New Mayor Mia Casey and Vice Mayor Dolores Morales Move to Expand City Limits to Allow for More Housing Developments on 2000 Acres of County Farmland.
“show me something better than ag land right there” – Planning Commissioner Carol Lenoir
Both new Mayor Mia Casey and Vice Mayor Dolores Morales along with the majority of the city council have been working quietly but aggressively to rewrite the nearly completed Hollister General Plan Update. Only Councilmember Rolan Resendiz objected to changes being proposed by the other council members. Mr. Resendiz claimed the changes would have massive negative impacts on the community and that the changes were just payback for developers’ financial support of Mayor Mia Casey and Vice Mayor Dolores Morales’ campaigns. He was quickly silenced by Mayor Mia Casey after pointing out her conflict for taking money from developers and special interest groups that want more developments approved.Cities are required by the state to do General Plan Updates every 10-15 years and cost well over $1Million to complete. The recent General Plan update was guided by residents who attended several community forums over the last few years to give input and direction for future growth in the city for the next 20 years. Community members gave clear direction to slow growth, protect farmland and grow within the current city boundaries to reduce impacts to the community and still meet all the requirements of the state housing laws. The plan was ready for approval by the city council, but in a shocking turn of events, the new city council moved to ignore prior direction from community members. Instead, it seems that the council has chosen to follow the directions and wishes of developers. The new changes being requested by the Hollister city council will take away over 2000 acres of county farmland and turn it into residential developments. The revisions will also add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the final cost of the General Plan Update.
Councilmember Rolan Resendiz exposed the effort by Mayor Mia Casey and Vice Mayor Dolores Morales to allow for more growth during a meeting in August. At the meeting council approved the spending of several million dollars to double the capacity of the sewer treatment plant. Mr. Resendiz pointed out that there was no need to spend millions to expand the sewer plant since there was plenty of capacity for several years to come. Councilmember Resendiz claimed that the truth was that Mayor Mia Casey and Dolores Morales were really expanding the sewer plant so that more housing projects could be approved, which they denied at the time. Mayor Mia Casey, angry at Councilmember Rolan Resendiz’s comments, quickly moved to keep Resendiz from speaking and then later moved to have him censured. Mayor Casey continued to (dishonestly) claim that there were no plans to expand city services outside of the city. It appears that Mr. Resendiz’ accusations about plans by Mayor Mia Casey and Vice Mayor Dolores Morales to allow for more developments to be approved were correct and were being kept from the public.
The changes being requested by the Hollister City Council will change the city’s Sphere of Influence to allow for over 2000 acres of farmland to receive city sewer services for future residential developments. Changes in a city’s Sphere of Influence can only be done legally if a city is planning to annex land in the near future. In past years, the city and county would have very heated arguments about illegally providing city services to developments outside of the city’s Sphere of Influence, yet several developments were still approved by the majority of the city council and county supervisors. The state laws are in place to prevent leapfrog developments and bad planning from occurring. The General Plan consultant felt it was important to warn the council once again that just changing the Sphere of Influence to allow for more growth was illegal.
Mayor Mia Casey and Vice Mayor Dolores Morales were both supported by groups such as the San Benito County Business Council, which have been lobbying both the city and county to approve more developments. They also benefited from tens of thousands of dollars from Political Action Committees (PAC) formed by development interests to create shadow campaigns to get around local contribution limits.
The total number of houses that could be built after rezoning from farmland in the county to residential housing could be well over 20,000 units if the council approves the changes and uses the formula of 10 single family houses per acre. What is still unclear, is how these changes were being made without the County Supervisors being involved in the discussions of taking county farmland to build more houses.
The council was informed by the General Plan consultant that the changes would lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional costs since the plan was nearly complete and just needed the council’s final approval. The consultant pointed out that new environmental studies would need to be conducted because of the significant increase in population and traffic.
Mayor Mia Casey and her Planning Commissioner, Carol Lenoir, were adamantly against the previous plan and had tried to derail it over the last few years because of the limits it put on future growth.
The new changes being recommended by Mayor Mia Casey and Vice Mayor Dolores Morales were from members of the development community and special interest groups. Many members of the community that originally participated in the original process were not aware of changes being discussed and their wishes were dismissed.
Planning Commissioner Lenoir, who was formerly a Hollister City Council Member, has been very vocal about wanting to allow for more growth in the city. At the Special CIty Council meeting she tried to present herself as speaking for the entire planning commission in favor of the changes to the plan. Council member Rolan Resendiz quickly challenged her claim and then the city attorney advised Commissioner Lenoir that she could only speak on behalf of herself. Carol Lenoir quickly pointed out that the previous plan was designed to slow growth and that what was needed was more residential growth.
During a special planning commission meeting to recommend changes to the General Plan allowing more growth along Buena Vista, Commissioner Lenoir said, “show me something better than ag land right there”. She went on to add, “it’s a waste of land right there”. In an effort to convince other Planning Commissioners that Developers care about the community and will build new schools, she added, “doggonit, the developers will bring you the school site and they might even build it. Start treating them like their [Sic] worth something and you would be amazed at what you could get out of them”.
As a council member, Carol Lenoir, knew of the many problems and impacts that were being caused by over-development, yet she went on to make several false and misleading statements during the meeting. Including the claim that developers built a new school, “they just built you a school in Santa Ana Ranch, let them build you one on Buena Vista”. During her term as a Council member, Carol Lenoir, knew that developers actually refused to give land to the Hollister School District and eventually sold the school district the land for over $5 million. The price tag to actually build the school was over $50 million and is being paid for by a bond that taxpayers will be paying for the next 20 years.
After a break, the council came back and once again began discussing how to make things more fair for developers by easing the burden put on them. Discussions began to center around lowering impact fees and other costs such as requirements for affordable housing and land matches, such as having to set aside 2 acres of land for every 1 acre being developed. Mayor Mia Casey, felt that it would be more fair to change the affordable housing requirements from 20% to 15% and only require preservation of land to 1 acre of farmland for each acre being developed. The previous rules called for the land match to be from within the planning area near the city, but the new rules will allow the land to be from areas as far away as New Idria or other remote areas. Mayor Casey also tried to claim that it would be similar to what the county is trying to do with land preservation. Her statement was untrue, as the county is in the process of changing their rules to require 3 acres of land preservation for every 1 acre of land being developed.
After several more hours of discussions the majority of the council recommended expanding the Sphere of Influence to allow for more residential growth from Buena Vista to Wright Road. It would also allow residential growth along Fairview from Santa Ana to Airline Highway and also from Fairview to Best Road. Also approved for expansion is Union Road from Airline to San Benito Street and finally San Juan Road to Highway 156.
As the four other councilmembers kept approving changes, Councilmember Rolan Resendiz warned the council members that the community is fed up with this type of growth and will be very angry when they find out about the changes being made to the General Plan. Councilmember Tim Burns responded by saying, “I’m shaking in my boots” and Council member Rick Perez just kept pushing for the council to keep moving ahead to get it done.
