Politics

Gilroy insurance executive Annie Palmer was startled out of a deep sleep at 1:30 a.m. recently when she heard something outside her Hannah Street window that sounded like a thousand bumble bees.It was a hot night and she had the window open.“I was really frightened,” she said. “I had no idea what it was.” She went outside with a flashlight and saw that it was a drone. She tried following it, but lost it.The same day—but at 10:30 p.m.—it was outside her window again. This time she called the Gilroy Police Department, where an officer first told her there was nothing they could do about it, but then, realizing it was so late at night that it was disturbing the peace, told her they’d look into it.She never heard back, but the following afternoon, while she was gardening, the drone was back again.This time, she took action.“I felt violated,” Palmer, 58, said. “It was really creepy. I felt like I had to hide in my house. It was definitely a violation of my privacy.”So, she followed the drone and found its owner on a street with a laptop computer piloting the device. He told her the drone had no camera, so she shouldn’t feel bothered.But she was. So were plenty of her neighbors who felt they were violated by this drone pilot.They filed complaints with the police and with Mayor Perry Woodward, who brought it up at the last City Council meeting and asked city staff to research what laws they can pass to protect the rights of residents, while possibly allowing drones to still fly.“They are fun to fly,” said Woodward in an interview. He is also a commercial pilot and an attorney and has long considered the problem of what he calls a technology in its “Wild West” phase. “I’ve flown them. But I don’t want to see someone flying one outside my daughter’s window. There has to be a balance.”Santa Clara County’s Open Space Authority has banned piloting drones from its parks. Los Angeles has classified drones with model airplanes, limited their use to daylight hours and forbidden them from flying more than 400 feet high, which is beyond the pilot’s ability to see them, making them dangerous to people on the ground. It also requires drones to stay away from hospitals and schools.In a proposed ordinance, Phoenix has asked for drones to be illegal if they are filming in a way that violates privacy.Hermosa Beach has passed legislation to require drone operators to have permits and stay 25 feet away from people.Woodward asked city staff to look into what’s being done in other cities and come up with a report for the council. Then, it would go to public hearings so they can hear from drone supporters and opponents and come up with city laws that will represent residents’ needs.He said he’s received many complaints about violations of privacy and concerns for safety of people on the ground.Police spokesman Sgt. Jason Smith said the department has its hands tied because there aren’t yet laws about drone use.“So in essence, we have to weigh the circumstances of a call involving a drone to see if it violates any of the laws that are currently in place,” he said. “For instance, under the right circumstances, the penal code sections for being a public nuisance or a peace disturbance might apply.”He added that “the department  would have to determine if the act of flying the drone met the criteria for a law violation (and there is not yet a drone-specific law); the person would have to be willing to sign a citizen’s arrest; and we would have to identify the pilot of the drone and further investigate his/her intentions.”

Like the movie Groundhog Day, every morning some 60 percent of Gilroy residents take the same trip over and over to their jobs in San Jose and Silicon Valley and they have to figure out the best, fastest and cheapest way to get there.

Gilroy voters will decide in November whether the city of 55,000 should limit sprawl, after a unanimous vote by the City Council Tuesday night. There will be an item on the ballot asking whether Gilroy residents should vote on future proposed developments and whether the city should keep some of the areas on its borders as open space.

Gilroy’s urban growth boundary (UGB) initiative has more than the required number of signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot.

Gilroy Library is running a reading program that will make kids feel like they are on a gameshow.

Gilroy’s urban growth boundary (UGB) initiative has more than the required number of signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot.

In a move that has been lauded by downtown property owners and the association that represents downtown businesses, the city’s stance on unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings is about to get a little more flexible.“The city’s goal is to get all [of the URM buildings] under compliance so that we can move forward, get them all occupied, and downtown hopping,” said Susan Ostrander, interim development services manager.“We are starting to get more interest in downtown,” she continued. “A sign of the economy in turnaround.”Currently, there are 15 URM buildings downtown, she said, all at different stages of compliance with the city’s current URM ordinance to ensure earthquake safety.“Some have never been occupied, some have been vacated. Some are working on planning permits toward getting their facades done, while others have completed the planning stage and entered in the building permit stages for retrofit work,” she said.At its last meeting, the City Council moved forward with staff recommendations to make the city’s URM ordinance easier for downtown property owners to comply with, in order to make the necessary upgrades to their buildings while ensuring public safety.The state’s URM building law requires local jurisdictions such as Gilroy to inventory all potentially hazardous buildings and establish a local program to mitigate the hazards. In 2006, Gilroy amended its URM ordinance to require one of two levels of mitigation: a “mandatory” minimum retrofit or a “voluntary” full retrofit.What turned out to be contentious, and according to Ostrander’s staff report, “counterproductive,” was a rule in the ordinance that mandated a URM building that has been vacant for 24 hours remain unoccupied until a minimum or full retrofit is completed.“The 24-hour requirement has resulted in high vacancies among the URM buildings,” according to the report presented to the council.Ostrander, working with concerns presented at recent URM Task Force meetings, suggested changing the 24-hour time period to 120 days continuous vacancy before the retrofit requirement kicked in. Staff also recommended the city accept bonds at 100 percent for URM retrofit activities, instead of the standard 200 percent.Most important, the amended ordinance gives city building officials discretion in issuing a temporary certificate of occupancy to eligible vacant URM buildings prior to the building being retrofitted.“We wanted the ability to—in certain circumstances when health and safety is not at risk—allow temporary occupancy during retrofitting,” said Ostrander. “Buildings that have been vacant for a long time are losing rental income and can’t pay for a retrofit—there is no winning in that situation.”Gary Walton, downtown property owner and member of various URM committees over the years said it was “unfortunate” it took the city 10 years to get back to what state law required.“No other city in the state prohibits tenants from occupying a URM building after 24 hours being empty,” he said, adding that he understood the city’s original intent was to get the repairs done, but the strict timeframe and the inability of owners to occupy their buildings while retrofitting, was a high barrier to those who didn’t have the ready capital to make the required changes.“You have to be reasonable,” he said.None of Walton’s downtown holdings are URM buildings.“Ten years of non-economic activity can mean up to $1 million in lost revenue,” said Jose Montes, owner of four buildings downtown, including the old Dick Bruhn’s location—home of the soon-to-open used bookstore, BookBuyers.“So technically you already lost your building since you’ve lost more in rent than what your building is worth. And you are still paying property taxes and insurance. Not to mention the cost of damages to the [now vacant] building and penalties.”The city has come a long way since an earlier version of the ordinance placed a $60,000 fine on each URM building out of compliance.“Back then we had 25 URM buildings downtown and you could either pay the fine or tear down the building for $45,000,” recalled Walton. “It would have torn out the heart of downtown. So they brought down the fee to $15,000.”That was in 2011, the last time the ordinance was amended. Less than a year ago, the city was issuing arrest warrants to out-of-town URM property owners for non-compliance.The tough tactic, spurred by former mayor Don Gage, left some rancour between downtown property owners, local lawmakers and city staff, especially when it turned out official letters from the city never got to the property owners in question.“We’ve been making progress in bringing owners to the table over the last three years,” said Walton, who also serves on the board of the Downtown Business Association, which sent a letter of support to the city regarding the ordinance amendments.“They didn’t understand the difficulty they created by removing the stream of income property owners could have used to make improvements.”Walton added: “There are some things they did right and others they did wrong, but it’s done. You can’t change the past, only change the future, and this is a good first step in doing something positive.”For his part, Montes is excited about the changes.“I see new staff, a new City Council and mayor, a new city administrator and they all realize that new steps needed to take place before we got downtown going again,” he said.The first reading of the amended URM ordinance will take place at the next City Council meeting on Monday, June 20.

A Clinton is running for President and Donald Trump is all over the media headlines, in this crazy world where old is new again, the ’90s are back, and downtown Gilroy is getting a bookstore.