San Benito County continues talks about fire services amid staffing and budget restrictions
SAN BENITO COUNTY, Calif. (KION-TV) -- San Benito County voting to pause a fesability study lookng to provide a new fire district for the san juan bautista and san benito county area. Opinions are divided after months of back-and-forth contract negotiations between the city of Hollister and both San Juan Bautista and San Benito County.
"What I'm getting at is we're kind of getting yanked back and forth here over the last several months,” District two Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki said. “Now we're being told, well now that you put your offer on the table, let's negotiate again."
In march, Hollister Fire announced a 270-day notice informing the county and City of San Juan Bautista that their fire services would be terminated come December of this year. That began a series of negotiating meetings that have not reached a full agreement.
mindy sotelo - san benito supervisor, district 3
Mindy Sotelo, Supervisor for district three said she think other options should be looked at before forming a county fire department. “I'm not in favor of us pausing the feasibility study. I really think that we need to be moving forward with that. i think that this is kind of our long-term solution,” she said.
Sotelo adding she is happy to hear Hollister is open to renegotiate in hopes of reaching a larger staffing agreement. Still others like Ignacio Velzáquez, feel the best route is to create a seperate fire district.
“It wasn't realistic,” District five Supervisor Velazquez said. “It wasn't sustainable, and we were gonna have problems. So we're looking at how do we start our own? How do we build a new system that we can afford? Not only for today, but for years down the road.”
Still the biggest barrier continues to be costs. "We're going to have to find funding to form a fire department, just like funding a fire department,” said Supervisor Curro. "We have to have this conversation, and i'm hopeful that we can look at things in an out-of-the-box discussion."
Hollister's City manager said they have been working to reduce costs, claiming there has been a 4.7 million dollar decrease from what they had orginally asked for.
