Editorial

Attaway promises year for completing projects

When Mayor Randy Attaway gave his State of the Town address at last week's meeting of the Town of Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce, he promised this would be a year for the town to finish what it had started.

He specifically pointed to the Town Plaza renovation project and the completion of the downtown streetscaping plan which was adopted some six years ago.

That's welcome news. The Town Plaza is one of the town's favorite gathering places, home to the weekly farmers market, the summer music series Music in the Plaza and the annual tree-lighting ceremony.

Thanks to the improvements, planned for completion in early fall, the park will not only look better, it will sound better. Replacing the electrical system will mean musicians can depend on the sound system for performances, and town staff will no longer have to cross fingers and come up with innovative temporary measures when getting the plaza all decked out in its holiday finery.

As for the streetscape plan, it was welcome news when it was adopted and when street benches and uniform trash receptacles began to appear downtown. What was even more welcome was the removal of the weathered old wooden planter boxes that couldn't seem to keep out of the way of cars navigating N. Santa Cruz Avenue.

Much as everyone loves downtown, though, it's hard to deny that for years, it has sported an unfinished look. The old planter boxes only went part way down the street, and when they were replaced, amid enthusiastic reviews, the new ones stopped midstream as well. Attaway has promised to finish the project.

Although the mayor's job is largely ceremonial, he does set the agenda for town council meetings. It's not too much of a stretch to suggest by the tone he sets, the mayor also sets the agenda for the community.

If this is a year to see projects through to completion, it seems fitting that work will soon begin on the bandstand in Oak Meadow Park. Some community volunteers have had their sights on this goal for years.

With the addition of a Shakespeare Festival in July at Oak Meadow Park, another back-burner community project moves to the front burner. Bringing community theater back to Los Gatos is a notion that began to gain momentum when developers first proposed renovating and expanding the Old Town shopping center.

Both professional and community theater thrived in the glory days of Old Town, but the old school auditorium that was home to these groups fell into disrepair, along with the rest of the center, and theater died.

Though volunteers pushed to make renovation of the theater a condition of approval for the Old Town project, it wasn't to be.

Now, in a year in which the mayor has set the tone for finishing what we've started, one more community dream may finally reach fruition.

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