Opinion

Graffiti may not be the most pressing issue for San Benito

A coordinated effort has been underway to make false claims about specific public officials. It’s clear their motivation is to discredit elected officials who support slow housing growth—a movement favored by a vast majority of local residents.  It’s no coincidence those behind this effort are...

By working together, our community has made it possible for San Benito High School to create a world-class learning and working environment for students and staff members. During its more than 125-year history, San Benito High School District has grown along with our community....

Two and a half years ago San Benito County got a wakeup call that the enhanced petroleum extraction juggernaut that has swept large areas of the US can happen anywhere, even here. Mysterious giant thumper trucks showed up in our neighborhood on the western edge of San Benito County, and it soon was revealed that they were prospecting for oil. Neighbors were concerned, and a grass roots effort was launched, Aromas Cares for the Environment or ACE. We educated ourselves about petroleum extraction, and learned that there are new technologies such as fracking being widely used in other states. We also discovered that San Benito County’s regulation of oil drilling was almost non-existent. ACE set out to do something about that. We worked with the Board of Supervisors for almost a year, culminating in the passage of a new County ordinance that brought some scrutiny to the process of obtaining an oil drilling permit here. The ordinance doesn’t have all of the protections that we wanted, but it was the best compromise that could be approved at the time.