Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Monte Sereno's Citizens' Group strikes again with a letter

Group looks ahead to next council race in Nov. 1998

Wants City Hall downsized

By Clarence Cromwell

The Citizens FOR Monte Sereno posted a new letter to city residents May 16 that calls once again for downsizing the city staff, among other things.

The letter was mailed just a week before the council set a closed session for May 27 at 5:30 to evaluate City Manager Gay Strand. The manager's annual review usually takes place at about the same time as budget talks, which the council began last week, Mayor Jack Lucas said.

In its most controversial point, the letter suggests combining staff positions to save money. The size of Monte Sereno's staff has been a sore point with the group since it issued its first letter to the city's residents.

The group proposed to create a city manager/planner position and a building official/engineer position, turning four positions into two.

Although the group believes in "reducing costs wherever possible," it has not compared Monte Sereno to similar-sized cities.

"We just took a look at the dollar amount and said, 'My gosh, that's a lot,' " Citizens FOR Monte Sereno member and former city manager Rosemary Pierce said.

The city has a full-time staff of six and a 12-hour-per-week city engineer to serve 3,500 residents. The total payroll comes to $262,268 annually, and the city manager's salary and benefits total $96,000 a year.

Practices vary among four other Bay Area cities that, like Monte Sereno, are mostly residential.

*Los Altos Hills (population 6,495) has 19 full-time employees and a city payroll of $981,393 a year. The city manager earns $94,598 a year.

* Brisbane (pop. 3,134) employs 75 people and runs up $3.3 million in payroll a year. (The city operates its own police and fire departments.) The manager earns $98,796 a year.

* In Belvedere (pop. 2,147), the manager is also the city clerk and earns $99,408 a year. The city has 14.5 full-time employees (including five police officers), and a payroll of $875,475.

The letter doesn't say what would happen to the two extra employees if positions were combined, but the city could not lay them off. A similar proposal by Saratoga officials to put janitorial services out for bids more than a year ago was derailed because the city found out it would be illegal to lay off public employees for the purpose of saving money. But job positions can be eliminated when people retire or resign.

Saving money is just what Citizens FOR Monte Sereno had in mind, one member said.

"If we don't have to spend it, we can leave it in the bank or reduce the tax rate," Cas Szukalski said.

The city can lower residents' property tax bill, but not much. The council does set the rate of an assessment for police services, which was lowered last year from $121 to $95 (this year the assessment will stay the same).

The assessment is a drop in the bucket compared to the 1 percent property tax--which usually means several thousand dollars.

The property tax and sales tax rates pose the biggest burden for residents and provide most of the city's revenue, but they are locked in by state law.

Not surprisingly, councilmembers Joel Gambord and Gordon Knight both agreed with the assertions of the letter.

Knight, however, sounded a note of caution about downsizing.

"There's a certain amount of work to be done, and we should look at it before we downsize," Knight said.

The letter also praises Gambord and Knight for getting the rest of the council to accept some of their goals during a council planning session and for gutting the historic preservation ordinance.

"Common sense is returning to the council," the letter states.

Gambord and Knight said they quit the group before the election to avoid the appearance that the group is a political action committee. Both their wives, however, are still members of the group.

The letter also asks for volunteers to run against three incumbent council members next year. It states: "It is important that the vacancies that will be left by the incumbents be filled by moderate-thinking citizens, rather than those of a mindset that mirrors the previous government we recently endured."

If one more member of the "Citizens FOR" were to win a seat, the group would have a majority for at least two years.

Pierce and Szukalski said the "Citizens FOR" want to promote democracy.

"We're just trying to keep people involved in their city," Pierce said.

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