Politics

Trustee Darcie Green was unanimously voted as new board president for the Santa Clara County Board of Education for the coming year during the Dec. 10 meeting, while Trustee Anna Song was given full support from her fellow board members to be named vice president.Green was appointed to the board in 2012 to fill a vacancy in Area 6. She currently serves as the community and government relations manager for Kaiser Permanente South Bay, according to SCCBOE staff. Green was named recipient of the 2014 Barbara Jordan Leadership Award, which honors young elected officials who demonstrate a distinguished record of public service to their community.Son was elected to the board in 200 as the first Korean-born female to be elected in California’s history, according to the SCCOE announcement. She also serves on the County School Boards Association Executive Board.

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.

With the July Fourth holiday squarely in the rearview window, the Gilroy City Council gets back to work on Monday night, July 10 at 6 p.m. Below is a peek at the upcoming agenda, which can found at cityofgilroy.org:

GILROY

City and county officials are asking Gilroy residents for their input on how best to spend more than $360,000 in federal funding dedicated to improving the community. In conjunction with the county and cities across the county, officials are hosting the last of three regional forums—this one in Gilroy—to ask locals how to address homelessness, affordable housing and community improvements with that funding.

The landmine-like potholes on First Street are on the way to being fixed, years ahead of schedule and after years of complaints.Mayor Perry Woodward, with support from Councilman Dan Harney and former city traffic engineer Henry Servin worked out a clever system to have license registration fees that go to the state shifted quickly to Gilroy’s street of most need.Without their efforts, the work might not have begun until 2021, but it will now be finished—if the last hurdle is cleared—by the middle of next year.“It’s the worst street in town,” said Woodward. “This needs to happen. It should have never gotten this bad. It’s been neglected by Caltrans for so long, we have a crisis. I’m glad we will get this addressed when the rain stops.”The potholes on First Street are one of the biggest complaints by the city’s residents. The trouble is, the street—which is also known as Highway 152—is maintained not by the city, but by the state, and it isn’t as big a priority for them as it is for the locals.Caltrans didn’t even include the street on its current list of repairs and it couldn’t be added until 2020-2021. The three Gilroyans, led by Woodward, who sits on the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority board, are in the process of getting the board to front $5.5 million for the repairs, which will then be repaid by license fees, speeding up the process.The roadway will be worked on into the spring, as the state adds water, sewer and electric lines under it. Then, beginning in April, new pavement will be added.“It’s fantastic news,” said Harney, who is running for council in Nov. 8. “It s a big deal. If Perry and I hadn’t done that, we’d still be stuck where we were. The way it is now, we can’t even repave the potholes.”While the proposal has been approved by the VTA, it still needs Caltrans approval, which Woodward is working on. He is optimistic about that final step.The city also set aside $2.5 million to fix some of the other worst streets in town at last week’s council meeting. Those streets are being decided by a computer model that ranks streets most in need of repair.

City Administrator Tom Haglund has said he regrets the

For its first and only meeting in December, the newly-formed