Quick Take
Last week, local governments took some big votes they had pushed off to the final meetings of the year, a state agency made an unprecedented decision in a decades-old Santa Cruz County controversy, and the county’s Democratic machine picked the people and measures it wants to see succeed in the March 5 primary.
The holidays are often a rush, and even the public sector is guilty of trying to fit everything in by the end of the year.
Last week, local governments in Santa Cruz County took some big votes that had been pushed off to the final meetings of the year, a state agency made an unprecedented decision in a decades-old controversy, and the county’s Democratic machine picked the people and measures it wants to see succeed in the March 5 primary.
Barring any specially called meetings, which we could see in the city of Santa Cruz related to calls for an Israel-Hamas cease-fire resolution, last week marked the final votes of the year for these local elected governments.
Here’s to a productive 2024.
The surveillance state comes to town
Every motor vehicle that enters the city of Santa Cruz will have its license plate scanned and data collected to analyze whether the vehicle is attached to an active crime or public safety issue, such as a Silver Alert.
The Santa Cruz Police Department successfully lobbied the city council to approve a purchase of the automatic license plate reader technology in a 5-2 vote Tuesday. Mayor Fred Keeley and Councilmember Sandy Brown voted against bringing the surveillance technology into the city.
“I’m still not over the Patriot Act or the reauthorization of the Patriot Act and I mean that seriously,” Keeley told Police Chief Bernie Escalante, referring to the 2001 legislation that gave the federal government broader surveillance power. “Under the guise of an attack on our country, we gave up enormous civil and personal rights. I totally trust you, it’s not about you. For me, this is a line.”
After the city council postponed the Dec. 5 vote on the license plate readers, the city and police department tightened up its proposed policy in several areas. Among them, where the policy once said the private company handling the technology, Flock Safety, should keep the data from at least one year, the new language called for a maximum of 30 days. After 30 days, the data will be trashed unless it is being used as evidence in an active court case.
Democratic machine makes its March Madness picks
The Santa Cruz County Democratic Central Committee, the county arm of the statewide Democratic Party, wants city of Santa Cruz voters to reject Measure M – the ballot question that asks whether exceptionally tall development proposals should first be subject to a popular vote election before they can pull permits and break ground on construction.
The decision by the local Democratic establishment to push back against a measure many see as anti-growth was among the headlines of the Democratic Central Committee’s endorsement panel Wednesday. For county supervisor candidates, the committee endorsed Lani Faulkner for District 1 and Monica Martinez for District 5, but could not come to consensus on District 2, where Capitola Vice Mayor Kristen Brown and Pajaro Valley Unified School District trustee Kim De Serpa are facing off in a field that includes small business owner David Schwartz, Anthony Crane and Soquel Creek Water District board president Bruce Jaffe.
For the Santa Cruz City Council, the DCC picked UC Santa Cruz student Joe Thompson in District 5 (Thompson helped organize the first Starbucks union in the state) and incumbent Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson in District 3. In the District 1 race between David Tannaci, who works in the city’s water department, and Gabriela Trigueiro, executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters Santa Cruz County, the committee did not reach a consensus, despite Tannaci being the only one of the candidates to attend the panel and answer committee questions. Midway through the evening, one of the panel moderators read a text she had received from Trigueiro: “Please let folks know that I was headed to the event but [I was] a passenger in a collision and I am receiving care now. … I express my apology for not being able to join you this evening at the event. I’m in a neck brace.”
Left out of the endorsement panel completely was the District 2 City Council race between incumbent Sonja Brunner and Hector Marin, who ran in the District 4 council race last year. According to DCC chair Andrew Goldenkranz, Brunner did not seek the committee’s endorsement and Marin did not turn in his paperwork on time.
Pump track spat pipes down
A mountain-bike training track, known as a pump track, will be coming to Felton Covered Bridge County Park after all. On Tuesday, the county’s board of supervisors voted unanimously to approve the project, which had created a monthslong and impassioned rift in the small Santa Cruz Mountains community.
For opponents, myriad problems mired the proposal: the track would be an eyesore and attract a younger, more rowdy demographic; the public process of debating the project was tilted in favor of the track, and the cement infrastructure could disrupt stormwater runoff and create flooding.
For proponents, who seemed to boast the full strength of the mountains’ mountain biking community, the message was simple: Felton needs more recreational opportunities for its youth. It was a message that resonated with District 3 Supervisor Justin Cummings, who called this out ahead of his vote approving the project.
“I know that change in our community is really difficult, but as someone who grew up in a neighborhood where we lacked opportunities for youth that were healthy outdoor activities, a lot of kids in the community started getting into very unhealthy and unsafe activities,” Cummings said. “We can provide youth in our community with more opportunities to be in environments where they’re visible, where they have access to public safety if they get hurt. These are things we can do to help.”
Aptos homeowners association must pay the state nearly $5M, in a lump sum, for public access violations
The Rio Del Mar Beach Island Homeowners Association lost its decadeslong dispute with the California Coastal Commission on Thursday over a nearly 800-foot coastal pedestrian pathway. The group will now have to pay a state fine of unprecedented size in Santa Cruz County.
The HOA argued that the path was the private property of the 27 beachfront townhomes along Beach Drive in Aptos. In October, a Santa Cruz County judge agreed and ruled in its favor. However, the California Coastal Commission, the powerful state agency that oversees land use along the California coast, said whether the path was private property did not matter. According to the commission, in 1980, the HOA requested a development permit from the state agency to rebuild a retaining wall and the walking path that was damaged by storms. The commission said sure, as long as the homeowners opened the walking path to the public, a condition that was honored until 1982, when the HOA began putting up fences to wall off public pedestrians.
After the Coastal Commission’s unanimous decision to levy a $4.8 million penalty against the HOA and a separate $500,000 penalty against two specific homeowners, attorney John Erskine of San Francisco-based Nossaman LLP told media that the HOA would likely sue the state.
Coastal Commission staffer Lisa Haage told Lookout that, typically, the state would work out a payment plan for such a large penalty; however, the HOA declined to settle, so the state will expect the $4.8 million in a lump-sum payment. The Coastal Commission has the ability to place liens on the properties, and to work with the attorney general’s office to ensure the fine is paid.
Publicly hired labor gets an examination
How the county and City of Santa Cruz get infrastructure projects done is getting another look at both levels of government. The City of Santa Cruz voted to form a subcommittee to consider the feasibility of a workforce labor agreement with the Monterey/Santa Cruz Building & Construction Trades Council. The policy is sought by labor unions, who say it will help strengthen local labor’s participation in construction projects and ensure living wages. Mayor Fred Keeley and City Councilmembers Martine Watkins and Scott Newsome will explore the policy and come back in April with their findings.
At the county level, supervisors voted to review the process by which the county hires contractors for public projects after seeing a rise in issues with contractors, from work stoppages and delays to hiring practices. Led by Supervisors Manu Koenig and Felipe Hernandez, the county will reconsider the definition of “lowest responsible bidder” — the lens through which public entities view contract proposals.
A focus for Koenig and Hernandez is to strengthen local hiring; project labor agreements might be the avenue to achieve that. County staff will come back to the board in late February with a list of projects that could benefit from a project labor agreement. Similar to the city, project labor agreements will be considered as a way to strengthen local hiring.
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FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Bruce Jaffe as a former member of the Soquel Creek Water District board. He is a current board member and board president.
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