Community

After eight years of prosecuting gang members in the South

The Open Space Authority invites the community to the Coyote Valley Family Harvest Feast, a celebration of locally-grown food, local farms, and Silicon Valley’s agricultural roots.This free and family-friendly festival will take place Saturday, Sept. 10, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve, 550 Palm Avenue in Morgan Hill. This year’s Family Harvest Feast is sponsored by Bay Area Parent, Peninsula Open Space Trust and American AgCredit, according to OSA spokeswoman Patty Eaton.Attendees are encouraged to register in advance at CoyoteValley2016.eventbrite.com. Free shuttle service will be available from Milpitas and downtown San Jose. Details are available on the registration site.The Family Harvest Feast will feature cooking demonstrations, fresh produce for sale, music and entertainment from around the world, guided hikes, and affordable, delicious food, Eaton said. There will be plenty of shade and fresh drinking water. Attendees should bring re-fillable water bottles, wear sturdy closed-toe shoes, and bring a wide-brimmed hat and sunscreen to protect them from the sun.The festival’s theme of urban agriculture reflects a worldwide movement to make cities healthier and more sustainable by local, community-based growing and selling of garden-fresh food. Attendees will learn about kid-friendly healthy eats, starting a vegetable garden, recipes for garden-fresh ingredients and more. The event will feature three San Jose-based urban farming innovators: Veggielution, a community-based urban farm and farm stand serving East San Jose; La Mesa Verde, a home and community gardening initiative that empowers local families to grow their own healthy foods; and Garden to Table, a nonprofit that runs a community-based urban farm near downtown San Jose and advocates for urban agriculture policyIt will be a delicious event for food lovers, according to Jamie Chen, Organizing Director of La Mesa Verde. "People will experience the fun of growing food together and enjoy delicious recipes with fresh summer produce right from the farm,” Chen said.Family-friendly activities scheduled throughout the day include home gardening, farming and craft food demonstrations; cooking demonstrations led by local chefs; music and entertainment from around the world; games and activities and more.Attendees can bring a picnic lunch or purchase food from on-site food trucks. Food cost is about $10 per person.For additional information and registration for the free event, visit CoyoteValley2016.eventbrite.com.

Parents, are you nervous about how your children and teens will spend their time in an active, productive and challenging way when school gets out this summer?If so,  the YMCA of Silicon Valley’s Summer Day Camps might assuage your concerns. Camps are available at YMCA facilities throughout Santa Clara County, including in Morgan Hill. Children can register for “traditional day camps,” which offer a variety of fitness, arts, life skills and educational (yet fun) activities for youth, according to the YMCA’s website at ymcasv.org.In addition to the traditional day camps, the youth organization also offers arts camps, specialty camps, sports camps, STEM camps, teen day camps and overnight camps. The YMCA even offers a “High Five Camp” for children who are too young for other options.More information about all of the YMCA’s summer youth camp and activity offerings is available on the organization’s website.Summer is a crucial time for children to remain active and continue learning when school and seasonal sports are not in session, according to YMCA staff. Spending the time indoors glued to technology can waste valuable developmental time for children. Kids and teens left at home throughout the summer can become bored and disengaged.“Connecting with friends and staying physically active are the backbone of an amazing summer,” YMCA of Silicon Valley spokeswoman Rachel Basso said in a press release. “Engaging and interactive programs allow kids and teens the opportunity to embrace the exciting potential of the summer months. Campers discover a passion for learning that leaves them confidently seeking new experiences and striving for success.”YMCA’s day camps and overnight camps help ensure children’s summer is “filled with adventure, friendship and discovery,” the press release states.The YMCA offers five clear benefits of summer camp:• Adventure: cooking, singing, dancing, solving, creating, running, playing and more;• Healthy fun: Summer camps set the foundation for a healthy lifestyle, emphasizing the importance of nutrition and staying active;• Personal growth: developing skills, making friends and exploring the unknown helps kids build confidence, establish independence and find a lifelong love of learning;• Friendship: Campers can make new friends and strengthen existing relationships. The confidence built at summer camp helps youth flourish throughout the year;• Memories: Summer camp offers an unforgettable experience, as campers return to school with a renewed spirit and stories of summertime adventures.There are more than 300 varieties of affordable day camps and other summer programs offered by the YMCA of Silicon Valley. Financial assistance and reduced member pricing is available to ensure all youth have access to these programs, reads the press release.

A summer day in July escalated from panicky to awful to the

The final chapter of BookSmart may soon be written.Citing mounting debt following a move from downtown Morgan Hill to East Dunne Avenue, BookSmart owners Brad Jones and Cinda Meister face the imminent closure of their Morgan Hill mainstay.“It’s heartbreaking,” Meister said. “This is our passion, to be part of the community and to support literacy and the arts. It’s a safe place for the community to gather. It’s much more than a bookstore.”Friday afternoon, the day after Jones and Meister announced the news of their store closing via email, aggrieved longtime customers came forward to pay their condolences.“A lot of our regulars have come forward asking what they can do,” Jones said.In its 22 years as Morgan Hill’s independent bookstore, BookSmart has cultivated a loyal core of supporters. Last Friday, March 23 those customers were shocked to read an email sent by Jones and Meister announcing their decision to close."It is with heavy hearts we must announce our closing," the message read. "The move to our Dunne location was very costly—financed with high interest and short-term loans. Our effort to refinance this debt has been unsuccessful and therefore we are unable to pay our bills. Starting today, we are liquidating our merchandise to pay our vendors and taxes."The store’s owners estimate BookSmart will be closed within a month or month-and-a-half, unless they receive a sudden infusion of financing from a surprise source.To finance their move in 2016 from downtown Morgan Hill to their current location at 1295 E. Dunne Ave., Jones and Meister ran up what would become a mountain of debt—$250,000 worth.The move, which took almost five months, left a vacuum of revenue. It also broke up the spending habits of former customers who went elsewhere, said the owners. Along with the cost of prepping the new location, the ongoing expenses cut deeper and deeper into the store's economic vitality. Eventually, it became too much to bear, and Jones and Meister said they were forced to bow to the economic reality.BookSmart was also plagued by the cost of rent, which for them is about $7,500 a month. They said they are now five months behind on the rent.More than a bookstoreBookSmart started as a small bookshop in downtown Morgan Hill. Jones and Meister branched out when they soon after added a toy store and a coffee shop to their book retail business. When the opportunity came to move to a larger location, they decided to put all three ideas together into one place at the downtown shopping center known as Depot Center, on East Second Street.“We bought an option to eventually own the property ourselves,” Jones said. “We paid more money up front so we could buy it later. Then, the economy changed and all the opportunities we had to purchase the property evaporated. We brought in some financial partners, but the city eventually bought the option on the property.”Specifically, the city’s Redevelopment Agency purchased BookSmart’s option on their former downtown site in 2010 for $1.7 million. Even though the state shut down the RDA in 2011, state regulators allowed the City of Morgan Hill to keep the option, and later sell it to developer City Ventures in order to complete the RDA’s former vision of modern mixed-use, residential/commercial development on the former Depot Center property and sites throughout the downtown.The old 25,000-square-foot Depot Center building, which had been a number of things in the past—including an egg plant—was also the home of several other local businesses, most of which also relocated out of the downtown neighborhood in 2016 before City Ventures demolished the structure. BookSmart moved to its current, and likely final location in a newer commercial shopping center in east Morgan Hill, near the intersection of East Dunne Avenue and Condit Road.According to Jones, BookSmart received no help during the move.“The city helped the other tenants to move, but in the contract, we signed when we purchased the option to buy the building, we also waived our rights for future relocation,” Jones said.After the move outside the downtown in 2016, BookSmart remained steadfast in its efforts to support community arts and culture. Jones and Meister formed the nonprofit BookSmart Community Advantage program, which has offered fun and educational workshops, art lessons, music classes and more, primarily geared toward children. Without a center of operation, the future of Community Advantage is uncertain and the foundation's board are exploring other options.As downtown Morgan Hill continues to ride a wave of redevelopment and renewal, BookSmart owners feel they have been left high and dry.“I was the president of the downtown association for years, and we really wanted the downtown to be something special, and right on the verge of that happening, we were out,” Jones said.As the crisis loomed, Jones and Meister launched a Gofundme campaign in July which eventually raised $20,000. The also sought financial relief by applying for a loan from the Grow Morgan Hill Fund. Despite support from the city council, their application was rejected since they've been operating at a financial loss for the last two years.“It would take someone to help us refinance the loan. That would mean, $250,000 over 10 years so we could make the monthly payments,” Jones said. “Every payment we make now goes to service the debt and nothing more.”Today, the old home of BookSmart is long gone. The corner of Second Street and Depot Street is now a construction zone, where City Ventures is building its project, consisting of commercial units on the ground floors and a number of “live-work” residences upstairs.And, while Morgan Hill leaps into the future, Jones and Meister will make a similar leap into the unknown.“We don’t know what we’re going to do; we need to find jobs,” said Jones, who was scheduled for a hip replacement surgery at the hospital this week. “We put every penny we had in this, and we put other people’s money into it too. We need to pay them back.”

South County residents to honor 9/11 victims

By the time Chamber of Commerce 2013 Woman of the Year Cricket Rubino and her husband Michael “retired” from the Live Oak Emerald Regime in 1998 – more than 25 years after the couple helped establish the marching band – she knew so many people in Morgan Hill that she couldn’t avoid being involved in the community.

The South Valley Ballet in association with Morgan Hill Dance Center is presenting the first full-length ballet production of the Nutcracker in the South Valley. Directors Juliet La Pointe Smith and April Sue are bringing their backgrounds in the art of classical ballet to the Morgan Hill area. Performing with the ballet company and ballet school are guest artists sharing their professional talents. This will be a fun-filled holiday performance for an audience of all ages.

Morgan Hill Mayor Mark Turner last week wanted the city to consider adding requirements for businesses that host “adult cabaret shows,” but reversed course after the owner of a local venue he had in mind agreed to make its events less visible from outside.  Before...