Every five to seven years, residents offer two opposing viewpoints: some say the city should require all homes that meet specific criteria to be designated as historic homes; others say they favor voluntary inclusion in the city's inventory.

The council's April 19 meeting was no different, though only one resident spoke in favor of a mandatory requirement. At the request of the council, city staff members drafted a new historic preservation ordinance that City Manager Brian Loventhal said contained simpler, clearer language. He said the new ordinance was intended to : simplify the ordinance, create a unified list of significant historic properties, streamline the permit process, allow for the establishment of historic districts and neighborhoods, establish fair but mandatory standards for preservation and rehabilitation, and allow for the creation of homeowner incentives.

Those incentives, which were not listed in the draft, include exceptions to building code regulations, waived application fees for rehabilitation work and as much as 60 percent property tax relief.

Kirkorian Way resident John Moore said that, while hearing about the incentives made the ordinance more palatable, he still felt that it was too vague and that mandatory inclusion was a bad idea.

"Pretend it applies to your house," Moore told the council. "No one in their right mind would say, 'Sure, I'll [comply with] that.' "

Greg Galanos, whose Withey Road home is one of the few on the list, chastised Mayor Curtis Wright for bringing up the issue again since he ran for office under the pledge that he favored fewer governmental controls. Galanos' home was placed on the historic list before he was the homeowner and he has applied for its removal, claiming that it does not meet the criteria for a historic property. He said mandatory compliance with a new ordinance would be unnecessary.

"It's been voluntary since 1997, and how many historic properties have been demolished? One property," he said. "That's one-tenth of 1 percent."

Los Gatos-Saratoga Road resident Lana Malloy was the only member of the public to speak in favor of a mandatory requirement in the ordinance. Malloy is a member of the city's newly formed cultural commission—a group the council voted unanimously to charge with the same duties formerly entrusted to its historic preservation committee.

"I guess I'm the craziest person in the room," she said. "I want my house on the list. It has character and charm and it gives these things to the community. Even if one of these homes is torn down every 10 years, that loss is too great."

Council members said they appreciated that the draft ordinance was more clear than the current one but asked City Attorney Kirsten Powell to include more objective guidelines for including a home in the historic inventory.

"I liked the numerical standard that was in the original ordinance," Councilwoman Barbara Nesbet said. She also favored including a list of the benefits of inclusion—an idea agreed upon by the rest of the council.

Councilman Mark Brodsky said he liked the idea of a new, clearer ordinance, but that he wanted to make it voluntary.

"I would like to see us start basic," Brodsky said. "Let people know what we'd like to save and then back off."

Taking a cue from Moore's earlier statement, Councilman Erin Garner said he started thinking about the ordinance in terms of his own home. He said it could indeed be applied to his own home, which was a "scary" prospect.

"The more objective we could make it, the better," he said.

Garner also said he wanted to talk face-to-face with residents whose homes might be affected in order to get their opinions before changing the ordinance from voluntary to mandatory.

The council reached a consensus that the ordinance should be modified based on its directions and brought forward at a future meeting as a discussion-only item once again.