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Grant requests sought The Gilroy Assistance League is now accepting grant requests for the year 2018 that will benefit Gilroy youth organizations. Thanks to generous donors and sponsors and a very successful 2017 Home Tour, Gilroy Assistance League will be able to award $26,000 in grants this year. A formal grant request must be completed and returned no later than Monday, Feb. 26. Grant request proposal forms may be downloaded at gilroyassistanceleague.org. For additional information, call Gina Anderson at 408.843.8604.
SOUTH VALLEY, BROWNELL RENOVATIONS PREFERRED OVER NEW ELEMENTARY By Scott Forstner Reporter
project—but by local developer Gary Walton. Walton said he learned about the presence of the blessing box when he received a notice in May 2017 from the city that someone had complained about “the box” in his parking lot and that it might violate city codes. But the issue was not pursued by the city, and the blessing box— and its daily donations—became a fixture on Monterey Street. Then in early January, Pinocchio’s pizza restaurant owner Sal Oliveri was stabbed by a homeless transient. Four days later, citizens and business owners and homeless advocates jammed a City Hall meeting, heightening concerns about problems of homeless people in the city.
Gilroy school district leaders have decided to shift Measure E priorities from an immediate need to build a new elementary school to a more pressing issue of modernizing Brownell and South Valley middle schools. This change in plans comes after a Jan. 18 presentation by Gilroy Unified School District Asst. Supt. Alvaro Meza that showed an unexpected decline in enrollment from last year to the current school term, a low countywide birth rate trend over the last few years and rising school construction costs. “We want to be the best stewards of our bond money,” said Meza of the district’s handling of the $170 million Measure E approved by voters in June 2016. “All those indicators pointed us to re-prioritize our bond funds to the aging middle schools.” The passage of Measure E allowed the district “to be eligible to receive state matching funds to repair, modernize and upgrade classrooms throughout the district and to build a new elementary school.” Meza stressed that the district is not abandoning its plan to build a new elementary school on a 12.74acre site at the corner of Santa Teresa Boulevard and Club Drive (near Solorsano Middle School)
➝ Blessing Box, 10
➝ Middle Schools, 17
Free-throw contest Saturday
Downtown is for Lovers The Gilroy Downtown Business Association presents its second annual “Downtown is for Lovers” essay contest. In 500 words or less share your love story, or love story that is inspiring to you. If your story is chosen as the Most Romantic, you'll win a gift basket donated by some of our downtown Gilroy businesses. Participants may submit their love story via email to melanie@ downtowngilroy.com or via mail to the Downtown is for Lovers Promotion, PO Box 2310, Gilroy, CA 95021.
File Photo
The Knights of Columbus in Gilroy is again sponsoring a free-throw contest for young hoopsters, ages 9-14. Any Gilroy boy or girl wishing to participate in the contest need only to come to the St. Mary’s School gym, 7900 Church St., this Saturday, Feb. 3, from 8am to 6pm, with a document showing proof of age. There is no entrance fee. Each contestant will shoot 25 free throws. Youngsters ages 9 and 10 will use a smaller ball and shoot from 12 feet. Firstand second-place plaques will be given winners for each year of age, with separate boy and girl winners.
BLESSINGS COUNTED Michelle Bozzo, Jina Carranza and Melanie Mikeska,
stand outside the Blessing Box, a sort of lending library for food and necessities.
City rescinds its order CITY THREATENED FINES ON ‘BLESSING BOX’ GIVEAWAYS By Barry Holtzclaw Managing Editor
For more than eight months, volunteers each day have gone to a Monterey Street parking lot in Gilroy and filled a small white cabinet with canned goods and other packaged foods. “Take What You Need, Leave What You Can” is written on the plexiglass doors of the two-foot-bythree-foot cabinet, which is quickly emptied each day by people in need. This small gesture of charity— one of thousands that have popped up on urban landscapes across the country in the past year—was built and is filled by nearly 20 community volunteers.
For several tense days in the past week, the “Gilroy Blessing Box” faced the prospect of being closed for good by the city’s code enforcement office. This week, the city rescinded its order and all is back to normal, at least for now. The events leading up to this past week’s threat began last spring as soon as the “blessing box” appeared. Inspired by a post on Facebook, Michelle Bozzo, Melanie Mikeska, and Jina Carranza built the cabinet and propped it against a building where Carranza’s business is located. The women didn’t know it at the time, but the parking lot in the 7600 block of Monterey Street isn’t owned by Carranza’s landlord—who gave permission for the
Pinocchio suspect has records PAST CONNECTIONS IN ONE HOMICIDE, ONE NEAR-FATALITY LOOM LARGE IN MARK ‘FROSTY’ ALLMOND’S RECORD
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Bond bucks reallocated to fix aging schools
LOCAL SCENE
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gilroydispatch.com • Vol. 151, No. 5 • $1
BUSINESS: Beer business is brewing downtown P18
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Friday, February 2, 2018
By Barry Holtzclaw Managing Editor
“Frosty” Allmond, charged in the Jan. 6 stabbing of Pinocchio’s pizza restaurant owner Sal Oliveri, has a long history of homelessness, drug 6
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abuse—and knife attacks, according to authorities in several states. “Frosty’s” full name is Marcus Anthony Allmond. In ancient Rome, Marcus Antonius, perhaps better known by a modern version of his name, Marc Antony, was the famous friend of Julius Caesar, who was stabbed to death by Roman senators. The 57-year-old Mark Anthony Allmond, as he is called in court records, had been recently released from a New Mexico prison. He returned to California, where early
last month, witnesses say, he exploded in a rage at a popular GIlroy pizza restaurant, nearly killing Oliveri. The attack in Gilroy, according to those who observed the incident, was not a robbery attempt, but an unprovoked outburst of anger paired with a large, razorsharp folding knife, a potentially lethal combination that eerily repeated similar incidents in New Mexico and Southern California more than two decades earlier.
THE LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE OF MORGAN HILL, GILROY & SAN MARTIN
FEBRUARY 2, 2018
OU T & AB OU T OF DA R CA LENEN TS EV
Gilroy resident awarded 2018 Volunteer of the Year
Generous Joyce A supplement to the Gilroy Dispatch & Morgan Hill Times
Inside this issue: Joyce Duarte named Volunteer of the Year
➝ Stabbing, 14
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