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The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency recently moved one of its regional offices into a building in Morgan Hill, but city officials promise the relocation doesn’t mean local police will start cooperating with federal authorities on immigration enforcement.The ICE office located off Vineyard Boulevard a block away from the Morgan Hill Police station is an Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) sub-office that moved from San Jose in September 2016, according to ICE spokesman James Schwab. He added the move is simply a relocation after the agency’s lease expired at their previous office up north.The office is not a detention facility, and ICE does not have any plans to establish a detention center in Morgan Hill, Schwab said.However, federal authorities can temporarily hold subjects accused of violating immigration laws at the site. In fact, ICE has submitted an application to the city’s planning department to expand their new Morgan Hill location with temporary “holding rooms.”“Anyone arrested by ICE who is going to remain in the agency’s custody for more than 12 hours will be transferred to a detention facility specifically equipped for that purpose,” Schwab said in a statement.He added the ERO sub-office serves as a worksite for assigned ICE employees, and “like all ERO office space,” the office has to be secure for interviewing and “briefly holding” subjects from the area who enter ICE custody.ICE submitted its expansion plans to the Morgan Hill planning office on Dec. 21, according to City Manager Steve Rymer. “The proposed tenant improvements would expand an existing ICE administrative office facility to include temporary holding rooms and detainee processing,” reads a statement from the city.The city has not approved the ICE expansion plans, and has told the federal office that its proposal would be in violation of the city’s zoning ordinance, which prohibits detention facilities, according to Rymer.ICE responded to the city that it will “comply with local safety regulations and will work with the city to comply with local zoning and development standards as much as feasible,” Rymer’s statement continues.Even if Morgan Hill formally rejects ICE’s proposal, as a federal agency it can override local land use laws, according to city staff.Rymer added that ICE has not asked the city for anything that would require council approval, and the two layers of government are not sharing any funding or resources as part of the federal agency’s move.The Morgan Hill City Council in December issued a public “statement of support and assurance” in response to community concern about the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened to take forceful action against undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and other marginalized segments of the country’s population.The city council’s statement says, in part, that MHPD has not and will not be used for federal immigration enforcement, and that will continue to be the case even with a federal enforcement office in the same neighborhood as the police department.“We totally stand by the statement we made last month,” Mayor Steve Tate said Jan. 12 when contacted by the Times.The council’s statement also more broadly addresses concerns about discrimination based on “race, national origin, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, color or disability.”The statement is about 450 words. The section on immigration enforcement reads, “Local police should not be involved in federal immigration enforcement and our police officers will continue to focus their time on high priority crimes. In accordance with best practices of local law enforcement professionals nationally, we will stay out of immigration enforcement. Our priority is to maintain the trusting relationship Morgan Hill police officers have with our community.”Morgan Hill resident Ann Horner was among those who pushed the council to issue such a statement, though she told the body in December she wished it was stronger.She said Thursday, without knowing all the details of the new local ICE office and its purpose, that it could seem unsafe to some residents, including those who were born here to foreign-born or undocumented parents.“If Donald Trump is willing to put people on a list and export them out, that’s why I was pushing for a more powerful stance,” Horner said. The relocation of the ICE office “doesn’t seem consistent with (the statement), ‘This is going to be a safe place.’ It causes pause and concern.”

Sobrato coach Erica Wallace said she had just implemented a full court press earlier in the week and had only spent a half hour teaching it.

After spending about four hours interviewing nearly 30 applicants for the Morgan Hill City Council Jan. 11, the body determined they could not appoint someone that evening due to an error that left one candidate off the list.The council, which currently only has four of five seats occupied, will reconvene at the regular Jan. 18 meeting to conduct a preliminary interview of the last applicant, Mariana Solomon. The council will then conduct a second round of interviews with a shortlist of finalists before appointing one as the newest member to fill the seat left vacant with former Councilman Gordon Siebert’s Dec. 8 resignation.At the Jan. 11 meeting, the council was able to narrow down the field of applicants to the top four, who will return Jan. 18 for follow-up grilling by the elected officials. These top four are attorney Caitlin Jachimowicz, Santa Clara Valley Water District retiree Carol Fredrickson, corporate board member and advisor Danielle Davenport and city Planning Commissioner John McKay.The four existing council members—Mayor Steve Tate, Larry Carr, Rich Constantine and Rene Spring—reduced the field to these four by submitting their individual top three to the deputy city clerk after hearing a five-minute statement from each of the 24 applicants and reading all their resumes. Deputy City Clerk Michelle Wilson tallied all the votes, and the council decided to invite the four receiving the most votes to the Jan. 18 meeting.Jachimowicz received three nods from the council, topping the vote tally. Davenport, Fredrickson and McKay each received two votes.Applicants Yvonne Martinez, former Councilwoman Marilyn Librers and Mario Banuelos each received one vote from different council members—not enough to remain in the running.Solomon, a fiscal services controller at Gilroy Unified School District, was left off the initial long list of applicants due to an “administrative” error by city staff, Tate said. She will have a chance to give a five-minute pitch to the council Jan. 18.The council’s appointee to the vacant fifth seat will serve the remainder of Siebert’s unexpired term before the office goes up for election in November 2018.   Caitlin JachimowiczDuring her allotted five-minute pitch to the four council members Jan. 11, Jachimowicz said she wants to increase tourism in Morgan Hill while continuing to maintain the “small-town” atmosphere. She added that the city’s infrastructure could some improvement and the tax base could stand for some growth.Jachimowicz is a criminal attorney at Jachimowicz Pointer Attorney at Law in San Jose, “focusing on record clearances, record reductions and other post-conviction relief,” among other areas, according to her resume.She grew up in Morgan Hill, and cited this background as her “most important qualification” for serving on the council.Danielle DavenportDavenport, who ran for Gavilan College’s board of trustees in the Nov. 8 election, works as chair of the board of Palo Alto-based StratusVR, and is a co-founder of South Valley Angels, a venture capital funding network. She told the council that Morgan Hill is at a “tipping point” with encroaching regional development and growth.“We have a unique opportunity to maintain our plans and values in Morgan Hill,” Davenport said. In response to questioning from council members, she said this balance can be maintained by “influencing people to get the best deal for us” when it comes to attracting new businesses or working with other groups or agencies in the region.Carol FredricksonFredrickson’s resume lists a variety of previous jobs related to public safety, environmental enforcement and the outdoors. These include work as a sworn peace officer and park ranger for the City of San Jose, environmental inspector/investigator and operations manager. She is retired from the Santa Clara Valley Water District.She now works part-time and volunteers at the Morgan Hill Centennial Recreation Center and the Red Cross.Responding to a question from Carr about growth—which was frequently asked of applicants during the Jan. 11 interview session—Fredrickson said the city is “doing a pretty good job” of finding a “happy medium” of a growth rate that maintains the small-town charm while also providing tax revenue.John McKayMcKay is a familiar face to the council. He has been involved in numerous local community efforts since he graduated from Leadership Morgan Hill in 2010. These include the planning commission of which he has been a member since 2011, the Morgan Hill Downtown Association and the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance, among others.He told the council Jan. 11 that the fact he is a “good listener” ranks high on his list of qualifications to serve on the city’s governing body.He added that his experience working with “a lot of different people in the community” would be valuable as a council member who is expected to do the same.McKay is also the author of the Morgan Hill Times’ “Our Town” column.The Jan. 18 city council meeting will start at 7 p.m. at council meeting chambers, 17575 Peak Ave.

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The storms that have pummeled Morgan Hill and the South Bay since last Friday brought plenty of traffic hazards and headaches, power outages and flooding on roadways and private properties throughout town.While neighborhoods in some communities to the south—notably Gilroy and Hollister—saw vast power outages, residential evacuations and emergency rescues due to the flooding, Morgan Hill seems to have escaped more than 8 inches of rain over a five-day period with no major widespread damages or injuries.The good news is that this season’s rainfall has already surpassed the annual average for this area, which is a hopeful sign that local water supplies will be plentiful this summer, according to Santa Clara Valley Water District officials.“These storms are providing natural recharge and are helping to fill our reservoirs, which will certainly have a positive impact on groundwater supplies,” said SCVWD spokesman Marty Grimes. “In 2016, our groundwater storage improved significantly due to the community’s efforts to reduce water use (during the last four years of drought) and above-normal groundwater replenishment by the water district.”Almost all of the district’s 10 reservoirs were at or exceeding capacity as of Jan. 11, according to the SCVWD website valleywater.org. The district’s largest reservoir—Anderson Reservoir in Morgan Hill—has to stay below about two-thirds of its full capacity due to seismic restrictions imposed by the state’s Division of Dam Safety. At times during this week’s storms, the release pipe at the bottom of the dam was releasing water at full blast into Coyote Creek, creating a dramatic gush of rapids into the northerly flowing waterway.Precipitation is also above average statewide, another encouraging sign for local supplies because the water district—a wholesale water supplier—relies on sources in other parts of the state to serve nearly 2 million residents and businesses in Santa Clara County. The SCVWD’s allocation so far this year from the State Water Project—a network of water sources and storage facilities that provides water for numerous participating agencies—is about 45 percent of the annual total, Grimes said. That’s up from about 15 percent the same time last year.But Grimes cautioned it’s still early in the rainy season, and the district will not know what the final allocation from the SWP will be until early spring. Thus, the district is not in a hurry to ease back on water-saving restrictions put in place at the height of the recent four-year drought.“If February and March are bone dry, all of these ‘above average’ indicators could fall to average or below average,” Grimes said. “That’s why we are cautious about prematurely ending our call for drought response efforts or reductions.”Wet JanuaryAccording to Chris Henry, a local weather enthusiast who runs the “Morgan Hill Rainfall” page on Facebook, the series of storms that started Jan. 6 dumped nearly 9 inches where he takes measurements in southwest Morgan Hill. Sunday, Jan. 8, saw the worst of it, with 3.36 inches. Tuesday evening’s storms walloped Morgan Hill again with another 2.53 inches of rain.So far in January, Morgan Hill has already seen 12.67 inches of rain, according to Henry. For the 2016-17 rainy season thus far, Henry has recorded 25.26 inches, which is about the annual average.Morgan Hill Police and city staff issued numerous warnings via email and social media about road closures, downed trees, power outages and flooding during the peak of the rainfall this week. West Little Llagas Creek spilled over its banks Sunday night—flooding the downtown—and threatened to do so again Tuesday.Both Sunday and Tuesday evenings’ storms placed the entire county under flash flood warnings. Residents and business owners frantically gathered sandbags at locations throughout town where the free supplies were available.Social media users posted photos and videos of flooding at Nordstrom Elementary School and the nearby Nordstrom Park on East Dunne Avenue. Some Facebook photos even showed residents floating down the flooded streets in paddleboats.Flood protection on the wayThe flooding in this week’s storms serves to some as a reminder of the need for the water district’s Upper Llagas Creek Flood Protection project. When complete, the nearly 14-mile long, $80 million project will provide 100-year flood protection for properties from Buena Vista Avenue in Gilroy to just beyond Llagas Road in north Morgan Hill.The flood protection project has been in the pre-planning stages since the 1950s, but a report by SCVWD to city staff in November 2016 stated that planning is done and construction on the first of two phases can begin this summer.The project relies heavily on funding from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, not all of which has materialized. Local sponsors SCVWD and the City of Morgan Hill have fronted local funds to complete the planning and design processes, in hopes of being reimbursed by federal authorities in the future. The water district is also still in the process of acquiring private properties needed for the project’s right-of-way.“When that project is completed it will remove the flooding problems in the West Little Llagas Creek corridor that have continually plagued the city,” Morgan Hill Public Works Director Karl Bjarke said Jan. 10.The “most immediate” benefits of the flood control project will be seen in neighborhoods near the intersection of Hale and Wright avenues, downtown Morgan Hill, the Bisceglia/Monterey neighborhood, the La Crosse area and the Monterey/Watsonville Road intersection, Bjarke added. The latter of these was underneath two feet of water at one point Jan. 8, during the peak of Sunday’s afternoon storm.“This flooding we are experiencing is the reason the city council and the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board reps meet quarterly (or more often as needed) and remain focused on completing” the local flood protection project, Bjarke added in an email.The Upper Llagas Creek Flood Protection project will widen and expand the creek by digging large channels and installing culverts and tunnels that will capture the runoff from large storms such as those that drenched South County this week.The project will not prevent flooding that occurs during heavy rains in eastern Morgan Hill, Bjarke noted.The National Weather Service website, forecast.weather.gov, shows more rain is likely Jan. 12, but mostly sunny and clear through the coming weekend in Morgan Hill.

The City of Morgan Hill and other authorities notified residents that a flash flood warning is in effect in Santa Clara County until late in the evening Jan. 10.

The Morgan Hill City Council will spend its evening Jan. 11—and maybe even the early hours of the next morning—interviewing up to 30 applicants for the vacant fifth seat on the dais.The lengthy list of candidates submitted their names and qualifications to the city clerk before the Jan. 6 deadline. The applicants are seeking to fill the seat left vacant by former Councilman Gordon Siebert, who resigned Dec. 8.Shortly after Siebert’s resignation, the four remaining councilmembers approved a selection process that will play out at the Jan. 11 special meeting. This includes allotting each applicant a maximum of five minutes to introduce themselves and make their case as to why they should sit on the council. If necessary, the council will ask follow-up or clarifying questions after each applicant’s five-minute pitch, Mayor Steve Tate said.The council does not have a specific list or set of questions in mind to ask the applicants, Tate noted. Any questions would likely be specific to what an applicant said in their introduction or what they have already submitted to the city clerk on written application forms.City officials will also ask the field of applicants to sit in a conference room adjacent to the council chambers when they are not being interviewed by the council during the Jan. 11 public meeting, Tate added.The list of applicants, which is much longer than Tate expected, includes at least one former councilmember and candidates for other local offices, as well as some newcomers to the process.The single agenda item for the Jan. 11 meeting says after interviewing all the applicants, the council will discuss the results of the interviews and narrow down the field to the top three. From there, the council will discuss the decision further and then select a finalist, who would be sworn in at the Jan. 18 council meeting.The selected new council member will serve the remainder of Siebert’s unexpired term, which ends in December 2018. The seat will be subject to a regularly scheduled election in November 2018.The Jan. 11 council meeting will begin at 6 p.m. at council chambers, 17575 Peak Ave.The full list of applicants, in the order they appear on the meeting agenda, is below. More information about the candidates, including their full application forms and resumes, can be viewed on the city’s website, morganhill.ca.gov. The applications include individual answers to questions about the candidates’ qualifications and why they want to serve on the council.• Angela Young, a visual artist and freelance journalist;• Caitlin Jachimowicz, a criminal attorney based in San Jose;•Cappy Myers, an environmental health and safety manager;• Carla Ernest, a clinical project management consultant;• Carol Fredrickson, a Santa Clara Valley Water District retiree;• Chris Harrington, a retired firefighter with the Santa Clara County Fire District;• Daniel Kenney, a real estate broker and life/health agent;• Danielle Davenport, a board member and advisor for StratusVR, who ran for the Gavilan College Board of Trustees in the Nov. 8 election;• David Jefferson, an engineer with Synopsys Inc.;• Erik Hansen, a marketing director for eBay;• Gavin Daprile, an engineering manager for Verizon;• John McKay, a retired construction contractor and Morgan Hill Planning Commissioner (and a columnist for the Morgan Hill Times);• Joseph Carrillo, and entertainer and producer who has run in numerous city council and mayoral elections in Morgan Hill;• Kirk Bertolet, an electrician and signal maintainer for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, and a mayoral candidate in the Nov. 8 election;• Maria Guadalupe de Anda Antunes, a self-employed real estate agent/broker;• Marilyn Librers, Executive Director of the Pauchon Research Foundation, and a former council member who served two terms from 2008 to 2016;• Mario Banuelos, a retired analyst with the City of San Jose, and a candidate for council in the Nov. 8 election who was endorsed by Tate and sitting Mayor Pro Temp Larry Carr;• Mike Brusa, a retired superintendent of schools;• Mitan Gandhi, retired from a semiconductor company;• Natalie Prcevski, a solution engineering manager with CenturyLink;•  Norm Alexander, a novelist and decorated U.S. Army veteran;• Paul Pascoal, a Santa Clara County civil engineer;• Prithpal Khajuria, an employee at Intel Corporation;• Ryan Maggio, an account executive;• Sanjar Chakamian, a self-employed management consultant;• Theresa Pittman, a nurse practitioner;• Thomas Spitters (no occupation listed);As of Jan. 9, the clerk’s office was in the process of confirming the voter registration qualifications for the following three applicants:• Monica Pette, Associate Counsel with West Marine Products, Inc.;• Troy Knapp, an account manager with ADP;• Yvonne Martinez, an urban planner.

Although police and city officials reported “significant” flooding and traffic hazards throughout Morgan Hill due to heavy rainfall Jan. 8, no major damages or injuries resulted.Downtown Morgan Hill saw some flooding during a short period at the peak of the storm early Sunday evening, but no downtown businesses seemed to suffer major water damage, according to Morgan Hill Communications Manager Maureen Tobin.The Santa Clara Valley Water District reported that West Little Llagas Creek, which runs along the west side of downtown Morgan Hill, began to overflow about 2 p.m. That cresting of the creek was the cause of much of the storm-related flooding, but the creek and floodwaters began to recede by 5 p.m.Tobin added that a couple of downtown business owners saw enough of a threat to place sandbags outside their front doors before the floodwaters began to subside.Throughout the afternoon Jan. 8, until about 7:30 p.m., Morgan Hill, Gilroy and San Martin were under flash flood warnings called by the National Weather Service. Streets and properties along Llagas Creek saw the most flooding, but high standing waters were seen on the east side of town as well.Social media users posted photos and videos of flooding at Nordstrom Elementary School and the nearby Nordstrom Park on East Dunne Avenue. The intersection of Hill Road and East Dunne was one of several intersections throughout town that were underwater during the brunt of the Jan. 8 storm. Watsonville Road at Monterey Road was reportedly underneath two feet of water at one point in the afternoon.Some Facebook photos even showed residents floating down the flooded streets in paddleboats.Morgan Hill Police Department posted a lengthy list of intersections and roadways that were closed during the heavy rainfall, but these traffic hazards also receded as the rain lightened up.“Everything was clear by 10:00 or 10:30 last night,” Tobin said Monday morning. “That last big wallop yesterday afternoon pushed things over for yesterday evening.”Although another storm is forecast to hit the South Bay Jan. 10, city and water district officials are not expecting it to be as harrowing as the Jan. 8 deluge.“People should remember we have saturated ground and hillsides, but no one is anticipating the rain to come will push our creeks to the flooding point,” Tobin added.More than four inches of rain came down over a three-day period (Jan. 6-8) in Morgan Hill and more is yet to come with a new storm front expected to hit late Tuesday morning and stick around through early Wednesday, according to Steve Anderson, meteorologist with the National Weather Service.The heaviest rain is forecast to touch down between 4 p.m. and midnight Jan. 10 accompanied by increasing winds, but dry, calmer weather is expected to follow through the weekend, Anderson noted.“The entire Bay Area had a pretty good lashing this last weekend,” Anderson said. “The rain forecast panned out as expected. The last time we saw this much rainfall was about 10 years ago in 2006.”According to SCVWD’s website, valleywater.org, the Uvas Reservoir gauge read 4.09 inches in the last 24 hours for a 29.53 total. The Edmundson Avenue gauge read 3.07 inches over last 24 hours, with a season total so far of 19.53 inches.Uvas Reservoir was at 105.1 percent its capacity or 10,337.1 acre feet of a 9,835 capacity. Chesbro climbed to 6,963.2 acre feet of its 7,945 capacity while Anderson rose to 43,998.7 acre feet of its 90,373 capacity, according to valleywater.org.Residents can still pick up sand and sandbags at three locations in Morgan Hill: the city’s corporation yard on Edes Court; a vacant lot next to El Toro Fire station at Monterey and Old Monterey roads; and in the southeast corner of the Caltrain parking lot on Depot Street.