Mayor Steve Tate’s sixth annual “State of the City” address touched on a little bit of the good and the bad from 2011, while urging the public and city officials to stay engaged in local government and community affairs this year.
In fact, the mayor wants the council and city hall to use what promises to be one of the biggest challenges in 2012 – the upcoming fiscal year budget – as “a vehicle to get people engaged.”
“We can use the budget process to educate and inform everybody in town,” Tate said during his speech at the Community and Cultural Center. “We can use it to get the dialogue and the input we need from you.”
The mayor used the speech and a slide show to praise city staff for stoically facing difficult challenges they met in 2011, illustrate the commercial growth the city saw toward the end of the year, and point out that some challenges – such as the elimination of redevelopment – will remain this year. The consolidation of city hall into the development services center, the development of an outcome based public safety plan, a new volunteer program at the police department and a series of measures to protect the RDA’s properties and cash before the state tried to get a hold of them are among the innovative cost-saving solutions that city hall staff came up with in the face of financial difficulties in 2011.
Morgan Hill, Tate said, is a place where people care about the community, and he hopes it stays that way in 2012 and onward.
“People are here because they love the Morgan Hill quality of life. It’s a wonderful, beautiful community that’s full of people that love to help and improve the community,” Tate said.
Tate noted that sales tax, the city’s largest single source of income, is on the way up. The opening of new retail businesses such as the Honda dealership, and the Kenworth truck dealer that will be opening this year in Morgan Hill will help those revenues continue to climb, he said. New restaurants, especially downtown, have also contributed to the city’s economic base and family-friendly ambiance. Property tax revenues appear to be headed that way as well in the coming years due to new construction activity, and the completion or near completion of housing developments in town such as the Crossings, Horizon and the San Savigno and Milano subdivisions.
Still, Morgan Hill’s per capita total revenue in 2011 remained the second-lowest of all the cities in Santa Clara County, because the city does not have a utility tax like most of the others do, Tate said. Only Saratoga has a lower percentage of public income per person.
The city still may not have enough money to do a comprehensive general plan update this year, but Tate hopes they can at least update the important aspects of the plan. Specifically, he wants to tackle the problems resulting from the conflict that resulted when the city’s residential development control system met a housing market collapse. That situation led to a backlog of hundreds of allocated but unbuilt homes throughout the city since 2007.
“We don’t want to get rid of the idea of a targeted population, but we want to find a more effective and efficient process to do it,” Tate said.
The city will also continue to pursue economic development opportunities for the rest of this year, which picked up some in 2011 with the occupancy by new tenants of about 502,000 square feet of vacant commercial space in Morgan Hill, leaving about 978,000 square feet vacant, Tate said.
Another city effort that was “reinvigorated” last year, even though it was embraced by the city more than 10 years ago, is the “41 developmental assets” for youth, Tate said. The school district’s participation last year, which promises to continue through this year and beyond, has enhanced the program. In recent months, part of that effort has been a series of presentations of the different assets by members of the city’s youth action council at city council meetings.
The mayor also wants to see “a lot of engagement” on the city’s plans for the southeast quadrant, the unincorporated area east of U.S. 101 and south of San Pedro Avenue, in the coming year. The city’s plans, which Tate admitted are “controversial,” include preserving as much agricultural land and open space as possible while allowing development in specific areas of the quadrant.
About 60 people attended the mayor’s speech. For one of the attendees, Tim Hendrick, a former chair of the Chamber of Commerce, the mayor’s emphasis on engaging the public was poignant.
“It’s really important for the people and leaders to be engaged,” he said.
Audience member Larry McElvain said he was “enthused” by they mayor’s description of the “positive things going on in our community,” particularly the focus on the youth and the developmental assets.
“We’re on a good roll despite the fact that money’s tight,” McElvain said.
