A Lookout View: Monica Martinez for District 5 county supervisor

Editor’s note: A Lookout View is the opinion of our Community Voices opinion section, written by our editorial board, which consists of Community Voices Editor Jody K. Biehl and Lookout Founder Ken Doctor. Our goal is to connect the dots we see in the news and offer a bigger-picture view — all intended to see Santa Cruz County meet the challenges of the day and to shine a light on issues we believe must be on the public agenda. These views are distinct and independent from the work of our newsroom and its reporting.

The race for the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors offers a bubble of hope for those of us concerned about democracy. 

We have four excellent, diverse candidates, all of whom are running on platforms of change. It’s heartening to see at a time when trust in politics is so low and the personal cost of running often discourages good candidates from seeking office.

Our county has tough decisions ahead, as we emerge from two years of historic storms and the devastating CZU wildfire – the effects of which too many still suffer, amid the unending and unnecessarily tangled bureaucracy of the rebuild. We also face a host of ongoing, intractable issues, including lack of affordable housing, homelessness, a crisis in mental health, dilapidated roads and infrastructure and an overcrowded jail. Many also feel distrust of “the system” of staff and planners and of the glacial, opaque way local government seems to function. 

In talking to 22 candidates and measure representatives, we’ve unearthed dozens of questions about our system – about what works and what doesn’t – and about how we can do better as crises continue to hit. What lessons have we taken from the CZU fire, the storms, the rebuild, and what will we do better next time?

We trust this slate of candidates will poke at these issues, and we’ve picked the two we think have the best chances of initiating positive change. We are thrilled that no matter what happens in these races Santa Cruz will have a woman on the board of supervisors, which for the past 12 years has been all-male.

District 5

It would be clichéd to say that the county’s District 5 is at a crossroads. Yes, there are numerous questions about the area’s future, with fundamental questions of water, fire and rebuilding confronting residents. But these questions have loomed for years, and in many areas only widened. Then there are the conditions of the roads themselves, lifelines in a terrain of few alternatives. Now, District 5 will get new leadership on the county board of supervisors for the first time since 2012, as Bruce McPherson retires from his post.

We believe the board needs new vision, creative thinking and budget-crunching know-how and that Monica Martinez is best equipped to deliver. We support her for the District 5 seat on Nov. 5. We believe she brings a readiness to the job that the mid-2020s require.

She would bring, we believe, a strong new focus on how the county spends its money – and increasingly use data to assess the effectiveness of that spending. These are lean budget times, and Martinez is used to the discipline of doing more with less in her long tenure leading social services nonprofits, currently as CEO of Encompass, one of the county’s largest health and human services providers, which she had led for a decade. We are impressed with her clear thinking and her regular ability to ask questions that, once posed, seem obvious, but that no one has asked before – like do we have a list of what went wrong and what we would do better to rebuild if another wildfire hits? 

We also feel the county urgently needs someone with a social services background, since social services account for two-thirds of the county budget. Knowing how services get delivered – what the human side of that delivery entails – is key to looking at the problems our community faces and making choices. We think Martinez is the best suited to do this. 

At the same time, we recognize and applaud the insurgent candidacy of Christopher Bradford. Bradford emerged by a fairly narrow margin into second place out of a vituperative field of four in the March primary. He has tapped into both the angst and the hope of largely Santa Cruz Mountains residents, speaking to their frustrations of county business as usual, and we hope he stays well involved in local politics and issues. He has great charm and speaks movingly and genuinely of listening to residents and rethinking the whys of county bureaucracy.  

Whichever candidate is elected, the county’s most powerful government body will finally witness a diversity of representation more befitting our times. In and of itself, that’s a good thing, as we  grapple with a growing list of interconnected issues.

The list of intractable issues our county faces can be daunting: homelessness and housing, addiction, abuse, crime and recidivism and mental health overall.

Equally, the struggles to address them can seem overwhelming.

We appreciate Martinez’s deep experience with these issues, and recognize that she would bring a unique experience to them. That should both help the next board of five to make better-informed decisions and provide new, ongoing assessments of the work the county and its staffers now do. 

We have also heard a fair amount in our endorsement interviews this fall about local governments’ uneven attempts and resources to gain state, federal and foundation grants to better address these long-term issues. We’d like to see a specific assessment of the county’s ability to seek such funding, in early 2025. Good, and better, decision-making is, of course, core to good government, but so is adding more (targeted) resources to take on these issues.

While these issues do consume so much air, the daily issues of life in the San Lorenzo Valley and Scotts Valley, post-CZU and post-2023 flooding, should remain at the forefront of the work of the District 5 supervisor and the entire board. We know that Martinez deeply understands that and will be an effective advocate for the rebuilding and repair that has been so difficult to keep on track.

In a field of two excellent candidates, we support Martinez for District 5 supervisor.