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As city officials deal with financial woes, the City of Hollister has lost two key administrators in the last month and replaced them with temporary employees. They include former Fire Chief Jonathan Goulding, who took a job with a different city, and parks and recreation director Charles Wall, who is on medical leave.
The city’s public works director role is also vacant following the departure of Javier Hernandez, adding to the leadership turnover in recent months, which includes former city clerk Jennifer Woodworth.
To address the vacancies in the fire and parks departments, the Hollister City Council appointed two retirees, a common public agency practice in which agencies temporarily fill sudden vacancies while they recruit a permanent replacement.
On June 22, the council approved the appointment of Stephen Healy as fire chief with an hourly wage of $106.58.
According to the appointment resolution, Healy will not receive benefits and is limited to 960 work hours, the equivalent of 24 weeks of full-time hours.
According to the staff report, Healy most recently served at the Redmond Fire Department in Washington and has also served at the Salinas Fire Department.
City Manager Ana Cortez said that she and Human Resource Director Noel Mink began a national recruitment to fill the position, which Cortez noted may take longer than the traditional four months because she is no longer a full-time recruiter.
“Between the two of us we would like to think that we can bring anywhere between three to five super-qualified individuals,” Cortez said. “We are not looking for first-time fire chiefs.”
She said all fire chief candidates will be interviewed by a panel that includes members of the firefighters union.
Goulding became chief of the Vallejo Fire Department in June after serving Hollister since May 2024.
The council on June 29 designated Karen Crocker as the parks and recreation director for up to a year with an hourly wage of $102.36 to replace Wall. Like Healy, she will not receive benefits and is limited to 960 work hours, the equivalent of 24 weeks of full-time hours.
“Ms. Crocker possesses significant experience and qualifications that enable the city to maintain operational continuity during the temporary absence of the incumbent employee,” the staff report says.
Crocker last worked for the Incline Village General Improvement District as its parks and recreation director as of April 2025. She also served the district as interim general manager in 2024.
According to the staff report in the agenda, Wall was granted a leave of absence not to exceed a year.
In April, the City Council approved increasing the parks and recreation director’s responsibilities to include overseeing the Hollister Planning Department. City officials said that the move, among others, would improve customer service and operational efficiency.
This was part of the reorganization of the city’s Community Development Department, which resulted in the elimination of the community development director/assistant city manager, a building official position and the cannabis affairs manager.
Crocker was initially appointed on June 22 along with Healy but that was done under a government code for a “true vacancy” rather than a leave of absence, according to Human Resource Officer Stephanie Brown.
In addition to filling those vacancies, the city also lost Hernandez in June and Woodworth in May.
According to a LinkedIn page under his name, former public works director Hernandez now works for the Transportation Agency for Monterey as an engineer.
City public works employee Frank Garcia spoke highly of Hernandez at the June 22 council meeting, saying the former director wrote a letter to Public Works employees upon his resignation in which he noted he had “fundamental different management philosophies and different views” than Cortez with regard to the direction of the city.
“Those are not words of someone simply moving on,” he said.” Those are words of a department director who believed the organization was heading in a direction he could no longer support.”
Garcia said Hernandez’s words should be concerning to the City Council. He noted that, shortly before Hernandez’s resignation, the Service Employees International Union, which represents city employees, had written a letter of recognition to him because he improved communication, professionalism, trust and respect within the city’s Public Works Department.
“In all my years with the city, I cannot remember employees coming together to write a recognition letter like that,” Garcia said. “We wrote that letter because we believe he understood the workforce. We believe he understood the importance of public works. We believe he understood the people who keep this city running every day.”
Woodworth, who had been with the city since December 2022, now serves as the deputy city clerk for Cupertino. Though she was replaced by City Clerk Angie Gonzalez, the position is posted on the city’s job opportunities page.
The exits follow the dismissal earlier this year of Assistant City Manager Rod Powell, who lost his job as part of a departmental reorganization.
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