Dispute over seniors center helps sink Live Oak School District workforce housing bond 

Three weeks after Election Day, Live Oak School District’s $45 million bond measure to build workforce housing appears headed for failure, partially the victim of a longstanding dispute with local seniors organizations that lease space in a district-owned building, school officials say.

As of Monday, Live Oak’s Measure N had garnered less than 48% approval, below the 55% needed to pass. The Santa Cruz County Clerk’s office was set to issue another update on the vote count Tuesday afternoon.

Superintendent Pat Sánchez said the district wasn’t expecting the remaining votes to tip the measure over the threshold.  “I think we’ve accepted that we didn’t pass the measure,” he said on Monday. “I think it didn’t pass. It was very close.” 

Measure N appears to be the only bond measure to fail among the seven placed on the ballot by local school districts.

Sánchez thinks some voters might have been turned off by seeing a large number of bond measures on the ballot this year — including the district’s successful $44 million bond, Measure H, in March. But he believes the biggest factor in the loss was messaging from local seniors groups that school officials planned to use the funds to demolish a district-owned seniors center in order to build its housing project. 

“There were a couple of groups that had the wrong information, that if [the bond] would have passed, we would have bulldozed the senior center and built teacher housing, which was not the case,” he said. 

For years, Live Oak School District officials have talked about converting a district-owned property at 1777 Capitola Rd. into a workforce housing development. The building, known as the Live Oak Senior Center, has long been rented by two local senior service organizations, Community Bridges and Senior Network Services. The district purchased the property in 2004 using funds from Measure E, a $14.5 million bond measure.

The district issued its first eviction notice to the two seniors organizations in 2022. Over the past year, however, the district began searching for alternate properties for the planned workforce housing project. It’s now looking to build the development on district-owned vacant land elsewhere. School officials have continued to renegotiate leases with the seniors organizations to remain at the Capitola Road site. Community Bridges, which runs its Meals on Wheels program at the senior center, recently signed a new two-year lease. 

Sánchez, who took over as superintendent in July, said the district hasn’t planned to demolish the 1777 Capitola Rd. property for a long time. But some organizations have continued to dispute that.

Clay Kempf, executive director of the Seniors Council, told Lookout that he and representatives from Senior Network Services helped organize rallies against Measure N in the weeks leading up to the election. They said they were concerned that if the measure passed, the organizations would be displaced by the workforce housing project.  

“It’s unfortunate that a collaborative approach couldn’t have been created,” Kempf told Lookout. “Senior programs offered many ways to partner to no avail, even offering to buy the property outright. The district wouldn’t commit to anything beyond asking us to trust them and hope for the best outcome.”

The Seniors Council isn’t a tenant at the building but allocates some state and federal funding to Senior Network Services and Community Bridges and works closely with the organizations. 

Community Bridges spokesperson Tony Nuñez said he had “mixed feelings” about the measure’s apparent failure. He said he’s not sure how much the dispute with the seniors organizations caused the loss, adding that it could also be voter fatigue from seeing multiple bond measures. 

Nuñez added that the organizations are still interested in working out longer lease agreements to remain at the Capitola Road site, or buying the property from the district. 

“We’re still where we were at about four, five, six months ago, where we’re still very interested in purchasing the property,” he said. “They’re still facing difficult financial challenges, and we would like to remain there.” 

Jeremy Powell, a former president of the Live Oak teachers union, said he hopes the superintendent can “mend some fences” with local organizations in the next year or so. 

“In order for a bond to pass in a community, you have to have all the constituents on board, especially the senior citizens as they are the ones that really vote,” he said. “It felt like this demographic felt antagonized by the district over the senior center, and the measure was doomed. Especially when many were actually protesting the measure in public during rush hour.”

Next steps

Considering the loss of Measure N, Sánchez said the district’s plans to build workforce housing have been delayed. Sánchez said the district will first have to “unpack the results of this election” before moving forward. But it will likely go back to voters with another bond in the future.  

In the meantime, the district is moving on with how to spend the Measure H funding that voters approved in March. Sánchez said some of that money will go toward moving the district offices – currently located adjacent to Green Acres Elementary School – to the Live Oak Senior Center site.  

It plans to move Ocean Alternative school to the site of the current district offices. Ocean Alternative serves its approximately 80 students in five portables adjacent to the district offices at Green Acres Elementary. He said the portables are “beyond their useful life” and will be demolished.

It will cost the district about $1.2 million to relocate Ocean Alternative and make the needed adjustments to the building, which was built originally to house classrooms. Moving the district offices to the senior center and making the needed improvements to the buildings will cost the district about another $800,000.

Sánchez said he hopes the district office will be moved into the senior center by the summer. 

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