Chamber move to community center denied The Morgan Hill City
Council voted 2-3 against a staff proposal to relocate the Morgan
Hill Chamber of Commerce to the Poppy Jasper Room of the Community
and Cultural Center.
Chamber move to community center denied
The Morgan Hill City Council voted 2-3 against a staff proposal to relocate the Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce to the Poppy Jasper Room of the Community and Cultural Center.
Councilmembers Marby Lee, Marilyn Librers and Greg Sellers voting against for various reasons.
Sellers and Lee disapproved of granting the public space to the chamber, since the primary motivation for the move was business.
Librers said she didn’t think the community center was “downtown,” so the move for her meant removing the chamber from the downtown. The community center is within the 18-block downtown area defined by the city.
Mayor Steve Tate, who seconded Councilman Larry Carr’s motion, said he thought the move would solidify the community center as a downtown venue.
Councilmembers were partly persuaded by the Poppy Jasper Room’s specialized use. The 864-square-foot space was designed for pottery activities, and classes there have been ongoing since the community center opened in 2005.
City staff and chamber officials spent almost eight months hammering out the deal.
New change order guideline adopted by council
In a 4-1 vote, the Morgan Hill City Council approved updated a guideline to include language making clear how and why change order work is approved prior to council approval. In the report, given to the council during their Wednesday night meeting, staff pledged to do all they can to minimize the circumstances where the need for extra work is encountered, to notify the council when it does occur and to make clear to the contractor that extra work done without council approval is done at their own risk.
Councilwoman Marby Lee voted against the action. The guideline was the result of Lee’s request for a staff report detailing staff’s change order requests done prior to council approval after she discovered that a $33,000 fence upgrade for the new skate park was approved by the council two weeks after the order had been placed. The resulting report, which totaled 56 pages and took 50 hours of staff time to produce, found 42 orders totaling $200,000 that had been approved by staff before they were approved by the council.
Tobacco shop has new name, new ownership
The Morgan Hill Tobacco Company will become the Morgan Hill Cigar Company Sept. 1. A group of investors formed a new corporation, BWC Enterprises, Inc., to take over the business from Wyatt Miller, who operated the shop with partners at 17430 Monterey Road adjacent to the Granada Theater since 1997. The Morgan Hill City Council approved a two-year lease for the city-owned space Wednesday night. Should the city want to use the space for redevelopment purposes, BWC will be given a 120-day written notice.
