Uncategorized

As the city of Gilroy happily reports glowing and growing sales tax numbers – “Seven straight quarters of sales tax increases” – and the unions call for new hiring, I wonder if anyone gets it. Or will we turn a blind eye to reality and take the easy way out as Mayor Al Pinheiro did in the last election? Personally, he said, binding arbitration for public safety employees was a horrible burden for the city, but he declined to take on the political fight to overturn it. That could have caused a real election rumble with the firefighters and police unions spending money to save the right for an out-of-town attorney to have the final say on pay and benefits for Gilroy’s public safety employees.

Apparently, hell has frozen over. I do not have first-hand knowledge of this – not yet anyway. But recently, something so incomprehensible happened that there is little doubt in my mind about the frigid conditions down below.

In the United States, the Methodist Church has been known for

I turned 18 without knowing how to ride a bike. It was 1997, and I remember spending that summer at a public park swallowing my pride as an uncle pushed me around on a bike until I could ride it on my own.

Pamela Ryalls-Boyd, Owner of Decorating Den Interiors in Morgan Hill, CA was the recipient of a 2nd Place Award in the Decorative Hardware & Trims Category at the prestigious 2015 Envision Design and Ingenuity Workroom Competition, presented by Windows Fashion Vision magazine. The 31st annual “best of the best” awards ceremony was the culmination of the central competition that recognizes excellence in the design and fabrication of custom window treatments. This one-of-a-kind competition is the “Academy Awards™” of the window covering industry.

Our neighbor to the north, the Cilty of San Jose,  has a population of 1,016,479 (Jan. 1, 2015) while the City of Gilroy’s was 48,820 (April 1, 2010)  and is currently above 53,000.  This is a huge population difference. In size (area), the City of San Jose is 179.97 square miles, while the City of Gilroy is 16.156 square miles. Again, a huge difference.But, in reality, San Jose and Gilroy are similar in many ways.A recent, eye opening San Jose Mercury News editorial  (May 1,  “San Jose needs to stop bleeding industrial land”), warned its readers and its elected leaders about a coming attack on San Jose’s General Plan for “land use”  by developers whose only desire is to develop more profitable residential housing at the expense of industrial and commercial development that brings in much more sorely needed tax revenue to the city’s general fund (property tax revenue is a net negative for the city’s general fund).San Jose, like Gilroy, needs a significant increase in tax revenue to repair its streets and sidewalks, hire more police officers, and address many other serious needs.San Jose’s problem is that it does not have enough land to develop the significantly larger industrial base it needs to generate the needed tax revenue, and what is left, the residential developers want, which would only make San Jose’s problem worse.The incentives for the residential developers are huge as any planning changes they can convince the city council to approve will allow them to rake in millions.  Industrial land is dirt-cheap and if the developers can convince the council to change the general plan, the developers can flip the land for a 300 to 400 percent profit...a pretty good deal for a day’s work, you think?Fortunately, while Gilroy is much smaller in size and population, it does have a significant amount of agricultural and undeveloped industrial land.The residential developers know this and they want it for their own needs. Just like in San Jose.  Does this make them bad people?  No!  This is what they do for a living.  They are builders and they hire people who are in need of  good paying jobs.But, the real question  is, “is this good for the citizens of Gilroy and the future of the city?” and the answer is a resounding...No!Gilroy needs more tax revenue to repair its streets and sidewalks, maintain its parks and create new ones, hire more police and firefighters, purchase firetrucks and build more stations in the future and improve the downtown business district and turn it into a viable destination for those who live in Gilroy and hopefully draw tourists.To be able to do all of this and more, Gilroy needs to focus more on commercial and industrial development and less on resi-dential development.  We cannot allow the residential developers to suck our land use dry for their purposes.The future of Gilroy’s financial viability could very well depend on the actions the city council takes on the General Plan on May 18.Ronald L. Kirkish is a retired semiconductor engineer and 31-year Gilroy resident. He can be reached at (408) 309-9390 or [email protected]. He wrote this piece for the Gilroy Dispatch.