After more than a year on the dais together, city council
members blazed through their second-annual policy summit last
weekend in a rare display of unity.
After more than a year on the dais together, city council members blazed through their second-annual policy summit last weekend in a rare display of unity.
The future’s unknown financial roadblocks and tough budget questions seemed to coalesce the council, which identified its top 12 priorities for the rest of the year after a day and a half together. Last year, it took three days to come up with a Top 10 list.
The council also spent the second half of Saturday chatting with the Morgan Hill City Council about the possibility of bridging emergency, recreation and environmental services. No final decisions were made, but both sides agreed to explore possibilities further, and Gilroy representatives asked their counterparts many questions about Morgan Hill’s contractual relationship with the Santa Clara County fire department as they continue to rethink how the city spends money on emergency services.
As for Gilroy’s own priorities, ethics and open government again made this year’s list.
To augment the recently passed Gilroy Open Government Ordinance, the council voted 5-1 to have City Clerk Shawna Freels work with her counterpart at the city of Santa Clara to figure out how Gilroy can implement its own voter-outreach program. In 2006, Santa Clara City Clerk Rod Diridon Jr.’s office distributed educational materials to voters, hosted community gatherings and consequently held candidates to higher ethical standards, according to a presentation he gave the council Friday morning. Councilman Bob Dillon voted against any Gilroy ethics program because he said the city had more important issues to address, and Councilman Perry Woodward was absent, but the rest of the council lauded Diridon’s campaign, which boosted voter turnout by more than 6 percent and cost Santa Clara about $100,000, according to his presentation.
When the next council election rolls around, city officials also expect the library to be entering construction. Council members agreed building needs to start soon and finish on time – no last-minute tweaks such as those that delayed the new police station and eventually caused what some council members described as an expensive, micromanaged monstrosity. City Administrator Tom Haglund said the city is still working out the details of the bond issuance for the library, and Assistant City Administrator Anna Jatczak said she expects the project to go out for bid this fall.
To avoid confusion this time around, council members vowed to give clearer direction to staff and to hold city planners responsible for the building’s aesthetics and construction pace, but most said they just wanted a functional building to stand for a long time – as promised to voters.
Residents have also been promised a bustling downtown one day, and council members said they would re-commit to revitalizing Gilroy’s core while also looking after some of the city’s newer assets.
Haglund reported that the Gilroy Gardens Board of Directors wants the council to come up with a game plan for the 536 acres the business sits on, “so we can sort of, once and for all, make a determination about amusement park itself,” he said.
Councilwoman Cat Tucker warned the council from meddling in the park’s business and said she shied away from too much cooperation, but Pinheiro and Haglund responded by saying it is not the city’s intention to run the park, but to work with the board lest the business plan its business on current conditions and then the city ultimately decides to rezone or alter the area, possibly putting the gardens out of sync and out of business and dragging down the area as it falls into abandonment.
The city has $150,000 budgeted over two years to create a master plan for the area, which could include trail systems and other woodsy attractions the city and park could use together, but Haglund said that money is in an developer fee-based fund that will have a $10 million deficit next year.
“It would be problematic to spend that,” Haglund said as city officials chuckled. “These are numbers on a page.”
The city plans to end the fiscal year in June with a $2.3 million general fund deficit, which the city’s reserve fund will have to cover, according to city figures. Last July, the city’s rainy-day fund held nearly $22 million, but staff expects the balance to drop to $5.5 million by June 2009, and earlier reports have shown the balance could plummet to negative $11.5 million a year later. But that is only if the city does not permanently cancel or delay tens of millions of dollars worth of major capital and infrastructure projects the reserve covers when developers are not building houses and paying fees to finance those projects.
To get developers building and paying fees, council members discussed some option but generally agreed that trying to fix the housing market is a waste of time.
The mayor and others recounted recent conversations with local developers who they said told them not to encourage construction by deferring fees, relaxing affordable and senior housing requirements or extending time limits for development because too many homes already saturate the market, they said. Adding to that pile will only drive prices down further, council members said while Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Larry Cope nodded his head.
“I think we just need to stay out of it and let the market run its course. When it bounces back, it’ll bounce back on its own,” Councilman Dion Bracco said. He added that by luring new developers to the city’s door, the council will be doing a disservice to past and regular developers who either have housing rights with time limits or have already built their houses and paid their fees – which city figures show run about $50,000 per single-family residential home, though developers have said it usually ends up closer to $70,000 – and are now sitting on loads of depreciating inventory.
At the end of the conversation, the council directed staff to come back with some impact fee scenarios and research about other cities that assess impact fees when homeowners move in instead of when developers break ground.
When it comes to broken walkways instead, the council agreed to spend more money on repairing sidewalks only if the city receives federal stimulus funds, but council members agreed that was unlikely – almost as unlikely as another strip club application coming through the planning department.
After being caught off guard by the short-lived proposal to build a strip club near the Gilroy Premium Outlets, council members said they wanted to revise the local adult business ordinance to make opening a strip club as hard as possible without violating any First Amendment rights to freedom of expression.
As for environmental issues, Gilroy’s entire environmental department will expire at the end of the week when lay-offs go into effect. To deal with this, the council discussed sharing programs with Morgan Hill, but the bulk of the meeting between the two bodies concerned mutual emergency services.
Santa Clara County Fire Department Deputy Chief Don Jarvis attended Saturday and told the council that Gilroy could share battalion chiefs, training costs, dispatch services and many other expenditures with the county if it entered into a contract similar to Morgan Hill’s. In the 1990s, Morgan Hill sold its fire stations and equipment to the county for a contract credit and then signed over its fire protection and personnel to the county.
Morgan Hill officials said it was a financial decision that they have not come to regret, but Councilwoman Cat Tucker said she thought the discussion was premature for Gilroy.
“I don’t think we’re in that dire of a need,” Tucker said.
The day before, the council, without Councilman Craig Gartman, also nixed the idea of moving the Las Animas Fire Station, 8383 Wren Ave., to the Sunrise Fire Station, 880 Sunrise Drive, as another way to save money and spread out fire protection now that Sunrise has been relegated to an emergency-only response station.
Coming under the wings of county fire is one thing, but Morgan Hill officials seemed to shy away from a mutual 911 center in, say, San Martin. Police Chief Denise Turner told the council she recommended hiring a consultant to see what a leaner, possibly re-located center would mean for police versus fire.
Councilwoman Tucker also shrugged at the idea of sharing recreation facilities and programs. She cautioned against rushing into partnerships and then waking up a few years later without knowing exactly who is running what. But Mayor Al Pinheiro pointed to the South County Regional Wastewater Authority as an example of a fine union between Gilroy and Morgan Hill and said any partnerships forged during this stressful economy could be undone.
“It’s like a marriage,” Pinheiro said. “If it doesn’t work, you go and get a divorce.”
COUNCIL’S TOP 12 PRIORITIES FOR 2009
-Ethics / Open Government Ordinance
-Library Construction
-Downtown revitalization
-Gilroy Gardens plan
-Housing development
-Arts Center
-Re-evaluating attorney services
-Environmental programs
-Budget issues
-Teen Center
-Sidewalks
-Adult entertainment ordinance
