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Music brings people together. With the holidays now in high gear, the South Valley Symphony welcomes everyone in Hollister, Gilroy, San Martin and Morgan Hill communities to celebrate the joy and cheer of the season with festive symphonic music at the “Holiday Panorama” concert at the Gavilan Community College Theater 4 p.m. Dec. 13.At this concert, we will honor the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris with a special piece composed by Sobrato High School graduate Christopher Niemann. The young man's piece is very poignant and personal, and I feel amazed that something of this quality was composed in a few days. Niemann told me he needed to write something to use music as healing for what happened in Paris. In a matter of days he completed a full-orchestral piece as a remembrance of those who died in Paris.The symphony made the decision to have the orchestra perform the new piece at the winter concert because the holiday season is a “season of giving” and the music can help people heal after a tragedy.A 2013 graduate of Sobrato where he first developed his talent in music composition, Niemann, 20, said he hopes the audience will feel motivated to move on from this tragedy after hearing the composition.“Being barely old enough to remember the 9/11 attacks and living through the aftermath, I remember the sensation of being extremely helpless,” he said. “Everyone from around the world watching such terrible events happen through the news and wanting to help when all you could do was watch. I never thought that I would have to experience that feeling of helplessness again. The idea to create a piece in honor of the victims came through the feeling of helplessness; because it’s very hard to just sit and do nothing when people around you are suffering.”Niemann has composed and conducted several pieces performed by the South Valley Symphony, including at the Oct. 10 concert a special composition called “In the Halls of the Overlook” based on the Stephen King novel “The Shining.”The selection of other pieces at the concert will give the audience a festive feeling for the holidays. Top billing at the concert will go to two guest artists—soprano Milena Georgieva who will sing Mozart’s “Exsultate Jubilate” and soloist Greg Chambers performing John Williams’ “Escapades for Saxophone & Orchestra.” The orchestra will also perform selections from Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Sleeping Beauty.” Leroy Anderson’s “Christmas Festival” will complete the concert with a medley of songs taking the audience into the festive spirit of the season.Greg Chambers is a music teacher at Sobrato High School and a master of the saxophone. The solo “Escapades” that he will perform is based on Williams’ film score for the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie “Catch Me If You Can.”Along with the Mother’s Day concert at the San Juan Bautista Mission, the symphony’s holiday concert is so popular that it usually sells out, so buy your tickets early online on the symphony’s website atsouthvalleysymphony.org or at Morgan Hill’s BookSmart store, Gilroy’s Porcellas Music and First Street Cafe, Hollister’s PostalGraphics or San Juan Bautista’s The Mission Gallery.We encourage families to share the festive fun of the holidays by attending the upcoming concert. Children can attend for free with accompanying paying adult (but the child must get a ticket to be admitted). Students with identification can also attend the concerts for free. During the intermission, I invite children on the stage to learn about the various instruments.The South Valley Symphony is a family, and we welcome everyone to celebrate the season at our Holiday Panorama concert this Sunday.Anthony Quartuccio is the Music Director and Conductor of the South Valley Symphony.

If you have been considering changing your landscape to make it more drought tolerant, now is the time. Last month, the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors voted to continue supporting higher rebate amounts for water conservation programs until next June.In most of Santa Clara County, you could be eligible for a rebate of $2 per square foot of converted landscape. In Palo Alto, Morgan Hill and San Jose Municipal Water’s service area, local cost sharing makes the incentives even larger.Our landscape conversion rebate program is one of the many conservation programs that is helping us through this drought. More importantly, it will help us manage dry periods for years to come. We are working to save nearly 100,000 acre-feet of water a year by 2030. That’s enough water to fill Lexington Reservoir five times.Fortunately, the response to this program during the drought has been overwhelming. From July through October 2014, about 410,000 square feet of thirsty lawns have been converted. The conversion of another 1.4 million square feet of grass is in process.Some people mistakenly believe that a drought-tolerant landscape only means a cactus or rock garden. In fact, our program allows a long list of approved plants, shrubs and groundcovers that are lush, flowering and very colorful. More and more, these types of landscapes will become the norm in our region, in place of lawns that requires mowing, fertilizers and frequent watering.In addition, the water district offers rebates for irrigation equipment that can help you reduce your water use. This includes weather based irrigation controllers, rain sensors, high-efficiency nozzles, dedicated landscape meters and efficient sprinklers. Those rebate amounts have been increased as well. About 90,000 pieces of irrigation equipment have been replaced or are in the process of replacement.To find out about our water conservation programs and their eligibility requirements, visitwww.save20gallons.org or call our water conservation hotline at (408) 630-2554. The water district strives to make the application process as easy as possible, but it is important to check the program requirements before starting any project.The board also extended our call for water use reductions of 20 percent until next June. Despite all the recent rain, our local reservoirs and our groundwater levels are still severely depleted. It will take many more significant storm systems to make up for the three long years of dry weather.Much of this county’s water is imported from outside the county. Those water supplies depend on the Sierra snowpack and the conditions at key state and federal reservoirs such as Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville. State officials estimate that we will need precipitation rates of 150 percent of normal before those reservoirs will recover.As a result, the state has issued an initial forecast for the amount of water it can deliver to our county in 2015 of only 10 percent.The bottom line is that we will start 2015 with far less water than we had at the beginning of 2014. It is essential that we continue saving, rain or shine, for the foreseeable future.—Contact Dennis Kennedy, who represents South County on the SCVWD Board of Directors, by email at [email protected].

The Morgan Hill City Council voted to ignore a lawful petition signed by more than 10 percent of the registered voters in this city demanding that the city council either reverse its proposed zoning amendment (proposed Ordinance No. 2131-NS) that would unnecessarily further deplete our already disappearing industrial land, or else put that question on the ballot for the voters to decide in a referendum election.  The right to decide questions of public interest in a democratic vote is guaranteed under the California State Constitution and built into the very fabric of our elections laws. It is the reason that most ordinances do not go into effect for at least 30 days after they are approved by the city council. This is the time period during which concerned voters can file their objections to a proposed ordinance, but this city council is trying to deny our citizens their constitutional right to vote on this issue.The Morgan Hill Hotel Coalition works hard to make the hospitality industry better for all. The hotels and motels in Morgan Hill, many of which are family owned businesses that span generations, have generated approximately $10 million in transit occupancy tax over the past five years. The Coalition welcomes all who care to join the hospitality industry on a level playing field.The Coalition publicly supported both the Stone Park Capital hotel project (La Quinta Inn) and development of a new downtown boutique hotel. Each of those projects are situated on lands that were zoned for commercial use (which allows hotels) when the projects were proposed. These two projects alone will increase our city’s available higher end hotel room inventory by nearly 40 percent.We advocate for sustainable growth so our local economy is less susceptible to boom/bust cycles that have crippled us in the past.Industry means jobs—good paying, manufacturing jobs that will benefit the citizens of our community as a whole, now and in the future. So we need to carefully protect our industrial land to make sure that there will be a place for people to create jobs when our children become working age.  According to the City of Morgan Hill’s own statistics, there is only about a 19-year supply of industrial land remaining within the city and there is currently a miniscule 3 percent industrial property vacancy rate in Morgan Hill.The Morgan Hill Hotel Coalition objected to the proposal to take industrial land and convert it to commercial use just so an out of town developer can build another hotel. More than 2,000 voters in Morgan Hill agreed and showed their support by signing the petition demanding that the city council repeal the proposed zoning change or put it on the ballot for the voters to decide. The city council should have allowed the voters to decide.Asit Panwala is a spokesperson for the Morgan Hill Hotel Coalition. His father owns Comfort Inn on Condit Road in Morgan Hill. The MHHC has started a group on Facebook titled "Morgan Hill Speaks," which encourages residents to become more involved in important land use issues and other local government business. 

Everyone knows about the value of gold. But what many don’t realize is that there is an even more precious resource, water. And with rainfall shortages and restrictions on our imported water supplies, groundwater is proving to be more important than ever.