This past week, the Morgan Hill Times reported that Dr. Alan
Nishino would be retiring as superintendent of the Morgan Hill
Unified School District, and would be paid an additional $30,500 to
extend his contract through August.
Dear Editor,
This past week, the Morgan Hill Times reported that Dr. Alan Nishino would be retiring as superintendent of the Morgan Hill Unified School District, and would be paid an additional $30,500 to extend his contract through August. When Dr. Nishino was hired by the district several years ago, I thought then to pay him a yearly salary of close to $200,000 per year was outrageous. After doing a little research, I find out it’s even worse that I had originally thought.
The MHUSD has about 9,100 students drawing from a community of mostly middle class and upper-middle class residents from what most of us would describe as an idyllic-type of community. Compare this to the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has 700,000 students and they pay their superintendent $300,000 per year. To add to this challenge, the students come from a community rife with gangs, drugs, racial strife, illegal aliens and students speaking hundreds of different languages. Based upon this comparison, how can the Morgan Hill school board justify now paying their superintendent more than $200,000 per year for what is a relatively cushy job?
Now I am sure Dr. Nishino is a fine and competent individual, but he doesn’t walk on water. (There is only one Messiah and I am told he is in the White House). If these are the types of decisions being made on how to spend the taxpayers’ money, is it any wonder California is practically bankrupt? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or an IBM engineer to conclude we can’t continue to waste money like this.
I hope during the next election, some of you ex-IBMers and retired insurance agents “step up to the plate,” run for the school board and bring some management skills, business acumen and plain common sense to running the schools. Now more than ever, our community and our nation need your time, talent and experience. After all, how many rounds of golf can you play and how many overseas trips can you take before you say to yourself, “Is that all there is?” The taxpayers and future generations deserve better.
Jim Becker, San Martin
Strong leadership is the key to the success of the downtown
Dear Editor,
I get so sick and tired of having to listen to the vocal minority, who oppose just about everything the voters, city staff and city council work so hard at trying to make a reality. Specifically, at the June 3 city council meeting, it was after David Heindel and the architect laid out what I thought was an excellent, well conceived plan, professionally presented. As is often the case, numerous naysayers, who typically don’t support anything that makes sense, got up and unfairly criticized the plan that was laid out for the corner of Second Street and Monterey. Some wanted to save the long vacant, dilapidated Granada Theater – why? I too went on my first date there but have no attachment to it emotional or otherwise. Others expressed concern over the availability of water. Some were overly concerned about a several thousand dollar overage on the architects estimate, and in general a host of other assorted negative comments.
The fact of the matter is Measure A passed convincingly in May. This validates the desire of this community to have a downtown that accommodates housing in a denser form, is pedestrian friendly, is close to public transportation and draws people from the community to enjoy the restaurants, theaters, bars and shops. It also helps to insure these businesses can achieve economic viability, which as we all know is not the case now.
Smart growth is a key component of the Morgan Hill Downtown Plan. And anyone that has read and understands Measure C, knows this type of concentrated development at the core of the downtown is one of Measure C’s primary objectives. Urban sprawl, with housing subdivisions located miles apart on either side of the freeway, is a large contributing factor to the budget deficits faced by the city of Morgan Hill. Police and fire protection where this type of development has been allowed to proliferate, have far higher costs for these services.
The city of Morgan Hill has been talking about creating this “vibrant Downtown” since 1983 believe it or not. And yet in over a quarter of a century very little has changed. Vast amounts of money have been spent over the years for consultants, numerous studies, architects, additional staff, and so on and so forth. As I write this, millions more has already and is currently being spent – just look at Depot Street and now the Third Street Promenade.
The bottom line is the city council needs to provide strong leadership and bring to fruition the elusive goal of establishing a downtown. Measure A is a huge first step but more needs to be done. I appreciate the fact that decision makers solicit input from the public, but please remain focused on the ultimate objective – which is to create the kind of downtown which all our citizens can be proud of. There will always be those who disagree and oppose and they have the right to express their opinions. The elected officials must consider these arguments, but hopefully continue to make progress and respect the will of the people in moving this vision forward.
Any city that has created a vibrant downtown certainly faced opposition and similar challenges. The reason they were successful was twofold: strong leadership and an unwavering commitment to make their vision a reality. Anything less would be a failure, and an unfortunate consequence for downtown businesses and the community. More years of the same is just not acceptable.
R. Alcini, Morgan Hill
