GILROY
– It was a joke!
Mayor Tom Springer says his idea to build Gilroy’s new high
school on industrial land east of U.S. 101 was not supposed to be
taken seriously.
GILROY – It was a joke!
Mayor Tom Springer says his idea to build Gilroy’s new high school on industrial land east of U.S. 101 was not supposed to be taken seriously. Instead, the suggestion was a cynical attempt to show the folly of Gilroy Unified School District’s site selection process.
“(It) was meant as sarcasm to identify the problem with the current district focus/drive on site selection,” Springer wrote Friday in an e-mail to The Dispatch.
Springer’s recommendation to put the new high school in Southpoint Business Park was shared with members of the press and residents of the Day Road area before a school board meeting last week. It was also mentioned in a discussion held between the mayor and GUSD Trustee Bob Kraemer on Memorial Day.
“I can’t say I took the suggestion seriously, but it was one of many ideas I heard from the mayor over the last two years, ideas that I have looked into,” Kraemer said.
Garlic town’s mayor says a group of parcels between Kern and Wren avenues south of Vickery Avenue are in fact his top choice for Gilroy’s second comprehensive public high school. He is lobbying school district trustees to re-examine a committee decision to make a 50-acre parcel on Day Road its number-one choice.
Springer wants trustees to discuss the high school site selection process at the joint city/school district meeting June 23. Already, City Administrator Jay Baksa and GUSD Superintendent Edwin Diaz have put the topic on that meeting’s agenda, Springer said.
Trustees, however, are slated to select a high school site June 19 at their regular board meeting.
Initially, GUSD set a May timeline for choosing where to build a new high school. The district wants to open the site by fall 2008.
“The city has staff that is well versed in analyzing infrastructure and land use issues. The district knows what they need when it comes to facilities, but land use planners they are not,” Springer said Monday.
Springer said he wants to offer the use of city staff to do more preliminary study on the five parcels GUSD has been considering. A study by city staff , the mayor believes, could better compare the costs involved with developing each of the sites.
At last week’s school board meeting, GUSD staff called the Wren/Kern site likely the most expensive of the five properties. Between 10 and 20 of the 40 to 50 acres needed for a high school are owned by unwilling sellers. Staff also said that land prices and mitigation costs would be higher in the Wren/Kern area than in the Day Road neighborhood.
Springer contests those ideas. Since the city hopes to build a public park near the Wren/Kern site, costs to upgrade surrounding roads may be picked up entirely by the city, reducing overall project costs dramatically, Springer said.
