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Stereopticon

Recalling vote for incorporation, and it was close!

By Willys Peck

It may or may not be on the 50th anniversary celebration schedule of Saratoga cityhood, but Oct. 22 is of significance since it is the official 1956 incorporation date in state of California records. That's when the legal machinery had completed grinding out results of the Sept. 25 election, and we were officially recognized as a city.

That election has been the subject of previous Stereopticon columns, but I think it's worth rehashing because it really was a close vote, and if it had gone the other way I'm convinced that Saratoga would be a much different place than it is today.

It wasn't a hairsbreadth margin favoring incorporation, but I don't think "close" is overstating the situation. With an estimated population of 12,900, Saratoga had 4,473 registered voters. Nearly 75 percent of this total cast 3,299 ballots, including absentees. Incorporation won by a margin of only 159 votes.

Had incorporation failed, I would say that there would have been another attempt at an election, just as there had been in Campbell, which voted down the issue once before the successful election in 1952. This was the era of defensive incorporations, when the advancing boundaries of San Jose threatened to take in a major portion of central Santa Clara Valley. Cupertino was another in this category, incorporating in 1955.

There were two annexation methods. One was by vote of the affected residents. The other, the so-called "uninhabited" annexation, was when an area with fewer than the designated number of voters could be brought into the city on petition of the property owner.

In the 1950s orchards dominated the landscape, and with agriculture yielding to industry, the growers were finding it to their advantage to sell their acreage to developers rather than continue the often risky business of raising fruit. San Jose made selling the property extremely attractive because of the city's relatively small lot-size requirements--10,000 square feet sticks in my mind--and the developers were having a heyday. The term "cookie-cutter tracts" came into the area's vocabulary.

It's a good question as to just how far San Jose could have extended its boundaries into our present city limits. I would guess a significant portion of the eastern and northeastern segment of our present city could have been known as the Saratoga district of San Jose. Shades of Willow Glen and Alviso! Willow Glen had incorporated as a city in 1936, and Alviso once laid claim to being the state's oldest incorporated city, but I can't locate that date. In any event, they both became areas of San Jose.

Saratoga's incorporation opponents had some good arguments and also had an organization, the Saratoga Protective Committee. Their pitch was that Saratoga residents were getting all the city-type services they needed, through the county and special districts, and another layer of government really wasn't needed. Proponents, who held one of their meetings in the backyard amphitheater at my house, had a potent argument in stressing San Jose's annexation ambitions.

In voting for incorporation, Saratogans also had to elect the first city council. I'd say it was an excellent selection. The five were Burton R. Brazil, an assistant professor of political science at San Jose State, then a college; Dr. Barney V. Rosasco, longtime Saratoga dentist; Harold C. Jepsen, a former county road commissioner; Raymond L. Williams, a retired Ohio industrialist; and John S. Langwill, a retired Westinghouse sales engineer. Langwill and Williams were elected to two-year terms.

Of the five, Langwill was the only one who had actively opposed incorporation. This in no way inhibited his service to the city, however, and he won re-election to a full term in 1958.

The incipient council faced a formidable task in launching the city on its civic course. Not the least of these challenges was setting up a civic center, a process that went through some interesting stages, not the least of which is the one in the Saratoga Civic Theater, where the city council now meets. Early city offices included a onetime tennis court clubhouse, and the erstwhile Firemen's Hall. The North Campus offers some interesting prospects.

Fifty years have come and almost gone. What's ahead?