Against a deadline imposed by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, the Los Altos Hills City Council Aug. 31 held a special meeting and signed an agreement extending the relationship between the two for an additional five years and ensuring continued law enforcement in the town.

The decision came ahead of the Sept. 30 contract extension. The sheriff’s office explained to the city that it would need 30 days’ notice to reassign deputies should a contract not be consummated. 

Through the negotiations, City Manager Cody Einfalt said that California Government Code No. 51350, which regulates how counties bill cities for contract services, is explicitly stated in the agreement as a means of cost recovery and to ensure the agreement is subject to that code. There will be ongoing oversight with the government code to provide protections, which was agreed to by both parties.

Mayor Rajiv Bhateja at the meeting moved to sign the contract with the added verbiage regarding Code 51350 and also moved to an immediate dispute process with three steps: informal negotiations, followed by non-binding mediations and then – as a last resort if necessary – litigation. The council passed the motion unanimously.

Bhateja said that the sheriff’s office at the end of 2025 sent a new proposal to the city, as well as Saratoga and Cupertino, which also use the department’s services, and the new cost spiked 30%.

“The general fund is $14.5 million that we can spend,” said Bhateja. “Getting a three-quarters of a million dollars increase is pretty significant (chunk out of our general fund).”

Bhateja said that the previous agreement had the city paying $2.7 million for the law enforcement services and the new contract would bump that up to $3.5 million. 

“We could probably deal with a 10% increase and deal with that,” he said, “but it’s just so much more.”

Bhateja said that the trio of cities argued that the sheriff’s office may have violated Code 51350. Essentially, Bhateja said he believes the sheriff’s office was billing the cities for overhead costs that don’t directly apply to the services they provide to the cities.

He said in negotiations, the cities got the sheriff’s office to reduce some of the overhead costs, but that knocked off just $100,000 from the bill, making it $3.4 million. Bhateja said the overhead pricing has increased by 23%, meaning the city essentially pays an officer $464 per hour of policing. The contract states that the city will pay $1.5 million for patrolling and $1.88 million for overhead costs, which means overhead costs are 125% of the patrol fee.

“We think they are doing their math in a funny way and claiming all the costs will be incurred in overhead costs,” Bhateja said, adding that compared to other cities working with other county sheriff’s departments, Los Altos Hills fees are exponentially higher.

Los Altos Hills, Saratoga and Cupertino brought in Vasquez and Company to do an independent review on the agreement, which found that $10.7 million of overhead costs are not allocable to the cities. Bhateja said the actual overhead costs should be $2.15 million across the three cities. Saratoga recently signed its contract proposal with reduced service hours to lower costs and secure a new five-year agreement. While Bhateja said they are uncomfortable with the contract, they need to have policing. 

“We decided to sign the agreement with a minor change the county agreed to, but (we’ll) keep working with the county on rationalizing costs,” Bhateja said. “This has been a difficult discussion, and we really value (the sheriff’s office and the county). The overhead costs are just insane. That’s where we need to come back to reality a little bit.”