Morgan Hill State of the City speech paints city as a future tourism hub

Speaking before a standing-room-only crowd, Morgan Hill Mayor Mark Turner advocated for building the city into a tourism destination and launched community reading and health initiatives during his State of the City address.

He also touched on public safety, housing, development, and homelessness in his speech delivered Wednesday evening at Morgan Hill’s Community Playhouse and attended by more than 150 people.

Turner lauded the police force, alerted the public to state-mandated housing expansion, and highlighted safe parking and homeless outreach programs. The mayor also called for the “overturn” of controversial Propositions 47 and 57, which aimed to create more lenient sentencing for some non-violent offenders — eliciting a wave of cheers and whistles from the crowd.

Much of the speech focused on the mayor’s plan to capitalize on recent growth in restaurants and hotels to mold Morgan Hill into a tourism destination — largely through youth sports, which he stated was “the single greatest opportunity we have … to drive revenue to our city.” The youth sports industry nets over $30 billion dollars annually in the country, so the mayor proposed a vision of making Morgan Hill “the premiere destination in Northern California for youth sports and recreation” to get a piece of that revenue.

The facilities to support that dream would cost $100 million — money that the city does not have, said Turner, but he remained optimistic. “We can focus on what we don’t have and say we can never do it, or we can focus on what’s never been done before and ask ‘how can we do it,’” said Turner.

Turner also announced Read20, an initiative to improve child literacy by encouraging students and parents of young children to read with their children for 20 minutes a day. To support this, the city will launch a weekly program where volunteers can read to youth.

The mayor also announced a new Healthy Morgan Hill initiative, a city-wide effort to encourage healthy living, and asked for community input on how these efforts might take shape.

“I believe there is more right with Morgan Hill than wrong with it,” said Turner in the conclusion of his speech. “There’s nothing wrong with Morgan Hill that can’t be cured by what’s right with Morgan Hill.”

Many in the audience seemed to approve of the mayor’s speech, remarking how they appreciated the optimism. “I think he covered all the points that were important for the community,” said Jay Lee, a resident of unincorporated Morgan Hill. “I thought it was great.”