Ben Anderson is a columnist who is not held to the same
journalistic standards that reporters are. Honesty, integrity and
getting facts straight are hallmarks of other award-winning
Dispatch writers but these virtues are missing for some getting
paid to jot down opinions on pages that are white, not yellow.
Ben Anderson is a columnist who is not held to the same journalistic standards that reporters are. Honesty, integrity and getting facts straight are hallmarks of other award-winning Dispatch writers but these virtues are missing for some getting paid to jot down opinions on pages that are white, not yellow.
Last Thanksgiving, Anderson asked rhetorically: “If our planning Kops want to reduce blight, how about forcing some attractive affordable housing into Gilroy that a guy doesn’t have to work four jobs to afford?”
In his column Wednesday, Anderson blasted the only green eco-developer in our town for doing just what Anderson wanted. Cote grew up in Gilroy, his family lives here, and he tells anyone that will listen that he wants to stay here the rest of his life and build what everyone here can be proud of. Gilroy is blessed that Cote built the first environmental/solar homes in the history of Gilroy and then Cote had the audacity to offer them at discounts he financed himself to police officers, firefighters, and teachers.
Anderson conveniently left out of his column the part about taxpayers paying not a cent to Cote to bring community caregivers to Gilroy and then give them a chance to purchase their own high technology affordable solar home here. Anderson also left out that a year after a police officer and his family moved in next to Las Animas Veteran’s Memorial Park in a solar home Cote built there for them, that crime dropped nearly in half from a year before, according to Gilroy Police Department statistics.
Anderson indicted Cote in his column for a legal issue with a business Cote was a stockholder in 20 years ago, but he conveniently left out how Cote paid back every school in Gilroy, with interest, out of his own pocket. Cote has apologized in this paper over and over for those incidents, but some people against alternative energy, reducing crime, or rebuilding run down parts of our town on Cote’s nickel seem to have their own agenda.
In one paragraph, Anderson says Cote will be building “18 more solar homes, most three-story versions this time,” then in asks “are 22 three-story homes more than the surrounding neighborhoods can blend in with … ?” Cote has proposed 11 non-taxpayer funded low-rise, tri-level, affordable, solar homes for police officers, firefighters, math and science teachers, nurses, U.S. military veterans, as well as for current residents of Gurries Drive.
A low-rise, tri-level is a specially engineered building designed for the first time ever in Gilroy to meet the maximum height restriction of a single-family home, yet be extremely affordable, fully solar and very beautiful.
Anderson made it appear that Cote is building in an area of all single-story homes, but forgot to mention that Gurries Drive, a short street, already is home to a half dozen multi-story apartments and that within 500 feet there are many, many more multi-story homes, apartments and businesses.
Anderson alleges that solar panels can be broken by rocks. They can’t. He admits solar panels are expensive but leaves out that Cote pays $30,000 for them and then still sells his homes to community caregivers at prices below non-solar homes in Gilroy. The homeowners get little or no PG&E electric bills, ever. Anderson claims the neighborhood will lose it’s character, yet Cote builds homes with historic character that many have written and spoke of as reminding them of the grander old neighborhoods of Gilroy.
It’s true that Gurries Drive has been home to drugs, prostitution and a recent shooting in the past month. Cote has promised to provide homes for four new police officer families. Anderson’s response is that the criminals will just move across the street, perhaps to St. Mary’s Parish? Not likely, criminals don’t congregate where police officers live, the cops won’t tolerate it – witness the precipitous drop in crime where Cote last built solar homes in Gilroy. Anderson then alleges that Gurries Drive will require patrols a la Eagle Ridge on private streets. Oops, no private streets are proposed and no taxpayer funds will be used.
Anderson offers no non-taxpayer paid crime-cutting strategies to counter Cote and the more than 20 first-ever amenities provided by his project. Anderson claims that Cote is only selling to police officers to get his project passed, however this is not an amenity the city is considering when approving Cote’s homes. Anderson fails to consider that 18 new homes in our city center are 18 homes that won’t be built in spectacular open space and greenbelt surrounding Gilroy.
At a neighborhood meeting Saturday, 12 Gurries Drive neighbors turned out in the pouring rain to support Cote’s new solar affordable project. At the last Planning Commission hearing, two former mayors, a former school board member, a police officer, a fire captain, education advocates and many others were there supporting Cote.
Perhaps the time has come to look behind the scenes at who is supporting Anderson? And then ask, why?
Editor’s Note: The discrepancy in Ben Anderson’s column regarding the number of homes proposed was due to an
editor’s error. The first reference was changed to the correct number, which had been modified from the original project proposal of 22, but the second reference was missed.
Guest columnist Eric VonForstmeyer is a Gilroy resident. Anyone interested in writing a guest column may contact Editor Mark Derry at ed****@****ic.com.
