Santa Cruz County’s three-year plan to combat homelessness is coming to an end and Carlos Palacios, the county’s administrative officer, offers an update on what the county has achieved and the work still to be done.
Community Voices
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
My husband is retiring: What will it do to our marriage when he realizes I eat cookies for breakfast?
Lookout columnist Claudia Sternbach is undergoing a life change: Her husband is retiring after 40 years at a tractor dealership. She works from home and is uncertain what it will mean to share the space all day. “First thing on my worry list is that he will judge me,” she writes. He’ll also find out she sometimes sleeps until 10 a.m. and eats Tate’s chocolate chip cookies for breakfast.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
The Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter has too many pets and too little staff; we need action now
The Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter population is exploding with mistreated, unwanted, abused and abandoned pets and too few staff members and volunteers to care for them, volunteers and staff write. Most of the issues, they say, stem from bad shelter management and inaction. Volunteers and staff, united here under their union, insist they are burned out and frustrated by poor leadership choices. They have created a petition to get action for themselves and the animals in their care.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Letter to the editor: We must do better to keep our waterways clean, for now and for our future
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here. To the editor: I have volunteered three times to clean up the trash left by transients on the Corralitos Creek near Safeway. Yesterday I was astonished by the conditions of the creek and the blatant disregard for our […]
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Can we please check our slogans and ‘insist on complete respect toward both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis’?
Local teacher and self-declared lefty Michael Levy is troubled by responses he is seeing across the world and in Santa Cruz in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. On Halloween, in downtown Santa Cruz, he felt a “gut punch” when he saw one of his lefty friends joining in with a controversial Palestinian slogan. As a Jew, he felt offended and angry and wanted to “smack him.” He decided to unpack his anger with research. Here, he makes a plea for others to do the same.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
I am the first male, openly trans person elected to public office in our state; this is my coming-out story
Nov. 13-19 is national Transgender Awareness Week, and in a Community Voices opinion piece, Adam Spickler, a Cabrillo College trustee and one of only four openly transgender people to hold elected office in all of California, shares their coming-out story. Adam wishes when they were growing up in the 1980s and 1990s that they had transgender role models.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
I don’t want to lose my south of Laurel home and hotel to a new Warriors stadium — here’s my solution
Joe Quigg owns the Pacific Blue Inn south of Laurel Street in downtown Santa Cruz and was horrified to see a model of his hotel and attached condo demolished in a city plan to build a new Warriors arena. He shares his thoughts on his neighborhood, his frustration with the city for not contacting him about the plan, and offers his idea for building housing and an arena.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
A contractor’s voice: I am worried about the quality and sustainability of new downtown buildings
Lee Brokaw has worked in construction for 42 years, 36 as a licensed contractor, and is highly critical of the building happening in downtown Santa Cruz. “For me, it makes no sense to build anything that won’t last 100 years,” he writes. He thinks contractors are building too quickly and worries they are not using high-quality materials.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Opinion: Nothing has prepared me for the antisemitism I see on college campuses now
College officials may might being perceived as taking sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict, but it is wrong to confuse condemning antisemitism with ignoring the plight of the Palestinians, writes Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Time to get flattened!
Lookout columnist Claudia Sternbach is a breast cancer survivor and reminds us why getting mammograms matters, even though she keeps putting hers off.