Uncategorized

Senior Night was special for Tyler Pederson and Amy Fearnside.

Morgan Hill - The Saratoga Falcons swooped down upon Richert

To put it in the playwright

Students from throughout the Morgan Hill School District had a chance to keep their fingers nimble and their lungs exercised over the summer break when they participated in the summer music camp, arranged by former band directors Jeff Wilson and Mike Rubino, with the help of volunteers. From beginning students to advanced, coming from San Martin/Gwinn to Los Paseos, the three groups of students perfected their skills over the five week period, meeting five days a week for two hours a day. Students who had never picked up an instrument before the camp and students who were starting a new instrument were able to play a variety of songs for the closing concert.

SAN JOSE -- In a make-up contest from two weeks ago, the Longhorns on Monday became the first Mount Hamilton Division team to six league wins, beating Live Oak 2-1 to move into a pelaton atop the conference standings with the visiting Acorns and Branham, who are separted by less than a game.

The family of Tara Romero, a local teen who was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in 2011, and the residents of Morgan Hill are nearing the home stretch in their commitment to bring a life-size bronze sculpture of her likeness to a prominent public location.The City of Morgan Hill recently established a fundraising campaign at gofundme.com to fund the remaining expenses to complete the statue of Romero and transport it from southern California. The goal of the campaign is to raise $10,000, specifically for statue refinements, a cement base, plaque, transportation and installation, according to the fundraising page found at gofundme.com/tara-romero-memorial-sculpture.When the artwork is complete, it will be placed at “a central location” in the public pedestrian plaza between City Hall and the Morgan Hill Library, on the west side of town in the area of Peak, Alkire and West Main avenues, according to city staff.While the statue, titled “Never Forgotten,” is created and commissioned to depict a young girl in Romero’s likeness, it will also represent the many other young lives taken too soon by violence, according to her parents and others in the community who united in response to the 2011 shooting. It will also serve as an inspirational symbol of hope, peace and unity for young people growing up in Morgan Hill, according to city officials.“With the (ongoing) movement against violence, it’s time for young people to make their voices heard,” said Lisa Washington, who sits on a Library, Culture and Arts commission subcommittee for the gofundme campaign. “The timing is there, and the city is behind it. It’s meant to be uplifting.”The Morgan Hill City Council approved the placement of the statue as a public art piece in 2012, but did not dedicate public funds to the project. In the years since Romero’s death, her family has paid more than $22,000 to Los Angeles-based artist Dee Spellerman to create the sculpture.Romero’s father, Joseph Romero, a Fresno resident, said the statue is mostly finished. The artwork is about six feet tall, depicting a young girl gazing up at El Toro mountain above City Hall, with her right hand stretched upward and lifting a butterfly. Joseph is getting ready to create a plaque that will be attached to the base of the statue, describing why it is there.The parents continue to struggle with their daughter’s death, as the criminal proceedings against one of the five men accused of killing her continues to drag through the courts, and another acquitted in a 2016 trial. Romero’s mother, Annette Nevarez, of Morgan Hill, said the statue will offer her a place to sit and reflect.“My life has been on hold,” Nevarez said. “I feel like she’s there with me. (The statue) will be a place where I can go sit down and see her. I’ll be a lot happier. She was such a good little girl.”Romero was a 14-year-old freshman at Sobrato High School when she died in a drive-by shooting at the intersection of Cosmo and Del Monte avenues on Nov. 4, 2011. The shooting took place just outside the Village Avante apartment complex, less than one mile south of the statue’s proposed location.The shooting happened when five men in a Chrysler drove by the intersection and opened fire on a group of teens standing in a grassy area on the corner. Romero was pronounced dead at the scene, and three of her friends and classmates at Sobrato were injured by the gunfire.Police said the suspects were members of an illegal street gang, and fired at the victims thinking they were members of a rival gang with whom they had been feuding in the preceding weeks. The teen victims had no history of involvement in any gang activity.Morgan Hill Police surrounded the suspects inside a nearby residence within minutes after the shooting, and arrested them a few hours later after convincing them to surrender.Three of the suspects have been convicted of murder and attempted murder in relation to the drive-by shooting that took Tara Romero’s life. One was acquitted of all charges following a lengthy jury trial in 2016. The fifth suspect has been ruled not competent to stand trial, and remains in custody at a state mental hospital until he is well enough to face the charges against him.Joseph Romero added that for him, the statue will be a place he can visit and “lay a flower there and memorialize Tara.” For the community at large, it’s a reminder that such a violent death “could happen to anybody.”As of April 3, the gofundme site for the Never Forgotten statue has raised just over $1,500. The city’s LCAC formed a subcommittee to organize the effort and encourage residents, civic organizations, community leaders and businesses to contribute to the cause.   The subcommittee consists of Washington, Tara’s brother Joey Romero (also an artist), Morgan Hill Community Services Supervisor Jennie Tucker, Community Services Director Chris Ghione, as well as LCAC commissioners Paul Lake, Katie Khera and Daniel Redfield.Washington’s daughter, Tyler, was one of Tara Romero’s best friends.“During this season of renewal and fresh beginnings, it’s a perfect time to support Tara’s family in their desire to memorialize her young life, and to creatively express the right of ‘everyone’s child’ to envision and achieve their dreams in a peaceful, nonviolent community,” Lake said. “With your contributions, we’ll be able to officially unveil the sculpture in the coming weeks alongside members of the Morgan Hill City Council.”

City officials posted a new website containing interactive maps, meeting and workshop schedules and information devoted to the upcoming switch to a by-district election system for electing city council members.The website, found at drawmh.org, allows residents and voters to participate in the effort to create four council districts within the city limits. The section titled “Draw a Map” allows voters to propose their own preferred district boundaries that reflect the area or areas they think should be represented by a single elected official.An “Interactive Map Viewer” features layers of data such as the boundaries of individual U.S. Census population units within the city limits, and the number of residents within each unit. Draft maps, to be created in the coming weeks with input gathered from the public and a professional demographer, will be posted to the website.The site, which can be viewed in English and Spanish, also gives voters instructions on how to draw a proposed district map—on paper or electronically—and submit it to city officials.“The primary goal when drawing council election districts is to draw lines that keep neighborhoods together. So the council wants to know: what do you consider the boundaries of your neighborhood?” reads the “Welcome” section of the website.The next chance for voters to interact in person with city officials regarding the effort to draw new council districts will be at a July 10 community workshop, from 7 to 9 p.m. at City Council meeting chambers, 17555 Peak Ave.Under the by-district election system, each district will be represented by a single council member who resides within that district. Voters within each district will elect only one council member to represent them.This is a stark change from the at-large system that has elected council members for the last 100-plus years. Under that system, all voters throughout Morgan Hill could vote on every council seat that was up for election, regardless of where in the city each candidate lived.The council voted June 7 to make the change to a by-district system, in response to a “demand letter” from an Oakland law firm denouncing the at-large system as being in violation of the California Voting Rights Act. By adopting the change, the council is taking advantage of legal protections that limit the damages and costs that can be claimed in a potential civil rights lawsuit.The by-district system will start November 2018, when two seats—currently occupied by Councilman Rich Constantine and Councilwoman Caitlin Jachimowicz—will be up for grabs. The other two seats—now held by Mayor Pro Tem Larry Carr and Councilman Rene Spring—will be subject to the by-district change when they next appear on the ballot in November 2020.The mayor of Morgan Hill will continue to be elected at large under the change, according to city staff and drawmh.org. The mayor serves a two-year term.The May 2 demand letter from Oakland law firm Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho, alleges that the current at-large system results in “vote dilution” and prevents under-represented groups such as Latino voters from “influencing the results of elections.”The city council has held two public hearings—on June 21 and June 28—on the election system change since it was adopted.At the June 28 meeting, Douglas Johnson, President of the National Demographics Corporation, gave a presentation about NDC’s proposal to offer mapping and demographic services to the city during the transition to a by-district system.Public meetings and workshops on the subject will continue until Aug. 23, when the council is expected to adopt official district maps created with input from the voters and NDC.NDC has recently offered similar services to the Morgan Hill Unified School District, when its seven-member board of trustees voted to change to a by-district election system in 2015, also under threat of a lawsuit. It has also offered redistricting services for the Santa Clara Valley Water District.The company’s contract with the City of Morgan Hill cost $43,000.

What do you get when you combine the Easter Bunny, kids, dogs, and a charity whose mission is to train service dogs to assist veterans in need? The result was Operation Freedom Paws'  Annual Easter Egg Hunt, where for $5 kids and parents had good wholesome fun on a perfect Spring day, while helping to match service dogs with veterans.