Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Newly elected Monte Sereno councilmembers are asking their colleagues to take a close look at the city code to ferret out intrusive regulations.

Is less really more?

Monte Sereno ponders 'big government' issue

By Clarence Cromwell

Less than two weeks after taking his oath, Monte Sereno City Council newcomer Joel Gambord was pushing to get his agenda of reforms in front of other councilmembers.

First, he proposed an about-face on historical preservation, and now Gambord wants to talk about the size and efficiency of the city staff and the "intrusiveness" of city ordinances.

Gambord asked Mayor Jack Lucas to schedule a council discussion in January so Gambord can propose staff evaluations and a renovation of the city code.

Gambord wants to set goals for the staff and the City Council and monitor their performance at set times, he explained. The first goal he wants to set for the council is to revisit some of the city codes to make them less "intrusive."

Gambord's comrade Gordon Knight agrees the council should look at staffing and the code books, as Gambord suggested. Other councilmembers said they're doubtful the city needs to improve in efficiency or its treatment of residents, but they're willing to listen to suggestions.

Issues about the "amount of government" in Monte Sereno fueled Gambord's council campaign. The arguments also sound a lot like arguments made during the past year by the resident group Citizens FOR Monte Sereno, of which Gambord was a member.

Gambord's candidate statement asserted that people "want to minimize the amount of government they have in their lives." That means that the number of people on the city staff should remain an open issue, he recently explained.

"There's an old saying in government that work expands to fit the allotted time," Gambord said. "I think the council needs to take a hard look at what our people are doing."

Gambord wants to make sure staffers have short- and long-term goals and a clear understanding of what the council expects from them, he said. He'd especially like to know what the city manager accomplishes with her time, he added.

"I think the size of the staff is an open question at this point," Gambord said. "We need to evaluate what they're doing."

The candidate's statement also declared that the city should minimize bureaucratic intrusion into people's lives.

"I think that can be done by taking a look at some of the ordinances passed in the last few years that are intruding into people's lives," Gambord explained in a Dec. 13 phone interview. He'd like to take a look at the historic preservation law, grading law, tree preservation laws, fence law, pet permit law and the law regulating housing density on hillsides, he said.

Gambord said the laws should be rewritten to reflect the fact that most homeowners want to do the right thing, and don't need to be coerced by the city.

Knight agreed that staffing and efficiency should be scrutinized. He added that the city should not lay anyone off. He believes that it might be possible to cut one position by attrition, he said.

No fat to trim

Other council members disagreed on the need to reduce the city staff.

Mayor Lucas said the city is slim now. "We've got one person for each function a town needs," Lucas said. "I don't think we're too large, and I think our staff is very responsive to citizens."

The state hands cities a lot of work required by law, Lucas added. He said recent city managers have managed the staff well, and that has made the staff efficient.

"Every staff member has their job definition and a sense of pride in what they do because they've been given the autonomy to manage their programs," Lucas said.

Lucas said he's willing to listen to any proposal Gambord brings forth, although he doesn't see where any changes need to be made.

Councilmember Dorothea Bamford agreed that the staff is more efficient and better-managed than before. There's no need to check up on them, she added: "I think it would just make everybody nervous."

Suzanne Jackson said cutting the staff won't save taxpayers money, anyway. "People have this notion that if you can cut the cost of your staff, you're going to save on the tax rate," Jackson said. That's not true, the councilmember said, because the state collects the majority of the taxes and forwards the money to the city; if the city spends less, the state will use the money somewhere else, she said.

City Manager Gay Strand was reluctant to comment on a subject that should be debated by the council, she said. But she said "there are only six employees," and they have "more work to do than there are hours in the day."

Why pinch pennies?

It's not a bad idea to take a hard look at where the city's resources are going, said San Jose State University Political Science Department Chairman Terry Christensen. But he emphasized that the city's performance should be examined from the standpoint of what residents get for their tax dollar and how efficient city employees are, as opposed to laying people off to save money.

"I think it's totally reasonable to look at numbers of staffing," he said.

After learning that the city doesn't lack money, he questioned why it would audit staff performance.

"They're in awfully good shape," he noted. "I don't know if they need to be pinching pennies. That suggests an ideological agenda, rather than a practical agenda."

Monte Sereno is doing so well that residents got a tax cut last year when the council reduced the $121-per-parcel police protection fee to $95. Council members said the city just didn't need the money.

Less intrusion

Knight agreed with fellow councilmember Gambord that less intrusion is better. He said city ordinances should be reviewed so that the council can determine whether they intrude too much. Knight hasn't yet concluded that any particular ordinance is badly written, he said, but they should all be as unrestrictive as possible, and any inconvenience to an individual should be justified by an important benefit for all city residents.

Other councilmembers welcome scrutiny of the laws, but say they don't want Gambord to get carried away.

"I think some of them need a second look, not all of them," Jackson said. She said the city should change laws that are too harsh and also must be willing to re-examine laws all the time, but some city policies are mandated by state and federal law and cannot be changed.

"I'm glad he's going to look at the ordinances," she said. "As a new councilmember, it will bring him up to speed." She added its OK to reconsider what the city's laws should do, as long as Gambord's intent is not to gut the laws.

Lucas agreed: "If you plan to do that, you don't need a city."

Los Gatos parallels

Los Gatos has had its share of discussion about reducing government, as well. But voters just didn't support the idea.

November 1996 Town Council candidate Egon Jensen's campaign sounded a lot like Gambord's.

Jensen said the government should function like a business, where costs are kept to a minimum and results count. Jensen told the Los Gatos Weekly-Times in December that Los Gatos should form a committee of residents with business and management experience to examine the town government and find out how much of its services Los Gatans really want to buy.

"We've never had an outside force determine how many police we need," Jensen said. "We've always left it up to the chief of police. If you have something that's generated within the community, you have built-in support."

Jensen predicts that sheriff's deputies will patrol Los Gatos sooner or later. He also said he felt that development regulation gets out of hand in local government. Part of his campaign was a proposal to simplify the "unyielding" Los Gatos planning process.

Los Gatan Bill Quigley urged the council during its most recent budget session to shut down its police department and contract with the county sheriff for law enforcement to save money. He'd also like to see a few administrative jobs cut from the ranks of the city staff, which has "too many people and too many perks," in his view.

Quigley says he's "very much against" the town telling people what to do with their homes.

Instead of Jensen, Los Gatos voters picked Jan Hutchins for the Los Gatos Town Council. Hutchins used to be a registered member of the Libertarian party--the party holds that the government should not interfere in people's lives, except to stop crimes of aggression, fraud or coercion. He's publicly stated that he's a libertarian, but doesn't push for cuts in government.

The staff appears "efficient and organized" and provides him with copious amounts of information with which to make decisions.

"It should be as large as is necessary to provide the basic functions, but you have to ask yourself what are the basic functions," Hutchins said.