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Raymond Martinez has lived in San Benito County for only six months. Still, he has already launched his new website, The San Benito Blueprint, which he hopes will help county residents cut through the misinformation and conjecture surrounding city and county planning decisions and projects.
Martinez, 33, described himself as “very civic-minded” and said that when he arrived in the county, he immediately started researching what was being built where and why, discovering the information he was looking for was often hard to find.
“Every other area that I’ve lived,” he said, “had somebody out there digging up this stuff and preparing it for the masses. Some of it is hard to understand, and most people will not sit down and read a master plan for a development.”
Martinez said his interest in planning goes back to his childhood, when he became curious about what was being built and, in some cases, why certain things did not work better. He did not consider a career in planning—or even know that kind of career existed—until his mid-20s.
“A friend worked as a senior city planner,” he said, “and he let me tag around with him for a little bit. I thought, ‘I could go back to school and actually do this for a living.’”
Part of his motivation for creating his website came after he joined NextDoor, a social media outlet that gives users a way of communicating with their neighbors. However, he was disappointed in what he found.
“I was immediately taken aback by how the dialogue happens,” Martinez said. “I remember thinking, ‘This is just people complaining.’ People often used it for local politics, and I couldn’t find information on many of their claims.”
Martinez thought he could fill an important role and started sharing his research. He started with last year’s Measure A, which proponents claimed would slow growth and stop new housing developments in San Benito County. What he found was the opposite.
“It was crazy,” he said. “I read the measure. And I found it only covers unincorporated land and leaves a giant housing loophole. Yes, it would stop some kinds of growth, but not the growth that voters necessarily want to stop.”
Martinez said that he understands growth has been one of the community’s top issues, but he was surprised by how worked up people became about it.
“A lot of that is fueled by some of the rhetoric of elected officials,” he said. “They kind of feed into it and don’t have to do that. I find it hard to get news from politicians, which is why I want to do this.”
Martinez said he is looking into the petition currently being circulated by members of the Hollister Guardians activist group to rescind Hollister’s recently adopted 2040 General Plan. The claim that one area marked on the petition, designated “the planning area,” which the Guardians claimed would be turned into tens of thousands of houses, particularly bothered him.
“It’s an area outside the city where the planners can do things like get easements to preserve agricultural land,” he said. “And because it’s outside the city, they have no legal jurisdiction. But the supporters were blatantly saying, ‘This is where housing is going to go.’”
Martinez said he finds such claims dishonest and counterproductive if the community is interested in smart planning and smart growth.
“The General Plan is a tool for that,” he said. “It is not necessarily for developers. The city can’t go in and say, ‘This is how I want you to develop a property.’ It’s incredibly dishonest to say that they can. It is not set in stone. It is something they need to include in the General Plan.”
Martinez said he thought the politicizing of growth and planning tends to be a gross oversimplification, arguing that more goes into the planning process than people think. He also said that recent decisions in state courts make it impossible to avoid California’s housing mandates, which require cities to build specific numbers of homes.
“You’ll see that cities with bigger pockets, like Huntington Beach, have tried and failed,” he said. “This town just doesn’t have the money for a lengthy legal battle.”
Martinez pointed to the state’s recent settlement with Elk Grove over its denial of a 67-unit building project, which ended with the city forced to pay $150,000 in attorney’s fees and agreeing to identify a site where the project could be built.
“Beverly Hills had something similar,” he said. “These are cities with budgets that are multiples of what we have here. I don’t think it would be a good use of our resources to pursue that route.”
Martinez said he envisions his site as a neutral and nonpartisan space for people looking for accurate information to better form opinions.
““My posts start with the facts and where they are coming from in the documents,” he said. “If people want my opinion, it is at the bottom of the page.”
Martinez said he is expecting pushback, and that there is not much he can do if the facts he is reporting do not support someone’s preconceived opinion.
“I am not trying to convince people,” he said. “I am really just saying ‘Don’t believe everything that someone in a parking lot or a politician tells you. Make sure you do your own research.’ I think that once we stop fighting each other, we can all work together to find solutions.”
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