Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Editorials

It couldn't happen in our nice town

We see it on the news nearly every night. A neighborhood living in fear. Suspicions focused on a particular house where people come and go at all hours. Talk that the house may be a methamphetamine lab. Concern about the danger for neighborhood children. And finally, a drug bust. Police and drug agency cars all over the neighborhood. People peeking out from behind drawn blinds.

It happens, but not in Los Gatos. Or so we'd like to think.

But police have discovered methamphetamine labs in Los Gatos three times in seven months. One was discovered following an explosion.

In the whole scheme of things, the latest raid on a Los Gatos meth lab may amount to nothing more than one more item in the police log.

But for the community, it should be a wake-up call that Los Gatos, with its high-priced real estate, its good schools and its highly touted small-town feel, faces many of the same problems as any other community in the 1990s.

Drugs continue to be a problem in Los Gatos. A report issued recently by the Los Gatos Police Department shows crime on the decline, a reflection of a regional trend.

Ominously, though, narcotics offenses were up 15 percent in 1996 over the previous year.

This community's affluence does protect it in many ways. When the San Jose Police Department targets a high-crime neighborhood for Project Crackdown, the city must marshal many resources.

Code enforcement leans on landlords to clean up and make repairs; broken lights are fixed; neighbors are brought together, introduced and encouraged to plan neighborhood activities. Police become much more visible.

The idea is that drug dealers and gang members are attracted to neighborhoods where no one seems to care.

In Los Gatos, broken lights don't stay broken long. People expect that if they call the police, the police will respond. So it's unlikely Los Gatos will ever become a haven for those who mark their territory with graffiti and sell drugs openly on street corners.

One can't help wondering, though, if the affluence that protects the community in so many ways is also the attraction for those who think Los Gatos would be a dandy location for a methamphetamine lab.

A banner year

Two weeks ago, the Lions Club replaced with regular downtown banners, the Christmas banners they had put up for Downtown Association Beautification Chair Shirley Henderson.

Barely alive, the LGDA was unable to contract out for the job.

Club members are reluctant to make this task a regular duty, and for good reason. It's a dangerous job. The town didn't have the funds to pay someone to operate the town's cherry picker this year, so volunteers did the job with ladders.

Let's hope that if the same situation occurs next year, the town will find a way to free up some funds. The town, as well as the downtown merchants, benefit from a healthy holiday shopping season.

Hoisting the welcome mat seems a small price to pay.