Officials at council policy summit project Gilroy will exceed
its 10-year growth goal by 30 percent
Gilroy – Over the next seven years, Gilroy will exceed its cap on residential growth by 1,000 homes – or 30 percent more than the 10-year goal set in 2003, according to city leaders. But officials focused on preventing sprawl and encouraging growth in the city’s core say the number is not cause for alarm.
The projection emerged last Friday, when council members who have fretted about the status of the city’s growth cap – now set at 3,450 new homes through 2013 – explored the nuances of Gilroy’s off-the-books accounting for new construction.
The city is well on the way to exceeding the cap by allowing requests for hundreds of units to bypass the building-permit competition that lies at the heart of Gilroy’s growth-control measure. The latest round of exemptions from the Residential Development Ordinance, which governs the permit competition, began several years ago when city leaders granted 99 building permits to nonprofit Bonfante Gardens as part of a bankruptcy bailout package. In the next two years, officials will review requests to exempt another 650 units from the permit competition. Meanwhile, scores of new homes could be approved outside the RDO competition under the Downtown Specific Plan, which provides a a separate 20-year cap of 1,700 new homes for the downtown Monterey Street corridor.
On Friday, council members at a full-day policy summit agreed to unshackle the downtown from the RDO system. Instead of counting permit requests as part of the city’s overall growth figure, they decided to deduct any new units from the figure set by the area’s specific plan. Officials stressed that the system does not amount to a carte blanche for downtown developers, who already have more than 20 residential projects cued up for the area.
City Planning Manager Bill Faus said the 3,450 unit cap has not lost significance, but must be viewed as one tool used to guide the city’s growth. He said the exceptions to the number allow the city to guide growth, as in the case of the downtown area.
“What the council tried to express is that yes the number is important, but we also need to look at the type of growth that’s occurring,” he said. “There are certain parts of our community that are vitally important. The target that we have set for the amount of homes in our community does not supersede everything else. It can’t be an end-all, where if we exceed it by 10 percent or 20 percent, the sky is going to fall. The council recognizes that we’re taking a holistic approach.”
Councilman Craig Gartman, one of the leading critics of the city’s growth accounting system, is quick to say he opposes putting obstacles in the path of downtown renewal, such as forcing developers to compete for building permits. Yet he insists the city must come up with a system that more accurately measures growth.
“We need to come up with a new number because we’re kind of lying to ourselves,” he said. “Either we’re going to control the growth in the city or we’re not.”
While council does not expect to tackle the issue of a new accounting system until 2007, they will move forward in coming months on other fundamental changes to growth policies. By April, they expect to sign off on a new scoring system for the RDO competition that encourages eco-friendly construction, affordable housing, and other socially desirable goals.
“It discourages to some degree development that is not centralized,” Faus explained. “It will give credit to projects under the smart growth banner – projects that lie closer to where services already are, in-fill development, green buildings, projects near transportation corridors.”
