The good news is that Sylvia Hamilton was unanimously elected to
her second three-year term as president of the San Martin
Neighborhood Alliance. The bad news is that she received just 11
votes.
The good news is that Sylvia Hamilton was unanimously elected to her second three-year term as president of the San Martin Neighborhood Alliance. The bad news is that she received just 11 votes.
Five years after it was formed, the alliance’s membership is as large as ever, but there are clear signs people in San Martin are suffering from issue fatigue. Whether it’s perchlorate, incorporation or the South County Airport expansion, people may still care, but they don’t always show it.
“Things are going on but they’re moving slow and the issues are not emotional now,” Hamilton said. “It’s not that people don’t care. It’s just that they think other people will take care of it.”
Lately, that responsibility has been shouldered by Hamilton and a core group of volunteers who are always the first to sign up to organize events, reach out to their neighbors and perform the sometimes tedious duties of putting together a newsletter, balancing the books and working the phones.
The hours are long, there is no pay, and intrinsic satisfaction is hard to come by in an empty hall. Only seven San Martin residents attended the most recent alliance meeting, a far cry from the hundreds that packed the Lions Club Hall in 2003 when perchlorate was discovered in the groundwater and fewer than half the number who were attending the meetings earlier this year.
“I get really worn out,” Hamilton said. “It’s hard to keep the same dedication and enthusiasm. At some point, I’ll run out of steam.”
Most San Martin residents believe they live in a little piece of heaven, but they are squeezed between Morgan Hill and Gilroy, two towns bent on growing in size and clout. And when it comes to planning and development, San Martinians are at the mercy of county officials, who direct the area’s growth and have little incentive to take residents’ concerns seriously.
“I see frustration in a lot of people,” said alliance member Greg Tomlinson, who with his wife, Mary, has lived in San Martin for 10 years. “We go to the county supervisors with information about why not to do something. They make a big show of telling us how much they want our input, but when you get there, they give you two minutes and they don’t listen. They’ve already decided what they’re going to do.”
Tomlinson helped form the alliance in 2000 to organize a drive to incorporate the tiny hamlet of 5,600 people and take back a measure of control over the area’s future. Enthusiasm for incorporation spread quickly, and when the county announced plans to expand the South County Airport, and the perchlorate contamination was discovered, membership ballooned to more than 500 dues-paying members.
But even as membership has grown, many of the issues facing San Martin residents have lost their immediacy. Perchlorate cleanup has continued apace with virtually no input from the community at large. The proposed airport expansion seems destined to occur despite San Martinians’ reservations, and the wheels of incorporation are moving ever more slowly. It now looks as though it will be 2007 before legislation that will help San Martin become its own city is enacted. Residents are running out of patience and losing interest.
“It’s hard to stay enthusiastic about an organization that so few people are involved in,” said Jane Bauldry, who has lived in San Martin with her husband, Ron, since 1986 and still gets to meetings when her health and schedule allow. “Unfortunately, the people I contact have the time and the wherewithal to come and participate, but they don’t. People would just rather do their own thing. If the issues could be resolved in a short period of time, you’d get more participation.”
Hamilton is always quick with praise for the numerous people who remain tirelessly dedicated to the alliance and the community – the people who send out mailers and work on the newsletter, the horrendously overworked Webmaster, people such as the Tomlinsons, who don’t go to many meetings anymore, but were the organization’s volunteers of the year in 2004.
Greg Tomlinson, who is currently studying at a seminary, said his family’s involvement is inspired by a higher calling. His commitment to God, he said, helps him look past what many people perceive as the community’s hopelessness in the face of the county’s designs for San Martin.
“I see it as a part of the commandment of God to be a servant, to share with people the hope that there is something that exists beyond what we have in this life,” Tomlinson said. “I’m not sure what the alliance can do. We need to get people who are willing to overlook the obstacles before us and say, “We’re going to do this anyway.’”
Hamilton says she doesn’t want to get away from monthly meetings because there’s always enough new information to justify holding them, but all agree that Robert’s Rules of Order are not about to rejuvenate the organization.
“How many times can you talk about the same four topics?” resident Steve Coney asked at the last meeting. “We need to bring a little life into this thing, create enthusiasm and bring the community together.”
Coney’s idea is to unite residents through the alliance’s Web site by creating a “virtual garage sale” modeled after the widely popular craigslist.org. Coney’s vision of the site is a place where alliance members can sell and trade their old treasures, a lost and found, job listings and advertisements for local businesses. The challenge will be finding someone to operate the site.
“What we need,” said alliance secretary Denise Matulich, “are things that hit home, that people can relate to. Something that is just plain fun and doesn’t address any serious issues.”
And if there’s one thing that packs the Lions Hall, it’s a spaghetti social. The alliance raised thousands of dollars at their spaghetti dinner in May and will likely raise thousands more at its popular classic car show scheduled for Aug. 20.
If the alliance is to evolve into more than a social club, it must demonstrate some political clout the next time its members want to convince the board of supervisors to rethink expanding the airport, or leasing the Lions Hall to the highest bidder, or any other decision that affects their future.
“We can’t expect everybody to come to every meeting,” Hamilton said, “but we’ll need hundreds, if not thousands, of people to stand up against the airport.”
