By Clarence Cromwell
Library users who damage or lose compact discs can expect a $10 fine under the new town fee schedule, to be used during the new budget year that began July 1.
The fine is among a handful of new or newly increased service fees unanimously approved by the Town Council. Town officials examine town fees at the onset of every budget year. The town usually charges fees for special services enjoyed by relatively few people.
The $10 processing fee is now charged when library patrons lose compact discs that accompany certain books, but that won't repay the cost of replacing the disc, said Senior Librarian Patricia Bargetto. The library usually has to buy both the book and disc if a companion disc is lost. The sets cost at least $25, and publishers don't provide replacement compact discs.
Bargetto said librarians decided against charging patrons the full cost of new sets, hoping instead that the $10 fine will convince them to take care of the discs.
In other areas, library officials loosened up. They decreased the fee for lost magazines from $10 to $5, Bargetto said, because they thought the fee should be closer to the cost of a magazine. Sometimes lost magazines involve a great deal of work, and therefore expense, for the library staff, because they must be erased from the library catalog if replacements can't be bought.
The library also ceased to fine patrons for dropping videotapes in the after-hours book drop. But tossing cassette tapes and compact discs down the chute will still cost borrowers a $2 fine. Tapes and discs tend to get crushed in the book drop.
The Police Department is charging a new $70 fee for informal bookings at the Los Gatos police station. Arrestees who need not be sent to county jail are fingerprinted and photographed in the basement of the police station and released. The $70 goes toward cost of the photographic equipment and the fingerprinting. The town only charges the fee if the person booked is convicted.
Los Gatos didn't charge for the bookings before, but the state government code allows law enforcement agencies to charge those convicted for the costs of the booking, said Sgt. Jeff Miller.
The Police Department also doubled the fee on fingerprinting for identification purposes to $10. Fingerprinting is required for some jobs.
Out-of-towners who visit Oak Meadow Park are paying for weekday parking this summer, but the fees will drop after September.
Weekend parking did cost $5 at the park. The new fee schedule adds a $3-per-vehicle fee on weekdays. The charges would drop after the end of September to $2 per vehicle on weekdays and $3 on weekends.
Residents of Los Gatos and Monte Sereno still park for free.
Parks officials reduced the fees to match those charged at county parks, Director of Parks Forestry and Maintenance Michael La Rocca said. Fees may be imposed later at Blossom Hill and Belgatos parks.
The largest increases were seen in the Building and Engineering Department. The fee for an encroachment permit doubled to $200. The Building and Engineering Department staff proposed raising the fee after it recalculated the cost of processing the permits and included all the associated staff work, according to a memo to the Town Council.
A fee for locating underground utility lines has been added to the schedule; the town recently began to help contractors find buried lines, because West Valley Sanitation District refuses to perform the service any longer. The formula for the line-locating fee amounts to 6 percent of other engineering-department fees charged on a project.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, July 17, 1996.
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