Releasing a map of the properties under consideration by Gavilan
Community College for its planned San Benito County campus is a big
step toward achieving the transparency that was promised as part of
the school’s site-selection process.
Releasing a map of the properties under consideration by Gavilan Community College for its planned San Benito County campus is a big step toward achieving the transparency that was promised as part of the school’s site-selection process.
The people of San Benito County are eager to embrace Gavilan as a neighbor and very much want to have input on where the school will be built. We applaud the college for respecting local concerns and abandoning its previously announced choice of a site near Hollister Municipal Airport and we hope administrators and trustees will be equally responsive to the community’s desires as the process moves forward from here.
Gavilan President Steve Kinsella told the Free Lance this week that the college now has a short list of four or five favored sites, although he declined to identify them for fear of compromising the school’s negotiating position with property owners. Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with a little discretion in such matters. While we aren’t going to speculate on which of the sites might be on the short list, we do believe the best place to build our new community college campus is as close to the heart of the community as possible. (The map showing the sites under consideration was published Thursday on the front page of the Free Lance.)
The new college campus will benefit Hollister in a many, many ways. Working closely now with local stakeholders will not only help ensure that the siting process runs more smoothly but also will magnify the benefits the college brings to Hollister.
Collaboration between the college and local entities and agencies will help everyone. The college, for example, will need a library. Gavilan working together with the San Benito County Library could create an on-campus library that would offer much more to both students and the larger community than either could with smaller, separate facilities. Developing campus athletic facilities in partnership with, say, the city and county parks and recreation departments, local school districts or even youth and adult sports associations would ensure that expensive, taxpayer-built facilities provide a better health and recreation return on investment. On-campus arts venues built in collaboration with Hollister’s arts organizations would elevate the cultural well-being of the whole community.
The time to lay the groundwork for such collaboration is now. As they move forward with building the new campus here, we urge Gavilan’s administrators and trustees to look for every opportunity to elevate the educational, economic and cultural life of this community. And we urge local government entities and community organizations to seek partnerships with the college. This really is a chance to create a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
