Politics

City Council may have turned down the Gilroy Unified School District’s final proposal on a joint agreement that would keep the South Valley Middle School pool open for three years, but the subject isn’t closed, according to Board of Education trustee Dom Payne.

Democrat Barack Obama won the pivotal state of Ohio Tuesday,

The Gilroy City Council will vote on hiring Gabriel Gonzalez as the new city administrator on Monday, giving him a salary of $210,000 a year and a car allowance of $4,200 a year.Gonzalez, 46, a CSU-Fresno graduate and Santa Cruz native, has had five jobs in the past six years. He was the city manager of Rohnert Park from 2010-2013, then moved to Kansas to be near his daughter and worked as city manager for the town of Augusta for five months. Back in California, he was the interim finance director for the city of El Monte for five months before moving up to assistant city manager there, where he remained for a year.Since July he’s been a management consultant for Management Partners, a national consulting firm.Earlier in his career he worked for six years as the city manager of Mendota and for three years as a manager of the Clinica Sierra Vista, a Central Valley healthcare provider for low-income and rural workers. He was finance director for the city of Arvin for six years, starting in 1995, according to his LinkedIn profile.Gonzalez was acclaimed for his work in Rohnert Park, reducing the city’s debt from $9 million to $2.2 million, according to a report in the Community Voice newspaper. He was said to have cut costs and created a 10-year plan to manage the budget.“One of his favorite mottos is ‘if the money’s not in our bank, we don’t spend it.’” the paper reported him saying.Rohnert Park City Councilman Jake Mackenzie lauded Gonzalez for helping turn the city around when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. "He has done yeoman's work; he has guided us through some very real fiscal crises and set us on a good direction for the future," Mackenzie told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat on the manager’s departure in 2013.The city’s then mayor Pam Stafford also praised him in that newspaper. “He came in at a time when we knew that what we needed to do is get financial stability, and we're well on our way to that,” she said. “He did a great job.”Former Morgan Hill city manager Ed Tewes, has served Gilroy on an interim basis since September 2015. The city manager before that, Tom Haglund, left after seven years totake a job as general manager of the Tuolumne Utilities District in Sonora, where he has a second home.Gonzalez was picked by a council subcommittee that included Mayor Perry Woodward and councilmembers Terri Aulman and Daniel Harney. The city had been looking since September and pared 29 applicants down to six, who participated in extensive interviews.Gonzalez has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from National University and a Masters of Public Administration from CSU-Fresno.

The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters this week enacted automatic recounts in 10 contests in the county following the Nov. 8 general election, two of which were Gilroy races.Both the Gilroy City Council and Gilroy Unified School District Board of Trustees had three seats up for grabs. Because of the narrow margin of victory between the third and fourth place finishers in both races, they qualified for the automatic recount. The races’ top two vote getters are not affected.“I don’t think it will swing much, but I don’t know,” said Paul Kloecker, the former councilman who placed third in the current council race. “I will do my celebrating when I get sworn in.”The automatic recounts are based on unofficial semi-final results following the record-setting number of polling place, provisional, and mail-in ballots cast on Nov. 8, when nearly 83 percent of the county’s registered voters took part.In the City Council race, Kloecker received 5,471 votes, 95 more than fellow planning commissioner Tom Fischer, who got 5,376 votes. That is just a 0.24 percent difference, less than the 0.5 percent that triggers an automatic recount as mandated by the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors earlier this year.A similar thing happened in the GUSD Board of Trustees race. Third place finisher BC Doyle, a former Navy SEAL, retired GUSD union leader and maintenance worker, received 8,439 votes, or 22.42 percent; while Paul Nadeau, director of operations of the nonprofit Navigator Schools, received 8,387 votes, or 22.28 percent. That is just a 0.38 percent difference.Nadeau, however, dropped out of the race before the election due to a potential conflict of interest because Navigator Schools operates a local charter, Gilroy Prep, which falls under the purview of the GUSD board. But his decision to drop out came too late to get his name removed from the ballot, leading him to garner thousands of votes. Nadeau said he would resign if elected and under the advice of counsel, run at a later time when it did not pose a conflict.The automatic recount, which started on Monday and will continue until the end of the weekend or whenever it’s completed, involves 150 county staff working from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the county registrar of voters office.“This is only the second time automatic recounts have taken place,” said Anita Torres, communications representative for the county registrar of voters.The eight other county races involved in automatic recounts are: Cupertino Union School District Board; Palo Alto Unified School District Board; Los Altos City Council; Monte Sereno City Council; San Jose City Council District 8; Los Altos Hills City Council; city of Santa Clara police chief; and Measure Y in the San Jose Unified School District.Narrow margins of victory, where small number of votes separated the winner from the loser, had become commonplace in small local elections. County supervisors earlier this year felt that, to satisfy voter confidence and offer greater transparency, automatic recounts paid for by the county, would be enacted if certain criteria were met, Torres said.If the contest is in a district within the county and it is not for a state or federal office; and if the margin of victory is within 0.5 percent of the total number of ballots cast or 25 votes, an automatic recount is triggered.The automatic recount as authorized by the Board of Supervisors is limited in scope and involves recounting by hand machine-counted ballots only, said Torres. “A person can see voter intent, whereas a machine would not catch it and mark it as an over- or under-vote.”Before the Board of Supervisors action, a recount would have to be voter-initiated with the costs covered by the candidate.Fourth place City Council finisher Tom Fischer said while he does not expect the recount to change the election outcome, it has been “quite an experience.”The planning commissioner, whose term ends in 2018, said if he does not surpass Kloecker to take the third spot free and clear, he intends to apply for the council seat left vacant when mayor-elect Roland Velasco is sworn in Dec. 12.However, he pointed out, the City Council can decide to bypass the application process altogether and just appoint Fischer as the fourth top vote getter in the council race.“They can pretty much do what they want to fill that seat,” he said.The top vote getters in the City Council race were GUSD Board President, Fred Tovar and incumbent Cat Tucker. In the GUSD Board of Trustee race, Mark Good and James Pace took the top spots.The final results for the Nov. 8 election will be certified by the registrar of voters on Dec. 8, after all manual recounts and audits have been completed.  

In a 4-3 vote, the Gilroy City Council on Monday took a big step in approving the design of a 73-unit housing project south of Hecker Pass Highway.

Gilroy Dispatch: Briefly describe your background and experience. Why are you qualified for this position?

All voters in Santa Clara County can drop off their March 5 primary election ballot at any ballot dropbox location throughout the county. There are also a total of 104 vote centers open in the county this weekend for the presidential primary election, and...