Lookout hosts its final week of primary election forums: Following our successful and informative forums on the District 5 and District 2 county supervisor races on Jan. 22, Lookout will host another two days of primary election forums this week at Santa Cruz’s Hotel Paradox. Tonight at 5:30, my colleague Jody K. Biehl will welcome on stage the District 1 county supervisor candidates, incumbent Manu Koenig and challenger Lani Faulkner. Then, around 7 p.m, I will host a discussion around Measure M, the city of Santa Cruz ballot initiative that proposes requiring a citywide election in order to approve any project seeking to build taller than existing height limits.
Come join us, or you can livestream the event on our Facebook page.
Later this week, on Thursday, Jody and I will be hosting candidate forums for the four Santa Cruz City Council elections. District 1 will feature David Tannaci against Gabriela Trigueiro; District 2 is incumbent Sonja Brunner and challenger Hector Marin; District 3 will be incumbent Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson against challenger and former mayoral candidate Joy Schendledecker; and District 5 will feature two newcomers, as Joe Thompson faces off against Susie O’Hara.
Come get to know the candidates.
Santa Cruz’s building height-centric Measure M has become the measure of Much Debate, Many Questions and Murky Answers.
Wanting to encourage rooftop activation on new buildings, city planners asked the Santa Cruz City Council in October to allow an additional 15 feet in height for certain downtown projects that offered rooftop decks, bars, swimming pools and other top-floor amenities. Staff also wanted to change a rule to allow hotels to exceed the 50-foot height limit and build up to 70 feet along Front Street between Soquel Avenue and Laurel Avenue, the current epicenter of the ongoing downtown renaissance. The hotel change was aimed directly at the Cruz Hotel project, but city staff said, broadly, the changes aligned the city policies to have a “mix of uses … as a means to support economic and cultural activities.”
The city council signed off on these and a handful of other land-use changes in the area. Despite the lack of fanfare, the decision marked a milestone: It could be the last vote the Santa Cruz City Council ever takes on increasing building height within the city. And, in fact, that vote might end up not even counting. Whether that is true will depend not only on how voters treat Measure M this primary election, but how it’s interpreted by the community, lawyers, judges and beyond.
Measure M, which began last summer as a petition from grassroots group Housing for People, asks voters two questions: 1. Whether they support changing City of Santa Cruz law to prohibit increases in allowable building heights for all projects throughout the city without prior voter approval. 2. Whether they support requiring developments with 30 or more housing units to reserve at least 25% of those units (an increase from the existing 20% requirement) as subsidized, affordable housing.
Although the intended spirit of the measure is clear — direct democracy and greater affordability — Measure M remains the Measure of Much Debate, Many Questions and Murky Answers. Measure Maybe, perhaps.
As in, maybe its language could be construed to inadvertently require a citywide vote for more minor code adjustments like fence heights or setback changes; or, maybe no judge would reasonably interpret that as the measure’s intent. Maybe its proposed 25% affordability requirement will be a force for low-income housing; or, maybe it will stymie future development and bring fewer affordable units. Maybe Measure M makes the Downtown Plan Expansion infeasible; or, maybe it’s only a small obstacle to a new vision for the city’s center. Maybe the measure will backfire, and its new restrictions on development will attract the wrath of the state’s housing czars, which could turn Santa Cruz into a developer free-for-all.
There are some aspects to Measure M, however, we know for certain …
What mountain voters want
Toward the northern corners of Santa Cruz County, past downtown Boulder Creek and after Highway 236 peels off from Highway 9, the narrow, winding Redwood Drive becomes Boulder Brook Drive. Beneath a dense canopy of redwood, Douglas fir and oak, Catherine Wilson steps out from her creekside trailer.
Four years ago, meeting Wilson at this location might have meant a tour of her house, or of the adjacent unit she rented to tenants seeking a mountain lifestyle. However, the CZU fire incinerated both structures, and now the youthful 79-year-old lives alone in a tight, blue mobile home that hosts her kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom and bedroom, all within a few square feet. She says neighbors call her “the poster child” of the post-CZU struggle.
“All that could go wrong has gone wrong,” she said. “I’ve been in the trenches for so long.”
The county’s mountain region is shaped by a collection of unincorporated communities that rely on the county as their most local form of government. The sheriff’s office is their police force, and the board of supervisors is their city council. For the first time in 12 years, thanks to the retirement of longtime Supervisor Bruce McPherson, a highly competitive race is underway to represent District 5 on the board of supervisors.
For many in the mountains like Wilson, two ideas hold true, and have risen to top the agenda in the race for District 5 county supervisor. People tend to want the government to stay out of their way; but if they must deal with the government, they want bureaucracy to be more efficient, and feel as though it’s working for them instead of lopping on layer after layer of stifling regulations. In a region where more than 900 homes burned down in the 2020 CZU fire and fewer than 40 have been rebuilt 3½ years later, the people point to the county government as the problem a new supervisor needs to fix …
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Weekly News Diet
Local: The storms that swept through Santa Cruz County over the weekend left tens of thousands of people without electricity, and rattled a region still recovering from last winter’s storms. My colleague Max Chun has that story.
Golden State: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is looking into allegations that the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority and Caltrans misled the federal agency about the harm that a long-planned Interstate 15 widening project might inflict upon the people and environment around it. Rachel Uranga from the Los Angeles Times dives into this controversial plan to relieve traffic along one of the state’s most congested freeways.
Global: French farmers are in turmoil, and hundreds are descending on Paris with tractors and bales of hay to block traffic and bring attention to their demands for fair wages and government protections. The loud demonstration, which the farmers unions are calling a siege, is reminiscent of the yellow vest protests in 2018 and the Canadian convoy of truck drivers in 2022. As the New York Times reports, this is the first real test for freshly minted French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
One Great Read
How to eat a tire in a year, by David Sedaris for the New Yorker
Do you think you could eat a semi-truck tire if you had a year? How would you do it? Humorist David Sedaris, among the dying breed of writers who made their careers through the personal essay, believes strategy in consuming 110 pounds of rubber could help determine who survives in a hypothetical population purge.
Of course, tire-eating is only a small facet of Sedaris’s latest piece, in which he spends most of his time meditating on lifelong friendship, what it requires and what it provides. I’m reminded of something I heard recently, about how, if you want lifelong friends, you’d better learn how to forgive. Capital-F forgiveness is foundational to Sedaris’s lifelong relationship with his friend Dawn, but the glue between them is really in smaller graces offered to one another.
Sedaris will actually be coming to the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium for a reading May 6. I hope to see you there.