By Khalida Sarwari
Saratogans might be pleased to learn that they live in not only one of the safest cities in California, but also one of the fastest-growing. Two separate reports recently ranked Saratoga second in the first category and seventh in the latter.
Movoto.com, the blog site of a national online real estate brokerage, named Saratoga as the second safest city in the state, behind only the town of Hillsborough. The ranking is based on 2012 FBI crime statistics for cities with populations of 10,000 or more combined with figures related to murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft and vehicle theft.
The report noted Saratoga’s underlying “feeling of security due to its unquestionable safety, particularly when it comes to a lack of property crimes.”
“Saratoga is a city of over 30,000 residents, so it may be especially impressive to know that in 2012, it saw only 753 property crimes per 100,000 people,” the report states. “Additionally, it saw 30 violent crimes per 100,000, none of which included murder, giving the city a total of just 783 crimes per 100,000 people, and residents just a 1 in 128 chance of being the victim of a crime.”
Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Capt. Ken Binder, who serves as the division commander of the West Valley Patrol substation, attributed the ranking to the efforts of law enforcement, as well as the Saratoga community.
“I have to give credit to the cooperation between the residents and the sheriff’s department and city council,” Binder said. “We ask residents to call in all suspicious behavior, and the residents are diligent in doing that. The sheriff’s office is proactive in policing the neighborhoods and responding to calls in service as well.”
Binder encouraged residents to stay vigilant during the summer months, report anything that seems suspicious, abstain from drinking and driving and to lock all doors and windows before leaving the house. It benefits the entire community when residents look out for each other and are in contact with their neighbors, he said.
Binder also advised residents to take advantage of the sheriff’s office patrol check program. Any resident can call the West Valley station a week up to a few days in advance and request that a deputy keep an eye on their home while they are away on vacation.
Residents who want this service must submit a patrol check request towvadmin@sheriff.sccgov.org with their name, address, phone number, date they’re leaving and returning, emergency contact information, any vehicles they’ll be leaving behind and information about pets.
Binder added, “We ask [residents] to suspend paper delivery and mail delivery so that they are not advertising that they are not home.”
This isn’t the first time that Saratoga has been ranked high on a list of safest cities. Earlier this year, NeighborhoodScout.com named Saratoga as the 12th safest city in the U.S. And in November, SafeWise Security Systems, a home security resource company, named Saratoga first among the 50 safest cities in California with at least 20,000 residents.
To ensure that Saratoga remains a safe city, the city council this month voted to allocate $300,000 to the sheriff’s office for enhancing safety around school campuses and other enforcement measures when school is not in session.
“To uphold the status of safety, we we will continue to invest our resources on public safety and continue our outreaching efforts,” Mayor Emily Lo said. “I think these two are important.”
Lo said the city would continue to offer and support programs such as the spring safety seminar hosted in May by state Sen. Jim Beall at the Saratoga Library. As part of the event, representatives from the sheriff’s office and fire department offered tips on preventing mail theft, home burglaries, scams and fires.
Los Altos was the only other South Bay city on the Movoto top 10 list. Other Bay Area municipalities include the towns of Moraga and Danville. On July 2, Sheriff Laurie Smith is expected to give the Saratoga City Council an award recognizing the city’s safety ranking.
While crime is on the decline in Saratoga, the city experienced a surge in jobs, income levels and population. Saratoga ranked as seventh in a list of fastest-growing cities by consumer advocacy website NerdWallet.
The site, which based its findings on data from the U.S. Census Bureau data that measured population, employment and income growth, noted that Saratoga saw a spike in both employment and income increase in the last few years.
“More than three-quarters of residents work in management, business, science or art, according to census data,” the report states.
San Ramon is the only other Bay Area city in the top 10.
According to the study, Saratoga’s working-age population increased by 0.9 percent between 2009 and 2012, and its median income rise by 7.7 percent over the same period. Employment levels increased by 7.6 percent.
Lo opined that the study emphasizes Saratoga’s standing as a highly educated community “with superb job skills, and [therefore residents] are able to benefit from the economic recovery in the last few years.”
Vice Mayor Howard Miller saw the NerdWallet analysis from a different standpoint. It was the increase in employment and income that put Saratoga on the list, not a growth in population, he said.
“The reason Saratoga is on this list is that we had a large number of professionals that had left the workforce in the great recession. Many of these people returned in the last three years,” Miller said. “Also, as Saratoga residents move out and new residents purchase very expensive homes, those new residents often have dramatically higher income.”
To view the Movoto.com report, visit movoto.com/blog/top-ten/safest-places-in-california. For the Nerdwallet report, visit nerdwallet.com/blog/cities/economics/cities-on-the-rise-california.
