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The up-and-coming 12U South County Outlaws lacrosse team hit the home field at the 2017 West Coast Showcase. Morgan Hill went 0-5, but played hard in their games, including a tight 5-4 loss to Sacramento to open play on Sunday. Goal Scorers on the weekend were Collin Fisher (2), Luke Richey (2), Ryan Forbis (2), Ben Ledwith (1), Lucas Groesser (1) and Colby Allen (1). Strong midfield play by Owen Schwalen, Ryan Bays, Connor Berlin and Jacob Wong. Top Defenders included Nolan Ledwith, Dylan Fisher and JD Rosyski. Morgan Hill had the honor of playing in the closest game of the tournament, with just three of the other 14 games being decided by two goals.

With recreational marijuana now legal in California, the Morgan Hill City Council updated the city ordinance regulating the drug’s medical use at their latest meeting.At the July 19 meeting, the council and city staff also agreed to host an upcoming workshop on recreational marijuana and whether the city should consider allowing marijuana manufacturing, cultivation, retail sales or delivery services in Morgan Hill.Since voters approved Proposition 64 legalizing recreational marijuana in November 2016, “several individuals” have inquired with city staff about marijuana-related business opportunities in Morgan Hill, according to a staff report presented to the council by Police Chief David Swing. The upcoming workshop discussion will aim to weigh the potential harmful impacts of an increased presence of marijuana—such as youth access and impaired driving—with the potential tax revenues available to the city if it allows retail sales, cultivation and manufacturing.Swing said staff has reached out to HdL Companies to facilitate the workshop. HdL Companies is a consulting firm that has worked with about 70 cities in California in providing advice on “best practices for marijuana regulation and expectations for potential revenue and impacts,” reads the city staff report.Council members commented July 19 that they are interested in hearing more about what other cities and states are doing to regulate recreational marijuana in order to inform them on how to impose further regulations in Morgan Hill. The state is expected to develop more regulations and guidelines on the sale and production of recreational marijuana by early 2018.The city has previously taken a more restrictive approach to regulation than many cities in the area when it comes to medical marijuana.“I think we should regulate it right along cigarettes and alcohol in Morgan Hill,” Mayor Pro Tem Larry Carr said. “I don’t want to increase smoking in Morgan Hill. I don’t want to breathe your smoke and we should be regulating that (and) decrease smoking in Morgan Hill, no matter what they’re smoking.”Carr also suggested inviting some marijuana advocates to the upcoming workshop, which is tentatively set for Sept. 6.Morgan Hill resident Joy Joyner spoke as a supporter of medical marijuana at the July 19 meeting. She said she currently has to drive to San Jose to obtain her marijuana-derived medicine, which she needs to alleviate chronic pain and other symptoms associated with a number of autoimmune and nerve disorders.“Every few weeks I go to San Jose, and my tax dollars go to San Jose,” Joyner said. “I would much rather my tax dollars go to Morgan Hill. Our city can use those dollars.”Ordinance changes reflect state lawIn the meantime, the council voted 4-1 July 19 to update the city’s current marijuana ordinance. The update removes references to “medical marijuana,” and clarifies that existing local restrictions apply to both medical and recreational marijuana sales, cultivation and distribution.The ordinance update also reflects Prop 64’s change in state law to allow the indoor cultivation of up to six marijuana plants for personal use.“The intent, really, is to avoid confusion,” City Attorney Don Larkin said.City Councilman Rene Spring voted against the ordinance changes because the city’s existing ordinance, first approved in 2011, is “outdated.” He would prefer to keep it in place as written for now, and do a more comprehensive overhaul of the ordinance to allow some level of legitimate marijuana business in Morgan Hill.Plus, he said he thinks the updates are too restrictive because they are now prohibiting both medical and recreational marijuana uses and production.“I’d rather have those businesses regulated within our town and bring in more needed tax money,” Spring said after the meeting.Local resident Doug Muirhead told the council that Morgan Hill voters approved Prop 64 with 57 percent of local voters casting “Yes” ballots on marijuana legalization. Thus, adding further restrictions on marijuana is “ignoring the will of the people.”

In the final week of practice leading up the mandatory dead week, the Live Oak football team was getting after it on the field, working on both fundamentals and installing plays ahead of the 2017 season.

More than a dozen city council district map proposals, submitted by residents and a professional demographer, are available for public review on a website created to set up the new election system.The draft maps can be viewed at drawmh.org, which provides a wealth of map drawing tools and demographic information about the City of Morgan Hill.Citizens can review the submitted draft maps and offer suggested changes, or create their own maps depicting four council districts equal in population, according to Morgan Hill Communications Manager Maureen Tobin. Residents can submit maps until Aug. 14.The city council is scheduled to approve an official four-district map in late August or early September. The map they approve will take effect with the November 2018 council election, and remain in place at least until the 2020 U.S. Census is completed.The five-member (including the mayor) Morgan Hill City Council approved the change from the current at-large election system to the new district-based system at their June 7 meeting. The change was a response to a demand letter from an Oakland law firm that claims the at-large system is in violation of the California Voting Rights Act because it limits the influence of minority groups.Under the by-district system, the city’s four council members will be elected by voters within the council district in which they reside. The mayor’s seat will continue to be elected on an at-large, citywide basis, according to city staff.By approving the change, the council aimed to protect the city from a potentially costly civil rights lawsuit. But it also forced the city to fast track the process of notifying the public and creating four new districts equal in population, without gerrymandering.The draft maps posted on drawmh.org include 10 “population balanced” maps with four districts each containing roughly 9,500 Morgan Hill residents. Seven of these were created by Morgan Hill residents. The other three were drawn by National Demographics Corporation, with whom the city contracted for $43,000 to help with the districting process.Also posted on the website are three maps created by residents that are not population balanced, and two maps that depict a single district.

A Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury report that investigated the failure of the Catholic Diocese to annex property to build a new high school in Morgan Hill is harshly critical of the local commission tasked with processing such approvals.But some environmental groups who have followed the high school’s annexation effort closely in recent years think the report was home-cooked with a bias in favor of the City of Morgan Hill, because the 2016-17 grand jury foreperson is a city planning commissioner. These critics also claim there are some “factual inaccuracies” in the report.The grand jury report titled “LAFCO Denials: A high school caught in the middle,” published June 5, took an in-depth look at the city’s effort in 2016 to annex about 230 acres of agricultural land from the 1,200-acre Southeast Quadrant into Morgan Hill’s Urban Service Area. As required by state law, the Morgan Hill City Council submitted an application requesting this annexation to the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO).The seven-member LAFCO commission rejected the annexation proposal on a 5-2 vote March 11, 2016. A second motion for an alternative proposal—to annex only the 38 acres within the SEQ (at the intersection of Tennant and Murphy avenues) designated by the Diocese for a private high school—failed at the same LAFCO meeting.The grand jury report took LAFCO to task for inconsistently and subjectively enforcing its guidelines and applying undefined terminology to their annexation criteria. It also criticized the City of Morgan Hill for not including enough public participation in the SEQ process and ineffective communication with LAFCO staff.Both agencies are responsible for the “strained relationship” between them, the grand jury report suggests.‘Inherent bias’?A group of private, nonprofit environmental organizations that argued against the city’s SEQ annexation proposal sent a letter to the LAFCO board July 17 spelling out their “grave concerns” with the June 5 grand jury report. Topping their list is the “appearance of (grand jury) foreperson’s conflict of interest.”The foreman, Wayne Tanda, has been a Morgan Hill planning commissioner for several years, and was chair of the city commission in 2016. He made a motion to recommend submitting the city’s SEQ plans to LAFCO at the June 23, 2015 planning commission meeting, according to the July 17 letter signed by representatives of the Committee For Green Foothills, Greenbelt Alliance, American Farmland Trust, Thrive! Morgan Hill, Sierra Club and others.“Given Mr. Tanda’s status as a long-standing appointed member of the…Morgan Hill Planning Commission, his direct input in the SEQ and Agricultural Mitigation Program proposals, and his involvement in the SEQ decision-making process throughout the years, it is difficult not to perceive an inherent bias in the content and conclusions of this report,” the letter states.The July 17 letter also lists “misleading statements” and “exclusion of pertinent information and factual errors” as other problems with the grand jury report.For example, a vague mention of “a county official’s” support for the Catholic high school might suggest to a less informed reader that the county as an entity was supportive of the annexation plans, the letter argues. In fact, however, county staff urged the LAFCO board to reject the city’s SEQ proposal because it is inconsistent with existing land use guidelines, and it doesn’t do enough to preserve farmland.Tanda said he couldn’t say much in response to these allegations because the grand jurors are sworn to secrecy about the body’s closed-door process. But he argued that the grand jury has built-in checks and balances that prevent excessive influence by a single juror.“So what?” he said of the observation that he is a city planning commissioner who supported the plans to develop the new high school in the SEQ. “Everybody (on the grand jury) is a volunteer. The system is set up so that nobody—not even any officer—has any more authority than anybody else. It’s designed so that everything is collaborative, everything is double-checked.”He added that the agencies investigated in the report—including LAFCO and Morgan Hill—got a chance to see it before it was published, in order to point out any potential inaccuracies.The June 5 grand jury report lists 10 “findings” and associated recommendations on how to correct or address them.Countywide representationThe current chair of LAFCO said one of the report’s factual errors lies in the grand jury’s argument that Morgan Hill—as one of only three cities in Santa Clara County subject to ag mitigation policies in the works—lacks adequate representation on the LAFCO board.The state law regulating LAFCO is exhaustively specific on the required composition of the commission’s board: two county supervisors, one council member from the City of San Jose, one council member from any of the other cities in the county appointed by a Cities Selection Committee, two board members from independent special districts and one public member appointed by the other members of the LAFCO board.But the state law also says the public member cannot hail from the same city as the council member appointed by the Cities Selection Committee. For the last 20 years, Morgan Hill resident and attorney Susan Vicklund Wilson has sat in the public member’s seat on the LAFCO board, preventing Morgan Hill from adding a council member from the cities’ seat during that time. Besides, state law also says LAFCO board members are not supposed to hone in on any single specific interest.“As a LAFCO commissioner, you represent the whole county,” LAFCO Chair Sequoia Hall said. “That’s the state law mandate. You put down your hat from whatever jurisdiction you come from. They were trying to say we need more South County voices (on the LAFCO board), but LAFCO commissioners represent everybody.”Also on the LAFCO board are County Supervisor Mike Wasserman (who represents South County on the board of supervisors), Santa Clara Valley Water District Director John Varela (a Morgan Hill resident and South County rep on the water board), County Supervisor Ken Yeager, Los Gatos Councilman Rob Rennie and San Jose Councilman Sergio Jimenez. LAFCO board members serve four-year terms.Hall noted that LAFCO staff is preparing a formal response to the grand jury report, which will likely be presented to the public at the board’s August meeting.LAFCO was created by the state to prevent urban sprawl and preserve agricultural lands in growing communities.Council to respondMorgan Hill Mayor Steve Tate said the City Council is working on its response to the grand jury report. He said they will likely present it for public discussion at the July 26 council meeting.Tate said he agrees that “in hindsight,” the council should have included the 2016 SEQ proposal in its General Plan update process, which was going on at the same time. The grand jury report noted this as one of its findings.The report also noted the city’s ag mitigation policy doesn’t seem to have an ongoing funding source.“I think we just need to keep working on figuring out a good relationship with LAFCO, and figure out how we’re going to to fund the ag mitigation,” Tate said.

A San Jose man died after saving his son from drowning in a Coyote Creek swimming hole just north of Morgan Hill, according to authorities.Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a call reporting the incident about 2 p.m. July 16, according to Sheriff’s Sgt. Rich Glennon. A group of children and adults were swimming in an area where Coyote Creek meets a pond on Ogier Avenue, behind the Parkway Lakes RV park.Glennon explained the edges of the water were about knee-deep, but the depth “increases dramatically” into a moving current farther from shore. When the group of children waded into this deeper area, they had trouble staying above water and the adults responded.The father of one of the children, a 5-year-old boy, jumped into the water fully clothed and helped the children, Glennon said. After he handed his son off to another adult, the man, later identified as 35-year-old Saul Garcia of San Jose, went underwater and did not come back up.The sheriff’s dive team and a boat equipped with sonar detection devices arrived on scene to search for Garcia’s body, Glennon said. They found his body about 6:20 p.m. under about 15 feet of water.Garcia’s family set up a page on gofundme.com shortly after his death, to raise money for his wife and the couple’s two young children. The page, titled “SAUL GARCIA AND FAMILY,” says there were six children—including his own—swimming at the time Garcia and other adults noticed they were in trouble July 16. Garcia “showed no fear going into the water and saving all 6 of the children lives before the water drowned him,” the gofundme page adds.

Auto burglaryA resident near Diana Avenue and Butterfield Boulevard woke up after hearing his car alarm going off outside his home and saw multiple subjects running away from the vehicle. A window of the victim’s car, a 2001 Chevrolet Suburban, had been smashed and the stereo was stolen. The crime was reported 12:30 a.m. July 12.Someone broke into a work truck parked on Mason Lane and stole power tools, electronics items and large hand tools from the vehicle. The crime was reported 7:02 a.m. July 12. A thief or thieves broke into a Toyota Solara on Serene Drive but didn’t steal anything. The break-in was reported 5:03 p.m. July 10.Someone broke the window of a Chevrolet S10 on Barrett Avenue. The crime was reported 8:26 a.m. July 11.A resident of Fountain Oaks Drive caught a suspect trying to break into his work truck. The resident yelled at the suspect through the window, and the attempted thief fled in a white mini-van. The incident was reported 2:54 a.m. July 10. Animal controlPolice gave the owner of three pit bulls a citation after the dogs were seen running loose and trying to attack goats in a yard on Monterey Road north of town. The dogs were impounded at MHPD kennels. The incident was reported 2:58 p.m. July 11.Grand theftA power pressure washer was stolen from the bed of a truck parked on Annatto Lane. The crime was reported 7:30 a.m. July 12.Municipal code violationPolice told the occupants of two motorhomes parked in the area of De Paul Drive and Cochrane Road that they needed to move the vehicles within three days or they would be towed. A nearby resident reported the oversized vehicle parking violation to MHPD 2:18 p.m. July 13.Petty theftA suspect reached under a cash register at Wal-mart, 170 Cochrane Plaza, and stole about 20 packs of cigarettes. The suspect was described as a white male with tattoos on his arms and neck. The crime was reported 9:09 p.m. July 5.Someone stole a wallet from a victim’s unlocked Honda Pilot on Morning Star Drive and used the victim’s credit card three times to make purchases. The crime was reported 2:45 p.m. July 11.Three juveniles attempted to steal alcohol from Wal-mart, 170 Cochrane Plaza. They were followed by store employees as they ran away on foot in a westerly direction on Cochrane Road. The crime was reported 2:46 p.m. July 11.TheftA guest at Microtel Inn and Suites, 16245 Condit Road, stole a television, sheets and towels from a room. The theft was reported 4:17 p.m. July 6.Stolen vehicleA thief or thieves stole a gold 1998 Honda Accord from a parking spot outside Commonwealth Central Credit Union at Tennant Station. The owner of the vehicle told police he went into the bank to cash his check, and the car was gone when he came back outside. The crime was reported 4:46 p.m. July 6.Someone stole a white Ford F350 pickup from a parking spot on Cory Drive. The crime was reported 6:44 a.m. July 10. A black 2012 Audi A4 was stolen from Morning Star Drive. The crime was reported 4:16 p.m. July 10.A dark gray Lexus IS250 was stolen from the parking lot of Wal-mart, 170 Cochrane Plaza. The crime was reported 1:31 a.m. July 8.Someone stole a Ford F350 work truck from a parking spot on Cory Drive. The crime was reported 6:44 a.m. July 10. DisturbancePolice wrote a social host citation and towed several vehicles in response to complaints of a loud party at a home on the 16600 block of Jackson Oaks Drive. The party was reported 11:53 p.m. July 8. All subjects are innocent until proven guilty. Information is compiled from public records.