Plan for Safety Center scrapped, so District will get new station
After eight months, council left with just one option
Site constraints doom plan
By Oakley Brooks
Saratogans used several metaphors last week to describe the cramped corner in the Village that houses the U.S. Postal Service, the sheriff's substation and the Saratoga Fire District.
A square peg in a round hole. Ten pounds of sand in an eight-pound bag. Vice Mayor Evan Baker called out the World War II term "blivet," in his words "six pounds of 'equipment' in a five-pound bag."
They were circling around the same thing--an intractable problem.
"As long as the post office does not sell [and move off], we're not going to get a public safety center on this site," Baker said April 17. "It flat out isn't large enough."
And so, after more than eight months of talks about new combined sheriff's and fire facilities, the city council was left with only one option April 17: to allow the fire district to proceed with its planned station and search for a Saratoga home for the sheriff's substation.
The council agreed to support the station on the Saratoga Avenue corner, the district's site of choice. The decision came after 4 1/2 hours of comment from local officials and residents cast a long shadow over the alternative, a drive-through station on Highway 9 opposite Oak Street.
Saratoga Fire Capt. Bill Morrison, the local union president, said firefighters would accept a station opposite Oak Street only if the city could negotiate with Caltrans for a new traffic signal there. A Caltrans official said recently that it might take up to four years to approve that signal.
Deputy Fire Chief Gordon Duncan also questioned firefighters' ability to get through traffic at the Saratoga Avenue light to get north and west in the city, and he wondered about a station sitting on high-speed Highway 9.
"How long will it take for one of our engines to get tagged?" he asked.
Members of the Saratoga Foothill Club were dismayed by the possibility of a new parking lot--instead of a fire station--greeting visitors headed into the Village on Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road. The lot would have served the Contempo site station.
And Saratoga fire administrators worried about the increased cost of the Contempo drive-through option--city architects ATI estimated a $700,000 difference between the two options--and about the willingness of the Postal Service to swap land with the district to allow a drive-through station.
The fire district's attorney, Hal Toppel, pointed to failed negotiations with the postal service in the past. Saratoga Postmaster Curtis Jewell has said the cash-strapped agency's recent reluctance to give up its Saratoga Avenue property stemmed in part from the $86,000 per year it collected from the tenant sheriff.
By the end of the evening, even Councilman Stan Bogosian--who'd voiced serious doubts about the safety of the corner station when the city first rejected plans for it in September--was ready to sign off on a refined version of the corner plan.
The fire district agreed to move the station 59 feet back from Saratoga Avenue to allow fire trucks to back into their bays without using the street. The district would also knock 4,000 square feet off its original design for the corner, moving much training and storage into a smaller building on the Contempo site.
In putting his support behind the corner site, Councilman Bogosian called on the district to drop its looming lawsuit filed against the city over the station plans.
"We need to unite behind one plan," Councilman Bogosian said, to applause from at least some fire district administrators--a sound he hasn't heard in many months.
The district will still have to bring its new plans through the Community Development Department and before the planning commission.
Several changes to the intersection and roadway around the station will accompany construction. The city is proposing new right-turn lanes on Saratoga Avenue heading west and Saratoga-Los Gatos Road heading north. All lanes in the area would also be widened to the standard 12 feet.
The Memorial Arch would also be moved across Saratoga-Los Gatos Road to Blaney Plaza to accommodate the new station.
Councilmembers directed traffic engineer Keith Higgins to begin lobbying Caltrans for a new light at Oak Street; in the interim the city would like to put a median strip on Highway 9 at Oak Place to prevent cut-through traffic in the Village Green neighborhood.
Mayor Nick Streit urged local agencies and civic groups to work to diminish traffic and parking problems in the neighborhood, responding to a lengthy request from Village Green Neighborhood Association co-presidents Meg Caldwell and Denise Michel.
"We have to make a commitment to help solve traffic issues upfront," Streit said.
Meanwhile, the sheriff's days in the Village appear numbered. Commander Jeff Miles said he is planing to redistribute19 people from the Saratoga substation to other stations in the county, in an attempt to comply with parking restrictions at the Village site.
But Commander Miles said that still wouldn't bring the sheriff into compliance with parking on the site. For 16 years the sheriff has borrowed spaces from the nearby Federated Church. Miles said the available space would leave the Saratoga substation with only a handful of patrol officers and no supervision, something he's not comfortable with.
The city council made a commitment April 17 to find the sheriff a new home in Saratoga, and to provide city parking spots in the Village--if needed--to keep officers at the Saratoga Avenue substation in the interim.
"I'm not willing to give one inch on this issue," Baker said.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
