Columnists

I just returned from a solo motorcycle trip across the great Southwest. Traveling mostly two-lane blacktop, there were few distractions other than the iconic, beautiful countryside.

Last month I took a nice motorcycle ride through the great American Southwest. This trip allowed me to reflect on life a bit here in our little community.

At Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park above Santa Cruz, a single ridge separates two very different habitats. Walking the trails on the park’s east side through bright slopes of mixed evergreen trees and chaparral, it seems so unlikely that just over the hill giant redwoods nearly 300 feet tall shade a forest floor dark, moist and green. The great thing about this park is that both settings are within easy reach of a day hiker.

It seems that it’s all about events this time of the year. We’re planning for them and talking about the coming year, all in terms of events.By events, I mean the plethora of fun happenings you can all attend whose co-function is to raise money for some worthy cause. Fundraising events are one of the great “win-wins” of life: you get to have fun, and someone makes money and does even more good for the community with that money. It’s kind of like the “law of conservation of energy,” only here it’s the money you spend that doesn’t lose energy and will come back to the entire community with no noticeable loss in effectiveness.I’d like to take a break from the Amgen Tour of California for a moment and turn your attention to one of my favorite events of the year, and it’s usually the first one too.The Wineries of Santa Clara Valley puts on two major events every year supporting the local wine association and bringing joy to those that appreciate fine wine: the Spring and Fall Wine Passport events.The first one starts this weekend (March 2-4), and it will be the best one yet. Of course, that’s what they always say but what if a two-day event got extended to 30 days, and the kickoff evening event just increased from 16 wineries and 12 restaurants to 22 wineries and 15 restaurants? I would say we have a bigger and better event!This Friday, March 2, that kickoff event will take place at the Coyote Creek Golf Club clubhouse. Since I’m usually working the event I probably pay more attention to the people than most, and all I can say is they have a lot of fun and I wish I could join them.The finest in local wines will be poured, and this is where you can get up close to so many of our local heroes of wine. I’m going to call them heroes because so many aren’t making wine for the perceived fortunes to be made (there is a joke about how to end up with a small fortune in the wine industry: start with a big one…). They are working hard to express their passion in winemaking and help promote this wine region. I can only hope they are feeling rewarded for those efforts.Friday night will also find some of the finest restaurants in the South County showcasing their fine foods. Here too you may get to meet many of the people responsible for bringing their fine foods to you. Regardless of who is serving up the food, it is always impressive and I hope that you’ll find something from a restaurant you haven’t yet tried that inspires a future visit.The wine association is aware that many passport holders tried to visit all the wineries in the old two-day period. It could be a bit much for some so now you have an entire month to make all those tasty visits, because the spring passport event goes from March 3-31.I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it again: make a plan of what wineries you want to visit, and then venture out and enjoy yourself. You can do it often now, so be safe.Kick off a year of fun events and a month of wine tasting this Friday!For more information about Passport Month and the order tickets, visit the Wineries of Santa Clara Valley website at santaclarawines.com/passport.html.

The Amgen Tour of California, the biggest bicycle race in all of these United States, is almost here! ARE YOU READY?It’s now May, which the League of American Bicyclists has declared National Bike Month. They have 57 million members, so they win—it’s Bike Month.Next, we are about to venture into our own Morgan Hill Bike Week. It’s the first time we’ve done it here and it’s being done right—with a little help from our friends. Bike Week officially starts May 9.To get an early start on Bike Week this Friday, May 4, you’ll want to mount up and head to the corner of First and Depot Streets. A no-host ride is planned to gather at 7:30pm and it promises to be one big party—a Bike Party to be exact. Bike Parties are popular in other cities, so let’s see how much fun we can have and make it a Morgan Hill style event. I’ve heard this bike event may include dancing…On Wednesday, May 9, you can ride to school with your children to celebrate Bike to School Day. Many of our local school children just learned about bike safety from the folks at Specialized Bicycle Components and AEG (Amgen ToC event organizers), so let’s practice safety and fun.Then next Thursday morning, May 10, is “Ride to Work Day.” Stop at the Community Center and get “energized” with refreshments and some goodies so you can leave the car at home.On Friday, May 11, head down to the Downtown Amphitheater for the Amgen ToC kick off concert. Specialized got involved, allowing the Chamber of Commerce to bring in some great musical acts. Specialized helped sponsor the concert, bike inspections and a bike rodeo that will take place in the parking lot with local bike shop partner “Bike Therapy” involved.Wanna try something different for Mother’s Day? Come out and ride with the Mayor and other community leaders you’d like to see sweat, and show that spending a few quality miles with mom is the way to spend the day. After the ride, sit down to some well-earned pancakes at the Morgan Hill Grange.Specialized is a friend to the Morgan Hill community, and what do friends do? They invite you over to their place on Tuesday, May 15. Specialized will open up their headquarters and “Windtunnel” to our community for a rare look around their digs. You must see all of the cool stuff they have in their museum, check out some custom bikes (like a chopper and hot rod bike) and maybe have a beer or glass of wine while you’re at it.To cap off our Bike Week, on May 16 we will host the world of international bicycle racing—that’s race day! I think I’ve already said enough about that.FYI:  a community meeting on street closures and details on the event will be held May 8, 6pm to 8pm, at the Community Center, 17000 Monterey Road. This is a great opportunity to hear details about the event so don’t miss it if you’d like to know more about getting around on race day.Enjoy your Bike Week!For detailed information, visit https://www.morgan-hill.ca.gov/1679/Events-and-Activities.John McKay is president of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance. He can be reached at [email protected].

In my last column, I described an event that could be the biggest thing to hit Morgan Hill since the Swedish Crown Prince and Princess visited in 1926.The Amgen Tour of California is coming and will bring the world right into our living room. This world class event will be in our town, not 10 miles south or 28 miles north like the last two world class events, both of which pretty much passed us by.Again, this is a big deal for us.Are you one of those people that wonder how this event came to be in Morgan Hill? An event that I’ve heard could cost over $100,000 just to be provided the privilege of hosting—in addition to the direct costs associated with a world class event (just the part we’re paying for)? An event that normally gobbles reams of paper just to fill out the qualification forms to participate?We are the beneficiaries of someone else’s misfortune. Another community pulled out of the event, and Amgen Tour organizers gave the folks in San Jose a call, who in turn gave our folks in Morgan Hill a call.Yes, we have a relationship with San Jose that is strong enough for that call to take place. Bet you had no idea that could have happened.So how did that happen? My theory… In April 2013 the community of Morgan Hill declared that we wanted tourism to grow as a key industry. The city council heard that proclamation, and an environment was created that fostered reaching out to our neighbors to work together in the name of tourism.A couple years back, the very people that gave us that recent call were invited to Morgan Hill to see what we see every day—a beautiful community that could actually be an asset to San Jose.An asset to San Jose? Yes, an asset in the sense that one of the lures to potential visitors of San Jose could be our “charming” community just minutes away from the big city hubbub. When you’re done at the Tech Museum, head over to Morgan Hill for lunch and hiking, for example.A stage was set years ago where this event is now about to play out. This event will in turn hopefully set in motion a recognition of Morgan Hill as a great place to visit, build businesses and live. These are called investments in the future.There is a lot of work to do before we can show off Morgan Hill to the world, and at the same time feel comfortable our community will enjoy this event. We have to get everyone who lives in, works in, or regularly passes through the downtown informed about the event and work to minimize the impacts to them. That work will start right away.As short as the event may be, one day there will be some inconveniences that we need to minimize for the entire community. Careful planning will help with that.We need to plan collaboratively to make the most of the large number of visitors and event coverage. We may only get one chance to shine, and we’re going to make the most of it.Let the work begin.John McKay is president of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, a city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance. He can be reached at [email protected].

About three weeks ago a group of us were having a Friday dinner when we heard police car sirens passing by over and over again. A little while later we start hearing the chirps and buzzes of messages being delivered to our faithful little electronic tethers to reality. C’mon, on a Friday night?Seems that something was happening at the Britton Middle School carnival right around the corner. Details were kind of sketchy at the time, but apparently someone had a knife and then half the world’s police showed up and things got ugly. Or something like that.More information arrived in the news the next morning—on the radio. Police officers were injured by several minors, eight arrested, one youth tazed, carnival cancelled and $20,000 in fundraising to support classroom related projects lost.Once again, something bad happened in Morgan Hill and the entire Bay Area gets to dwell on it with us. Can’t we get a break?So, we had a student with a knife at a carnival where police intervened, a mob got ugly, some police were assaulted, some young hoodlums went to jail, and the carnival was shut down.Can you find the good in all of this? One of my friends pointed out some things that we, in Morgan Hill, should appreciate. So here I go.First, someone noticed a knife being exchanged between two young males and they called the police, two of which were already on site patrolling the carnival. When approached, the young male with the knife handed it over without incident. No problem.So then the guy who first supplied the knife is approached and wants to tango with the MHPD and a crowd joins in.This is the smart part of dealing with the stupid part.Instead of possibly escalating the issue with the few MHPD officers on site with any number of defensive and offensive weapons at their disposal they reach for their—radios.This is the part I needed made clear to me.The MHPD brought in neighboring law enforcement agencies not to overwhelm the riotous crowd with lethal force, to but to be in large enough numbers to use the least amount of force possible for the situation.But until all of those other agencies showed up, things were getting pretty dicey. This is about the time some other police departments haven’t done so well. You see it on the news with shootings and complete riots.Apparently our officers were very cool in the face of all of this. Whether it’s training or hiring the right personnel, this discipline and cool headedness is now, to me, the face of our police department: cool and level-headed enough to think of calling in greater numbers to avoid violence and then remaining cool until they show up. They were surrounded by a mob and some officers were actually assaulted.With the possibility of someone greatly harming an officer or grabbing a service weapon, there are some who might say that deadly force is appropriate here. I can only imagine that if you’re afraid and freaking out you might turn to the last resort, deadly force, and the courts have in some cases said that it was appropriate. Not in Morgan Hill.Some are hungry for headlines like “Carnival at Middle School Ends with Officers Hurt”.I like “MHPD Diffuses Escalating Situation with Professionalism”.

Last week was a big week in the world of planning for our community. The Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce, Morgan Hill Downtown Association and the Morgan Hill City Council all held their annual planning retreats.Every year, most organizations will spend an extended period of time really focusing and digging into understanding what it is they do and how they are going to do more of it and do it better.Looking to both the past and the future are all part of creating a meaningful and attainable vision.We spend time looking at the past to see how we did; most of what I’ve seen has been pretty good in my opinion. 2017 was a pretty good year if you believe in constant planned improvement in how we operate as a community. I mean this in the broadest sense with things like seeing public art going up, the Friday Night Music Series blowing up, the increased popularity of the downtown, expanded industrial activity, fundraising events reaching new levels in quality and effectiveness, our Fourth of July and Holiday Lights parades growing and adding definition to who we are, public parks with private partnerships opening downtown; the list goes on and on…We will spend a lot of time gazing into a future that is incredibly bright. That bright future could look different to each person in an organization, and must be distilled to ones they can agree to champion as an organization. Courses to a vision must be charted by mere people, often volunteers that practice a level of good common sense that is not so common these days. I would even call our city councilmembers elected volunteers with their level of compensation.Advice from professionals in the different fields of interest is usually available in Morgan Hill, but ultimately it is really up to the dedicated amateurs to make decisions and chart courses to the visions of the future.So I guess what I am working toward is giving recognition to all of those people that work so hard to make this community what it is in so many ways.Thank you to the city council for the countless hours of work that so often go un-thanked. Thank you to the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Association, Independence Day Celebrations, Kiwanis, Historical Society, AAUW and more…Thank you for paying attention to the past and seeing a vision for the future of Morgan Hill.Thank you for having the courage to make decisions that might ultimately prove to be wrong because no one makes all of the right decisions except for the one who makes none, and then they already made one bad one to begin with…Thank you to the professionals who help guide us amateurs. Thank you for putting community ahead of self. As far as I know, not one of you has made a fortune from all of your hard work, contrary to what some may say.Thank you to all of you who are considering joining the ranks of our volunteer community.Thank you to all of the volunteers of all types that make Morgan Hill truly community driven.John McKay is president of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, a city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance. He can be reached at  [email protected].

A few months back I got an email from a friend who said she would like to talk to me about the Poppy Jasper Film Festival. I kind of thought, “Poppy Jasper Film Festival”—didn’t that film festival kind of fade away a year or so ago?

Okay, I don’t think I’m quite done with talking about the new downtown parks.I was at the three new parks’ grand opening this past Saturday, and it was a big deal. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many of the community’s leaders and volunteers in one place like this before. There were representatives from the Open Space Authority, Santa Clara Valley Water District, Assembly Member Ana Caballero’s office and of course our city council.But I think the most important thing was that the community really turned out, especially at the Railroad Park. Seeing so many from our community turn out makes me believe that these parks are the right ones for us at the right time.If you had ever seen the old empty lot where the new Creek Park is now, you might remember it was overgrown with tree canopies touching the ground and blocking the views.That old lot cleaned up nicely with a wonderful trail that goes from Second to Third Street through the park, passing over a sturdy footbridge that makes you feel like you are leaving the downtown. There is a sculpture of a fox under the canopy of a huge oak tree and the open main area of the park has a couple features for the young ones to climb on. But this park is mostly just for relaxing and hanging out. I’m already looking forward to sitting under the trees on a nice summer day.After initial ceremonies at the Creek Park, a mass of people went up the hill to the Hilltop Park and we were all reminded that this park will be great for exercising. But the view and the slides make it all worth the effort. Children lined up to go down the slide,screaming down one after another. We really got to see and were reminded of what so much of these parks are about—the children.We went to the Railroad Park on Depot Street. As soon as the gates opened, there was a flood of children climbing on the different play features. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those zombie movies where the zombies all climb together to get over a wall or something, but the scene reminded me of that. A tower that looks like the Eiffel Tower looked like it had that swarm, but these were wonderful, happy, screaming kids, alive with joy, that now have a place to play in the downtown.Children playing in the Railroad Park went on through the day and into the evening with the park full again after the Holiday Lights Parade.I went to Sunday brunch the next morning, and from the downtown parking garage I could hear the children yelling and screaming and laughing from my upper floor perch. I could see the brightly colored park and equally colorfully clothed children running about and playing with others.This really reinforced that what was missing in the downtown was that sound of life filling the air and the sight of children being children. We got a taste of this with the pop-up parks, but this is much bigger.I want to make sure that one of our most firmly held goals is to make the sights and sounds of children commonplace in our thriving downtown.Can we work on that together?John McKay is president of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, a city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance. He can be reached at [email protected].