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After eight years on the San Juan Bautista City Council, John Freeman has changed direction and will now represent Division 2 on the San Benito County Water District Board of Directors. This is a natural progression, said Freeman, a specialist in hazardous waste removal with 20 years of experience in industrial water treatment.
As president of the San Benito County Water Resources Board, Freeman was an early advocate for importing water from the West Hills Treatment plant on Union Road, a solution that San Juan is implementing. He has occasionally contributed to BenitoLink and has been a resource in our reporting on complex water issues.
In addition to his work on the City Council, Freeman has served on the Strategic Planning Committee of San Juan Bautista, the policy board of the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments, the board of directors of Central Coast Community Power and as president of San Benito County’s Integrated Waste Management Commission. He ran unsuccessfully for the San Benito County Board of Supervisors in 2020 and 2024 and was an uncontested candidate for the Water District Board.
In his last presentation as a council member, Freeman discussed problems that he thought San Juan businesses were facing and signs that offered encouragement. In this interview with BenitoLink, Freeman offers his perspectives on the problems local businesses face and his thoughts on his years in service to the city.
BenitoLink: Why did you get into city government?
Freeman: The city had been foundering and flailing for many years, trying to solve its perpetual water problem. I thought I had the education and technical expertise to help solve that problem. Out of college, I got hired by an industrial water treatment company based in Pittsburgh that served the power, refining and steel industries. I had a wet lab chemistry set in the back of my car and would do chemical tests. But water is water, and with the chemistry of water, it doesn’t matter if it is industrial or municipal.
What were your first experiences on the City Council?
At that time, we had a city manager who did a few things like spurring two housing developments, Copperleaf and Rancho Vista. But I don’t think he did very much else. For a civil engineer, he didn’t seem to care about the water and vaguely dismissed it, saying, “We’ll work on it later,” or “We don’t have the money.”
We eventually worked our way to [former city manager] Don Reynolds, who was the best at getting things done in the last 20 years. He had 30 years of experience in municipal government in one form or another and was the head of the public works department in Salinas. Regarding the water problems, they were all minuses until Don showed up. Other managers would tell me grants could be gotten, but they were hard to come by. Don answered, “Of course, we can get those grants, and they’re easy to come by.” He knew where to ask for grants and who to ask.
Besides finally tackling the water problem, what are the city’s biggest accomplishments in the past eight years?
We’ve done a tremendous job on the roads. We’ve paved 11 separate streets and redid part of Third Street from San Jose Street down to the library. It was the worst street in town, and we completely redid it with new storm drains, sewers and a new water line. Now, it doesn’t hurt your car to drive around town anymore.
It’s not well known, and the City Council doesn’t take a lot of credit for it, but we enabled two new internet companies to come into town and establish their services: Etheric and Garlic.Com. Those two provide speedy internet service at a very reasonable price, which is something that Charter doesn’t.
What is the downside of the last eight years?
For the past four to five years, the City Council has consistently ignored economic development, much to its detriment. Now, driving down Third Street, it’s a ghost town. I remember going downtown on a Tuesday evening and having quite a few choices to eat out. And that’s no longer the case. The restaurant industry has never completely recovered from COVID, and they’re closing down all over, not just here. If we’re going to be known again as a culinary destination, we must overcome that somehow.
There are a lot of empty buildings on Third Street, and I’m hoping the vacancy ordinance will help. It’ll certainly push the landlords—they don’t promote themselves very well. They don’t list themselves through commercial real estate brokers. They don’t bother with that. They just hope someone will find them. They put a small sign in the window—“Call 408 blah, blah.” They hope someone will do that. Now, they can pay fines or let a tenant in to rent.
Just before you enter the downtown area, that red building has been a thorn in my side for the last 15 years. It’s one of the most prominent places in town, but it’s run down, empty and boarded up. It doesn’t show the town well, and it’s kind of indicative of those problems.
Could you discuss a few of the 10 issues you raised about the local economy at your last City Council meeting?
The highway construction is one. That’s been a real problem. The town has a lot of antique shops, but that is a fading business. And, in my opinion, that’s not one that the City Council can directly address. They can’t zone them out of existence. But I think more niche businesses will eventually come, and once they become known, they will do well. But the owners have to work that out among themselves.
You have talked about encouraging commercial development south of Hwy 156. What are you envisioning?
We need to become a lot friendlier to business on the City Council and planning level now. I’d like to keep the retail up here on Third Street, with maybe a little overflow on Fourth Street. However, having some kind of business outside San Juan is important.
I’d like to see two or three small food-oriented warehouses, much like the fish factory that is already out there. I’d also like to see a small business park within the city limits near Hacienda de Leal. What a town needs is people wandering around each and every day at lunchtime.
The only business that really does that right now is Waltz Creative, a web content firm. They employ somewhere between 12 and 15 people, and almost every day, half of those people, maybe even all of them, wander down to Lolla’s. It would help if we had three or four more places like that.
What do you see in San Juan’s near future?
With Jose Aranda’s election, the City Council has some new energy. And we also have a new and possibly energetic city manager. We have two hotels that provide pretty good service, and we are a lot closer and nicer for tourists coming down from San Jose or the Bay Area than anywhere on the peninsula. I think we just need a little more business.
I see a bright future for this city. I really do. It has tried to destroy itself several times and always failed. I think our location, weather, the old town’s beauty and the Mission can eventually overcome the problems.
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