City to sue SUSD over lack of binding agreement on projects

By Steve Enders

An angry City Council May 5 expressed its frustration with the Saratoga Union School District and is threatening to go to court in an effort to block the district's planned renovation at two school sites scheduled to begin this summer.

The council was unanimously upset after reading a letter to the city from the SUSD school board two weeks ago, which attempted to detail measures it will take to address the city's concerns over Saratoga School's eucalyptus trees and traffic issues at Redwood Middle School.

The letter isn't good enough, councilmembers said, adding they still want to see a binding agreement to make sure the district doesn't stray from the compromise the two bodies seemed to have made weeks ago.

According to Vice Mayor Stan Bogosian, the city has 28 days to file an action in court to block the implementation of any further action the district could take toward construction.

The city's action may be unprecedented, at least in Santa Clara County, according to officials at the County Superintendent's office.

What "adequate compromise" the City Council reached three weeks ago when it welcomed district officials to present revised plans addressing their numerous concerns has all but fallen apart.

"Hopefully the district will at least see to a memorandum of understanding," Bogosian said.

"The community interests are not being met. As much as I hate to involve lawyers in things, it's one of those things that I don't think can be avoided," he said.

At its meeting, the City Council instructed city attorney Mike Riback to draft papers under the California Environmental Quality Act in an effort to make the school district comply with its demands.

School superintendent Mary Gardner said her first reaction on hearing of the legal action was disappointment. She added that it was evidence that the working relationship between the district and the city had broken down.

Technically, the city has no jurisdiction over the school district because the SUSD decided to exempt itself from the city's zoning and land use laws. However, under CEQA the city believes it can exercise some control over what the school district does during its environmental review process.

The district decided on a "negative declaration," meaning it sees no negative impacts to the sites from construction. The declaration also exempts itself from initiating a lengthy environmental impact report.

The City Council then wanted a memorandum of understanding (MOU) from the district, which it said would be acceptable given the district's strict time schedule on construction. Because of the timing of construction, the city said it would not ask the SUSD to provide a "mitigated negative declaration," which still would have taken weeks to complete. Both projects went out to bid in April.

At the April 22 meeting, school board officials nodded their heads in approval and seemed to agree that an MOU was an acceptable solution to the long-running problems.

Instead, at its next meeting the district decided to send a watered-down letter to the city explaining how it was going to address the traffic issues and provide for the protection of the trees.

Although it notes the city's concerns, the city argues the letter does little to actually attempt to solve any of the problems.

Gardner says she has asked the district's legal advisor, Robert Logan, to work with city attorney, Mike Riback, to clarify any misinterpretations the city might have about the letter sent by the school board.

"Our confusion over the memorandum of understanding," Gardner said, was that we thought it would also take a commitment from the city, and we didn't know how to do that. ... If the letter of intent wasn't in the right format, then we want to figure out what the right format is."

Among the demands for Saratoga's Oak Street School are a tree-protection plan, outlining the steps it will take to see that two "historic" eucalyptus trees are saved from construction taking place around them.

Under CEQA, the defacing of historic items is considered to be a negative impact, thus the city's push for strict compliance.

In its letter, the district agreed to place a $15,000 performance bond on each tree, but Bogosian said such a low price tag is "woefully inadequate." The council has said it wants a $100,000 guarantee on each tree.

When asked, Community Development Director James Walgren said the actual cost of the trees would probably fall "somewhere between" $15,000 and $100,000 each--the actual amount could be determined by an arborist, he said.

Also, the city wants a promise on what the district intends to do to help fix the present and projected traffic backup on Fruitvale Avenue near Redwood Middle School. Traffic from West Valley College, the middle school and Saratoga Avenue all add to congestion at each intersection around the area, and with increasing enrollment, that traffic will only become worse, the city said.

Councilmember Evan Baker said he was more concerned with what isn't in the letter than what is, and pointed to one sentence to make his point. He called the wording of the letter "indefinite."

In the section addressing traffic concerns at Redwood, the letter states, "If any of these strategies are determined to be reasonable and economically feasible, the district will implement the strategies accordingly."

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