At its Sept. 4 meeting, Farwell Avenue resident Ellis Chang addressed the city council about the red-curbing, an action that the council had approved at its July 17 meeting following the recommendation of the city's public safety commission. Chang told the council that he and his wife were unaware that the commission was even considering such an action and that they had never been invited to give their opinion. In fact, he said, they had been contacted by the commission's then-staff liaison, Paula Reeves, earlier this year, who told them that city engineers had determined that red-curbing that section was unnecessary.

"We feel we've been singled out," Chang said.

The council, led by Vice Mayor Evan Baker, agreed to put the item on a future agenda to find out what happened and reconsider what was done.

"He should have been a participant," Baker said.

Reeves quit working for the city at the end of June, but the current interim staff liaison for the commission, assistant city manager Lorie Tinfow, said the situation was likely caused by a miscommunication. She said the proposal to red-curb a 120-foot section of east-west Farwell Avenue at the corner of Wild Oak Way was brought to the commission in May. The commission then directed staff to have an engineer check the site to see if it needed red-curbing. Tinfow said the engineer determined that it didn't, and Reeves likely then called the Changs and told them the commission was considering the item but that the engineer had determined the action wasn't necessary.

But the city was then in the midst of changing engineers, Tinfow said, and at its June meeting, the commission asked if the new engineer could take a look at the site. The commission also visited the site and then decided to recommend that the council approve the red-curbing, which it did at its July 17 meeting. And the Changs didn't show up at any meetings, Tinfow said, because they probably thought it was a moot issue.

Commission chairwoman Brigitte Ballingall, who wasn't present at the council meeting, later said the commission understood the city engineer to mean that the site didn't need to be red-curbed because people should "obviously" not be parking there anyway.

"That's probably one of the most perilous 45-degree turns in Saratoga," Ballingall said, adding that parking in the section in front of Chang's house would force westbound traffic to cross a double yellow line to make that turn. "However, it was really common for people to park there. You have to violate the law to get around that vehicle."

She said the issue was raised to the commission by Chang's Farwell Avenue neighbor who lives on the other side of Wild Oak Way along the turn. The neighbor asked the commission to recommend the red-curbing, Ballingall said, because the neighbor had actually collided with a vehicle that was parked in front of Chang's home. She had missed avoiding the parked car because of sun glare.

"Whenever there's been an accident, we pay attention," Ballingall said. "We tend not to take an action unless it's absolutely necessary."

She said the commission in the spring asked staff to request that Chang not park in that spot and not have visitors to his house do so. She said, though, that she didn't know if that request had actually been made, but she assumed it had. She said she also assumed that Chang had been made aware of the commission's consideration of the red-curbing and had been invited to address the commission on the topic.

"Our assumption as a commission is that the involved neighbors are notified," Ballingall said. "That is common. He should have been notified."

Chang said the commission should have taken into consideration that his neighbor's accident was the only one and that it could have been avoided if she had been driving more slowly and carefully. But mostly, he said, he would have liked to have had the chance to tell the commission that, and he later said he was pleased that the council had agreed to take a look at the situation.

"I want to give the city council the opportunity to improve the process," he said. "I do want that to be resolved as soon as possible."