Community

Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Northern California challenged its branch offices across the region, including one in Morgan Hill, to raise money for charity and 15 offices from Carmel to Santa Rosa raised over $100,000 in the recent fundraiser.

Van Daele Homes and Presidio Residential Capital have begun model home construction at The Gables, a 9.4-acre community that will offer 37 attached townhomes ranging from approximately 1,400 to 2,100 square feet in Morgan Hill, according to a Dec. 21 press release.

It’s the second day of the New Year and the Morgan Hill Centennial Recreation Center is bustling with activity as residents begin to put their “Get fit in 2018” resolutions into action.

Supplying hundreds of needy South County families with a warm meal, winter jackets, toys, photos with Santa and a bag of groceries has become a holiday tradition for volunteers who attend the Morgan Hill chapter of the Cathedral of Faith.

As winter sets in and temperatures drop, Santa Clara County officials are actively working with all jurisdictions and providers to ramp up warming centers and associated services for homeless individuals and families, according to county staff.

The local school district has proposed increasing its sports field use fees paid by youth teams, in some cases by thousands of percentage points—a cost hike that would fall on the backs of participating families, according to the presidents of two long-established, local leagues.

The holiday spirit is alive and well at Sailor’s Ink tattoo shop, where owner Jen Kelso is offering discounts on ink for customers who donate a present for the shop's Christmas toy drive.

South Valley Fleurs Garden Club is accepting grant applications from local schools and youth groups through its EduGrow Planting-to-Learn program, which aims to promote horticulture education.

Saint Louise Regional Hospital’s new chief medical officer wants to see the Gilroy-based 93-bed medical center grow, incorporate cutting edge technologies and focus on the newest cancer treatments.Dr. Arthur Douville takes over the helm of the South Valley hospital, as well as San Jose’s O’Connor Hospital on Jan. 2. The sister hospitals are owned by Redwood City’s Verity Health Systems, which was formerly Daughters of Charity Health System, and owns four hospitals in Northern California and two in Southern California.“It’s not a backwater,” Douville said in response to a reporter asking why he left bigger facilities in the county. “The facility is a crucial element of medical care in the community for starters. Look at its location, between Hazel Hawkins and Kaiser. It’s the only significant medical facility in the area with a growing community, new people coming in, new businesses. I think it’s a crucial part of the community. You’re going to be surprised at what’s going to happen at Saint Louise.”Among his wish list is improving the emergency room, which now has eight beds that serve 30,000 patients a year. The hospital already has a cutting edge telemedicine system and was the first in the area with a robot that worked for emergency stroke victims, linking them to specialists in Los Angeles. Douville studied Saint Louise’s stroke program when he was at Good Samaritan Hospital and used it as a model.“There’s nothing wrong with it now, but I want to keep following up as a leader in telemedicine,” he said. “When I looked at the stroke program, I was amazed at the efficiency. Saint Louise can be a leader in some ways for the kind of facility it is, a smaller center for medical care in the community.”Verity’s management wants to make high quality cancer treatment a focus for its hospitals, he said. “We want to leverage the expertise of an urban medical center.”Douville said he’s concerned about possible federal cuts to medicare and Medi-Cal.“We should all be concerned about the effect on hospitals being able to provide safe and practical care,” he said. “But I think technology and better communications among caregivers will allow us to overcome any of these challenges.”He scoffed at an assertion by Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) that emergency rooms should be allowed to turn away patients and refer them to walk-in clinics or their own physicians at a later date. A federal law passed under President Ronald Reagan required emergency rooms that receive Medicare funds to treat all patients. Before that, some hospitals turned away patients who couldn’t afford treatment.“That simply contravenes medical ethics and everything that is required for hospitals these days, as well as normal human compassion,” he said. “That’s Tennessee, not our community.”Douville was raised in Kansas, outside Kansas City, Missouri and got his MD from the University of Kansas, before moving west to study neurology at Stanford. He’s been in medicine for 30 years, including stints at Good Samaritan and Mission Oaks hospitals.SLRH opened in 1989 as Saint Louise Hospital in Morgan Hill. The hospital moved to Gilroy in 1999.Dr. Douville’s wife, Sherri, works for a startup called Medigram, which is a mobile communications software at data aggregation service that works with healthcare teams. The couple lives in Los Gatos.

Thousands of residents and visitors lined Monterey Road through downtown Morgan Hill Dec. 2 to watch the annual Holiday Parade.