About half of the participants in the Leadership Los Gatos class spent a recent Saturday cleaning up a wetland area near the Kennedy Meadows housing development.

The wetland was created to mitigate habitat loss when the project was built in 1995. Class member John Bourgeois said he knew the area along Ross Creek needed some maintenance, because the ecological-consulting firm he works for designed the mitigation. Both cages that originally protected native plants from grazing deer and tree posts that once supported saplings needed to be removed, since the foliage had grown for more than eight years.

So from 8 a.m. to noon on April 24, a dozen group members removed the cages, posts and some non-native, invasive plant life.

Bourgeois said he was pleased with the result of the group's four-hour effort.

"There's always more you can do, but we made a good dent," the biologist said. "We got more done than I hoped."

Class member Michael Kane said the day required a bit more work than he had expected.

"It wasn't what we thought," he said. "We thought we'd pull a few weeds by a babbling brook. Instead, we were pulling trees out of a deep swamp."

Kane said he enrolled in the third annual offering of the class at the urging of Councilwoman Sandy Decker. He met Decker when working with the town council on a neighborhood issue last year, and she motivated the investment adviser to get involved in town government. So he signed up for Leadership Los Gatos, paid the $250 registration fee and was blown away by the intricacies of municipal administration.

"We get a primer ... a start of an extensive educational process," he said. "It's beyond what I thought in complexity—the town plan looks like a Tolstoy novel. Lots of thought, lots of work went into it."

Leadership Los Gatos participants meet once a month to learn about different facets of the town, including council and commission business, law enforcement, planning, garbage collection and a variety of other topics. The group must also complete some kind of group project, such as the Kennedy Meadows cleanup and an upcoming infrastructure improvement project at Oak Meadow Park that the other half of the group will lead this summer.

Chiropractor William Updyke said he shared Kane's surprise at the complexity of town business—calling the class "much more interesting than I ever thought"—but he said he went to the creekside expecting to work hard and was consequently prepared.

"It was definitely fun playing in the mud and sloshing around in the swamp area," he said. "We had a great time. People were singing as we were working, slinging mud at each other and getting a lot of work done in the process."

Judy Glickman said the project was indeed hard work, but she walked away feeling satisfied.

"I felt it was gratifying, because you could see the work that you did," she said. "We fought the blackberry bushes and won."

Glickman said that even though her husband, Steve, is the town's mayor and has served as a councilman for several years, she, too, has learned much more about Los Gatos than she knew before the class. She has enjoyed the "behind-the-scenes" peek at the town and said many people probably don't realize that people just like them govern the town.

"I think a lot of people are simply unfamiliar with their own local government," she said. "They see people on the council as politicians and think, 'Other people do that—I don't do that.' It just doesn't dawn on them they could be on a commission and get involved. You don't have to have a special talent."

The program, which is facilitated by the Chamber of Commerce and receives approximately $15,000 from the town every year, was a launching pad for several current town leaders. Phil Johnson, chairman of the Chamber's board of directors, said past class participants have gone on to serve on city commissions and the Chamber board.

"The entire intent is how to become better, more knowledgeable citizens and how to get involved," he said.

And though the group's graduation is not until May 28, one current class member is already a town commissioner. Bourgeois was recently appointed to the parks commission and said he would encourage others to take the class.

"There's lots of ways to contribute to the town that I wasn't aware of that became evident," he said.

But be forewarned—some of those ways may require gloves.