Quick Take
The new downtown expansion district, an affordable housing measure and a rail-trail compromise all came to fruition in 2025. Now, Fred Keeley, Santa Cruz’s first four-year elected mayor, looks to his final year in office.
This midwinter season, Lookout Santa Cruz is checking in with some of the people and topics we’ve covered over the past year.
Sitting in his living room on an overcast evening in December and looking back on his nearly 40-year career in politics, Fred Keeley said he considers being the first elected four-year mayor of Santa Cruz to be the highlight.
“Best job I’ve ever had,” he said. “I’m very proud of my work in the Legislature. The issues are bigger and the work is hard. As mayor, it’s human-scale, but the issues are still challenging and the work is still heavy lifting.”
Keeley, 75, has been a county supervisor for eight years, the county treasurer for 10 and a state assemblymember for six. As his term ends next year, that will likely be the end of his elected office tenure. But he’s never far from politics.
Keeley and his wife, Barbara, often hold fundraising events at their home. In the new year, they’re hosting one for gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa. Keeley said that Villaraigosa is “like a brother” to him, as he was speaker pro tempore when Villaraigosa was the speaker of the Assembly. And yet he has stopped short of endorsing him, saying he believes that either Villaraigosa or State Controller Betty Yee, with whom he also worked closely in the California Legislature, is worthy of the office, as voters face a likely packed primary in June.
Keeley ran on a platform of building more housing in a city notorious for its least affordable rankings. He’s made the often-controversial downtown expansion plan a focal point of that pledge and now considers it “a promise kept.” The plan includes an entertainment district around a new Santa Cruz Warriors arena, and taller, denser housing developments, originally planned at 15 to 17 stories. Keeley had vowed to cap them at 12 stories; the height limit eventually dropped further to eight stories once approved by the city council in May.
“This is another case of the legislature and governor saying, ‘Thou shalt build a bunch of housing,’” he said. “I think we’re doing a pretty good job within the context of what’s available in our toolbox.”
More recently, another one of Keeley’s campaign promises, an affordable housing ballot initiative, came to fruition when Measure C (a $96 annual parcel tax and a graduated real estate transfer tax on home sales above $1.8 million) won the approval of city voters in the November election.
Then, earlier this month, he and District 1 County Supervisor Manu Koenig joined forces on a compromise plan aiming, they say, to bridge the community divide on rail and trail. In their plan, the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) would put together a proposal that would build three segments of the Coastal Rail Trail over the existing railroad tracks. The two commissioners put aside their disagreements on passenger rail to do what they believe will move the project forward without losing the largest active transportation grant in state history. Their proposal narrowly passed at the RTC’s December meeting.
Through all the push and pull, Keeley prides himself on reaching across the aisle. That consensus-building is the topic of a class he has taught at the Panetta Institute for Public Policy.
“The first step is always to manage towards a principled compromise,” he said. “Never ask the counterparty to compromise their principles because otherwise it’s saying, ‘I have to defeat your belief system,’ and that’s not what we’re trying to do here.”
Now Keeley is looking toward retirement. Once his term as mayor is over in December 2026, he said he and Barbara plan to step away from politics and organizing. But he’s not ruling out serving on a board or committee later on, just to stay in the game.
While Keeley said he might endorse a mayoral candidate if asked, he’s mostly hoping to make his last year in office a fitting conclusion to his long career. How will he finish his term? There might be no new major objectives, but Keeley says he has another plan for his final year: supporting his fellow councilmembers’ objectives.
“People running for elected office are people with a future, and I think my role [this coming year] is not a caretaker role, but it’s somewhat different for me,” he said. “I think that’s the appropriate way to conclude a life in public service.”
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