Board wants to keep more than 30 buses at Live Oak High
School
Morgan Hill – A proposal to park the Morgan Hill School District’s fleet of school buses at Live Oak High School has neighbors in the area ready to sound their horns in disapproval when the district discusses the issue again in April.
“I haven’t found one (neighbor) who is in favor of this,” said Donald Carlton, who has lived in the area for 44 years. “When you look at the environmental factors, not to mention that it will de-value the properties, it just doesn’t seem like the place for it, does it?”
Carlton said he and possibly as many as 50 neighbors plan on attending a School Board meeting to tell trustees how they feel about the proposal to park more than 30 school buses on Live Oak’s campus, relocating the bus barn from its current site at the city’s corporation yard on Eades Court.
The lease that the district has on its current facility is up in December, and the district wants to find another location in case the city raises the rent. The district paid the city $151,800 to lease the space this year.
“This is the last year the rent will be at this amount, as far as we know,” Deputy Superintendent Bonnie Tognazzini said. “After December, it will be market value, or what it is appraised at, or whatever can be worked out with the city.”
Trustee Shelle Thomas has expressed concern about relocating the transportation department with its only entrance and exit onto Half Road, behind Live Oak High. A road which is literally half a road, she said.
John Zaucha, a neighbor of the school, also told trustees that he didn’t believe the bus barn belonged at the proposed location.
“It’s my opinion that if you move the bus barn to the Live Oak field, you’ll eventually terminate the Live Oak ag facility,” he said. “The surrounding area is primarily agricultural. It will be impacted by pollution … The roads in the area are extremely narrow and in extremely poor condition.”
Carlton said residents in the area have been e-mailing trustees, expressing their opposition to the plan.
“There are quite a few of us not very pleased with this,” he said. “We think they need to listen to the community on this one.”
Residents of Half Road, Elm Road and East Main Avenue are not the only ones upset. Live Oak Ag students and supporters fear moving the bus barn will result in the loss of their farm on campus.
“The district is not taking away their farm,” said Superintendent Alan Nishino after a School Board meeting in February at which FFA Booster President Kris Friebel expressed concern about the district’s plans.
Friebel worries the district will tear down the buildings on the site.
Trustees voted in February to move forward with a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) report on the site. The report will likely be completed in April, she said, and trustees will then discuss if they’ll move forward on the plan.
Ag students and boosters have also attended recent board meetings to bring their concerns to trustees during the public comment portion of the meeting.
“We have three buildings out there right now, we need three buildings,” Friebel told trustees.
The buildings currently on the Live Oak farm, she said, were not built by the district but by ag parents and supporters.
Board President Mike Hickey said the district had planned to use some of the land in the Greenbelt area to build a district farm when building Sobrato High.
“This was all discussed when Sobrato was being built, it’s nothing new,” he said. “This is what was requested.”
But ag students and boosters are concerned that moving the transportation facility to Live Oak will be the beginning of the end for the farm at the school. The buildings, while important, are not as important as the educational component the farm provides Live Oak. If all farm activities take place at the Sobrato farm, supporters say, the Live Oak ag program will suffer.
“This is an important part of our ag program,” Friebel said. “Even if we have the Sobrato farm, we still need to have those acres, or two acres, at Live Oak.
