Quick Take
Santa Cruz County’s District 2 lays claim to manifold identities: Behind eroding bluffs and expensive beachfront properties sits the more suburban Aptos and its main corridor of Soquel Drive. Those who trek farther inland are greeted by rural tracts of apple orchards and berry farms. The district’s geographic and economic diversity has also placed it at the forefront of some of the county’s most pressing challenges. All this awaits a new county supervisor, with five candidates on the March ballot to replace Zach Friend.
What might a glowing movie montage of Santa Cruz County show? Would the redwoods or a golden-hour coastline dotted with surfers go first?
Surely the county’s wineries and vineyards would make an appearance, as would stretches of berry fields and apple orchards. The million-dollar ocean views from homes perched near the edges of coastal bluffs could transition into frames depicting the county’s busier urban areas, featuring local shops and quality restaurants. The director would have to squeeze in a shot of a farmers market and, for good measure, perhaps a bird’s-eye view of a college campus.
And, to capture all of this, the camera would never have to go beyond the boundaries of the county’s District 2.
Nor would it have to leave District 2 to find most of the county’s most pressing issues. A crumbling coastline and a rising sea have put private property at the water’s edge in a precarious position. Home values are skyrocketing and development of new housing has moved at a glacial pace. Roads and infrastructure have been pummeled by recent storms, and the county is running out of money for repairs. Climate change’s threat of more extreme weather patterns exacerbates all of these issues. And that’s to say nothing of pesticides, farmworker housing and waning telecommunication service.
In the shadow of three-term Supervisor Zach Friend’s retirement at the end of this year, five candidates have thrown their names on the March primary ballot to represent the area as its next supervisor. District 2 has it all, and the next supervisor will have to know it all if they are to properly represent the whole of this diverse region.
If one were to approach Seacliff State Beach, or La Selva, or Rio Del Mar from the Pacific Ocean, they might at first glance recognize the beaches as some of Santa Cruz County’s most precious and revered natural assets. Further scrutiny, however, might also reveal these settings as future battlegrounds for some of the region’s thorniest political and existential fights over the next decade.
Acres and acres of pristine beach, decorated with naked dock pilings shredded by storm surges. Walkways interrupted by ribbons of red caution tape and metal barricades alerting pedestrians to where the man-made infrastructure failed against the encroaching ocean. Tall coastal bluffs support scenic roads and multimillion-dollar homes expected to eventually slip into the ocean as rising tides push the coastline inland.
The coastal changes wrought by global warming do not, in and of themselves, cause much debate in Santa Cruz County. How to deal with those changes, however, is where tensions arise. For the next county supervisor to represent District 2, navigating this divide and charting a decisive path into the unknowns of climate change will be among the chief responsibilities.
In the eyes of state regulators, the question along the coastline for places like Rio Del Mar, Seacliff and La Selva is not so much whether to retreat, but how and when. These queries are made complicated by the loud and organized opposition from those whose properties run right up to the cliff’s edge.
The California Coastal Commission, the überpowerful state agency that oversees land use along the state’s coast, has already adopted a view that coastal communities should let nature work its course. Cities and private property owners should retreat inland instead of trying to armor the bluffs and properties against erosion with concrete slabs and steel rebar.
In 2022, the state rejected Santa Cruz County’s coastal land-use plan, the policy document that sets intentions for future decisions over how coastal land is used and managed. The Coastal Commission rejected the plan because the county did not seem committed to a managed retreat philosophy. The county is now reworking its plan, but under the close watch of the state and with more science to reinforce it.
Last year, the county got nearly $1 million from the state to conduct an in-depth sea-level rise vulnerability study that will analyze Santa Cruz County’s soft spots and where impacts will be greatest. The long-term impacts of sea-level rise have largely been abstract, but this study will turn that abstraction into concrete local examples and dollar signs. The county hired a consultant for the study earlier this month.
The Coastal Property Owners Association represents many of the people who own coastline real estate, including the Rio Del Mar homeowners association embroiled in a yearslong spat over a fence blocking a public walkway. The CPOA has been among the loudest voices pushing against the retreat mindset. Steve Forer, the group’s president, said he wants to see a strategy that recognizes a property owner’s right to protect their land claims.
“Property along the coastline is the most valuable and expensive in the state,” Forer said. “We generate more tax revenue than any of the inland properties and support so much of the county. If we lose those valuable assets along the coastline, where is that money going to come from? This has been a long fight for us.”
The next supervisor will be stepping into an issue moving at geologic pace, with solutions dictated by the state that will likely be opposed by an influential and monied constituency.
However, the coastal housing issues of District 2 are not confined only to the unrelenting erosion of bluffs. Creating more housing opportunities will also be near the top of the agenda for the next supervisor. Some of that work will come in the form of shepherding through projects so the county can meet its state mandate to add more than 4,000 new housing units by 2031, such as the opportunity for more than 400 new units at the 2600 Mar Vista Dr. lots in Aptos, or the redevelopment at the Deer Park Marketplace.
For Rio Del Mar resident Barry Scott, he wants to see the next supervisor do something about vacation rentals.
Scott said he is “surrounded by empty homes” and believes that an earlier acceptance by the state and county to allow short-term rentals along the beach as a way to open up coastal access has “backfired.” Although the county benefits from the hotel tax revenue brought in by short-term rentals, Scott said the community needs a supervisor who is going to prioritize actual housing.
Although it’s where much of the population and energy is focused, District 2 is more than that stretch of Monterey Bay coastline from Capitola down to Pajaro Dunes. The district lays claim to manifold identities: Behind the bluffs and beaches sits the more suburban Aptos and its main corridor of Soquel Drive. Those who trek farther inland are greeted by the yawning, rural tracts of Corralitos, Freedom and Amesti, where apple orchards and berry farms dominate the landscapes and the economy.
Many of the inland issues contrast to those faced along the waterfront, but one problem ties the district together: roads.
In a county with about 600 linear miles of roads to maintain, District 2 lays claim to the most, with 179 of those miles, or 30%. The condition of roads, especially amid the floods and heavy rain seen across the region, has dominated the constituent emails and phone calls received by incumbent Supervisor Zach Friend over the past year.
During a recent afternoon break, a man who identified himself as simply Bud took his rhino-sized white pickup truck down Freedom Boulevard in Corralitos, past the acres of bare apple trees and mustard blossoms that carpeted the orchards, and parked at the Cactus Corner grocery store for some lunch.
Bud, an apple farmer, said he has called Corralitos home for 83 of his 85 years. As he and his walking cane leaned against the ice cream freezer awaiting his sandwich, Bud, sporting a clean, white, flat-brimmed cap and a blue wool sweater, said he was surprised to see his mail-in ballot feature five names running to replace Friend as supervisor.
Bud had research to do, he said, but he knew what he’d be looking for in the next county representative: diligence in fixing the county roads and a commitment to being responsive to constituent calls and emails, something for which he praised Friend.
He also wants the next supervisor to focus on solutions to the countywide issue of homelessness. “Corralitos Road, Eureka Canyon Road, you don’t have to go far to find bad roads out here,” Bud said. “But we really need someone who is going to address this homeless thing. It’s bad.”
Farther inland, Carol Golsch, who lives off Hazel Dell Road which straddles Districts 2 and 4, said her engagement with county government in recent years has been limited to advocating for road repairs – particularly Hazel Dell Road, which suffered critical damage during 2017 storms and remains dangerous today. Lately, however, Golsch has been concerned about a different issue: telecommunications service.
Golsch tried putting her frustrations into words over the telephone, but after nearly a dozen calls back and forth dropped, she reached Lookout by email. The telephone problems have grown only more urgent with the recent news that AT&T wants to end its obligation to provide landline service to rural communities throughout California. Earlier this month, the board of supervisors, led by Friend, submitted a letter to the state objecting to AT&T’s proposal and outlining what kind of impact it would have for residents in areas such as Corralitos where cellphone service is not a dependable alternative to copper landlines.
“I think the two main concerns up in the mountains that unify everyone are road issues and communication,” Golsch said via email. “I think everyone here struggles with poor service in those two areas.”
Capitola Mayor Kristen Brown, Pajaro Valley Unified School District trustee Kim De Serpa, Soquel Creek Water District board president Bruce Jaffe, military veteran and small business owner David Schwartz and mortgage broker Tony Crane have each come forward as candidates for the District 2 seat.
With five people on the primary ballot, it’s unlikely a candidate will earn more than 50% of the popular vote in the March 5 primary, which means the top two candidates will have another eight months to convince voters they have a grasp on the entire district before facing off in the November general election.
Brown said she sees the process of coastal erosion and the need for managed retreat as still an emerging issue. “There will come a time when it’s no longer safe to build or rebuild in the coastal zone,” Brown told an audience Jan. 22 during a candidate forum hosted by Lookout. However, she said raising homes on stilts and building buffers could slow the erosion. When it comes to road infrastructure, Brown said the county needs to evolve beyond a philosophy of reacting only to emergency road repairs and to focus instead on road maintenance in order to minimize emergency fixes.
De Serpa said she believes the hotel taxes collected from the beachfront properties along the coastline are too valuable for the county to adopt a managed-retreat philosophy. “Many of our coastal homes bring in a lot of money because people love to come here and stay here, so I’m not a fan of managed retreat right now,” De Serpa said during the candidate forum. “I think we need to preserve people’s properties and help rebuild our infrastructure along the coastline.”
De Serpa said a lack of road maintenance, historically, is as responsible for the dismal state of county roads as climate change, and that the county will likely have to go out for a bond to finance road fixes.
Jaffe and Crane said they think road management and maintenance decisions should be left up to the public works department; however, the two split on the managed-retreat question. Jaffe was vague in his remarks, saying he supported managed retreat, “but you have to keep the homeowners happy, too.” Crane said he “[doesn’t] know if retreat is the good way to go.”
Schwartz said he doesn’t want the government to stand in the way of private property owners who want to reinforce their homes against coastal erosion. “Do we allow the people to do what they need to save their homes? I think we should,” he said during the candidate forum. Schwartz, echoing Brown and De Serpa, said prioritizing road maintenance would have put the county’s infrastructure in better shape, but the conversation, in his mind, has shifted to road replacement instead of repair.
March 5 is election day. You can watch Lookout’s District 2 candidate forum online, and stay up to date with our election coverage here.
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