We’ve got a vague yet pervasive sense of frustration and
bewilderment about the San Jose’s Coyote Valley development
proposal, process and reaction.
We’ve got a vague yet pervasive sense of frustration and bewilderment about the San Jose’s Coyote Valley development proposal, process and reaction.
Evidence is rapidly mounting that suggests the project should be scrapped. San Jose is nowhere close to satisfying its own “development triggers” – prerequisites that must be met before earth will be moved in the area just north of Morgan Hill. In fact, San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales has recommended abandoning the triggers.
The triggers include requirements such as ensuring the northern part of Coyote Valley have 5,000 new jobs, creating a five-year economic forecast that projects a balanced or surplus budget for San Jose, financial stability between San Jose and the state, and city services restored to 1993 levels.
Needless to say, these conditions won’t be met anytime soon.
It all adds up to a completely unnecessary development considering the vast sea of vacant offices and warehouses scattered throughout the northern region of Silicon Valley. But San Jose City Council members don’t need to take our word for it. They just need to listen to their own budget director.
“Until things pick up or we reduce services we will probably have shortfalls for the foreseeable future,” Larry Lisenbee said recently. “Until I see some indications that the job situation is improving, I will caution the City Council that they should not expect any upswing in the Silicon Valley economy.”
To say nothing of the news that there isn’t enough water to meet the colossal demand of new 80,000 residents in 25,000 homes and the 50,000 workers planned for Coyote Valley. That’s just one of many environmental concerns about this proposal that has us scratching our heads and wondering: Where are the tree huggers and the legion of lawsuits demanding the city call it quits?
Environmentalists must take a long, hard look at Coyote Valley, the process and the plan and quickly raise their collective objections loudly in court now before it is too late.
Though it seems to draw a collective yawn in San Benito County, this project will have a large impact on our way of life. It is foolish to think that all 50,000 jobholders San Jose envisions working in the Coyote Valley will live there. Workers who cannot afford a home in Santa Clara County will look south for more affordable housing. They did it during the Dotcom boom, why wouldn’t they now?
That means that Hollister home prices will rise, and once the sewer moratorium is lifted, there will be pressure to build more housing in our area to accommodate the Coyote Valley workforce. That, of course, will add more burdens to our already taxed infrastructure. How many more drivers can Highway 25 handle? At what point should we consider asking our neighbor to the north to pitch in to help with infrastructure improvements their growth will require in our county?
When Cisco was proposing a huge new campus in the Coyote Valley in the late 1990s, municipalities as far a way as Salinas raised red flags about the impact the project would have to the south. It’s hard to see how the latest proposal for Coyote Valley is different. Hollister is trying build up its local economy so it can be more than a bedroom community for San Jose. The Coyote Valley project would drag us the other way. The bottom line is we have a dog in this fight.
We urge San Jose City Council to put the brakes on this project before lawsuits from environmentalists and neighboring communities strike San Jose where it hurts – in the wallet. There’s simply no sense in lining lawyers’ pockets for an unnecessary project that only serves to increase Mayor Gonzales’ ego and home developers’ bank accounts.
