GILROY
– Day Road residents fighting to keep Gilroy’s second high
school from being built in their backyards will not be taking the
city or the school district to court – at least not for now,
because they can’t afford it.
GILROY – Day Road residents fighting to keep Gilroy’s second high school from being built in their backyards will not be taking the city or the school district to court – at least not for now, because they can’t afford it.
The grassroots group known as Neighbors for Responsible Development has ended its relationship with Morgan Hill attorney Bruce Tichinin, just days after failing to convince City Council not to bring a 60-acre Day Road property – the likely home of the next public high school – into Gilroy boundaries.
The group’s spokesperson Cammie Brown said the development of the high school would continue to be watchdogged by the group despite losing whatever legal leverage it had. And at some point in the future, Neighbors for Responsible Development may bring the matter in front of a judge.
“We’re going to be meeting over the next couple of weeks to make some decisions about what to do next,” Brown said. “We have to look at the costs involved with fighting this and realize we’re up against Glen Loma Group, the school district, the city and all the powers that be who have relatively unlimited resources and time.”
At the heart of the group’s concerns is the idea that Gilroy Unified School District’s high school site selection process – which ended June 19 – was a sham. A letter from Superintendent Edwin Diaz to Glen Loma Group developer John Filice reveals the district intended to purchase the Day Road site since November 2002, long before alternative sites were being reviewed.
Preliminary approval by the state Board of Education had also been garnered before the site selection process, which looked at four alternative properties, ever got started.
At Thursday’s school board meeting, Brown – without Tichinin – represented Neighbors for Responsible Development. She asked trustees to reveal who authorized the November letter, but received no response.
Because it was not an item listed on the agenda, trustees chose not to answer Brown. School board President Jim Rogers said staff and trustees would likely answer the question publicy in the near future. It is not clear if it would be on the agenda of a future school board meeting.
Diaz Tuesday defended the district’s site selection process. The superintendent noted that the November letter had been rescinded in June upon the recommendation of a district lawyer. Diaz also noted that the document was a nonbinding letter of intent, not a guarantee to make a purchase.
“Intention is not selection,” Diaz said. “We put a lot of resources and time into the site selection process. But no process that results in selecting a site for a second high school is going to satisfy anyone who doesn’t want the high school there.”
Still, Neighbors for Responsible Development believes GUSD acted irresponsibly.
“They still jumped the gun by issuing a letter of intent before trustees voted and before an oversight committee was formed,” Day Road resident Chris Messmer said.
A frustrated Messmer said even though GUSD must now conduct a stringent environmental review of the high school’s impacts to his neighborhood, he has no confidence this next process will do any good.
Messmer worries that once the environmental studies are done, GUSD will claim economic hardship to waive as many mitigation measures as possible. It is the same point of contention Mayor Tom Springer raised in recent weeks when he opposed annexing the Day Road parcel into Gilroy proper and fought for development of the new high school in a more central part of town.
“By the time it’s all said and done, the City of Gilroy taxpayers are going to pay for widening Santa Teresa Boulevard so it can handle the amount of traffic we know is coming,” Messmer said.
As for Tichinin, the lawyer had been representing the group over the last few months as GUSD looked more and more likely to settle on the Day Road parcel. Tichinin was instrumental in getting the school district to redo its site selection process and consider alternative spots for the new high school.
The land use attorney also represented the group when City Council considered annexing the Day Road parcel as a future 250-home housing development and a Catholic church and elementary school.
Tichinin told City Council it could not annex the property without violating the California Environmental Quality Act. Under the law, Tichinin argued, City Council had to wait for studies on the environmental impacts of the high school to be completed.
City Council, however, voted 4-2 that the environmental review related to the housing and parish project was sufficient for annexation.
The controversy was part of Springer’s recent decision not to seek re-election in the November 2003 mayoral race. Springer claimed the annexation was a breach of ethics.
“This is all very disappointing,” Brown said Tuesday. “We’re now in a battle where we no longer have the mayor in our corner. I’m just really disappointed with the school board, the city, everything.”
