Los Gatos Weekly-Times

EDITORIALS

Town didn't have to lift a finger

That Los Gatos Boulevard is being considered as a likely spot to apply, at least theoretically, the lessons learned from a $100,000 research grant is good news. What's even more encouraging is how the boulevard came to the attention of Scott Lefaver, executive director of the Institute for Metropolitan Studies at San Jose State University. Lefaver wrote the grant proposal and serves as the project's team leader.

Considering the boulevard as a mixed-use transportation corridor is not a notion that was hatched in the town Planning Department; it didn't require months of meetings and public hearings and fretting about financial realities in hard times.

This was an idea born in academia. And it expanded to Los Gatos Boulevard because of a friendship based on a mutual interest in transportation between Lefaver and Mark Brodsky, private citizen.

Brodsky, a Monte Sereno resident, has been active in the Boulevard Community Alliance since its earliest days.

Three years ago, he attended a transportation conference at San Jose State, and he and Lefaver have kept in touch since.

When Lefaver received the go-ahead on his grant proposal, he immediately thought to call Brodsky--simply, he says, "because Mark has interesting ideas."

It didn't take Brodsky long to convince Lefaver that the boulevard would be the perfect place to apply the lessons learned from the research. The boulevard, after all, has all the prerequisite elements, including its location at the crossroads of several freeways and the need for a public/private partnership.

Such partnerships are being discussed more and more as the wave of the future. Government can't do everything, but working cooperatively, the private and public sectors can do a lot.

Maybe the lessons learned in the $100,000 study won't apply to the boulevard. Maybe they'll be too expensive, or the neighbors won't like them.

But the beauty of what's happened so far is this: Without the town having to spend a cent or expend any staff energy, the research will go on, unhampered by bureaucratic restrictions.

While the boulevard might never become more than a theoretical case study in a research project, the potential exists for it to become a model for communities like Roseville and Santa Rosa, or even other communities in Santa Clara County.

As private citizen Brodsky and academic Lefaver have suggested, there might even be funding available for such a model project.

Finding comfort

Call it a privy, a potty or a comfort station. The fact is that the Town Council finally got around to talking toilets. Anyone who's strolled the town's charming streets, imbibed its lattes and nectars and brews along the way, is probably saying, "It's about time."

While the cost of the French JCDecaux toilet would be prohibitive, Councilmember Pat O'Laughlin's suggestion that the town explore joining forces with San Jose to bring the cost down makes a lot of sense. A cooperative effort could bring relief for one of the town's heretofore unmentionable problems.