Hollister
– The building housing San Benito County’s Council of
Governments resembles a small, quaint home, and its staff is about
the size of a large family. But this cozy office and its small
staff have a big responsibility.
Hollister – The building housing San Benito County’s Council of Governments resembles a small, quaint home, and its staff is about the size of a large family. But this cozy office and its small staff have a big responsibility.
“We’re not just one little office that builds the roads in San Benito County,” interim Executive Director Bob Davies said.
Davies described COG as the “collecting clearinghouse” of funding for the county’s transportation. He pointed out that his staff has to work with a number of state, regional and local agencies, and that it needs to look beyond the county’s borders when establishing its vision and priorities.
The agency is far from universally beloved. At Monday’s City Council meeting, one local resident described COG as “a black hole for taxes.” Lawyer Joseph Thompson, a Tres Pinos resident, has long denounced the agency. He’s particularly critical of the county’s mass transit program; Thompson estimates that it would be cheaper for the county to hire limousines to drive local transit riders from location to location than it is to continue running COG’s buses.
“With the money (COG) wastes transporting empty bus seats, it could have built the Highway 25 bypass 10 years ago,” Thompson told the Free Lance earlier this month.
Davies is familiar with the criticism, and said he sympathizes with the agency’s detractors.
“From a philosophical standpoint and an ‘idealistic’ standpoint, the way dollars are funded to the region probably aren’t the most effective compared to how you handle your personal budget,” he said. “These criticisms have some validity, but we’re constrained by laws and funding issues outside of our control.”
When asked about empty buses seen around the county, Davies pointed to one bus route that goes to Gavilan College; he said that when the bus leaves Hollister, it’s packed, but when it returns, it’s empty.
“By our rural nature, we have buses that go out loaded, but on return are empty,” Davies said.
Davies also noted that COG is hiring a firm “to take a long, hard look” at the county’s transit system.
According to COG documents, the agency was created in 1973 by an agreement between the county’s governments. COG’s board of directors, which sets the agency’s policies, consists of two representatives from the county’s Board of Supervisors, two representatives from the Hollister City Council and one representative from the San Juan Bautista City Council.
The agency’s previous director, Tom Quigley, resigned in August. Davies was brought on as an interim executive director to keep the agency moving forward while the board searches for a permanent executive director. He previously worked for 11 years as a commander of the Hollister-Gilroy California Highway Patrol, spending nine of those years also on COG’s technical advisory board. Although Davies has plenty of knowledge and experience with COG’s projects, he said that in the long term, he doesn’t want to take on the leadership role.
Davies noted that he’s been happily retired, and that he’s unfamiliar with the funding issues COG faces. He added that one reason he was willing to take on the position at all was COG’s staff.
“I knew I was coming into the position with a dedicated, qualified, competent and responsible staff and a clear vision of where COG is going and how to get us there,” he said.
Currently leading that staff is transportation planning manager Mary Dinkuhn, who joined COG in 1999 as a student intern. When asked about the staff’s size and age – Dinkuhn is 28 years old, as is transportation planner Veronica Lezama – Dinkuhn said she thinks the group’s youth gives it energy.
“It’s difficult having a small staff, but we work together really well,” she said. “We make a lot of stuff happen, and we can all do each other’s jobs, almost.”
One of Dinkuhn’s major accomplishments is her work on the long-delayed Highway 25 bypass. She said the bypass has been discussed since the 1950s, and started moving forward in 1989, with the passage of Measure A. When completed, the bypass will allow the highway to circumvent downtown Hollister.
Dinkuhn noted that the city has limited control over San Benito Street/Highway 25, since the California Department of Transportation makes all the final decisions regarding state highways.
“(The bypass) will free up downtown to revitalize itself,” Dinkuhn said.
She added that she hopes to go out for construction bids in January, with work to begin in February or March. Many of the recent delays have arisen because of COG’s dispute with local property owners, who will lose land to the highway project. Dinkuhn said that most of the 15 or 20 property owners have settled with COG. While she hopes to reach a deal with the four remaining owners, the agency has already taken possession of the property through eminent domain proceedings.
Dinkuhn isn’t the only staff member to have risen through the ranks. Lezama – who writes most of the agency’s grant applications and manages a number of its programs and projects, including rideshare – said she started as an intern in 2002.
When asked how she hopes the county’s transportation will evolve, Lezama said, “By managing the rideshare program, I’ve gotten a different perspective. We want (people) to try alternative modes of transportation.”
Although she acknowledged that San Benito County’s rural nature – and the high proportion of out-of-county commuters in its population – creates challenges for the rideshare program, Lezama said she’s hopeful that she can convince more residents to try carpooling and vanpooling.
Lezama was recently selected as this year’s Woman of the Year by the League of United Latin American Citizens.
COG’s board of directors hopes to select a new executive director by the beginning of 2007.
Anthony Ha covers local government for the Free Lance. Reach him at (831) 637-5566 ext. 330 or
ah*@fr***********.com
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