Politics

For the edition published on New Year’s Day, it seems fitting to ask several notable Gilroyans for their New Year’s resolutions.

Gilroy’s City Council will be looking at the year 2040 at its first meeting of 2016 on Monday, when it starts the lengthy process of approving a new general plan.

A property developer and city staff disagreed pointedly at a Planning Commission meeting Dec. 3 over the fairness of requiring the company to rebuild seven intersections around its planned townhouse complex in southwest Gilroy.The Planning Commission passed the requirement as part of a package of resolutions approving the construction of Imwalle Properties’ 202-unit complex. The company must install traffic signals and add lanes to intersections to accommodate increased traffic expected in the area as a result of the project.The city estimated the development’s traffic impact not in isolation but in combination with those of other projects in progress in the area, including the Hecker Pass and Glen Loma developments.“We’re one of all the projects coming into the southwest quadrant of Gilroy, and yet we’re being asked to fix all these intersections and pave the yellow-brick road for all the new projects coming in,” said lead developer John Razumich. “It’s a bit of a challenge for us.”Building the improvements would add $7 million before reimbursement to the cost of the project and extend it by three to four years, Razumich said. It is difficult for a smaller company like Imwalle Properties to find financing for the extra cost, he said.City planners had previously proposed charging the company only for its share of the construction cost and improving the intersections itself, in accordance with a study prepared by consulting firm RBF. However, commissioners questioned whether the report adequately estimated the project’s effect on traffic in the area, so planning staff hired another firm to conduct a second traffic study.The second study, by Hexagon Consulting, essentially agreed with the first but recommended that the developer build the improvements. Imwalle Properties would be reimbursed for its construction, minus its fair share.The developers did not dispute the necessity of the improvements but rather the fairness of having to construct them on their own. The obligation imposes an almost impossible financial burden that is out of proportion with the amount of new traffic caused by their development, Razumich said.“Our impact came out the same, but what has changed is we’ve gone from paying $1.6 million and doing the work adjacent and near to our site to needing to fix intersections that are over four miles away that are under state jurisdiction, that are under county jurisdiction, that we’re simply not set up for, we’re simply not capable of.”Collecting impact fees would not be adequate to cover the cost of building the improvements, said Kristi Abrams, the city’s chief planner. Improvements are needed to compensate for the cumulative effects of surrounding projects expected to open in the future, she said. Since the developers for those projects pay their contributions at different times depending on when they are approved, the fund does not contain all the money needed to finance improvements for cumulative impacts.“If the applicant does not mitigate their impacts, paying a fair share does not mitigate the impacts because it does not get the improvement complete,” Abrams said.The traffic-impact fund is currently running a deficit, Abrams said. Revenue fell below liabilities during the Great Recession, when applications stopped coming in.Abrams said the developers misunderstood the nature of the impact fund. Impact fees are collected to cover improvements for traffic increases throughout the city, so a project’s impact cannot be effectively calculated for individual intersections, she said.“There are all kinds of trips throughout the city that are just not at that location they’re identifying,” Abrams said. “If you wanted to follow their philosophy, then you would need to figure out where those trips are all day, every day, seven days a week and figure out all those little percentages throughout the entire city. So that kind of analysis doesn’t work for the city of Gilroy.”The city council’s final vote on the project has not yet been scheduled. Imwalle Properties will continue to discuss how to complete the improvements with city staff and city council members before then.

By Brad Kava

The city of Gilroy is preparing for torrential rain this winter as the threat of a record El Niño storm looms. Across California, the cyclical weather phenomenon is expected to bring as much as two times last winter’s rainfall.

How much garlic do you want with that?That was one question Emeryville artist Scott Donahue had to answer before he started the sculpture called Garlicgeese that welcomes visitors to Gilroy on the west side of Monterey Road a few blocks from the entrance to Hwy. 101.It’s hard to resist the vegetable that’s put Gilroy on the map, but he, along with the developer the arts commission wanted something a bit less garlicky.Thus was born Garlicgeese (one word, says the artist), a statue of a mother and her five half-garlic, half-goose creatures sculpted from brass, epoxy and stainless steel, weighing 500 pounds and mounted on a 20-foot-long concrete platform. It’s put smiles on the faces of children and been the site of an international geocache contest, where contestants flocked to find a hidden message.“Public art is specific to a place unlike art in a gallery,” said Donahue. “Originally, we thought, garlic and Gilroy. But then we thought, maybe people in Gilroy will think they’ve seen enough garlic. I thought if I could do something a little different, a little extra, I thought the general public would like a different presentation. This is our place, but it’s open to interpretation.”The geese, which cost $50,000, are a sign of the times as Gilroy ponders how to handle public art. Everyone wants art, but few can agree on the merits of individual pieces, or how they should be paid for.L. Mattock Scariot, the chair of the city’s Arts and Culture Commission, said she’d like to see new developers pay a fee for art to decorate their projects. However, she said, a proposal to charge in Gilroy is on hold while the city awaits the results of a developer’s lawsuit against the city of Oakland for trying the same thing.Gilroy’s new proposed General Plan, which will be heard by the council Jan. 4 and outlines the city’s intent for its future, lists public art as a priority and suggests finding funding sources that include corporate sponsorships, joint use agreements, private donations, user fees, bonds or fees on new developments.The downtown is decorated with four historical sculptures that cost $83,000 and were paid for in 2009 by a mix of city funds and private donations.Planners have placed requirements on some new developers to add art to their projects. The geese were paid for by K. Hovnanian Homes, which built the 60-unit Monterey Manor community on Monterey Road. They were unveiled a year ago.Donahue, the artist, was considering something about garlic but wanted to add something more. A former employee at the home builder suggested a theme of ducks, based on a statue he’d seen in Boston. Donahue took off with it.“I was thinking about marching garlics,” said Donahue, who got so into government policies as a public artist that he ran for city council in Emeryville and was elected. He’s now the city’s vice mayor.But the developer wanted to add something that wasn’t just garlic. And there was some feeling on the city’s art commission that the city needs to include other themes.“This is how public art works,” said Donahue. “If an artist is just slavishly going to one idea, they can’t make it something better.”The process took months of review by two city art committees, the planning department and finally the city council, before it was approved. Then it took five months to build. Donahue kept refining the piece, modeling it in clay, long before he used the permanent materials.The 64-year-old artist and UC-Berkeley lecturer has seen his share of controversy. His Berkeley Big People sculpture on a pedestrian bridge over Hwy. 80 is loved and hated. A review in SF Gate said it “fails every test” in sculpture and criticized the image of campus protesters as being “politically correct.”Garlicgeese has less controversy. Reviews on the Dispatch’s Facebook page were all positive.“So creative, simple and beautiful! Well done and thank you mystery artist,” wrote Barb Beaumont Siordia.Added Scarriot, the arts commissioner: “A lot of people think we have too much garlic. I don’t think so. I love how it’s abstract. You can’t tell it’s geese and it’s garlic. It’s really, really good.”“It’s a great way to be welcomed to Gilroy,” said city planner Melissa Durkin, who is working with other new art projects on Hecker Pass.

Residents upset with last week’s vote to add as many as 5,300 homes to Gilroy descended on Monday’s City Council meeting hoping to have their objections heard.

Morgan Hill Cutthroat

GILROY—While other California cities are bringing in revenue and helping patients with marijuana dispensaries and farms, Gilroy will continue to just say no.

GILROY—After 34 years in various local political offices, plain speaking Mayor Don Gage, 70, announced his retirement this week, at the start of Monday’s city council meeting. The one-time farmer, IBM program manager and elected representative said he wanted to spend time with his family, including three daughters and six grandchildren. He served through boom and bust times, watched the city and the freeway grow, and leaves as Gilroy pursues its biggest and most controversial housing project.