Lookout’s primary election forums series kicks off Monday with District 2 and 5 County Supervisor candidates

Santa Cruz County voters have much to decide in this year’s primary election and March 5 is quickly approaching.

Among the national-level seats, such as the Republican nominee for president and a successor for the late U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, local voters will have to choose candidates vying for three county supervisor seats and four Santa Cruz City Council seats. Three major tax measures are on the ballot, as Santa Cruz County and the City of Santa Cruz each seek approvals for sales tax hikes, and the Pajaro Valley Healthcare District is looking to pass a bond measure aimed at stabilizing Watsonville Community Hospital. 

Then, voters in the city of Santa Cruz will decide on a citizen-initiated ballot measure that proposes to cap building heights and increase the city’s affordable housing requirements.

On Monday evening at Hotel Paradox in Santa Cruz, Lookout kicks off its primary election forum series with the candidates from the District 2 and District 5 county supervisor races. The seats became competitive midway through last year after incumbents Zach Friend in District 2 and Bruce McPherson in District 5 each announced they would not seek a fourth consecutive term. The seats have drawn the most candidates of any other local races on the ballot.

Capitola Mayor Kristen Brown, Pajaro Valley Unified School District Trustee Kim De Serpa, Soquel Creek Water District Board President Bruce Jaffe, small business owner and veteran David Schwartz and mortgage broker and general contractor Tony Crane have each thrown their hats in the ring to replace Friend. 

District 2 covers a diverse swath of Santa Cruz County, stretching from the agricultural and rural communities of Corralitos and Freedom to the coast in Aptos, Rio Del Mar and La Selva. The district has the most linear road miles in the county at 179, and sits on the front lines of sea level rise, coastal erosion and climate change. 

In District 5, Monica Martinez, chief executive officer of social services nonprofit Encompass, small business owner and community organizer Christopher Bradford, Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District trustee Theresa Ann Bond and local home builder Tom Decker will face off to represent a significant portion of the people in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The district stretches from Summit Road at the northern tip of the county, down along the Highway 9 corridor from Boulder Creek down to Felton, including the San Lorenzo Valley, Scotts Valley and the north part of the city of Santa Cruz.

Natural disasters and infrastructure are also top issues for the people of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Only a fraction of the 911 homes destroyed by the CZU fire in 2020 have been rebuilt. Fixing the glacial pace and bureaucratic hurdles of the CZU rebuild is foundational to Bradford, Martinez and Decker’s candidacy. 

In a report released late last year, Santa Cruz County was ranked the county most vulnerable to landslides in California, and the 15th-most-vulnerable county in the country. During the 2023 storms, landslides shut down parts of Highway 9 for months. Water supply is another concern for District 5 residents, especially after the CZU fire burned crucial infrastructure and caused tens of millions of dollars worth of damage to two major water utilities, the public San Lorenzo Valley Water District and the private Big Basin Water Company. Both utilities are still searching for answers on how to finance their repairs. 

Then, of course, there are the countywide issues, such as the state mandate to permit more than 4,000 new housing units throughout Santa Cruz County by 2031, nearly $1 billion in deferred maintenance to roads, bridges and culverts, a strapped budget and a property tax formula that barely covers the county’s expenses, growing urgency to address homelessness, fentanyl and a deteriorating jail that serves as the county’s largest mental health facility. 

My colleague and Community Voices opinion editor Jody Biehl will be asking questions to the candidates in District 2 and I will be handling District 5. For tickets and information on how to livestream the forum, click here. Hope to see you there!

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