The human impact of Santa Cruz County cuts
On the x and y graph measuring a topic’s level of impact and tedium, government budgets might occupy the upper-rightmost position. Public budget season — roughly late spring to late summer — is a monthslong slog of bureaucratese, spreadsheets and reports so arcane as to make an almost impenetrable barrier to entry for the layman.
Yet, few things are as important as the government budget, a moral document that sets the values and direction for our government, that organization we pay to not only maintain the inner piping of our society but also to implement our agreed-upon ideas of progress. And this budget season has thrown that in sharp relief.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent time with the clients and staff of the Mental Health Client Action Network, known as MHCAN, a day center where people with self-disclosed mental illness — most of them homeless — can drop in, find a meal, do laundry, shower, use a computer or just hang out.
What makes MHCAN stand out among the menu of social services throughout Santa Cruz County is that it is peer-run, and everyone from staff to volunteers and clients have struggled with some form of mental illness. This allows everyone to exist on even ground, and creates a safe space away from both the intensity of street living as well as the often prejudicial glare of society. Many people credit MHCAN with saving their lives and helping to launch them into stability.
And it may all disappear at the end of June.
MHCAN has survived primarily on county government funding for the past 30 years. However, a tight budget year has led Health Services Agency Director Mónica Morales to propose redirecting the money the county would spend on MHCAN to other services mandated by the state. That loss of funding is expected to shutter MHCAN.
The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors will discuss the cuts in a hearing on Tuesday, before making the final budget vote on June 10. Along with an elimination of MHCAN, the county has proposed laying off 12 workers and cutting 74 staffing positions. For more on that proposal, read my coverage here.
For more on MHCAN, the people who depend on it, and those who run it, read my story from last week. And if you want to have a say in how the government spends your money, tune into the two budget hearings this week, Tuesday and Wednesday, at 9 a.m. at the Santa Cruz County Government Building.
OF NOTE
Soda industry joins grocers in suit against Santa Cruz sugary drink tax: After some speculation, the lobbying organization for the likes of Coke, Pepsi and Dr Pepper sued the City of Santa Cruz last week over the soda tax voters approved in November. The California Chamber of Commerce and the California Grocers Association have also joined the suit. Whether Santa Cruz’s soda tax — the first of its kind in the U.S. since 2018 — violates state law will now be up to a Sacramento judge.
A Watsonville city councilmember’s one-man fight: Despite what the Watsonville Police Department, city officials or the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office have said about the matter, Watsonville City Councilmember Casey Clark has held onto his belief that bodies are buried along the Pajaro River levee. Now, the Monterey County sheriff’s discovery of two bodies in the area has recharged his pursuit of the truth. My colleague Tania Ortiz spent time with Clark and on the levee to report this story published Monday.
Deficits, deficits everywhere: In Santa Cruz County’s four cities, spending is forecast to outpace revenues in the coming years, making for some bleak budget predictions.
Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury releases first investigation: This report just dropped as I was writing this newsletter on Monday morning, but the citizen panel tasked with investigating local government operations has released the first report of its annual season, which criticizes the county government for not engaging the public on how to mitigate climate change and emissions reductions.
POINTS FOR PARTICIPATION
Layoffs, service cuts and public infrastructure projects lead county budget talks this week: The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors meets Tuesday and Wednesday to go over its proposed budget. Amid the uncertainty around how state and federal spending cuts will impact local services, the county electeds will determine how to move forward with its own local money drama on Tuesday, as they navigate the aforementioned proposal to lay off about 12 HSA employees, cut funding to several services and reduce its staff size by 74 positions. On Wednesday, the county will also dive into which public infrastructure projects and road repairs it will finance over the next year with its limited budget. Both meetings this week begin at 9 a.m.
Clocktower Center and the first project proposed in Santa Cruz’s expanded downtown get public looks this week: On Wednesday at 6 p.m., the developer behind the eight-story, 245-unit project proposed to replace the Ace Hardware on Front Street will present the plans to the public and take feedback in a virtual meeting.
Then, on Thursday at 7 p.m., the Santa Cruz Planning Commission will take a vote on Workbench’s Clocktower Center, the most talked-about development proposal in the county over the past year. Once envisioned as a 16-story tower behind the city’s town clock has slimmed to an eight-story project with 178 new housing units.
ONE GREAT READ
On the campaign trail, Elon Musk juggled drugs and family drama, by Megan Twohey and Kirsten Grind for The New York Times
For anyone who has spent any time on social media over the past year, the “Elon is tripping on drugs” narrative has been difficult to avoid. In that way, this New York Times investigation into his growing dependency on ketamine, adderall, psychedelic mushrooms and ecstasy is less revelation than confirmation.
However, this story points to a previously unreported wrinkle in Musk’s personal life, involving his son, X Æ A-12, also known as X.
Early on in Musk’s White House tenure, his 5-year-old progeny was a fixture at news conferences and public appearances, often hand-in-hand with, or atop the shoulders of, his father. Yet, as The New York Times reports, Musk and X’s mother, Claire Boucher — the musical artist known by her stage name, Grimes — had agreed in their custody settlement to keep X out of the public eye.
The report also gets into Musk’s apparently pronatalist turn, and his expressed desire to continue fathering as many children as he can, even telling his most recent baby’s mama, conservative writer Ashley St. Clair, that he’d be willing to give his sperm to anyone who wanted to have a child.