Politics

GILROY—In a split vote Monday that rejected much public sentiment and planning commission advice, the Gilroy City Council embraced urban growth far beyond city limits while at the same time preserving a big swath of prime farmland.

Gilroy officials have made a priority of keeping millennials–people in their 20s and 30s–in town after they graduate from college. The challenge is daunting, according to a survey of Gavilan students, who say the city is boring, too expensive and doesn’t have adequate housing.

Local Assemblyman Luis Alejo is considering filing an ethics complaint against a Bakersfield assemblywoman for charging at a fundraiser that he doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance during legislative sessions.

Wearing trendy blue jeans and a smart floral print top, Diana Clinton, 54, looks every inch the urban professional as she taps away on a laptop in the office of the Gilroy Compassion Center on Monterey Road. The only hint she may be a client is the deeply tanned skin she’s earned living outside in Gilroy for almost five years – the low point in a steady quality-of-life decline since she was laid off from IBM in 1988.

He came to Gilroy as deputy district attorney prosecuting drug dealers and bad financial actors. Mayor Pro Tempore Peter Leroe-Muñoz is a Harvard Law School alum with a first-hand understanding of public safety issues affecting the region. No longer in the running for state Assembly, having dropped out of the race in January, Leroe-Muñoz has two more years left in his term on the City Council. In this Q&A he addresses a major project’s effect on the communications capabilities of law enforcement and emergency responders across the region, as well as a rumour about his residency.

SACRAMENTO – The state Senate authorized initial funding for California's high-speed rail project, handing a victory to Gov. Jerry Brown and the Obama administration, which have been pushing hard for the first-in-the-nation bullet train.

The city has nearly reached a deal with the fire union that