Supervisors prepare for their final votes of 2024
With Tuesday’s meeting comes the final votes of 2024 for the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. As the five people shaping the laws, policy and general direction of government for the county’s roughly 262,000 residents, the supervisors take on the largest political responsibility here, locally.
This past year presented a few hurdles for the supervisors, though none larger than the county’s dire financial picture. The significant costs of recent natural disasters, and the pandemic, have placed the county’s budget on life support, threatening local programs and its ability to maintain services. It’s a story still without an ending, and one we will continue to watch in 2025.
The board’s final meeting on Tuesday will mark the finale for supervisors Bruce McPherson and Zach Friend, both of whom will step down after three terms and 12 years at the helm. McPherson and Friend step off the dais into a much different world than when they began their supervisor careers in 2012. Former president Barack Obama was beginning his second term, the world didn’t yet know who Edward Snowden was, nor was it considering the possibility of Donald Trump becoming president, and artificial intelligence still felt like a reality confined to the sci-fi section of the bookstore. Now, Trump will begin a second term as president, Snowden might get pardoned, and invisible algorithms control much of the content that floats into our daily lives.
As part of their final votes as supervisors, Friend, McPherso and the rest of the supes will consider a pilot project labor agreement. The agreement is a long-simmering idea that would require the contractors hired for 10 county infrastructure projects (worth up to $236 million) to give hiring preference to local labor unions. It would mark a major win for the Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties Building and Construction Trades Council. During the five-year pilot program, the county would analyze how pushing its contractors to work with local trade unions affects its mission to develop the local workforce.
The supervisors will also consider a resolution affirming the county’s solidarity with its immigrant population. The “commitment to protect and support” immigrants comes amid Trump’s campaign promise to conduct the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. Through its commitment, the county would look for ways to “strengthen resources to help protect and support immigrant communities against policies that may negatively impact the safety and wellbeing of the members of those communities.”
A rezoning to open up the housing potential of 30 parcels, a report on how new financial incentives have helped boost county hiring by 46% and rules changes to allow local cannabis cultivators in good standing to expand their growing area by 2% each year fill out the rest of Tuesday’s big-ticket items. Then, on Monday, Dec. 23, the county will swear in McPherson and Friend’s respective successors: Monica Martinez and Kim De Serpa.
OF NOTE
Workbench CEO steps down from the county’s planning commission amid growing conflict optics: Tim Gordin, who over the past year has become the developer-of-the-moment in Santa Cruz County, quietly vacated his county planning commission seat in November, just two months before his four-year term was set to expire. Gordin’s resignation comes amid growing discomfort in some corners of the community with the notion of one of the county’s most high-profile developers serving on its premiere land-use policy body.
Justin Cummings elected to lead arguably the most powerful land-use authority in the U.S.: Through a unanimous vote of fellow commissioners last week, Santa Cruz County Supervisor Justin Cummings has been chosen to lead the powerful California Coastal Commission as chair. One of the most influential arms of state government, the 12-member Coastal Commission oversees land use and development along California’s 1,100 miles of coastline. Given its purview over the highly desirable and environmentally valuable coastal resources, the commission has been called the most powerful land-use authority in the United States. Cummings’ ascent could mean a more prominent seat at the state’s table for Santa Cruz County issues.
Scotts Valley will see its first affordable housing project in decades, against city officials’ wills: While the first-of-its-kind, 100-unit project, proposed by Workbench and developer CRP Affordable Housing, will help make a significant dent in the city’s state-mandated housing obligations, local leaders are being dragged into accepting the development kicking and screaming. The project, officials say, will come at a great economic development cost to the city.
POINTS FOR PARTICIPATION
Two controversial projects in the city of Santa Cruz reintroduce themselves this week: On Monday night, the 16-turned-eight-story tower proposed behind downtown Santa Cruz’s town clock will go in front of the public for a virtual community feedback meeting with residents, city planning staff and local developer Workbench. The meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. You can learn more about the meeting, and the project, here.
On Thursday, the 831 Water Street project returns, revamped, for its first brush through the public process. After a vision for 145 market-rate and subsidized units forced its way through a city council approval in 2021, the project has been reformed to a 140-unit, all-subsidized housing project. The Santa Cruz Planning Commission will vote on the project during its final meeting of 2024, at 7 p.m. inside Santa Cruz City Hall.
Supervisors take the oath of office: Incoming county supervisors Monica Martinez and Kim De Serpa will be sworn into their four-year terms on Monday, Dec. 23, at 2 p.m., inside the board chambers at the county building. The ceremony will kick off a new era for a board of supervisors that looks much different than the all-male, all-white dais that called the county’s shots just four years ago.
ONE GREAT READ
Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong sits down for an interview amid controversial shakeup at the paper, by Jim Rainey for the Los Angeles Times
When billionaire surgeon Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the Los Angeles Times, the West Coast’s premiere news outlet, he was hailed in some circles as a hero despite the healthy skepticism inherent in such a seismic purchase. The outlet hired more than 150 people as the rest of the mediascape shrank, and went on to win six Pulitzer Prizes in as many years.
Now, on the backs of recent, controversial decisions, Soon-Shiong’s fortunes and favor appear to be flipping as he takes a more active role within his media property. He stepped in to block the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in the recent election, and a few weeks ago, introduced the “bias meter,” which, by his own account, seems to be a proprietary feature he will soon add to all Los Angeles Times stories, alerting readers to an article’s ideological tilt. The announcement followed Soon-Shiong’s critique of the Times as an “echo chamber” of the political left.
Soon-Shiong recently sat down with the Times’ Jim Rainey for a wide-ranging interview about his plans for the newspaper, and what the Times will look like with him more involved with its direction.