South Bay cities face drastic increase in cost for contracting police services from county

A battle is brewing in the South Bay as three cities get slapped with a huge bill for police services.

The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department provides services to Saratoga, Cupertino and Los Altos Hills and has done so since the 1950s. But the county says the cost for public safety has skyrocketed, and it needs to charge roughly 35% more to come out even.

The mayors of the three cities, though, say the math isn't quite adding up.

Saratoga Mayor Chuck Page got involved in city politics in 2006 when he was first elected to the city council. He said public safety has always been at the top of his list.

"We knew that we were going to have an increase," Mayor Page said. "They had sent us a letter saying that we were going to, and we should anticipate a larger increase than normal, but five times is a bit more than we expected."

The county responded by saying that is just the cost of doing business in 2026.

"This is only about cost recovery," James Williams, the Santa Clara County Executive, said. "It's about cost recovery for the direct deputies on the ground, but also the investigations and records and other related services that inherently are part of delivering law enforcement to these communities."

The dispute isn't about the price tag of the deputies patrolling the streets but the overhead costs of the behind-the-scenes support staff. Mayor Page said he wants to get a clear picture of what the city is on the hook for versus what the county is using before the city even thinks about making cuts to other areas of their budget.

"If we had to cut 10%, what would we do?" Mayor Page asked. "This is not somewhere anybody wants to go, but we have to be ready to make some changes if we have to."

Saratoga said it's looking at alternatives such as contracting with another nearby agency. Creating its own department may be financially impossible.

Santa Clara County Sheriff Robert Jonsen said the cost of doing business has dramatically changed since the last time they negotiated a contract in 2014.

"It is a significant increase," Sheriff Robert Jonsen said. "It has become very expensive. We've upgraded a lot of systems. We've incorporated a lot of technology and into law enforcement that just wasn't there 10 years ago."

The county and the cities have until June 30 to come to some sort of agreement. Mayor Page is hopeful they can come up with a deal to keep their communities safe.

"You can't change law enforcement in six months, but that's why we got to continue to work with them, and everybody's got to work together to make this right," Mayor Page said.