While many locals were disappointed by the City Council’s vote
to cancel the Hollister Independence Rally, at least for this year,
not many were surprised by the decision that finally came this week
after months of discussion about the costs and benefits of the
city’s signature event.
Hollister – While many locals were disappointed by the City Council’s vote to cancel the Hollister Independence Rally, at least for this year, not many were surprised by the decision that finally came this week after months of discussion about the costs and benefits of the city’s signature event.
Rally detractors are happy with the council’s decision, saying that the event was just too expensive for the city.
“I’m not against bikers, I think they’re fine people, but we can’t afford their rally,” said Hollister resident Claudia Olson, who said that many in town are tired of the commotion of the rally.
Supporters of the annual event said that it brings tax revenue and gives Hollister nationwide publicity.
“It puts the City of Hollister on the map,” San Benito County Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz said. “Get your head out of the sand and look to the future.”
During Monday night’s City Council meeting, council members voted 3-2 to adopt a resolution stating that no motorcycle rally would happen on public property in 2006. Councilmen Brad Pike and Robert Scattini cast the dissenting votes.
“It was expected,” Carol Rivers, owner of Whiskey Creek Saloon on Fifth Street, said of the council’s decision.
The rally has been in precarious spot since October, when the City Council started discussing the performance of the event’s long-time organizer – the Hollister Independence Rally Committee. In November, the City Council voted 3-1 to terminate the HIRC’s contract with the city to organize the rally. The majority of council members cited financial reasons – the 2005 rally stuck the city with a $360,000 public safety bill to pay – when they voted to terminate HIRC’s contract, after that group had organized the rally for nearly a decade.
Since that time, the council has been hoping that a group would come forward with enough money and experience to organize a 2006 event that won’t be a financial strain on the city, which is struggling with an annual $3 million budget deficit. A half-hour before Monday’s meeting, council members received a sketch of a rally proposal from Florida-based Biker Design, an apparel merchandiser. Despite Biker Design’s offer to pay the city $300,000 to hold the rally. But the majority on the council said that the new proposal came just too late and was too skimpy.
However expected the council’s ultimate decision on the rally may have been, Rivers said news of the rally’s cancellation came as a disappointment to her. She is certainly not alone in that sentiment.
“I feel that the City Council doesn’t understand simple math,” De La Cruz said, adding that the rally was an obvious financial boon for the city that brought tax revenue as well as national notoriety to Hollister.
Scattini, an outspoken rally defender, also said he is unhappy with the outcome of Monday’s vote.
“It really upsets me,” he said. “We canceled the HIRC contract, we never canceled the rally. I’m sad to see tradition being broken.”
Council members Doug Emerson and Pauline Valdivia, both of who voted to cancel the rally for this year, defended their votes, saying that they were being fiscally responsible and thinking of the whole community.
“I can’t, in all conscience, expect the community to pay for something like this,” Valdivia said.
Emerson said, in addition to economic issues, he was concerned about safety at the rally. In a police report on the 2005 rally, Hollister Police Chief Jeff Miller said that he would not be able to guarantee the safety of rally goers and residents at future events.
“I chose to error on the side of safety and error on the side of fiscal responsibility and be some what conservative on this vote,” Emerson wrote in an e-mail.
Scattini and Pike both said that the 11th hour proposal from Biker Design could have been the solution to the rally problem that the council has been grappling with for the past several months. Emerson and Valdivia, on the other hand, said the proposal was too late and incomplete.
“You got a guy sitting in front of us whose going to give us the money,” Scattini said during Monday’s meeting. “My take is I’d like to give this guy a chance.”
Emerson, however, said that the money is only one component for organizing a rally.
“It is now very late in the game for anyone to do a quality job of putting together the rally. Biker Design has no experience in staging and promoting an event such as this. Their area of expertise is in merchandising – very much different than planning, staging, promoting and carrying out an entire rally,” he wrote in the same email. “Yes, the $300,000 is tempting, but basically that’s all the proposal said. It did not deal with the issue of safety. It said nothing regarding promotion and publicity, it really did not deal with any issues other than to say they would pay the city upfront $300,000.”
While the rally has had many vocal supporters, not everyone in Hollister is hot for the event, which brought about 120,000 bikers into town in July.
Olson said she supports the council’s move to shut down the rally this year. She said she hopes the city will find alternative ways to celebrate the Fourth of July, such as a parade.
“I think it’s a wise decision. We don’t have the funds to underwrite the rally,” she said. “They say that this is the birth place of the biker, really cattle ranchers and farmers were here long before that. We’re not all bikers.”
Some in the community were relatively indifferent to the council’s rally decision.
The Hollister Downtown Association never had an official stance on the event, according to Executive Director Brenda Weatherly. Rick Maddux, owner of downtown’s Maddux Jewelry said he wasn’t glad that the rally was canceled, but does not feel that most downtown businesses would miss anything.
“It didn’t do downtown any good as the majority of people go,” he said. “Restaurants and bars did fine.”
Because many downtown businesses would be closed for the Fourth of July holiday anyway, businesses and the rally could co-exist, Maddux said.
“But after 10 years they never got a handle on the cost, on how to run it,” he said.
Now that the rally is officially canceled, the Hollister Police Department will complete contingency plans for dealing with the influx of bikers that many say will come this July regardless of whether there is a planned event.
“I have a big concern because they will be coming anyway – probably not in the same quantity as the past, but they will be coming,” Rivers said, adding that she will stock up on beer and liquor for the Fourth of July holiday just like she has in the past. “If they show up, I’m going to be prepared. If they don’t I won’t have to buy liquor for a while.”
Luke Roney covers local government and the environment for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 335 or at lr****@fr***********.com
