The Los Gatos Town Council has approved a plan for a mini-Music in the Park concert series this summer, with five Sunday concerts planned between July 8 and Aug. 5. In the meantime, town staff will be busy booking performers and recruiting sponsors to help defray expenses.

It’s estimated the new concept will cost $45,000. The town has ponied up $6,000 and will ask local businesses to make up the difference.

Like the Los Gatos Weekly Times Facebook page for neighborhood news and conversation from Los Gatos and beyond.

“We would just go and have a conversation with those same sponsors who have shown a commitment over the years to see if they would still want to sponsor an event that they’ve sponsored for years,” Assistant Town Manager Arn Andrews said at the Feb. 20 council meeting. “The only difference is instead of an outside organization asking them how they would like to participate it would be staff asking them them how they would like to participate.”

During the meeting, it was decided that at least one full-time town employee would be on hand for each concert, overseeing logistics like set-up and tear down.

“We would look to be hiring temporary events staff to be working about a six-hour shift at each concert,” Economic Vitality Manager Monica Renn said.

She added that “we’d be looking to do mixed genres of music for all five concerts.”

The free concerts will be held at the Civic Center at 110 E. Main St. from 5-7 p.m.

The council also agreed to a one-time set aside of $10,000 for a pilot program that would help defray the cost of events put on by nonprofit groups, including: Jazz on the Plazz, the Los Gatos Christmas and Holidays Parade and Fiesta de Artes, as examples.

“This would be a new $10,000,” Town Manager Laurel Prevetti said. “This would be a new way for the town to support events and I don’t know if we would have the budgeting capacity to do it in future years, so it truly would be a pilot.”

Another topic that grabbed the council’s attention was the ongoing high school parking problem.

Now, Stacia Street and Loma Alta Avenue residents have joined the chorus of people who are unhappy with students parking on neighborhood streets. There are more students with cars than there are parking spaces on campus, so for years the kids have been parking on nearby residential streets.

A number of streets, including Jackson and Alpine avenues, have restricted parking. But the restrictions mean the kids simply move to a street that doesn’t have any.

That prompted Mayor Rob Rennie to ask, “Where are we going to push them to next? They’re already taking the parking lot on Park Avenue.”

Several people who live on Stacia Street also weighed in on the issue.

“They park there really early in the morning and sit in their cars and party, and then at lunch they all come back to their cars and the bottom of the street is party central; playing Frisbee, doing doughnuts, loud voices, sometimes they’re rude and obnoxious when we ask them to move to get in our driveway,” resident Deborah Moore said.

Following the public comments, Councilwoman Marcia Jensen asked, “Can we please bring back our comprehensive parking plan for the high school zone?”

That plan was adopted by the council in March 2017, but was rescinded a few weeks later after residents protested. It would have established a 90-minute weekday parking zone between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. on portions of Alpine, Whitney, Bella Vista, Loma Alta and Johnson avenues and Stacia Street.

The council agreed to re-consider the high school parking zone, but has not set a date for that discussion.