Council votes 6-1 to allow GUSD to bypass regulations and
proceed with school conversion
Gilroy – The image of high school students packed like sardines in a single building has trumped city leaders’ worries about playing favorites with zoning laws.
On Monday, City Council members voted 6-1 to let the Gilroy Unified School District sidestep smart growth regulations and proceed with plans to convert Las Animas Elementary School into as many as 99 homes. School officials are desperate to wring $13 million from the site to help finance a second high school in northwest Gilroy and a new elementary school in southwest Gilroy – areas where more than 2,000 homes will sprout in the next decade.
The decision to let GUSD skip past the city’s competition for housing allotments came after some last-minute soul-searching among council members. For months, they criticized the school district’s plans to forge ahead with a special exemption that would free similar school redevelopment projects from the competition governed by the Residential Development Ordinance, the heart of the city’s growth-control efforts. Instead, councilmen urged the district to seek a share of 191 housing allotments they will dole out in an RDO competition this fall.
“The bottom line is that there’s never a guarantee if they go through the RDO process,” Mayor Al Pinheiro said Tuesday, echoing a main concern of school officials. “They need this kind of answer to get the job done and get our kids a new school.”
Reducing class sizes at Gilroy High School ranks among the district’s most pressing needs, parents and school officials have said. The high school, constructed 30 years ago, was built to serve 1,800 students but now has an enrollment of 2,500. A new elementary school has also emerged as a top priority as the city prepares for 1,700 new homes in southwest Gilroy.
Council members did not argue with the need for new schools, but several took issue with the district’s claims about the need to fast-track the project.
School officials worried that the RDO competition would pit the district against more seasoned developers for a limited number of housing permits. They also feared that housing units awarded through the competition would force a potential buyer of the site to build over a number of years, further reducing the value of the land.
“The more questions we asked the more risks we realized we were encountering,” said Steve Brinkman, GUSD’s Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services.
Those concerns did not sway Councilman Craig Gartman, the lone dissenter in the vote. He insisted the school district would fare well in the RDO competition and could receive its housing allotments with plenty of time to sell the site and finance its new facilities.
The size of the project was the top concern for Councilman Russ Valiquette. Planning commissioners recommended a maximum of 85 units for the site, rather than the 99 units originally requested by the school district. School officials scaled back the project after neighbors complained about having smaller units – which typically serve lower-income families – in their back yards. Valiquette suggested that either size could run foul of neighbor’s wishes.
“I haven’t heard one neighbor in that area say they could live with 99 or 85,” Valiquette said.
A district plan to separate affordable housing from the neighborhood with a row of larger lots convinced all councilman except Gartman to support the 99-unit limit.
“What did not appeal to me would be to restrain it in a way that would not allow them to be creative,” Pinheiro said.
The higher limit sat well with Brinkman.
“We want to be mindful of neighbor’s concerns, but we also want to maximize the value of the property,” Brinkman said. He and other school district officials say they have maxed out their borrowing capacity and are more than $20 million short of funds needed to complete the new schools.
The zoning exemption, which leaves the door open for redevelopment of other school sites, may prove a vital source of funding as the district scrambles to keep pace with the city’s growth, City Administrator Jay Baksa said.
“I feel for the school district. They have got such a tough situation that it’s almost an impossible situation,” Baksa said. “They’re going to have to continue to think out of the box to meet the needs of the Gilroy public.”
The new elementary school is scheduled to open fall 2007. The new high school is scheduled to open in fall 2009.
