SAN JOSE — The city has sent a letter asking the California Historical Resources Commission to reconsider its recent decision to place the Willow Glen Trestle on the state historic register, which could save it from demolition.

The letter, written by city manager Norberto Duenas, argues that state commissioners used faulty information in determining the 95-year-old wooden railroad bridge should be designated a historic structure.

Duenas wrote that the commission should “reverse or alter its prior determination because there is a significant error in the facts, information, and analysis on which the decision was based.”

At the commission’s May 10 hearing in Pasadena, representatives from the city and from a group called Friends of the Willow Glen Trestle presented arguments for and against saving the bridge.

The Friends group last year also had sought to place the bridge on the National Register of Historic Places, but its application was returned after a federal historian declared the trestle’s candidacy for such status wasn’t “sufficiently justified” and its historic significance was “blown out of proportion.”

Both sides have been locked in a battle the past four years over the bridge’s fate and the role it played in shaping the Willow Glen community. The Friends group insists that because of the trestle’s historic ties to the region’s agricultural past the city should spend an estimated $2 million restoring it.

But the city contends the bridge holds no historical significance and is standing in its way of completing the Los Gatos Creek Trail connection. San Jose wants to tear down the trestle and replace it with a $1 million custom-built prefabricated steel bridge that has been sitting in storage pending a legal resolution to the dispute.

Both sides are awaiting a ruling from Santa Clara County Superior Court on whether there is substantial evidence to declare the trestle historic.

Despite acknowledging the “fuzzy” difference of criteria between state and federal historic registers, the state commission erred because it “ultimately relied on the importance of the Willow Glen Trestle to the residents that are advocating for its preservation,” Duenas said.

Although a historical resource “must be significant at the local, state or national level,” Duenas said that criteria shouldn’t apply to neighborhoods.

“Lowering the threshold for historic significance to the level of a neighborhood interest makes the ‘local’ significance relative and subjective,” he said. “Lowering the threshold so low effectively means the application of no standard, and that any special interest within a city would be able to claim listing on the register, even if the events were not historically significant to the city.”

The city manager also took issue with where the commission met, saying, “There is a public interest in conducting the hearing at a location that would facilitate the greatest community participation.”

San Jose residents who could not attend the hearing in Pasadena “should have been afforded the opportunity to speak before the commission,” Duenas said.

That opportunity will present itself when the commission holds its next hearing in San Rafael on July 28.

A new decision by the commission “would be a waste of everyone’s time and is an embarrassment to the city,” Friends member Larry Ames said in a statement.

Ames said he thinks the council should instead “reconsider its past decision in light of the recent historic determination.”

District 9 Councilman Donald Rocha last week tried to persuade the city’s Rules and Open Government Committee to bring the matter to a council vote in August. The committee unanimously ruled against doing so until after the court issues its ruling next month.