The City of Gilroy is offering the public a chance to sound off on what the priorities should be when it comes to revitalizing the downtown area.
Held between 6:30 and 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Eliot Elementary School Cafeteria at 475 Old Gilroy St., the meeting will be the starting point for future discussion on where City resources should be focused in addressing a variety of concerns about the downtown area, from blight to future marketing opportunities.
In January, City Council directed staff to develop a far-reaching city action plan. Lee Butler, Gilroy Community Development Center manager, said the City is looking for new ideas.
“What were looking to do with this meeting is understand the community’s priorities for the City’s investment in downtown revitalization,” Butler said. “We’ll be doing a prioritization exercise that allows the community to communicate to the City – ultimately City Council – where they would invest limited resources if it were up to them.”
Butler said quite a few options will be presented at the meeting and members of the public will be asked to prioritize those options and comment on what is working well, what is not working well and what potential or existing policies could use revision.
Each January, City Council has an annual priority setting session. This year, Council identified gathering community input on future City direction as one of their priorities, according to Butler.
“We’ll be synthesizing and presenting the information [from Wednesday night’s meeting] and presenting that back to City Council,” Butler said. “Staff will start to develop a city action plan, including which steps the City should take.”
Butler said if some priorities identified Wednesday run neck-and-neck in popularity, the next step is an online survey to further define what the community wants.
Some of the options are increasing public parking, aesthetic improvements, potential historic building guidelines and various infrastructure improvements.
“Council wants the City to really get a list of priorities together so that we have a defined plan of action for supporting and investing in our downtown,” Butler added.
“What is it that is most important to the community? Let [the City] know so we can present that to the council so they can understand that as part of their discussion,” he said. “Council wants to understand what the community – who is living it every day – wants in the long run. And this is really a big step in understanding what those priorities are.”
After Wednesday’s meeting and a possible online survey to further define the community’s preferences, Butler said City staff will present their findings to City Council at a regularly scheduled meeting in November.
