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Gilroy
February 25, 2026

Guest View: Heartbeat of Gilroy

It was a warm Thursday summer evening, and everything was in place. I stepped back and was completely in awe. In previous years, I had seen the wonder of creating a venue in a matter of days, having a celebration of Garlic and family for...

Spoking My Mind: Happy New Gear

bicycle new year resolution
Yes, a very happy new gear to all! Did Santa bring you a new bicycle last month? Spectacular! Send me a picture of you and your new ride—landscape is preferred over portrait—and I’ll try to feature it in a future column.  Have you signed up for...

Preserving the Past: Don Ygnacio Ortega

It began in the little mining camp of Real de Santa Ana, Baja California. Jose Francisco Ortega had already completed 10 years in the king's army and was in 1768 the Superintendent of Osio's gold and silver mine at Real de Santa Ana. To secure...

Guest View: State keeps expanding school curricula while key subjects need improvement

Recently, the attorney general’s office completed paperwork for an initiative that, if qualified for the 2024 ballot and approved by voters, would require California’s nearly 6 million public school students to take a course in personal finance. The proposal, by an organization called Californians for...

Guest View: Plan to overhaul mental health system offers a glimmer of hope

Gov. Gavin Newson’s announcement in the spring to radically reshape California’s mental health care was compelling for several reasons. One is personal: I have an adult son with schizophrenia, a condition that’s impacted our lives for almost 30 years and counting.  My son is 44...

Guest View, Carol Marques: Housing shortage or affordability problem?

carol marques
At a recent city function, a guest speaker said Anderson Dam was built in 18 months but the retrofit would take 8-10 years. It was his next comment that resonated with me: “That’s just the way it is.” I sat there thinking, nothing is...

Guest View, Dion Bracco and Carol Marques: Addressing homelessness

There was an opinion piece in the March 19 Dispatch that led the reader to believe that the Gilroy City Council is ignoring a plan that could end homelessness. That is a misleading statement. What the opinion leaves out is that the Gilroy City Council...

Guest View, Carol Marques: Spend energy on solutions, not negativity

By Carol Marques I was disappointed last week when I read a letter to the editor in the Dispatch which reinforced the negativity that is trending right now. The writer’s perceptions of the City of Gilroy lack the facts. Much of what he is concerned...

Guest View: The misconceptions of homelessness

Living in the Bay Area for any period of time, the discourse around the housing market is a hot button topic of conversation, mostly because it costs more than a car to live in a car-sized apartment every month. With the explosion of wealth...

Memo from Pastor Kang: What do you see at night?

By Hwapyoung Kang I am Hwapyoung Kang, the first native South Korean senior pastor to serve the Gilroy United Methodist Church, which was established in Gilroy in 1853. I believe I can now say that I am a 2.5-year-old Korean-Gilroyan, because I have experienced the...

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