GILROY
– Mary Hohenbrink is a businesswoman and she believes in
competition. So much so that when a few weeks went by and Al
Pinheiro remained the lone mayoral candidate, Hohenbrink entered
the race just to give him some.
GILROY – Mary Hohenbrink is a businesswoman and she believes in competition. So much so that when a few weeks went by and Al Pinheiro remained the lone mayoral candidate, Hohenbrink entered the race just to give him some.
Now that two more candidates are up against Pinheiro, and after learning more about their opinions on city business, Hohenbrink believes it’s her voice that best represents Gilroy citizens.
Hohenbrink, a former systems engineer manager in Silicon Valley, has never before run for public office. But the mother of five says her experience in business gives her what it takes to manage the city’s business.
“To have political experience you need business experience. You need to understand zoning, what the general plan is and where the money comes from to fund the city,” Hohenbrink said. “If you have interviews with the right people and speak to the right people, you get the idea of what’s going on.”
Like her fellow candidates, Hohenbrink believes the stumbling economy is a major issue for the city over the next few years.
Hohenbrink is a victim of the economic bust, losing her Silicon Valley job months ago. She now does systems engineer managing within temporary assignments.
The former South Valley Middle School PTA president believes that Gilroy’s sense of community support is being underutilized in these tough economic times. She says volunteer and fund-raising efforts will help make some of Gilroy’s proposed but unfunded facilities a reality.
An artist herself, Hohenbrink sees the proposed arts and cultural center and improved storefronts as two prime ways to improve downtown. While public and private fund raising is need to do both, Hohenbrink says citizens can reduce the projects’ costs by doing some of the work themselves.
“We need community involvement (to improve downtown). If the city said … ‘this is a picture of how we want it to look’ … we could get a lot of involvement from private citizens who would be willing to, like my husband, bring their hammers and nails and help.”
Hohenbrink’s vision of downtown Gilroy is not compromised by the medical clinic that will move into the Fifth and Monterey street building the Garlic Festival Store is vacating.
“They’re willing to invest $2 million on the exterior and interior of that building which could then upgrade it, update it. They were willing to do anything that Gilroy wanted it to look like,” Hohenbrink said, including make the front 1,000 square feet of the building a retail space.
Downtown activists opposed the clinic partly because they want all shops in the downtown core to be specialty retail stores, not professional services.
Hohenbrink doesn’t mind the influx of big box retailers on the east side of Gilroy. She is one of the pro-Wal-Mart candidates in the race and doesn’t buy into the argument that east-side supermarkets will die out if the store opens a super-sized version of itself in the new Pacheco Pass Center.
The new store would sell groceries along with the normal staple of low-cost items.
“I think we should have a super Wal-Mart here. Wal-Mart does a lot of good things for the community,” Hohenbrink said. “While everyone is hating Wal-Mart, the senior citizens here play bingo sponsored by Wal-Mart every week.”
Wal-Mart has been criticized for paying its employees less than fair wages and benefits, but Hohenbrink says the company isn’t much different from other businesses.
“Wal-Mart employees have not made their own bed and said ‘hey, we want a union here,’ ” Hohenbrink said.
Hohenbrink has concerns about public safety matters that go beyond its 80 percent bite out of every tax dollar. Firsthand and second-hand experiences with less than stellar customer service and response times make Hohenbrink believe reorganization is needed in the Gilroy Police Department.
“I wouldn’t say they have a bad attitude, but I’d say they need to refresh their thought process,” Hohenbrink said. “More customer oriented, because after all they serve the community.”
Hohenbrink also wants to see more cooperation between schools and police given the more than 100 registered sex offenders in Gilroy and the open access to school play fields and playgrounds. Hohenbrink, who has four of her children in or soon to be in Gilroy public schools, also has concerns over drug use and drug sales on campus.
“If I’m elected mayor, I would have a long chat with our police commissioner,” Hohenbrink said.
Hohenbrink, a dog and horse owner, also wants increased animal control enforcement in Gilroy.
A major concern for Hohenbrink, who used to live in the unincorporated part of Gilroy, is the perchlorate plume that has now reached south of Leavesley Road.
“This perchlorate that’s moving toward us, you could almost consider it a violation of the people’s rights. We need to have state and federal help before it gets into our water system. I would have been pounding on the doors in Sacramento,” she said. “We are an agricultural city. We need to have clean water, and we don’t want it delivered in bottles.”
