We want to note Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer’s departure from the
political scene fondly, but try as we might we can’t say that the
mayor’s four-year term was a positive experience for Gilroy.
We want to note Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer’s departure from the political scene fondly, but try as we might we can’t say that the mayor’s four-year term was a positive experience for Gilroy.

We can say that Springer worked hard. There was no doubting his dedication. He had a penchant for detail, perhaps too much so. We can also say that Springer genuinely cared about Gilroy and had the best interests of Gilroyans at heart. But Springer compromised those admirable qualities with his compulsive tinkering and his need to constantly insert himself into the limelight. On a council desperately in need of a uniting influence, Springer seemed to be desperately seeking a personal legacy, a landmark accomplishment that would warrant the public’s undying gratitude, cement his political reputation as a deal-maker and establish his unquestioned leadership.

Software engineer by trade, Springer could not resist the urge to introduce additional features or revise the agreed-upon specification behind the team’s back. It wasn’t that his ideas were necessarily bad, it was the timing of their introduction and the way he shunned consensus-building.

Politics of alienation became Springer’s forte. We need only rewind to this summer, when Springer dropped a Tom-bomb on the high-school site selection process as it neared its ending, the recommendation of the Day Road site. After two years of winnowing by school board members and city staff and diverse community input, the mayor suddenly interjected himself into the process, championing a site between Wren and Kern avenues that had already been eliminated from consideration. His 11th hour opposition left everyone wondering why he didn’t speak up before, but that was typical.

Springer seems determined to continue his pattern of preemptive meddling to the end of his term. He recently ambushed the policy recommendations of the Agricultural Mitigation Task Force for allaying the loss of agricultural lands east of town to urban development. Springer surprised everyone by saying the proposed mitigation isn’t stringent enough. “The policy falls vastly short of what I expected,” is a bizarre statement coming from someone who two years ago viewed the 664 acres of farmland east of town solely as a superior inventory of developable space for attracting campus industrial development.

Why has Springer, who never attended a meeting of the task force, taken this opportunity to change colors to virulent green? Only Tom knows for sure. Perhaps he hopes to counterbalance the main legacy he created for himself as mayor of Gilroy – the enabler of massive-scale highway off-ramp retail development – a dubious legacy at best. To establish Gilroy as a regional retail center, council doled out million-dollar incentives to big box developers, which effectively delays by three years the receipt of sales tax revenues into the city coffers.

Motivations aside, Springer’s last-minute machinations over ag land mitigation are consistent with his reputation for self-serving, Machiavellian politics. It will be remembered that things always had to be done Tom’s way – after all, he was the mayor and most in possession of the facts. He seemed perpetually miffed that no councilman besides Craig Gartman was willing to recognize his intellectual supremacy or embrace his unpredictable, guerrilla-style political tactics.

One thing we can thank Springer for is his decision not to run for re-election, to step aside and make way for Mayor-elect Al Pinheiro. By removing himself from the mayor’s race Springer spared us a confrontational mayoral campaign that would have aggravated old wounds on the council dais.

While we offer thanks to this public servant for giving those wounds an opportunity to begin healing, we sincerely hope he steps away from city politics entirely, keeping himself out of political backrooms and instead taking some time to reflect that hard work and a willingness to serve, unless combined with diplomatic sensibility, make for an incomplete leader.

That said, we wish Mayor Springer well and good luck in whatever road he may choose next.

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