Gilroy Mayor Responds To Criticism After Garlic Festival's Cancelation

GILROY, CA — Gilroy Mayor Marie Blankley pushed back against what she said were “accusations and mudslinging against the City of Gilroy” in the wake of the Gilroy Garlic Festival being canceled for the foreseeable future.

A guest column written by Ken Christopher – the executive vice president of the local garlic supplier Christopher Ranch – in the Gilroy Dispatch on Thursday suggested that “fear” was what ended the world-famous festival.

The Garlic Festival Association’s board of directors had cited lingering uncertainties from the pandemic — along with "prohibitive insurance requirements" by the city of Gilroy — for the decision to pull the plug on the festival.

The festival was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, and it was a drive-thru event last year.

In the column, Christopher said he believed that the city of Gilroy “simply gave up on the Gilroy Garlic Festival.”

"The Festival had a multi-decade partnership with the City, but now it seems that the City no longer wants to be a partner,” Christopher wrote in The Dispatch. “In requiring outrageous insurance coverage for the event, our local officials put an end to something that means so much to so many.”

Related: Gilroy Garlic Festival Canceled In 2022, Foreseeable Future

In 2019, a mass shooting occurred at the festival, killing three people and injuring 17 others. The gunman killed himself after a shootout with police officers.

“The importance of security and insurance is not determined by fear, as some have suggested,” Blankley wrote in a statement Thursday. “It is determined by reality, a reality that hit us in our home at our beloved festival and forever changed us all. However, it is not that tragedy that caused the demise of a 40+year festival that generated over $12 million for our local nonprofits. Rather, it was the pre-existing financial crisis and spending down of reserves that left a once robust Association now unable to pay insurance premiums for which no one otherwise would be questioning.”

Private entities like the festival association cannot use public property without covering the costs and risks associated with the events, according to Blankley. That kept the festival from accepting donations like buses from the Gilroy Unified School District, and the festival association was also on the hook for security provided by Gavilan College when they considered holding the event at the public college’s property.

“It is true that the Garlic Festival Association has been trying feverishly to find solutions they can afford to [continue] the festival, but given what they can afford today, private property may be the only solution for the time being,” Blankley said.

The mayor, who has lived in Gilroy since 1964, said that the Gilroy community has “the luxury of trying to rebuild while a 6-year old, 13-year old, and 25-year old had their lives ended” in the 2019 shooting at the festival.

“We ARE the City of Gilroy, and we are better than this,” Blankley said.

Bay City News contributed to this report.