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Court was back in session Feb. 15, one day after Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputies cleared the South County Courthouse due to a “suspicious package” identified by officers.

For the third time in four years, the Sobrato girls basketball team is a league champion.

With a series of historic storms having pounded the region since 2017 started, Santa Clara Valley Water District officials are bummed that their overall storage capacity is limited by various safety and environmental restrictions—allowing untold amounts of potential drinking water to wash into the bay shortly after it falls from the sky.

Marlene LaMar called and texted her 15-year-old daughter Sierra more than a dozen times on her way home from work March 16, 2012, with no response. Sierra would soon miss a hair appointment, and Marlene started to panic, she testified Feb. 7, in day six of the trial for Sierra’s suspected murderer.“I had this feeling that felt wrong,” Marlene said. “She would never miss a hair appointment. I knew something was really bad.”Before that afternoon, the teen, whose cell phone was “attached” to her, almost always responded immediately to her mother’s texts, Marlene further noted.Marlene’s testimony at the Hall of Justice in San Jose was a flurry of emotions, as she went from uncontrolled sobbing while describing her last days with her daughter, to fondly smiling as she recalled Sierra’s unique personality quirks.“I went to her bedroom and said I loved her, and gave her a hug” the morning of March 16, 2012, the last time Marlene saw her daughter, she testified Feb. 7. The typical family school day routine saw Marlene and her boyfriend leave the house first each morning to go to work, leaving Sierra to walk to her school bus stop near their home. “She always would tell me she loved me” every morning, Marlene continued through tears.Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney David Boyd’s line of questioning allowed Marlene, Sierra’s sister Danielle and other witnesses to describe the 15-year-old former Sobrato High School sophomore as a normal teenager, while establishing a timeline of events. Boyd claimed that nothing was unusual about Sierra’s behavior in the days preceding her disappearance nearly five years ago, indicating it is unlikely she ran away from home.The teen enjoyed keeping up with the latest cosmetic trends, and doing her friends’ makeup, Marlene said when shown photos of Sierra’s discarded beauty supplies, found with some of her other belongings after she disappeared.“She loved her cat,” Marlene said of Sierra’s pet, Chester, who lived with the family at the north Morgan Hill home they rented. She almost always wore her favorite red Converse high-top sneakers—although the day she disappeared was an exception with black slip-ons covering her feet, which were later recovered by police.Marlene laughed when Boyd presented several “mismatched socks” among Sierra’s belongings found by investigators.Sierra’s body has not been found. But Antolin Garcia Torres, 25 of Morgan Hill, is on trial for her kidnapping and murder. He has been neatly dressed in a shirt and tie throughout the trial, with his close-cropped hair combed back. During Marlene LaMar’s Feb. 7 testimony, he sat silently with little expression on his face.Earlier in the trial, Boyd outlined some of the DNA evidence—a key to the state’s case against Garcia Torres—that connects the defendant to Sierra in her final hours.The defendant also faces three attempted kidnapping charges related to incidents in the parking lots of two Safeway stores in Morgan Hill in 2009.If convicted, Garcia Torres faces the death penalty or life in prison.Questions about ‘state of mind’Before the jury entered the courtroom Feb. 7, attorneys and the judge discussed whether or not the defendant should be allowed to bring up father Steve LaMar’s criminal history.During this discussion, Boyd read a letter written by Sierra, under unspecified context, describing some difficulties in her life at the time. The teen had in recent months been uprooted from her hometown of Fremont to move with her mother to Morgan Hill, where she had to make new friends. She was upset about the breakup of her biological parents, and lamented her newly limited contact with her father, who she described as “my best friend.”“Everything in my life feels like it’s not right and going downhill,” reads part of the letter, which Boyd read aloud. The teen had also been seeing a therapist before she disappeared.Defense attorney Al Lopez said that his intent was to show Sierra’s “demeanor and state of mind” at the time she wrote the letter.“It’s important to the jury why she feels all alone,” Lopez told the judge. The defense attorney argued at the trial’s outset that Sierra might not be dead at all, and suggested through earlier testimony that she could have run away.Boyd’s rationale is that Sierra is dead because she left behind her favorite belongings, including her cell phone and makeup, and she relied completely on her parents for financial support.Judge Vanessa Zecher and the attorneys agreed to keep the father’s criminal past out of earshot of the jury.The trial will resume Feb. 9, and is expected to continue another three to four months.

Local police nabbed four suspected thieves Feb. 6 in possession of $1,000’s worth of baby formula and other merchandise at two local Safeway grocery stores on E. Dunne and Tennant Avenues, according to a post on Morgan Hill Police Department’s Facebook page.

Attorneys for Santa Clara County filed a lawsuit Feb. 3 in federal court challenging President Donald Trump’s Jan. 25 executive order that withholds federal funds to municipalities that do not assist the federal government in the deportation of millions of immigrants.

Petty theft

Morgan Hill residents and businesses are starting to receive notices in the mail informing them of their coming automatic enrollment in the Silicon Valley Clean Energy Authority, which allows electricity customers to use strictly renewable sources to power their homes and businesses.“Silicon Valley Energy is on track to start providing our 100 percent carbon-free electric generation service to residents and businesses of Morgan Hill, beginning in April,” reads an email from SVCE spokeswoman Pamela Leonard.SVCE is required to inform existing PG&E customers 60 and 30 days in advance of their automatic enrollment in the program, Leonard said. All customers have the ability to opt out of SVCE, and continue using the PG&E electricity they have been burning.SVCE is a nonprofit public agency formed in 2016 by 12 South Bay communities, including Morgan Hill. The nonprofit was formed in order to source clean energy on the participating communities’ behalf, at lower costs than PG&E’s comparative rates, according to Morgan Hill Communications Manager Maureen Tobin.“PG&E is still an essential partner as they will continue to deliver electricity over existing power lines, maintain the lines, send bills and provide customer service,” Tobin said in a press release.Enrollment will be phased in over a six-month period starting in April, and ending in October, Tobin explained. All PG&E customers will receive a series of notices before and after they are enrolled.Specifically, existing PG&E accounts will be enrolled in SVCE’s GreenStart electric generation service, which offers 50 percent renewable energy that is 100 percent carbon free, Tobin continued. For a higher rate, residential and commercial customers can choose to upgrade to SVCE’s GreenPrime program, to receive 100 percent renewable power.In comparison, PG&E’s existing service offers 60 percent carbon-free, 30 percent renewable energy.On Jan. 11, the SVCE board of directors approved rates for their GreenStart, GreenPrime and rooftop solar programs. The GreenStart rates will be 1 percent lower than existing rates offered to residential and commercial customers by PG&E, according to a SVCE press release.For the GreenPrime program, rates will be $.008 per kilowatt-hour more than that currently offered by PG&E. That adds about $4 per month to the average customer’s current bill.Furthermore, the SVCE board approved a Net Energy Metering program for rooftop solar customers. This program will offer rewards to customers who produce more power with their solar power systems than they consume.“Right now, electricity used to power our homes and businesses creates about a quarter of our region’s emissions,” Tobin’s press release continued. “Using more renewable energy is an easy, economical way to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and improve our carbon footprint. It’s the single most effective way to accomplish our communities’ climate goals.”Other communities that are part of SVCE include Santa Clara County, Gilroy, Campbell, Cupertino, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Mountain View, Saratoga and Sunnyvale.To learn more about SVCE, visit svcleanenergy.org, or call (844) 474-SVCE.

A 60-foot tall, five-story mixed use project in the heart of downtown was approved by the Morgan Hill City Council Feb. 1, despite mixed reviews on its fit in the ever-changing neighborhood.Touted by the developer as a residential haven for millennials, the project was approved on the fabled Sunsweet property, located on Depot Street with frontage on both East Third and Fourth streets. Property owners and developers Rocke and Glenda Garcia have tried for more than 20 years to develop the site. They have submitted numerous iterations of a mixed-use project for the city’s consideration over the years, but none of those have progressed to construction.This time, the city and the Garcias might finally see eye to eye, even though the council asked the developer to make some changes to the latest Sunsweet proposal, for which they approved a development agreement on a 4-1 vote Feb. 1. Councilman Rene Spring voted against it.The mixed-use project includes 83 apartments for rent, 7,859 square feet of retail space—including dining—along Third Street, underground parking and a variety of amenities for future residents. The fifth floor of the project is not a full story, but rather contains loft areas for the upstairs units, according to Morgan Hill Interim Planning Manager Terry Linder.The residences would be a combination of studios as well as one- and two-bedroom units. The project also features an outdoor plaza of 18,600 square feet, surrounded by the residential building.Republic Family of Companies is the builder and designer, and a “50/50 partner” in the project, according to Rocke Garcia.The Sunsweet property is a “landmark” of downtown Morgan Hill, Garcia added.The site has long been seen by city officials, as laid out in the 2009 Downtown Specific Plan, as crucial to the success of a fully built-out downtown.“I’m just super pleased that Glenda and I are involved in it,” Garcia said.The former agricultural processing site is located just east of the city’s downtown parking garage, and has been mostly vacant for decades.But the proposal presented to the council Feb. 1 was met with some hesitation from the elected body, and criticism from the public.Spring said he voted against the project primarily because of its maximum proposed height of 60 feet in some places—higher than other projects downtown. The “front” of the project is on Third Street, where Spring acknowledged that height variations with a lower rooftop at a proposed arched entryway don’t look as imposing.Still, he said, the idea of a 60-foot “wall” along the Depot Street side “breaks my heart looking at it,” referring to drawings presented by city staff and the developer.Newer developments downtown have grown in height in recent years. Linder noted that the city’s four-story parking garage required an allowance to exceed the downtown height restriction of 55 feet.Mayor Pro Temp Larry Carr agreed the height of the Sunsweet proposal is out of the norm for downtown Morgan Hill. But he had more pressing concerns, including the fact that 2,000 square feet of the proposed commercial space on Third Street (7,859 square feet) is dedicated for the project’s leasing and property management office.Carr said the city’s vision for Third Street frontage, as noted in the DSP, has always been for commercial uses available to the entire community—not just for the use of residents of a single project.“That takes up a quarter of the Third Street frontage, and it’s not going to have activity in it,” Carr said. He asked the developer to try to reduce the size of the office, or figure out how to add more community-oriented commercial space on Third Street.Linder noted that after the council’s Feb. 1 approval of a development agreement, the project’s detailed plans will still require further planning commission and council approval.Parking was a unanimous concern among the council members, who worry there will be more cars associated with the new residents than spots available—a problem with numerous other high-density residential projects in Morgan Hill.Carr included in his motion for approval, a request for the developer to come back with a plan to require new residents to park on site, and not in spots elsewhere downtown that are supposed to be for visitors.The developer asked city planners for flexibility on some of the DSP’s building guidelines. These include the required depth, from the street, of commercial space; the total amount of commercial space; and the maximum height.The developer is seeking a “Planned Development” zoning designation in order to get around some of these restrictions. Such a designation provides “flexibility in our design standards and guidelines,” Linder said.But the requests by the Garcias and Republic are not out of the ordinary, she added. “The exceptions sought this evening are in line with the exceptions we’ve looked at with other projects,” Linder said.Targeting millennialsMichael Van Every of Republic Family told the council the rental apartments will appeal to “a broad spectrum of people,” but are particularly well-suited for millennials who are struggling to find places of their own in the pricey Bay Area market.The project is “pet friendly,” and the office will provide concierge services, a lounge area, espresso machine and a greeting area, he added.“Morgan Hill doesn’t have this product type,” Van Every said.Councilwoman Caitlin Jachimowicz suggested, despite the parking and other worries she shared with her colleagues, the proposal will allow young professional natives of Morgan Hill, who might have moved away in their 20s, to come back to their hometown.“I don’t want to lose (the project) because of the concerns we have,” she said. “The numbers show that people my age are not coming back to Morgan Hill. We don’t have the places to move back to.”The Sunsweet proposal looks poised to fill that void, she said.The developer did not immediately comment on whether they would be able to adjust the project in line with the council’s Feb. 1 requests.