District’s $1M white elephant
Open space agency votes to demolish cabin it bought 12 years ago
A house that a Bay Area open space district spent $1 million in 2005 to purchase and renovate as a home for one of its rangers — sparking public criticism and a debate within the agency — is about to meet a new fate: the wrecking ball.
The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, a government agency based in Los Altos, bought the 1,440-squarefoot, two-bedroom home with vinyl floors and a rickety deck at 16075 Overlook Drive in the hills west of downtown Los Gatos for $950,000. It spent another $93,429 fixing the deck and support piers.
At the time 12 years ago, the idea was to provide housing for one of the district’s rangers and build six parking spaces to open up easier access for hikers using its adjacent El Sereno Open Space Preserve.
But after 10 years of rental payments that brought the district about $80,000, the agency’s board voted last week to
spend $94,256 to tear the whole thing down. The reason, said Steve Abbors, general manager of the district, is that building inspectors found major structural damage in the house, which was built in 1972 on a steep slope. Repairs would have cost $409,082.
“The walls were buckling. The floors were shifting,” he said. “It’s no longer safe to inhabit, and it’s too expensive to rebuild.”
Abbors said the purchase, which occurred on a contentious 4-3 vote by the district’s board three years before he took over as head of the agency, was worth it in the long run. The six parking spaces were built. A previous tenant had vicious dogs that would chase hikers away, he said. And several district employees, including rangers and maintenance workers, who rented it over the years smoothed out what had been a rocky relationship between the district and neighbors.
Critics, however, call the whole episode a waste of public money, even if $1 million is relatively cheap for Los Gatos, where the median home price last month was $2.1 million.
“$1 million for six parking spots, really?” said Mark Hinkle, president of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, based in Cupertino. “That’s $166,000 per space. Who pays that?”
Permit system
Open space district records show that very few people are using the entrance to the preserve where the six spaces were built. The district does not allow general public access there, and instead requires interested hikers or bicyclists to request a free permit, after which they are given a combination to a gate, behind which the parking spaces and a 1.2mile trail are located.
Last year, only 39 permits were issued, down from 53 in 2013. The preserve receives between 5,000 and 10,000 visitors a year. Nearly all of the visitors to the property, a 1,416acre expanse of oak trees and chaparral with 7 miles of trails and scenic views across Santa Clara Valley, enter a different way, along Montevina Road.
Nobody has lived in the house since 2015, when the ranger, his wife and family moved out as the structural problems worsened. Today, it is marked by fading wood, a heavy musty smell, rat droppings, cracked windows, cracked tiles and spider webs.
The ranger was paying $954 a month in rent. The reduced rent is part of a program under which the district gives its rangers and maintenance staff a 50 percent discount to rent homes the district owns if they agree to perform after-hours work, including emergency response for everything from injured people to fires to poachers.
“The area we operate in is half the size of the state of Rhode Island,” said Abbors. “It’s important to keep an eye out.”
The district, established by voters in 1972 and funded by property taxes in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, has preserved more than 63,000 acres from San Carlos to Mount Umunhum in the hills south of San Jose. When it buys land, sometimes there are homes on the properties. If they are run-down, they are demolished. In other cases, they are restored.
When its board purchased the Los Gatos home from the previous owners, Phil and Jean Hayes of Santa Cruz County, the district owned nine homes. Today it owns 34. Of those, 15 are rented by rangers and other staff and 18 are rented to the public at market rates, and one is set for demolition.
Rent: $484 - $2,200
Employee rent ranges from $484 for a two-bedroom home on La Honda Road in La Honda to $2,200 a month for a three-bedroom residence on Alpine Road in Portola Valley. Public rents range from $1,028 a month for a two-bedroom on Purisima Creek Road in Half Moon Bay to $3,969 for a three-bedroom on Lobitos Creek Road in Half Moon Bay. Most of the homes are in rural areas.
When the Los Gatos hills home is bulldozed in a few months, the suddenly clear 1.5 acres on which it sits will offer sweeping views, Abbors said. But Hinkle, of the taxpayers association, said the agency could recoup all the money it has spent there so far simply by selling the land and the home, as is. He said the district shouldn’t be buying houses at all.
“Sell the land with the house on it,” he said, “then let the buyer deal with it, and the district would get their money back. Winwin.”
Abbors said that the controversy over the original purchase had an impact. Since 2005, the board, made up of seven elected members, has purchased only three homes on parcels of less than 40 acres, all of which were needed to provide public access to district preserves like Mount Umunhum, Russian Ridge and La Honda.
“That situation was unique,” said Larry Hassett, the district’s board president who voted against the original purchase. “Most of the other places we have bought with housing on it — Skyline Drive, Highway 9 — it’s usually in a rural area with a lot of land attached to it.”