Gilroy’s
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round-heeled city councils
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are the cause of several mentions of Gilroy city odors.
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Thank our round-heeled City Councils for Gilroy’s stinky smells!
Dear Editor,
Gilroy’s “round-heeled city councils” are the cause of several mentions of Gilroy city odors. 
First, Gilroy processes Morgan Hill’s sewage, and does it in an “odor plume” area that is expanding through southeast Gilroy neighborhoods. Recent letters from people stating they can’t tolerate the smells outside their front doors are sad reading. We don’t have to process that stink for Morgan Hill. Our city councils let it happen, Eyes wide shut. 
Add to that the “new industry” in Gilroy, yet to be fully implemented, which is simply the city council approved transfer of San Martin’s stink in the form of a greatly expanded “transfer” station. Just go to San Martin and dare to roll down your window next to the much smaller one. Yuck. It is billed as the place where they simply transfer fresh collections and then move the waste along. What is left unsaid is that it includes household garbage that has sat for a week outdoors to rot, and also includes composting, the nice eco-word for salad-tossed great mounds of rotting vegetation. It stinks, and our round-heeled City Council is adding it to Gilroy’s air quality, voluntarily. 
If you do a little history on this one, you will notice that it was quietly moved a few miles closer to southeast Gilroy neighborhoods, since it was to have been close to the new shopping center on Highway 152. That was when several restaurants backed out of opening there. More stink for our neighborhoods! – and now what?  Why, we are welcoming in (that is, our round-heeled city council is welcoming in) what is essentially a specialized oil refinery and yes, it will fall into the same geographical part of Gilroy, that is, southeast Gilroy. 
Does it even bear mentioning that this part of Gilroy is heaviest with non-voting Hispanics? Non-voters are a little hampered when it comes to retaliation for this voluntary lowering of the air quality and trashed general quality of life all of this brings to them. 
In the Dispatch story that repeated the carefully chosen words of the promoters, this new tech industry (refinery is best suited for a sparsely populated area. In other words, Welcome Richmond South County! Take a trip to Richmond, and I dare you to roll down your car window, or even try to take a walk. Refineries essentially cook the raw materials to get the simplified – refined – ones. 
It is a smelly, often toxic environment. High-quality jobs as an excuse? Hardly. All the engineers and scientists involved are already hired, and are very few. They will commute in from other areas. Gilroy is drooling over 100 jobs for knob-twisters who will draw the same income as fast-food, which generates the waste this industry will be processing!
Meanwhile, the odor plumb is expanding. It is already very heavy at Wal-Mart in the early morning, and is beginning to stretch across the freeway, east and north. Here’s a joke: Stinks like this will lower property values, ha, ha. We need more of that, right? 
Our round-heeled City Council knows precisely what it is doing, and what it means. In its lust for increasing tax revenues, it welcomes in stinks, odors, poverty level employment and a progressively lower quality of life for this city. When I moved to Gilroy in 1978 the smell was that of tomato soup with garlic seasoning. Now it is the pungent smell of garbage and soon, a “high-tech” oil refinery. How sad. Wake up, citizens – a new odor experience will be coming to YOUR FACE soon!
Tony Weiler, Gilroy
Dog napping a growing problem … family missing their Yorkie ‘Charlie’
Dear Editor,
Someone has taken my dog. My family is devastated and I’ve been crying for days. His name is Charlie and I know every one of his quirks and habits, just as I know my own children. He was wearing a collar with a tag with my phone number on it, but clearly the person who took him, ignored it.
I can’t describe or articulate what I wish I could say or do to that person. Instead, with twisted irony, I offer to reward this person for abducting my “child” and causing my family grief because I would do anything to get my Charlie back.
He did not choose to leave his family. I worry that he wonders where we are and I sob as I write this… thinking, “how could a person be so cruel?” I have posters all over town but Charlie will never know how hard I looked for him. I don’t know how long I should leave his bed in the corner or when to pack up his toys. I can’t guess what backyard he is in or even if he’s still in Gilroy.
The only way we’ll get him back is if someone will come forward. He can be dropped off at the Animal Shelter in San Martin or at the Gilroy Veterinary Office. Or, drop him right back in my yard at 5265 Hecker Pass, no questions asked. Please, please bring Charlie home. We are offering a $400 reward for his return.
Please take a look over your own back fence and if you see this little guy or any yard suspiciously full of small dogs, I urge you to investigate and take action. Sadly my little Charlie is only one in many in this town that have gone “missing”. Charlie was picked up on Hecker Pass on Easter Sunday. He is a standard Yorkshire Terrier (11 lbs.) neutered, with short hair. him.
Lydia Eden-Irwin, Gilroy
