Hollister Mayor Ignacio Velazquez showed up at City Hall at 10 a.m. Tuesday, July 11, carrying two boxes of petitions concerning the 400 Block at Fourth and San Benito Streets, to present them to City Clerk Tom Graves. As he spread packets containing more than 2,400 signed petitions—the effort needs 1,600 confirmed signatures to be accepted—on a table in Graves’ office to formally accept them, the clock began ticking on the process that would require the city council to either rescind its decision to sell the 400 Block for development or amend its resolution. Graves commented wryly that Velazquez wouldn’t be any more willing to accept an amendment than he was the original resolution that he has been campaigning against as a private citizen.
Velazquez agreed.
“From this point, Tom (Graves) will accept them; they will go to the county elections department to do random samplings to make sure there are enough signatures; then it comes back to the city council to rescind its decision or have it go to a vote,” Velazquez said.
Graves added, “We and the (county) Registrar of Voters have until Aug. 22 to say the petitions are sufficient. The city council is going to be formerly notified on Sept. 5. They can either amend it or withdraw it by Nov. 13. If they don’t withdraw it and let it stand, an election has to take place not less than 88 days after it’s presented to the council.”
Graves thought that if the council withdrew the resolution it would result in a stand-alone election, which was what some in the city government believed and that it could cost $140,000 or more. But Velazquez said he had talked to his attorneys and that was not the case.
“’Not less than 88 days’ is correct, and then there’s a ‘not more than,’” Velazquez said. “I think it’s 120 days. That would fall into the March election. It looks like they’re going to have the primaries in March this year. The right choice, in my opinion, is obviously the people have spoken and the council should rescind and begin having a conversation with the public.”
When Graves checked the voting regulations, it turned out that Velazquez was right. The exact wording is: “…the council may either (a) repeal the ordinance, or (b) call an election. Sections 1410 & 9241 require the election to be held not less than 88 days from the date the resolution was adopted and not later than the jurisdictions next regular municipal election,” which would be March 2018, as the mayor had said.
Graves said, however, there is still some debate whether the resolution is an administrative act, which would qualify it as a referendum item. He also pointed out that the resolution is not an ordinance, which could confuse the issue even more as to whether a referendum is in order. He said the city is talking to the state attorney general’s office about referendums and the California Fair Political Practices Commission about campaign rules.
“There’s some question whether this can be referendized,” Graves said. “The second question is, if the mayor recused himself on the action, can he then circulate this petition and undo this action of the council? Ignacio and I probably disagree about this, but I haven’t heard definitively yet whether that’s OK. I need to hear from the attorney general’s office whether or not it’s OK. We’ve asked, but we just haven’t heard back yet.”
If a resolution does find its way to the ballot, Graves questioned whether it would pass by a 50 percent plus 1 vote margin. Velazquez had no doubt voters would show up.
“I’ve never been involved in something that had this much support in all my life,” the mayor said. “It was becoming crazy how many people wanted to become involved and how many were so angry that it got to this point. If this goes to an election, this thing would pass hands-down. Hopefully, we don’t have to get to that point and clearer heads prevail.”
When asked how things might be different going forward if the issue were to go back to the city council for more public meetings than it did in the first round of talks, Velazquez said during the earlier meetings the public did come and showed its opposition to developing the 400 Block not only vocally, but with signs and banners.
“They were ignored,” he said. “They were told ‘only you people support this.’ There were a lot of people there. Once that got rejected, they got angry and frustrated because nobody was listening to them. So it kept moving forward. It’s one of those lessons on how government works. It doesn’t have to go to an election. The council just has to choose to listen to the people.”
Velazquez said that if the council votes to rescind the resolution, then the process begins as a blank slate and he would recommend the conversation begin with the public on the future for downtown, which would mean some entity besides those involved with the current project would have to buy the property from the successor agency, which controls it.
According to Velazquez, that would be the city.
“In 2014, the city was going to purchase that property for a public plaza, and everybody at the time agreed that would be the best use of that space,” he said. “It got tabled and when it came back it was this whole different thing. To say it was always intended to be for buildings is absolutely wrong.”
If the city owns the property and designs a venue to attract foot traffic, existing businesses will profit and new businesses would quickly follow, the mayor claimed. He said the issue, though, is one of vision.
“My vision is more of a community center as the heart of downtown where hundreds of people come every day,” he said. “A building with condos and retail below is not going to do that. We know this because we see the empty spaces downtown. We see what Gilroy has done. It’s the same concept and it has failed. You don’t take an empty space that everyone wants and put a building on it.”
So now Graves needs to start counting and verifying the petitions before forwarding them to the county registrar.
“We certify if the petition is sufficient or insufficient,” he said. “If it’s insufficient, it just stops. We hang on to them for eight months and then he can have them back.”
If the matter does go to the ballot, Graves said it would not cost $140,000, as he and others previously thought, but there would still be a cost, more likely in the $80,000 range, which would come out of the General Fund because the city does not have a reserve to pay for it. And he said there still could be an issue with the wording of the petition.
“It should have come from our city attorney,” he said. “But when I talked to the city attorney, he didn’t seem too concerned because they had checked in with him periodically. But he’s new and I think this is his first referendum. Normally it (wording) does come from the city attorney.”
Graves said that if the council rescinds the resolution it cannot be taken up again for at least a year.
“The problem with that is the successor agency has been directed by the Department of Finance to sell this piece of property,” he maintained. “There’s a lot of confusion with this. The fact that the mayor recused himself, which was a good decision on his part, but wants to come back and circulate a petition as a private citizen, I’ve never seen that before and I’ve been looking into it. I hope he can because I know he’s done a lot of work around this, but there’s some question whether or not he can do it.”
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