City plans to tap reserves to make necessary improvements
Decision comes as council finishes capital projects plan
$1.2 million in reserves left
By Oakley Brooks
For a brief moment last week, it looked like Azule Park proponents might have to jump through yet another hoop to get the improvements they have long awaited.
As the city council took its last look at the five-year, citywide capital improvement plan, the latest figures showed that park projects--including Azule--would put the city's park development fund some $750,000 in the red.
After city staffers recommended that council members take a cautious approach in uncertain economic times in funding improvement projects, Vice Mayor Nick Streit suggested that the council commit only to fund park projects over the next year.
Streit urged council members to consider the remaining projects in a year's time.
Azule Park, scheduled for an $880,000 upgrade to begin sometime in 2002, would be held and then put up for review.
But without much hesitation, the rest of the city council rushed to affirm the city's commitment to modernize Azule, a triangular plot near Blue Hills Elementary School, which has sat abandoned since the city acquired it in 1969. The city and neighbors developed a detailed landscaping plan for the park this past summer.
"This council has committed to get this job done," Councilman Evan Baker said. "If we let this go, the odds are it won't get built."
And so with Vice Mayor Streit following suit, the council agreed to tap into the city's general fund reserves to pay for the park project.
That was the final wrinkle that council members had to smooth out as they prepare for a Nov. 7 approval of the $8.7 million needed to make various upgrades throughout the city.
After the decision regarding the parks upgrades, Katie Alexander, a longtime steward of the Azule improvement process as the chairwoman of the Azule Park Neighborhood Association, looked unfazed.
"We've been in this situation so many times before," she laughed, referring to the various hurdles her group has encountered in the last five years to get work started at Azule. "We're very happy that the city council saw it our way."
Despite some increased attentiveness in the audience as the issue of Azule came up, there was no public input Oct. 17 on the 26 projects within the capital improvement plan.
That followed input from only a handful of citizens as the city worked to put together the improvement plan this past summer.
After Vice Mayor Streit closed the last public hearing on the improvement plan Oct. 17, Councilman Baker quipped, "There's this underwhelming response from the citizens. I guess they must love us."
Of the $8.7 million that will go toward roads, bridges, drains and curbs, as well as recreational facilities, some $5.2 million will come from the city's general fund reserves. The reserves have grown steadily over the last seven years to an estimated $6.4 million in June.
Another $1.9 million will come from the city's park development fund for recreation facility projects. The remaining money will be filled in by private, state and federal grants.
In anticipation of passing the capital improvement plan, council members approved an environmental impact assessment that declared the proposed projects will not significantly affect the natural and cultural assets of the city.
Just one project, the Fourth Street bridge replacement, may require some further environmental study before construction on it can begin.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
