Council blasts company, ponders business incubator
The City Council blasted a paid consultant for being nearly a
year behind in preparing traffic policy documents that were
supposed to be finished within 90 days.
Council blasts company, ponders business incubator
The City Council blasted a paid consultant for being nearly a year behind in preparing traffic policy documents that were supposed to be finished within 90 days.
The consulting firm Higgins and Associates was supposed to prepare a list of guidelines for how the city will resolve traffic trouble spots, but the city is still waiting 10 months later.
“To be perfectly frank with you I’m pretty disappointed. I mean this was brought to you, I believe, in February of this year,” said Mayor Tony LoBue. “You’re planning on putting this project together it seems like in two weeks. You haven’t even addressed there are target areas we want specifically addressed and you haven’t even met with the community once.”
City Manager George Lewis corrected LoBue and said it was not part of Higgins’ contract to meet with the community or address streets or neighborhoods with serious traffic problems, just to set a policy for dealing with such situations.
“Our job is not to go into the neighborhoods and develop the actual strategies, it’s develop the guidelines,” said Keith Higgins, the consultant. “We’re way behind schedule, and I can’t make any excuses for that whatsoever.”
Exactly why the city needed to hire Higgins in the first place seemed something of a mystery to the council.
“Why can’t the city do some of the things this gentleman was supposed to be doing?” asked newly sworn Councilman Robby Scattini. “Why do we have to hire somebody who’s not from Hollister and doesn’t even know anything about Hollister?”
City Engineer Clint Quilter told Scattini the city staff already had so many other responsibilities that using someone on staff to set up such a policy would slow down productivity.
In a meeting long on details but short on substance, the council also received a proposal from the Economic Development Corporation to build a business incubator at the Hollister Airport.
A business incubator provides office space at low rents to fledgling businesses in the hopes they will grow into viable companies. The incubator would be built on the site of Building 25, which burned down a few years ago.
“Right now we have the opportunity to get funding from the EDA (U.S. Economic Development Administration) in the amount of $1.5 million to $1.75 million,” said Mark Davis, a consultant for the EDC. “That window of opportunity to secure the funding is within the first quarter of 2003.”
Any new building would cost more than $2 million, said Davis. There would be 6,500 square feet of office space and another 21,500 square feet could be used to house businesses with an emphasis on anything to do with aviation, he said.
The building would not be available for at least two and a half years and theoretically circumvent a state-enacted building moratorium. The council will make a decision on whether to approve the proposal at their meeting on Dec. 16.
