forgotten us as it continues to plan the huge Cisco campus at Coyote Valley, estimated to create 60,000 more jobs than houses. In Gilroy’s pursuit of an enormous industrial/mercantile tract, bulldozers are still clearing land for gigantic colored boxes where another 60,000 “homeless” may work, possibly including a Super-Walmart.
Morgan Hill, we hear, now boasts its own postmodern greenbelt: rows of five-acre farmettes linked together by coyote trails. Measure G limits growth of the five-acre checkerboard in San Benito County. Undeniable, our county must focus on developing more jobs and local support for agriculture, agribusiness, tourism and low-to-medium cost housing. Measure G may be our last best hope. Let us give thanks for a democratic choice.
Margaret Cheney,
Hollister
