Fire Commission threatens suit if city goes with Contempo site

District wants public safety center on current site

Decision expected by April 17

By Oakley Brooks

The Saratoga Fire District last week threatened to follow through on a December lawsuit against the city, following the city council's recent direction to reconsider a new fire station on Highway 9, opposite Oak Street.

The district would like to build its new station on the site of the current station, at the corner of Saratoga Avenue and Highway 9.

Following the city council's rejection of plans for the new station in September, the district sued the city, saying its denial was unreasonable.

Fire officials effectively put their suit on hold this winter while they collaborated with a committee of citizens and public officials in exploring a new combined fire, sheriff's and postal facility in the Village.

That stance changed slightly last week when the safety center committee, at the direction of the council, reconsidered a station up Highway 9, on the site of the old Contempo Realty building.

"If the council adopts the Contempo alternative, we will have no alternative except to seek redress in the courts," Commissioners Bob Egan, Jay Geddes and Joe Long wrote in a letter to the city council.

District officials were unhappy that the safety center committee was once again considering the Contempo site, after ruling it out before a March 6 presentation to the council. The committee had felt that shuffling public agencies and parking around a new station on the former Contempo property might be too costly.

And the district was also miffed that the city approved a new traffic study to look at the impacts of a fire station at either site.

"The Contempo site is not acceptable to the district ... regardless of the results of any traffic study," the March 21 district letter said.

City Councilman John Mehaffey said in December that he thought the district threatened to take Saratoga to court in case fire officials did not get the station they wanted out of the public safety center process, and he stated last week that the district was "posturing."

Councilman Stan Bogosian said in a letter this week to the Saratoga News that it was "unfortunate" the district had "politicized" the design of the fire station.

The fire district maintained that the city council has rejuvenated the Contempo site after heavy lobbying by Don Whetstone, who owns the property across from the current fire station and sits on the safety center committee. Whetstone first proposed an alternative site for the station in July.

But the committee's Village Green neighborhood representative, Bryan Styslinger, also voiced his support for a station on the Contempo site last week. He felt a properly constructed station there might limit the amount of traffic in his nearby neighborhood.

The traffic study also continued despite the fire district's resistance to it, and last week traffic engineer Keith Higgins gave the results of the city-approved study.

Higgins told the committee that "neither (fire station) site stands out enough to be called 'favored.' " He added that he would lean toward the Contempo site, with many improvements to the area. Higgins suggested a new traffic light at Oak Street, a drive-through station to keep trucks from repetitively backing into the station, and the station's location being sufficiently setback from Highway 9 to give firefighters enough room to shuffle trucks.

Higgins also said the Saratoga Avenue site "can be made to work."

But both he and Caltrans engineer John Thomas said that ideally they would never recommend placing an original driveway on the site of the current fire station, because vehicles enter traffic too close to the Highway 9 corner.

Thomas added that it could be up to four years before a signal was built on Caltrans-maintained Highway 9 at Oak Street, which might complicate issues of a new station on the Contempo site.

Fire Chief Ernie Kraule was scheduled to bring in his architect this week to the safety committee, to show how a well-placed building on the Saratoga Avenue site might alleviate safety concerns about trucks backing into the station near a busy intersection.

City Manager Dave Anderson, who is facilitating the safety center discussions, says he is taking the fire district's input in the process--including statements from district commissioners--on the same level as other committee members.

"We're trying to come to a solution by taking into account more factors than they are considering," Anderson says. "We have to have more overlap in terms of what stakeholders want. I think that's going to happen in the next couple of weeks, and that's going to determine the success of the process."

City council members, meanwhile, are working toward making a final decision on a plan for the Village safety center by April 17.

"If the fire district builds a safe, adequate station and meets the city's code requirements," said Councilman Mehaffey, "exactly where it goes, I don't care."

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