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For the last three years, Los Gatos has dealt with an increasingly tighter budget without many noticeable changes to services and programs. Now, as Town Manager Debra Figone has said several times, "the low-hanging fruit has been picked," and the town is climbing farther up the money tree to balance its budget.
The town council is tentatively scheduled to hear options for restoring funding to several areas at its June 7 meeting. But if the proposed cuts to the library, police department, community services and other departments remain, town residents may notice a few changes.
The Los Gatos Public Library faces a reduction in hours from 62 to 50 per week, losing morning hours on Mondays and Tuesdays and evening hours on Wednesdays and Thursdays. In addition, the proposed budget calls for a nearly 40 percent reduction in the acquisitions budget.
Assistant Library Director Linda Dydo said the library is currently dealing with a reduced acquisitions budget this fiscal year, and it has simply stopped buying books. Even with reductions in the number of acquisitions made, it ran out of funding for new materials with nearly half the fiscal year left.
"We had to stop purchasing books in February," Dydo said. "If you come into the library right now, our new bookshelf is just pitiful—I'd say it's one-third empty."
Dydo said that if the budget remains at the same level next year, the library might need to discontinue using one of its electronic databases.
Scott Seaman, chief of the Los GatosMonte Sereno Police Department, said emergency response would remain at the same level, but the department's responses to nonemergency calls may be slowed. He said staff reductions and reallocations could make it logistically impossible for officers to arrive quickly at the scene of incidents not requiring immediate attention.
The town is also examining the elimination of one of three canine units, and there may be increased wait times at the department's public counter.
"The more we start ratcheting down, there are going to be some ways that the public will have to see it," he said.
Town programs are not the only ones affected by the budget, though. A Place for Teens, the nonprofit organization that serves approximately 1,100 Los Gatos teens every month, may only receive about half of the $6,000 it requested from the community services department.
Lee Fagot, board co-president, said the teen recreation, education and resource programs offered by the organization have already been scaled back a bit due to a decrease in donations. He said the decrease in town funding could have a ripple effect if potential donors feel that the town doesn't support the organization.
"Without being able to demonstrate town government support, it makes it harder for us to obtain grant money from other foundations," he said. "It makes it difficult even with some of the local merchants who ask us about town support. Very often, people think of us belonging to the town, and we're not—we're completely independent."
The Los Gatos Museum Association may also only receive half of what it requested from the town. Executive Director Laura Bijuk said that if the town goes through with a $6,000 reduction in its grant, the museum group will have to "fill that gap" another way.
She said the museum works with a yearly budget of only about $100,000, and it would have to dig into the principal of a recent endowment if community donations did not make up the difference. She said that, as with the teen center, there is a perception that the association is "sitting on a ton of money," which she says is not true.
"We're pretty stretched," Bijuk said. "We don't have anywhere to cut."
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