Los Gatos Weekly-Times

EDITORIALS

Council's rainy-day plan makes sense

When it rains, it pours inside the Los Gatos Civic Center. The picture painted at last week's budget hearing of town employees running around with buckets and wastebaskets trying to divert rain drops from important documents sounds like a scene in a slapstick comedy.

The Town Council got the message and earmarked $350,000 for roof repairs at the Civic Center. It was a good move. Town buildings, like the town's streets and infrastructure, are screaming for attention.

Last year, when the grand jury recommended 25 facilities improvements for the Los Gatos Police Department, town officials pretty much brushed off the criticism. Town Manager David Knapp summed it up: "When you have limited resources, you don't spend them on office space."

Police Chief Larry Todd said that the building's inadequacies did not inhibit the department's ability to serve the community.

The Town Council clearly has held off as long as it can on some building repairs, though. When staff members spend rainy days trying to keep records dry and computers out of harm's way, the town's ability to serve the community is being inhibited. Especially when winters are as wet as the last one.

Marketing downtown

For most who gathered last Thursday to hear Dave Kilbourne's presentation to local business leaders, the message of the downtown revitalization expert was simply an affirmation of what they already believe: The best way for downtowns to compete with malls is to work together to beautify and market the downtown as a unit.

The Los Gatos Downtown Association has tried to do this for nearly 10 years. Unfortunately, town funding that ended because of budget restraints left the association wandering up and down the streets with hat in hand.

The organization has stayed alive, but just barely. A membership campaign brought just 45 paid members. Several sustaining memberships have made the difference. But it's not enough.

For all the ideas generated about how to market the town, the bottom line was that nothing can happen without a funding mechanism.

It was talk of a funding mechanism that prompted several in the audience to argue that Los Gatos needs no marketing--and by implication, no funding mechanism.

The downtown once had a funding mechanism--the Business Improvement District. Implemented in December 1991, it was put in mothballs in March 1994 because a small but vocal minority made the renewal process an annual nightmare.

The business district could be reinstituted if the business community gave the council a clear message that it supports such assessments. But before that can happen, the LGDA will have to convince a vast majority of downtown businesses that such a district is a good investment.

Marketing and beautification aren't necessarily aimed at outside visitors, after all. They're needed to keep Los Gatans from taking their shopping dollars to such well-defined and well-marketed shopping areas as Valley Fair and Stanford Shopping Center.