110 E. Main Street Los Gatos, CA 95030 ● (408) 354-6832 www.losgatosca.gov
TOWN OF LOS GATOS
COUNCIL AGENDA REPORT
MEETING DATE: 09/15/2026
ITEM NO: 12
ADDENDUM
DATE: September 14, 2026
TO: Mayor and Town Council
FROM: Chris Constantin, Town Manager
SUBJECT: Receive and Accept the Saratoga Police Services Transition Study and Independent Cost Review; Approve the Proposed Regional Law Enforcement Services Partnership Framework, Financial Basis, and Agreement in Substantial Form; and Authorize the Town Manager to Continue Discussions with the City of Saratoga and Return to the Town Council for Final Consideration if Requested by Saratoga.
REMARKS:
Attachment 6 contains public comments received before 3:00 p.m. on Monday, September 14, 2026.
Attachments Received with the Staff Report:
1. Resolution
2. Proposed Agreement for Law Enforcement Services Between the Town of Los Gatos and the City of Saratoga.
3. Meliora Public Safety Consulting, Transition Study for Police Services in the City of Saratoga, dated August 28, 2026.
4. Matrix Consulting Group cost model review letter dated September 3, 2026, and the fiscal year 2027-28 Regional Municipal Policing Cost Allocation Methodology, Pillar Framework, and Position Schedule.
5. Public Comment
Attachment1 Received with this Addendum:
6. Public Comments Received Before 3:00 p.m. on Monday, September 14, 2026.
Austin
September 13, 2026
Town Council
Town of Los Gatos
110 E Main Street
Los Gatos, CA 95030
Re: Public Comment on Town Council Meeting, September 15, 2026 — Item 12 re: Saratoga Police Services Contract
Dear Mayor and Members of the Los Gatos Town Council:
I am writing to urge the Council to take a pause and reconsider the Saratoga police services agreement. Personally, I do not believe the Town should be expanding the scope of the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department.
Understanding that there is strong support among the Council for this item, the Town is taking on substantial financial, staffing, operational, and governance risks for uncertain benefits. I am concerned that this decision is moving much faster than the evidence warrants.
The Public has not been given a reasonable opportunity to evaluate what is being proposed.
With substantial help from multiple outside consultants, Town staff have spent months developing this proposal. The Chief, Town Manager, paid consultants, and many others have had substantial time to study the issue and work through its implications. The public has not.
Consider that the material released mere days before this meeting include a 23-page staff report, 50-page draft agreement, and a 73-page transition study, among others. These ATTACHEMENT 6
documents raise serious and complicated issues involving service levels, workload, staffing, financial projections, and governance. You may have met the baseline legal requirements for public notice by posting the data on a Thursday for Council action on Tuesday, but that falls far short of meaningful public engagement on a decision of this magnitude.
There is no emergency here that demands the Town act absent good faith engagement with the public.
The financial model rests on an unrealistic staffing baseline.
In the Melioria Transition Study, Table 4, page 16 there are 60 budgeted positions, 54 current employees, 6 vacancies. The proposal presents a financial model that covers the
14.5 FTE's needed to bring headcount to the 74.5 target, but does not account for the six vacancies the department has struggled to fill to date. Which is to say that the hiring plan incorrectly assumes that the Department is fully staffed; in reality, it is already operating below its authorized staffing level.
This deficit – of 20 FTEs – matters. The Department routinely blows past its overtime budgets – a fact highlighted in the previous Meliora report. By entering into an agreement that practically doubles the service area and population served by the Department, you could be setting the Town up for an even worsening situation with the potential to degrade service across the board.
Saratoga should not become the solution to Los Gatos' spiraling, out-ofcontrol police spending problems.
On its surface, the proposal appears to Council that spreading fixed and administrative costs across a large service population would reduce the burden on Los Gatos. However, cost sharing is not the same thing as cost control.
Echoing a comment by Councilmember Rennie in December 2024 re: Meliora Report, the solutions presented by this consultant appear to be to spend more money. Police simply cannot envision a solution to a problem that doesn't involve more money and more police.
A lack of appetite to challenge this reality explains why, despite the Department enjoying status as the single-most expensive item in the Town's budget at ~40% (and Los Gatans paying substantially more per-capita in property taxes on "public safety" than Monte Sereno, Saratoga, and neighboring cities), the Chief is demanding even more.
If the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department's underlying personnel, pension, overtime, management, or other expenses continue to grow faster than Town revenue, this agreement is only a temporary band-aid.
From the outside looking in, it remains unclear whether the proposal creates sustainable efficiencies or merely distributes an existing systemic and structural problem across another jurisdiction, kicking the can down the road.
The Meliora analysis itself identifies significant limitations in the data.
The consultant was unusually candid. In their words:
Data from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office was not collected in the traditional manner used in an organizational assessment process. Because there was no opportunity for back-and-forth dialogue to reconcile any data anomalies or areas that we would normally question, we are left to accept the data as presented.
Ultimately, the proposal is based on a single year's worth of data, which required substantial cleanup and contained gaps. This should give pause to the Council.
Does a single year of unreliable data accurately predicts the needs nearly three years into the future? Staffing models, workload estimates, and financial projections ultimately depend here on assumptions about how much work Saratoga generates for the Town. If those assumptions are materially wrong, the Town could discover, after the fact, that the staffing and financial models were wrong as well.
The appropriate response to uncertain data is to validate the assumptions, not rush into a long-term commitment.
The timing is particularly inappropriate given the upcoming election.
The current Council should not bind its next members to such a major expansion of Town responsibility immediately before voters weigh in on its membership. Delaying final approval would allow additional and much-needed public scrutiny, better validation of the financial and staffing assumptions, and allow the officials who will oversee its implementation to participate in the decision.
Finally, the proposed Law Enforcement Partnership Advisory Committee (LEPAC) does not provide meaningful public oversight.
As drafted, LEPAC is an advisory mechanism composed exclusively of elected officials and staff. Its recommendations are non-binding and the public is not given meaningful representation. For an arrangement that will fundamentally change the scale and regional role of the Department, that is inadequate and falls short of what regional peers have done.
If the proposal moves forward, LEPAC should be established as a genuine public oversight body, with regular public meetings, published agendas and minutes, public reporting of service and financial metrics, and, crucially, community representatives with actual seats at the table.
I strongly urge the council to reject the proposal.
But, if there is no support for doing that, I ask the Council at minimum to continue this item, rather than approve it now, and require the following before it returns:
1. At least 30 days of public review of the complete proposed agreement and supporting analysis.
2. An independently validated financial model that incorporates Los Gatos’ current staffing level rather than assuming a fully staffed department.
3. A detailed recruitment and implementation plan accounting separately for existing vacancies and positions required for Saratoga.
4. A substantially strengthened LEPAC process with actual community representation.
5. Final consideration only after the newly elected Council is seated.
This agreement will reshape the Department and Town for decades. Taking another month or two to get the decision right costs very little. Getting it wrong will cost the Town millions of dollars, strain an already understaffed department, and be extremely difficult to unwind.
Please do not mistake momentum for urgency.
Sincerely,
Austin