Lea este artículo en español aquí.
After a five-month pause, the San Benito County Board of Supervisors has approved nearly $107,000 to resume clearing the San Benito River.
The work will focus on removing homeless encampments, cleaning up trash and towing abandoned vehicles from the Nash Road Bridge to beyond the Hospital Road Bridge.
The board allocated $150,000 from county reserves for the clearing during its Jan. 23 meeting, but about $43,000 will be reimbursed, as the county won a state grant through CalRecycle’s Farm and Ranch Solid Waste Cleanup and Abatement Program, which funds cleanup of agricultural and rangeland areas.
Supervisors also approved additional pay for county employees performing hazardous work on the riverbanks, as well as regular updates at board meetings.
Supervisor Ignacio Velazquez will oversee the effort, with Supervisors Mindy Sotelo and Angela Curro joining him when the clearing reaches their districts—Sotelo in southwest Hollister and Curro in south county.
Velazquez said homelessness is a broader issue that extends beyond San Benito County.
“Wherever the most pressure is is where you’ll see less of the homeless,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we don’t care. We do care. But the only way to solve it is by individuals wanting the help. And we’re not giving them the help by allowing them to set up structures or communities within the river.”
The initial clearing effort began in May and lasted into August. For that effort, supervisors had allocated $352,000 to dismantle tents and improvised shelters, store residents’ belongings and fund a full-time officer to prevent new encampments from being established along the riverbed.
By June, when the previous fiscal year ended, the county had spent only $214,000 clearing the riverbanks from Hwy 156 to Nash Road, which county officials labeled phases one and two.
During that period, county officials and external contractors removed more than 30 tons of solid waste and 35 vehicles and RVs, Integrated Waste Manager Celina Stotler told the board.
Deputy Director of Community Services and Workforce Development Enrique Arreola said his staff engaged with 24 people: six were taken to the homeless shelter, four were placed temporarily in hotels, one was reunited with their family, and the rest went somewhere else.
The effort, county officials have said, has been extremely challenging.
“There are so many areas where people can hide,” said Sotelo, who went with Sheriff’s Deputy Peter O’Day to patrol the riverbed. “There’s a ton of poison oak. It’s just a complicated terrain.”
For the current fiscal year, despite nearly $138,000 remaining unspent, the county allocated only $25,000 for the clearing while it grappled with a tight budget that led to personnel cuts.
As a result, cleanup efforts in recent months have been limited, Stotler said. The lack of funding, she added, has also “constrained” the county’s ability to prevent new encampments from forming around Union Bridge, where they have increased after people displaced from the Fourth Street Bridge area moved following the May sweep.
Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki pointed out that tents have also been set up near the Fourth Street Bridge, which falls under the city of Hollister’s jurisdiction rather than the county’s. Stotler said she has been told that clearing efforts there have also been affected by the city’s own budget cuts.
When Kosmicki asked why encampments have increased near Union Bridge despite regular patrols by O’Day, Stotler said he has compared it to the “whack-a-mole” game.
“You clean an encampment or you tell them to vacate, and they simply go into another area,” Stotler said.
Supervisor Dom Zanger criticized the comparison, saying the issue should not be framed as a game. He pointed to an ordinance approved by the board prohibiting people from living in the riverbed and said it must be enforced.
“It can’t be okay just to do whatever you want,” he said. “You can’t just break the rules and break the law because you want to. We need to get serious about this in terms of the whack-a-mole game, because it shouldn’t feel like a game. I don’t believe that it’s okay to just disrespect and disregard what we did here.”
San Benito County Sheriff Eric Taylor responded by saying that supervisors needed a “reality check.” He said people are not imprisoned for violating county ordinances, and even when someone is booked, officers cannot hold them indefinitely.
“It’s almost like believing that if we arrest someone for domestic violence, they’re not going to return to their home when they get out of jail,” he said. “We can remove them, take them into our jail, which is expensive, which usually comes with price tags of medical care, and then they get released per the law—not the sheriff’s policy, it’s per the law of the state of California—they go back to where they came from, which is the river.”
The board unanimously approved continuing with the clearing, though Curro said she “struggled” with the decision.
“$352,000, and we have one person that transitioned into their home with their family,” she said. “The humanity side is killing me. You lose your water, then you lose your PG&E, then you lose your home, then you’re living out of your car, then you can’t afford your car because you can’t afford gas, and you can’t repair it. All of a sudden, you’re in the riverbed. The whole whack-a-mole, that was a great description because that’s what this is. So how can we keep funding if we’re not solving the problem?”
We need your help. Support local, nonprofit news! BenitoLink is a nonprofit news website that reports on San Benito County. Our team is committed to this community and providing essential, accurate information to our fellow residents. Producing local news is expensive, and community support keeps the news flowing. Please consider supporting BenitoLink, San Benito County’s public service nonprofit news.
You must be logged in to post a comment.