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Town will check with utilities before more streetscape work
By Nathan R. Huff
North Santa Cruz Avenue's facelift will continue, but before proceeding with superficial details the town wants to ensure that local utility companies aren't going dig up the new streetscape.
A unanimous council declined adopting a redevelopment implementation plan at its May 22 meeting, instead directing staff to contact local energy, sewer and water agencies to determine when and if they intend to work on underground utilities.
Council members also raised the question of whether the town should set aside redevelopment funds for a new library, or if the $5.5 million the town has earmarked for a new facility should be used for the redevelopment area's infrastructure.
The Redevelopment Agency was created in 1992 to renovate areas "blighted" by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Essentially, the agency freezes the amount of redevelopment area property tax revenue the town must dispense to other agencies. As property values and taxes increase, the town can take the additional revenue and put it into the Redevelopment Agency.
This year's proposed redevelopment budget is more than $4 million, more than half of which is reserved for the proposed parking structure on town parking lot #2. The remainder, aside from the 20 percent state-mandated housing set-aside, is slated for various infrastructure improvements.
Among those infrastructure improvements is the N. Santa Cruz Avenue beautification project, which includes sidewalk improvements, new planter boxes, gutter and curb reconstruction and realigning the intersection of N. Santa Cruz and Bachman avenues. Much of the beautification at the south end of N. Santa Cruz Avenue is complete and the project was scheduled to continue this year. However, the town council wants to proceed cautiously.
"I won't say we're moving too fast," councilwoman Linda Lubeck said, "but this next year might not be the right year." Lubeck's fellow council members agreed they did not want to see the town spend its limited funds redoing a street only to see it ripped to shreds. The council instructed staff to get as much information as possible on PG&E's, GTE's, West Valley Sanitation District's and the local water providers' plans for underground utilities.
Randy Attaway, who sits on West Valley Sanitation District's board of directors, said he had invited the district's director to talk with the council. "We are just going through the budget hearings," Attaway said, "and there is money allocated to do the sewers on N. Santa Cruz." Attaway added the tearing up of a recently repaved section of Los Gatos Boulevard by the district had taught the town some "valuable communication lessons."
Town manager Dave Knapp said the town probably wouldn't hear from all the utility agencies until the end of the summer.
Meanwhile, there may be some shuffling of other redevelopment funds. Linda Lubeck made an unsuccessful motion at the May 22 meeting to take $5.5 million tentatively committed to the building of a new library and return it to the general redevelopment pot.
"As much as I want a new library, it's not first on my list for redevelopment funds," Lubeck said. "That still means we need to find a way to build a new library, I just think we can find other funds." Councilman Joe Pirzysnki echoed Lubeck, saying the community would have a much easier time passing a library bond than a street improvement bond.
Library supporters are in the midst of a drive for a new facility. The town plans to apply for state grants approved by a ballot proposition in March. The library must have 35 percent of the funding ready to apply for the grant. Departing library director Gloria Grimes asked that the town not eliminate the possibility of helping fund a new facility through RDA funds, adding that the town can count the land it bought over a decade ago toward that 35 percent.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
