Community

Hundreds of volunteers were scattered around Christmas Hill Park early Tuesday afternoon, transforming the 25-acre facility on Miller Avenue into the home of the 36th Annual Gilroy Garlic Festival.

Whether it's a blues ditty from Nate Pruitt

Gilroy

Worried about sprawl and impacts to the city due to unmitigated growth, a group of Gilroy community members ranging from longtime residents to recent arrivals are in the process of drafting what they call a “smarter growth” ballot initiative that would give voters control over how much the city can grow.“The complete language of the initiative is still being authored as we speak,” explained Sandie Silva of the new advocacy group, Gilroy Growing Smarter, via text message.“We are making it so that the voters will be the decision-makers for the overall limits to Gilroy's growth and leave the responsibility for smart use of limited land within our boundaries to the elected officials.”Forged out of the controversy surrounding the 721-acre Rancho Los Olivos housing project proposed for an area north of Gilroy, Gilroy Growing Smarter includes the same folks that created the online petition in December that generated more than 2,200 signatures from people opposed to the 4,000-home development.Silva, who is part of a Gilroy farming family, said she has never been political before, but was dismayed watching people go to City Council meetings and voice their opinions, only to be rebuffed and have their concerns ignored by elected officials. So she decided to get involved.“We started because of the 721 acres and I started the petition,” Silva recalled. “And [the City Council] decided to vote against what the people wanted anyway.”She said the council’s actions raised “a lot of flags” with people who were left wondering what was going on at the council and why they were not being heard.Overwhelmed by public criticism and two lawsuits, the developers behind the large-scale development rescinded their application in January, deciding to take more time to sell the project to the public.  But for those who understand it is too late to complain about new construction when the tractors have already rolled in, the battle to save Gilroy from being another bedroom community for Silicon Valley has just begun.“We are a very diverse group,” said Silva. “We come from downtown and unincorporated areas; we are business owners, parents, and we feel we speak for the vast majority of Gilroy who want the city to grow in a compact and responsible way. We are not anti-growth.”In addition to working on the initiative and gathering enough signatures of registered Gilroy voters to make the November ballot, the group plans on forming sub-committees to tackle other pressing issues relating to Gilroy’s growth, including the state of downtown and infrastructure.“Downtown has been a thorn in everyone’s side for years, so we would want that area revitalized,” said Silva.“It is very complicated today to do something innovative downtown,” said David Lima, a member of Gilroy Growing Smarter. Gilroy resident, Lima has written on development issues for the Dispatch before. “There are a lot of rules and adversarial relationships that developed since 1989 when the buildings were damaged—a lot of factors have made it difficult to do clever things downtown.”“Existing infrastructure is another thing we want to look at,” said Silva. “Schools are already overcrowded and there are the poor street conditions.”On its website,www.gilroygrowingsmarter.org, the group lays out its aims: elect a responsive city council that will honor the wishes of the citizens; combat suburban sprawl through careful redevelopment of downtown, with gradual residential infill; preserve agricultural and open space land and encourage the creation of high-quality jobs in Gilroy for Gilroy residents.Asked if it was all the current construction underway which has made folks in Gilroy jittery (some projects were approved more than 10 or 15 years ago and delayed due to the 2008 economic downturn), Lima replied yes, that was part of it, but it was more to do with the potential impacts to the city and its residents that got people concerned.“All of the projects that have been approved, are in the planning process or under construction have the potential to add 15,000 people to Gilroy (about a 30 percent increase to its current population of 53,000),” he said. “That is a huge increase.”And with all that growth, he added, there will be impacts to traffic, water and air quality that have not yet been felt.Lima said he’s probably spoken to hundreds of people over the last couple years about why they live in Gilroy and what it is about living in a “small town” that people love.He said that overall people wanted a definite boundary, a green boundary of farmland or open space around their city. They also wanted a “clearly identified center in downtown” where you can find grocery stores and restaurants. Traffic should also manageable with motorists usually being able to get through the traffic lights with one change.“And you know quite a few of the faces you see at the store,” he said.“People are really concerned that if we grow beyond our 53,000 all of those lovely, small town characteristics will simply disappear, which will make people very unhappy.”

The Gilroy Unified School District is investigating an anonymous complaint that the manager of the cafeteria at Christopher High School makes vulgar, sexual advances on his female employees.

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As California tackles its fentanyl crisis, two new laws will be taking effect in January that will make drugs that reverse the effects of opioid overdoses easier to access in certain places and update the so-called good Samaritan law to include those who administer...