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Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

Watsonville Community Hospital reports nearly $23 million loss in 2025

By Tania Ortiz

Watsonville Community Hospital reported losses of nearly $23 million in 2025 following a challenging year of fewer patient visits and changes to federal and state funding. Hospital leadership expects to have an update by March on its search for a private partner to help shore up its finances.

Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

The best things I ate and drank in Santa Cruz County in January

By Lily Belli

Defying January doldrums, Lookout food and drink correspondent Lily Belli launches a monthly food-and-drink dispatch from Santa Cruz County’s dining scene. She selects from a month of eating to highlight brothless ramen, a revived Syrian pop-up, the return of a Capitola classic and hand-pulled noodle soup as the most memorable bites.

Credit: https://www.facebook.com/Centralfiredistrict

Capitola police, Central Fire crews respond to burning building over the weekend

By Ashley Palma-Jimenez

Capitola Police Department officers and crews from the Central Fire District of Cruz County responded to a fire at an apartment building on 45th Avenue on Saturday night that injured one.

Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

Carmageddon: City hopes to make decision on Murray Street two-way traffic within weeks; RTC’s early steps toward interim trail construction

By Max Chun

After the Murray Street Bridge reopened last week for the first time since last June, the City of Santa Cruz is continuing to gauge the feasibility of allowing two-way vehicle and bicycle traffic along the one opened lane, and hopes to make a decision within weeks.

Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

OPINION: A Lookout View: After the Moss Landing fire, the public deserves answers — not silence

By Lookout Editorial Board

“We know investigations often lag, but the lack of clear information leads us to ask troubling questions,” the Lookout Editorial Board writes more than a year after the massive fire at the Moss Landing battery storage plant. “Why has it been so hard to get consistent answers from the officials charged with protecting the public?”

Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

OPINION: Federal cuts put Watsonville Community Hospital at risk. Partnership is the way forward.

By Stephen Gray

Watsonville Community Hospital reflects the growing fragility of Santa Cruz County’s health care system, strained by rising costs, workforce shortages and declining reimbursements. Despite real progress since becoming community-owned in 2022, Stephen Gray, the hospital’s CEO, writes that new federal Medicaid cuts are projected to cost the hospital up to $10 million annually, threatening local access to care. Measure N has funded critical facility upgrades, he writes, but state law prevents those dollars from covering staffing or service losses caused by federal cuts. To protect and expand health care services, the Pajaro Valley Health Care District is now actively seeking a strategic operating partner to ensure long-term stability. He insists the hospital will work to preserve local oversight.

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Best of Santa Cruz County events, February 2-5

Here are some events you may be interested in this week:

Monday, Feb. 2

Tuesday, Feb. 3

Wednesday, Feb. 4

Thursday, Feb. 5

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Max Chun is the general-assignment correspondent at Lookout Santa Cruz. Max’s position has pulled him in many different directions, seeing him cover development, COVID, the opioid crisis, labor, courts...