Quick Take:
Life for dozens of families has been disrupted since a February landslide knocked out an important Santa Cruz Mountain thoroughfare. During a town hall meeting last week, county officials estimated a permanent fix to, at best, be three years away.
Money remains the driving force behind the county’s ability to fix a landslide and road failure in the Santa Cruz Mountains that has cut off five families and significantly disrupted life for dozens more. However, money is still nowhere to be found, according to local officials who held a virtual town hall with impacted residents late last week.
The meeting offered perhaps the first glimmer of hope, albeit faint, for residents along Mountain Charlie Road in the nearly four months since the road collapsed on Feb. 29. Although local officials delivered some clarity, even the most optimistic view estimates a permanent repair of the road is still three years away.
The county received a verbal greenlight from the Federal Emergency Management Agency last week to include Mountain Charlie Road in a preliminary list of damages from the 2024 federally declared disaster. Although it’s the first step in the $3-4 million repair becoming eligible for federal financing, county officials emphasized FEMA dollars are far from guaranteed.
Matt Machado, director of the county community development and infrastructure department, which oversees county public works, said federal officials will still need to survey Mountain Charlie Road themselves and review a critical geotechnical report about what caused the road failure. Dave Reid, director of the county’s Office of Response, Resiliency and Recovery, told Lookout the county commissioned the report to “help tell our complete story” and tie the landslide to the 2024 storms. The report is still in an early draft stage, and Reid expects to publish it in two weeks.
Even if FEMA agrees that the 2024 disaster caused the landslide, Machado said it could still be three years until the county gets the money to repair the road. That timeline could be significantly extended if the FEMA route turns up dry. Machado said his team is mulling an interim fix but offered no clarity on funding and timing.
County leaders, including chief executive Carlos Palacios, initiated conversations last week with the state about a possible loan to fix the road, which could accelerate the repair. However, Reid, hesitant to overpromise, emphasized those discussions remain in their nascent stages.
“We’re in a world of hurt up here,” Machado told Lookout ahead of the meeting on Thursday. Machado, who doesn’t live in the mountains, was referring to the county’s struggle to come up with any answers for Mountain Charlie.
The road failure, which, as the crow flies, happened about a mile south of the Summit Road exit to the west of Highway 17, has disrupted life for an estimated 65 families in the area, particularly those south of the landslide who use Mountain Charlie Road to access the highway linking Santa Cruz to Silicon Valley. What were often 15-minute trips to and fro have become sometimes hour-and-a-half treks. Children are dropping out of extracurricular activities, residents are skipping doctors appointments, and access to everyday necessities has become strained.
However, the greatest impact has been to the five families who live up a private driveway that connects to Mountain Charlie Road. The driveway, which takes cars from the road up along a steep incline to five ridgetop residences, collapsed under the same landslide that imperiled Mountain Charlie. For these families, the driveway is the only vehicle access point to Mountain Charlie. The impacted residents, who range in age from two to 84, have been essentially cut off from road access for nearly four months.
For all the uncertainty around Mountain Charlie ‘s repair, the solution for the private driveway appears even further out of reach. On Thursday, Machado said even if the county did receive FEMA or emergency state dollars, the county cannot spend public money on fixing the private driveway, which he estimated to cost around $1 million. It’s possible, however, that the road and the driveway, which steps up from Mountain Charlie and rides the incline of a steep ridge, are linked. Public works is still trying to figure out if the public road can be repaired independent of the private driveway.
As summer and wildfire season settles in, residents have become increasingly concerned about their ability to evacuate if a fire sparked south of the slide, since the damage cuts off their access to Highway 17. The road failure has also multiplied southbound traffic on the narrow and winding stretch of Mountain Charlie Road. Added traffic has accelerated the road’s deterioration, and residents said they’re not confident the road — their only exit route — will hold up against three more winter storm seasons.
“I’m just trying to not get killed on the road, that’s not too much to ask,” one resident, who did not identify himself, said during the meeting. That resident said the slide has ruined his plans to sell his house and retire. “The three-to-five-year timeline isn’t sitting well with anyone [here] that I’ve spoken to.”
On Thursday, Machado acknowledged a promise he made to residents that he would send out public works crews to the southern stretch of Mountain Charlie, ahead of the upcoming winter storm season, to reinforce some of the infrastructure and fill potholes and cracks. However, he said his department was working under a 16% budget reduction for road maintenance, thanks to a decision from the county’s board of supervisors earlier in the month. He still vowed that his department would do what they could.
“It’s unfortunate,” Machado said. “But we’re doing our best. We’re going to see less [road] maintenance over the next year because we just have less resources.”
Machado did say that his department and the county are working to find some alternative revenue sources to boost road funding. In early 2025, the county will survey residents to gauge their appetite for either a sales tax increase, a parcel tax, or an area-specific tax that could boost road maintenance revenue at a time when the county is looking at nearly a billion dollars in deferred road and culvert maintenance.
In March, county voters approved a half-cent sales tax increase that was estimated to bring in an additional $10 million per year. However, that money has been held up in court after a Boulder Creek resident sued the county over how it conducted its election.
FOR THE RECORD: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated when the county would begin surveying resident appetites for a tax increase. That work will begin at the start of 2025, not later this year.