The monstrous Lick Fire delivered on Labor Day and the
sentencing of David Vincent Reyes, the cold blooded killer of
Garlic queen Franca Barsi were the most dramatic headlines in
2007.
MORGAN HILL
The monstrous Lick Fire delivered on Labor Day and the sentencing of David Vincent Reyes, the cold blooded killer of Garlic queen Franca Barsi were the most dramatic headlines in 2007.
Other local stories that dominated the Morgan Hill Times pages included the continuous battle by local officials to get perchlorate cleaned out of the groundwater beneath Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy, local pooches and their owners finally opening a dog park and the city inaugurating a new, multi-million dollar library and a giant outdoor recreation facility.
A new Target store opened at Cochrane Commons, the city’s newest shopping center, and Circuit City and DSW shoe store have signed leases and will soon be moving in as well as other businesses.
There was plenty of controversy as well. Residents voiced strong opposition when a mosque was proposed for San Martin and residents of the affluent Jackson Oaks enclave in the hills east of Morgan Hill vehemently opposed including their neighborhood in a study looking at creating hiking and mountain biking trails.
Adults on whose watch underage drinking and wild partying occurs found out that the city’s “social host” ordinance holds them responsible by slapping hefty fines. The county is following suit and considering passing a similar ordinance.
In San Martin, a small but dedicated group of residents continued to push their case for incorporation of the community as the county’s 16th municipality, a town, and the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission and its staff are closely examining the proposal.
- Lick Fire
In mid-December, a 51-year-old San Juan Bautista school teacher was charged with a misdemeanor for her alleged role in setting off a blaze that torched 47,760 acres in Henry W. Coe State Park in September. The fire raged on for eight days before firefighters brought it under control – but not before more than one-third of the state’s second-largest park was blackened, taking with it four cabins and 11 outbuildings. The cost of fighting the blaze was $12.5 million.
- Reyes sentencing
More than a year after former Gilroy Garlic Queen Franca Barsi was murdered, her on-again, off-again boyfriend David Vincent Reyes was sentenced to 32 years and four months in prison.
On Nov. 26, Reyes sat in court with Barsi’s friends and family and heard Superior Court Judge Kenneth Shapero approving the plea bargain agreed upon by the public defender and the District Attorney’s Office.
Barsi’s death shocked the South County community, an example of domestic violence taken to the extreme. She was found on Sept. 13, 2006, in her Westwood Drive condominium suffocated to death. Her arms and legs had been tied behind her back with a white electrical cord.
The murder left Barsi’s then 10-year-old son motherless.
- Library and Outdoor Recreation Center openings
In June, the city’s new library opened in a state-of-the-art, $19-million building behind City Hall. In late November, city officials and dozens of parents and children convened at the new Outdoor Recreation Center on Condit Road for a ribbon-cutting. The facility cost $10 million to build, with the funds coming from the Redevelopment Agency, whose board is the city council.
- Perchlorate order
On Dec. 7, the Central Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a long-awaited and much-revised — and discussed — cleanup and abatement order that specifies in detail how Olin Corp., the company responsible for polluting area groundwater with perchlorate, must proceed in its cleanup efforts.
The battle is far from over. While the state board agreed with Gilroy and Morgan Hill officials as well as community groups that Olin should be required to treat more of the water that a draft order suggested, Morgan Hill is still looking to get Olin to reimburse it for installing and operating an old municipal well equipped with a system to remove the toxic salt.
- Mosque response
A proposal to build a mosque, an Islamic place of worship, near San Martin, became a lighting rod topic. A number of residents expressed their opposition to the mosque through letters to the Times, saying that it would potentially harbor terrorists. Other letter-writers expressed support.
In September, the South Valley Islamic Community unveiled its latest plans for a 5,000-square-foot mosque within a rectangular hall perched atop a San Martin hillside. The $2.5-million project is considerably scaled back from conceptual designs revealed earlier in the year due to a lack of funds. A domed roof and minarets will not be part of the 25-foot-tall mosque, formally known as the Cordoba Center for Muslim Community and Religious Affairs. The first round of designs were submitted to the county planning department in July. If approved, the facility rise by early 2009 at 14065 Monterey Road, in San Martin.
- Dog park
After an effort spearheaded by local dog owners, the city’s and South County’s first off-leash dog park opened in January. The Dog Owners Group (D.O.G.) raised $27,000 for the project since May 2005 and the Morgan Hill City Council added $20,000 in August. The city also helped by reserving 1.5 acres of land on the south end of Community Park on Edmundson Avenue. The park operates from sunrise to sunset.
- Jackson Oaks trails
In early November, all but one member of the Morgan Hill City Council voted down the last remaining proposal to consider including Jackson Oaks community for a network of biking and pedestrian trails. The residents of the affluent enclave on the eastern hillsides of Morgan Hill were vehemently opposed to the trails, believing they will bring with them traffic and crime, among other unwanted consequences.
- Social host ordinance
To prevent wild partying at which underage drinking often occurs, the city followed a trend among other Bay Area cities in passing a “social host” ordinance, that holds adult party hosts responsible by slapping hefty fines. The first citation was handed out in November for a party that ended in a shooting that left one person injured.
- Cochrane Commons
Within the last months of 2007, a Circuit City and DSW shoe store signed long-term leases with the developer of Cochrane Commons, the city’s newest shopping center located on Cochrane Road adjacent to Highway 101. Earlier in the year, a Target store opened its doors and a Starbucks drive-thru also opened for business.
- Teacher labor dispute
Two of the Morgan Hill Unified School District’s bargaining units – the Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers and the Service Employees International Union – took issue with the district this year, as SEIU contract settlements dragged out for months and the teachers filed a formal complaint for alleged contract violations.
The district negotiating team worked with SEIU’s team since for nearly six months in an attempt to reach an agreement. SEIU had declared negotiations at an impasse, but the district team made one more offer.
Mediation talks began in March, with a state Public Employee Relations Board mediator. Four sessions and three months later, the two groups finally reached an agreement palatable to both. While the two teams were struggling to come to terms, union members regularly packed school board meetings, sometimes with signs and noisemakers and dressed in their purple shirts.
Morgan Hill’s teachers complained they are left out of curriculum decisions, in violation of their contract, and were in a dispute with the district over compensation for secondary school teachers whose class sizes exceed the negotiated number of students.
