Bozzo ready to ‘review and renew’ city goals

Greg Bozzo is Gilroy’s mayor-elect, as the final vote tally from the Nov. 5 election gives him a 211-vote win over incumbent Mayor Marie Blankley.

A total of 11,274 Gilroy residents voted for Bozzo, compared to 11,063 for Blankley, according to the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters’ final results. Elections officials were scheduled to certify the local general election results on Dec. 5. 

Bozzo and three newly elected Gilroy City Council members—or re-elected in the case of one officeholder—will be sworn in at the Dec. 9 council meeting. Incumbent Zack Hilton, Terence Fugazzi and Kelly Ramirez won the three city council seats that were on the local ballot, according to the registrar’s posted results.

Bozzo said after taking the oath of office, his first priority will be to meet with the council and get started on an effort to “review and renew the goals of the City of Gilroy.” The first official opportunity to do that will likely be at a council planning session in January. 

“It is important to me that we have the input of everyone when we formulate the goals of Gilroy,” Bozzo said this week. “The platform I ran on is still important to me, and I’m very hopeful that those are part of the goals of the new council.”

Bozzo’s platform includes the creation of a “robust” economic development plan for Gilroy, which could mean more plans for Gilroy Gardens and potential public/private partnerships with larger entities such as the Premium Outlets—“and certainly figure out a way to complete the downtown corridor.” 

Additional campaign platform points that Bozzo said he remains committed to are an improvement of City Hall customer service; bringing back the Gilroy Garlic Festival; improving community engagement; and developing “practical housing solutions.” 

Some of these items and ideas will “take a lot of discussion, a lot of consensus building, a lot of vetting.” That includes the possibility, floated by Bozzo, of bringing higher density housing to the east side of Highway 101 near the outlets. 

When it comes to customer service at City Hall, Bozzo said, “I have always felt there is a disconnect between our community and City Hall—not just the private sector, not just nonprofits. It seems a majority of folks feel like there is a disconnect.

“The new council needs to come together and agree on what we could do to fix that. If it’s staffing, we need to look at staffing. If it’s management, we need to look at management.” 

Bozzo added that this “disconnect” is further reflected in Gilroy’s “flat economic development” and a high city staff turnover rate. 

Those trends can be reversed “by capitalizing on the strengths of this community and narrowing our focus where we need to improve, because this community has a lot of strength,” Bozzo said. 

The final election results from the registrar’s office also confirmed the victory of three city council candidates: incumbent Zack Hilton, Fugazzi and Ramirez.

Hilton received 10,895 votes; Fugazzi had 10,072; and Ramirez received 9,012 ballots. The top three vote recipients won council seats in the at-large election. 

Other candidates receiving votes in the Gilroy City Council race were incumbent Fred Tovar, with 8,625 ballots; Stefanie Elle with 7,718 votes; and incumbent Rebeca Armendariz with 5,689 votes.