To my Council colleagues, staff, and the public I am very excited to be a part of this process today. I bring not just the views of myself but those of my constituents. We have policies and practices that need to be updated to 2025 standards and fortunately these are coming through the implementation of our General Plan, Housing Element, and State housing legislation.
Legislating policy in-house often doesn't require budget allocations, and many best practices are already open sourced. Our entire Zoning Ordinance continues to be amended to meet the standards of our General Plan 2040, and I look forward to continuing being a part of that process.
While this meeting is for high level goal settings, I’d like to find some common ground when it comes to housing for all, climate action, planning our multi-generational community center/civic center, updating master plans, further streamlining of the permit process, and most important our human capital or our employees. Many of these issues we can’t solve alone, and we need to leverage partnerships that currently exist and be flexible when it comes to new partnerships.
We can continue to further our housing options for all residents of Gilroy, and strengthen our Housing Trust Fund. In our Housing Element we have committed to programs that break down segregation of the past and affirmatively further fair housing through an Inclusionary Housing Policy, Facilitate Missing Middle/Middle Income Housing, Collaboration with Development Community, Permit Streamlining, update our ADU Ordinance and SB 9 Ordinance to comply with state law.
We must work toward housing equity. The consequences of failing to effectively and aggressively confront this crisis is hurting our residents, robbing future generations of the chance to call Gilroy home, stifling economic opportunities for workers and businesses, worsening poverty and homelessness, and undermining our environmental and climate objectives. Many of us hear from our constituents regarding rental price increases, whether market rate or below market rate, we can use our local control to place a cap on the annual rent increases through a rent control ordinance, or leave it be and allow property owners to increase their rent to the state max of 10% annually to our constituents.
Many of our opportunity sites in our Downtown Expansion District and First Street Mixed-Use Corridor are zoned for both commercial and residential. We used to have an active developers roundtable hosted by city staff.. I'd like to see staff host these monthly and draw in all developers as this could help with economic development and build a peer to peer relationship.
Housing Element Program G-1 states Collaboration with Development Community, the City shall continue to cultivate new and existing relationships, throughout the housing element planning period, with for-profit and non-profit development companies working in the area of affordable housing, facilitating collaborative approaches to affordable housing development. Invite affordable housing developers and developers of housing for special needs households to the annual developer roundtable meeting and the creation of developer interest list.
For climate action we can build off best practices in REACH building codes, join the other cities within Silicon Valley Clean Energy and adopt clean energy building codes that keeps the cost of construction low, prevents pollution, and utilizes the grid's clean energy. Continuing to install infrastructure on city assets like solar plus battery storage and EV charging capabilities, will move us in the right direction. Grant funding is available if we align our policies with those in our region. I am proud of the work we have done going farther than the State minimum and implementing REACH codes requiring EV capabilities in multi-family residential. We still have time for the upcoming building code adoptions to strengthen it, use our local control, and set a good example.
For local economic development we can streamline the business permit process, we need to cut out the parts that slow down the grand opening for a business. After completion of the building checklist, the business should be allowed to open, and not prevented from opening their doors based on subjective findings and a laundry list of requirements that don’t apply to Gilroy from our outsourced plan checkers. When we remove barriers to opening businesses quickly, local jobs of all incomes will be more readily available. Everyone should have access to jobs that pay a living wage, and the ability to expand their skills.
The Arts are alive in Gilroy. Today we have a monthly Arts Roundtable, Third Friday Art Walk, Chalk Fest, La Ofrenda Festival, and doors continue to open. The City of Gilroy celebrates the role that the arts and creativity play in helping us navigate a pandemic, amplify the need for racial equity, and highlight the power of the arts to change our lives for the better. The Gilroy Arts & Culture Commission and SV Creates work in partnership to support the arts and creativity in Gilroy as an essential part of our thriving community. SV Creates partners locally with the Gilroy Arts & Culture Commission and Gilroy Arts Roundtable to include the City of Gilroy with a network of leaders who care about the resilience of our arts ecosystem and its impact to our community. They are conveners, promoters, incubators, and funders of the arts with a mission to elevate Silicon Valley’s creative culture. The City of Gilroy recognizes that the arts and creativity support student success and life-long learning, provide key job skills, and bring joy to our community while strengthening our connections; and values partnering with SV Creates and State-level organizations to promote unified support for the arts.
We need to continue to invest in human capital or our workforce. I remain concerned with the recruitment and retention of the fire department, and the mental health and stress that puts on them. The root cause of staffing still hasn’t been solved. We made significant improvements to recruitment and retention with Local 2805 but we can’t seem to maintain our staffing levels to what the standards of coverage calls for, and what we need to permanently staff the Santa Teresa Fire District Station 4. The 2%@60 CALPERS retirement offered to our fire department is the worst in the State and I think we need to continue to pursue consolidation with a larger entity. Members of this City Council get a better CALPERS retirement of 2.5%@55.
In a letter last year from City Admin in response to the Countywide LAFCO Fire Service Review, “The Gilroy Fire Department agrees with and appreciates the potential advantages of combining service for the South County region through participation with a single larger entity that would address increasing costs and needed efficiencies. Contracting out also brings the potential for one or more alternative service models to GFD. The City is currently in negotiations to finalize and receive funding to build a permanent fourth fire station, the completion of which was contemplated as part of and necessary for the response time goals adopted by the Gilroy City Council in 2019. With the completion of the fourth fire station and recent City Council approval to initiate the exploration of combined service for South County, we believe there are many opportunities underway for significant improvements to GFD services to the Community and our residents.”
With the action taken last month by the Board of Supervisors to dissolve the South Santa Clara County Fire District and annex its territories into the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, now is the best time to continue that exploration of consolidation with our County partners who have continued to provide the much needed safety net in services, including expansion of the County owned St Louise Hospital, Santa Clara Family Health Plan Community Resource Center, South County Youth Task Force, Re-Entry Services, millions of dollars in grant funds from Public Health, 8th/Alexander Affordable Housing project, and much more.
I’ll never forget the partnership between Gilroy Fire and County Public Health during the COVID-19 pandemic when our firefighters went door-to-door in our rescue ambulance and set up clinics at the senior center providing vaccinations for the most vulnerable and isolated. It was such a successful model that nearby cities in South County were asking for our services. When we needed to provide services during the pandemic, the County was our partner, and remains our partner. Consolidation not only increases service levels but will also create a more balanced and sustainable budget, allowing our dedicated firefighters to switch into retirement that matches the region, while ensuring that our community is better protected in the future.
Lastly, our Housing and Community Services Division has 6 mandated programs that need to be completed in 2025/2026 and 9 to still be completed for 2024. We can’t allow our housing element to become decertified and open ourselves up to more Builder’s Remedy projects. Our Public Works Department has many capital improvement projects that they are working on, from expanding or fixing our critical infrastructure, finding the solutions to hire a senior civil engineer to manage these projects in essention.
All of these legislative changes will make Gilroy more livable for all and the path forward is clear to me. I look forward to working with everyone over the next two years.
