Opinion

Being unique can sometimes be a source of pride, but when it comes to a plastic bag ordinance, Gilroy’s failure to act is a bit embarrassing. Every city of any consequence in Santa Clara County has clamped down on single-use plastic bags. Milpitas, one of the last holdouts, passed a ban that went into effect on Jan. 1.

It was disappointing to see the article attempting to humanize the spokesperson who is being paid to sell Gilroy residents on a housing project to which we have publicly voiced our opposition. That said, what was most concerning—and left me scratching my head—were her comments specific to the proposal.

The major streets of Gilroy are turning into a third-world grid of potholes, gullies and fissures that continues to get worse after every storm, and it appears NOBODY in city government is not only not doing anything about it, but apparently does not care. Why is our City Council not doing anything about it? It seems to me the Dispatch could make a lot of Gilroy residents very happy to spearhead an effort to find out WHY the streets have been so neglected (besides the age-old excuses of ‘no money’) and WHY our local government refuses to keep us posted on their plans to fix it. How about an editorial addressing this problem?

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.

The bungled attempt to slide the largest development in Gilroy’s history through the county Local Agency Formation Commission came off the rails this week when LAFCO sued the city in Santa Clara County Superior Court. It’s unprecedented for a city to be dragged into court by the very agency whose approval it needs, and the mayor and council members who voted to submit the half-baked application for a highly unpopular project should be embarrassed about the way this all was handled.Citizens elect leaders to make wise and cautious decisions that reflect the will of their constituents, and the North Gilroy Neighborhood District initiative reflected none of those qualities.Mayor Perry Woodward, especially, displayed poor judgment. He makes money litigating as a profession—he has sued the city of Gilroy and this newspaper in the past—and just signed on to work for a big San Jose law firm. He, more than anyone, should understand the need to follow procedures and keep the city out of court. Litigation between taxpayer-funded entities is a game that no one wins.Luckily, landowner Jeff Martin made a sound decision to withdraw the application, promptly and without fuss. He has been a part of the community long enough to know which way the wind’s blowing, and he wants to do the right thing.In our view, a project this big should undergo a community visioning period, or charette, otherwise the nice watercolors, elegant website and new name—Rancho Los Olivos—are just lip gloss on a boar. It should have widespread community buy-in before it is handed off to regional agencies for approval. The process should not simply move from a small political in-group clumsily and arrogantly telling Gilroyans what’s best for them to a slick PR campaign by an out-of-county agency hired to sell the plan. Instead, if it’s to move forward, there has to be a genuine willingness to listen to a community that has spoken up loud and clear.“I asked the applicant to please rescind their application to allow for time for the city and greater community to better understand the proposal, the benefits to our community, how it gains local control and fits within the collective long-term vision of Gilroy’s future,” Woodward said in the developer’s press release. First off, why was the mayor of Gilroy’s position expressed through the project publicist’s press release, rather than in a city announcement? Does the mayor work for the city, or the developer? Second, should the mayor, after two weeks on the job, be using the personal pronoun and instructing a private applicant how to conduct his business affairs? And, third, is the problem really that the citizens of this community are too uneducated about the project’s fabulous benefits to “understand”?If Woodward really wants to bring the community around on this defining issue, he can start by creating an inclusive city leadership, which means not hand-picking ideological soulmates for mayor pro-tempore and council appointee. If he goes ahead with Peter Leroe-Muñoz as his second-in-command and then engineers Bob Dillon’s appointment—many City Hall watchers believe that that backroom deal’s already been cut—Woodward will have a de facto four-member voting block to accelerate Gilroy’s expansion over the objections of a large number, if not a majority of residents. And because a new general plan is in the works, Gilroy will live with the results of this political gamesmanship for decades to come.We hope Woodward’s colleagues on the council will realize that a mayor who’s crashing into walls should not be followed blindly. Being aggressive and taking initiative can sometimes be confused with leadership.A proclivity for action, to be sure, can be a very good thing when accompanied by sound judgment and a consensus of support. But when a moral compass is spinning freely and ambition charts the direction, what appears to be a march forward can really be just a bunch of lemmings sprinting to the cliff’s edge, dazzled by the brilliance of a $3 billion payday.

The unusual series of events of December 2015 continue to reverberate. On Dec. 7, Mayor Gage resigned and the council voted to forward an annexation request to the county, ahead of the new general plan and over the objections of the planning commission.

On Monday, the Gilroy City Council will appoint the city’s new mayor. Within weeks, it will fill a council vacancy and consider a general plan in a community that is deeply divided over how big and how fast Gilroy should grow.The process highlights some flaws in the City Charter-defined procedure, which prescribes that one of the remaining council members be named as mayor.Three of the council members, Peter Leroe-Muñoz, Dion Bracco and Roland Velasco would have to give up the last three years on their council terms to serve less than a year as mayor, then run for office again two years earlier than they would have had to otherwise.The three remaining members—Cat Tucker, Terri Aulman and Perry Woodward—all have terms that expire in 2016. Of those three, Woodward seems the most ambitious of the bunch. He ran for mayor before and dropped out when Don Gage entered the race.Woodward, who says Gilroy shouldn’t listen to outsiders, led the effort to raise campaign contribution limits from $250 to $750 and maximum expenditures from $26,000 to $53,000. That, paradoxically, is likely to increase the influence of special interests, such as out-of-town developers, over the concerns of average Gilroy homeowners, for whom $750 is a big check to write.Woodward also chaired the commission that voted to abandon compact development, add 5,300 homes on annexed farmland and make Gilroy one of the county’s largest cities. Not everyone in Gilroy wants to see that happen.If residents are unhappy with the choice of the next mayor and the policies he or she espouses, the timing of Gage’s resignation leaves them little recourse. They can’t exercise their right to recall the mayor or the appointed replacement councilmember because the earliest possible recall election date would be the date of the next regular election. So the appointed mayor and the newly appointed swing vote (the current councilmembers voted 3-3 on the annexation) will serve for the majority of 2016.This is obviously a watershed moment for Gilroy, and the critical decision is being made following a series of political and legal maneuvers. A chair’s been pulled out of the circle and the music has started.Passing a new general plan under these circumstances, and over the objections of the Planning Commission, could well taint the document that will shape the city’s future over the next 25 years and beyond.Gilroyans should pay close attention to who will be named mayor on Jan. 4, as well as the process to fill the empty council seat and the growth options in the new general plan. The stakes are very high.

TWAS THE MONTH before General Plan hearings, in Olde Gilroy,

With the mayor’s surprise resignation, the fast-track approval of a massive annexation initiative and the word that the council will appoint a replacement on Jan. 4, Gilroy residents should be asking some tough questions. What’s really happening over there at City Hall?

This fanciful letter was received by open space advocate Connie Rogers. We don't know the author 7 December 2015With my apologies to Mr. Shakespeare & Mark Antony Friends, Gilroy Residents, Lovers of Small Town Character! Lend me your ears! I have come to bury the USA Amendment 14-01, not to praise it. The evil that this amendment could do would live on forever and permanently change Gilroy; the good that it would do for a very few people should be sacrificed for the benefit of all. Our noble Mayor has told us that Gilroy must grow, and if it is true, it is a grievous thing that we must sacrifice the small town character that we love for the benefit of a multitude of north-dwelling and north-working newcomers to our fair city. But our Mayor must be correct, for he is an honorable man! So is Councilman Woodward an honorable man. And he says we must have “local control” of this land. For without local control, rapacious San Martin might gobble up the land, or Hollister may leapfrog-annex it before we can. We must protect the land from such nefarious interests, says Councilman Woodward, and he is an honorable man!  Some of our elected representatives tell us that only with a large tract of land can an excellent plan be made, and that they have only the highest standards for development in Gilroy. They say that small infill developments are inefficient and insufficient for our growth needs. They tell us that they know better than we do what Gilroy needs and how to achieve it. They brush off the consistent counsel of their Planning Commission, their professional planners and consultants they have paid, and attendees to every public meeting for planning Gilroy’s future held in the past year. We must all be wrong, and they must be right, because they are honorable representatives.  Council members who vote for this amendment do so perhaps out of pure motives, for they are honorable people. One of them might wish for the Mayor’s endorsement in his campaign for elected office; another might subscribe to the need for “local control”. Yet another may actually believe that “active senior housing” located as far from downtown as possible is the best place for those pesky active seniors. But I honor most those council members who vote against the amendment! The initiative of Mayor Gage and Councilman Woodward to increase election spending and campaign contribution limits is surely a good thing, and wealthy landowners and developers would surely agree, since they are all honorable people. Passage of the USA Amendment tonight would surely please those few people, even though the rest of Gilroy’s 53,000 residents apparently feel differently. We all should remember this at next year’s election, for we are voters and we too are honorable people. The mischief is afoot!