39 F
Hollister
December 8, 2025

Question of the Week: Tax dollars on public art?

Panelists and readers answered this: Hollister spent $4,000 toward the painting of five utility boxes in downtown. Should the city spend tax dollars on public art?

Readers invited to answer ‘Question of the Week’

Starting today, the Free Lance is inviting readers to answer the Question of the Week—formerly called Water Cooler—which publishes each Friday on the Free Lance Opinion page and at SanBenitoCountyToday.com.

Letter: Rebuild it, and they will come

If you rebuild it, they will come. Hopefully, this will encourage more tennis at Dunne Memorial Park. The newly resurfaced tennis courts look great and are very easy to play on.

Letter: Apology for offending on religious holidays

After reading the article this week and having received other emails it seems clear to me that I do owe an apology to anyone I offended by implying that because I was a Christian and Easter was a Christian holiday that Christians deserved a day off with the implication that our religion was more important than others.

Letter: Runaway overtime in public safety departments

For years, the City of Hollister public safety groups have racked up significant overtime charges, but the city cannot tell the taxpayers where the money has been going because they don’t have a system for tracking the reasons for the charges. It’s more than passing strange that a majority of the city council is eager to charge people for using emergency services, but they have been anything but eager to manage the overtime costs.

Letter: Push for train use

Railroads know intermodal, serve business and commerce with it. And what do we have? COG-VTA knows transit, “free” lite rail shuttle, Heavy Socialist Lite Rail, crucifying losses with Caltrain, almost as bad as Amtrak, empty bus-seat transport, gouging motorists and truckers to

Question of the Week: Clear out homeless encampment?

Panelists answered the following: Should officials clear out the growing homeless encampment along the San Benito River bed on the west side?

Letter: Homeless shelter success

The staff and clients of the homeless shelter would like to thank the community for their generous outpouring of love, time and support.

Letter: We can do a lot more

There are two topics I read about in the May 1 paper. One is by Dr. Anju Goel. And she mentioned that San Benito County is one of the counties with the most chlamydia in the state of California. This is horrible. We need to help the people, and educate them. They need somewhere to turn to and get the help they need to reach out to these kids and adults and teach them. You can put this in the paper, but are they going to treat the people and help them? Kids are at risk of getting this. Are they reaching out to the schools? Is something going to be done? They should do something about this, before they put it in the paper. Public safety means a lot to me. There are a lot of problems going on; I bet there are more problems than this.

Letter: Just a ‘yoot’

All my life I have been called a 2-bit thug. Thanks to the mayor of Baltimore, I’m just a misguided “yoot.”

SOCIAL MEDIA

5,035FansLike
322FollowersFollow
1,077FollowersFollow