Guest View

The San Benito County Board of Supervisors at the latest meeting initiated efforts to significantly strengthen the county’s illegal dumping ordinance to deter those activities.  Supervisor Dom Zanger and I had requested this formal consideration, and I have been pushing for more action with regard...

If there is one thing most of us can agree on, it is that we need to slow our growth.

By Kollin Kosmicki San Benito County must address the severe farmworker housing shortage.   As a journalist in the early 2000s, I examined heartbreaking farmworker housing conditions in Hollister. Multiple families, sometimes dozens of residents, often packed into small homes and poverty-stricken conditions.   The situation already reached a...

The Gavilan Joint Community College District extends from the Coyote Valley to the southern edge of San Benito County, and includes the communities of Morgan Hill, San Martin, Gilroy, Hollister, San Juan Bautista, Tres Pinos and Paicines, along with the surrounding rural areas. It...

Open letter to San Benito County residents, Nov. 8:  I am writing to share my gratitude for your engagement in our recent election and to provide a brief update on how the day unfolded. Thanks to your participation, the election was a resounding success, with...

The economic downturn that the world is facing today as a result of Covid-19 may have been unavoidable. But the level to which so many of our neighbors are struggling today has been compounded greatly by the recent economic history of the United States, in which the economic security of working families has been sacrificed on the altar of corporate profits.

While December’s rain and snow show promise, water managers remember the same thing happened last year—epic early storms followed by the driest January through March in California’s recorded history.  After three dry years, all of us are hoping for some reprieve this winter. But the tough reality...

Measure Q gives San Benito voters the power to stop outside developers from ruining your county. I’ve seen many rural counties get run over by developers who convince local government officials to change their zoning: The developers come in, build, sell and take their...

As someone who was born and raised in Hollister, whose mom was a nurse at the original hospital when it was downtown, I feel a special connection to this community—like so many of you. I was born at Hazel Hawkins, and today, as interim...

A consistent uptick of Covid-19 cases in San Benito County, the Delta variant’s growing presence and a slowing vaccination rate here have raised serious concerns about our progress fighting this deadly pandemic.  This new reality we face is daunting, but vaccines remain the only solution...