The majority of the City Council did the proper thing on Monday
night when they voted to annex 60 acres into the City of
Gilroy.
The majority of the City Council did the proper thing on Monday night when they voted to annex 60 acres into the City of Gilroy. While I sympathize with those Day Road residents who oppose the inevitable changes which will occur in the next few years in their little slice of heaven, I was unimpressed with the arguments they brought forth.
The presentation of their case against annexation included accusations of deception against the attorney for the Silveira property and posing questions of ethics to the monsignor from the Catholic Diocese of San Jose.
I was a member of the General Plan Update Committee a few years ago. The Day Road area has been in the urban service area of the city for years. I expected that land to be annexed into the city as soon as houses went up along Sunrise Drive. I don’t think I am the only person in Gilroy who thinks that once you’ve exited the freeway onto Masten Avenue, you are in Gilroy proper. The plans for the Silveira property which were proposed in the RDO before the Planning Commission included the Catholic parish and parochial school and housing as far back as 1999.
The real sticky point in the matter has been the interloping of Gilroy Unified School District. They might want to put the long needed second high school out on Day Road. They sent a letter of intent to pursue this land to the attorney for the Silveira property.
Then realizing they had opened a huge can of worms, they rescinded the letter of intent. A couple of weeks later, apparently unaware that the Superintendent had rescinded the letter, the school board passed a resolution calling the Day Road site “the preferred site.” They forgot to mention all of this at a joint meeting with the City Council. Hmmm … sounds about right for GUSD.
What I didn’t bring up at the Council meeting, because it wasn’t the appropriate venue, is that the school district is totally conflicted about this property. We know that GUSD recently adopted a policy of attendance areas. When I looked at the boundaries for the elementary attendance areas, I got a little worried about the future of Rucker School.
The attendance area for Rucker would appear to assure that Rucker School’s population would be too low for any long term certainty. And yet the district was expanding the campus to allow for a capacity of 700 students.
Still, I was worried that Rucker might go the way of San Ysidro. My fears were allayed when it was pointed out to me that GUSD was counting on a large number of homes slated to be built in the Day Road area to sustain the school well into the future. I don’t think that the school district can decide what it wants on that site. So far they are leaning towards houses or a high school, depending on which official GUSD document you are holding.
What the Day Road coalition doesn’t seem to grasp is that it doesn’t matter where GUSD decides to build a second high school. There will be an impact no matter where it goes. This is like a case of NIMBY gone mad.
The flap over the transitional shelter last year pales in comparison. The residents Monday evening spoke about a traffic impact of 5,000 cars for the high school alone (they quoted 10,000 cars for the parish/school/high school).
This seems unusually high to me considering the high school will open for 900 students. They believe that the air quality out by Day Road will be affected. It is ironic that the speakers lobbying our City Council aren’t residents of the City of Gilroy and apparently don’t want to be part of the City of Gilroy. Do they care about the air quality/noise/traffic impact to the people living everywhere else in Gilroy? There are already three elementary schools and Mount Madonna High School in a half mile radius in the north central area.
Many Gilroy citizens live near this congested area. Unfortunately, most of them cannot afford to hire an attorney to represent their interests. If I lived on Kern Avenue, I would fully support building a second high school that was located anywhere but in my neighborhood.
The truth is there aren’t a lot of options for locating a second high school near any of the present schools. With the exception of Rucker School, all of our schools are located in areas that are well built out.
Well planned cities make sure that resources and facilities are distributed throughout the community. It is my hope that GUSD will partner with the newly enlarged City of Gilroy to determine the best possible site for the new high school.
