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Photograph by George Sakkestad

Councilwoman Kathleen King, a 19-year Saratoga resident, gears up for the upcoming city council race. King believes her experience on the current council will be an invaluable asset to her if re-elected.

King is hoping to reclaim her council crown in '06 election

By Shannon Burkey

Kathleen King didn't start out wanting a career in politics, but she said her political life has now just taken on a life of its own.

King, who has served four years on the current council and was mayor of Saratoga from 2004 to 2005, said it was a children's hospital--or lack of one--that caused the 19-year Saratoga resident and mother of five to throw her hat into the political arena.

In 2001, King's son Robert, then 4, was diagnosed with a rare disease called alpha mannosidosis. There are currently only 260 known cases in the world. While her son was hospitalized numerous times and had to undergo two bone marrow transplants, King realized the great need for a children's hospital in the city of San Jose.

Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, in Palo Alto, is the only children's hospital in the county, and it is very impacted, according to King. San Jose lacks any type of hospital specifically for the needs of children.

So King took a leave of absence from her job at Applied Materials, where she had worked for 25 years, so she could concentrate on bringing a children's hospital to San Jose. Since 2001, King has been working with Lucile Packard Children's Hospital to bring a similar hospital to the San Jose area.

With Lucile Packard located at the far end of the county and running at 95 percent utilization, King felt San Jose really needed its own facility.

"San Jose is the largest city in the United States without a children's hospital," King said. "We believe that San Jose needs a more community-based hospital, with Packard being the backup. I have been working on this for six years, and I will work on it until it is done. I believe a city of this size has to have a children's hospital, and it will happen."

While working on the children's hospital, King became interested and involved in politics, and in 2002 decided to run for the Saratoga City Council.

Since being elected to the council, King said she has many accomplishments to be proud of, but helping to get Assembly Bill 117 passed stands out as one of her biggest.

"Getting AB117 passed is like getting a 6 to 9 percent pay raise without having to do any extra work or without having to tax people any extra," King said.

The signing of AB117 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will bring about $4 million a year to the cities of Saratoga, Monte Sereno, Cupertino and Los Altos Hills. The bill will return tax equity allocation funding that belongs to the four cities--but has instead been going to the county--back to the four cities.

King said the current council had to cut 8 percent from the city's budget during her second year in office, 10 percent during her third year and 12 percent during her fourth year. To make up for these cuts, King said she knew the council had to come up with something major, and AB117 was the answer.

For 55 weeks, King worked with representatives of the four cities, consultants and Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn to get AB117 signed and the money returned.

"It was hard for the county to give it up, but it was the right thing to do and that was our argument--which is not always the easiest argument," King said. "Nobody wanted to give up the money, but we went from elected official to elected official and said, 'You represent us, and it is the right thing to do.' It's just good government."

King is also very proud of her involvement in forming an agreement with West Valley College to use two of their soccer fields for the city's youth soccer leagues, which for years have struggled to find fields to play and practice on in Saratoga.

"The soccer people said that they have been working on getting use of these fields since 1999. To have these two fields now really makes a difference in sports for kids in the city."

The issue of the North Campus is on every candidate's mind, and King is no different. She was one of the three council members who voted to sell the campus four years after the city purchased it for $4.5 million. But she said she is happy with the way things turned out and would like to see input from the community on what it should now be used for.

"As an individual, I would have liked to keep it, but as a councilperson I was worried about maintaining two facilities with the economy the way it was," King said.

If elected to a second term, she has several things she wants to get done this time around.

One is working to get Caltrans to relinquish Highway 9 to Saratoga, Monte Sereno and Los Gatos.

"We really can't do anything with it right now. Until the three of us own it, it's always going to be a problem."

Making the Saratoga to the sea trail a reality is also something she would like to see accomplished.

King believes her experience on the council the past four years is invaluable and will give her an advantage during the next four years.

"This position takes time to learn. You make mistakes along the way, and it is a shame to lose the learning that comes with an incumbent," King said. "You may not agree with everything they did, so you have to look at the whole and see if they balanced out. Personally, I think you lose a lot if you don't gain from an incumbent's experience."