We just shut the door on another successful Garlic Festival.
Highlights for me were the music, the
”
Got Milk
”
tour, and the people watching.
I had the opportunity to talk to a large number of Festival
visitors this year and met quite a few people who are not from
northern California.
We just shut the door on another successful Garlic Festival. Highlights for me were the music, the “Got Milk” tour, and the people watching.
I had the opportunity to talk to a large number of Festival visitors this year and met quite a few people who are not from northern California. I was a little surprised that many people I met were first timers. I assumed that the garlic-lover living in San Jose would be a regular after all these years. This weekend I met quite a few of those folks who always meant to come, but never made it before this year. The festival improves a little bit each year, and at this point it is nearly perfect.
If only everything in Gilroy ran as smoothly as the Garlic Festival. Maybe we need to duplicate the community effort put into the Garlic Festival elsewhere.
With the support of the community, our downtown could be thriving. With community input and support, the new South County Housing project downtown could be the start of a new era for downtown Gilroy. With the right mix of housing, office and retail, this project could be the beginning of the end of downtown blight.
With community support, our arts and cultural center would have been in place already. While it is not too late to make it happen, it has yet to become a priority for people outside the arts community.
Having heard the rave reviews for the Morgan Hill Aquatics Center, I decided to go take a look this week. Wow! The will of the Morgan Hill community has produced an outstanding facility. Why can’t we do the same thing here in Gilroy for our families? As our population grows, I’m wondering if now would be the right time to renew efforts for an aquatics center here in Gilroy.
I say renew, because I remember that there was talk of a town pool years ago. As a member of the General Plan Update Committee, I was one of many proponents for an outdoor swimming facility for Gilroy. There was support among the people eight years ago.
Somehow, sports fields and skate parks and bike paths were valued, but having a centrally located “town pool” never made the cut. Maybe Gilroy parks and recreation needs a transfusion.
In 10 years, only one park has been built in the Northwest quad, and that only happened because it is attached to an elementary school.
Maybe instead of a grand aquatics center, we could have two or three strategically located no-frills pools. I know we are getting very little bang for our tax buck in this part of Gilroy, and I’m sure the community would agree. The travesty of requiring builders in Gilroy to tack $48,000 on to each new house for “city services” needs to be tempered by providing some tangible “quality of life” services like pools and parks.
Let’s organize this effort with the same spirit that we use for the Garlic Festival.
Finally, our schools would be head and shoulders above where they are today with a Garlic Festival kind of community commitment. I believe that part of the problem may be that many people associated with the Garlic Festival do not have children in Gilroy public school.
The number of “power brokers” in Gilroy who sent or send their kids to private schools is astounding. But we never talk about it, so I guess GUSD doesn’t see it as a problem. Well, I see it as a problem. I am committed to GUSD more than I would be as an average citizen, because my children go to public schools in Gilroy. The level of community support for GUSD directly correlates to having a personal stake in the quality of the schools. Change will happen in GUSD when the whole community pulls together in a Garlic Festival way.
