Beginning this week, GeneralSports Venue/AstroTurf will cover about 4,600 square-feet of sun-baked dirt with perennially green AstroTurf for $58,234.

The job should wrap up by July 11, two weeks before this year's Garlic Festival. The Garlic Festival Association has paid $40,500 for the work, leaving the rest to the city.

"This is a huge benefit to the festival, and it turns a patch of dirt to a useful area under the shade," said GFA Executive Director Brian Bowe. "This will benefit the city during and after the festival."

The council voted 5-1 to approve the synthetic makeover earlier this month, welcoming the idea of no more mowing, watering, fertilizing or weeding. Councilman Bob Dillon was absent for medical reasons - his first after almost five years on the council - but Councilman Dion Bracco objected to the project: The city should not pay a penny for something the Garlic Festival alone wants, he said, especially when Gilroy has to tend the area during the 362 days between festivals.

"If the Garlic Festival wants it, let the Garlic Festival pay for it," said Bracco, adding that it only cost him a few hundred dollars to seed his front lawn. "Synthetic turf has not even been proven to be safe," he continued.

Across the country, parents have questioned whether the synthetic grass - made in part with ground-up rubber from used tires - contains toxins from the old road-runners and lead from dyes used to color the artificial blades.

City officials in Hoboken, N.J., closed an artificial turf soccer field there last April after the state detected high levels of lead at the site.

GeneralSports' predecessor installed that field, which has since been replaced by a newer model, the company said. Beyond this, subsequent tests on the children who played on the old field revealed the same or lower levels of lead as those children who never stepped foot on it, company representatives have said.

"Synthetic turf is safe. With 40 years of history under EPA oversight and Occupational Safety and Health Administration-regulated manufacturing, not one person has ever reported ill effects related to any materials used in synthetic turf," reads an April 28 letter to "our constituents" drafted by Jon L. Pritchett, CEO, and Michael A. Dennis, chairman and president, of GeneralSports.

"In addition, we want to make clear that the fibers in currently produced AstroTurf products, both nylon and polyethylene, are environmentally safe, and are below stringent international standards with respect to heavy metal content and leaching from the turf fibers, including lead."

The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services found lead from the older fields can be absorbed by the body, but only under particular conditions. GeneralSports has said absorbing lead would only be possible through near-impossible ingestion: A 50-pound child would need to consume 23 pounds of the fake grass.

Garlic Festival patrons, young and old, will more likely be eating garlic fries than fake grass, however, during this year's festival.