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Letters
Homes replacing orchards is sign of the times
Spending most of my childhood and adult life in Los Gatos, I have seen many changes occur, but none so discouraging and literally close to home as the apricot orchard on Blossom Hill Road being gutted, uprooted and made into luxury housing. Not that I was unprepared; I knew the owner had been trying to move the land for years. I had just left a glimmer of hope that this would be a corner of the valley that would never be disrupted.
I grew up in a home whose backyard fence faced the orchard. I remember every once in a while walking out back at dusk and seeing deer graze the fields, or sitting on the fence and watching the rancher drive up and down the endless rows of trees in his loud tractor.
This is the place where I saw my first snake, walking down from hiking in the hills above when I was 10. I could not believe it when I was in college and my mother called me saying there were wild turkeys hopping the fence and wandering about in our back yard. Sure enough, I was home one weekend and witnessed five enormous birds bounce over the fence and cluck away on my lawn, only to be chased away playfully by my dog.
I suppose the best memory I have is when the mustard plants would spring up to about three feet tall. My sisters and I would lug our poor dog over the fence and play hide-and-seek in the orchard, using a dead apricot tree as home base and simply ducking down in the field of yellowness as a hiding spot. Trying to trudge through those plants was like trying to run in fresh powder after a snowfall.
Of course, it is now gone, replaced by huge bulldozers and mounds of cement foundation. I know progress is inevitable and the orchard is a prime piece of real estate, but it is hard to hide my disappointment. Instead of visiting my mother and looking out on a field of trees and flowers, I will now see obnoxious homes that some Internet executive has bought with his stock options. But that is the way things are in Silicon Valley, and Los Gatos is no different. It is simply a sign of the times.
David Campbell
Los Gatos
Lights beat those pigeons any day
It is such a pleasure to go for my daily walk at Vasona Park now that the Christmas holiday lights are being put up there. For two full months, I will be able to cross the bridge with the arch without worrying about being bombed by the pigeons.
I've been bombed twice.
The arch is tolerable to look at without gagging, now that it has received its first bath from the rain and the pigeons have been unable to land on the lights. Oh, how I would love to have the lights adorn the arch all year long!
Alice Durkin
Los Gatos
Town could find better use for the money
So, the Town Council has no problem with handing out $4,000 to $5,000 to individual residents (Brent Ventura and his La Rinconada neighbors) in order to bribe them to annex into "the town." Tell me the benefit to any of the taxpayers who provided that money.
We have some very worthwhile causes that would be much better served with those funds, for example: our recreation fields are an embarrassment and could be tremendously improved with the same amount to benefit the schools and the recreation programs simultaneously. The annexation issue will come up again, possibly successfully, in one year.
This idea is very close to literally throwing money away.
Jane Olson
Los Gatos
It does seem a bit curious
The photograph of the "Day of the Dead" exhibit at Los Gatos High School in the Nov. 10 issue of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times made me wonder:
Why is it all right for our public high school to celebrate the "day of the dead" but [it] cannot even acknowledge any "day of the living," such as Easter or Christmas as the resurrection or birth of Jesus Christ? It does seem curious.
Marilyn Allen
Los Gatos
Parking Partners no partnership
A group of us worked within the system last year by attending several town meetings to voice our concerns about the lack of parking. We were made to feel that our concerns were unreasonable and told studies done by the town concluded there was no parking problem in Los Gatos.
Apparently those "studies" were wrong.
Our company has been in Los Gatos since 1986. Our employees eat, shop and spend money on services in town every day. Yet we keep losing reasonable parking. In fact, we are in a building of well-established Los Gatos companies--all of whom have employees (dare I say customers) spending money in town every day, not just during the holiday season.
We have already been forced into adjusting to three-hour lots and two-hour street zones, meaning our employees stop work to move their cars every three hours or pay the tickets. Now the town is asking us "in the spirit of going the extra mile" to help for the holiday season by parking further away.
Tell me please why our business is less important than others are? When did we become second-class citizens? What about our employee who is on crutches due to knee surgery? Go the extra mile? Will the town provide security for the female employees who have to walk through neighborhoods before light in the morning or after dark? Or make sure of their safety when they are crossing dark streets during high-traffic hours?
I politely decline the offer to join the Los Gatos Parking Partner Program. A partnership implies more than one person or group, sharing interests and benefits and working towards the common good.
Rochelle Stone
Los Gatos
Here are a few modest proposals for parking
Although I live in the mountains, I am proud to have a Los Gatos address, and I have worked, shopped, and dined in town for the last 13 years. Despite all the so-called negative changes, I think it is still a wonderful town.
However, the parking situation is horrendous. I would like to add a few comments to the cover-page article about parking and the problem of hiring employees that appeared in the Nov. 3 issue of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times. Here are some possible solutions: Change the one-hour limit on E. Main Street to at least two hours. I mean, how do those cute little restaurants survive? "Oh, let's go to A Matter of Taste. It's great! Wait--never mind, you can only park for an hour."
Make the parking lot behind Old Town available to employees. Guests aren't going to want to park back there, if they can park out in front, or in the underground.
And what is up with Bank of America and Wells Fargo? It is a major insult to the town that they just sit there day after day with those huge empty parking lots, chasing everybody off with their hired lot guards. This is a most absurd situation. The town should do something about this!
Have guests park on the outskirts of downtown and use a running shuttle to bring them in and out of the center of town--kind of an ongoing festival situation!
Do away with the three-hour limits in the town lots. This not only hurts employees, but also diners, shoppers, and movie-goers.
We need to make this town easy to come to. Let's not stab ourselves in the back. It seems the decision-makers are making lots of people unhappy. I think maybe they ought to have another meeting!
One last comment--when you write about the town lots, could you refer to them by location rather than by number? I have no idea what "Town Lot 7" is.
Jan Foss
Los Gatos
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
