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In the wake of the iconic Hollister Independence Rally’s return for the last two years, City Manager Ana Cortez announced at the Aug. 3 Hollister City Council meeting that she plans to request officials to postpone the event in 2027. 

Cortez’s proposal drew criticism from Councilmember Rolan Resendiz, who has been a strong supporter of the rally. Mayor Roxanne Stephens, another strong rally backer, missed the meeting.

The announcement comes in the wake of criticism of the city’s handling of the rally by the San Benito County Civil Grand Jury and a dip in attendance at this year’s event.

At the meeting, the City Council also approved responses to the 2025-26 San Benito County Civil Grand Jury report on the rally by a 4-0 vote with Stephens absent.

The council also approved a response to the civil grand jury’s report regarding the city’s requirement to file subpoenas to interview all city officials and to access all city records.  

Cortez, in her city manager report, said her proposal to postpone the rally for a year is intended to give city officials ample time to organize the rally and ensure it is well-attended. She also said it’s “highly unlikely” the city will have money for the rally in the budget for the upcoming year.

“My biggest disappointment was that we didn’t have 30,000 people, 40,000 people,” she said. “A lot goes into the planning. A lot of money spent on these events and success is attached to the number of folks that come.”

The city estimated last month’s rally attracted about 20,000 visitors, compared to 26,600 in 2025. The figures are generated from a software program that uses cellphone location data. Visitors who attend both days of the rally are counted twice. 

The rally has been held for the last two years after a seven-year hiatus starting in 2018.

Cortez’s announcement did not sit well with Resendiz, who pointed out her responsibility to take direction from the City Council. He suggested that the ad hoc committee, consisting of himself and Mayor Roxanne Stephens, review Cortez’s proposal and return to the City Council with recommendations. 

Cortez also said the city plans to release a request for proposals for a rally promoter or organizer soon. And she asked the council to consider expanding the rally to a four-day event. 

Earlier in the meeting, the City Council had approved the city’s responses to the civil grand jury’s report on the rally including recommendations to hire a security company no later than six months before the rally and provide an expenditure report within three months following the motorcycle gathering.

While the city’s response indicated it agreed with contracting a security firm as early as possible, it also disagreed with creating what it called “artificial deadlines.”

The city’s response said the deadlines are not reasonable because they would restrain city officials’ ability to negotiate a contract and that circumstances beyond its control may delay negotiations.

“That being said, the City Council intends to have security contracts in place well in advance of any event,” the city response said.

For the 2025 rally, the city contracted with American Global Security less than a month before the rally. This year, the city contracted with Citiguard 38 days before the rally.

The civil grand jury is convened annually and is composed of 19 citizens who are sworn to serve as grand jurors and investigate the operations of various government departments and agencies.

With regard to the civil grand jury’s recommendation on the rally spending report, the city’s response indicated it may be unable to have “closed the books” on the rally within three months because it depends on “fiscal year timing” and when vendors submit invoices.

“While the report may not be ready within three months as recommended by the Grand Jury, as stated earlier, such expenditures are a matter of public record and accessible to the public at any time,” the city’s response said.

For the 2025 rally, the city failed to provide BenitoLink with the preliminary and final financial reports that the promoter Roadshows, Inc was contractually obligated to submit to the city. The city ultimately provided its own financial report.

The civil grand jury report also noted city officials failed to provide some of the documents it requested with regard to the rally’s cost. 

The city also disagreed with the civil grand jury’s finding that the ad hoc committee made up of Resendiz and Stephens “made the majority of decisions for the rally” rather than the full council. The city’s response cited minutes of multiple council meetings during which it said the full council discussed the rally, but did not include those minutes nor the meeting dates.

“While the City Council relied on the ad hoc committee and staff’s advisory role prior to implementing decisions, the City Council retained authority,” the city said.

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A recent Hollister School District agenda revealed that San Benito County Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki has been paid to provide communication services to the district. Kosmicki and School District Superintendent Erika Sanchez brushed off any potential conflict of interest concerns.

Kosmicki, a former journalist, said there is no “real” crossover between the two public agencies and that he has recused himself from “a couple” of county items that involved the school district “out of abundance of caution” to ensure there are no questions over potential conflicts.

“I’m a county supervisor and I’m allowed to do other work,” Kosmicki said. “I do it in my spare time.”

At a July 28 Hollister School District Board of Trustees meeting where the latest contract with Kosmicki was approved, Sanchez said it’s not a conflict of interest because he is a private contractor and that it would only be a conflict of interest if Kosmicki served in a school leadership role such as being on the board.

“If a supervisor were to also be a vendor and then attempt to get a contract under that umbrella as a supervisor, that would be a conflict of interest,” she said. 

At that meeting, a public speaker who identified himself as Neil Dickson said he had concerns of potential conflict of interest and asked if the services had been put out to bid and if there were other vendors who were considered. 

“I’m questioning the award of that contract,” he said. “I want to know the background of the award of the contract.”

Sanchez said this last contract did not go out for bid. She did not say if other vendors were considered. 

Kosmicki said was approached by the district to provide those services and that he could not remember when it began but that it has been “a few years.” 

Sanchez said the district has been contracting this work for six years, but it is unclear when Kosmicki started. She did not responded to BenitoLink’s request for clarification before publication.

The Hollister School District Board of Trustees unanimously approved on July 28 a $25,000 contract with Kosmicki for “assistance” with news releases, videos and web content for the upcoming school year. 

Kosmicki told BenitoLink the contract is for writing positive stories of activities happening at the school sites such as graduations, and occasionally reviewing news releases.

The two previous contracts BenitoLink found in the district’s website dating back to March 2025 between the school and Kosmicki were agendized under an item titled “Consideration and Approval on Ratification of Contracts under $15,000” within the consent agenda, which is generally approved without discussion.

For those contracts, the district only provides the name of the vendor, the date, the amount and a short description of the services. No copies of the contracts are included in the agenda when the payment is under $15,000.

Kosmicki said if there are any potential issues that arise he could recuse himself from participating in that discussion and not vote.

Kosmicki most recently recused himself on Dec. 2 at the Board of Supervisor meeting from discussing and voting on an non-monetary agreement allowing San Benito County Behavioral Health to provide prevention and education services to students referred to the county for the 2025-26 school year. 

At that meeting, Kosmicki said he was recusing himself because the school district was a source of income of more than $500 for the past 12 months. He said the item had returned to the board because he intended to abstain or recuse himself from the item on Nov. 18 but realized he had not.

While the contract states Kosmicki “shall receive no assistance, direction, or control from the district,” he said he has no discretion and only produces content the district requests. 

“I’m very proud of the work I do for the school district and I just do what I can to help the district inform the public and families of school district happenings,” he said.

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.

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Santa Clara County and state leaders are gearing up for legal battle to block a planned ICE facility in South County.

The lawsuit filed last month by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and county officials argues the federal government has illegally bypassed environmental laws, local zoning rules and other statutes in advancing the project just east of Gilroy. A hearing to consider plaintiff’s preliminary injunction seeking an immediate halt to construction work is set for Sept. 9 at San Jose’s federal courthouse.

Revelations about the planned facility, first reported by San José Spotlight in May, have sent shockwaves throughout the Bay Area. Planning documents suggest the facility will include enough detention space to hold 150 people, fueling concerns that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may be preparing for more extensive operations in the region.

Opponents of the project, located on unincorporated county land at 7240 Holsclaw Road, view the lawsuit as the most promising avenue to block it. San José Spotlight reached out to legal experts for their perspectives on the lawsuit, and what to expect as court proceedings get underway in just over a month.

What’s in the case?

The lawsuit names the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE and the property’s owner — an LLC belonging to development firm Elmwood Capital Group — as the defendants.

In making their case to block the project, state and county officials argued federal authorities have failed to conduct environmental reviews or consult with state and local authorities, as required by federal mandates laid out in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act. They also said the facility violates zoning rules that reserve the property exclusively for agricultural uses.

DHS has not laid out a detailed response to the legal claims — and representatives have repeatedly said there are no plans to create a detention center at the location. The claim contradicts blueprints which bear the logos for ICE and DHS and outline an ICE facility with detainee processing areas, as well as interview and holding rooms.

Federal officials have agreed to temporarily pause construction and demolition work at the site — first observed in April — under a compromise agreement struck earlier this month between both parties.

What are the environmental concerns?

The 25-acre parcel likely contains hazardous materials due to its history of use for agricultural research, according to the complaint outlining the state and county’s case.

“There are three decades of documented leaks and spills on the Holsclaw Property from hazardous materials, including thiram, a toxic fungicide, along with releases into the property’s septic system of DNA extraction waste, ethidium bromide, calcium hypochlorite and acid-based chemical wash water,” the complaint reads.

Given the risk development work at the site poses to the surrounding ecosystem and the agricultural value of land, the injunction asserts NEPA requirements obligate the federal government to conduct an environmental review of the project before proceeding.

“If there is a potential issue, you at least have to investigate it,” Tseming Yang, an environmental law professor at Santa Clara University, told San José Spotlight. “You then have to analyze it and then describe it, and it has to be in the document.”

In addition, the complaint warns that the planned 20,0000 square-foot facility could overwhelm the area’s septic system, which was designed for much more limited use.

The property owner has previously asserted that any construction work conducted at the site is covered by federal exemptions, according to court documents.

Even if the court sides with plaintiffs on their environmental arguments, the decision would likely only delay the project until the government can make good on environmental review requirements, according to Yang, who previously served as an attorney in the Environment Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

But that delay could be substantial, David Sloss, a constitutional and property law professor at Santa Clara University, said.

“NEPA can slow stuff down a long time,” Sloss told San José Spotlight. “They can hold it up probably until the Trump administration is no longer in office, and then it may become moot at that point.”

Can local rules bind the federal government?

The arguments around land use raise thorny questions about whether federal or local authority should prevail in this case.

The U.S. Constitution’s so-called Supremacy Clause means that whenever federal laws contradict state laws, the federal statutes win out. In this case, this constitutional provision may open the door for the federal government to argue that its prerogative to build a facility at this site supersedes local zoning rules.

But the legal questions get even trickier, because the lawsuit also asserts that the property owner, who is leasing the property to the federal government, is bound by a contract with the county to preserve the land for agricultural purposes.

“That contractual obligation should be binding on the federal government, unless there’s something in the lease agreement that exempts the federal government from that contractual obligation,” Sloss said.

What to look for as the case unfolds

Opponents of the facility have filed a number of amicus briefs laying out arguments in support of the lawsuit. That includes one brief filed July 27 by a coalition of more than two dozen Bay Area and Central Coast city and county governments arguing the planned facility would cause widespread economic and social harms.

But the legal terrain may be perilous for attorneys representing the county and state. Since taking office, President Donald Trump’s administration has launched a concerted effort to rollback environmental regulations, issuing a variety of executive orders that have weakened pollution standards that sought to limit environmental contamination from industrial operations and manufacture.

“The changes in the law that are being pushed by the administration, might change how the case is evaluated,” Yang said. “Courts have not been as friendly to some of the (environmental) challenges as we’ve seen.”

Contact Keith Menconi at keith@sanjosespotlight.com or @KeithMenconi on X.

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The nonprofit Kings View, which serves clients in 23 counties across the state, is ending its services in Shasta. The decision comes, Kings View leaders say, after another delay in the nonprofit’s most recent contract process with Shasta County’s Health and Human Services Agency. 

Kings View has been serving about 120 mental health clients in Shasta through two programs operating on behalf of HHSA’s Behavioral Health branch. Its first contract with Shasta began in 2018.

Over the last six years, the 75-year old nonprofit says it’s faced repeated challenges in Shasta when it comes to both timely contracts and getting reimbursed for services that were provided to clients during gaps in between contracts. 

A few weeks ago, Kings View learned that it would likely experience another prolonged gap in its contract with HHSA. That was the point at which the organization reluctantly decided to stop providing services in Shasta, Kings View Communications Director Beverly Raine said this week.

Publicly available Shasta County documentation confirms Kings View’s claims about contract gaps, but is not detailed enough to verify whether or not those gaps created financial losses for the nonprofit. 

In a series of statements yesterday and today, HHSA said the county had “paid for all contracted eligible expenses for Kings View” with the exception of the most recent June invoice, adding that it would need additional information to determine whether financial losses had been incurred by the agency during gaps in contracts.

Kings View’s contract with the county ended June 30. The nonprofit said it’s currently in the process of handing off clients and closing up its Redding-based wellness center. 

Some impacted clients pose a risk to both themselves and the community

About 20 of Kings View’s Shasta clients are enrolled in a state-mandated program known as Assisted Outpatient Treatment or AOT which provides court-ordered community treatment under what’s known as Laura’s Law. The legislation, which was signed into law in California in 2002, is named after Laura Wilcox, a 19-year old mental health clinic volunteer who was killed by someone with severe mental illness in 2001.

Under Laura’s law, individuals qualify for AOT if they have a serious mental illness that has resulted in either incarceration, psychiatric hospitalization or violent behavior towards themselves or others within the last several years. It’s specifically intended to reduce the risk of harm from individuals who experience what’s known as “anosognosia,” or a lack of awareness of their mental illness. 

The program does not force the use of medications but does provide support to assist with both medication access and use, along with other needs. California counties which have implemented AOT have reported significant cost savings through reduced hospitalization, incarceration, and homelessness, all of which are prevalent issues in Shasta. 

Kings View Clinical Officer Marilyn Sliney said a team of four nonprofit staffers have been working with Shasta AOT clients to meet their significant support needs in ways intended to protect both the clients’ wellbeing and the broader community’s safety.

“They are mostly referred through the court system,” Sliney said. “These are people who are at very high risk, very high need. The AOT program helps to keep them safe and increases the safety of the community, by helping them to manage their pretty severe mental health diagnoses.”

AOT is just one of two programs that the nonprofit has been running in Shasta. The other, Sunrise Mountain Wellness Center, located off Hilltop Drive in Redding, has been providing a variety of holistic mental health support services to about 100 clients each month, regardless of income level or insurance. Walk-in clients have been able to receive free lunches, transportation, peer mentoring and access to a number of social activities and behavioral health classes that provided them with stability, engagement and care. 

The nonprofit says it operated the two programs interdependently in Shasta, using a shared building and regional director to provide cost efficiencies. Both programs were funded by the state’s Mental Health Services Act, which was replaced by the Behavioral Health Services Act this year.

Updated requirements under BHSA have meant changes are necessary in how the wellness center is operated in order to allow it to continue to qualify for state funding through the county. It’s a similar challenge to that being faced by Hill Country Community Clinic’s program in Burney, which has also been receiving MHSA funding for a wellness center through a contract with HHSA.

In interviews this week, Kings View staffers said last November was when the two nonprofits began engaging in discussions with the county about how to evolve wellness center programming to comply with new funding rules as they came into effect mid-year. The changes require more evidence-based programming, Sliney said, something Kings View was prepared to offer under a “clubhouse” model that can be funded through a subset of BHSA known as BH-Connect. 

HHSA confirmed many of those statements, saying RFPs for the clubhouse model were awarded to both Kings View and Hill Country in May to facilitate new funding for community services under BHSA guidelines. Kings View’s latest contract ended June 30, and the organization has been awaiting execution of a new contract.

Issues occurred when Kings View learned only a few weeks ago that the county was not prepared to enter into a new contract for months, perhaps six months or more, leaving a substantial gap between when the current contract ended and when a new one might be executed. 

The nonprofit says it can’t absorb the cost of maintaining staff during a prolonged contract delay. And without the cost efficiencies from the wellness center, the nonprofit says, it also cannot afford to continue to provide AOT services under a new contract this year. As a result, the nonprofit is ending both services in Shasta.

Sliney called the decision a “very, very difficult transition for Kings View to make,” saying while the organization is committed to providing services to individuals in need and has a special passion for the work in Shasta, it’s clear that the nonprofit’s work here cannot continue, at least not under these circumstances.

“Unfortunately, as much as we are mission-driven, we are also an organization that has fiscal responsibilities,” Sliney explained, “and sadly there have been instances historically where there’s been a gap in contract [with HHSA] and some of those instances we were not able to be reimbursed for any of those costs in that gap.” 

She said the county’s initial discussions with Kings View this May indicated that September was a likely start date for the new clubhouse model. That was workable, Sliney said, explaining that Kings View was willing to continue paying staff costs for the wellness center over that time period, despite knowing that those costs would never be reimbursed. It wasn’t until the organization learned a few weeks ago that the earliest date for execution would likely not be until January that a decision to withdraw from Shasta was made.

Kings View Communications Director Raine explained it this way.

“Kingsview is a nonprofit organization, so we have to be stewards of our budgets and our revenues and it was just more money than we could agree to absorb,” Raine said. 

In response to questions from a reporter, HHSA said the agency had paid “all contracted eligible expenses” through May adding that it was unable to speak to the specific issue of financial losses without additional data.

HHSA added that both Kings View and Hill Country were informed that executing a contract could take three to six months or longer, “depending on the process of negotiations.” Asked why executing the contract with Kings View would take months to accomplish, HHSA shared that “in general, a three-month duration is a reasonable and typical time frame to execute a contract,” adding that a “typical contract” could take six months. Sliney said HHSA has told the nonprofit that the contract delay was due to the county’s need to continue sorting out issues related to state funding.

Moving forward, HHSA confirmed for Shasta Scout that it will be serving the needs of AOT clients in-house. The agency said it tentatively planned to hire between 2-4 staff to meet AOT needs, and would be planning to fill those roles within the coming months. 

“The County is working closely with Kings View to transition clients into HHSA’s care while maintaining continuity of services and minimizing disruption,” HHSA Administrative Branch Director Erin Watts said.

In an interview yesterday, Kings View staffers expressed deep concern for the clients the nonprofit has been serving in Shasta, especially those in the state-mandated Assisted Outpatient Treatment program or AOT, whose care is intended to prevent harm. 

Sliney described the Kings View AOT team as always out in the community wherever patients are staying, helping them to manage their emotional regulation, mental health impacts and need for resources —  including food, shelter and clinical treatment. She said it’s a level of care that’s imperative to ensure not only their wellbeing but also community safety. 

“They have to be supported and served” Sliney said, “or there is going to be increased emergency services, hospital visits, or physical or safety issues involved.”

Kings View had similar concerns for wellness center clients, expressing worries that they won’t be connected with the resources and human connection they need to stay stable. HHSA responded by saying that the agency’s Peer Support Program “provides similar assistance,” adding that a peer support specialist is available to youth and adults regardless of their insurance provider.

Moe Shimizu contributed reporting for this story.

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For the first time in over 35 years, the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking community input to form a community involvement plan for the Iron Mountain Mine Superfund site.

Located about 9 miles northwest of Redding in the Klamath Mountains, Iron Mountain Mine is a 4400-acre site that was mined for minerals, primarily by the Mountain Copper Company, from the 1860s to 1963. It’s famous for being one of the most toxic Superfund sites in the country, the polluted runoff from which was responsible for mass fish kills in the Sacramento River during the 1940s. 

Today, contamination at the site is controlled through an extensive treatment system overseen by the EPA, and officials say it poses no immediate threat while those systems remain in operation. 

Noemi Agagianian, the community involvement coordinator for the site, reassured Shasta Scout that no major changes are planned as the EPA solicits feedback from the community to determine how it can most effectively communicate with the residents and other interested parties moving forward. 

What made Iron Mountain Mine so toxic, and will it ever be fully cleaned up?

Iron Mountain Mine was actively mined for about a hundred years, primarily for minerals that were rich in sulfur. When those minerals are exposed to air and water, they produce a metal-rich acidic runoff that leaches into local waterways, and eventually, the Sacramento River, according to the site’s Remedial Project Manager Wayne Praskins.

The site’s water has been classified as some of the most acidic in the world — the pH has been recorded at levels below zero. For context, battery acid has a pH of about 0.8.  

In the 1980s, the EPA got involved after the federal Superfund program was created to clean up toxic sites and return them to productive use. A large water treatment plant was constructed at the site and has been in operation since 1994, neutralizing the acidic runoff and removing most of the metals from water that drains from the mines. 

“We’ve been successfully controlling this runoff for the last 30 plus years,” Praskins said. While there are no big changes in the immediate horizon, the EPA is looking into whether it can recover some of the leached metals for reuse. 

Today, daily site operations involve water sampling, moderation of the plant and recording data on water quality. Since chemical reactions continue as long as oxygen and water are able to reach exposed sulfide minerals, the plant would have to operate “for centuries” before EPA oversight is no longer needed, Praskins said. 

While the Iron Mountain Superfund site is supervised by the EPA, a separate site operator is responsible for day-to-day operations. The site operator manages a full-time staff of about 15 to maintain the site, while the EPA provides oversight and regular inspections. Funding comes from a 2000 legal settlement — one of the largest environmental settlements in history — with Aventis CropScience USA, the corporate successor to the historic mining company that operated Iron Mountain Mine. Under the settlement, the business has committed to financing the site’s cleanup for 30 years.

Four years away from that contract’s expiration, the EPA is still developing plans for how the replacement site operator will be hired, but Praskins said “it will probably be a similar arrangement” to the current system. 

Here’s what an update to the site’s community involvement plan will mean

The EPA is currently seeking community input as it updates its community involvement plan for the Iron Mountain Mine site, a process that has received relatively little public attention. Shasta Scout first learned of the outreach after a source spotted a notice posted at a rural post office.

A community involvement plan is legally required for all Superfund sites. It specifies EPA-planned community involvement activities in response to needs that are identified through interviews and other research. 

At the Argonaut Mine Superfund site in Jackson, California, for example, interviews conducted as part of a community plan update led to increased engagement with a local historical society. The group had raised concerns about protecting historic mining features during cleanup, according to Mikayla Rumph, who manages media relations for EPA Region 9, which includes Shasta County.

Shasta is home to two Superfund sites. The Afterthought Mine Superfund site — which was added to the EPA’s National Priorities List in September 2024 — is still finalizing its first community involvement plan, though completion was originally scheduled for this February. Like Iron Mountain Mine, historic mining at Afterthought, located near Bella Vista, led to contaminated mine waste that began entering nearby waterways that feed into the Sacramento River. Rumph said interviews for the site’s community involvement plan led to increased outreach to downstream residents as well as to recreational users of local creeks. 

Agagianian hopes the CIP for Iron Mountain Mine can have a similar impact. She has spoken with about a dozen community members about Iron Mountain Mine since the community outreach process began a few months ago. She said progress is “in a pretty good state right now,” but the team made the decision to extend the timeline for interviews until the end of July to talk to as many interested parties as possible. 

The EPA said it has reached out to existing site partners, local government agencies, community organizations and tribes to spread the word, in order to hear from as wide a cross-section of the community as possible. “We’re casting a pretty broad net in terms of who we want to speak to,” Agagianian said.  

Many interviewees so far have wanted reassurance that the site continues to be treated and that no major operational changes are planned, according to Agagianian. The need for ongoing communication with the community regarding the site has also been a recurring theme of interviews.

The last community involvement plan for Iron Mountain Mine was written in 1990. Most Superfund community plans are updated according to a timetable, such as every three or five years, or when significant changes to the site conditions occur. Since the operations at Iron Mountain Mine have remained in a long-term maintenance phase, there hasn’t been an event to trigger a revision. But Agagianian said the agency felt it was about time to check in with the community to make sure the plan reflects current residents’ concerns and questions. 

Once the interview process with community members is complete, Agagianian and her team will begin drafting the updated community involvement plan. The plan will offer site background along with reflections on what residents shared in their interviews. Based on this information, it will prescribe methods of engaging with the community moving forward.

Agagianian emphasized that the plan will act as a “living document” — changing as the needs of the community change. The EPA hopes the plan will be released to the public before the end of the year. 

Community members who wish to be interviewed for the project should reach out to agagianian.noemi@epa.gov. 

Maya Nelson is a student at Brown University. She’s reporting for Shasta Scout as a 2026 summer intern with support from the Nonprofit Newsroom Internship Program — created by The Scripps Howard Fund and the Institute for Nonprofit News.

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MENDOCINO CO., 7/15/26 — The federal money that paid Mendocino County farmers to grow food for their hungry neighbors ran out at the end of May.

The Ukiah nonprofit that oversaw the program says nothing here can take its place.

“While we may receive smaller grants/donations, there are no local funding sources that can cover this amount of funding gap for food purchasing,” said Haerah Baird, who manages food systems programs at the nonprofit North Coast Opportunities.

What the state has offered instead is $15 million to cover one year. Baird can’t yet say whether it will do any good.

“We have yet to find out how the approved $15 [million] will be allocated and whether it will be functionally useful, since there are costs associated with operating the program,” she said.

Since 2022, the program paid farms to grow food for people who couldn’t afford to buy it. Farmers got paid. Food banks got fresh local produce. Families who were going hungry got vegetables grown a few miles from where they lived.

Those contracts are gone. What replaced them is a one-year stopgap nobody can vouch for yet.

And a Laytonville farmer who sold his produce for the program says the county lost more than a way to feed people. It lost a food network— one the county will need the next time a fire or an earthquake hampers supply chains.

The money

The program was called the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, or LFPA. The federal government paid food banks to buy from small and local growers. California’s version was called Farms Together. The California Association of Food Banks oversaw it, along with the Community Alliance with Family Farmers and Fresh Approach.

In Mendocino and Lake counties, the money moved through the Mendo-Lake Food Hub, a program of North Coast Opportunities, which ran it since 2015. Statewide, the program brought California-grown food to over 50 food banks, buying from hundreds of farmers.

The Trump administration canceled the contracts in March 2025. The last of the money in California ran out at the end of May.

The food hub sits between the farms and the food banks. Farmers list what’s ready — a few cases of tomatoes, several dozen bunches of kale. The hub gathers it up and moves it where it needs to go.

Since 2024, the program money paid for $451,200 in contracts between the hub and Mendo Food Network, Baird said. Mendo Food Network runs the Fort Bragg Food Bank and supplies pantries around the county. Thirty-nine local farms took part. Everything went to the network’s main warehouse in Willits, which distributed it from there.

Last year that pipeline carried more than 70,000 pounds of local farm food.

Across the life of the program, Farms Together moved about 207,253 pounds into that food bank system. That works out to roughly 172,710 meals. The figures come from a closeout letter the program sent to help the food bank approach donors.

Those totals are program-to-date, Baird said. Most of the buying happened within six or seven months, from about May or June to November.

But the contracts behind that pipeline are gone.

Baird said the program had become more than a way to stock a shelf. It was a dependable customer for small farms that have few outlets. Sudden cuts like this one, she said, hit small and vulnerable communities hardest, consumers and farmers alike.

There is not much slack here to take up the difference. Roughly 17,164 county residents were on CalFresh last year, about 19% of the population, against about 14% statewide.

What it cost the farmer

On Monday, in the hills north of Laytonville, Casey O’Neill was picking scallions. O’Neill is familiar to Mendocino Voice readers from his weekly column about the challenges of farming in the hills above Laytonville.

The scallions were bound for food banks in Lake County, bought through a grant program that runs through the food hub. It’s the kind of transaction that’s become rare in Mendocino County this year, and O’Neill knows exactly how rare.

“Being able to send this produce today is big for my farm,” he said.

O’Neill runs HappyDay Farms, a vegetable and cannabis operation that sells through the hub. He’s one of the 39 farms that provided fresh produce for the program.

Losing Farms Together cut his vegetable income by about a fifth, he said.

“It was a reduction in our vegetable income, I would say, of about 20 percent from last year,” he said. “We’ve been able to backstop it in some areas, but it definitely made sales a lot more difficult this spring.”

What bothers O’Neill isn’t mainly the money.

“A lot of times local food is not affordable for the people who are the most vulnerable in our communities,” he said. “And that was a really solid and elegant mechanism for getting food to people, getting fresh local produce to people who otherwise can’t afford it and don’t have access to it.”

What it cost the networkers

At the other end of that pipeline is Rachelle Sutherland, deputy director of Mendo Food Network, the nonprofit that took the food in and pushed it back out across the county.

About half the network’s partner agencies got produce through the program, she said in an email.

“Approximately half, if not more, of Mendo Food Network’s agency partners received organic produce through this program, along with our own direct distribution at Fort Bragg Food Bank,” Sutherland said. “It was an important resource that helped expand the variety of fresh produce available to the communities we serve.”

What people will see isn’t an empty shelf. It’s a narrower one.

“Families will still have access to fresh produce, but they will likely see a smaller selection of organic fruits and vegetables,” she said. “While we remain committed to providing healthy food, the loss of this program means we won’t have the same variety of organic products available.”

The network is now asking the public to cover part of what the federal government stopped paying for. Sutherland confirmed that the network’s recent Freight Fund campaign was a response to the cuts. It’s a drive to keep food moving around a county where the distances are long and the fuel isn’t cheap.

“Our Freight Fund campaign is connected to these funding reductions and the rising costs of fuel and freight,” she said. “As transportation costs continue to increase, community support through the Freight Fund helps ensure we can continue moving food throughout Mendocino County and getting it to the people who need it most.”

The bridge

When the federal contracts were killed, the Farms Together coalition asked Sacramento for $45 million to replace them. It got a third of that.

The 2026-27 budget Gov. Gavin Newsom signed June 29 includes $15 million to keep the program alive for one more year. The figure survived the final budget deal intact, Baird said: “Yes, it was fully approved.”

But what that money has to cover is a good deal larger. Baird said her understanding is that the state’s $15 million stands in for what had been $80 million in federal money.

The program also has to be rebuilt before it can spend anything. Farms Together is moving between state agencies, Baird said, and “the entire Farms Together program will need to be redesigned at the state level” — work that carries its own costs.

 The Food Network’s Sutherland said the California Association of Food Banks, which ran the program, is still working out how the state money gets divided.

“We’re encouraged that the state has allocated $15 million as a one-year bridge, but California Food Banks is still determining how those funds will be distributed,” she said. “At this point, we don’t know what Mendo Food Network’s allocation will be, so it’s too early to say whether it will fully address the impact of these cuts.”

It’s a bridge, not a rescue. If the money holds, it could buy 12 months. After that, farmers and food banks expect to ask again, and to keep asking, until Congress restores the federal program.

A rehearsal for disasters

The linkages the program paid for — farm to hub, hub to food bank, food bank to pantry — aren’t just a way to move vegetables, O’Neill said. They are practice.

“These kinds of programs are incredibly important for helping small farms survive and, again, for keeping those networks functioning to get food to people,” he said. “Because in times of crisis, you can’t just magically create food networks.”

“All of this funding, all of these linkages between food banks and between the food hub and between farms — this is all a dry run for actual real crisis,” he said. “You know, for a catastrophic earthquake or fire or flood. It’s money spent that creates multiple positive ramifications.”

And the dollars did other work on their way through, he said.

“These dollars ripple outward,” O’Neill said. “People who are in need are able to take home high-quality food to feed their families, so they can put their limited dollars elsewhere. And the farms who are receiving this income are able to pay labor. When I go to the feed store in Laytonville, I’m spending money that came in from this grant program. Then that money is still circulating within the community.”

“The dollars that come in, they’re circular in effect, and they create more than just a dollar’s worth of effect on the ground here in these communities,” he said.

The program made a version of that claim itself. In a closeout letter to donors, Farms Together said every dollar spent with small and mid-sized farms returns $2.06 to the local economy. That’s the program’s own advocacy number. O’Neill arrived at it from the feed store.

On Monday, O’Neill was picking scallions. Lake County had landed a grant, he said, and the hub was buying.

Whether it runs next season is a question for Sacramento, and after that for Congress. O’Neill said he doesn’t much care which.

“I think it’s incredibly important that these programs exist and that they’re funded,” he said, “regardless of where that funding source has to come from, whether it’s federal or state.”

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A Christmas wish from his 11-year-old daughter turned into the trip of a lifetime for Hollister’s Edgar Arce and his family, who squeezed two FIFA World Cup matches, and a youth soccer tournament and Lake Tahoe trip into an unforgettable week this summer.

The Arces traveled to Houston, Texas, on June 17 to watch one of the first Group K group-stage matches between Portugal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo at NRG Stadium. One week later, they attended the final Group D group-stage match between Australia and Paraguay at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on June 25.

In between, the family made a stop in Lake Tahoe so their 11-year-old daughter Maliyah Arce could compete in a soccer tournament.

“This all started when my daughter asked me for tickets to the World Cup during Christmas,” Arce said. “It was on her Christmas wish list, and me being a big soccer fan, I was just finding an excuse to make that experience happen.”

He and Maliyah are big Cristiano Ronaldo fans.

“The Portugal game was definitely my favorite,” Arce said. “Watching Cristiano Ronaldo play. The vibe. It was at a stadium we’ve never been to. Houston was the best experience between the two matches we attended.”

“My favorite match was the Portugal one,” Maliyah said. “My favorite moment from the game is when I met IShowSpeed.”

Between World Cup matches, Maliyah competed in the CUFA Tahoe Summer Tournament with the Hollister Tremors from June 20-21.

“The Houston game was on Wednesday. We flew back home on Thursday, traveled to Lake Tahoe that weekend, came back home on Tuesday and had the second World Cup game on Thursday,” Arce said.

Arce said his daughter has been playing with the Tremors for five seasons, and it was the second year their family traveled to the tournament. The Tremors won the tournament, and the family traveled home with some new hardware.

“This was a peak experience for me,” Arce said. “I am a big soccer fan. I buy the new jerseys every World Cup, I follow my local Mexico team, I coach my daughters, and I played soccer when I was little and through college. Being at the World Cup was the cherry on top of the cake for me.”

Arce played soccer for Gilroy High School and Gavilan College in Gilroy.

“It was just the best experience, and I want to be able to top it at the next World Cup,” Arce said. 

“I want to be able to make it happen again, and hopefully I can continue the tradition with my kids.”

“I loved being there with my family, making memories and experiencing this with them,” Maliyah said. “It was amazing.”

In addition to attending World Cup matches, Arce said he hopes to travel with his family to Guadalajara, Jalisco, in Mexico to watch his favorite team, Club América, play against its rival, CD Guadalajara, also known as Chivas.

The BenitoLink Internship Program is a paid, skill-building program that prepares local youth for a professional career. This program is supported by Monterey Peninsula Foundation AT&T Golf Tour and Taylor Farms.

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Santa Clara residents and workers now have access to an on-demand shuttle service in the northern part of the city thanks to a regional effort to reduce car trips and improve transit connections.

Silicon Valley Hopper has expanded its service into North Santa Clara as of July 1, allowing riders to travel throughout the city and reach destinations that include Mission College, Rivermark Plaza, Santa Clara Square and Great America Station. The expansion completes the second phase of a four-year partnership between Cupertino and Santa Clara to grow the microtransit ride-share service, which launched in Cupertino in 2019.

“The expansion of SV Hopper makes it easier for residents to get where they need to go by providing affordable, on-demand transportation throughout Santa Clara,” Santa Clara Public Works Director Craig Mobeck told San José Spotlight. “By extending service to North Santa Clara, this program improves access to jobs, schools, shopping, regional transit and other key destinations while strengthening first- and last-mile connections that complement our existing public transportation network.”

The expansion is expected to serve about 28,600 North Santa Clara residents. City officials said the service is intended to complement existing bus, light rail and commuter rail service by expanding affordable transportation options for older adults, students, low-income riders and people with disabilities.

Unlike Uber or Lyft, SV Hopper picks riders up and drops them off at nearby street corners instead of their exact destination. Riders can request trips through the SV Hopper app or by phone, allowing drivers to transport multiple passengers traveling in similar directions. Fares cost $3.50 per ride, with discounted $1.75 fares available for students, older adults, low-income riders and people with disabilities. Each additional passenger costs $1.

Coverage increases

Growing SV Hopper’s coverage area has long been part of the cities’ plans. Cupertino and Santa Clara jointly secured about $3.6 million in grant funding — $2.9 million from the state’s Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program and $727,000 from VTA’s Measure B Innovative Transit Program — for the Santa Clara expansion in two phases.

The expanded service is projected to cost approximately $5.8 million between July 2026 and November 2027. The current grant funding will support SV Hopper through November 2027, with Cupertino and Santa Clara sharing the remaining costs based on the size of each city’s service area.

With North Santa Clara joining the system, the city’s share of the local, non-grant-funded costs will increase from 42% to 61%, while Cupertino’s share will decrease from 58% to 39%.

 Matthew Schroeder, Cupertino’s senior transportation planner, told San José Spotlight the funding pays for all operating costs through the cities’ contract with Via Transportation, which runs SV Hopper. That includes vehicle operations, drivers, dispatching, app technology, customer support, fleet maintenance, accessibility services and data reporting.

The expansion also includes additional drivers and an increase in the fleet to 16 electric vehicles. Schroeder said Cupertino, Santa Clara and Via Transportation will continue monitoring vehicle deployment, driver hours, routing performance, peak demand and rider feedback to maintain service reliability.

Officials said the expansion is expected to generate more commuter trips by connecting North Santa Clara’s employment centers with existing service to Caltrain, ACE and Amtrak. Because North Santa Clara has more jobs than residential neighborhoods, Schroeder said the cities anticipate an increase in first- and last-mile transit trips.

District 1 Councilmember Albert Gonzalez said the expansion will help residents who don’t drive, particularly in neighborhoods with limited parking.

“SV Hopper expanding to District 1 is one way to help residents who are looking for alternate forms of transportation,” Gonzalez told San José Spotlight. “It’s a plus for our community. It’s going to benefit us in the long run.”

Gonzalez said many residents living in affordable housing along Calle de Mundo have limited parking, prompting some households to sell their cars and depend on other ways of getting around.

“SV Hopper is much more direct, in a way VTA isn’t,” he said.

SV Hopper completed more than 103,000 rides in 2025 and averages about 9,000 rides each month, according to Cupertino officials. But not every rider has been satisfied with the service.

During the May 5 Cupertino City Council meeting, Peggy Griffin, an older adult who frequently uses SV Hopper, said she has experienced lengthy afternoon waits while helping people use the service to travel to medical appointments after they stopped driving.

“When we got to one of the doctors … it dropped us off okay, but picking us up, it took 20 minutes of ‘no ride available’ before she even got an offer for a ride,” Griffin said at the meeting. “Then the ride was 31 minutes for a wait. So it was 50 minutes before she even got a car to pick her up.”

Still, Griffin said she sees the service as valuable enough that riders should pay more if it helps improve reliability.

“I think that the cost of the rides needs to increase,” she said. “It’s too low.”

Schroeder acknowledged wait times can increase during peak afternoon periods when school dismissals overlap with evening commutes. He said Cupertino, Santa Clara and Via Transportation are evaluating ways to improve reliability, including repositioning pickup locations near high schools to reduce delays caused by school traffic.

Janine de la Vega, spokesperson for Santa Clara, said the city’s long-term goal is to secure additional funding to continue the service.

“SV Hopper has demonstrated strong ridership and regional value by increasing access to passenger rail, but as with any public transit service, long-term continuation of SV Hopper at this service level beyond the current grant horizon will depend on securing a sustainable mix of funding sources,” de la Vega told San José Spotlight.

Contact Maryanne Casas-Perez at maryanne@sanjosespotlight.com or @CasasPerezRed on X.

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On a bright sunny day in the Central Valley city of Selma, farmer Drew Ketelson was out with his crews harvesting nectarines. 

Ketelson, vice president of HMC Farms, grows stone fruit – nectarines, plums, peaches, apricots and table grapes. In recent years, he’s experimented with different technologies to ease the workflow on his crops. 

“We’re using moisture sensors, we’re using aerial drones, we’re using AI tools to help us analyze the weather and make better irrigation decisions,” Ketelson said. “I forget how much stuff we have until I look at the list and I go, ‘oh my goodness, we do have a lot of technology out here.’”

Ketelson is just one of many farmers in the region who have had to adapt and modernize their farm operations to maintain and increase their production. 

California’s Central Valley produces more than a quarter of the nation’s food. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 250 different crops are grown in the Valley with an estimated worth of $17 billion a year. 

Researchers at the United Nations estimate the world’s population will reach about 10 billion people by 2050. To feed the population, USDA estimates that agricultural production needs to increase by at least 47%.

To help in that effort, the ag-tech nonprofit F3 Innovate, or F3I, is launching a supercomputer at Fresno State – the first-of-its-kind in the region – to help farmers use AI to solve daily problems, and bring resources and technological support to Valley researchers and students. 

“Agriculture is facing enormous pressures and meeting those challenges is going to require faster insights, better tools, stronger partnerships and the ability to innovate at the speed of precise minute-by-minute decisions,” said Priscilla Koepke, CEO of F3I.

Ketelson, who is on the F3I board of directors, firmly believes the supercomputer and new technologies are critical for the future of agriculture. 

“I think if you’re not jumping into AI and utilizing these tools, you could be missing out on being able to maintain a margin,” he said.

‘Agriculture is facing enormous pressures’

Supercomputers are specialized machines built to process massive amounts of data at high speeds. The technology is often used by government agencies and scientists to simulate models for climate change solutions, medical research – and now agriculture. 

F3I’s supercomputer operates out of Fresno State and taps into the same data resources as UC San Diego’s Supercomputing Center. However, it’s not a new building – it works as a cloud service that users can utilize on their own. 

The nonprofit is also providing hands-on technical support to help growers, researchers and students use the technology to create solutions that fit their needs.

“The center exists in the Valley so that we can help build and benefit from the AI economy rather than watch it develop elsewhere,” Koepke said. 

Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval said he’s looking forward to the possibilities of what the supercomputer could bring to his university. 

His hope is for the school to be a leader for the Valley for AI. In the fall, Fresno State students can take a minor in artificial intelligence. 

“What we’re speaking about right now is going from like black and white television – not only to color – but to this fully immersed environment in which you are actually part of the movie,” Jiménez-Sandoval said.“It’s a huge jump from being dependent on a system like ChatGPT to being the architects of real profound change that’s going to be focused on specific issues in the Valley.”

Some farmers ‘cautiously optimistic’

Ketelson is already using the supercomputer on his farm. Most recently, he used it to track his farm vehicle performances and find out when he should replace older trucks. He also used it to obtain strategies for how to most efficiently use his fleets.

“It took me three minutes to build a whole fleet management program,” Ketelson said. “It was something that was really tangible and hands-on that just really changed my operation overnight.”

One prominent Valley farmer says he’s “cautiously optimistic” about new technology.

“There’s a lot of technology there and AI has a great deal of potential,” Westside farmer Joe Del Bosque said. “What we’re lacking right now is trying to figure out what that can do for us on the farm.”

While Del Bosque of Del Bosque Farms has been using and shopping around for new technologies to use on his ranch, he said that he’s careful and verifies how it’s operating on his crops. 

“I go out and walk the fields and my eyes can tell me a lot too,” Del Bosque said. “My eyes have a lot more experience than AI…[it’s] only as good as the information that it has to work with.”

While technological advances and AI continue to surge in his industry, Del Bosque said he’s hopeful for what it could do for farmers and farm laborers. 

“It’s going to be a long time before we’re able to get technology to replace human hands, but we need to find ways to make it easier for these human hands to do what they have to do.” 

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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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