Prioritize funding for animal control
I was walking down Miramonte Avenue one night recently with my wife and one of my kids when a car slammed into a large raccoon crossing the street, fatally wounding it. The driver paused to ask what he had hit, then drove on.
While I stood in the road waving cars to a stop with a flashlight so they wouldn’t swerve into oncoming traffic, my wife called animal control, only to learn they close their office before dark. We tried the police and were told that removing animals was not in their purview. Eventually, my wife ran home and got a shovel and I moved the creature to the side of the road.
According to the Los Altos fiscal year 2022-2023 budget, “Public Safety” (the police department) has a budget of $22,918,053, or 47% of the entire General Fund. When people talk about defunding the police, what they often mean is reallocating overly generous budgets to more useful social services. I don’t know how much is spent on animal control, but I’m guessing that adding an overnight shift at the expense of the police budget would not result in a single additional crime.
If a car accident resulted from a wounded animal in the middle of the road, three police cars, an ambulance and a fire truck would respond and we’d all be grateful to our first responders. But spending a pittance to prevent that accident from happening is evidently a waste of civic funds.
The budget states that “The City of Los Altos will continue to implement plans, strategies, and educational opportunities to ensure public safety, traffic safety, and emergency preparedness services are done in a responsive, equitable, professional, socially responsible, and trustworthy manner.”
Evidently, “responsive” is the key word, rather than “preventative.” I don’t believe we should abolish the police, but I do believe we should take a hard look at how much we spend on them at the expense of services that would do far more to improve our daily quality of life.
Doug Edwards
Los Altos
Sewer rate increase deemed ‘outrageous’
Each of us received a Notice of Proposed Sewer Rate Increase recently via snail mail.
I get the fact that to most of us, anything that costs less than a grand barely merits our attention. But please forgive me for intruding upon your inner peace with this, as I found the Notice:
(1) Outrageous, and
(2) Bemusing
I don’t know about you, but when I get conflicting emotions on a subject, I get really interested in it. Such is the boring life some of us retirees live.
Outrageous: Sewer charges have a fixed and variable component to them. The details are spelled out in the Notice.
So, let’s normalize the rates and consider year-over-year percentage increases. Oh, the advanced math that I do for you, my cherished neighbors.
The fixed charge goes up 13% next year, then 15% per year thereafter.
The variable rate goes up 36% next year, then 15% per year thereafter.
I get the fact that the hyperinflation of the past 18 months was shocking, so year 1 rates going up a lot merits consideration as reasonable (well, maybe 36% is a tad high). But what really galled me was the temerity to ask for 15% year-over-year thereafter. I mean, you know, maybe if we were Argentina this would be OK, LOL.
Pity that no justification was provided.
Bemusing: Let’s say that you are really peeved by the proposed rate increases. Whatcha gonna do about it?
The Notice says two things which a wag like me thinks is hilarious:
(1) To protest, one must snail-mail a signed, written document to the city. Now you see how sewage increases the carbon footprint and contributes to global warming – to wit, the reduced gas mileage all those postal vehicles will suffer from.
(2) Even better, the city cannot approve the increase if 50% plus 1 of the Los Altos property owners protest. Yeah, right, like that will ever happen.
Steve Smith
Los Altos
Library parking: Don’t forget the lease
It was disappointing to read about the prospects of parking spaces being further reduced at the Los Altos main library (“Library users petition to protect lot, stop dog park,” April 12).
Before another step is taken, the Los Altos City Council should review the lease renewed between the city and the Santa Clara County Library District in 2013. Good through April 17, 2033, the lease calls for “a parking lot with approximately ninety-five (95) parking places” for the library. Summarily reduced by 14 spaces with the construction of the meandering walkway between the library and the History Museum that arrived with the new community center, that count is now well below the lease stipulation, to about 81 spaces.
Offhand comments about the BookDash Home Delivery and the book drop box lessening the need for on-site parking do not match reality of parking remaining an issue and getting worse as we come out of the pandemic. Stop by sometime to see for yourself, especially when one of the library’s many programs is underway.
The 14 removed spaces need to be replaced to comply with the lease terms, and more are needed above that quantity to meet community existing and future needs.
Duncan MacMillan
Los Altos Hills
Editor’s note: The lease terms noted in the above letter are being “misapplied” and “are incorrect,” according to Los Altos City Manager Gabriel Engeland.
