Letters

Planning must be used to save our brand name

During his last bid for re-election, Egon Jensen stated that the town should be run like a business. I can tell you that running a business entails more than just balancing the books. A business must also build on its assets to generate more income. And business assets are often more than just capital improvements. Brand loyalty is also a big asset.

I believe this town's strongest asset is the brand name "Los Gatos." And it is important for the town to protect and strengthen this asset because it drives local revenue. The value of the 9 percent of the property tax and 12 percent of the sales tax are directly related to the strength of the brand.

Weaken this brand name and we must cut back on services. Strengthen the brand, and we generate more income for additional services, like the Senior Center, for which Egon lobbied.

There are forces at hand that actively denigrate the quality of the Los Gatos brand. Since Egon was mayor, the population of the surrounding valley has increased by around eight times. The RAND Corporation projections for increased growth (shown on the North Los Gatos website) anticipate another 150,000 people moving within driving distance of our shops and restaurants. Failing to respond to this congestion can choke out our small-town atmosphere, make it less pedestrian friendly and devalue the Los Gatos brand with piecemeal development.

I believe our town denigrated the LG brand when it approved new construction that did not look uniquely like Los Gatos. For example, the New Old Town looks like a copy of the outlet mall off Highway 101 at Camarillo, the new homes on Lark look nearly identical to homes in Oakdale or Fresno, and the empty offices on the North Forty would fit in comfortably in Mountain View or Canoaga Park. What was wrong with maintaining the design look displayed on the cover of the Chamber of Commerce brochure? Look how nice our local developer Flick rebuilt the Soda Works!

We also denigrate the LG brand when we promote speeding traffic through our residential arteries to support new developments. Wide lanes promote speeding and "speed trap" enforcement does little to promote a positive town image. Forcing kids and the elderly to walk on roadways with cars going over 40 mph makes us much less pedestrian friendly and lowers the value of nearby properties.

Making Winchester beautiful, narrow, and calm between Lark and Blossom Hill is a good business decision. It adds value to our assets. So will narrower crosswalks with pedestrian and bicycle ways carved out of the unneeded extra northbound lane. Designing a gateway on Winchester at Lark will encourage commuters away from my neighbors and my residential property. Permitting large beautiful Victorian homes (even if subdivided into affordable units), instead of cookie cutter condos will also add value to the Los Gatos brand.

The council spent good money to develop a downtown recovery plan after the earthquake. We must now invest in a full town congestion management plan that continues to build the LG brand while providing for satellite parking, mixed-use residential, local circulation transit, a greater supply of local retail storefronts, and traffic calming. However, the citizens group "White Paper" for Winchester and Daves is ready now with a more professional analysis and lower cost alternatives than the town's plan for a light.

A light at Daves lowers the property values, and it costs more because a utility pole must be moved.

The North Los Gatos site has more than 30 pages of information designed to spark a detailed planning process for the North Forty. I look forward to a debate on the many specifics and details I've included. But as to Egon's charge that my plan will cost money, I can only answer, "You bet, it takes money to make money because that is how business is run."

Mark Brodsky
Monte Sereno

An ounce of prevention ...

Once again the rainy season has brought its regular accumulation of standing pools on the wooden section of the Los Gatos Creek Trail immediately behind Old Town. As I picked my way across these watery sections yesterday, it occurred to me that a few strategically placed small holes drilled through the planking might allow enough drainage to provide more secure footing.

However, those responsible for maintaining this section of the Creek Trail can surely find a more elegant solution, and ought to.

If they do not, the almost inevitable consequence will be a skid for someone, a fall, an injury and a damage suit that would be far more costly to the taxpayer than any engineering remedy.

Ralph Parkman
Los Gatos

It was just as I remembered, only different

It felt like I'd entered a time warp. Sure, some things were a little different--the cheerleaders' skirts were a little shorter than I recalled, for instance, while the basketball team's shorts were a little longer, but those were just details. Things were pretty much as I'd remembered. The same orange and black championship banners hang from the gymnasium rafters. The same scoreboard lit the wall behind the basket. The same hollow thumps from the bevy of basketballs smacked against my eardrums.

One important thing was missing, though. The room's usual perfume of excitement and teenage pheromones was overshot with a different sense. Tonight it held a hint of anxiety coupled with hesitancy, as if no one was quite sure why they were there or exactly how they should be acting. At least that's how I felt.

Fifteen years ago, who would have thought that one day I'd be walking into this building not to watch the Wildcats pound yet another rival basketball team, but instead to memorialize one of my classmates, now an American hero?

If I'd been given a glimpse of the future, I'd have shrugged it off with typical high school nonchalance. It would've been inconceivable to my teenage mind that anything we'd do in the future would be more important than what we were doing right then.

Flash forward that decade and a half, and here I was, preparing to say goodbye--and thank you--to Todd Beamer as the high school retired his jersey number.

When I saw his parents enter the gym, I longed to approach them, to let them know the loss of their son mattered deeply to all of us. But how could I speak of my own sadness when their own grief was so overwhelming? What right had I to be sad, to grieve, when others' wounds were so much deeper?

After watching them graciously receive well-wisher after well-wisher, I approached them. I wanted to convey my sorrow, my guilt, my thanks, but before I even opened my mouth I knew anything I could say would be mere words. Nothing from me would ease their pain.

Nothing from me would bring Todd back. Nothing from me would be enough. So I simply told the truth--that I went to school with Todd, and I was so sorry. "He was a good guy," his father said. "Yes, he was. A good guy. I'll remember him," I said.

And then I realized that maybe I did have a role in this drama. I couldn't fully grieve for someone I knew for only a split second in time. I couldn't ease the hurt of a despairing mother and father. But I could bear witness to their son's actions and to their pain. I could pledge to let Todd's example make me a little different, a little better. I could remember. And maybe that is enough.

Lain Chroust Ehmann
LGHS class of '87

LGHS athletes don't deserve the attack by your cartoonist

Who is this cartoonist, Steven DeCinzo? He can't be from Los Gatos, can he? You folks can do better. His cartoon attempts appear to resemble in style and content, something a seventh-grader might scrawl on the inside of his locker at middle school.

How is it that one portion of your newspaper devotes considerable effort and coverage to the sport and athletic accomplishments of the kids and their coaches at Los Gatos High School, and then this DeCinzo appears in another part of the paper, spewing cynicism and ridicule at the efforts and accomplishments of the coaches and athletes at LGHS (the latest, a second CCS championship in a row for the LGHS varsity football team--no small feat!)?

Surely the paper is aware that three members of last year's championship team are attending Harvard (Brian Edwards), and Columbia (Scott Soucy and Derek Smith) and all are playing football also--no small feat--and many others have gone on to other fine colleges and universities.

Yet, your paper, via DeCinzo, implies that there is no intellectual value to sport, that it may be devoid of learning opportunities. Organized sports require a great deal of discipline, effort and thinking to succeed. Ask anyone who has participated.

I would suggest to DeCinzo that uninformed cynicism (informed cynicism has some merit from time to time) and ridicule is not intellectually stimulating, politically interesting, funny, nor anything else that may resemble some socially redeeming trait.

Rather, it is annoying, sophomoric and out of character with Los Gatos. This cut-rate journalism that attempts to sensationalize is what tends to undermine the public confidence in the media's objectivity and pursuit of truth.

I'm in firm control of my admiration for your paper and its cartoonist ...

Robert C. Gingery
Los Gatos

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Obituaries

Picture From the Past

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Gatos girls in CCS soccer playoffs