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Hollister resident, former county supervisor, small business owner and former BenitoLink committee member, Bob Tiffany, has been appointed to the California Transportation Commission by California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas.
A press release from Rivas’ office, quoted in a previous BenitoLink article, described Tiffany as “a strong community leader who will bring an open and inclusive perspective on transportation and climate issues.”
Tiffany will join the 13-member commission, which is responsible for programming and allocating funds for the construction of highway, passenger rail, transit and active transportation improvements throughout California.
Hollister Mayor Mia Casey is enthusiastic about the appointment. “I think that Bob Tiffany will really represent San Benito County and keep us in the discussions when it comes to funding. I’m excited about him being there to advocate for us.”
BenitoLink recently conducted an interview with Tiffany.
BenitoLink: How would you work with the commission to expand Hwy 25?
Tiffany: Dealing with 25 is a complicated question. And, although I’ve been involved in transportation issues locally when I was a supervisor, I’ve got a lot to learn. I was in a Zoom meeting with the Caltrans District Five representative and the executive director of COG [San Benito County Council of Governments], going through the Hwy 25 presentations and getting educated on some of the ins and outs of what we’re dealing with there.
There are a lot of issues involved, like vehicle miles traveled and how an expansion project affects that, along with mitigation costs, environmental concerns and climate change considerations. In the old days, you had the money, you just expanded the road, but it’s a lot more complicated these days.
How do you see high-speed rail helping the state and, in particular, our county?
Speaker Rivas is very supportive of high-speed rail, and I think that we certainly need a lot more public transit, including more rail service. But how that impacts Hollister or San Benito County remains to be seen. My understanding is that it goes partly through the north part of the county, but there are no stops. There is a possibility that there could be rail service from Hollister to Gilroy, but that’s probably well down the road.
Do you see any way to increase mass transportation in San Benito County?
I think it’s something we definitely have to look at. I think as part of the process of trying to move forward with 25, we are going to have to look at ways to mitigate the vehicle miles traveled, and one of the ways is by having more public transit.
I think there is some potential in running buses from Hollister to hook up with Caltrain, but I think for it to be something that’s widely accepted, there has to be a more regular and more frequent schedule. People that are going up to Silicon Valley need to know they can rely on it. But it is a part of getting more vehicles off the road, and that is certainly something we need to look at.
In 2021, the county estimated it needed $12 million a year for road improvements. How can we increase revenue to get the work done?
I’m pretty passionate about this issue, and I’ve spoken out about this quite a bit when I was on the Board of Supervisors. I think there’s a disconnect: people don’t realize that a lot of it is driven by a lack of revenue. We are only getting 11 cents on the dollar in property tax, which is right at the very bottom of all the counties in the state. The county has a very limited number of commercial businesses that generate sales tax.
So I’m a big advocate for attracting more businesses, commercial or industrial, to San Benito County. A lot of people don’t realize that, say, the Amazon plant is in the city of Hollister, so the county’s not getting that revenue to help pay for the roads. There needs to be more sales tax revenue flowing into the county to provide better services. There is something like 450 miles of county roads, so we need a lot more revenue to really deal with them.
Do you see any way of squeezing more money from heavy users like Amazon?
I guess that’s an interesting idea, but again, Amazon is in the city of Hollister, so I don’t know if there is anything that could be done to help the county in that area. At Amazon, all those vans are going out for delivery. They start within the city limits, and very quickly, they are on county roads
There is a bigger issue: I would love to see the county and the city of Hollister work together much more collaboratively. We are starting to see that happen on things like the wastewater treatment plant, but I think it should also happen in the area of roads.
A high percentage of people in Hollister are commuting outside the county for work. What can we do about that other than encourage job growth here?
Highway 25 really dominates the narrative in our community on so many levels. People are stuck in traffic, and they’re frankly angry, and you can’t blame them. I come from this area, and I hope I will bring that perspective to the commission. I think I can better represent this area because I’m very familiar with it. What I would love to see is more jobs here that will pull some of those people off the roads heading to Silicon Valley jobs. Unfortunately, I think it’s challenging to attract businesses like those when you do have this primary artery that is deadlocked a lot of the time.
If you were given a free pass on the commission to get anything you wanted done, what would your priorities be?
It’s paramount that we get 25 expanded. I mean, I went door-to-door talking to people about it in 2018 to pass a 1% sales tax to pay for road improvements. So I’ve been intimately involved and very passionate about getting that fixed as soon as we can. It’s got to be balanced with dealing with the issues of the environment and climate change, which are very critical, but that would be high on my list.
I hope to have a better sense of what the needs are within this region, but I want to take some time to get a better sense of the whole landscape for the whole state because I am representing the whole state. I don’t want to be strictly looking at it from a local standpoint. The state has transportation issues that are very difficult and there are a lot of factors that are going into dealing with traffic and congestion and the safety of our roads. But at the same time, we need to balance dealing with environmental factors and make sure there’s equity with the underserved communities. So it’s really a balancing act.
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