Opinion

In 1985 Marley Holte and his wife got together and instead of buying presents for one another they bought turkeys and cooked them at the community center in Hollister. Anyone that wanted to could show up for a Christmas dinner with all of the trimmings; this started a tradition that has since expanded to Thanksgiving as well. I came aboard the third year starting out in the kitchen carving up turkeys as they came out of the oven cooked whole. On our fifth year we moved to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

In a recent editorial a point was made that the city and county should focus on maintaining the infrastructure that we have now and not spend resources on building new infrastructure such as the River Park Project. While I agree that we shouldn’t be building things that we can’t afford to maintain, I think it is critical that we not abandon the goals of improving our community and to find ways to increase city and county revenues so that we can make improvements to parks, streets, schools and other public facilities.

Today I received my bill from the San Benito County Water District. With it was a pamphlet advocating passage of an $11.1 BILLION water bond. The pamphlet tells a sad tale of woe about what will happen if we do not pass this water bond. But what this pamphlet does not say is that farmers pay a small fraction of the cost of their water. The rest comes out of your taxes. Because their water is cheap, California farmers grow low-value crops like cotton, rice and cattle feed. This is a complete waste of our precious water, because these low value crops could be grown in states that have plenty of rain. If farmers had to pay the full cost of their water, they would not waste it on low-value crops. I will be voting NO on the water bond, and I will vote NO on any future water bonds unless the agricultural water subsidy is eliminated.