Saratoga News

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Commissions lost to budget in 2005 will return in 2007

By Shannon Burkey

The Saratoga City Council has given direction to city staff to begin the process of bringing back two of the city's disbanded commissions.

"There are commissioners who have been out of commission for a long time, so let's get them back and have a fully running government again," Mayor Aileen Kao said.

Since the commissions were dissolved in 2005 due to budget cuts, residents have passionately advocated reinstating them.

At its May 16 meeting, the council discussed reinstating the parks and recreation commission and the finance commission. The five council members agreed that bringing those commissions back was a necessity, but also felt they need to have a specific focus and a lot of direction from the council.

"I want to make sure that when we bring these commissions back into being that we write their mission statement very clearly," Councilwoman Ann Waltonsmith said. "I think we should proceed slowly and thoughtfully so that we can do it the right way."

The council would like reduce the number of parks and rec commissioners from seven to five. The commission would meet six times a year, and one of its tasks would be to seek input about the "Saratoga Park Preservation and Field Use Policy Initiative" for the council.

"I think the parks and recreation commission might be better to have more people on it, but I like the idea to start small and get a core group to focus on some specific things," Councilman Chuck Page said. "There's a lot of public input that needs to be gathered, so a task of theirs could be to seek public input and identify the real issues related to the initiative and bring it back to us for direction."

The parks and recreation commission has been at the center of attention since the Citizens for Parks Preservation decided to withdraw the initiative in February after a unanimous city council vote to create an entity to look into the issues of preserving the city's open spaces and parklands raised in the initiative.

Members of the group were very vocal about their preference of reinstating the parks and recreation commission to address their concerns.

Saratoga resident Marty Goldberg worked on the initiative and reiterated to the council the importance of the commissions.

"City involvement is beneficial for any city," Goldberg said. "Commissioners can be the eyes and ears for the council and bring you valuable information. Please bring back the sleeping commissions and utilize our talented and caring citizens for the benefit of our city."

Council members also gave direction on reinstating the finance commission, but giving it the specific purpose of preparing an annual synopsis of the city budget.

City staff estimates that to bring back the commissions will cost between $95,000 and $110,000 a year.

Staff members traditionally oversee the commissions, and staff is asking to add an analyst position that would oversee all the commissions.

"Bringing these positions back will require staff time, so if we've got to do it, we've got to do it," Page said.

Councilwoman Kathleen King sees the new position as a good resource for the city.

"Here is a perfect opportunity, if we're going to bring someone on, for them to do focus groups in the city and find out what people want out of a parks and recreation commission. They could also do some list-serves to get some benchmarking of what other cities do well and bring that back to us," she said.

King said she would also like to see the person in the new position work with to develop an arts council with Montalvo Arts Center. The arts commission was also one that was cut, but council would like to look into a way to create something in conjunction with Montalvo instead of bringing it back.

Councilwoman Jill Hunter has long been an advocate of bringing the commissions back and she said it is critical that they get rolling again.

"I like think the commissions are the eyes and ears of the council, and they tell us what they see as being the thing that they would like to work on, then we work with them to reach a conclusion as to what is something we'd all like to see worked on," Hunter said.