A giant red steel structure with a noose hanging from it in the
northwest quadrant. Sounds like one Gilroy resident doesn’t want
any houseguests. But not everything is always what it seems …
A giant red steel structure with a noose hanging from it in the northwest quadrant. Sounds like one Gilroy resident doesn’t want any houseguests. But not everything is always what it seems …
“What’s going on at the corner of Chesbro and Kelton?” she asked. “There’s a structure that’s about 20 feet out of steel and it looks like a noose hanging on top of it. I’m curious as to how that passed city code and what the heck it is.”
As soon as we heard the word noose, we had the sick urge to go out and see it for ourselves. But to tell you the absolute truth, we don’t have any idea what it is either. knocking on the door of home at the corner didn’t help much, either, because no one was home.
But we did talk to the building and life safety division for the city, and it appears that the structure, in one way or another (scaffolding, perhaps?), is the first step in a two-story, 14,000-square-foot extension being built onto the east end of the property. Concrete also has been poured for the floor of the extension.
So, it sounds like the structure will ‘hang’ around for a little, but won’t be a long-term eyesore.
* * *
Another caller rang in to try and provide a solution to readers’ complaints about cars for sale on First Street and to complain about the utility tax.
“I’d like to respond to the call to the Red Phone (June 25),” he said. “In order to alleviate the parking problem in front of Safeway on weekends, paint the curb red like on the south side in front of the cemeteries or paint it green for 10-minute parking.”
While that certainly would work, there are plenty of ways that the city could stop people from parking on First Street, like parking meters, for example. It really comes down to whether the city really wants to or not.
“My complaint is the utility tax that Gilroy has and Hollister and Morgan Hill do not,” he said. “The money does go into the general fund, but we should get rid of the utility tax, which hurts those that are low-income, and we have all the big company stores coming in and we are getting their sales tax.”
According to City Administrator Jay Baksa, the tax has been around for 34 years, and is the city’s second-largest tax generator. The 5 percent tax on gas/electric bills, phone bills and cable bills goes into the city’s general fund.
“It generates $3.8 million, 13 percent of the revenue needed to provide city services that are not fee-generated,” Baksa said. “To give you perspective, the entire budgets for parks maintenance, recreation, forestry, the senior center, the youth center, museum and public information program is $4 million.”
If the tax, which is not enforced in Morgan Hill and Hollister, was cut, we wouldn’t necessarily lose all those programs, but major cuts would come from somewhere.
“It becomes a quality of life issue,” he said. “You won’t get the same level of services.”
Baksa said some of those quality of life issues include have 1.5 police officers on the street for every 1,000 people in town – ratios both Morgan Hill and Hollister can’t boast. When it comes down to it, we would say the tax is worth it.
