Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Editorial

Councilmembers in the same boat

After years of economic hardship that included a $500,000 budget shortfall, a rancorous battle over a proposed utility-users tax and an election battle that focused mainly on the town's economic troubles, Los Gatos suddenly has a new problem--what to do with its $1.3 million budget surplus.

Silicon Valley is enjoying unprecedented prosperity, and Los Gatos is reaping the benefits, thanks to increased income from sales and hotel taxes, and from building fees.

In his mid- year budget report to the council, Town Manager David Knapp recommended that some $350,000 of the surplus go toward expediting road improvement work. He also suggested that the council allocate $170,000 to the reserve for economic uncertainty.

But a unanimous Town Council, in effect, said, "Not so fast!"

Then, in what will surely go down in the annals of local history as a benchmark moment, a unified council put forth the notion that some of that surplus might better be allocated toward a new parking structures.

Whether the council was responding to the literal fact of the $1.3 million surplus or to the positive economy that this surplus represents, the council finally seems ready to get serious about a parking structure.

Or perhaps, with the prospect of 35,000 square feet of new retail space coming in with Old Town, councilmembers just came to the realization that parking cannot be put on hold any longer.

The town actually had made great strides in dealing with parking prior to the Loma Prieta earthquake. Public parking was put in along the Southern Pacific right-of-way. Then the town built a multilevel structure at Grays Lane.

The plan was to put in metered parking there, and that, in turn, would help fund more parking. With the considerable damage the earthquake caused downtown, however, it no longer made sense to charge for parking in the structure at Grays Lane.

Things have pretty much been in a holding pattern ever since.

Not that there haven't been attempts to find creative solutions. Metered parking on public lots was seriously explored for a while, but in the end, the council could not get behind it.

Then a year ago, it looked as if the town and the merchants, working together, might build a second level beneath the planned Old Town lot. That effort generated considerable enthusiasm, but it met a soggy demise when underground water rendered the plan unfeasible.

Now the councilmembers all seem to be in the same boat. That's good news for downtown businesses and for everyone who visits downtown.

It would be foolish to assume the economy will remain rosy forever, but as long as the surplus showed up on the eve of what promises to be a real parking crisis, the time to move ahead clearly is now.

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