The termination of the 18-year agreement between the two organizations was a trickle-down effect of the church's efforts to meet the desires of the Village Green Neighborhood Association to keep congregants' vehicles off the streets, said sheriff's Sgt. Bill Tait.

In an action similar to one taken this summer by the church with the Saratoga Foothill Club, which had also used the church lot for event parking, the church asked the sheriff's office, effective late last month, to no longer park in the 30 spaces it had been allowed to use for free, Tait said.

"The neighbors have helped us realize that we are harming them" by subsidizing parking for other organizations who don't have enough, said church administrator Jerry Bruce, adding that the church has long-term plans for increasing on-site parking for its own uses.

"We're very saddened," Tait said. "But we certainly understand the pressure they're under from the neighborhood association."

Tait said the parking problem on the block at the northeast corner of Saratoga Avenue and Saratoga­Los Gatos Road is merely a symptom of the space problems of all the agencies located there—the sheriff's station, the church, the Saratoga Fire District, the post office and some commercial space. He said the sheriff's office does not blame the neighborhood association for wanting to keep those agencies from parking on their streets.

"They are trying to find a quality of life in their neighborhood," Tait said of the neighbors. "We can certainly understand their frustration."

Tait said the church's decision came after several months of discussions between the sheriff's office, the church and the city to find a solution to the parking crunch, with the outcome being that "there really aren't any."

The office, which has 52 vehicles in its fleet, can park 46 of them on its site by double and triple parking them in 32 spaces—the remaining motorcycles and administrative cars are driven home by the employees using them, Tait said. But the office needs an additional 30 spaces at shift-change to accommodate employee-owned vehicles, he said. He said the city is allowing the sheriff's office to park in public lots along Big Basin Way and Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road.

The sheriff's office's only public parking are five spots on Saratoga Avenue that it shares with the post office, Tait said. The office urges its employees to not park on Park Place, a request to which the employees are largely compliant, he said.

He also said the city is trying to work with the office to find it another location.

"It's not just the parking," Tait said. "This building is two-thirds of the needed size. We outgrew it 15 years ago."

Although the city's plan this summer to relocate the senior center in the new North Campus Facility and then move the sheriff's office to the senior center fell through, Tait said that some relocation at those sites has not yet been ruled out.

Meanwhile, he said, the sheriff's office is working on alternative plans for better accommodating itself. He said the only options the office has would be to build a parking garage on the current site—not considered to be a very viable option—or relocate to another site. The office is considering different aspects of a relocation, he said, including possibly moving to a headquarters site outside of Saratoga and opening a smaller, resident-friendly office in the city.

"We will find a solution—we'll keep working on it," Tait said. "We are attempting to make everyone happy."