Disclaimer: As a former member of the City of Hollister Planning
Commission, I participated in the development of the 2005 City of
Hollister General Plan.
Disclaimer: As a former member of the City of Hollister Planning Commission, I participated in the development of the 2005 City of Hollister General Plan.
I keep forgetting that I’m one of those “55 and older” people who are “interested in pursuing an active lifestyle with amenities and programs that foster a healthy mind, body, spirit and community,” as the text of Measure S describes us.
Right now a Sun City lifestyle, as envisioned in Measure S, doesn’t seem very appealing. I enjoy living right in the middle of everybody else, families, kids, teenagers, older people, the whole melange.
But even if I thought Sun City Hollister sounded like The Emerald City and Shangri-La combined, I would still be against Measure S.
Measure S doesn’t guarantee that Sun City will be built, or that all the benefits that might come from Sun City will materialize.
What Measure S does do is obliterate some of the integral features of the 2005 General Plan, without making the case that it is necessary to do so in order for the potential benefits of Sun City to be realized.
Specifically (and this is in your sample ballot, if you care to check) it discards the plan’s emphasis on orderly infill, designed to annex current “islands” of county land, developing those and then other areas within Hollister’s Sphere of Influence before developing areas further afield.
This is important because development of close-in areas will make better use of Hollister’s current infrastructure and avoid piecemeal and leapfrog development that has resulted in the mess of unconnected subdivisions that sprang up during the last growth spurt. In fact, the specific land proposed for Sun City is one-third prime agricultural, part of it is in the 100-year flood plain, and part of it falls within the Inner and Outer Safety Zones extending from Hollister Airport’s runways.
Not only that, but also if Measure S passes and for some reason Sun City is not built, there is no guarantee that a subsequent developer would build more than the minimum required housing units designated for the 55-plus population. So much for all the advantages that a 4,400-unit gray-haired population would provide.
(Parenthetically, I question some of those advantages. Tax money for schools but no pesky school-age kids, that I get. But why does Measure S claim 55 + folks use less water? Do they, er, we, have astro-turf lawns, or take fewer showers? And how are Sun City residents going to benefit Hollister businesses and at the same time generate less traffic?)
The other big problem with Measure S is the same as the big problem with Measure G a couple of elections ago: Planning decisions shouldn’t be made by popular vote.
I’m not saying the voting public is incapable of making a good choice. But planning is complex, detailed and rather boring work. You have to spend lots of time and struggle hard to understand how all the parts affect each other. That’s why there are planning commissions, with public meetings, and why the process takes so long.
By contrast, an election can be swayed when a party to it is willing to spend vast sums of money – $685,000 at last count – on DVDs, slick brochures by the fistful, TV ads and now trailer signs. Don’t let them buy your vote.
If Pulte, the developer of Sun City, really thinks Hollister is where they need to be, they’ll find a place to build that already fits the new General Plan. And the owner of the proposed site will find another buyer.
We need to think of ourselves and Hollister’s future, and vote NO on this bad idea.
