The Morgan Hill City Council goals for 2009 will revolve around
economic development, downtown, governance and the budget
strategy.
The Morgan Hill City Council goals for 2009 will revolve around economic development, downtown, governance and the budget strategy.
During the first of a two-day goal setting retreat at the Community and Cultural Center’s El Toro Room today, the council were preoccupied with how to both save money by further streamlining city processes and bring money into the city by attracting more businesses to replace the ones that recently left — Mervyns, Circuit City, Ross — and fill in spots potentially ripe for development, like Tennant Avenue at U.S. 101 area and the southeast quadrant, which hasn’t yet been defined as open space or development worthy.
Preliminary goals include positioning Morgan Hill so that it’s welcoming to businesses with strategies including improved infrastructure and subsidies; using their Redevelopment Agency dollars towards developing the properties the agency bought last year or towards lending to a contractor; repitching Measure H, the measure to increase housing downtown that failed in the November General Election; eliminating the council’s standing committees and replacing them with monthly workshops; and retooling the sustainable budget principles the council adopted in 2006.
Perhaps more revealing about the council’s direction is what’s not on the goal-setting agenda this year. Environmental sustainability and Upper Llagas Creek flood protection, both keystones of the council’s 2008 goals, were set aside this year.
Councilman Greg Sellers said the council did well managing its goals for last year, which included public safety and downtown redevelopment, both of which materialized as city measures that failed in the November General Election, and rolling with the punches when the economy went south and the affordable housing and utility tax issues heightened. Sellers said he was confident that in 2009 they would be able to be equally nimble.
Councilwoman Marby Lee took a more cautious approach.
“In the economic situation we’re in, it’s hard to focus on new things,” she said, adding that she’d prefer a “lay low strategy” for goal setting.
“We’re looking at how to deal with worse straights, and keeping things going the best we can,” she said.
The council will reconvene at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow to discuss police staffing and collaborative ways to save with Gilroy. Both cities’ councils will meet in the Community Room at the Gilroy Police Department tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. to discuss joint ventures that could include recreation, a dispatch center and environmental services.
