An Open Letter to Director Gleason, Ward 1, Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District

Director Gleason,

I am writing this now because Bear Creek Stables is the subject of an ongoing County zoning violation investigation in the ward you represent, you have remained publicly silent about it and other serious issues despite serving on Midpen’s governing board, and you are asking voters to reelect you.

The real test of an elected official is what happens when the values you claim to hold become inconvenient. It is easy to say you value integrity, accountability, transparency, and listening when doing so costs you nothing. If those values don’t guide your conduct when they become difficult, then they are only aspirations.

For 18 months leading up to the Midpen Board’s consequential vote on the future of Bear Creek Stables, you repeatedly came to me for help as you struggled with the issues surrounding the stables and with problems you saw inside Midpen. Again and again, you asked for my research, my judgment, and my help figuring out what to do. By the end of those 18 months, I had given you at least 200 hours of unpaid work because I cared deeply about Bear Creek Stables and trusted you at your urging.

Privately, you presented yourself to me as a director determined to fix Midpen’s accountability problems, and you asked for my help to do it. When boarders were being unfairly evicted, you told me you believed it was wrong and retaliatory and sought my help.

On two separate occasions, when you saw horses owned by the concessionaire that appeared to be suffering, I was one of the people you turned to instead of calling animal control yourself. In 2024, when Midpen did work affecting nesting birds, you told me it contradicted Midpen’s own claim to go above and beyond minimum state standards and was something that “directors should and would address.” That did not happen. Instead of raising it yourself, you texted me that you had told another director “it was coming,” meaning I would be the one to take it to General Manager Ana Ruiz. You were the elected director with the authority to act, yet you handed that obligation to me.

The director you presented yourself to me as being is impossible for me to reconcile with the actions I have seen.

The Midpen Board approved a plan based on the Bear Creek Stables Ad Hoc Committee’s proposal that specifically limited where public programs and capital improvements would occur to keep children separated from vehicular traffic and out of the private boarder area. When Brian Malone pushed public programming beyond that protected area and into an area for which Midpen had not submitted improvement plans to the County, you were silent.

You remained silent as others perverted the Ad Hoc’s work, including the 100 hours I spent writing the reports and preparing the presentation that won the Board vote. They tried to shove through an out-of-scope upper arena construction project in 2026 that would have put construction machinery next to active nests and baby birds in harm’s way.

Then came the discovery of public records that showed that Midpen had never obtained the County approval required for public programming at Bear Creek Stables.

In 1999, County Planning raised concerns that permits might be required for the stable operation. Midpen’s own Board report said the stable operators were pursuing grandfathered-use approval and required them to “establish approved use with the appropriate government agencies.” The rental agreement between Midpen and the stable operator in 1999 was even more specific: Bear Creek Stables could be used for horse boarding activities only, and the operator was responsible for obtaining all required County permits or approvals.

In 2000, Glenda Smith, the then-operator of Bear Creek Stables, asked Santa Clara County for a letter determining whether horse boarding at Bear Creek Stables was legally grandfathered. Not once in her letter did she mention any public programming. The County reviewed the historical evidence she provided and determined that horse boarding could continue without a use permit and explicitly stated that no other uses could be added under this determination.

What does this mean legally? Horse boarding was the only use the County recognized as legally grandfathered at Bear Creek Stables. The public programming Midpen was allowing and writing into its contracts was not covered by that 2000 determination.

In 2015, Midpen went back to the County with plans to add public uses at the stables. Its own materials listed public riding lessons and trail rides, equestrian exhibitions and lessons, environmental education, 4-H programs, ranch days, and equestrian day camps as “Potential Uses and Activities.” Those materials also acknowledged that some children’s educational programs and occasional horse-riding clinics were already occurring.

The County treated Midpen’s proposal as an expansion of the existing operation and told Midpen that the project required a use permit. Then, in 2018, Midpen acknowledged that the 2015 proposal triggered a use permit and “a host of prohibitive code improvements.” It told the County it was changing course and pursuing an approach that would respect the limits of the County’s 2000 determination. Midpen’s own letter recited that determination and then said that “no new uses would be added nor would existing uses be intensified.”

When the County opened a Code Enforcement investigation in July 2026, Midpen staff were present when County inspectors visited Bear Creek Stables. Code Enforcement told Midpen that it had to comply with County and State law before resuming public programming. Yet in early August, Midpen publicly denied that there was an active County investigation into Bear Creek Stables.

You represent the ward where this was happening. You said nothing publicly while your own agency denied that the investigation existed. I was embarrassed for Midpen watching the back and forth as Midpen staff repeatedly denied the investigation while the County repeatedly confirmed it to the journalist reporting the story for the Los Gatan.

“Mid-Peninsula Staff accompanied us and confirmed that although there is a new concessionaire currently overseeing the property, they are not currently open to the public for programming.   They are currently open only for boarding services to a small group of horse owners in the upper corral area.  The lower corral area is open/accessible only to Mid-Peninsula and Concessionaire staff.  I made it clear to the Mid-Peninsula staff that they must comply with all County and State laws related to the operation of the stables prior to resuming public programming.  The staff member concurred and acknowledged this admonishment. 

The current complaint filed with the Code Enforcemetn Division [sic], case VIO26-0300,  is under investigation and will remain open until any identified violations are resolved.”

~ Santa Clara County Code Enforcement Program Manager Darrell Revier, July 30, 2026

Three months later, that investigation is still open. According to County Code Enforcement Program Manager Darrell Revier, the case “will remain open until any identified violations are resolved.”

You know the derelict condition Bear Creek Stables is in today. As the elected director for this ward, you are supposed to be watching out for your constituents, including the children Midpen wants to bring onto this property. Why are you silent about this?

At the May 14, 2024 Board meeting, you heard Ana Ruiz say the structures and facilities were already “past their lifespan” and warn that without major capital repairs within a short time, they would “structurally and functionally fail.” A 1995 historic evaluation had already described the stable buildings as “neglected.” Midpen bought the property five years later and has owned it for 26 years. Those buildings are still deteriorating.

This is an agency with an annual budget of roughly $107 million and access to a $300 million Measure AA bond fund. Yet instead of first making good on the promise to repair the stables before opening them to the public, Midpen is trying to establish a right to conduct public programming that would involve bringing children to the property while those conditions remain.

This isn’t only about the more than 200 hours of free, highly skilled work I gave you based on assurances you made to me that turned out to be false.

Dozens of volunteers spent six months working in good faith through the Bear Creek Stables Ad Hoc process to develop a workable path forward for the stables. They showed up, did the work, and trusted that the process Midpen had asked them to participate in was the right path.

Those volunteers did that work without knowing that Midpen had known for decades that horse boarding was the only legally grandfathered use and that public programming required County approval. None of that was disclosed to volunteers being asked to build a future around public programming before Midpen finally invested long-held Measure AA money to fix up the stables.

You have remained silent about that betrayal of the volunteers’ trust, and of mine.

You sit on Midpen’s governing board. You have the ability to raise these issues before your fellow directors in a public meeting and ask what your agency is doing. At any meeting, you could have and should have done that. You never did.

And now you are seeking reelection and asking people to endorse your record as an elected official.

Caitlin

P.S. I am still waiting for that apology you promised to give me but never delivered.