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As the new chair of the San Benito County Board of Supervisors, and also the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), Kollin Kosmicki gave a 180-degree turn to the agency watching over the boundaries of the county’s two cities and nine special districts. Among the changes he has made, on Feb. 13, Kosmicki recommended removing LAFCO’s public member commissioner, Richard Bettencourt, and his alternate, Elia Salinas—an unprecedented move not just in the county, but across California.
He also paused a study LAFCO had been working on for more than a year and rescinded the invitation for special districts to join the agency.
Kosmicki told BenitoLink that LAFCO is “crucial,” and he has pushed fundamental changes to align it with the “slow growth” agenda on which he campaigned.
“When I was elected, I committed to slow growth, to responsible growth, preventing sprawl, and improving our infrastructure so that we could eventually grow at a reasonable pace,” Kosmicki said. “Growth is at the top of the list when it comes to political issues in this community (…) I’m standing up for our residents and I take my role very seriously to represent the majority of our community.”
Every county in California has a LAFCO. They were created in the 1960s to put the brakes on the unbridled growth of the post-war era. Their mission is to oversee the creation of new cities and local government agencies within a county, preventing sprawl development and protecting agricultural lands.
While LAFCOs don’t approve development projects or make decisions regarding zoning and land use, with their authority over city and district boundaries, they end up influencing county planning.
“The decisions made at LAFCO are the most crucial steps in the development process,” Kosmicki said. “LAFCO makes decisions on annexations into the cities of Hollister and San Juan Bautista. Once the annexations occur, under the current laws in the state of California, it makes it very, very difficult to stop development from happening whether you like it or not.”
Kosmicki was elected chair of the Board of Supervisors on Jan. 6. That same day, he proposed to appoint himself as one of the county’s LAFCO delegates, which the board approved unanimously. And in just two months since joining LAFCO, he has made three moves that shifted the agency’s direction.
Removing a LAFCO Commissioner
Four of the five LAFCO commissioners in the county are elected officials. In addition, every LAFCO in California has a “public member” commissioner, and Bettencourt had been San Benito County’s for 14 years. Having learned that Kozmicki intended to remove him, Bettencourt resigned his seat before the meeting, because, as he told BenitoLink, he “decided not to be fired.” Kosmicki then proposed to remove Salinas, a motion approved by supervisor Dom Zanger and Hollister mayor Roxanne Stephens.
Kosmicki told BenitoLink there were two reasons for removing Bettencourt and Salinas. First, he said, although he values his service to the community, he argued that Bettencourt—who was not elected by voters, but chosen by other LAFCO commissioners—shouldn’t have held on for so long to what he considers one of the most critical roles in the county.
“Public members are not elected officials and are not held accountable to the voters, and they are one of the five people making the most important land use decisions in the community,” he said. “Richard Bettencourt was on LAFCO for 14 going on 15 years, and with the current term it would have been 18 years. That is a very, very long time for somebody who’s not elected to hold one of the five most important positions in the community.”
The second reason, he said, was the need for a “change” that aligned with the current political landscape, where the “slow growth” faction holds a majority on the Board of Supervisors and in the Hollister City Council.
We have now a more of a slow growth, responsible growth, preventing sprawl platform,” he said. “It was time for a new perspective, and I want to just ensure that LAFCO’s priorities are in line with that purpose [slow growth].”
Kosmicki said he considered Bettencourt and, particularly, Salinas to be on the “pro-growth” side. He told BenitoLink that Salinas “supports unfettered growth and sprawl” and, for that reason, “she doesn’t belong on LAFCO” whose mission, he said, is preventing sprawl.
Both Bettencourt and Salinas rejected that characterization. Bettencourt told BenitoLink he doesn’t identify as a pro-growth and believes in LAFCO’s mission of “protecting prime ag land.”
“Growth doesn’t have to do anything with LAFCO. LAFCO has to do with rules. We need rules to define where our sewage would go, how much capacity we have,” Bettencourt said. He added that while he wouldn’t have necessarily supported every motion by the new chair, he believes “the more debate there is, the better for everybody.”
Salinas, for her part, said she considers herself an “advocate for economic development.”
“In my opinion, growth is going to happen no matter what, so we should prepare and plan for it,” she said.
San Juan Bautista Mayor Leslie Jordan and six members of the public voiced opposition to the removal of Bettencourt and Salinas. LAFCO Executive Officer Jennifer Stephenson advised the board against the decision.
“Turnover of commission members is challenging,” Stephenson said, “As there is a unique code and requirements for LAFCO that must be learned. Both members have institutional knowledge of LAFCO—its aims and goals—and both have attended every meeting since my starting at this LAFCO.”
BenitoLink spoke with LAFCO officials from Santa Clara, Monterey, and San Luis Obispo Counties, all of whom said they had never heard of a LAFCO commissioner being removed by their peers without cause. Stephenson, who has worked in LAFCOs for 20 years in, Plumas, Lassen, and Modoc counties, told BenitoLink she had never seen anything like this.
Rescinding the Districts’ invitation to join LAFCO
California law allows districts within counties, such as the Pacheco Storm Water District and the San Benito Health Care District, to have two seats on LAFCO, and around half of the LAFCOs in the state include their districts. San Benito LAFCO began working on incorporating the county’s nine districts in Dec. 2023, so, as the commissioners said in a letter to the districts, they could “have a vote regarding decisions that may affect them.”
On Feb. 13, Kosmicki rescinded this invitation. As he told BenitoLink, he disagrees with the idea of having certain districts as part of LAFCO.
“I just don’t see why we would allow the potential for someone, for instance, from the Aromas Water District to be one of the seven decision-makers on whether to annex property into the city of Hollister; or why somebody from the San Juan Bautista Cemetery District, for instance, would have one of the seven most influential seats when it comes to growth matters,” he said.
Kosmicki also said that adding the districts was a political move by the previous LAFCO board “to dilute” the current board’s slow-growth majority.
“They’re trying to sell it as something that would increase inclusivity. I’m calling them out and saying there were other motives behind the initiation of inviting special districts and I firmly believe that the primary motive to invite special districts was to potentially add two members to LAFCO who are on the pro-growth side,” he said, “(…) to join LAFCO and basically flip the majority of the board.”
Putting the Wastewater MSR on pause
At the first LAFCO meeting of the year, soon after Kosmicki was appointed chair, he proposed halting a comprehensive study on the county’s wastewater collection and treatment services. This is one of the Municipal Services Review (MSR) that LAFCOs have to do every five years. San Benito County’s wastewater MSR had not been updated since 2007, and the last board had been working on it since September 2023.
Supervisor Zanger and Hollister mayor Stephens supported the motion.
Kosmicki told BenitoLink he postponed the MSR’s approval because, in his view, it “widely” opens the door for a regional wastewater plant—something he believes would “vastly increase opportunities for sprawl to occur.” Because of this, he said he wanted to give the new board more time to study its implications.
At the Jan. 9 meeting, LAFCO Executive Officer Jennifer Stephenson said the MSR does not induce growth.
“The document just identifies options,” she said. “In no way can LAFCO initiate any one of these changes of organizations. That would be up to the member agencies themselves, not LAFCO. It’s purely intended to be an identification of what the options are and then clearly identify what the benefits and challenges would be, and then it’s up to the city, the county, and other affected agencies to come to an agreement on what they want to do.”
Kosmicki insists that such a process can still take place.
“It’s not shutting the door, it’s just saying, ‘Wait a second here, we need to pull back on this conversation.’,” he said. “Because the implications could be a lot more significant.”
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