John and Debbie Tawney don’t have a shortage of anecdotes about
their Maple Avenue home on a cul-de-sac in unincorporated San
Martin.
John and Debbie Tawney don’t have a shortage of anecdotes about their Maple Avenue home on a cul-de-sac in unincorporated San Martin.
There’s one about the two different postal routes on either side of the street because one side is in Morgan Hill and the other is in the county. Or the one about how a discarded mattress or an injured person should be taken to the street’s north side where Morgan Hill will respond quicker than the county-serviced south side, where the Tawneys’ home is located along with six other residences.
The Tawneys’ street, which dead-ends about 800 feet west of Murphy Avenue, is part of a several-thousand-acre chunk of land that has an identity crisis.
“We’re in the middle of no man’s land – no man’s land is Maple Avenue,” said John Tawney. “Who do we belong to?”
Early next year, a clearer answer may emerge when the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation Commission, which is considering a drive to incorporate San Martin as a town, decides whether to include the land within the town’s boundaries or leave it within county limits. At a meeting this month, Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage, who is also one of five LAFCO board members, said he wanted the land included in the boundaries because he considered it “rural residential” and not farm land, as the county’s staff described it. LAFCO’s mission is to thwart urban sprawl and preserve farm land, but, like John Tawney, Gage said leaving the land out of San Martin would make it “no man’s land.”
Meanwhile, an ongoing feud between a private property owner across from the Tawneys’ residence who wants to build a nursery and the Tawneys and their neighbors vividly illustrates the county’s inability to adequately respond to local concerns, several families say. The close-knit group of neighbors signed a petition to oppose the construction of a wholesale retail nursery at 765 Maple Ave. since it was first proposed in 2005, but despite their concerns the Santa Clara County Planning Commission approved the project in October. The Board of Supervisors heard an appeal in December and upheld the commission’s decision.
The nursery will consist of an existing house with two detached garages, three 8,000-square-foot greenhouses, a 2,400-square-foot office building, a 27-space parking lot, and 15,250 square feet of outside display area, to an existing residence and its two detached garages. It will be located at the end of the cul-de-sac and have two signs, one facing Maple Avenue and the other facing the passing U.S. 101.
The Tawneys said they shelled out $250 toward the total $1,250 cost to file the appeal, and said they didn’t get their money’s worth. They felt neither the commission nor the board took their concerns seriously in rubber-stamping the proposal.
“They’re doing it on pencil and paper,” said Debbie Tawney, a teacher at El Toro Elementary School in Morgan Hill. “This is what happens time and time again … this gives an example of how remote they are.”
Gage said the board considered the opposing views and defended the decision rejecting the appeal, saying that the Maple Avenue site was zoned to allow a nursery, which had already existed at the location.
But Mark and Trina Hineser, whose residence is next door to the Tawneys, said there was no nursery there before.
Furthermore, they say county officials haven’t done their research. If they did, they would have found a number of discrepancies, they said.
“It is our belief that neither of our documents were looked at or reviewed by the (Board of Supervisors),” Trina Hineser wrote in an e-mail to South Valley Newspapers. According to documents filed with the county’s Planning Office, Morgan Hill-based MH Engineering Co. is the company seeking to build the nursery. The listed owner is Kevin Wang. Calls to the company were not returned by press time.
The Hinesers claim that the Environmental Information Form submitted to the Planning Office on Oct. 21, 2005, contains falsified information.
“If the form had been filled out correctly back in 2005 the application would have been looked at much differently,” Trina Hineser said. “Especially due to the fact that applicant indicates that there are other retail businesses around this location and that it is not on a dead end street or cul-de-sac, both of which are statements that are not true and should have been reviewed and noted by the planning department prior to them accepting the applicants’ application.”
Because the project has gone through the governmental review process, families such as the Hinesers and the Tawneys have little recourse other than to sue. Neither has indicated plans to do that so far.
The way Debbie Tawney sees it, the damage has been done because when the nursery goes up, her three daughters will no longer be allowed to play in the street or stroll around the neighborhood handing out cookies.
“We’re basically confined to our backyard,” Tawney said. “We wanted to be in the (rural area) so our kids could play.”
