Opinion

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! 

On Monday, Dec. 7, the Gilroy City Council will be taking up the important issue of whether in the next five years to plan for and build new residential neighborhoods on the approximately 721 acres roughly bounded by Monterey on the east, Santa Teresa on the west, Fitzgerald on the north and the existing city limits on the south. Specific project details are not yet available but the development will likely consist of somewhere between 4,000 to 5,300 new residences.

TEN YEARS AGO, in November 2005, the City of Gilroy passed the Downtown Specific Plan. Its goal was to “create a unique and identifiable Downtown for Gilroy that is economically vibrant, pedestrian-oriented and a local and visitor destination.”Obviously, that didn’t work. Instead of colorful signage, sidewalk cafes and aesthetic trash enclosures, we have “for lease” signs, empty storefronts and construction fences surrounding projects that seem frozen in time. The dilapidated cannery buildings remain dilapidated. Music is piped in, lending a bizarre lite rock soundtrack to an eerily quiet downtown.Last year, the city formulated an “action plan” to “develop a thriving Gilroy downtown.” As before, it was an exercise in words, not actions. It lacked a timeline and was presented without buy-in from stakeholders.It mis-prioritized seismic safety as the No. 1 goal, above economic development and a welcoming environment. The execution was all stick, no carrot: slapping liens on buildings, fining owners and even criminally charging a 90-year-old woman.That came on the heels of two decades of inaction downtown and the failure to learn from other cities’ experiences. While downtowns around Santa Clara County—Morgan Hill, Los Gatos, Campbell, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, San Jose, Willow Glen—upgraded their unreinforced masonry buildings, formed redevelopment agencies, invested in public improvements and paid attention to the retail mix, aesthetics and pedestrian experience, Gilroy repeated the 1960s-era mistake made by San Jose and countless other cities: building a large retail center on the outskirts while neglecting the city’s core. So we have a downtown that’s nearly half a century out of step but bursting with potential. The city has to do more than hang flower baskets and plant a few skinny trees. There should be millions in coordinated public and private investment and a cooperative, can-do ethos at City Hall.If the city is going to cry poor and not properly fund downtown revitalization, then the least it can do is provide some fee waiver exemptions, expedite approvals and stop arresting property owners. It should implement the aesthetic improvements it promised a decade ago. And it should stop taking a narrow view of cost recovery on investment and instead look at the general benefits a downtown offers. Unlike a Costco or Walmart, downtown’s value cannot be measured in direct sales tax recovery. A beautiful, active downtown would raise the overall asset value of the Gilroy brand, and with it the economic future and quality of life of the entire community.