In the hard-fought battle over incorporations, the opposition called itself the Saratoga Protective Committee and it touted the virtues of staying in the county. This is the back page of the group's one-fold brochure.
Saratoga Stereopticon
Annexation fears spurred city's incorporation
By Willys Peck
The city of Saratoga turns 44 next week, an anniversary commemorating the certification of the vote that established this as Santa Clara County's 15th incorporated city. It is fitting that all public offices will be closed that day, as well as schools, banks and some businesses.
The nit-pickers among you no doubt will seize on the fact that the day itself, Oct. 22, falls on a Sunday, accounting for the aforementioned closings, but we Saratoga chauvinists dismiss that as mere coincidence. A holiday closing is a holiday closing.
Seriously, though, it's a good idea, especially in an election year, to look back and reflect on those events and pressures that put us in the municipal posture we maintain today. These matters have been covered in previous "Stereopticon" columns, but they're worth revisiting. What was Saratoga like in the mid-1950s? Why was it felt that city status was necessary? The town already was served by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department. There was a fire district, a school district, a sanitation district and a cemetery district. Planning, road maintenance and building code matters were handled by the county. Why, with such an array of municipal-type services, would anyone want to add another layer of government, and a tax-levying one at that? Who were the people behind this movement and what motivated them?
The incorporation movement really was hatched in the Saratoga Lions Club, at that time the only national service club in town. The membership included a number of movers and shakers, among them an impressive roster of retired military officers who knew all about the chain of command. The club had sponsored a study into the matter of incorporation in 1953 and this led to a detailed study by the nonprofit Coro Foundation the following year. The Coro Foundation did not make any recommendation as such; the report simply laid out the probable results in terms of taxation, local control and the various requirements of city government.
Early on, the battle lines were drawn. The pro-incorporation group under the banner Save Saratoga! was opposed by the Saratoga Protective Committee, which compiled a list of arguments as to why the town didn't need to become a city.
The deciding factor in this controversy was the city of San Jose and its aggressive annexation policy of the 1950s. There had already been two defensive incorporations, Campbell in 1952, after one failed incorporation vote, and Cupertino in 1955. While it was true that legally "inhabited" territory could not be annexed without an election, "uninhabited" territory, notably orchards, could be annexed with the concurrence of the property owner.
This was at a time when there was still substantial orchard acreage in the valley, and to an orchardist ready to move on to land development, the siren song of San Jose was hard to resist. Minimum residential lot sizes, generous commercial zoning policies, these things made big bucks into bigger bucks. They also scared the pants off pro-incorporationists. "Keep it rural" was a dominant theme. The possibility of strip commercial zoning along a street like Saratoga Avenue, where San Jose could have annexed well into present Saratoga boundaries, was just one of the factors that prompted a nearly 75 percent voter turnout on Sept. 25, 1956. Each side had done its work well in terms of persuasion. The vote, including absentee ballots, was 1,729 to 1,570 in favor of incorporation, a margin of 159 votes. Those are the ones making it possible for us to vote on city council candidates Nov. 7.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
