After months of negotiations and considering other policing options, Saratoga City Council approved a five-year law enforcement contract with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office on Aug. 19.
Saratoga, Los Altos Hills and Cupertino had to decide by Sept. 30 if they would like to continue contracting law enforcement services with the county sheriff’s office. Their contracts had expired at the end of June, but the cities received an extension to continue negotiations.
On Aug. 11, Saratoga councilmembers voted 4-1 to moderately reduce general law enforcement and traffic enforcement and agreed to pay $10.6 million for next year’s contract, as opposed to the $11.6 million the sheriff’s office said it would cost to continue its current level of service. Saratoga is currently paying about $9 million for these services.
City Manager Leslie Arroyo said the tradeoff would be less patrol availability. Councilmember Belal Aftab cast the sole opposing vote, saying that he would have preferred to maintain law enforcement services at their current level due to the already lean staffing of deputies in the city and the fact that the city’s automatic license plate readers are currently inaccessible. Arroyo acknowledged that continuing to contract with the sheriff given the increased costs would affect the city’s finances, leaving room for the possibility that Saratoga may partner with Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department for future policing services. The new contract includes an exit clause, allowing the city to leave the agreement within one year’s notice.
During the Aug. 19 council meeting, Saratoga councilmembers unanimously approved the contract. Arroyo said the county needed the cities to decide before September if they were going to renew their contracts with the sheriff to give the Board of Supervisors enough time to execute the contracts. The final alterations to the contract included stipulations in case a city terminates its contract with the sheriff’s office early, requiring the departing city to pay for its portion of the West Valley substation’s lease through November 2029, according to lawyer Catherine Engberg, who also serves as Portola Valley’s town attorney.
Arroyo said the three cities hired an auditor from Vasquez and Associates to determine if there were any options for reducing or adjusting the costs associated with the sheriff’s contract, specifically regarding the overhead fees that were passed onto the cities. California’s Government Code 51350 states that counties can only charge cities for the specific, direct and indirect costs incurred because of a contract, not including general administrative or operational costs. On Aug. 11, Arroyo told the council that overhead and support costs were incorporated into the hourly rates for law enforcement services in their previous contract; however, this new agreement would separate out a substantial portion of the costs into “shared overhead pools,” which cover investigations, records, information technology, personnel and training, internal affairs, administration and countywide support services.
“It may be a little different than other counties do, but there’s nothing in that audit report that says, ‘What you’re doing is illegal,’” said Saratoga Mayor Chuck Page on Aug. 19. “To me, it makes more sense to move on and make sure we’re locked in than to try to fight an imaginary fight.”
However, Los Altos Hills Mayor Rajiv Bhateja said he is still in talks with the county and is still committed to getting law enforcement services from the sheriff. He told this news organization that he believed the town should pay the cost of the actual service, which is $1.5 million. However, he is facing a $1.9 million overhead for those services, which were already limited. Los Altos Hills pays for around 7,281 patrol hours per year, which doesn’t cover the whole year.
“We’ve asked for it in the past,” Bhateja said in an interview. “They said, ‘We don’t have it, because we don’t have enough people,’ but part of it is also how much we’re willing to pay.”
Bhateja also noted that the overhead fees for all three cities totaled $22 million. However, the county’s draft budget for 2026-2027 included a stipulation if the contract cities did not renew their services with the sheriff, which would lead to $2.2 million in savings.
County Executive James Williams said those savings would be the result of the county cutting and reallocating services and positions if the cities did not renew their contracts.
Cupertino Mayor Kitty Moore said she is waiting for the report by Vasquez and Associates to be completed and reviewed by her, Bhateja, the Cupertino city manager and the town manager of Los Altos Hills before making a decision on the contract or considering policing alternatives. Cupertino would have to pay around $25 million total to continue law enforcement services with the sheriff’s office. Overhead costs account for $14 million.
“We have a fiduciary duty to review so that we aren’t paying more than what is really attributable to the sheriff’s contract,” Moore said in an interview.
Williams said the county had broken down costs line by line for the cities to determine if each was incurred from the services provided by the sheriff’s office.
“There’s obviously the direct costs associated with the enforcement — deputies on the ground — but there’s also the costs associated with the supervision of that division,” Williams said. “Now some of the cities are calling that overhead, but those positions wouldn’t exist at all without that division.”