Saratoga News

How strong is Saratoga's sense of community?

By Dale Bryant

To watch Saratogans dance in the streets and stroll along Big Basin Way while sipping wine and enjoying food from some of the valley's finest restaurants, an outsider would surely believe from observing Celebrate the Taste of Saratoga! that Saratoga is a city with a strong sense of community.

Certainly it has much more going for it than most suburban communities. Not only does Saratoga boast a long, colorful history, old-timers who can "remember when" and a quaint downtown affectionately known as The Village, but the city enjoys such fine treasures as Hakone Gardens. Saratoga is home to elementary schools, a middle school, a high school and even a community college.

But does Saratoga enjoy that most elusive of all treasures--a sense of community?

What is almost as surprising as the tenacity with which many Saratogans are embracing the idea of a unified school district is how many of these people are claiming that unifying the school districts will help give Saratogans a sense of community.

Councilmember Don Wolfe's statement at a recent joint meeting with school boards that it's time for "one city, one school district" sounded like a rallying cry.

Since I started editing the Saratoga News in June, a number of residents have said to me that Saratoga has no sense of community. Some have accused the newspaper of contributing to the problem by giving short shrift to our coverage of schools outside the Saratoga and the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High school districts. My excuse is that we don't have the space or the staff to cover all the districts that serve the Saratoga community.

There's no question that when I was growing up in Saratoga, there was a sense of community. In the last half of the 1950s, I used to walk to The Village with my mother's grocery list, do the shopping and say: "Put it on our tab."

My next-door neighbor and I spent many carefree days climbing around in Saratoga Creek. These days, playing in the creek could be dangerous to our health. Our cocker spaniel, Skipper, and our neighbor's dog, a black lab mix named Nipper, used to take an afternoon stroll through The Village every afternoon. No one called the pound; they were part of the community.

In those days, a trip to San Jose took 45 minutes, and when we arrived, there was a distinct downtown with department stores and dime stores and dress shops. We shopped in San Jose, but we also shopped in our home town of Saratoga. Swanee's dress shop was a favorite. And to my way of thinking the greatest shop of all was the Clef House. It was owned by the parents of my classmate Richard Rosenfeld, and it was an eclectic marvel of sheet music and clothing and knickknacks.

No one in those days questioned whether Saratoga had a sense of community. The question wouldn't even have come up.

How a unified school district might affect the community's sense of itself can only be guessed.

There are other sectors concerned about the city's sense of community as well. I attended a meeting recently of the Saratoga Business Development Council. People there were worried about the kind of support residents give local businesses. Most Saratogans say they'd like a more diverse mix of businesses. But no one wants to move retail shops into communities that don't have good foot traffic. And some shops that provided a mix left because they didn't get enough community support.

I can't help wondering how much our workaholic Silicon Valley lifestyle vies with the forces that contribute to a city's sense of community. Are we just spending too much time at work to get to know our neighbors? Some recent research has shown that on a national level, a surprising number of people prefer being at work to being at home.

The city of San Jose has spent millions trying to convince the world that it is the capital of Silicon Valley. And now it claims to have a small-town heart. I would be the last person to criticize San Jose for its aggressive efforts to breathe life into its downtown. Still, I can't help wondering if many Saratogans don't think of themselves as residents of Silicon Valley rather than residents of Saratoga.

What do you think? Does Saratoga have a strong sense of community? Would a unified school district make Saratoga a better place to live? Or have lifestyles changed so much, and the world become so small, that the notion of a strong sense of community in Saratoga is just a nostalgic whim? Are there other barriers to creating a sense of community? Or do you think Saratoga already is a friendly, hometown kind of place?

In addition to reporting on local news, the Saratoga News serves as a community forum for the exchange of ideas. We invite you to share your thoughts on this topic over the next few weeks in our Speak Out! section. Email us at sn@sjmetro.com, or fax us at 867-1010. Letters can also be mailed to Speak Out!, 14357 Saratoga Ave., Suite E2, Saratoga, 95070.

Dale Bryant is the editor of the Saratoga News.

[ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ]