In between is a long strip of unincorporated, privately owned land bordered by a drainage canal leased by the Santa Clara County Water District. Property owners have long rented out the rural property to ranchers such as Richard Vargas to graze their cattle. More recently, Santa Teresa residents also use the hillside for hiking, passing across the boundary between the quarter-acre Century Oak Park, which is in the city limits at the base of the hill at the end of Snell Avenue, and the wooded, private acres above. Some blamed hunters or target shooters. Eventually, the meetings resulted in the formation of the Santa Teresa Foothills Preservation Committee, which supports the weapon-free buffer zone petition, but which also wants to establish public control of the foothills land through its purchase by the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority.
Kids go up there in the hills.
Yeah, they're trespassing, but given the fact that there are a lot of homes up there, both at the top of the hill and at the bottom, it seems like a reasonable thing to have the Board of Supervisors pass a restriction on discharge of weapons in that area. He says that the elimination of cattle ranching along the hillside is not the goal of the group. What has been the problem is that because the cattle are on private land, the public has no say over what goes on. So the thought is if it were open-space public land, maybe some cattle grazing could still go on, but maybe it could be restricted to certain areas. Both Hessler and the Ciprians have praised the response of Chief Lansdowne to their concerns.