Don't change Kevin Moran Park. It is the last undeveloped open space in Saratoga, and as such has always been more fun for kids than any other park in the area. Kevin Moran I never knew, but I do remember the stories about how he was killed during a riot in Southern California during the Vietnam years. What I do know is what that park meant to me during my childhood in Saratoga.

With its open spaces, trees and the orchard behind it, it was a place to cut loose and run around. My friends and I would go down to Kevin Moran, play football on the grass, climb the trees, play hide-and-go-seek, or toss dirt clods at each other in the orchard. It was a place to explore, and we always found interesting, new things on every trip.

As I grew up, Kevin Moran remained an important part of my life. There's a tree in the orchard way far in the back, near where the old nursery used to be prior to Highway 85 completion. As a 4- or 5-year-old, it was the only tree I could climb since it had one branch that swooped almost into the ground. I could climb it and scramble up into the higher branches. For years, I'd return to that tree. In junior high, I did homework under it. In high school, I kissed my first girlfriend there. When I struggled with where to go after high school, I did my best thinking under that tree. It served as a refuge, a quiet and semiwild haven in the middle of the suburban sprawl that had long since come to define our community.

Years later, while going to school at the University of Oregon, I'd come home between terms, and it seemed like my group of friends would always gravitate to Kevin Moran. We spent many summer nights out there in that park, talking about our futures, dreaming together and growing close. One night, six or seven of us were lying on the grass discussing life when two police officers emerged from the orchard behind us. I think they expected to find us smoking pot or something, and when they discovered what we were really up to, they announced themselves and sheepishly said, "The park is closed, you guys. We hate to ask you to leave, but you're going to have to move on."

Another time, just before my senior year at the U of O, I took a dear friend out for dinner to say goodbye to her. I knew that this would probably be the last summer we'd be in town together. We ate at D'Artagnon's, then I took her back to Kevin Moran. I had set up a table in the middle of the grass there, complete with formal flatware, candlesticks and champagne flutes. Under a full moon, we toasted to our pending starts in life and said our good-byes. That is a memory I will always cherish. After graduation, I stayed in Oregon, married and settled down in a small town, one that has a park very similar to Kevin Moran that my own kids now explore with great élan.

I know this is sentimentality talking, but it would be a shame to destroy such a unique park, and developing it would destroy the very character that the neighborhood loves about it. Don't turn it into a McPark—let the next generation of Saratogans forge their own memories there instead. The place lends itself to that. I know the ones that I carried out of my years in Saratoga will always remain close to my heart.

John Bruning

Independence, Ore.
Saratoga High School Class of 1986

City funds should not be
spent on trail proposal

I read with interest in the latest issue of The Saratogan that "the city's deferred maintenance backlog totals $18 million" and that "the City of Saratoga receives only $3.1 million" in property taxes to maintain our infrastructure. The article goes on to inform us that the governor is also usurping "about $1.3 million this year alone." With our decreasing budget and current maintenance backlog, our city council still insists that we want a bike/hike trail from Saratoga Avenue to Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, even though more than 180 citizens who live along the proposed trail signed a petition opposing it. The 1.6-mile trail is to run along the railroad tracks, over two creeks, and across busy Cox Avenue at an estimated cost of $2 million.

"It's free!" the city council told us when they began their push to hurry this project through. "The Valley Transit Authority is supplying most [$1.4 million] of the money," they said, "and an 'anonymous donor' is supplying the rest [$400,000]."

In fact, the city cannot know the true cost of the trail. A guesstimate was made several years ago without the vital information of where the trail would be placed, how wide it would be, what materials would be used, and the cost of two bridges—all necessary factors which must be taken into account in order to come up with a realistic price tag. Nor were the ongoing maintenance and policing costs included which will continue for the life of the trail.

This sounds like another skate-park incident: hurry-up-let's-do-it—oops! We lost $19,500 of our taxes in that one. Our city council decided to purchase a mobile skate park in 2002 for $20,000 and sold it last month to Campbell for $500 after deciding it was too much trouble to move and set up [Saratoga News, July 28, 2004]. Evidently no one properly researched that expenditure either or they would have discovered that it was not as easy to move as the vendor claimed before they spent all that money. I won't even go into the North Campus debacle.

If the project is under-funded—and it appears it is—who will come up with the added resources to complete, maintain and police it? The state has no money. The VTA has many other projects on their slate and is in bankruptcy. Perhaps the anonymous donor will take up the slack, but we cannot be sure that s/he has an "open wallet" to cover budget overruns, short estimates, and the perpetual cost of maintaining and policing it. So, taxpayers, who do you think will have to ante up?

If we can't afford to maintain our roads, facilities and infrastructures now, how can we possibly afford to take on the added expenses of a trail that starts nowhere and goes nowhere? It doesn't make sense. However, if Saratoga "needs" another bike/hiking/jogging trail, I propose we use the natural trail that now exists. Or, we could use another one which already has bike lanes and sidewalks with safe crosswalks at signals, is regularly maintained, and is well policed: Cox Avenue. It too is 1.6 miles long, but this trail is bookended by two great shopping centers full of shops, restaurants, banks, and even a Starbucks. What more could we ask for?

Donna Poppenhagen

Fredericksburg Drive