At Lookout, we believe in community betterment. While we do that in lots of ways, including community forums, deep election coverage and Lookout Listens sessions, the No. 1 way we show community impact is through our reporting. Our reporting aims to keep decision-makers of all kinds accountable. Over our four years of publishing, we’ve been able to increasingly do that – and we have plans to do more of it over the next year ahead.
Here is just a sampling of our impactful stories, and a link to our online donation page, where you can help grow our accountability reporting resources. In each of these stories, the public saw action, driven by good community journalism.
Jump to: Government / UC Santa Cruz / K-12 Education / Love / Small Business / Opinion
Government
County ends secret meetings to nominate people to boards and commissions and overturns Coastal Commission nomination.
Politics and Policy Correspondent Christopher Neely discovered local officials were choosing their nominees for statewide boards and commissions in secret meetings at local restaurants, a violation of the state’s open meeting laws. His coverage helped overturn the county’s nominations for the California Coastal Commission and led to County Supervisor Justin Cummings, who had previously been excluded from the private nomination meetings, being picked to join the powerful state land-use agency. Cummings was named the commission’s chair in 2024.
Santa Cruz City Council votes to restrict rent hikes at St. George — and other buildings like it in the city. The City of Santa Cruz voted to extend certain rent control provisions to all government-assisted housing after our coverage of affordable housing/homelessness issues involved.
A tip from residents led Max Chun to expose a developer’s plans to dramatically raise rents at a low-income apartment complex after a longstanding rent control agreement with the City of Santa Cruz expired. The story sparked quick action: the Santa Cruz City Council passed an ordinance protecting tenants from excessive rent hikes in government-assisted housing.
UC Santa Cruz
UCSC updates maintenance system, offers rent credit over Family Student Housing concerns, due to mold in family student housing.
Education correspondent Hillary Ojeda’s reporting on mold problems and maintenance issues at UC Santa Cruz’s family housing got results: The university offered rent credits and promised a more streamlined maintenance process.
UCSC changing its Slug Crossing commencement back to its original format after outcry
In June 2023, UCSC decided to make pandemic-era changes to its graduation ceremony permanent. Instead of a traditional communal gathering, students would be given 15-minute time slots to accept their degrees, a change school officials said was necessary because of parking problems on campus. Ojeda’s coverage of student backlash forced a return to the traditional ceremony.
K-12 Education
Superintendent Daisy Morales at Live Oak School District resigned because of concerns raised in our reporting
Ojeda’s reporting on Live Oak School District’s budget crisis, an exodus of senior officials and plummeting morale led to the district superintendent’s resignation.
Love
His home was devastated by winter storms, she offered to help. Now, they’re engaged. Lompico storms love story.
In a heartwarming twist from Lookout’s Pulitzer-winning storm coverage, Ojeda’s story about Benjamin Short’s landslide-damaged home in the Santa Cruz Mountains led to more than repairs – it connected him with neighbor Shannon Iliescu, now his fiancée.
Small Business & Food
Swenson agrees to a new lease with the Live Oak farmers market after our reporting.
Food & Drink Correspondent Lily Belli’s reporting kept the Live Oak farmers market in its longtime home when its landlord, a large property developer, backed down from dramatic rent hikes and relocation plans.
Belli chronicled a small winemaker’s battle to open a tiny tasting room on the Westside of Santa Cruz. It took winemaker Megan Bell 483 days to get permits from the city and open her wine cubby – a long and frustrating process that nearly bankrupted her business. After the story ran, city officials reached out to Bell to ask for her feedback on how to improve their lengthy permitting process.
Community Voices / Opinion
The United States Coast Guard changed its mind about removing a number of water buoys – including local landmark Mile Buoy – and replacing them with virtual navigation aids.
Environmental activist Dan Haifley wrote an op-ed against the removal of the buoys. His piece helped garner community support to save Mile Buoy, which has been in place since 1900 and both serves as an iconic part of the Santa Cruz landscape and helps boats and kayakers visually navigate the Monterey Bay and avoid collisions. “The buoy,” he wrote, “denotes a safe path to port.”
Taking on bureaucracy and fighting for fire rebuilds
The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors began to rethink the bureaucratic impediments to rebuilding homes after the 2020 CZU fires. Of 911 homes lost, only 24 had been
rebuilt as of February 2023. Retired firefighter Dan DeLong wrote about the needless red tape many of his neighbors face in rebuilding and about the egregiously complicated and expensive demands of the county – including expensive septic requirements and environmental health ordinances misapplied to fire rebuilds. He hailed an environmental health specialist who came out of retirement to help 50 people fight unnecessary holdups and right the system.
Fighting for social injustice in county jail
Crystal Ross, who spent close to a decade incarcerated, wrote about the conditions she faced in the county jail and helped open discussions about treatment and mental health issues in our jail.
The Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department reopened Blaine Street, a minimum security women’s jail, which had been closed since COVID-19 after our editorial. Advocates used our editorial to pressure the board of supervisors into pushing the sheriff to reopen the facility. The sheriff had insisted staffing issues kept the facility, which offered better living conditions and access to educational opportunities for women, closed.
In-person contact visits, which allowed incarcerated men and women to see, touch and hug their children, had not happened for four years – since the start of COVID-19. These visits returned to our women’s minimum-security jail after our editorial. Visits are slated to return to the men’s minimum-security jail soon.
UCSC and Metro Santa Cruz began to rethink its bus fleet after third-year student Sebastián Valdez documented the aging fleet, drivers’ complaints and student safety fears.
UCSC student and Black Lives Matter advocate Faith Brown called out a local nightclub for a racist dress code policy. The club said it didn’t enforce the policy, but after the piece ran, the club removed the posted dress code policy.
UCSC graduate student Amanda Quirk called out UCSC for its lack of accessibility. The campus made some updates to its provisions for accessible access to graduations and other campus events.