City Council voted unanimously Monday night to authorize an almost $1.75 million contract to hire two consulting firms that will work in tandem to guide a 25-person citizen committee in updating Gilroy’s 20-year General Plan.
Over the next two years, Sacramento-based Mintier-Harnish and the Monterey-based EMC Planning Group will help revamp Gilroy’s General Plan, a process that happens every 10 years. The General Plan is a tome of visions and goals containing essential blueprints such as the Economic Development Strategic Plan, the City’s Infrastructure Master Plans and Zoning Code and an Environmental Impact Report that will assess the potential environmental impacts of the draft General Plan.
It outlines direction on important projects and issues such as downtown’s 18 vacant unreinforced masonry buildings (deemed structurally unfit to survive high magnitude temblors); future transportation needs; fiscal and economic development; residential development and climate action planning. The City is scheduled to review the updated General Plan in March 2015 and adopt it in June 2015.
“This isn’t just a glossing over,” said Senior Planner Stan Ketchum, underlining the magnitude of the project. “It’s an important process for the city.”
Painting an official portrait of the Garlic Capital in the 2030s is also a state law.
California requires cities to develop a General Plan every 10 years, explained City Administrator Tom Haglund. Since Gilroy’s last General Plan revisal in 2002, Haglund noted, California has passed a wrath of new laws on climate change – such as greenhouse gases and municipal carbon footprints – that the City must address comprehensively.
The City began the rigorous process of consultant selection in late 2012, according to Ketchum. The initial field of 12 potential suitors vying to chaperone Gilroy’s decision makers was eventually whittled down to a shortlist of three over a period of four months, Ketchum explained, with the partnership of Mintier-Harnish and EMC Planning Group eventually emerging as the chosen consultants.
The City of Morgan Hill, comparably speaking, approved a $1.5 million contract in December 2012 to hire Santa Ana-based The Planning Center | DC&E consultancy. The Planning Center | DC&E was on the Gilroy General Plan consultant shortlist as late as March 2013.
Now that Gilroy’s consultants have been hired, work will begin in drawing information from all corners and perspectives within the city.
Councilman Peter Leroe-Muñoz says he is looking forward to his first experience with the intensive process of updating Gilroy’s General Plan.
“It’s a living document for the path of the city,” Leroe-Muñoz enthused. “This isn’t something you just rubber stamp.”
As for the relevancy of the revised General Plan, Leroe-Muñoz says that having a well-thought out and unified approach will behoove the city in the long run.
“If you don’t have a guide, you could end up with a disjointed product,” he added.
Looking even further into the future of the city, Leroe-Muñoz hopes this update sparks the interest of some of Gilroy’s future politicians.
“We’re looking for younger people,” Leroe-Muñoz reasoned. “It’s important to get them to buy into the process.”
The General Plan development schedule includes eight primary elements that must be completed before the plan’s adoption in June 2015. The first element, “Project Initiation,” is already underway and is centered on establishing who will be involved in the process by forming a General Plan Advisory Committee, Technical Advisory Committee and organizing a Community Engagement Strategy. The City must also create avenues for public discourse via mediums such as a project website and interactive online Town Hall forum. Project Initiation will last until the end of July.
Other stages involve updating the City’s housing element to stay consistent with state law, defining Gilroy’s “vision and guiding principles” and evaluating land use policy alternatives.
Ultimately, the responsibility for Gilroy’s final vision rests on the shoulders of the 25-person General Plan Advisory Committee (referred to informally as GPAC) selected in the first stage of the process. Should they make a catastrophic misstep, Council retains the right of veto.
Drawn from the ranks of City Council, City Commissions, stakeholder groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and 10 “citizens-at-large” plucked from the local community, the group will have to work together to finalize the City’s blueprint. The stakeholder groups and City Commissions will select a representative in the next few weeks at their regular meetings. The 10 citizens-at-large must apply to the City Clerk’s Office by 5 p.m. Tuesday, July 9. The City will unveil the 25 GPAC members at the regular Council meeting July 15.
Mayor Don Gage is eager to meet the people who are going to step forward and have a hand in crafting Gilroy’s model for the future.
“It’s their city. I’m expecting to see diversity,” Gage observed. “Staff will provide information (via the Technical Advisory Committee) and they’ll work through it.”
The Arts and Culture Commission holds its regular meeting next Tuesday and Commissioner Phyllis Armenta expects they will discuss the GPAC. As for what’s at the top of her wish list, “there’s always the new Art Center,” she laughed.
In 2005, the City mooted plans to develop a brand new, roughly $20 million Gilroy Center for the Arts, but halted development in 2008 when the economy took a nosedive. The community has made do with the Interim Center for the Arts on the corner of Monterey and Seventh streets since 2010.
Taking wants and wishes into account and guiding the disparate group of people who make up GPAC is down to Mintier-Harnish and EMC Planning Group. The role of the consultancy firms in the whole process, Gage explained, will be to educate successful applicants about the processes and responsibilities involved in creating a General Plan.
“What do you want to accomplish?” Gage challenged his constituents.
Whoever answers the clarion call from deep within City Chambers, the City is hopeful that the 10 citizens-at-large seats will be filled with residents who haven’t necessarily participated in City issues in the past.
“Their fresh ideas on how the city should ultimately develop over the next 20 years are very important,” Haglund reasoned.
Still, fresh ideas aren’t limited to people who haven’t played the game of marrying politics and development.
James Suner, president of the Gilroy Downtown Business Association who heads the James Group – a local property development company – would like someone from the GDBA to get a say in creating the city’s future.
“What about some more commercial use on the northwest side?” Suner posed. “You have to drive all the way to First Street if you want to buy some milk.”
In addition to being concerned about the grocery needs of residents living west of Santa Teresa Boulevard, he sees wholesale integration of housing types and price ranges – apartment buildings, duplexes, townhouses all rubbing shoulders – as a key component in keeping the Garlic Capital moving in the right direction. Dismantling Gilroy’s mindset that developments should be identical to whatever they border is something Suner wants the “Land Use Alternatives” element to tackle head on between December 2013 and August 2014. He points to the cookie cutter approach in housing from Mantelli Drive to Sunrise Drive in the city’s northwest as an example of a missed opportunity.
“Let’s mix it up housing-wise,” Suner opined. “We haven’t achieved that very well.”
