A Dream for the Future of Morgan Hill

On Wednesday evening, MorganHill Mayor Dennis Kennedy delivered
the annual of the city address. It is reprinted here.
As Morgan Hill celebrates our Centennial year, it’s important to take some time to reflect on our community’s past and present and to talk about our dreams for the future.

Our past: Morgan Hill was incorporated in 1906 as a small community of under 500 residents.

Of those residents, 111 chose to vote in that year’s election; 65 voted for incorporation and 36 voted against. In 1907, architect William Weeks designed a new school to serve the growing community.

By the 1920s, the City was known for its agricultural products including prunes, apricots, peaches, pears, apples, walnuts, and almonds.

The region boasted prosperous vineyards until Prohibition demanded that production temporarily cease.

Around the 1950s, Morgan Hill was transformed from an agricultural center to a residential community. Growth began to accelerate rapidly in the 1970s as Silicon Valley developed, and workers were attracted to Morgan Hill’s rural, small-town atmosphere and reasonable housing prices.

On November 3, 1973 the Morgan Hill Civic Center and library were proudly dedicated to the community of 7,000. By 1980 the population increased to approximately 18,000 residents.

In the last twenty-five years, Morgan Hill has continued to evolve.

The Morgan Hill Redevelopment Agency was formed in November 1980 in order to rebuild our deteriorating downtown, to rebuild the City’s infrastructure, and to enhance economic development allowing Morgan Hill to be a more self-sustaining community.

Basically, a Redevelopment Agency helps to eliminate physical and economically blighted conditions. The effective life of a Redevelopment Agency is 40 years, so the agency establishes long term goals and objectives.

The redevelopment process provides for a change in the distribution of property tax revenues allowing the Agency to retain a much higher portion of the property tax.

In 1999, Morgan Hill residents voted to extend the Redevelopment Agency, with future funding dedicated to alleviating:

• Physically deteriorated, outmoded, and unsafe structures

• Conflicting hazardous land uses

• Inappropriate mixed land uses

• Circulation inadequacies

• Insufficient parking

• Inadequate utility systems

• Flood control and drainage problems

• Inadequacies of recreational, cultural, social, and governmental facilities

Through the investment of redevelopment funds, the City has successfully enhanced our local economy, enabling businesses such as Specialized Bicycles, Abbot Labs, which is now Hospira, and Anritsu to grow and thrive, and has improved traffic circulation with the construction of Butterfield Boulevard and other projects.

In addition, it has funded the construction of important community facilities such as the Community and Cultural Center, the Morgan Hill Playhouse, our wonderful new Aquatics Center, the new Police facility, our soon to be completed Indoor Recreation Center, and soon to be constructed new library.

As you can see, the RDA has had an incredibly positive impact on the shape of our community.

The City’s voter-initiated growth control measures have helped our community grow at a stable rate, allowing our City to retain its small town atmosphere, ensuring that new development helps fund the cost of services to new residents.

We can take a lot of pride in our past. We can also be proud of Morgan Hill today. Now, more than 36,000 residents call Morgan Hill their home. In both formal and informal talks with residents, I find that people love living here. They appreciate the small town atmosphere, and they tell me what a wonderful place this is to raise a family.

They have concerns, too. They want our downtown to thrive. They want strong schools. They want opportunities for recreation, dining, worship, and shopping.

The City has a vital role in meeting resident’s expectations for the community, and the City has reached some important milestones in the last year.

We have invested in our community facilities and infrastructure, and I’d like to highlight some of the many positive changes that have occurred recently:

We have worked to improve the reliability of our water system in the hard-to-serve eastern foothills with renovations at the Jackson Oaks Booster Station. We have improved security at the site and added more attractive landscaping and trees in the process.

We’ve also added a new 1 million gallon Water Tank at the Boys Ranch. And, we are continuing to address the problem of perchlorate in our water supply, and are seeking financial relief from the Olin Corporation

The City is proud of the more than 100 volunteers that participated in the 2005 Beautification Day project.

This is the fifth year for this community-wide project which included construction of the new BBQ area at Galvan Park, clean-up and restoration of the Civic Center landscaping and rejuvenation of the planters at the Friendly Inn

New play equipment has been added to Paradise Park along with new benches, tables and new drinking fountain courtesy of many dedicated Rotary Club members.

If you’ve driven on West Edmundson Road recently, or stopped at Starbucks at the Vineyard Town Center, I’m sure you’ve seen the progress being made on our new Indoor Recreation Center. The Center will include a gym, indoor pool, and youth and senior citizen facilities. Wouldn’t it be fitting to honor the 100th birthday of the City of Morgan Hill by naming this new facility “The Centennial Recreation Center”? We look forward to the grand opening in fall 2006.

After countless hours of work by many dedicated community volunteers and staff members, the new Morgan Hill Library groundbreaking ceremony will occur this Spring. The 28,000 square foot Library will be twice the size of the current facility, and the City expects to turn over the completed facility to Library staff in the Spring of 2007.

Responding to the call from many Britton staff members and parents, the City worked on crosswalk safety improvements at Britton Middle School by installing bulb-outs for increased pedestrian visibility, new median & pedestrian safety signs and vehicle speed indicators. This will help slow down traffic and provide for better pedestrian safety.

Improved Bicycle Safety is a top priority and as a result bike detection loops have been installed up and down Monterey Road and signal change cycles are now triggered by bicycles at red lights. Morgan Hill is quickly becoming known for being a bicycle-friendly city and looks forward to hosting a second bicycle Grand Prix this year.

The City continues to work with the downtown businesses on traffic calming in the downtown area to make the downtown a more pedestrian friendly place. A new median has been constructed & lanes have been narrowed at Monterey & 4th Street. In addition, speed cushions have been added to slow traffic in order to ensure pedestrian safety.

The 38 acre Outdoor Sports Complex is in the phase one design process.

This will include renovating one or two soccer fields with artificial turf, constructing a permanent parking lot, concession stand, restrooms and infrastructure improvements with a budget of $2.6 million.

The Viale Teacher Housing Project consists of 10 affordable single family ownership homes targeted to public school teachers, and was built with assistance from the RDA to maintain long-term affordability.

As we look to the future, we can’t forget that we’ve been able to make many of these critical improvements only with the use of redevelopment funds. Those funds are dwindling and the Redevelopment Agency will expire in the next few years. We have begun investigating how to extend the life of Agency, and we will need to decide, as a community, whether to continue using this valuable tool.

As we look to the future, there are challenges ahead. It now clear that our current City services are not sustainable. There are many contributing factors, but the basic facts are that service costs have grown while revenues have not.

Like other employers, the City has faced increased expenses for employee benefits, including pensions and health insurance. We also have added community services in recent years and have opened facilities we’ve never had before, such as the Community and Cultural Center and the Aquatics Center.

Sadly, our public safety resources are not keeping pace with our community’s growth. Morgan Hill has lower staffing levels than other cities in the County, in particular Gilroy and Los Gatos – two communities we are often compared to. Compared to our population, we have fewer police officers, fewer firefighters, and fewer emergency response units than do Gilroy, Los Gatos, and other cities in the County. I do want you to know, however, that in spite of our staffing levels, our police, fire, and emergency services staff work hard to keep our community safe.

Public safety services account for 82 percent of the City’s discretionary expenses – services paid out of our General Fund. Most General Fund revenue comes from property tax and sales tax. Unfortunately, only a small portion of property and sales taxes stay in Morgan Hill. Our sales tax revenues have grown over the last 10 years, but we still receive less sales tax per capita than other cities in the county. The same is true for property tax: Gilroy, Los Gatos, and all other communities in the county combined receive more property tax per person than we do in Morgan Hill. And, unlike other communities, Morgan Hill does not have any local taxes.

Our limited tax base, combined with a strained local economy and state take-aways, have all eroded revenue to the City. We have used our reserves – our rainy day fund – for the last few years, but those funds are limited.

As a start to balancing our budget, we’ve made cuts already in the areas of park maintenance and irrigation, administrative and legal expenses, recreation, arts and cultural programs for children, and street repair.

You may have noticed that many City parks are now brown on the perimeter. We now maintain only the core areas of the parks, and spread mulch elsewhere. This is a good example of the kind of tradeoff we have made in the last year to move closer to a balanced budget.

The tradeoffs for the future are more difficult, though. To close our ongoing budget gap of $1.5 million, we need to either significantly reduce services, or add new revenues. What do you think?

Are you willing to live with reduced services? Would you pay a little bit more to keep things the way they are? Or are you willing to dig a little deeper to improve our current level of services?

Our City Council needs resident input to make these important decisions, and we are reaching out to the community in an innovative and all-encompassing way. Through a process called community conversations we want to hear your thoughts about the tradeoffs our community faces.

This is not business as usual, and I want to take a moment to explain what the conversations are like. You don’t need to come to City Hall, fill out a speaker card, or follow Robert’s Rules of Order. Instead, the conversations are small-group dialogues, some hosted by the City and some by community organizations. A facilitator will introduce the issues and possible tradeoffs, and then you spend a couple of hours talking with your neighbors about what services you want – and are willing to pay for – from your City.

So far, about 75 people have attended a conversation, and we have found people really get engaged in the issues and in listening to fellow residents. The time in each session has flown by.

This is really a major outreach effort, and we are doing it because – when it comes down to it – this is your town, and we need your input on how we should move toward a balanced budget. You don’t need to be a financial expert or know all about City budgeting to attend, you just need to care about the community!

I invite you, your neighbors, organizations you’re affiliated with, your child’s teacher, the clerk at the grocery store and all other Morgan Hill residents to share your thoughts and dreams for the future of our town.

My vision for the future, and one that is shared by my esteemed colleagues, is for a community that is a safe place to raise a family, with ample employment opportunities; recreational options; and quality social and cultural experiences.

What is your vision for Morgan Hill? I ask you to share your visions with us, your elected representatives and your City Staff by becoming involved in the Community Conversations, so that your City Council can make these important decisions, while understanding what your dreams and ideas are for the future of Morgan Hill.

You can attend one of several conversations now through March – or offer to host one!

We’re planning a capstone event in April and a complete report to the City Council in May. The City Council will need to decide how to move forward in June.

Even as we honor our more distant past, let’s be proud of what we’ve done more recently. Last year, the City made important accomplishments in delivering services to meet community needs by investing in our infrastructure, building community facilities, and moving forward with projects to build housing, shopping, and dining and entertainment in our downtown.

We’ve also begun to plan for the extension of the Redevelopment Agency, which has been an important tool for our community. And we’ve started an unprecedented effort to reach out to every day citizens on the important tradeoffs between City service levels and funding.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about a dream for the future. His vision, based on his values, was one which shaped our nation for years to come. Morgan Hill needs your dreams, visions, and values as we make plans for our future together.

It’s been nearly 10 years since our community talked together about our vision for the future – a process which led to the development of many wonderful new facilities. It’s time to renew that discussion. Please join in our Community Conversation to make Morgan Hill the community that you want it to be.

Mayor Dennis Kennedy delivered his State of the City speech Wednesday evening at the Morgan Hill Community and Cultural Center.