Editor’s note: Due to technical difficulties, this newsletter is coming to you a day later than usual.
No money and no answers for Santa Cruz County as it struggles through its budget process
After a surprise atmospheric river tore through the Central Coast on New Year’s Eve 2022, evacuating hundreds as rivers and mud flowed into neighborhoods, the Santa Cruz County government responded with emergency shelters, first responders and rapid road repair. That storm would be the opening salvo in a cataclysmic series of disasters to injure the county over a three-month span.
Cataclysmic, and expensive. The county is still digging out from under the debt imposed by that winter. The emergency response and repairs for just that first storm cost the county $1.6 million out of its emergency fund, according to budget director Marcus Pimentel.
Amid what some have called unprecedented financial pressures facing the county, that same contingency fund used for emergency response — typically flush with more than $7 million — will be squeezed to only $1.5 million, less than the cost of only one storm in 2023. That’s far from the only shortcoming.
Hazel Dell Road in Corralitos had a significant slip-out during the March 2023 storms. The cost: $460,000. The county’s money to fix it: $0.
Over on Capitola Road near Live Oak, the county agricultural commissioner’s office not only has a leaky roof, but the land under the building’s back corner is sliding, putting the entire structure at risk. The county has no money to fix it. Necessary improvements to the county jail and a $30 million upgrade to the outdated 911 emergency communication infrastructure are just some of the other examples facing the same fate.
“During the Great Recession, governments were talking about how they could avoid spending money to replace a firehose,” Pimentel told Lookout. “That’s a place you never want to be. The conversations we’re having now are worse than that. The fact that a building is slipping and we can’t fix it is wild.”
Of Note
A cannabis miss: Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley’s proposal Tuesday for a 45-day emergency moratorium on new cannabis business permits came with one eye on the particularly hot dispute surrounding an upcoming hearing over a dispensary application on Mission Street.
Yet, after criticism, and questioning from city councilmembers and the business community, the mayor withdrew, resetting the stage for a May 14 city council decision over whether The Hook Outlet can open its shop in the old Emily’s Bakery building.
No way to one-way on West Cliff, yet: In Santa Cruz, the city’s planning and transportation staff wanted to push forward with converting West Cliff Drive into a one-way street for a two-year pilot. However, staff apparently got too far ahead of residents in the area, who were inflamed by the prospect of more cars driving through their neighborhood. The proposal was too much for the city council, too, which curbed staff’s ambitions with a “not now but maybe, probably, later.”
Now, Lookout’s Max Chun reports that the funding for and the likelihood of a one-way pilot project is years away.
Tech lures departing city manager: Assistant City Manager Laura Schmidt came to Santa Cruz nearly 10 years ago on the back of a robust information technology résumé that spanned the private and public sector. On Monday, Schmidt, who helped steer the 50-year vision for West Cliff Drive, tendered her resignation from her city post, and will pursue a consulting job in the tech sector.
Looking Ahead
Street sweeps and oversized vehicles: The City of Santa Cruz’s zoning administrator, responsible for interpreting the city’s zoning laws and deciding the fate of permit applications, will host a meeting Wednesday at 10 a.m. to decide whether to issue the city a permit for a new street sweeping program along Delaware Avenue, Natural Bridges Drive, Swanton Boulevard and Mission Street.
The program requires a coastal permit to enact parking restrictions in the area that would require people to move their cars during street cleaning hours. Houseless advocates have come out in strong opposition to the program, arguing that the parking restrictions would unnecessarily harm people living in their cars by continually requiring them to move.
Rail-trail debate continues: In the wake of the board of supervisors’ surprise move last month to not advance a 4.5-mile section of the rail trail between 17th Avenue in Live Oak and State Park Drive in Aptos, the county’s Regional Transportation Commission, which is overseeing the project, will host a special meeting Thursday at 9 a.m. The gathering of the county’s transportation body is to, in part, reaffirm its commitment to the project. I and many others will be watching to see how the commission and the public react to commissioners/supervisors Manu Koenig and Bruce McPherson, who effectively held the project up at the county level.
Weekly News Diet
Local: Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s incoming superintendent, Heather Contreras, says she will “listen and learn” before she moves on the controversy surrounding the district’s contract with its ethnic studies consultant. Hillary Ojeda has that story.
Golden State: For years, the state government has avoided punishing landowners who overpump their groundwater. On Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board will decide whether to enforce a first-of-its-kind crackdown on aquifer overdrafting. According to CalMatters, the state is likely to put Kings County on probation, a decision that will have reverberations in agricultural communities across the state.
National: Tensions have continued to rise between China and Taiwan, a major exporter of the world’s computer chips. Watching across the Pacific, the U.S. has been working to reinforce its domestic chip manufacturing and this week finalized one of its more significant moves. The Biden administration announced a $6.4 billion grant to Samsung so it can wrap up construction of a chip manufacturing site in Taylor, Texas, and expand an existing site in Austin, according to the New York Times.
One Great Read
Lila Neugebauer interrogates the ghosts of “Uncle Vanya,” by Helen Shaw for the New Yorker
A few weeks ago, I watched the Japanese film “Drive My Car” (2021), the deeply moving, three-hour masterpiece from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, inspired by the short story of the same name by Haruki Murakami. Hamaguchi takes the Murakami classic and spins it into a meditation on communication that threads such subtle emotional needles with unmatched precision.
The backdrop of the story is a stage production of Anton Chekhov’s classic rural drama “Uncle Vanya.” The play’s director casts actors who each speak a different language and requires them to say their lines in their native tongue. Words, then, become the least important form of communication for the cast, who must rely on eye movement, body language, intonation and affectation. Through this method, success is less about memorization of lines and more about a living, on-stage presence. Words suddenly seem like a crutch.
Riding high off this film, I was pleased to open the New Yorker and find a profile on Lila Neugebauer, a stage director who is working on the first American production of “Uncle Vanya” in almost 20 years. Neugebauer, only 38, has long been Broadway’s wunderkind. Now, she takes on one of the stage’s toughest challenges: Chekhov.