City manager asks the council to decide by Feb. 6 whether there
will be a motorcycle rally this summer; HIRC appears bankrupt
Hollister – The fate of the Hollister Independence Rally remains uncertain, but the City Council now has a Feb. 6 deadline to make an unequivocal decision whether to cancel it or find a group with enough capital to run the annual event.
City Manager Clint Quilter told the council Tuesday that a decision was needed by Feb. 6 to give city staff enough time to prepare for the event or publicly state that it would be canceled.
In November, former Hollister Independence Rally Committee members Dave Ventura, Helen Nelson and Bruce Beetz formed Ghostrider Promotions and submitted a rally proposal to the city that would have moved the event to Hollister Municipal Airport. But the group officially dropped out of the running Tuesday. Ventura told the council that Ghostrider would not have enough time to organize the event this year, but would be interested in hosting the rally the following summer.
“We are very interested, but just not for this year,” Ventura said. “We would really like to look at 2007 to put this on at the airport.”
Two months ago, the council voted 3-1 to terminate HIRC’s contract with the city to put on the biker rally after the group had organized it for nearly a decade. Council members said they couldn’t condone spending at least $300,000 from the city’s general fund each year for a single event – the 2005 rally stuck the city with a $360,000 law enforcement bill, which HIRC won’t be able to reimburse.
HIRC, which had already taken thousands of dollars worth of deposits from vendors planning to attend the rally in 2006, has since closed the doors to its San Benito Street office and taken down its Web site. A sign on the door the office said that HIRC had suspended its operations and directed visitors to a Santa Clara bankruptcy attorney.
Ventura said he did not know if vendors who had already put down deposits to reserve locations would be reimbursed.
“I wish them the best of luck,” he said.
Ventura would not confirm if HIRC had filed for bankruptcy and referred questions to HIRC Treasurer John Loyd, who did not return phone calls Wednesday.
City Council members discussed the rally, defined their positions on its financial impact to the city and heard input from the public Tuesday night, but did not make a decision on a contract proposal it received from Marlon Moss in November. Moss, representing a group called the Hollister Rally Commission, had proposed keeping the rally downtown and moving the main stage and beer garden to the vacant Fremont School yard on Fourth Street.
Although Moss has not drawn up a formal contract for the city, he told the council Tuesday that he was willing to secure a $150,000 bond to prove that he had the capital to cover rally expenses.
But Mayor Robert Scattini and other council members didn’t appear assuaged.
“The reason we’re not taking (Moss’s proposal) too seriously is because it’s going to take more than $150,000,” Scattini said. “If he came back and said he had a $450,000 bond, that’s different.”
Since November, the council has been hoping for a group to come forward with enough money to finance the rally without putting any financial strain on city coffers.
“My priority is the financial part of it right now,” Councilwoman Pauline Valdiva said. “You can’t do it without the money.”
Although time is limited, Scattini is convinced that another group still has time to come forward with an acceptable rally proposal.
