After Hollister closes down rally discussion, potential
organizers look to Mission City
San Juan Bautista – Florida-based company Biker Design will ask San Juan Bautista City Council members to open their city to the annual Fourth of July motorcycle rally, after Hollister’s City Council canceled the event earlier this month.
Biker Design made an unsuccessful last-minute attempt to forge a contract with Hollister to organize the city’s annual biker rally before the City Council voted 3-2 on Feb. 6 to cancel this year’s event. Representatives of the company had been holding out hope that a round of meetings with Hollister City Council members late last week would sway at least one of the council majority to reopen the discussion and work toward striking a deal. Council members who voted to cancel the rally, however, say that they will not revisit the issue.
“I still haven’t changed my position,” Hollister City Councilman Doug Emerson said Monday.
With little hope of a deal with Hollister, Biker Design will appear at tonight’s San Juan Bautista City Council meeting. The company has not yet made an official offer and discussion is preliminary, according to Gary Nowicki, vice president/special events coordinator for Daytona Beach, Fla. Biker Design.
“First and foremost, it was Hollister,” he said. “But if Hollister is a dead issue, there’s the possibility of trying to get something started in San Juan. But who knows?”
San Juan Bautista City Councilman Chuck Geiger, who came up with the idea of holding a rally in San Juan, said that the event, though disruptive, could be a financial boon for the bucolic town which had to raise water and sewer rates last year to avoid deficit spending.
“I understand that people don’t like the sound of motorcycles,” he said. “But to me, the sound of motorcycles is the sound of money.”
Although no other San Juan Bautista City Council members returned phone calls Monday, Geiger said that San Juan Bautista can close down Third Street for motorcycle parking and have vendors set up on side streets.
“Everybody has to buy into it that this is going to make money for San Juan. Everybody can benefit from this thing,” Geiger said. “Boy, what an opportunity. Think about San Juan Bautista becoming the biker Mecca.”
As for public safety, Geiger said that police officers could be posted at each of the three entrances and exits to the town. Also, he said, the city could enter into an agreement, or memorandum of understanding, with the Mongols and Hells Angels motorcycle clubs saying that members of those groups would not cause trouble at the event.
San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill, who would be in charge of coordinating public safety if there were an event, said that the decision of whether to hold a rally belongs to the San Juan Bautista City Council.
Hill – who has said that biker rallies are “stinking, rotten events” – did say that there would be a small fraction of attendees, such as the Mongols and the Hells Angels, who would come to cause trouble and that an MOU is ridiculous.
“They’re not going to do that,” Hill said. “No public entity on the planet is going to make an MOU with the Hells Angels, a known criminal street gang.”
After the 2005 Hollister rally, which drew about 120,000 people, Hollister Police Chief Jeff Miller told the City Council that there was nearly a violent clash between the Hells Angels and the Mongols. He also said that he could not guarantee public safety at future events.
Hill said that if there is an event, he would not sign any contract for public safety unless the money to cover them was paid up front.
If a rally came to San Juan, it would be the second large-scale project city leaders would be faced with handling. For more than a year, the city has been haggling with the San Benito County Water District over a $3.8 million grant from the Economic Development Agency the agencies jointly received to overhaul San Juan’s dilapidated water and sewer system.
But the smell of motorcycle exhaust and leather has some San Juan residents salivating at the idea of thousands migrating to the town and spending their money.
Barbie Garcia, who owns Annie’s Cottage on Third Street in San Juan Bautista, believes an influx of people, and their money, coming to attend a biker rally would benefit the city and businesses.
“I think it’d be a great thing for San Juan Bautista,” she said. “This town needs some action.”
Some are a little more cautious about developing opinions about a possible rally in San Juan, however.
“I don’t know if it would be a good thing or not,” said San Benito County Supervisor Anthony Botelho, who represents San Juan Bautista. “I just hope that the plans are very well thought out and all contingencies are considered.”
Before the Hollister City Council’s fatal vote on Feb. 6, the rally had been in danger of cancellation since October, when the City Council began discussing the pros and cons of the event that cost the city $250,000 last year.
In November, the City Council voted 3-1 to terminate the Hollister Independence Rally Committee’s contract with the city to organize the rally.
During the intervening months, two groups stepped forward with rally proposals – one which would have moved the event to the Hollister Municipal Airport and another that was similar to the HIRC model of holding the rally in downtown Hollister. Neither proposal gained traction and both groups withdrew.
Just before the fateful Feb. 6 Hollister City Council meeting, Biker Design gave council members an outline of a proposal to pay the city $300,000 and organize a downtown rally for 2006. The proposal seemed to address the council’s chief concern – the rally was an expense that Hollister’s general fund couldn’t afford, and Biker Design would also pay for garbage and clean-up and would be insured for $2 million.
But, saying that the Biker Design proposal was too little too late, the council majority wasn’t swayed by the last-ditch effort and voted not to hold a rally on city property in 2006. The decision was the culmination of more than three months of discussion about the event. Mayor Robert Scattini and Councilman Brad Pike cast the dissenting votes.
“If Hollister killed it, we’ll try to go where people want it,” Nowicki said.
