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So you lost your job and times are tough; maybe the kids wear threadbare clothes because this week the choice was food or shoes.The Keeper’s Closet is here to help. And it’s free.Almost a year old, the Gilroy nonprofit serves the clothing needs of newborns to six-year-olds, a segment of the population its founder said was not being served in Gilroy when it comes to free clothing for the needy.The founder and board president of The Keeper’s Closet is retired attorney and former city councilman Brian Cunningham, 73. He has long been involved in charity work, including a stint as president of Martha’s Kitchen and as a leader in the St. Vincent de Paul Society of South County in Morgan Hill.In was while with the latter organization that he saw the unmet need that led to the founding of The Keeper’s Closet last February. It’s part of a larger nonprofit called Life Advocates that helps young women facing unplanned pregnancies, young people contemplating suicide and those in need of food and clothing.It costs about $50,000 a year to run The Keeper’s Closet, including rent and a half-time outreach manager. Cunningham pays for it all out of his own pocket.“He not only has a heart for helping and serving people, he definitely is a dreamer and a doer,” said Rochelle Henson, 25, the group’s outreach manager and only employee.The mainstays among the volunteers are Julie Gozzo, Cunningham’s legal assistant, Debbie Molyneaux, Mary Fierro Lisa Menge and Lisa Dimas Jessen.The mission of The Keeper’s Closet is “to serve families who can’t afford clothing,” to provide it for free and to unite the community to recycle and reuse clothing, according to Henson, an Aromas resident.“By doing that,” she said, “we are helping families who are going through tough times.”The group takes donations of clothing and shoes typically in large plastic bags, then sorts and stores the clothes by type, gender and size.Two of its greatest needs are consistent donations and increased visibility. For now, their go-to outreach tool is Facebook, at facebook.com/TheKeepersCloset/.In its 1,800-square-foot headquarters in a modest Gilroy office building on West First Street, Henson has created an elaborate but simple and orderly system that uses stacks of cardboard file boxes to store and easily find each category of clothing. Nearby shelves hold scores of shoes, while dozens of colorful jackets and coats hang on racks. In another room are dozens of bags of donated clothing awaiting sorting.The clothing is handed out, no questions asked, every few months at distribution events at the office. Those in need also can drop in during the week but must call ahead and make an appointment. The same goes for donors, because the office is not always staffed.“Because this is our first year it has been kind of a trial year and we still are planning which days are best,” Henson said, regarding the big distributions.“For our very first, nobody knew about us so we only had eight kids but at our second we served 92 and the third it was 75,” she said.The next events will be Feb. 22 and April 2.Needy families can receive shirts, shoes, pants, shorts, sweatshirts, jackets, dresses, socks and underwear. The Keeper’s Closet often also has a selection of strollers, high chairs and toys. Sometimes there are diapers and cribs.And all of those are the items that the group encourages people to donate, preferable gently used, clean and in large plastic bags.The group accepts sizes up to 8-year-olds because some 6-year-olds are bigger than average, Henson said.The biggest need is for boys clothing, according to Cunningham.“We are always running out of clothes, especially for young boys, sometimes we have to buy then from the Salvation Army,” he said.He hopes people who dump clothing in street bins around town will consider The Keeper’s Closet and its collection bins instead. They are located in USA Gymnastics and Strandz Beauty Salon in Gilroy, Artistry Hair Salon in Morgan Hill and at Aromas Free School in Aromas.Cunningham would like to hand out modest, free food packs with nonperishable staples such as beans and rice, for families really in a bind. He hopes someone in Gilroy’s food industry will come forward and help with that idea.The name, The Keeper's Closet, was inspired in part by the divine and in part by the whimsy of word play, Cunningham said.“The idea was that Keeper refers to God the Father and how He cares for us, and Closet was just sort of alliteration,” that they liked.Henson and Cunningham voiced similar sentiments when asked what they get out of the services provided by The Keeper’s Closet. Cunningham put it this way: “There is a certain uplift I get and others that join me get in helping others,” he said.“It’s a dramatic life lift you feel. There is no other human activity that matches helping others; in the autumn of my life I have found it to be one of the most rewarding things I have done.”To donate or receive clothing, The Keeper’s Closet is at 1335 First St., Suite C, across from Mama Mia’s restaurant. The office is on the second floor. Call ahead at (408) 847-2018 or contact them via email [email protected].

The San Benito High wrestling team took all of the drama out of Wednesday night’s Monterey Bay League Gabilan Division match against visiting Christopher. The Haybalers won nine of the first 14 individual weight classes en route to a 51-18 victory.

It started right after the Civil War and helped put Gilroy on the map, but much of the city’s railroad history is a faded and forgotten puzzle of the past.

As the local public relations professional behind the 247-megawatt Panoche Valley solar project and the No on Measure J campaign, which failed to stop a citizen-led effort to ban fracking in San Benito County in 2014, Kristina Chavez Wyatt is no stranger to controversy.

When I came to Gilroy in 1980, the Gilroy Dispatch was filled with letters about rampant growth. The development at the time was the Northwest Quadrant. The claims were that Gilroy was sprawling, we were becoming another San Jose and we were losing our small town charm.

After what may have been the quickest job interview ever, Daniel J. Harney was selected at Monday’s City Council meeting to fill the seat left vacant following the resignation of former mayor Don Gage.

On Monday, Gilroy joined a growing number of jurisdictions across the state that have banned the cultivation of marijuana.In a unanimous vote—with no discussion from the dias or objection from the public—the City Council passed a new zoning ordinance which prohibits the cultivation, processing, delivery and dispensing of marijuana within city limits.The ordinance, which was introduced at a Planning Commission session in December and had its final reading at the council meeting on Monday, makes no distinction between the cultivation of marijuana for commercial and personal use.The state’s Compassionate Use Act of 1996 and Senate Bill 420, known as the Medical Marijuana Program Act (adopted in 2003) allows an individual, a qualified patient, a primary caregiver, or a member of a legal cooperative to possess a specified amount of marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation.In 2010, Gilroy passed an ordinance prohibiting medical marijuana dispensaries.A trio of bills, known as the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act (MMRSA), was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in October, establishing a regulatory framework and licensing authority for the state’s rapidly growing medical marijuana industry. In response, cities and counties across the state have been scrambling to put their own regulations on the books in order to maintain local control.The rush was prompted in part by a March 1 deadline for local zoning rules that the author of the Assembly bill now says was a mistake.According to the city’s reading of the legislation, under AB 243, “if a local agency does not have an ordinance in effect by March 1, 2016, that either expressly prohibits or expressly regulates the cultivation of medical marijuana, the California Department of Food and Agriculture will be the sole licensing authority for such uses, and may issue such permits for locations within Gilroy.”In a press release, Assemblymember Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) said, “Nobody intended to give local lawmakers such a short timeline to develop regulations for an industry as complex as medical cannabis.”Wood introduced a bill last week that would remove the March 1 deadline and delete the authorization of local jurisdictions to prohibit the cultivation, storage, manufacture, transport, provision or other activity by patients and caregivers otherwise exempt from state regulation. On Monday, AB 21 as amended passed the state Senate and will go on to the Assembly and then to the governor for his signature. Gov. Brown has said he supports the deadline “fix.”Yet it seems no legislative action can come soon enough to impede the banning trend that is sweeping the state. California Norml, the state’s largest advocacy group pushing for marijuana reform, estimates that nearly 160 jurisdictions have put bans on the books or are considering bans on commercial and/or personal marijuana cultivation.In unincorporated areas of Santa Clara County, commercial cultivation of marijuana is banned. The Patient and Caregiver Medical Marijuana Cultivation Ordinance regulates cultivation by three or fewer qualified patients and primary caregivers for the patient’s personal medical use and prohibits distribution.“There is a wave of communities looking at banning cultivation, which is an unfortunate side effect of regulations,” said Mike Adams, a grower from Nurturing Seed Farms in Mendocino County.Adams was part of a panel discussion on cannabis at the EcoFarm conference in Pacific Grove on Friday. The well-attended panel was the first of its kind for the agricultural conference, which focuses on sustainable, organic and ecological farming techniques.Adams sees the cultivation of cannabis as an opportunity for small-scale farmers to bolster their revenue and gird them from the risk of operating a small farm. He said that with small-scale farming you are “basically taking a vow of poverty.”Calling cannabis the “number one cash crop,” Adams said in his eight years in California he can confidently say that cannabis growers are doing financially better than those growing kale.Yet, with the trend of cultivation bans sweeping the state, it is hard to predict how things will pan out for people interested in growing cannabis.Since 2004, when SB 420 established the medical marijuana program in the state, a patchwork of municipal ordinances has popped up as local jurisdictions attempted to address key issues like land use and public safety. Most ordinances dealt primarily with dispensaries and brick and mortar stores, not cultivation.All that changed with the signing of MMRSA. While most of the provisions of the law do not fully take effect until 2018, the rush by local jurisdictions to put their own regulations on the books has left growers, industry watchers and patient advocates in a state of shock.In an open memo to local governments, medical marijuana patient advocacy group, Americans for Safe Access, stated that banning the personal and commercial cultivation of medical cannabis since the adoption of the MMRSA is “an unnecessary step that is harmful to patients and may deprive the cities and counties of the proven benefits of regulation: reduced crime, fewer complaints, greater clarity for all stakeholders (especially law enforcement), tax revenue, and more.”Researchers from cannabis industry investment firm The ArcView Group found that the U.S. market for legal cannabis grew 74 percent in 2014 to $2.7 billion, up from $1.5 billion in 2013. According to the Washington Post, the cannabis industry will be worth $35 billion by 2020.    

 Four-year Gilroy resident and eBay executive, Daniel J. Harney, was selected to fill the city council seat left vacant by the resignation of former Mayor Don Gage in December at tonight’s city council meeting. After nearly two hours of discussion with questions from the council and comments from the public, Harney received the four votes needed from the six-member council to beat out the other seven applicants to garner his place on the dais. He beat seven other applicants. An eighth,  Harvard-educated lawyer, James Foy, dropped out of the running. Harney will serve out the 10-months left of Gage’s term. During his interview in front of the council, Harney said he and his wife, who is a nurse at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, moved to Gilroy from Morgan Hill in 2011 with their children in part because of the city’s “sense of heritage” and focus on “smart growth.” When he lived in Morgan Hill, Harney served on the Board of Directors for the homeowners association of Creekside Village. When asked by Councilmember, Dion Bracco what sets him apart from the other applicants, Harney said he had a vision for Gilroy that he believes is shared by a lot of new people coming into the city and as a “Gen-Xer” has a strong connection with the rising “millennial” demographic. He wants to see a vibrant downtown with a variety of things to do.As a member of the city council, Harney will have to serve on a number of committees and commissions. He said he would like to serve on the VTA or transportation committees.Harney said his primary goals during his short term on the council is to work with his fellow council members to fill leadership positions in city hall, including a new city administrator and to make budget expenditure decisions.Harney said he intends to run for a permanent seat on the council during November elections.After receiving the oath, Harney took his place on the dais for his first action as council member. In a unanimous vote, Council member Peter Leroe-Munoz was selected as Mayor Pro Tempore.   

Here's the view of Gilroy people see from the train. Yuck. This is the scene behind House of Furniture and Revolution Furniture on Monterey Street. The scary thing is that some of those couches look pretty nice. But beware, there are some big German Shepherds guarding the place. 

As she looked out at the 6,762 yards of CordeValle’s San Martin golf course, Cristie Kerr, the 11th ranked women’s pro in the world, said it was “tough, but fair.”