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Plans for a new Catholic high school for southern Santa Clara County, first proposed 14 years ago, gained new life on Sept. 5, when the Morgan Hill City Council revisited a plan to annex the proposed school site southeast of the city.
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The annexation is considered critical to the success of the project, and the council’s 3-2 vote sends the plan to extend city limits to the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation Committee, which effectively has veto power over any proposed annexation.
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The committee rejected an earlier version two years ago. Undeterred, the Roman Catholic Bishop of San Jose has updated its school plans, and city business and political leaders have scaled back the annexation plan in hopes of making it more attractive to the committee.
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Continuing population growth in southern Santa Clara County, its growing affluence and growing pains in area public schools are all factors that make a new private high school attractive to the Roman Catholic Diocese, which operates five high schools in San Jose and northern county communities. The church owns the land where the new high school would be built.
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The Local Agency Formation Committee (LAFCO) is an appointed body of citizens and elected officials, including Santa Clara County Supervisor Mike Wasserman, whose district includes Morgan Hill and Gilroy.
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The committee will vote as early as December on whether the land for the high school can be annexed into the city. Without the annexation, a school spokesman said, the plan cannot proceed.
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A vote by the committee could come as early as its Dec. 5 meeting. If the committee approves the annexation, the City Council will be asked to vote again on the project. That vote could be taken by a lame-duck majority, or the new council elected in November.
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Councilmembers Rene Spring and Rich Constantine last week voted against sending the amendment to the committee. Spring is not up for re-election; Constantine is running for mayor.
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The LAFCO committee has denied the city growth plans that have included the high school in the past.
In October 2015 the City Council submitted to LAFCO a series of land-use plans called the Southeast Quadrant for annexation into the city. The land for the proposed high school was included in these plans.
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In March 2016 the committee denied the annexation request. A city is only allowed to submit plans to the committee once a year. With the decision coming a year later, the city submitted a request to annex only the land for the South County Catholic High School.
The request was denied in June 2016.
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The annexation amendment would include nearly 65 acres of land on Murphy Avenue, between Barrett and Tennant avenues. The land is within the city’s urban growth boundary, but not within city limits. In order to receive city services such as fire, water and power, the land would need to be annexed.
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Spring asked city Principal Planner John Baty whether or not a hotel, single-family home, stores or gas stations could ever be built on the land zoned for Sports Recreational Leisure. Baty said that technically they could be allowed.
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The Rev. Steve Kim, who has been in charge of the project for the Diocese of San Jose for almost three years, says the church only wants to build a high school on the property.
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Constantine said he could not vote in favor of the project because he felt the plan still failed to answer the questions that had always existed with the project. He said he was not against a high school being built on the land, but said the rush to bring the project back to the committee would sow more distrust between the city and LAFCO.
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A 2016-2017 Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury Report of the committee’s denials of the South County Catholic High School land annexation summarized that distrust saying, “LAFCO staff made erroneous statements about the Catholic Diocese of San Jose (Catholic Diocese) in a report on the high school plan and did not correct the errors after they were pointed out, creating the appearance of bias. On its part, Morgan Hill created the appearance of pro-growth favoritism. The city excluded the Southeast Quadrant from the normal General Plan update process.”
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The city will use the Southeast Quadrant agricultural mitigation environmental impact report that was used to submit the proposed annexation in 2015.
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The Grand Jury Report cited the impact report as a previous reason for denial stating, “It dealt with the 38-acre high school site but not with an adjacent 22-acre area needed to connect the high school to Morgan Hill’s existing [urban service boundary] boundary.”
“Without the connection, the high school would be an urban island in the midst of unincorporated land, contrary to LAFCO policy,” the report said.
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Constantine said he had spoken to committee members who felt nothing had changed with Morgan Hill’s approach to the project. “You keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result,” said Constantine.
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When asked at the meeting what had changed in the plan since last submitting to the committee, Baty said the city now has more concrete plans for agricultural preservation and was submitting a much smaller project than it had before.
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Wasserman told the Times in an email, “LAFCO works to protect farmland. If Morgan Hill’s application can permanently preserve agricultural land with one-for-one acre conservation easements, then it could be a win-win for those of us who care deeply about both farmland preservation as well as education and building more schools.”
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While Constantine has voted consistently against sending the annexation amendments to the committee, councilmember Larry Carr and Mayor Steve Tate have voted in favor of the annexation. Kim called the high school “a lasting legacy [Mayor Tate] wants to be behind.”
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Tate is not seeking re-election. Carr’s term will end in 2020.
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Last year’s Grand Jury report said one of the committee’s reasons for rejecting the annexation had been a recommendation that the diocese could find other pieces of vacant land within city limits and preserve the desired land for open space use.
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Kim said this wasn’t possible. He said the diocese had explored all viable options. He said building the school within city limits would mean having several “satellite campuses,” something he said threatened student safety.
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Julie Hutcheson, City Council candidate in District D, spoke against the annexation, on behalf of the Committee of Green Foothills, the Greenbelt Alliance, the Sierra Club, and the Audubon Society. She told the Times she made her comments because she feels the city needs to work in collaboration with the county and outside organizations to create a better use for the project.
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Hutcheson believes the project creates sprawl and is detrimental to climate change efforts. “Farmland has the capacity to substantially mitigate for climate change impacts because it can sequester greenhouse gases at a rate substantially higher than urbanized land (estimated at 58 to 77 times more) so it can be a critical tool to help us mitigate for greenhouse gas emissions,” Hutcheson told the Times.
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Kim countered by saying the school will provide an opportunity to educate students on sustainability. He also cited the one-to-one agricultural-land mitigation plan that has been put in place. This means for every one acre of land used, another acre of free space will be preserved.
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Kim and Baty also said the reduction in the amount of cars on the road because of South County students no longer commuting to Catholic high schools in San Jose would be a positive environmental impact.
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“We want to respect the environment,” said Kim. “We want to respect Morgan Hill.”
