Councilman Bob Dillon has a change of heart and South County
Housing’s downtown project is still alive
Gilroy – A major affordable housing project was rescued from doom Monday night when a lone councilman, reluctant to be a scrooge, had a last-minute change of heart.
Representatives of nonprofit South County Housing left council chambers shortly after city leaders failed to approve a regulatory change that would have cleared the way for the 303-unit Rancho del Sol project.
The tie vote (3-3 with Mayor Al Pinheiro recusing) amounted to a disapproval of the project by council members, who debated whether the proposal threatened the city’s vision for diverse neighborhoods and represented preferential treatment for a single developer.
But an ensuing vote, expected to be a formality, breathed new life into the project for at least a few months.
Like most land-use proposals, the South County application came in multiple parts – one request to change zoning regulations and another for building permits.
And like most applications that fail to secure the necessary zoning or regulatory changes, South County’s remaining request was expected to also fail in a subsequent vote.
But after voting against the zone change and adjourning for a brief recess, Councilman Bob Dillon returned to the dais and without any fanfare cast a ballot in favor of the permit request. The move freed South County to return with a revised application and left Councilman Roland Velasco asking “what happened?”
City Administrator Jay Baksa said he could not recall a project receiving approval on a subsequent vote after failing on the initial round of voting. Officials caught up with South County director Dennis Lalor in the City Hall parking lot to inform him of the last-minute turnaround.
“I called Dennis this morning and told him Merry Christmas,” Dillon said. “I just changed my mind on it at the last minute. I figured they should be able to come back. South County does great work and my hope is that they will come back with new language.”
Lalor said he planned to work with council members to resolve their concerns.
“We came forward with a proposal that is a solid one that is good for the city,” he said. “We still feel that way and we hope to find a way to allay those concerns.”
During council debate, Dillon said he supported the overall project but called the zone-change request a “designer ordinance” catering to a single organization.
“Not that it matters, because it’s going to be you gentleman making the decision,” he said to fellow council members. Later that night, both Dillon and Charles Morales, who lost their November re-election bids, stepped down from council.
Councilmen Craig Gartman and Roland Velasco expressed deeper reservations than Dillon before voting against the regulatory change and the permit request. Both council members maintained that the Rancho del Sol project would cluster a large number of affordable units in north-central Gilroy, counter to the spirit of the Neighborhood District Policy.
The recently-approved guidelines stress the importance of creating neighborhoods with a diverse mix of housing affordable to all income ranges.
Bernardette Arellano, a field officer for U.S. Representative Mike Honda and daughter of newly elected Councilman Peter Arellano, argued before council that too often “affordable” is used in a “pejorative way.”
In an interview, City Administrator Jay Baksa agreed.
“This isn’t downtown Chicago high-rise tenement apartments we’re talking about,” he said of the South County project. “This is pretty nice stuff. Yes there is some housing for low-income families, but there’s some for moderate and upper moderate. The key is the mix.”
To make that mix work, he said council must bring its zoning regulations in step with the times. The current language caps affordable projects at 225 units. The language proposed by South County and city staff would have capped rental apartments at 75 units while allowing nonprofit developers, under “exceptional or special circumstances,” to exceed a similar cap on the categories of single family homes and condominiums/townhouses. South County said it needed the additional units to make the project work financially.
If the nonprofit developer decides to rework the language, they will face a new council that may be as conflicted as its predecessor.
Both councilmen Peter Arellano and Dion Bracco watched the South County debate Monday night as they waited to get sworn in toward the end of the meeting.
Arellano could not be reached for comment, though Bracco said his feelings on the project have not changed since he rejected it in recent weeks as a planning commissioner.
“For one, I don’t believe I was elected to make decisions for one developer or one organization,” he said. “I don’t believe it’s my duty to make sure South County Housing or any developer is able to make (a project) pencil out. If it doesn’t pencil out, maybe it’s not the right project. I also think we’re getting a concentration of one type of housing in one area. I don’t believe we’re following the goals of the Neighborhood District policy.”
