Are the needs of Watsonville Community Hospital obvious enough to overcome ‘two-thirds and apathy’?
Less than two years ago, Watsonville Community Hospital, entering bankruptcy under its private ownership, stood at the edge of financial ruin. The failure of a critical safety net that accepts 33,000 emergency room visits per year would have not only caused pain to local residents, but it would have spread exponentially more pressure across the region’s health care system.
The hospital needed a Hercules, and a Hercules it received. Words such as heroic and miraculous are often employed when describing the community-led effort to form a governance structure, raise $64 million, rescue the hospital from bankruptcy and return it to public ownership. For those involved, the hospital saga felt like the center of gravity: media across the Central Coast covered it step by step. And at a time when rural community hospitals are facing similar straits, legislators from up and down California look upon the Watsonville Community Hospital story as a model for what can go right.
It’s an epic of possibility and momentum that local leaders hoped would galvanize voters to support Measure N, the proposed property tax to raise $116 million for the hospital. Yet, it’s a story that, today, many voters are surprised to hear, creating a major hurdle for the campaign as it approaches Tuesday’s vote.
“For a lot of people, this campaign has been the first point of contact from the hospital in the last 10 years,” Tony Nuñez, head of campaign communications and a director on the Pajaro Valley Health Care District board, said. “So they’re like, ‘We didn’t even know the hospital was going to go out of business; I didn’t even know you were going to shut down.’”
This communication void is but one dimension of the steep, uphill climb in securing support for this new tax. The population base of the Pajaro Valley Health Care District, which stretches from Pajaro in Monterey County to just north of Rio Del Mar, encompasses some of the lowest-income neighborhoods of Santa Cruz County and northern Monterey County, with many seniors and those on fixed incomes. It’s also an area with exceptionally low voter turnout, and a March primary election with little else on the ballot is unlikely to draw big numbers to the polls.
Looming over all of this is the requirement that, as a new tax, it must receive support from two-thirds of voters, 66.7%, in order to pass.
“The challenge is people not knowing, not caring, not being informed about this stuff,” Nuñez said. “Two-thirds and apathy: That’s really tough.”
A campaign finance two-fer
To kick off last week, we published an analysis of who was making the largest campaign donations in this primary cycle. (That story required a few fixes to double-counted donations in the city of Santa Cruz races.) To close out the week, we analyzed the geography of campaign donations in the three county supervisor elections, as well as which groups and organizations were spending the most on independent advertising for candidates.
Tracking the flow of money by geography in the supervisor races called for some admittedly nifty maps and charts, and revealed notable trends. Both District 1 candidates, incumbent Manu Koenig and Lani Faulkner, have heavily relied on their district’s population base — the Soquel-Live Oak-Twin Lakes area — for campaign money. More of Koenig’s war chest comes from outside the county, while Faulkner has benefited much from donations the the 95060 ZIP code, a primarily city of Santa Cruz area.
What do the maps and charts show about the crowded District 2 and District 5 races?
In our analysis of independent spending, Service Employees International Union Local 521, which represents more than 50,000 public, nonprofit and private-sector workers in the Bay Area and Central Valley, has again led the way in advertising spending. Santa Cruz Together, the politically influential group that formed to fight a rent control measure in 2018, has also been active in independent spending.
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Looking Back on Our Primary Election Coverage
Since the start of the year, my colleagues and I have prioritized coverage of the primary election cycle. We’ve been out in the community chasing down answers and following the myriad threads and impacts of this year’s ballot. Lookout decided to make our election coverage free, as independent reportage about those seeking power is as critical a community service as any that a news outlet can provide. Here are some of our best stories over the past couple months.
Assemblymember Gail Pellerin’s dalliance with Big Oil: A Los Angeles Times investigation found Gail Pellerin, who represents a large swath of Santa Cruz County in the state Assembly, had financial ties to Big Oil, in direct contradiction with her environmentalist platform and her votes as a state legislator. Pellerin declined Lookout’s request for comment beyond a quick statement she provided to the L.A. Times, which explained that the investments were made by her late husband, and she was working to divest from the companies (which she did at the beginning of the year). Although they were surprised, local politicos said Pellerin had not lost any of their trust.
Rural and rugged District 5 wants the government to both support them and leave them alone: The possibility of natural disaster hangs over every season in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And the painfully slow recovery from recent disasters is front of mind for voters as they prepare to choose who next to represent them on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors.
Lookout’s election forums bring clarity to county and city races: Between Jan. 22 and Feb. 8, Lookout held eight forums on primary races and ballot questions. At the county level, District 5 candidates spoke about their plans to speed up the CZU wildfire recovery; District 2 candidates took their positions on how to manage a crumbling coastline; the two candidates battling for District 1 worked to differentiate themselves from one another. The debate over Santa Cruz’s Measure M took a heated turn, and six of the eight candidates fighting for four Santa Cruz City Council races discussed what they would do with their votes on the city’s dais.
The next District 2 supervisor will need knowledge from the coastline to the apple orchards: District 2, which stretches from Aptos down to Pajaro Dunes and out to Corralitos and Freedom, sits as a microcosm of the county’s most valuable assets and its thorniest issues. Voters in District 2 want many things, but where should the next supervisor begin?
The Coastal Rail Trail still a live wire in District 1 supervisor race: The ghost of 2022’s Measure D, in which the community overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to turn away from its vision of passenger rail, has hung over the District 1 supervisor race since Faulkner threw her name in the hat last year. Faulkner helped lead the opposition to Measure D; Koenig’s former employer, Greenway, led the support. Despite the community’s firm support for rail, some remain skeptical that Koenig can be the champion the nascent project needs, especially as the plans begin ramping up.
Some proper fact-checking on Measure M: I’m not sure any issue this election cycle has produced such heated debate as the city of Santa Cruz’s Measure M, the proposal to limit the city council’s land use authority by first requiring a citywide vote before any new buildings can exceed existing height limits. In February, I wrote a piece about the collective uncertainty around exactly how Measure M will impact the city’s development, and the possibility of unintended consequences. Last week, my colleague Max Chun fact-checked a new claim, supported by the Santa Cruz Warriors, that none of the buildings proposed for the downtown expansion plan will exceed eight stories.
Prop 1’s “tough call”: Gov. Gavin Newsom cleared the state’s part of the ballot in order to pave the way for Proposition 1, a murky proposal that asks voters to authorize $6.38 billion to build mental health and substance abuse treatment facilities, as well as housing for the homeless. Max Chun chipped away at the iceberg that is this monumental proposition.
A trio of school districts and the money they seek: Live Oak School District is asking for $44 million in the wake of planned layoffs to help maintain its school’s aging facilities. Pacific Elementary School District is seeking nearly $2 million across two bond measures to modernize classrooms and other infrastructure. Happy Valley Elementary School District wants nearly a half-million dollars to support the school’s art and music programs, as well retain teachers. Of course, there is much more to this story, and my colleague Hillary Ojeda has all the background.
An Election-Focused Weekly News Diet
Local: Through Measure N, Watsonville Community Hospital hopes to raise $116 million so it can buy the land underneath the hospital, update its aging equipment and expand what it can offer to its patients. Hillary Ojeda takes us inside the hospital to show us exactly what the hospital needs and how the community feels about the beleaguered facility and the proposed tax to help fund it.
Golden State: The most intriguing statewide election in this primary cycle might be the race for U.S. Senate, a five-candidate race that is sure to tell us where California Democrats stand. Before the polls open Tuesday, read CalMatters’ primer on the personalities and what they are promising Californians.
National: The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Colorado and other states could not keep Donald Trump off the ballot in November under a constitutional provision of the 14th Amendment, which says insurrectionists cannot hold office. None of the justices took a position on whether Trump participated in an insurrection. The New York Times reporting team has that story.
One Great Read
Small businesses help to build upon the culture of a place. Locally owned shops tell us something about the spirit of a city, and through them we witness the ideas and creativity of our community reflected back to us. A new investigation published by Lookout food writer Lily Belli finds that the City of Santa Cruz’s permitting bureaucracy has become so thorny that it’s becoming more difficult for local entrepreneurs to make it out the other end.
Lily tells this comprehensive story through Megan Bell, a winemaker with local standout Margin Wines, who had to suffer through 483 days of back-and-forth with the city in order to open a 120-square-foot tasting room in Santa Cruz’s Westside. Bell sees the city’s permit system as stacked against small business owners. She is not alone.