Land-use agency gets tour of Gilroy; local leaders hope
‘visuals’ give LAFCO a fresh outlook on city
Gilroy – Local leaders convinced officials from a regional land-use agency – one that has stymied Gilroy’s recent efforts to expand its borders – to lay down the zoning maps on Wednesday and view the city’s landscape firsthand.
They hope the “visuals” will help members of the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission, a group charged with regulating the growth of cities and preventing sprawl, approach Gilroy with a fresh outlook as the city prepares for a series of annexation requests in coming years.
Local leaders have accused the agency in the past of placing greater restrictions on the growth of Gilroy than cities elsewhere in the county, while LAFCO officials say the city has simply failed to meet its standards.
“One of my goals as mayor was to start a dialogue between the commission and city to establish a positive relationship,” Mayor Al Pinheiro told the five-member commission, shortly before heading on the tour Wednesday afternoon. “I believe LAFCO and Gilroy share the same goals … However, at times it might appear we are at opposite (poles).”
The tour included brief stops at three areas overtaken by development in recent years, as well as an expanse of land outside the city’s eastern border slated for industrial use and preservation as farmland and open space.
Planning Manager Bill Faus billed the day as strictly informational.
“We’re taking them on a tour to show them what the areas look like, not to advocate any position,” he said. But he and other officials did not fail to point out the development encroaching on various sites along the tour.
Faus pointed out the industrial uses and sewer treatment plant surrounding 170 acres of farmland adjacent to Rossi Lane, a pocket of land in the city’s southeastern reaches. Pinheiro stressed how residential and commercial development, as well as the 80-acre sports complex now under construction, has enveloped a 20-acre strip of farmland south of Luchessa Avenue. The city will apply to incorporate both areas in coming years.
“It starts to not make a whole lot of sense to farm,” Pinheiro said of the Luchessa Avenue land, which has not been farmed for two years.
LAFCO previously rejected annexation of the land, arguing that it could still support small-scale farming or other “niche” agricultural uses.
Property owner Richard Barberi, on hand for tour, expressed hope that LAFCO members would take a different stance in February, when they review a second application to bring the land within the city’s borders to allow development.
Pointing to the land surrounding his parcel, he said, “the tour shows them that here there’s residential. Over there is a sports park. And there’s my land in the middle. What can I do with it?”
Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage, an appointed member of LAFCO, said “it’s important for people to see what they’re voting on. Sometimes a map really doesn’t do it justice.”
But it remains unclear how much credence his fellow LAFCO members will give to a changing landscape and the city’s farmland-preservation policies.
Before heading out on the tour, John Howe, a Sunnyvale councilmember and LAFCO member, said that he would “probably stick with the technical side” of the agency’s policies when judging the merits of Gilroy’s annexation requests. Gilroy still has land within its borders capable of development, for instance, and LAFCO commissioners generally frown on requests to incorporate more land before the available supply is built out.
LAFCO member Terry Trumbull said the tour gave him a new perspective he would not have gained in the confines of the agency’s office.
“The spot by (Antonio Del Buono Elementary) school especially – you got to see that there is urbanized area on three sides of it,” Trumbull said, referring to another potential site for annexation. “That’s better than looking at an abstract map in San Jose.”
