Saratoga News

Letters

Saratoga rails like a spoiled child

Saratoga has been fortunate to have had Meg Caldwell serving our community. She has lent us her personal interest and has given her time generously. She helped draft the Hillside Protection Plan and served to investigate and correct development abuses that threaten and violate property rights.

As a member of the Planning Commission, she was well-informed, served as a teacher to the community and her fellow volunteer commissioners, and made conscientious, well-thought-out decisions.

Her career as an environmental attorney and her research of individual proposals gave integrity to her contributions and consequently the panel decisions of the commission. She has voiced frustration with city politics and trends from a well-educated position.

A myopic Saratoga, like a spoiled child, rails against the greater authority of surrounding communities. County, state and federal environmental and property protections are overlooked or blatantly defied in selfish pursuits. Planning proposals often ignore Saratoga's own guidelines and codes for development. Meg has often been a lone voice for adherence to the law--policies adopted for the orderly administration of community.

Thank you, Meg. Your service to Saratoga has been a rare contribution of intelligence and integrity!

Bernard and Luanne Nieman

Padero Court

Bookstore provides valuable services

We would like to offer a public word of thanks to the Saratoga Bookstore on Big Basin Way, a store that has provided us with a high degree of personal service.

A large corporate bookstore would never provide the kind of support and convenience to customers that our local bookstore does.

Cliff Reid and Holly Davies

Big Basin Way

Saratoga's name has long history

During the construction phase at the Blue Rock Shoot Coffee Roasting Co., numerous people have stopped and asked what our wood letters beneath the awning say. I tell them it reads "Sar-agh-toga" and "place of swift water." I then proceed to retell the meaning of these words and the history behind them.

A Saratoga historian defined Saratoga as "the scum that floats to the surface." Upon moving to Saratoga four years ago, I was never pleased to hear this definition and had hoped there was another meaning.

Recently, City Council member Don Wolfe gave me a history of Saratoga, N.Y., as written by the Saratoga County Planning Board and other official sources. In it, I learned that the area we know as Saratoga County was originally the hunting grounds of the Iroquois Indians, who called it Sar-ach-togue, meaning "hillside of a great river, place of the swift water." Saragh translates to "swift water" and oga to "place of." The name later was Anglicized as Saratoga.

We felt it was important to write you regarding this, as the definition of the name Saratoga has an interesting and proud history.

Mitch and Tracey Cutler

owners, Blue Rock Shoot
Saratoga

Initiative on the Ballot

I am a senior citizen and a longtime Saratoga resident. I worked hard to get the Saratoga Neighborhood Preservation Initiative on the ballot because it is a pro-senior measure.

Which Saratoga residents are most affected by the increased noise and traffic from high-density development? Which group of Saratoga citizens has the most to lose if their property values drop? Which Saratoga residents are the least able to move to get away from traffic and congestion? The answer to all of these questions is Saratoga's seniors.

It angers me to see the City Council using scare tactics by describing the initiative as anti-senior. No group stands to gain more from the passage of the Neighborhood Preservation Initiative than my fellow senior citizens. We seniors may be older, but many of us are also smart, and the City Council's wild charges and obvious attempts to use the senior citizens of this community are going to seriously backfire.

Margaret Russell

Saratoga Glen Court

Anderson's letter was unnecessarily mean

I was thoroughly disgusted, but not surprised, by Karen Anderson's vicious letter [Saratoga News, Jan. 3] regarding Meg Caldwell's exit from the Planning Commission. Anderson shows us, once again, that she is a mean-spirited, nasty person, and judging from her letter, she is the one in this city with no dignity or professionalism.

Contrary to what Anderson says, the undercurrents I've been hearing about our City Council, most all of whom Anderson supported, is that they may act professional and polite together, but the decisions they are dictating for Saratoga are making a lot of people grumble.

By losing Meg Caldwell from our Planning Commission, Saratoga has lost a person who has always tried--and continues to try--to do what was best for our city and the people who live here. She, like a lot of other Saratogans I know, wants to preserve in Saratoga those things that drew a lot of us here in the first place to raise families. This Saratoga is a nice little city with excellent schools and a balance between the environment, residential and business.

Stanford University is quite fortunate to have Caldwell on its faculty. We are fortunate, though, to have Anderson off the City Council or in any other capacity in our city other than resident loudmouth. If given the opportunity, I would not vote her, or anyone she supported, even as dog catcher!

Barbara H. Lulu

Douglass Lane