This community opinion was contributed by Mary Zanger. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent BenitoLink or other affiliated contributors. BenitoLink invites all community members to share their ideas and opinions. By registering as a BenitoLink user in the top right corner of our home page and agreeing to follow our Terms of Use, you can write counter opinions or share your insights on current issues. Lea este articulo en español aquí.

“My vote doesn’t count” is heard frequently, but let’s look at how one vote does count. Our vote is our voice. Our voice is us. We are heard when we vote. Let’s remember that when anyone attends a Super Bowl game or even a Baler football game, our one little voice can become a roar. Getting together with like minded friends makes us roar like a crowd in a football game.  

We want to roar about important issues. We live in Hollister, where some things just are not right. Our city cannot decay in the middle and continue to spread out in the surrounding edges.

In the middle, we find that we are like-minded. We need to slow the expansion of more houses and more cars because these can choke our voice. We can choke on spoiled air while we try to get to work on time while becoming less healthy.

We can lose our organic food and our whole food supply if houses continue to grow on farmland. Remember that our farmland feeds the state, the country and the whole world. Room for growing food is our valuable base as we the people. Farming depends on equipment, supplies and labor, which are basic to a buying and selling economy. Equipment, parts, transportation and labor are all people. Transportation is our roads which cannot choke us. Roads are constructed and maintained by people who have voices. Labor is all of us in all ways. Labor is we the people with voices.

Let’s turn our voice into a roar by getting together with like-minded voices so we become a roar with a vote to be heard. Let’s find friends like us that want to put the brakes on this run-away giant called sprawl, where our farmland, air and water are gobbled-up and spit-out, leaving the refuse of broken roads, broken economy and broken city.