Photograph by George Sakkestad
Members of the Azule Park Neighborhood Association are ready to do battle over the prospect of upgraded playfields at Saratoga's Blue Hills Elementary School.
Neighborhoods rally against playfields
By Steve Enders
The first true spring evenings have descended upon Saratoga, creating an idyllic setting around one of the city's many well-used parks.
The sudden warm weather brings tee-ball coaches out in shorts, and a young family runs with their golden retriever on the field at Blue Hills Elementary School. In adjacent Azule Park, a narrow stretch of unkempt orchard separates the houses from Highway 85 below. Cars there stream past, creating a false sound of breakers crashing on a beach.
The scene couldn't be better for an urban area, and residents there want to keep it that way. They're also not alone in this corner of town.
On the opposite side of Saratoga, many of the neighbors around Marshall Lane Elementary School feel the same way. They want their little neighborhood school to stay small--no renovated playfields, they say, because they'll attract too many people for the quaint area.
They scoff at being called "NIMBYs" because many have children playing sports in and around the city already. Other parents serve as coaches and can appreciate a good patch of grass to play on. They just don't think the proposed locations are sensible ones.
Sometimes it takes a crisis to get a group to organize, and that's what's happened in these two Saratoga neighborhoods in response to the city's plan to build new fields so more children can play sports.
And in a few weeks, it's all going to come to a head when the city's parks and recreation commissioners and a mediator attempt to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem.
In those meetings--dates are still being hashed out--the city's representatives and a yet-to-be-named mediator will bring the opposition face to face with supporters and user groups to try and reach some sort of compromise.
Citing the long-completed Parks and Recreation Task Force decisions, the city argues that the rest of the city wants playfields, and the sites that have been chosen are the best ones available. The school districts which own the sites, the city maintains, have verbally pledged support in maintaining the fields once they're installed.
The neighborhood groups say they're adamantly opposed to any such renovation, and they're willing to fight to the finish, they say.
"We feel [the meetings] are a redundancy," says Marshall Lane neighborhood leader Lisa Kurasch. "We've expressed our views. It's like we're going through another hoop, but we're hoping the City Council will hear it."
Councilmembers probably will, eventually. If the Parks and Recreation Commission votes to approve the playfields plan, the City Council will have final say.
Kurasch says that the neighborhood, while opposed to the school being used by more baseball teams, is willing to work with the city to find a solution. Unexplored options include, she says, a bond initiative to buy suitable land, working with other nearby cities to use their parks or finding an alternative site within Saratoga.
In the Blue Hills/Azule Park area, about 150 residents on many streets have signed their names to petitions asking the city not to proceed with the fields. About 40 families have rallied around a newly-formed neighborhood organization there as well, which holds regular meetings to keep residents updated on the plan's status.
Kurasch says about 80 people are against the plans around Marshall Lane.
Eddie Sweeney, who says golf balls often end up in his back yard from duffers illegally practicing their chip shots, will likely represent the neighborhood at its meeting with the city.
"There's no compromise," he says, "we would've liked to have been consulted at an earlier stage. The ideal outcome for the soccer organizations and for us is seeing Central Park [the Heritage Orchard] used."
In two other neighborhoods, vocal opposition has been relatively silent. Plans to build fields at Foothill Elementary School have gone mostly unopposed, as have plans for fields at Congress Springs, already a site of a large sports complex.
Traffic, parking and safety are the major concerns. Besides that, Marshall Lane residents worry that Saratoga money will be used on school fields that aren't in the Saratoga school district.
In the Blue Hills neighborhood, residents think the city can get a better bang for its buck by building the fields in a central location, like the Heritage Orchard, where there would also be plenty of room for parking and vehicle access in and out of the area.
Neighbors say they sympathize with parks commissioners, who have toiled as long as the residents have over the present situation. They are, despite that sympathy, sticking to their guns.
"We've got 34 kids now--that's pretty new," Kurasch says. "We do block parties, we know each others' lives and watch each others' houses. We've had a good community but what this has done is brought it out more acutely."
Saratoga, California Since 1975
