Measure N will help fund affordable housing by taxing those who don’t use their homes more than eight months a year, argues Cyndi Dawson, chair of the City of Santa Cruz Planning Commission and campaign manager for Measure N. At a minimum, she writes, the city estimates taxing empty homes will generate $2.5-$4 million to support housing for the community and help keep our teachers, child care, health care and service workers from moving away. Santa Cruz has a history of supporting tax measures and Dawson thinks residents need to step up and support this measure.
Opinion from Community Voices
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Shebreh brings work ethic to focus on homelessness, youth and mental health
Lookout asked the two candidates running for 3rd District Santa Cruz County Supervisor to write up to 800 words to help voters differentiate between them. We asked them two specific questions, with strict word counts. Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson’s answers are here.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Justin is a renter, an independent thinker and cares about people, equity and the environment
Lookout asked the two candidates running for 3rd District Santa Cruz County Supervisor to write up to 800 words to help voters differentiate between them. We asked them two specific questions, with strict word counts. Justin Cummings’ answers are here.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Joy Schendledecker for mayor: Santa Cruz needs truly progressive ideas and a mayor who will fight for justice in housing, jobs and the environment
Joy Schendledecker is a community organizer, member of the Santa Cruz chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, co-founder of Santa Cruz Cares and Sanitation for the People, as well as an artist and a mother of two teens. Her leadership skills, she says, are “generally not recognized in our culture” and include grassroots organizing and neighborhood consensus-building and care work for family and community. She believes Santa Cruz needs new ideas and to elect someone who is rooted in the community she represents: the underpaid and overworked, tenants, workers and unions, families, elders, people with disabilities, our LGBTQIA+ community, students and young people.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Fred Keeley for mayor: I have the experience, relationships and know-how to take on Santa Cruz’s pressing issues
Fred Keeley has worked to better this community for 44 years. He has served as county supervisor, county treasurer, state legislator and on numerous countywide task forces. He’s also a professor, a member of numerous local nonprofit boards and the largest Democratic fundraiser in the region. He’s a man with connections, experience and plans. Here, he explains how, if chosen as the city’s first directly elected mayor, he will tackle homelessness, affordable housing (hint: it’s a bond measure), neighborhood integrity and water issues. He also offers key ways his thinking differs from his opponent’s.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
We need to solve the mental health crisis; I have a record of success and am a proven champion of democracy
California’s State Assembly District 28 splits between Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties and includes most of the city of Santa Cruz. It’s a new district configuration, hammered out to take effect in 2022, and is 50% Democratic and 19% Republican. Lookout asked the candidates running in this race — Liz Lawler, a Republican from Monte Sereno, and Gail Pellerin, a Democrat from Santa Cruz — to submit answers to two questions. Gail Pellerin’s answers are below.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
We need to restore balance, accountability to Sacramento; I’m not a career politician
California’s State Assembly District 28 splits between Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties and includes most of the city of Santa Cruz. It’s a new district configuration, hammered out to take effect in 2022, and is 50% Democratic and 19% Republican. Lookout asked the candidates running in this race — Liz Lawler, a Republican from Monte Sereno, and Gail Pellerin, a Democrat from Santa Cruz — to submit answers to two questions. Liz Lawler’s answers are below.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Conversations with Jody: Bestseller Ng talks new novel, hope in dark times, humanities crisis
Bestselling novelist Celeste Ng is blessed with prodigious gifts. She writes gorgeous, lush sentences that make us look at ourselves and our world differently. Her first two novels have sold more than 2 million copies and her second novel, “Little Fires Everywhere,” became a popular TV series starring Reese Witherspoon. She comes to Santa Cruz on Oct. 18 for a Bookshop Santa Cruz event at UCSC’s Cowell Ranch Hay Barn to talk about her new novel, “Our Missing Hearts.” Witherspoon just tapped the book as her October pick. Community Voices editor Jody K. Biehl talks to Ng about the book, writing, the role of the humanities and artists, the rise of Donald Trump, motherhood and more.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Stop watering your cactus! Why succulents matter and how to stop killing them
Martin Quigley, director of UC Santa Cruz’s Arboretum & Botanic Garden, is back with more tips on climate-friendly planting. This time, he tackles succulents, everyone’s favorite office and garden plant, and outlines why they are excellent choices for our Mediterranean climate. And he takes us backstage at the Arb to show us how he “makes” plant babies. You can do it, too.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
A year after my father’s death, I’m still getting to know him; turns out his time with Pranksters wasn’t so merry
Dean Quarnstrom died in 2021 and his son Evan has spent the year since traveling the world, mourning and reading his dad’s journals, which chronicle his days hovering on the fringes of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters in 1960s Santa Cruz. Dean describes the Pranksters as “pretentious,” “untrustworthy” and a “bunch of a–holes.” As he reads his father’s writing, Evan relives the counterculture generation — including his dad’s stories about Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead and Hells Angels — and gets to know a side of his father he never knew.