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Recreation Department seeks ideas for its long-range plans
By Amy Golod
Just like clothes, hobbies can be fashionable or outdated. In the '50s, children played with hula hoops rather than skateboards, and senior citizens did not take computer classes. Since its founding in 1955, the Los Gatos-Saratoga Department of Community Education and Recreation, known as the Rec Department, has never developed a long-range plan to redesign its programs which are no longer quite au courant.
The Rec Department asked the community at a June 23 meeting what it would like to see in the department's long-range plan; the answers pretty much cut across all ages: more programs to accommodate a growing school population, more programs for senior citizens, programs and facilities to accommodate the needs of working parents, more places for high school and middle school students to spend time and better programs for children with special needs.
"We have a strategic plan to understand the pulse of the community. We don't want to say, 'This is what the community ought to have,' " Bob Best, director of the Rec Department, said.
A 30-member planning committee, made up of representatives from Los Gatos, Monte Sereno and Saratoga, are gathering information for the long-range plan. The committee works with Moore, Iacofano, Goltsman Inc., a consulting firm hired by the department to assist in devising a plan. The department's seven-member governing board also contributes ideas
The department was created as a joint powers agency for the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School and the elementary school districts in Saratoga and Los Gatos, to provide educational and recreational programs for the students of these districts. While residents outside the school districts' boundaries can use the facilities, they cannot serve on the governing board. They can serve on the planning committee, however.
Those at the June 23 meeting asked for more facilities and programs. However, the department is already facing the challenge of decreasing space. Portable classrooms, for example, now replace some of the schools' fields as a result of the larger student populations. Residents thought building a new recreation center would increase space and be more efficient for participants in multiple activities. Working parents cannot shuttle their children to different places throughout the day, and organizing multiple activities at one location would help, said some.
One location at which the department would like to create more programs is Los Gatos' A Place for Teens, according to Best.
Two individuals who work within the Los Gatos school system urged the formation of more facilities, such as a skate park for middle school students so that the students do not bother merchants downtown or spend their free time unproductively.
The plan is scheduled to be completed by November.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
