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Reservations for the July 16 Leadership Excellence Award Dinner celebrating farmer, community supporter, philanthropist and good guy Joe Aiello are available. Please go to leadershipmorganhill.org to reserve your seats now.More than 200 community leaders, supporters of Leadership Morgan Hill (LMH) and friends of the honoree are expected to attend this community celebration to honor Joe and his family and to benefit the local nonprofit LMH educational organization.This year’s event will be held at Guglielmo Winery, a beautiful, tranquil outdoor venue set in the winery’s vineyards at 1460 East Main Ave., Morgan Hill—just a short distance from where Joe started his farming career.The theme for this year’s event is “Italian Farm to Table,” embracing our honoree’s heritage and his vocation. The menu reflects the theme, and delicious Italian-oriented food will be freshly delivered from farm to table for your enjoyment.Dinner is only part of the evening’s program. You’ll want to browse the silent auction before and during dinner; it will have unique and enticing items. After dinner we will celebrate Joe and his family in a brief award program, which will be followed by music featuring the local band Bad Monkey and dancing. Joe wants all attendees to come and have fun doing whatever makes it a memorable event for them. In keeping with the outdoor setting, dress for the event is casual, upscale summer fun.Aiello is an icon in the agricultural community. His Uesugi Farms is a very well-known producer of many crops including peppers, melons and strawberries. Their Pumpkin Patch in Morgan Hill is extremely popular, especially right around Halloween. Joe’s support of the Future Farmers of America programs in all our local high schools is extensive and truly inspires participants to put farming in their future. Some who do that also reap the award of a Uesugi- sponsored scholarship due to Joe and the family’s philanthropy.Joe is a leader who truly reflects the ideals of the LMH organization. Please come help us celebrate with this great guy and his family.Reservations and more information are available at leadershipmorganhill.org.Tate is the mayor of the City of Morgan Hill.

Despite some much-welcomed rain in April, Santa Clara County remains in a drought emergency. These recent storms were nowhere near enough to make up for the record dry conditions that impacted California during the first three months of 2022. During that time, San Jose recorded...

I am a past President of Gilroy-Morgan Hill Bar Association, a member of the Transportation Lawyers Association, and past Chair of TLA's Legislation Committee.I have practiced transportation law in the South County for 38 years, and have done post-doctoral study of transportation law and policy at the Norman Y. Mineta International Institute for Surface Transportation Policy Studies, and at Transportation Research Board, Georgetown University; and at the Library of Congress. I am a graduate of SJSU, and the University of Santa Clara Law School, and I have 52 years of transportation industry experience dating back to my junior year at Cupertino High School, when I worked for the SPRR, and later at UPRR in San Jose (1970-1980).My comments are personal, and not made on behalf of a client or any professional organization to which I belong.For a state that cannot afford adequate fire suppression, or water storage, it is bad public policy to add to the public transit boondoggles that the taxpayers (mostly motorists) already shoulder, under the worst tax/fee burdens among all the states.What the California High Speed Rail Authority is doing, which is not what voters voted for in Prop. 1A in 2008, is contrary to the conclusions of both the President's Blue Ribbon Commission on Transport Funding, and the California Transportation Commission. Both of them concluded that we ought to fund transport with "user fees."Giving away transit rides, by any mode, with fares near zero, diverting the costs to motorists' gas and diesel taxes, is unfair, unsound, and unsustainable transport policy. Taxing people out of their cars is a public policy plunging us down the Road to Serfdom, intended to cripple our state's economy.We already pay our taxes for many wasteful boondoggles like Amtrak, Caltrain, ACE Train, BART, Light Rail and county transit, when it would be much cheaper for taxpayers if we just purchased each transit rider his own BMW, or paid his taxi fare, or his Uber fare.California's voters voted for self-sufficient high speed rail, not a Supermassive Black Hole added to the already intolerable public sector transit Black Holes that our lost leadership forces us to subsidize.This bad public policy is making California into Northern Venezuela. I urge local leaders to support the repeal of Prop. 1A.Caveat viator.Joseph Thompson is an attorney whose law offices are in Gilroy. He can be reached at [email protected].