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It has been a busy year for local public agencies, residents, taxpayers, business owners, students and other members of the Morgan Hill community in 2015. While the goings-on and controversies at the Morgan Hill Unified School District demand their own narrative, below is a list of the top stories of the year, and how they’re likely to shape the future of this city in 2016.
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Downtown happenings
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Numerous construction projects—which city officials have described as pieces of a moving puzzle that has to be completed by a strict deadline—and a “traffic calming” experiment dominated the public discussion when it came to City Hall’s decision making process.
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These activities had some kind of effect on just about everybody’s movement into, out of and through the downtown neighborhood—whether in a vehicle, on foot or on bicycle. They also resulted in significant impacts on business and economic development, as some downtown merchants have complained of dropping sales, and others moved out to make room for private rehab projects that have been planned since before the Redevelopment Agency was shut down by the state in 2012.
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In August, the city’s “complete streets” project brought one of the largest crowds ever to the City Council chambers, as the elected body was scheduled to decide on whether to keep the narrower, traffic slowing, two-lane configuration that was implemented in February as an experiment. Scores of audience members offered their opinion at the public hearing, and the community seemed to be divided down the middle on a two-lane versus four-lane configuration and which one is best for safety and business.
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At the end of that meeting, the council voted to keep Monterey Road in its original four-lane layout, but to install other traffic calming measures, including a traffic light at the intersection of Fourth Street.
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Also in 2016, expect to see completion of downtown street construction and utility undergrounding, as well as the 270-space Fourth Street parking garage (with accompanying public art pieces depicting a tarantula and the poppy jasper mineral). Private developers will demolish the Downtown Mall, portions of the Granada Theater, Depot Center (BookSmart shopping center) and the former liquor store at the intersection of Monterey Road and Third Street. In these structures’ place will be a variety of modern, mixed-use developments that include restaurants, retail, a hotel, other commercial uses and residences.
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Land use issues
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Changing uses of land and the continued growth of Morgan Hill also drew a lot of interest from residents who regularly attended meetings where the council was set to approve rezoning amendments, annexation requests and more residential units on formerly industrial properties.
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City staff, consultants and volunteers spent a large part of 2015 soliciting public input to determine the patterns, densities and varieties of growth that Morgan Hill residents would like to see planned out in the 2035 General Plan Update.
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The draft update was published in December, and in the coming months the city will continue to refine the document, with even more public input, before it becomes law. This wide ranging growth planning effort also includes an update to the city’s growth control ordinance, which sets an annual cap on the number of homes that can be built in the city limits. This ordinance is set to expire in 2020, and the city hopes to get an extension to 2035 on the November 2016 ballot.
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The public’s next chance to weigh in is the Jan. 21 meeting of the General Plan Update Committee, which will take place 6:30 p.m. at the City Council meeting chambers, 17555 Peak Ave. To see the draft document, visit the city’s website at morganhill.ca.gov.
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Unrelated to the General Plan, two more major land use decisions will come to a head in 2016. The county’s Local Agency Formation Commission is set to consider the city’s request to annex two areas on the southern side of town at their Feb. 3 meeting. Specifically, LAFCO will decide whether to annex about 215 acres in the Southeast Quadrant (in the area of Tennant and Murphy avenues), and implement zoning that would allow a new Catholic high school as well as recreation and sports related facilities to be built.
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The second request to be considered Feb. 3 is to annex about 65 acres south of the Monterey/Watsonville Road intersection into the city limits.
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Predators locked away
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Two unrelated, wide ranging criminal cases that accused two men—formerly entrusted with taking care of children and keeping them safe—of sexually assaulting a number of juvenile victims came to a close in 2015 as the offenders pleaded guilty to the crimes.
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Former Paradise Valley Elementary School fifth grade teacher John Loyd pleaded guilty in September to four counts of lewd and lascivious conduct toward four different children—all young girls who attended his class at the school in southwest Morgan Hill. He was sentenced in October to 40 years in prison. Loyd was initially arrested in October 2013.
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In August, former YMCA employee Nicolas Lhermine pleaded guilty to six charges that he sexually assaulted four young female victims age 3, 5, 6 and 7. He also pleaded guilty to the charge that he was in possession of child pornography images depicting a 17-year-old female.
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Lhermine was a YMCA childcare aide at a facility run by the nonprofit organization on the campus of Paradise Valley Elementary School. His crimes dated back to July 2013, when he was arrested by Morgan Hill police after one of the victims told her parents what Lhermine did to her.
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Drought continues and water rate hikes proposed
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Despite the projected approach in 2016 of one of the strongest El Nino systems, California remains in the fourth year of an historic drought. The lack of rain prompted state officials to declare an emergency in 2015, and require residents and cities to cut their water use by 30 percent from 2013 levels.
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Customers in the city of Morgan Hill have heeded that call, as monthly reports throughout the year have placed the city among the county’s top water savers.
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Sure to be a hot topic in early 2016 is the city’s proposal to raise water and wastewater rates by as much as 60 percent for an average residential customer by 2020. The proposed water rate increases are directly related to the drought and conservation; city staff has said cutting water use results in lower revenues for the utility fund, while the city’s costs are only going up.
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A public hearing on the increases is scheduled for 7 p.m. Jan. 20, 2016, at City Council chambers, 17555 Peak Ave.
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Phony vet exposed
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For as long as his son Victor can remember, 89-year-old Morgan Hill resident William Goehner has regaled anyone who would listen with tales of his service in the U.S. Navy during World War Two. Whoppers included his claim that he reached the rank of Lieutenant Commander at the age of 19, and he was part of a daring rescue mission with the Underwater Demolition Team which was dramatized in the 1951 film “The Frogmen.” Goehner long claimed to be the inspiration for the lead character in the film.
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But on May 30, Goehner was confronted by ABC reporter Dan Noyes at the USS Hornet Museum in Alameda, where the vet was invited to give a special presentation on the UDT. Noyes showed Goehner documents that disproved his claims of a storied military career.
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On June 2, the Times visited Goehner at his north Morgan Hill home, where the vet finally admitted he had been lying all these years, and he apologized for the first time. “I’m sorry. I was discharged as a Seaman First (Class),” he said at his home June 2. Seaman First Class is several ranks below the Lieutenant Commander status he claimed to have reached.
Search efforts formally end
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Volunteers who were determined to find any trace of missing Morgan Hill teen Sierra LaMar announced in March that they would discontinue organized, weekly search efforts.
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LaMar was reported from her north Morgan Hill home in March 2012. She was 15 and a sophomore at Sobrato High School at the time of her disappearance. Shortly after her disappearance, Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Morgan Hill resident Antolin Garcia Torres, 22, on suspicion of kidnapping and murdering Sierra.
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Garcia Torres remains in Santa Clara County Jail, awaiting trial and the possibility of the death penalty if he is found guilty. His next hearing is scheduled for April 25, 2016 at the Hall of Justice in San Jose.
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“Just because the weekly searches have been temporarily suspended, we will never give up trying to find Sierra LaMar,” Sierra’s mother Marlene LaMar said March 14 at the last organized volunteer search, which started out from the Community and Cultural Center.
