WATERING THE TAN BARK
“I noticed that the grass at Paradise Park has been cut back a bit for ease of maintenance and for water conservation purposes. This is great! The trouble is the sprinklers that were watering the grass are now watering the tan bark. Maybe we can ask the city to get the sprinklers reset?”
RED PHONE
As we all live our lives, we learn that nothing is as easy as it seems.
When the sprinklers were installed years ago in the park, they obviously were not intended to work in the way we now need them to. Mori Struve, Morgan Hill’s deputy director of public works, informs us that parts of the sprinkler system will need to be dug up and sectioned off so the high-use turf areas and ball fields can continue to be watered in one way, and the trees located in the tan bark areas can be watered with what we can assume will be a drip system. And all of that takes planning, time and money.
Stay tuned for further developments as to when this situation might be corrected.
NO TREPASSING SIGNS ARE GETTING RIDICULOUS
“I live in the Holiday Lake Estates. My neighbor has posted multiple ‘No Trepassing’ signs all along his yard and they have been up for some time now. I have investigated in a small way the legality of this, and any input you can give me would be greatly appreciated. When does the length of time that signs are displayed become too long and the number of signs too many?”
RED PHONE
Red Phone spoke with John Amos, of Morgan Hill’s municipal code enforcement office, and, unfortunately, the only code there is concerning your problem is the limitation of the size of any signs that can be posted on private property. There are no codes addressing length of time signs may be displayed or how many signs are allowed.
Perhaps a signed petition from your neighbors may make your neighbor more aware of how this practice is affecting others.
ARE COPS BREAKING THE LAW?
“I have a question for the chief of the Morgan Hill police. Why is it that the motorcycle officers of Morgan Hill are allowed to park on the walkways near Monterey Road next to the Wells Fargo Bank to wait for traffic violators? The police also hide on private property to do the same thing. I have no problem with them writing tickets, but their main function, I understand, is to deter motorists from breaking the law, while they are breaking the law themselves in doing so.
The “E” on their license plates is for exemption for tax purposes, not to be exempt from breaking the law.”
RED PHONE
Morgan Hill police Cmdr. Joe Sampson takes exception to your interpretation of the “e” on the license plates. He informed the Red Phone that the police can and often do break the law in the performance of their duty, and the special license plates on their emergency vehicles mean that they are exempt from following the letter of the law.
He admits that parking off the side of roads does happen, mostly to get out of the sun at times, but more importantly to get out of the flow of traffic where it is safer to wait.
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