Editorials

There are a lot of very sweet, kind and hard-working people who live at Eagle Ridge. Of that, I have no doubt.

The bizarre events of December 2015 will be long etched in Gilroy’s political history. Mayor Don Gage stunned the city by resigning without warning a year before his term ended, effectively handing the reins to his political ally, Perry Woodward. The handoff allowed Woodward to run as an incumbent—but not before the duo pushed through approval of a massive farmland annexation that would have, along with other planned developments, made Gilroy one of the Bay Area’s biggest cities—a sprawling urban mass of 120,000 residents, more than double the city’s population today.

What’s becoming more and more clear is that there’s something systemically wrong with the Gilroy Fire Department. What’s wrong is exemplified by the ongoing lawsuit brought against our community for overtime pay by well-compensated assistant fire chiefs Phil King and Ed Bozzo (retired). What’s wrong is exemplified by the fact that the firefighters are the only group to ever force the city into binding arbitration. What’s wrong is exemplified by the fact that the firefighters union again hasn’t settled contract negotiations with the city.

In that same tradition that prompts us to be thankful at the