Guest View
The opinion of Jaime De La Cruz
The pattern of growth for the next 10 years in San Benito County
will define us for years to come. Planning for out future is
crucial to our economy and to our way of life.
Guest View
The opinion of Jaime De La Cruz
The pattern of growth for the next 10 years in San Benito County will define us for years to come. Planning for out future is crucial to our economy and to our way of life.
Of all the seven elements of a growth plan, job creation and housing opportunity are the most important elements because they defines a community. As the price of homes continues to rise, local residents have been forced to seek housing in communities far from where they grew up. And with the lack of high-paying jobs for our residents, more and more of our children have no choice but to move where jobs are available. This type of growth has a twofold affect. One, it creates a weak local economy, and more important we become a bedroom community. Job creation and providing affordable housing for our local residents are important issues that have not been adequately discussed or planned. Simply demanding that builders build affordable housing is unrealistic and leads to higher price homes for the middle-class.
Despite what you may have heard I do not believe in sprawl. I believe the answer to our problems is to plan for our future using smart growth principles. Our focus as a community should be to work from within, rather than continuing the pattern of leapfrog development.
Building more houses is not the solution to our problem. In fact, building more houses only creates a negative fiscal impact to our county budget because of the increased demand in public services. The more houses that are built the more fiscal resources are needed to provide public services like fire, police, social and medical services.
As elected community leaders we need to move quickly in creating a new general plan that protects our community before state officials beholden to special interests demand that we build thousands of new homes.
If we are to take ownership of our own community growth plan, the updating of the general plan will be the first step in developing a smart growth plan. In the near future, the San Benito County Board of Supervisors will be updating its general plan. It will be an opportunity for public input on how growth will occur. It will be an opportunity for the Board of Supervisors to listen to you and provide the necessary tools on how our community will grow. From these meetings the board should able to develop a blueprint for smart growth.
Before we consider any one project, the following issues need to be addressed. Will a development provide the necessary jobs for our residents? Will the development provide the right mixture of affordable housing for our residents and not for out of town residents? Will the development become a fiscal burden to our taxpayers? Finally, what affect will it have to our local economy? Will the effects of the development create a ghost town in downtown Hollister?
These are serious issues, which have not yet been seriously addressed by any of the large developments being proposed. DMB and the other development companies proposing projects do have impressive track records in other communities, but we are in a unique situation and we need to have all the information possible before anymore large-scale projects are built.
This does not mean that I am against development. I just want to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes that were made in the past. My children and your children deserve the best and this can only happen with smart planning.
Ten years from today our community can say, “We did it”, we built the right mixture of housing for our children to live and work in our community. We created high paying jobs for our residents. We developed a smart growth plan with community input. We planned for the future!
Jaime De La Cruz is a San Benito County supervisor representing District 5, which covers the northern Hollister area.
