GILROY
– Development of Gilroy’s second comprehensive high school is
moving into the next phase: exploration of its environmental
impact.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Development of Gilroy’s second comprehensive high school is moving into the next phase: exploration of its environmental impact.
The Gilroy Unified School District Board of Trustees awarded contracts to begin testing and rough planning on its preferred site for the new high school, a 50-acre parcel of the Day Road property annexed by the city in June.
At its meeting Thursday, the school board authorized a firm to begin work on the significant environmental impact report, which provides information on environmental factors such as air quality, noise and traffic that may be affected by the construction and use of the completed second high school.
“Not only do we have to do this for our local area, but for the education department and the (state),” school board President Jim Rogers said.
The environmental impact report will provide GUSD and the public with information for the Day Road site as well as four other sites the district considered. The other sites include ones at Rancho 101, Wren and Kern avenues, south of Day Road (east of Santa Teresa Boulevard) and near Gavilan College. The report may also look at sites GUSD has never considered.
“It will be interesting if they come up with a site we didn’t look at,” Rogers said.
EMC Planning Group – the land-use planning and design firm awarded the contract – will not be making recommendations as to which site GUSD should approve. The firm will provide mitigations, or ways to absorb a negative environmental impact, for each site. For example, depending on the traffic impact at the Day Road site, the report would suggest places where the city should install stoplights and stop signs or widen roads. The cost of those changes will likely vary from site to site because the environmental impact will differ.
Whatever the mitigations for each site are, the district must take them into consideration when deciding to move forward with the Day Road site, Rogers said.
“It’s not possible to ignore the mitigation,” he said. “I don’t want to have to be impacted and not have it mitigated.”
An impact report must be drafted, made available for public review and debate, and sent to the state clearinghouse before GUSD can officially approve the Day Road project and move forward with purchasing the property, said Teri Wissler Adam, principal of EMC.
Because EMC has already done environmental work on the property for the City of Gilroy, the impact report process will be faster and less expensive than if a new firm had been hired.
The report, which normally takes between nine and 12 months to complete, could take as few as seven months, Wissler said. The public can expect to see the report in five to six months.
GUSD will pay EMC about $63,000 to complete the impact report, paid for by Measure I, the $69 million school bond passed in November. Rogers estimated that it could have cost as much as $100,000.
Board members awarded two other contracts for soil testing and conceptual drawings which will be used to complete the impact report.
The new high school is expected to open in 2008 and cost an estimated $39 million.
