Saratoga News

LETTERS

Why can't citizens buy the Mountain Winery?

The Mountain Winery article was probably read by everyone who receives the Saratoga News. Discussions go on and on; who should own the place, what to use it for, what about the summer series?

It would be hard to imagine that anyone who has been to the winery would find it less than fantastic. It is equally hard to imagine the property not existing as it is now.

The mayor says the city can't afford to buy it. OK, that's probably true, but if we Saratogans don't do something together, one can almost bet that one day we will wake up and see a zillion homes, all eight feet apart, like what happened to the Champagne Cellar land on Saratoga Avenue. What a traffic and school mess that's going to be!

So, what to do? Well, I have a suggestion. Saratoga is one of the wealthiest communities in the whole United States. Many of our residents could buy the property by themselves, but that probably isn't practical either. Thus, if the city can't buy it, then let's all buy it together!

Let's issue shares, and have ownership of the Saratoga Paul Masson Mountain Park belong to the people. Sure, it will require city involvement--it should. Sure, it will take a board to manage it; sure, it will involve time, effort and money. But, the other side is that it is a huge part of Saratoga's history, glory, beauty, culture and open space. We should do everything we can to protect that for Saratoga, its future and our residents.

That's my suggestion. If this makes sense to you, my fellow Saratogans, I, for one, will volunteer to help make this a reality.

Chuck Desmond

Quail Run Court

The era of church-like silence at library is past

In response to Ms. Lick's commentary "When did the library become a playground?" [April 17], I would like to represent the staff point of view.

First, we are delighted with the active use of our library by this community. We are pleased that students choose to come here after school to seek resources for their assignments and recreational materials, just as we are glad to welcome large numbers of preschoolers to morning storytimes, business people seeking demographic information or seniors looking for a good read.

We do agree that the afternoon hubbub becomes intense between 3 and 5 p.m. We do not agree that no one on staff is doing anything about it.

In the past month, I have had contact with all three neighborhood schools and provided them newsletter announcements which we requested be sent to all families asking parent cooperation in dealing with this issue. In addition, I have contacted the sheriff's office notifying them of some petty vandalism we have suffered and requesting an increased presence in the afternoons. On the day the commentary was published I had personally spent two hours "patrolling" the areas used by junior high groups, with constant "shushing" reminders, splitting up groups, asking several to leave who were beyond library behavior.

As a former children's librarian who spent years trying to entice kids to come to libraries and as an adult who honestly enjoys this in-between-age, playing the tough-guy role is not my favorite way to spend afternoons! But realistically, with 50 to 100 boisterous teens arriving daily at our facility, with limited seating and no segregated area for group study, it is nearly impossible to maintain acceptable library decorum. The era of a church-like environment at the public library is probably well past.

In our view, this is not just a library problem but a community problem. With the closure of the Teen Center and loss of after-school programs, there are limited supervised options available to young teens. If there is a group of parents who want to work on reopening the Teen Center or providing other activities in the neighborhood, I will be happy to reserve the Library Community Room for their meetings and to assist in researching teen solutions which have worked in other communities. Meanwhile, when you come upon groups in the library which you feel are beyond appropriate bounds, please let staff know. Often, librarians are very involved trying to assist the rest of our library users and may not yet have noticed a particular problem.

Dolly Barnes

Community Librarian

A random act of gentlemanly kindness

Here's one for Louise Webb and her random acts of kindness. At the height of commuter traffic on Tuesday, April 9, the rarely used railroad crossing gates on Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road were down with red lights flashing and no train in sight.

Three (that I saw) very kind men stopped, got out of their cars and held the crossbars up so the motorists could pass.

Kudos to these gentlemen who took time to help us motorists. If it wasn't for them, we'd still be sitting there!

Jackie Manou

Saratoga Chamber of Commerce

Sheriff, fire employees were most professional

On March 22, a gentleman driving down Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road had a heart attack, evidently died "freezing" on the steering wheel and gas pedal, crashed through our back fence through the courtyard and came through our living/dining room wall. Three-fourths of the van was in the house with the motor running.

Needless to say, most of the living and dining room and furniture were destroyed.

Santa Clara County sheriff's deputies and the Saratoga Fire Department responded within minutes. My wife and I cannot say enough kind words for these two departments which provided professional service, advice and generally took care of everything.

Deputy Forest of the Sheriff's Department and Captains Sporleder and Strothers of Saratoga Fire were most professional, certainly knew their jobs and provided us with the service we needed in the most tragic time. Our entire family would like to publicly thank each of these departments for a wonderful job.

Pat and Jerry Wald

20446 Chalet Lane