Morgan Hill Direction

By Steve Tate

Issues and priorities for the next few years.

• Priority of Safety
• Community Values
• Visionary Leadership
• Fiscal Discipline

Because of its high priority and the Council's belief that increased staffing would be necessary to ensure citizen safety, we placed a measure on the 2008 ballot to impose a utility user's tax for the purpose of expanding police staffing. That measure failed by a 2-1 margin, clearly indicating that our voters are unable to support any additional financial burden. The wide margin of defeat was larger than expected and strongly signals that additional tax measures should not be considered or proposed in the near future.

Because of the severe impact of the recession, we are cutting our police staffing this year after some modest expansion several years ago. Fortunately, no layoffs were necessary because the M.H. Police Officer's Association was willing to forego future salary increases. Having advocated staffing expansion, it is really hard to accept this reality, but it is necessary. To accomplish the same level of safety protection with fewer resources, we are focusing on safety outcomes and seeking to find the most effective ways to achieve positive results. While it is hard to imagine that our officers could be more productive, we are hopeful that intense focus on positive outcomes can allow us to increase citizen safety even with fewer resources. We are extremely proud of the outstanding service our police force provides.

We have been working for several years on a plan to improve our fire and emergency medical services. Service is currently provided under a contract with Santa Clara County Fire, and we are working with them as well as with Gilroy and the South County Fire District on a plan where we would have one entity serving all of South County. Progress is slow but promising. While it does not look like any money can be saved, it does look like service can be enhanced across the region.

Public safety remains at the top of our priority list + right where it belongs.

Community Values Our residents frequently boast about the very special feeling our community embodies. Expressed frequently as our "small town feel" or as a sense of "friendly openness", people simply like living here. The value that our residents place on our quality of life is something that we need to strongly embrace and maintain.

Our community is enhanced by its great volunteer spirit, where residents willingly and eagerly support our schools, youth recreation and sports, the city through its commissions and committees, and our terrific events like the Fourth of July and Taste of Morgan Hill. Our get-it-done attitude is exemplary, we need to encourage and promote its continuation.

Downtown is a big part of our "small town feel" and we need to continue to strongly support its economic success and its vibrancy as a special place in our community. The Downtown Specific Plan was finalized last year and implementation is under way with expanded parking, the 3rd St. promenade now open and redevelopment of key downtown "catalyst" locations in design by our partner, Barry Swenson Builders. Our vision of a spectacular gathering place and residential hub of the community is getting much closer!

We need to also continue to emphasize providing opportunities for our youth so they can flourish and develop positive qualities and values for success. Support for our senior population is also important, acknowledging the great contributions they have made. The youth and senior components of the Centennial Recreation Center are flourishing with record program attendance and lots of happy smiling participants. It is extremely important to maintain the vitality of these programs and we are working with our YMCA partners to do just that.

Recreation plays a big role in our community. We are pleased that so many of our youth are involved in sports and we have an active adult population as well. The M.H. Aquatics Center, Centennial Recreation Center and Outdoor Recreation Center have enhanced our recreation base dramatically. City Recreation is doing a fantastic job of recovering the costs of their operations, thus minimizing their impact on the General Fund while still providing increased access to our residents. While serving our own citizens, our facilities also draw regional participation, helping the economy and building our reputation for providing great recreational venues.

Through our competitive process for housing allocations, Morgan Hill has done an admirable job of providing affordable housing opportunities. This is an area of continuing emphasis because we need to be "obtainable", and able to accommodate people who want to live in our community. The downturn in the housing market is preventing our housing developers from meeting their affordable housing commitments, and we need to continue working with them to find solutions to get us through the current crisis without losing our ability to make housing obtainable when the market recovers. It is very important to continue to focus on and to innovate in the area of housing affordability.

One community value that all communities are promoting these days is their environmental awareness and support for any initiatives that will protect our precious environment. Morgan Hill adopted a comprehensive environmental strategy in 2007 and has implemented strategic programs with enthusiastic help and support from our residents. The current economic recession has curtailed several of the programs, but our strong citizen commitment and involvement will allow us to continue to pursue our environmental goals.

Continuing to make our downtown a truly spectacular venue, improving our quality of life while valuing and enriching our youth and seniors, meeting demands for recreational services, continuing to make Morgan Hill obtainable for those who want to live here and implementing our environmental agenda are ways we can preserve and enhance our Morgan Hill community values.

Visionary Leadership The Morgan Hill City Council has come a long way since the mid-1990's when the absence of harmony stunted progress. Today, we are courteous and respectful, and we adhere to our values-based ethics policy that I am proud to have helped develop. We've achieved a level of operation that allows us to work efficiently and collaboratively, thereby increasing our productivity.

In my four years of leadership, we have raised the level of collaboration and policy-making productivity. That focus will continue, further improving Council and commission/committee operations in meetings, assignments, and interactions to better meet objectives. The skills and connections we have on the Council help us achieve our goals and objectives, and can be honed to do even more. We've built a very strong bond with Gilroy and enhanced our regional participation and credibility. This needs to continue, giving us a stronger voice.

We are continually improving the job we do of establishing achievable annual goals and objectives. Because of the recession and its impact on our budget, we have had to establish clearer priorities and deploy responsibility for them in a way that is more optimal for successful accomplishment. We will continue working to assure council, staff, commissions/committees and the public are on the same page in terms of the City's goals, objectives, priorities and responsibilities.

The theme for the 2010 State of the City was a ten-year-out vision for Morgan Hill based on input from the community. It is straight forward and mostly evident, and it does provide a solid basis for our future direction. We anticipate a population of 48,000, which is what our growth control ordinance allows, but also postulate that with a carefully updated General Plan for the city, we could meet the population target without the many encumbrances of the ordinance.

We envision a safe community with a thriving Downtown, engaged/ involved citizens and leading schools. We will preserve our small town, neighborly atmosphere while being a recreation mecca for our citizens as well as drawing many outsiders. We will maintain our infrastructure (roads, parks, sewer, water, etc.) adequately. Finally, we will improve our economic base so that we maintain a solid financial footing, supporting all the elements of the vision.

I am confident that this vision does reflect where the community wants to go, but validation is important and a "road map" needs to be developed. A comprehensive, three-year General Plan update to do that is planned to commence in the 2011-2012 fiscal year.

Fiscal Discipline In the economic recession, this area is of paramount importance to our future well being. We've been in a deficit spending situation for three years and will continue for several more. We can afford this because we were able to build up significant reserves in the past. To assure that we will survive and recover with the economy, the Council adopted a sustainable budget strategy, a course of action that forces us to come into revenue/expenditure balance when our reserves shrink to 15% of our revenues. We are very fortunate that we've had sufficient reserves to allow us to continue providing substantial service levels up to this year, when the strategy forced us to make cuts as we now project that our reserves will, indeed, shrink to the 15% level in a few years.

Careful, thoughtful planning must continue for implementing the sustainable budget strategy. As much as we dislike cutting services that our citizens have come to expect, the economic climate dictates the necessity to do so and we need to stick firmly to our policies and weather this economic storm. We also need to carefully plan and review all our projects and activities to assure that their impact on the General Fund is affordable and sustainable.

Responsible, well-planned economic development is needed to build city revenues. The Cochrane Commons regional retail center on Cochrane Road and east of U.S. 101 was a major step to boost revenue, Walmart is helping, and we will soon have a Honda dealership. We continue to work with developers and merchants to make sure each area serves a unique customer set and that synergy is built between them. We also continue working to bring in a couple more auto dealerships.

We need to continue attracting and retaining businesses that will help Morgan Hill thrive economically while being great community assets. New businesses like Flextronics, Del Monaco Foods, Pinnacle Manufacturing and Lin Engineering are thriving; we need their help and that of other businesses to tell the story of why Morgan Hill is a great place to do business.

The economy will recover; it always has. We can't expect the City's budget situation to improve as quickly as the general economy since property tax and sales tax will lag. However, it is my firm belief that we will recover, we will enhance our economic base and we will thrive and prosper as we are a strong and wonderful community!

Summary We can make the quality of life in Morgan Hill even better than we now enjoy. To do so, we must always maintain the Priority of Safety, focusing on outcomes. We must embrace our existing Community Values while exercising Visionary Leadership to become more effective and efficient while achieving our 2020 vision. Fiscal Discipline will provide a reduced yet adequate level of services in order to sustain, and then balance our budget while we look forward to a vigorous recovery.