Guest View

The Western United States is experiencing one of the most extensive and intense droughts on record. January through April were the driest first four months in California’s recorded history, the state’s largest reservoirs are at critically low storage levels, and the state’s snowpack level...

As the year comes to a close, it is fitting to reflect on what has been achieved in and around Hollister and at City Hall. The City Council has been very focused on strategic planning, getting the city staffed up and improving operations.  We had...

The best chance for Hazel Hawkins Hospital to survive this fiscal crisis is for district leadership to embrace outside professional guidance—an objective third-party consultant—to develop a business plan in order to stabilize a deep structural deficit while pursuing an acquisition partner.  In my role as...

If there’s one thing we all have in common, no matter how many differences may separate us afterward, it’s this: we all came into this world in more or less the same way—we were born. In fact, celebrating one’s “birth” day is so common...

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...

During December 2022, Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital first notified the County of San Benito of its untenable financial status. On Dec. 10, 2022, the San Benito Board of Supervisors was given a notice requesting a $10 million loan. The Board of Supervisors and staff...

The San Benito County Free Library will undergo a significant expansion in the coming years with the help of an enormous grant, but that’s not the only exciting progress for the local library this year.  If you’re not aware, library staff recently announced the county...

Special interests are at it again in San Benito County. That said, I want to address the ambiguous signs that showed up throughout the county this past week with my name on them and phrases like Recall, Censure, Unethical and Shameful on them. To be clear,...

The past year and a half has been extremely hard on everyone, but it has been especially hard on small business owners. And according to Americans for the Arts, the arts were tremendously impacted by the pandemic, with an overall expected financial loss of...

Winter storms brought significant snowfall to the Sierra Nevada and other California mountains in December. Snowpack is critical for the state’s spring water outlook because when the snow melts it runs downhill into streams that fill reservoirs that hold about 30% of the state’s...