Good morning, Lookout friends. It is Monday, March 25, and Santa Cruz County is looking at a mix of sun and clouds, with high temperatures around 60 for most of us.
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Christopher Neely is first out of the chute as we embark on a new week, reporting on an effort to expand a marine reserve area off Natural Bridges State Beach and add one off Pleasure Point – an effort that local surfers, fishers and lawmakers are opposing.
From Watsonville, Beki San Martin reports on a long-simmering dispute centering on community gardens. Nonprofit Tierras Milperas aims to help the region’s Latino and Indigenous farmworkers grow their own food, but has come into conflict with some of its own members and with the administrations of churches where it has leased plots.
Monday means Lookout’s weekly Carmageddon feature, and in this edition, Max Chun has updates on when the big Murray Street Bridge overhaul will finally get underway, changes coming to Bay Street in Santa Cruz and much more.
The Monday headlines also include Wallace Baine’s look at the fate of Seabright’s Pacific Cultural Center, so let’s hop on in.
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Surfers, lawmakers push back against proposal to expand marine protections in Santa Cruz County
A petition by an environmental advocacy group to the state’s Fish and Game Commission would establish a state marine reserve off Pleasure Point and expand a reserve adjacent to Natural Bridges State Beach. Local lawmakers, along with the fishing and surfing communities, have come out against the idea. Here’s what Christopher Neely knows.
In the county’s agricultural heartland, a feud over church gardens and food sovereignty takes root
Tierras Milperas offered farmworkers in its network of seven community gardens a vision of self-government and food sovereignty. But over the past nearly two years, that utopian ideal has devolved into a power struggle between the organization and two Watsonville churches that has raised issues of classism, racism and political ideology. Beki San Martin has our story.
DAILY DIGEST
Plenty to pore over for a Monday, but there’s more coming from Lookout. Christopher Neely will be back in a bit with In the Public Interest, his weekly look at all things Santa Cruz County politics and policy – just one of the many Lookout newsletters you can sign up for right here. (That link can also get you signed up for breaking news alerts via text and email.) Also coming later Monday is our latest high school sports roundup, so to be sure you don’t miss that or any of our other local coverage, keep up on social media: Lookout is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Threads.
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Once more into the Monday fray …
Will McCahill