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Dozens of Hollister city employees are facing uncertain futures after receiving layoff notices earlier this month. Perhaps nowhere is that uncertainty more acute than in the Hollister Police Department, where eight civilian employees were laid off along with Capt. Michael Paddy. But the uncertainty extends beyond the employees to the department itself and into the community.
While former city manager Ana Cortez was officially fired without cause on Oct. 20, dozens of city employees who had received layoff notices and were placed on leave a week earlier remain in limbo. They were asked to come back to work last week but still face losing their jobs for good on Nov. 13.
While the City Council rescinded the previously declared fiscal emergency and directed staff to negotiate cost-saving measures including layoffs with the city employee unions, the layoff notices are still in effect.
The council held a special closed session meeting on Oct. 26 that included labor negotiations.
For now, though, eight HPD employees, in positions including community service officer, analyst and records clerk, could be gone in a few weeks.
In a no-confidence vote by the Police Officers Association (POA) ahead of Cortez’s dismissal, the union laid out its criticisms of her, which ranged from a failure to meet and confer with union representatives regarding layoffs to intimidation, retaliatory threats and mistreatment of employees.
One criticism even included “suppression of employee speech and public information” in which the union alleged Cortez prohibited city employees from “speaking publicly or communicating with the press” under threat of termination due to insubordination, which the union said interfered with its ability to respond to media inquiries and communicate “important public safety information to the community.”
BenitoLink has regularly reported that all city departments including police were directed to refer all media inquiries to Cortez’s office.
But it was the layoffs that roused the union’s anger most of all.
The layoffs impacted the records, fleet maintenance and evidence divisions, according to Police Sgt. Bo Leland, who serves as the POA president.
Among those fired, Leland said one was the sole evidence clerk.
“She is responsible for maintaining the chain of custody for evidence, property, releasing found property or property that’s been adjudicated through the court back to people who own it,” he said. “She was also responsible for sending body camera footage from cases to the district attorney’s office and the public defender. And, she would take all of our evidence that needs to be processed and sending it to the Department of Justice for DNA analysis or fingerprints or those things.”
Leland said two community service officers were laid off. One of them was responsible for parking enforcement, vehicle abatement, and patrol calls. They assisted nonhazardous patrol calls for service. The other was a patrol community service officer, who was also in charge of fleet maintenance and fleet division. Leland said she was the primary contact for the sex offender registry.
An analyst who was responsible for sending crime data to the Department of Justice was also laid off.
“She also compiled patrol statistics for our supervisors to help them evaluate their employees and make sure that everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Leland said. “We’ve already seen at least three criminals that we know of who were arrested, two of them for violent offenses, who had to be released from custody at the county jail without charges because we were unable to process the reports,” he added.
Only one civilian manager was not laid off, according to Leland, who said Hollister Police Chief Carlos Reynoso found himself delegated to standing watch in the lobby, which the POA claimed in its no-confidence declaration is a labor law violation.
Police chief ‘muzzled’
Leland said one of three people who had been arrested was charged with making terrorist threats but he was not authorized to give specific details.
“I know what the specifics are and they’re terrifying,” he said. “The details are important, but I’m not allowed to release them.”
He also said the police department has not been permitted to send news releases to the media or public venues.
“We would love to write a press release about it [terrorist threat] as the police department so we can inform the public, but the city manager, Anna Cortez, has basically muzzled the police chief,” he said. “She won’t allow him to speak to anybody. A couple of months ago, the city manager ordered that we were no longer allowed to speak to the press in any circumstance whatsoever.”
Reynoso, who has served as Chief of Police since June 7, 2021, as the first Latino in the position, would not confirm Leland’s contention about him being muzzled, but he has not spoken directly to BenitoLink or been quoted in a press release since July 11, after commenting extensively concerning the Independence Rally.
In a July 7 BenitoLink article, Reynoso was critical of the vetting process for the security company the City Council hired for the Independence Day motorcycle rally. When asked on Oct. 20 to comment on the layoffs, he said he could not respond.
Leland said Cortez could order him not to speak to the press as the public information officer for the department, but she could not prevent him from speaking as president of the POA.
As he explained during public comments at an Oct. 19 council meeting, Leland told the public that she would not discuss any alternatives.
The ‘off-ramp’
“There was an option to come to the union and ask for concessions, ask us to take furloughs to reduce expenditures so people could keep their jobs and we could keep functioning,” he said.
“The morning before the layoff notices were officially sent to these employees, I had a conversation with her, and I told her that there was an off-ramp to this entire disaster and that I wanted to have a good conversation with her about what that off-ramp was. She said she wasn’t interested.”
The off-ramp, Leland said, “is that the police department is currently sitting on $1.98 million worth of vacancies for sworn staff. The total cost of all the staff that were laid off is about $1.4 million. So, even if you were to lay off all of them, even if you were to cancel five of the seven vacancies for police officers, you could retain the entire civilian staff, and we could still hire two more police officers.”
HPD employee Terra Casarez was outside City Hall on Oct. 20, along with other union protestors. Casarez worked in the records department for the past four years, and prior to that she worked for San Benito County. She said she expected her job was in jeopardy because she was the least tenured in the department.
“I was hoping that we could go in with negotiations,” she said. “I do work on the budget and the financial part for the police department, so I knew where we could cut from. I was hoping that we could go in and do that and we were also willing to give up furloughs. But never in a million years did I expect them to cut an entire department, much less every single non-sworn employee [one manager was not fired].”
Casarez said she returned to work Oct. 20, after Cortez relented on the implementation of immediate paid leave, with the understanding that the employees would still lose their jobs on Nov. 13.
“My reason for returning was because I could not let my department fail,” she said. “When we left, there was work on our desks, and I would never leave with work on my desk. It needed to be done. I want to support my chief. I want to support my captains. I want the community to be safe. I’m hoping prior to the 13th, we can come to some resolution to keep us at work and save money. There’s plenty of ways to save. We can all give up a little. And I’m happy to do that. And I want to see all SEIU members come back, as well.”
Christopher Dorn was also on the picket line on Oct. 19. He worked in code enforcement for nearly four years. Prior to coming to Hollister in 2023, he worked in San Bernardino County in its police probation department. He said he was caught by surprise on the morning he came to work and there was a message waiting for him that he had been let go.
“I wasn’t able to wrap my head around it,” he said. “I was just in shock because there was no warning.”
Dorn said both code enforcement employees were fired.
“So, there’s a lot of issues that we haven’t been able to take care of,” he said. “I’m looking forward to going back and providing the service to my community. I’m just hoping to get my job back and be reinstated full-time, so I don’t have to worry about being laid off Nov. 13.”
His main concern, though, is that he is the single father of two children.
“It’s hard trying to explain to my kids why I’m home,” he said. “It’s bad news.”
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Hollister City Council rescinds fiscal emergency, calls back employees | BenitoLink
City of Hollister lays off dozens of employees amid fiscal crisis | BenitoLink
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