With plenty of public support, Hollister City Council members on Oct. 9 approved a plan to charge a library impact fee that, once finalized, will be charged to new housing developments.
“I think we have a very exciting opportunity to follow in the footsteps of San Benito County with the proposed library impact fee,” said Director of the Hollister Planning Department, Bryan Swanson, as he gave a brief presentation on the fee.
The fee will not affect those developments that are already in existence. It would go ito effect 60 days from approval and “it would go towards new developments that haven’t come to the city,” said Swanson.
The fee for developers constructing those projects will be $544 for new single-family residential units and $495 for new multi-family residential units built within the city limits.
During public comment, Hollister residents who spoke showed support of the fee.
Marty Richman said, “I support it. It’s moving on towards being a full-service city. You know we have everything that defines a full-service city except a library. If you look at the definition of a full-service city in California, it has a police department, we got it, a fire department we got it, we got everything but we don’t have a library…The truth of the matter is, most of the county doesn’t use the library but most of the city does, so it’s obviously something we’re going to have to wrestle with, how we pay it, but a good start is this impact fee.”
Mary Schneider seconded Richman’s support, adding the library needs more than basic upgrades.
Ruth Erickson, who has volunteered at the San Benito County Free Library for more than 30 years, said, “I’ve seen how this city has grown, and I’m not sure about of the exact statistics, but at least 75 percent of the library users live in the city of Hollister. With hundreds of new homes and hundreds of new residents, the library (without the fee) will not be able to keep up with the expenses, let alone with all the new library patrons.”
The San Benito County Free Library was founded by the San Benito County Board of Supervisors, on Feb. 4, 1917 and was housed in the old county courthouse. After being moved to the Veterans’ Memorial Building in 1927 and City Hall in 1959, the library moved into the newly-completed building at 470 Fifth St. in 1960, where it resides today.
The impact fee is intended to provide funding to expand library services and make improvements to the existing library.
Tree work OK’d
In other council news, city council members approved a resolution that allows the city manager to sign an agreement with Quality Tree Care for the removal of problematic trees whose roots have crept up under sidewalks and are in need of repair. City council members also approved additional funds not to exceed $66,000 that will cover the costs for tree removal and replacement associated with the sidewalk and street improvement project.
Richman expressed his support of the resolution and suggested the council research different ways to solve the issue.“There’s a lot of documentation available on urban trees,” he said.
“I think we have to do some work on this and basically lay out the way we want the trees mixed and maybe some flexibility on how we want to mix. We don’t have to say ‘you have to have that one’ but we may have to say ‘you could have that one or that one and your neighbor then could have that one or that one’ because I think that was a very, very important point that was made in the document,” he said referring to a paper on urban trees put together by the Agricultural Department at Cornell University. “It has a lot in there about sidewalks and which ones are known not to have invasive roots and will stay put underground and wont drop limbs. I think if you follow those recommendations … we will do better.”
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