Supervisors, county executive voice support after veterans outline concerns over service agency

A low murmur roared through a packed room Tuesday at Capitola City Hall, the temporary venue for the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors while their usual room in the downtown government building is being renovated. It was standing room only during the public comment section of the meeting; most of the seats were filled with U.S. veterans of all ages and from different branches of service. 

The veterans were there to show support for a call for changes at the downtown Santa Cruz Veterans Services Office (VSO) and to state growing concerns from local vets about the way the VSO is managed.

Lorena Vazquez, who worked at the VSO as a veterans service representative in the county for 24 years before retiring in 2024, was one of the more passionate voices to speak.

“These are people who fought or died for this country,” she said. “Yet our Veterans Service Office is being mismanaged, tied down and restricted from offering benefits to those veterans and their families.” 

Last month, a veterans advocacy group launched an email campaign calling upon fellow vets and the public to contact their county supervisors over mismanagement of funds and services at the VSO, including the cancellation of the longstanding Work Study Program. 

According to David Ramos, a veteran and managing director of the Santa Cruz County Veterans Memorial Building, the ongoing issues stem from too much bureaucratic oversight from non-veteran eyes. 

“Currently there are three levels of non-veteran leadership above the VSO director,” Ramos said as roughly two dozen people, mostly military veterans, stood in support.

The VSO is currently one of 18 programs that operate under the county’s Human Services Department. 

“There are front-facing and public issues the veteran community is feeling,” Ramos continued. “Including the restriction of service availability and the discontinuation of resources. This non-veteran of leadership micromanages the VSO director to the extent he is not available to his own veteran community.” 

He told supervisors that there are also “underlying personnel management issues” that are undermining the VSO’s professional development of services and programs and that those issues “should be under investigation.”

“I stand before you today with respectful insistence,” he said, “the Veterans Service Office [should] be extracted from its current leadership structure and given its own status as a standalone department.”

After urging the board to listen to and help the veteran service community, Ramos finished his two minutes by asking a show of hands of who in the audience supported the issue. As another two dozen hands shot into the air, Ramos stepped down from the mic to rounds of cheers from the public. 

Ramos is one of several local veterans advocates who met with County Executive Officer Nicole Coburn on Monday about the issue. 

“I think we had a really good conversation, and I definitely learned a lot about their concerns,” Coburn said during the Tuesday morning meeting. 

She told county supervisors that the VSO’s Work Study Program – which veterans advocates say isn’t accepting any more applications – remains active and has not been discontinued. She said part of the confusion and issues surrounding the office are due to inexperience. 

“It’s important to know our VSO director is new, and he’s still learning,” Coburn said of Andre Samayoa, who’s been with the office for six months. 

To help this issue, she said that former VSO director Dean Kaufman has volunteered to mentor Samayoa. 

“And I think we’re going to take him up on that,” Coburn said. 

Samayoa declined to comment Wednesday about the situation.

On Wednesday, Jason Hoppin, public information officer for Santa Cruz County, said, “The mentorship is open-ended. We’re bringing in Dean [Kaufman] to help reassure people during the transition.”

Coburn also said the county is looking to connect with the VSO in Napa County, which currently serves around 7,000 registered veterans, a similar number to Santa Cruz County. She said the county will prepare a professional development plan for the Napa representative to also help mentor Samayoa navigate through the system. 

Finally, Coburn told the room that the first step she took was instructing Human Services Department Director Randy Morris to have Samayoa report to the county’s adult and long-term care division director, Alicia Morales. 

However, Coburn acknowledged that the issue will require further, hands-on attention and is far from being resolved. 

“I need to further investigate the root causes of the issues at the VSO to figure out what other changes might be necessary,” she said. She added that there will be another meeting before Christmas involving herself, Ramos, Morales and Morris. 

Supervisors Felipe Hernandez, Monica Martinez, Justin Cummings and Kim De Serpa all said they recognized the importance of making sure local veterans receive the best services in the most efficient ways. Cummings added that he would be meeting with Ramos on Wednesday to further discuss the issue and has already started working on an agenda item surrounding the VSO that he aims to bring to the board in the near future. 

“That item will be very much aligned with what the staff is proposing to do,” Cummings said via Zoom. “It’s really important that we take action on this so the community sees we are responding to their concerns as their representatives.” 

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