Lea este artículo en español aquí.
When Sandra Schwehr first thought about opening the Little Tree Montessori School in Hollister in 2021, she believed the process would be easy. Feeling optimistic, she prepared a one-year budget she believed would cover all the necessary upgrades.
By the time of her first interview with BenitoLink in June 2025, Schwehr had been paying $7,000 a month in rent for the previous two years and had obtained only her building permit at the beginning of that month.
Schwehr initially spoke to BenitoLink off the record, out of a concern for possible retaliation from the city. She has agreed to speak on the record for this article.
By the first days of 2026, she had spent more than $120,000 on renovations and permits, and was still struggling with the process. Every new inspection, she said, resulted in an entirely new set of required corrections.
This is the fourth in a continuing series of BenitoLink Special Reports on the seemingly dysfunctional processes of Hollister’s Building Department and those who seek to bring new businesses to town, make repairs after a disaster, or make improvements on existing buildings.
The delays also threatened her business, forcing her to lay off two of her employees who are single parents and lose her license, along with the Department of Social Services saying her case would be closed because her school was not yet open.
She said she told the department representative, “If you do that, I won’t. I can’t. I don’t have the fight left in me.”
Last August, Schwehr was granted a temporary certificate of occupancy, which allowed her to bring students in, but she said she continues to live under a bureaucratic Sword of Damocles, with constant and sometimes confusing orders for modifications and changes along with deadlines that threaten her ability to stay open.
“We feel like the Building Department has ultimate power over us,” she said. “They give us these lists a piece at a time. A piece at a time. A piece at a time. And it’s costing us money. I had to have the electrician come out three different times because they kept adding things to what was required.”
And the number of additions, corrections, modifications and changes fills pages.
For example, Schwehr said that city subcontractor 4Leaf demanded a “photometric lighting plan,” which maps the behavior of light in a specific space. She said she could not find any contractors in the city who knew how to draw one, so she had to go outside the county.
A month after completion and submission, the $2,500 plan was rejected as “not being accurate.”
Schwehr placed two dirt-filled galvanized troughs against one side of the building to serve as a rudimentary garden. The city insisted that they be moved to another part of the yard, that the ground be cleared, and that a drip irrigation system be installed instead.
A concrete pad extending from the rear door was roughly three inches above the yard’s asphalt, requiring a wheelchair access ramp which, according to Schwehr, a contractor installed at the angle prescribed by city code.
The city rejected it as being the wrong angle, even though Schwehr’s husband, Keith, re-measured it, he said, and established it was correct.
As part of the school’s security, a sheet of mesh had to be installed on the street side of the schoolyard’s exit door, on top of a steel plate, to block anyone from entering by pulling on the emergency exit bar to open it.
Keith installed it with 50 hex-head screws, only to be told by city Building Official Gabriel Martinez that they had to be replaced with rivets, in his stated belief that “somebody could use the tool and unscrew them very quickly.” He said that Martinez added that he “wouldn’t feel safe bringing his child here.”
“It didn’t seem the right place for a comment like that,” Keith said. “It just seemed personal rather than business. It would be easier for someone to just climb the fence than take the time to remove all the screws.”
The school site is across the street from Hollister High School and, concerned about students cutting through the front yard and trampling any plantings, Sandra had the yard redone in bark to reduce maintenance and, in the process, water usage.
The city demanded that she hire a landscape architect to install plants and add a drip irrigation system, forcing her to abandon her goal of using no water. She will now be required by city code, she said, to water plants she does not want.
One official, according to Sandra, even told her that he was instructed by Martinez, as he left his office, not to allow them to pass the inspection he was about to perform.
The Schwehrs concede that many of the repairs and renovations ordered, such as installing a $14,000 fire sprinkler system and modifying a commercially manufactured fence with excessively large gaps, are necessary. However, with every completed task, they say the city has found more things to write up that they had never been told about before.
One such inspection took place in late July 2025, when she had been assured by Assistant City Manager Rod Powell—who Sandra consistently cites as being helpful in resolving issues—that there would be “no surprises” in finalizing the “life and safety” list required for a temporary certificate of occupancy.
She said that Powell and Martinez walked through the site together and created what was supposed to be the final list of requirements. About a week after the joint walkthrough, she said, Martinez returned without Powell to add more requirements.
She said these included upgrading the furnace, estimated at $10,000, strapping the water heater, and pulling an additional permit for related piping.
“This sums up the entire two-year process working with the city,” Sandra said. “Everything was piecemeal. We would be given a list of items that needed to be addressed. We would address them, only to get a new list.”
BenitoLink emailed Powell, Martinez and City Manager Ana Cortez to request insights into the delays the Schwehrs have faced. None of them responded by publication time.
Even seemingly minor victories in getting corrections finished or nullified, she said, would lead to more corrections. Take, for example, the struggle to be allowed the fairly standard three garbage cans for waste.
In January, the Schwehrs were told they had to provide a dumpster, build a shelter for it with a roof sloped at a specific angle, and install a drain that connected to the city’s sewer system. This would require pulling up the school site’s parking lot, as well as its own and the city’s sidewalks.
The cost would be between $10,000 and $15,000.
Sandra said the issue was that, on any given day, the school generates close to zero waste, so there is no need for anything more than a standard garbage can.
“As a Montessori school,” she said, “our mindfulness about the footprint that we leave on the earth is one of the big things that we try to impress upon the children.”
Sandra said the children bring their own lunches in reusable containers, which they take home after school. Any organics, such as fallen leaves, are taken back to the Schwehr home for composting. Any paper waste is reused or recycled.
After trying to negotiate the matter with the city, Sandra called Recology, explained her situation, and requested an accommodation, which was granted and sent to the city. With no answer for over two weeks, she contacted Powell and the string of building and city officials she always includes in her emails.
“Rod basically called me,” she said, “and told me he had talked to the city manager and the city attorney, and would be able to change it. Instead of a garbage enclosure, we could have the cans and just screen them so they couldn’t be seen from the street.”
It was a Pyrrhic victory. The day after getting the requirement changed, Sandra said she had been sent three emails with additional corrections, some of which had never come up in any previous inspection or conversation with the city.
“This is retaliation,” she said. “Some of the stuff that they put on our list is just absolutely crazy. And who knows what they’re going to change next?”
On Feb. 11, Sandra sent an email to Powell, which she also forwarded to BenitoLink. In it, she listed her responses to the new demands.
Some she found baffling, such as having to provide a list of every building code, the California Energy Code, and Title 24 that apply to the school. “How should we know?” she wrote. “This seems like a job for the city inspector.”
Or submitting manufacturer specification sheets for the existing water heater, which had been at the school site long before her tenancy, with a demand that she “ensure the water heater meets California 2022 energy efficiency standards.”
Or submitting forms showing the school site is compliant with the state energy code, which she said had never been asked of her, though the plans had been under review for more than two years.
“I am asking the city of Hollister to remove all new and punitive requirements,” Sandra wrote to Powell, “so we can continue working together to complete the original list of legally documented requirements. This will allow us to continue serving the families and children of Hollister.”
Hollister Planning Commissioner Peter Hernandez, a local business owner, contacted BenitoLink after reading an account of the seven years of delays Maria Torres faced in returning home after a fire destroyed part of a wall. Hernandez asked to meet with the Schwehrs the next day.
Related stories
BL Special Report: Local contractors, business owners air complaints to council
BL Special Report: Hollister homeowner still unable to occupy home five years after fire
BL Special Report: Hollister officials meet with frustrated property owners
We need your help. Support local, nonprofit news! BenitoLink is a nonprofit news website that reports on San Benito County. Our team is committed to this community and providing essential, accurate information to our fellow residents. Producing local news is expensive, and community support keeps the news flowing. Please consider supporting BenitoLink, San Benito County’s public service nonprofit news.
You must be logged in to post a comment.