HOLLISTER • SAN BENITO COUNTY
A New SV Media publication
Friday, March 9, 2018
sanbenito.com • Vol. 145, No. 10 • $1
City cancels bike rally PROMOTER LOSES KEY SPONSORS Bryce Stoepfel Reporter
Barry Holtzclaw
In Hollister, this upcoming Independence Day will be a mild one compared to those of the past. The Hollister City Council this week voted 3-2 to cancel this year's Hollister Independence Rally after learning that rally promoter Randy Burke would fall short of the $180,000 fee the city was seeking. Mayor Ignacio Velazquez and Councilmember Ray Friend voted in favor of holding the rally, and Vice Mayor Mickie Luna, and Councilmembers Karson Klauer and Jim Gillio voted to reject the event. “I’m extremely disappointed, this rally was an important piece of our town’s history and I don’t understand why there’s always controversy,” Velazquez said. “I think there’s always a way to do it. I think the best way is to have a non-profit run it. Times have changed, but we deserve a chance to keep it going.” Burke, and his company
WATERSHED MONITORING Paul Kreun, hydrographer with the Santa Clara County Water District, checks water flow in Uvas Creek, which flows into the Pajaro River in San Benito County.
Rain increases flow to Pajaro
➝ Rally Canceled, 8
THE LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE OF SAN BENITO COUNTY
MARCH 9, 2018
MONITORING OF UVAS CREEK IS GOOD NEWS FOR FISH
OU T & AB OU T OF NDAR CA LE EN TS EV
By Barry Holtzclaw
Blossoms & Beer
Managing Editor
Inside this issue: Beer in the garden
said Jim Brumfield, whose 14-acre horse ranch on San Juan Highway is a short walk from the site of the planned bridge. The riverbed crossing will be funded completely with federal money from the Federal Highway Administration's Toll Credit Highway Bridge Program, with construction slated for the spring of 2017. “The key to a better transportation
TURN TO BRIDGE • A8
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An advocacy organization that re college instructors across Califo symbolically walk out of the clas what they call a significant pay d
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Santa Clara County Police Chiefs’ Association used funds from the state Homeland Security Grant Program to finance the video, which casted Gilroy students in an active-shooter-oncampus dramatization and informed viewers of the appropriate actions to take in such a case. “We’ve been taking this
serious for a long time and do everything we can possibly do to prepare for the unlikely event of a school shooting in Gilroy,” said Gilroy Supt. Debbie Flores, who also offers up the school campuses to Gilroy police officers to carry out their own live-training drills when school is out. “It is the top priority in this district to make sure
make his pizzas. In starting the business, he is also bringing a taste of his family’s home country to his family’s hometown in Hollister. The Felice family is from the Calabria part of Italy and has deep roots in San Benito County as well. With the opening of Forno, meanwhile, Hollister will once again
Four years ago, students, staff and faculty within the Gilroy Unified School District collaborated with more than 15 law enforcement agencies to help
produce a “Run, Hide, Defend” training video. Since then, just about every school district throughout Santa Clara County has shown the CMAP-produced training video to provide school communities with the best possible tactics and procedures to follow if there is an active shooter at a school.
TURN TO PIZZA • A8
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San Juan resident: ‘Like our own
Project planned for Y Road
KATIE HELLAND •REPORTER khelland@freelancenews.com
HOLLISTER
A $16 million bridge stretching 900 feet across the San Benito River is planned to connect Y Road and San Juan Bautista. But in this rural area, the number of people it will serve is small. “It's like our own bridge to nowhere,”
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His 15-year-old nonprofit environmental organization, Coastal Habitat Education and Environmental Restoration, will be hosting a Uvas Creek cleanup on Saturday, March 10, from 9am to 1pm. Interested volunteers are invited to meet at the Uvas Creek entrance to Christmas Hill Park in Gilroy. The volunteers will include high school students who will receive community service credits. The project will focus on cleaning up garbage and trash in the creek from Silva’s Crossing to the Santa Teresa Boulevard bridge.
Cake, anyone?
one of the last remaining wild runs of the steelhead, which is a federally threatened species that spawns spawn in fresh water for up to two years. The young fish migrate to the ocean where they reach adulthood, and adults return to their natal streams to begin the process again. Garcia said fields in northern San Benito County rely on shallow wells for irrigation, and that the deep aquifers that provide drinking water for much of the region are still in good shape. More than 50 streams flow into Pajaro River, and they need late-winter maintenance, he said.
The San Benito County chapter of the national nonprofit organization Birthday Cakes 4 Free started last spring and group members have been bringing cakes, cupcakes and muffins to low-income seniors and children ever since then. Since the group started in June, its members have delivered about five cakes a month to the Emmaus House, Chamberlain's Children Center and the assisted living facility Whispering Pines Inn. Now they're looking to expand to individual homes in the county. A2
Solar revisions
The company vying to build a 247-megawatt solar farm in Panoche submitted a draft supplemental environmental impact report addressing plans to examine impacts under a revised, reduced proposal. PV2 Energy filed the supplemental draft EIR on Dec. 23. The prior company overseeing the project, Solargen Energy, had an initial EIR approved by the county board in late 2010. A5
SPORTS
A year ago, Brad Sparrer was the No. 5 player in the lineup on San Benito High’s golf team. But entering the 2015 season—practice starts on Feb. 1—the 5-foot-8, 140pound sophomore will likely be the Haybalers’ No. 1 player. Sparrer’s meteoric rise came the good old-fashioned way: hard work. B1
DISTRICTS USE SAFETY PLANS, STAFF TRAINING Reporter
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monitoring endangered species in the watershed for two decades. He waded into Uvas Creek in Gilroy last week with a water district hydrographer, to get a first-hand look at the flowing water. Garcia said the steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is set to begin the fish species’ spawning runs this month. For several years, drought conditions prevented that trek from Monterey Bay up streams like Uvas Creek to lay eggs. But the spawning runs returned in 2016 and 2017, after heavy winter rains. Uvas Creek supports
Schools prepare for the worst
Scott Forstner
6
reported stream flows nine times greater than the previous month. With more rain expected this weekend and into next week, things are looking up for naturalists, who were concerned that bone-dry January and February would blunt comebacks by several endangered species. The 104-mile Uvas-Llagas watershed flows south, gathering rainwater from the broad valleys of southern Santa Clara County, and meets the Pajaro River in northern San Benito County. The timing of this rain couldn’t have been better, according to Herman Garcia, who had been carefully
Soph surge
The late-winter rain has been good news for gardeners, farmers and the steelhead. The Santa Clara County Water District sent out teams of hydrographers to streams in the Pajaro River watershed last week, and initial reports showed streams running at near seasonal levels. One hydrorapher at Uvas Creek in Gilroy
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A supplement to the Hollister Free Lance
Marci Huston’s bar is in full bloom
our students are safe and that we’ve done everything to make sure they are safe.” In preparing for the worst case scenario—one that no school employee hopes to ever encounter but must be prepared for— area school districts such as those in Gilroy, Morgan Hill and Hollister have ➝ School Safety, 10
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