Photograph by Carrie Jensen
New Mayor Nick Streit (right) shakes hands with new Vice Mayor Evan Baker during the annual reorganization in city council leadership on Dec. 11.
Streit takes over the mayor's seat from Mehaffey, rolls up sleeves
Streit has reputation as innovator, risk-taker
Baker named vice mayor
By Oakley Brooks
Nick Streit took over as mayor of Saratoga Dec. 11, replacing John Mehaffey and pledging to bridge the divisions in the city between school districts, sports leagues and neighborhoods.
Mehaffey, who will remain a city council member, said he was confident that the exodus of city workers had been stopped in the last year.
"It's been a rebuilding year for the city, but we're firing on all cylinders now," Mehaffey said.
At 46, Streit becomes one of the youngest mayors in Saratoga's history, which has rotated mayors every year since the late 1970s.
And in his three years on the council, Streit, an accountant by day and a married father of two, has remained an independent spirit--something local politicos have come to respect.
"He's a risk-taker," Don Whetstone, a local political activist, said while praising Streit recently.
In the 1998 election, Streit earned a place on the council without the backing of Whetstone, late Mayor Jim Shaw and a broad political coalition that supported the 1996 Measure G anti-growth initiative and Saratoga Creek cleanup. The coalition rallied behind Mehaffey, new Vice Mayor Evan Baker and unsuccessful candidate Erna Jackman in '98.
Just weeks after his election, though, Streit helped negotiate a settlement with local clean water advocates, who had sued the city over the polluted Saratoga Creek, a suit that had dragged on for four years.
Early in his term, Streit suggested that Saratoga might add badly needed gym space by building a recreational facility in the Heritage Orchard, an idea that was eventually shot down by the public.
Streit again went out on his own in urging the city council and then voters not to approve an extension of Measure G, which would put a moratorium on the conversion of commercial land to residential development. He was the only dissenter on the council, on a measure that passed overwhelmingly among voters.
But Streit has shown the ability to work with fellow council members, in the spirit of "trust and respect" that he said Shaw established before his death in August 1999.
This past year as vice mayor, Streit worked closely with Mehaffey, as the council cautiously stepped into the city's raging fire service debate. The two have also guided the city through the development of its first-ever capital plan to upgrade the city's infrastructure. And in August, Mehaffey chose Streit and City Manager Dave Anderson to lead Village Public Safety Center talks among local fire, U.S. Postal Service and sheriff's officials, as well as citizens.
In his opening remarks on Dec. 11, Streit pointed to the safety center design process as one of the things he'd like to complete over the next year. And he said he'd like to continue to push along a design plan for the Allendale Avenue civic center, for which the council and members of the public settled on a broad scheme on Dec. 11.
Streit has now swung firmly behind creek cleanup in the city, and he urged officials to push ahead with efforts to purify Saratoga and other local streams. He held up a 1946 Life magazine photo of actress Donna Reid wading in Saratoga Creek, as a symbol of the end goal of clean creeks.
On a broader scale, Streit said he wished to reach across jurisdiction and neighborhood boundaries in the city by bringing principals and superintendents from the seven school districts, along with other civic leaders, to the same table for quarterly breakfasts.
His aim is to bring Saratogans out of their respective corners.
"We will no longer compare ourselves by which school district we live in," he said, "Or in Pride's Crossing versus Toll Gate or in Saratoga Little League versus Quito Little League. We will think of ourselves as simply Saratogans."
Streit's speech came during a low-frills ceremony attended by his immediate family and the city's top staff. A small reception followed.
While city code specifies that the city council--and not the people--select a mayor, the succession of the mayoralty is not defined. For several decades after Saratoga's incorporation in 1956, mayors served as long as they had the favor of their fellow council members.
Later a "gentlemen's" agreement among council members developed, allowing the position to be handed down annually. The unofficial process gives the mayoralty to the council member who earned the greatest number of citizen's votes in the oldest election period participated in among sitting council members. The following year, the office is passed to the second highest vote-earner from the eldest election year.
Last year Mehaffey, who earned the largest share of votes in 1998, received the mantle from Stan Bogosian--the second highest vote-earner in the 1996 election. Bogosian was scheduled to replace Shaw, the most popular '96 candidate, in December 1999.
But following Shaw's death, Bogosian assumed the mayor's position on a pro tem basis in August of '99, before officially holding the office throughout 2000.
After Evan Baker took over the vice mayoralty on Dec. 11, he admitted it was only an honorary title--his four-year council term is up in 2002, and he will then retire from political life.
But Baker still grew misty-eyed as he and Streit took the oath of office following their election by the council, adding a little emotion to Saratoga's annual rite of political passage.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
