Pit bull attack #22 and let’s hope Mary Cortani and Phil Robb win

Another awful pit bull attack … enough is enough, it’s time for the new City Council to ban the breed from Gilroy. Take a model ordinance, spend precious little money on paying the city attorney firm Berliner Cohen to take a look at it and pass it. Unfortunately, it’s the best solution for the growing problem of random, vicious attacks. It’s only a matter of time before it’s not a dead family pet, which is tragedy enough, but a dead child.
Tags for children on the Christmas Tree at First Street Coffee. Take a tag for a boy or girl. It has an age on it, buy a gift, bring it back and the good folks at the South Santa Clara County Fire District will take care of the Santa part.
Santa’s arrival in  downtown Gilroy delayed due to the incoming storm. That pushes the  Christmas parade bash back one week  to Saturday, Dec. 8, so adjust your holiday schedule.
New mayor Don Gage will adjust his holiday schedule and, no doubt, be downtown soon anyway to do a little Santa shopping for his lovely bride, Jeanne. Sandra, the owner of the new and improved Amoretto Boutique in the cool, old bank building at the corner of Monterey and Martin Streets downtown, will be waiting. She’s quadrupled the inventory from her previous location, added a number of new items including home decor and done a fantastic job designing the interior. It’s a perfect building for a boutique and just the kind of thing downtown needs.
Coffee coming soon to the Amoretto Boutique and perhaps somewhere else downtown, too, if Karen Titus lands a spot to start brewing – perhaps on the ground floor of the building the Garlic Festival built now known as the Allium building.
Allium, alleyoop, there’s a new QB at the 49ers helm. Tough, but right move for Coach Jim Harbaugh to go to Colin Kaepernick, but it’s the wrong move every time to get stuck with Joe Buck as the talk-your-ears-off game announcer. Had to watch the entire 49ers game with the sound off. Later, when pondering the fact that Cal Berkeley alumni were going to buy football Coach Jeff Tedford out of the rest of his $6.9 million contract, I wondered why the fans couldn’t do that for Joe Buck. How about buyoutbuck.com? All contributions go to buying Joe Buck out of his broadcasting contract? Bet we could raise the money in less than six months.
If more than six months pas before the new City Council takes up the issue of hiring an in-house attorney to replace the expensive firm of Berliner Cohen, that will be a crying taxpayer shame.
Shame on the Gilroy Unified School District for not building proper athletic fields, including a stadium, at Christopher High School. All this talk about building a comprehensive high school – we couldn’t get comprehensive, fields and stadium included, for $130 million? Anyway, now what? District should kick in $1.5 million, ask the dynamic generous duo of Don and Karen Christopher if they would consider matching that, get the project started for $3 million and seek grant funds and sponsorships to try to get the rest done. Meanwhile, get the bid for the swimming pool at South Valley Junior High lowered, agree to split the out-of-pocket costs and go after some community grants to get it fixed.
Speaking of grants, Gilroy’s got ’em, straight from the “Give Where You Live” Gilroy Foundation. The grant application process opens Dec. 1. Details at www.gilroyfoundation.org. Money for nonprofit organizations that benefit Gilroy in education, art, health, recreation, agriculture and civic services available.
Old City Hall Restaurant is available again and I hope that Bobby and Fran Beaudet can make it work. It’s kind of cool that a husband and wife team are operating restaurants in two of our city’s most historic buildings – the old firehouse and the old city hall. Do know that Old City Hall is a great place for a bigger gathering upstairs and that the place is booked for more than a handful of groups for the holiday season. It’s a beautiful building, representing Gilroy’s finest.
Would be a fine Gilroy week if Mary Cortani won CNN Hero of the Year for her heartwarming rehabilitative work pairing dogs with war veterans, Phil Robb, the wonderful music man in GUSD, won Educator of the Year for Region V of the California League of High Schools … all while new leadership marched onto the dais of the City Council Chambers.