In a Facebook post on March 3, San Benito County District 4 Supervisor Bob Tiffany announced that he would not seek reelection when his term runs out at the end of 2022. He gave no reason for his decision in his post, but said he planned to “continue to be actively involved in community service in the years ahead, just in a different role.”
He spoke with BenitoLink about his time on the board, his reasons for not seeking reelection and his plans for the future.
“I do want to say I am not done yet,” he said. “I have about 10 months left, but in the 14 months that I have been doing this, it has been an interesting and challenging experience. It is very diversified work, and you get into things that you would not otherwise deal with, like potholes in the far reaches of the county, landfills, homeless issues and affordable housing.”
At the time of his election in 2020, Tiffany was the president of the San Benito Business Council and had considered moving into politics after selling his car dealership in 2019. The District 4 seat had been vacated on July 21, 2020, by Jim Gillio, who cited the impact of COVID on his business as his reason for resigning.
“It was not an easy decision because I do enjoy the work,” Tiffany said. “But I really didn’t plan to be in this position before the last election. I was semi-retired when people started to twist my arm to run after Jim resigned. It is something I don’t regret at all, but it is a very demanding job. It is a full-time job in terms of hours and you have to be fully committed to it. And I did not feel ready to commit to another four years of that kind of work.”
Tiffany said he is particularly proud of his work with the board handling the COVID crisis.
“Particularly before the vaccines came out, we had a significant amount of deaths for a small community,” he said, “Kollin Kosmicki and I worked very closely with the county staff and public health people to try to do everything we could to try to make things better. Once the vaccines were available we worked to get more because there were not enough initially to go around. And since then, we have tried to get as many people vaccinated as possible. It was not popular with some people, but we did it because we felt strongly that it was the right thing to do.”
Tiffany said not running again would leave him with time to do other things, including spending more time with his wife, doing some traveling, and playing more tennis. But his involvement with the community will continue.
“It was not an easy decision because I do enjoy the work,” he said. “I still feel like I can make significant contributions. I was involved in the Community Foundation Board for 20 years and I might get back to working with them in some form or another. I am still involved in the Business Council and I want to keep pushing forward things that I think would be good for the community.”
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