Ahhhh It
’s once again spring in Morgan Hill. You can smell it and feel
it. Our hillsides are coated with every imaginable shade of green.
It’s just wonderful. Later, we will trade green for gold and enjoy
the pleasant warmth of a Morgan Hill summer.
Ahhhh It’s once again spring in Morgan Hill. You can smell it and feel it. Our hillsides are coated with every imaginable shade of green. It’s just wonderful. Later, we will trade green for gold and enjoy the pleasant warmth of a Morgan Hill summer.
Aside from our hillside and valley views, our community is distinctive in so many ways. You don’t find 12-foot sound walls along our freeways; there is little congestion in our city streets and few urban anxieties as found in other communities similar to ours. In contrast we have many rural and community resources that make Morgan Hill a special place.
Shortly the City Council will have an opportunity to preserve our rural character by setting an urban limit line. It’s an historic undertaking. The line will constrain our urban growth, reduce our sprawl and preserve our open space. Land outside the urban limit line will continue to be developed under county regulations in large lots because those lands remain outside our city limits, in unincorporated areas that are regulated by Santa Clara County. The new line will also identify areas as greenbelt worthy of a future investment by us and others.
But the line I am describing is not the one that Urban Limit Line Advisory Committee is recommending to the City Council. That line significantly expands the current growth boundary, allowing for the type of development that would threaten our rural character. Environmental groups and Morgan Hill residents are proposing an alternative line, west of Highway 101 that maintains our view sheds, that keeps development off our foothills, while preserving open space.
The alternative proposal would still allow for 200 to 250 acres of industrial development at the US 101 and Tennant Ave. interchange, east of 101 to support our infrastructure with much needed jobs and revenue.
The proposed line will also be fair and have strategies to compensate landowners and various strategies will be pursued. After all, if it’s not a fair deal for all it is not going to be a good deal for anyone.
We have enough residential land with in our city limits for the next 30 to 50 years. We should focus our development at our urban core and along transit corridors.
There is no need to expand but there is a need to contain unbridled growth, to preserve what we have and to avoid the painful mistakes of our neighbors to the north and south.
Communities have often failed to address open space and understand its importance until it was too late and prohibitive. We have an opportunity in Morgan Hill to not only do things right but to do the right thing, to create an urban limit line that reflects our values and our needs.
I urge my fellow residents to lend support to the alternative urban limit line, to keep Morgan Hill the beautiful city it is and will become.
Alex Kennett, Morgan Hill
