Politics

Fed up with early morning noise and traffic from ongoing construction, residents of one of Gilroy’s newest high-end subdivisions woke up to a new neighbor this week.It’s a manned guard shack that showed up in the middle of the roundabout at the entrance to Meritage Homes’ Heartland housing development.It’s designed to control the flow of construction-related traffic and keep noise levels down in the before-dawn hours.But a city official Tuesday said it must be moved.“I understand why they did this but it’s not in a safe location, so we will ask the developer to move this to a safer spot until they finish construction activities, Rick Smelser said in an email. He is Gilroy’s director of public works and city engineer.The playhouse-size structure was set up on city property, the roundabout island at the corner of West Third Street and Cobblestone Court, just west of Santa Teresa Boulevard and the Village Green senior housing community.A spokesman for C&C Security said Meritage requested the manned booth after receiving complaints from new residents of the $870,000 to $943,000 homes.They’ve complained about pre-dawn noise and traffic from contractors building more new homes in developments that stretch roughly along Hecker Pass Highway west from Santa Teresa to Burchell Road.Chapter 16, section 31 of the city code prohibits loud noise of any kind that disturbs another person in their home between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Wayne Spalding, vice president of human resources for the Fremont-based C&C Security, said a uniformed guard arrives early in the morning to make sure no one begins work before 7 a.m.The guard then patrols the neighborhood and construction areas from a vehicle, he said.The project’s new construction manager requested that the guard shack be placed on the roundabout island, according to Spalding.An early morning observer to the area would witness not only the arrival of construction workers, but also large and small trucks loaded with everything from pre-fabricated housing rafters to roofing materials and landscaping equipment and plants.The long, new stretch of W 3rd Street, with at least one elementary school bus stop, also has become the scene of high-speed driving, the almost universal running of the stop sign at Rosemary Drive by residents, construction workers and truck drivers, and numerous incidents of cars and trucks going the wrong way at the roundabout—some trucks doing so because they are too long to negotiate the sharp curves of the roundabout.At the Gilroy Police Department, Capt. Kurt Svardal said the guard shack arrangement between the private security firm and the development company does not involve police, although he said he was “a little surprised” by the location of the structure on the roundabout.Smelser said that while he was unaware of the guard shack until asked about it Tuesday by the Dispatch, builders are legally allowed to take steps to secure their projects and equipment even if it involves city property.“During construction, before the city has fully accepted the construction, the contractor has every right to protect their equipment,” he said.As for traffic and noise associated with building activities, he said, “They have every right to control what is going on during construction; if they want to control construction activity, I can see that,” Smelser added.A spokesperson for the Meritage did not return phone calls seeking comment.   

The City of Gilroy's two code enforcement officers issued immediate cease and desist warnings to approximately 19 vendors who on Tuesday were selling Valentine's Day products without the proper city permits and business licenses.

In mailers to thousands to Gilroy homes, in speeches, in endorsements by politicians and wealthy businessmen and on signs all around town, voters have been told that passage of the $170 million Measure E bond proposal on Tuesday’s ballot will ensure Gilroy kids get a good education by building modern schools with state-of-the-art technology.But a Dispatch review of school rankings and research data suggest the jury is still out on whether new facilities make a significant difference in some measures of academic standards.In Gilroy, school rankings appear inconsistent on the question and suggest that factors such as poverty play a bigger role than facilities when it comes to classroom achievement.Christopher High School, the district’s $158 million showcase, was built with 2008 bond money and non-voter approved $33 million in Certificates of Participation, repaid from the general fund. Its state academic ratings are high, 8 out of 10 compared to all California high schools and 7 among schools with similar demographics.But Gilroy High School, an old facility with some recent modernization, ranks at 4 among all high schools and 5 among similar schools in the state.Glen View Elementary School was completely remodeled last year with about $7 million from 2008’s $150 million Measure P, money still being repaid by taxpayers.Glen View in the past has lagged in test scores and in recent tests that pattern continues. The school ranked 4 on a scale of 1 to 10 compared to schools statewide.Compared to schools with similar demographics it ranked 3. And in terms of how it serves low-income students, who make up most of its student body, it also ranked at 3.Gilroy Prep School, the only charter school in the Gilroy Unified School District, ranked at 10 among California schools, 9 in how it helps low-income kids and 6 compared to similar schools.At GPS, technology of the kind Measure E would pay for helps students. Personal computers allow students to interact immediately with teachers, and allow teachers to monitor in real time whether students understand what’s being taught.When it opened in 2011, GPS was put in a collection of old portables at South Valley Junior High School. And while the school has since had some upgrades paid for by bond money, its scores from the beginning have been among the state’s highest.GUSD officials, including assistant superintendent Alvaro Mesa, have said comparisons with a charter school aren’t fair and that differences between schools such as Glen View and Gilroy Prep have more to do with the percentage of low-income students than facility conditions.GPS has always focused on low-income, underserved families, with school officials sometimes knocking on doors in low-income neighborhoods to recruit students.About 55 percent of GPS students are on a free and reduced cost lunch program, an indication of those families’ low-income.The figure at Glen View is a lot higher, Meza said.Asked to comment on whether spending millions on school facilities and really matters in classroom achievement, schools superintendent Debbie Flores issued this statement:“The district has not stated that Measure E is needed to improve education, but rather to help maintain the high-quality of education currently provided to all local students. If Measure E does not pass, additional monies from the general fund would need to go to shoring up our older facilities and ensuring they continue to meet safety standards for students. This would take needed funds away from educational programs. Also, the district believes that equitable facilities should be provided to all students.”In the newest Yes on E mailer, Gilroy businessman and Chamber of Commerce 2016 Man of the Year for 2016 Joel Goldsmith put it this way: “Nothing in our community is more important than educating our young people, and that is best done in modern facilities.”Mayor Perry Woodward wrote in the mailing that passage “will help sustain the high quality of education provided to our children and allow us to modernize and build facilities to better support instruction needs.”When it comes to Gilroy’s oldest—South Valley and Brownell—and its newest—Solorsano—middle schools there is almost no difference in their state rankings.Here’s now the rankings show up on greatschools.org, which tracks state school standings nationwide.Brownell and Solorsano ranked 7 and South Valley 6 when compared to all California middle schools.Compared to middle schools with similar demographics, Brownell outranked Solorsano, 7 to 6, and South Valley was at 5.Compared to how well the schools meet the needs of low-income students, Solorsano ranked 6 while the others had 5.At the California Policy Center, a think-tank that digs into school bonding, researcher and author Kevin Dayton said Tuesday, “I am not aware of any peer-reviewed study, or any study for that matter, that has proven that a bond measure and facilities improvement results in better test scores. To think that a new building is going to make children be better mathematicians or thinkers is absurd.”However, in a 2010 study the 21st Century School Foundation (at http://bit.ly/24jfAVL) in Washington D.C. found that “Recent research continues to point to a small but steadily positive relationship between the quality of a public school facility and a range of academic and community outcomes.”Among its cited research one study found that, “In schools with poor facilities, students attended less days on average and therefore had lower grades in English Language Arts and Math standardized tests. Attendance was found to be a full mediator for grades in ELA and a partial mediator for grades in math.”Another cited study found a “4-9 percent difference between students in schools in worst/best condition; 5-9 percent difference between students in oldest/newest schools; 4 percent difference in graduation rates between students in schools in worst/best condition and between students in oldest/newest schools.”Dayton is critical of the political processes behind school bond sales.“At every stage of the process, interests that will benefit from bond sales can take advantage of a system that favors passage of a bond measure,” he wrote in 2015. “Some issues of concern include use of public funds to develop campaigns to pass bond measures, significant political contributions to campaigns from interests likely to benefit from construction, involvement of college foundations as intermediaries for campaign contributions, and conflicts of interest and alleged pay-to-play contracts.”He went on, “Few Californians realize how much debt they’ve imposed on future generations with their votes for bond measures meant to fund the construction of new and modernized school facilities.“From 2001 to 2014, California voters considered 1147 ballot measures proposed by K-12 school districts and community college districts to borrow money for construction via bond sales. Voters approved 911 of these bond measures, giving 642 school and college districts authority to borrow a total of $110.4 billion.”Dayton’s study can be found here: http://bit.ly/1TY7qAC.In its latest round of campaign finance disclosures, the Yes on E group, Friends of GUSD Supporting Measure E, listed more contributions from companies outside Gilroy that do business with the school district.They include Val’s Plumbing & Heating of Salinas, $2,500; Total Securities Concepts Division of TSCS, Inc., of Prunedale, $2,500; and Palace Business Solutions of Santa Cruz, $500.Those are in addition to more than $30,000 in contributions already received from a half-dozen of the school district’s biggest contractors, some of whom have worked on previous bond projects, including the Seward L. Schreder Construction of Redding. That firm did more than $14 million in bond-related projects with GUSD from 2011 through 2015 and is Measure E’s biggest financial supporter at $10,000.In its campaign filing report, the pro-E committee listed spending of $2,107 for 400 yard signs and $5,753 to print and mail flyers to 10,000 Gilroy homes.It also lists a $2,279 reimbursed to Jaime Rosso for money he spent out of his own pocket for campaign literature, banners and sign lumber before the committee had its own account, he said. Rosso is the spokesperson for the committee and a longtime GUSD school board member.

Downtown area closure for major street and sidewalk repairs will

As the City of Gilroy prepares for escalating local development,

For the past year, Gilroy Mayor Don Gage and Council Member Perry Woodward have been individually meeting with owners of downtown’s 18 unreinforced masonry buildings and city staff. The pair claimed a victory this month; two buildings have been officially taken off the list of structures deemed unfit to survive a high magnitude earthquake after sufficient retrofitting.