Hello, my name is John McKay and I would like to be your tour guide into what makes this community tick. How it works or maybe how it doesn’t, but I’ll mostly focus on what does work. Just like you I am a resident of Morgan Hill and maybe just like you I thought the mayor ran the city, apparently all by himself.
Okay, maybe that “City Manager” I read about does something too, but wasn’t too sure about what he did. I thought the Chamber of Commerce put on every event you see around town. That’s what the “Chamber” does right? I think I conveniently ignored a lot of details because I just didn’t have time to figure it out and I had more important stuff to do – personal stuff, and work stuff, and family stuff. Just a lot of stuff, so if someone else wasn’t totally screwing it up then I was fine with it.
A couple of years ago I got to wondering more and more about how this city really works because a side benefit to a flailing economy is spare time for some of us. There was a nationwide opportunity for reflection and introspection opened up for some of us (you will see this Pollyannish trend continue here, but I do understand how tough it was on some).
I was fortunate and it was amazing where the mind can go when it’s not focused on work or somewhere else 24/7. So I had some time and liberated my curiosity. Someone told me about Leadership Morgan Hill and this is where it all began for me. Supposedly this program would answer all of my questions and it sounded like it had a secret handshake, too – no one would get into specifics and I noticed that members gathered in what appeared to be ritualistic meetings (cool, a “light” version of a Dan Brown secret society right here). Somehow I got accepted into the program and I looked forward to learning the secret handshake and how to sacrifice a goat without any blood or, ah, killing the goat.
After about eight months into that eye-opening program, I learned so much that I felt that I had seen just the tip of the iceberg that is the Morgan Hill community (kind of like the more I know the more I know I don’t know). I also learned that there is no secret handshake and the ritualistic meetings were fund raisers of alumni who had become good friends gathering again. And no sacrifices except maybe the momentary ones when an embarrassing “retreat” story is retold. Turns out describing the LMH experience and program is not easily done and it is hard to do it justice in a short time – it has to be experienced.
End of the first phase, a general overview, a kind of reconnoitering so I knew where to look next. Okay, I now know that there is a mayor and a City Council and city manager and city staff and they manage much of what you likely understand to be the “city” around you. The Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce does a lot around the community but they’re not doing everything, and those other organizations deserve credit for what they do, too. There are so many worthwhile organizations out there that I would like to highlight. Formal, informal, business, community, non-profit, big and small we have them all.
For the size of our city we have a sense of community involvement that would have us fighting way above our weight class anywhere else. So, if you have the time and interest to read what I can muster up and the Morgan Hill Times let’s me stay I would like to tell you more about is going on in your community. I will tell you about what I have learned, will probably say something wrong and have to apologize to someone, and surely be so wrong at times that I will embarrass myself.
Stick around, it could be fun.
John McKay is a 13-year Morgan Mill resident who managed commercial construction until community became more important. His column appears every other week. Reach him at
ta*****@ya***.com
.
