Dear Editor,
Should the Gilroy Unified School District stop busing students
and leave them to the Valley Transportation Authority as the Gilroy
Dispatch advocates? I don’t believe so.
A very bad idea to consider VTA bus service for Gilroy students
Dear Editor,
Should the Gilroy Unified School District stop busing students and leave them to the Valley Transportation Authority as the Gilroy Dispatch advocates? I don’t believe so.
Students need to be picked up and delivered to and from school from SAFE stops and on SAFE rides. VTA routes are not designed with school children in mind. With the ever-expanding walk zones, Gilroy students will be, more than ever, in potential danger. How many child molesters, drug houses and pedophiles live in the children’s path to school? Anyone can look at the Megan’s Law website and see where they are located through town? Are parents going to want to put their child alone on a VTA bus?
There will be more cars on the road delivering school children, which means more pollution and wear and tear on the roads, etc. Plus, what kind of training do VTA drivers go through? School bus drivers go through very intense training and are tested and certified with a California Highway Patrol officer to ensure they are a very safe and cautious driver. They have more laws to follow than your average commercial charter bus driver has. And who is going to monitor behavior on a VTA bus?
School bus drivers have the authority to issue tickets and report inappropriate behavior on the bus to the school. It takes a VERY SPECIAL person to be a school bus driver. You have to be very tolerant with the students. I’m not sure if a VTA driver wants that responsibility. A school bus driver is trained that once a student is in your sight they become YOUR child. We treat them as if they were our own. Drivers in our district have a great bond with the students.
In addition to getting the students to school, buses also take our after-school sports participants to their games. It would mean more money to transport students to and from the events. With the economy the way it is going, some kids may not be able to participate. That could be our town’s next Jeff Garcia or Chris Gimenez.
And for our rural students, where are the stops in the country? I believe there are none. Has this really been thought through?
I really feel students need and deserve a SAFE ride to school. Not only is it safe, the bus gets the children there on time and keeps a lot of cars away from our schools. Sacramento needs to come up with other departments to cut from; transportation has already taken its fair share.
Linda Figone, Rhonda Roascio, Mora Taormin,
GUSD school bus drivers
Apparently, Gilroy Gardens no longer a happy place to be or go
Dear Editor,
I totally agree with the recent letter regarding the lack of customer service at Gilroy Gardens. My husband and I took our grandson to Gilroy Gardens expecting to have a fun filled day. Not so …
Our first encounter was with a very unfriendly security guard at the ticket booth – there was no “hello”, no “thank you” or even a smile. The day went downhill from there.
The employees completely ignore you and seem to be very unhappy being there. We ended up leaving after only being there for a half an hour.
We decided that we would not be renewing our season passes and would rather take the long trek to Disneyland where the employees make it a happy place to be.
Gilroy Gardens employees could really use some customer service training – especially if they want returning customers.
R. Rianda, Gilroy
Police chief: State budget cuts will really harm Gilroy’s public safety
Dear Editor,
I wanted to let City Council members and the public know about some serious concerns I have about the proposed budget cuts to the state budget that will negatively impact Gilroy.
First, the state is proposing reductions in the Department of Corrections budget that will involve the wholesale accelerated release of at least 20,000 felons into our communities. Please understand that in California, felons re-offend 70 percent of the time over a three-year period. In addition, most law enforcement studies have shown that by the time someone is arrested, they have committed approximately 13 crimes.
Finally, in other states where felons have been released early, 20 percent of the crimes they committed were violent ones.
In California, this means that 14,000 felons are likely to commit more than 180,000 new crimes over a three-year period – 36,000 of which will be violent. As a police chief, I can tell you that this is unacceptable; surely Sacramento policy makers can do better.
In Gilroy we currently have a disproportionately high number of probationers, parolees, gang members, and registered sex offenders living here. Our rates are the highest per capita in Santa Clara County. Should these additional felons be released to our community it will challenge public safety’s ability to handle increased crime rates and compliance checks. Moreover, it will directly impact our community’s safety.
Second, the proposed budget actually undercuts the very concept of “public” safety. It does this by requiring that local police departments pay a fee each time they use the state crime lab for forensic services. They have to pay this even though your taxes are already paying for the state crime labs. This effectively means that public safety is no longer public. While affluent communities may be able to have the state crime lab process rape kits for essential DNA information, poorer communities will be unable to do so. This state budget – for the first time in the state’s history – will mandate inferior investigative services for crime victims who live in poorer communities. This is not only terrible public safety policy, it is shameful and offensive.
Finally, the proposed budget completely destroys the 51 multi-jurisdictional methamphetamine task forces that have been our front-line defense against major methamphetamine producers. Meth operations have become increasingly sophisticated and violent and these task forces have been essential to local law enforcement.
Moreover, Mexican drug cartels are poised to move their operations into California. The destruction of these task forces amounts to unilateral disarmament of essential law enforcement resources. Gilroy currently participates in the United Narcotics Enforcement Task Force. This cut will eliminate our ability to work drugs at a regional level in the venue of a cooperative task force. Also troubling is that with the elimination of the task forces we will lose the asset seizure and forfeited funds and equipment that are derived from the task force. The forfeited monies now go to further our narcotics investigations. Much of the gang activity here is linked to and funded though the drug trade. With limited staffing resources at the local level we will not have the ability to work large scale or complex drug cases.
No matter how you slice it, Californians will be less safe if the budget that’s being considered by the governor and legislature is adopted. Their proposed budget includes some unprecedented provisions that will place our communities distinctly at risk. Right now, these three proposals are all poised to be adopted by the legislature and approved by the governor.
Police Chief Denise Turner, city of Gilroy
