Blog Archives

CHICKEN VILLA. April 4, 1950. My feeble research only hints that this might be Doc’s and Monica’s Chicken Villa drive in.. Located at Front and Laurel, which would probably be where Walgreens is located today. I believe I still have the waitresses’ names someone sent me years ago…any help on this puzzle?                                                        photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection.

DATELINE June 17

DREAM INN PROJECT. The Dream Inn developers are gearing up with their supposed “community” meetings and quickly before we know it their plots and plans will be floated before the city council. The Save Santa Cruz Westside organization has kept on top of this threat to our city and sent out many important notices. I’m re-“printing” most of their latest one here…stay tuned, it’ll affect all of us for generations.

“It is imperative we express our concerns about this project: the massive size, the height (56′ including stairwells and decks), the increased traffic (cars, pedestrians and bicycles) to an already congested intersection, slower response time for emergency vehicles, excavation for a 2 story underground parking garage that might cause destabilization of cliffs, the addition of commercial/retail to an area currently zoned motel/residential, only 10 affordable condos out of 89, loss of viewshed and heritage trees, as well as increased noise and air pollution

Every one should be informed about 3 very important meetings that have been scheduled for the Dream Inn project (aka 190 West Cliff).

There is a Community Meeting (by the Dream Inn Developer) tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, July 10 at the Cruzio Building located at 877 Cedar St.. It is important to attend this meeting to see what changes the developers have made to the project and express our concerns with this massive development

The project is expected to go before the City of Santa Cruz Planning Commission on Thursday, August 15.  It could go forward to the Santa Cruz City Council 2-3 weeks later (possibly in early September).  

It is important to get as many people as possible to these meetings to show our opposition and express our concerns! Please help get the word out to the community! We will post updates on these critical meetings on our website:  savesantacruzwestside.org

For more information on the developers plans, google 190 West Cliff, City of Santa Cruz.

Thank you for your continuing efforts!

And especially, we must insist on a full EIR!  

There are many objections to holding this “community” meeting so far away from the community affected – it will pose great difficulty for our CVC elderly population to attend. If it’s in the same room at Cruzio as the 6-story project was held last year, it is far too small a room, and parking during the summer downtown will be a challenge – I’m sure part of the strategy.. 

We will be sending in a request – and hope others do too – to hold the meeting IN the neighborhood of the project (St Joseph’s church room, SCPD Community Room or Louden Nelson option, or Circles church room for example – assuming their Dream Inn conference rooms are not available) and that there be a Q&A format! We hope hundreds of Santa Cruzans and others can attend! Spread the word.

REMOVE HIGHWAY ONE PROJECTS FROM CITY BUDGET. Rick Longinotti from the Campaign for Sustainable transportation has some, not just good, but necessary city financial and environmental concepts. Read the campaign’s latest newsletter.

Reducing Traffic Injuries Begins with Santa Cruz City Council budget Tuesday, June 25th  
Action: Sign an email to City Council .
The City of Santa Cruz budget contains two big projects that would increase auto capacity and take us farther from our goal to reduce fossil fuel consumption:

• Replacing the four-lane Hwy 1 bridge over the San Lorenzo River with a seven-lane bridge.
• Expanding the intersection at Hwy 1 and River St.

The City Council can remove these projects from the budget at its next meeting on June 25.

There’s another important reason to remove these projects. The projects would undermine the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists on our streets in two ways:

1. Expanding intersections almost always results in making them more intimidating for bicyclists and pedestrians. The plans for Hwy 1/River St. call for unprotected bike lanes on River St. of the minimum legal width of four feet. A bicyclist in that lane will be vulnerable to speeding traffic in the additional sweeping right turn lane from Hwy 1.
2. The opportunity cost of these “improvements” is a human cost. Santa Cruz is consistently at or near the top of the list of injuries to bicyclists and pedestrians of 103 California cities of similar size. Spending limited local funds on making our streets safe should be our priority. Instead we’re targeting $15.5 million for bridge replacement and $8.5 million for Hwy 1/River St. intersection expansion, with over $5 million in City funds to be spent in the next fiscal year.

Vision Zero, the international movement to reduce traffic injuries, urges us to stop thinking about traffic collisions as “accidents”. Would you agree with me that our City’s high rate of injuries to bicyclists and pedestrians is not accidental?  If so, please Sign an email to City Council

SIMON KELLY DIED. Simon died last Friday. His sons were with him. Among many, many achievements Simon was a staunch member of UCSC’s Dickens Players, and played many roles in productions here and in the Bay Area. He and I go back to our student years at U.C. Berkeley. We hung out during jazz, lsd, folk music, weed, opera, and the Monterey Jazz Festival’s earliest years. We’ll all miss him.

UGLY BUILDING CONTEST. Peter Scott UCSC Physics professor emeritus, and co founder of The Campaign for Sustainable Transportation has a great idea. He asks..

“How about a viewer poll: What’s the ugliest building now under construction in Santa Cruz? He says, “I would vote for at least two: (a) Swenson’s condo block (1547 Pacific Ave?) (b) The Hilton Hotel at Mission & King (west end of King)”.

Let’s go for it. Send any all entries to the usual  bratton@cruzio.com

June 17

HOME SWEET HOME.
I love this town. This past weekend was arguably the busiest of the year: 14 UCSC graduation ceremonies over three days and the usual Boardwalk madness, including the free Friday night beach concert. The traffic…fuhget-about-it! Locals know to stay far from High and Bay, and Beach Street and Pacific, but Mission and Ocean also functioned as alternative Seaside parking lots at various times during the weekend. Downtown was a pretty safe bet to try and get away from the bumper to bumper traffic elsewhere. Walking was the best mode of transit. And with all those graduations we should be proud to show off Santa Cruz. It’s a special place, one that it is pretty nice to show to all the parents, relatives, family and friends who visited.

ENVS Graduation
In my other life, many of you know that I believe deep into my soul that theory without practice misses a lot of life. Our 650-plus ENVS interns every year not only put out an enormous number of labor-of-love hours in this community, they also get a helluva an education on local farms, in an assembly member’s office, learning to teach kids at Life Lab or the Marine Sanctuary Center or at Natural Bridges State Park. It’s a great program that I am lucky to be a part of because it is the inquiring mind of undergraduates that can light a fire under the older generation’s trend toward cynicism and discomfort. So, back to the graduating culture…our Environmental Studies graduation brought close to seven hundred friends, family, and graduates to this year’s ceremony last Friday morning. Vice-mayor Justin Cummings was one of two keynote speakers and he hit it out of the park with undergrads when he said he never expected to get a PhD and be vice-mayor 15 years ago when he was sitting where the class of 2019 sat that day.  It was an improbable and wonderfully overcast morning at the remodeled UCSC Hay Barn near the base of campus. The other keynote, retiring Sociology Professor, Andy Szasz connected with students most when he described looking for the ideal job as they might look for the ideal relationship: it takes time and many false starts, which might even include one or two divorces along the way too.

Strategic Planning
I love this town too because there are more dedicated activists, volunteers, and politically involved denizens than in most other towns our size in all of America. This past Saturday morning dozens of Surf City’s finest activists gathered at a local union hall to discuss what could be contained in the next city of Santa Cruz Strategic Two-Year Plan. But this year’s biennial strategic plan is only going to be a “six-month” one, and nobody can figure out why. (You can access the past two city strategic plans here.) The last one, crafted in 2017 by a 5-2 council in which Councilmember Sandy Brown and me were in the minority on most big issues, focused on three over-arching themes: “housing, public safety and well-being, and infrastructure.” Pretty broad themes, right? So broad that it was difficult to parse city councilmember hopes and desires from staff’s penchant to keep on keepin’ on with the practices of the past. In the past, housing seemed to mean ‘all housing is good housing,’ instead of ONLY build housing if it is affordable for “low and very low” incomes and if it is focused toward the people who live here now, not second homes or tech housing for those living over the hill. And public safety and well-being basically aimed to hire as many sworn officers as possible without a plan, and without adequate police review in place or even planned. Infrastructure meant paving streets and moving cars as quickly as possible in a town famous for overbearing traffic and intersections at LOS–level of service–ratings at or near the “F” mark. But there was an election, as there often is in western democracies, and new people came into power.

A Progressive Strategic Plan
What about this as the beginning of a strategic plan? One that might more accurately reflect the progressive values and aspirations of our town.

Dr. James Hansen, 1988: “The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”

Hansen, 2017: “The simple thing is, I’m sorry we’re leaving such a fucking mess,” he said.(New Yorker interview) 

NOTE: 1988 turned out to be the hottest year since modern instrumental records began in the 19th century. That mark has since been broken, in 1990, 1998, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2016.)

1. Climate
   • over-arching theme-message for today, of Santa Cruz, is the Climate and climate change is the central issue that every other strategic goal and action ought to flow through, i.e. the climate lens.
   • Actions:
     • Reinstate 2015 climate goal as outlined in Strategic Plan
     • set greenhouse gas emissions to “net zero” by 2025
2. Infrastructure, Traffic, and Housing
   • All new construction must be carbon neutral
   • Actions:
     • Remodel the library on the site of the current library with the bond money that has been approved by voters
     • No purchases of non-emergency diesel and gasoline vehicles, e-vehicles only
     • Expedite installation plan for electric plug-in stations across Santa Cruz
     • Pursue backlog of $19 million in accumulated grant funds for bicycle and pedestrian projects as supported by the Public Works and Transportation Commission
     • Make 25% the inclusionary of low and very low as specified by HUD     as the requirement for developers to undertake housing projects in the city
     • Grandfather in unpermitted ADU units that do not affect health and safety of occupant
       

     • Support housing that favors our workers with Santa Cruz salaries  ver over commuter housing
     • Reform and restructure the “rental inspection ordinance” program and make it a tenant protection and tenant rights safety net program.
     • Identify bike and pedestrian projects that can be substituted for the $8.5 million going to the intersection widening project at Hwy. 1 and 9 (“traffic impact fees.”)
       

     • The golf course in DeLaveaga must pay for itself through course fees
3. Homelessness, Social Justice, Quality of Life, and Public Safety
   • Actions:
     • Create a police review board
       

     • Commit to using Quimby funds to provide the requisite amount of park space for every new housing development
     • Bring forward a wireless cell ordinance that contemplates the seismic shift(s) on the horizon with the coming of 5G technology and protects the health, safety of consumers and complies with ADA requirements
     • Build a 24/7 homeless shelter and navigation center now. It is needed, it’s necessary; we cannot wait another two years.
     • Create a plan to convert existing temporary workers to permanent worker positions.
     • Revamp and enforce the “local hire ordinance.”
4. Public Process and Council Process
   • Recommit ourselves to working with and serving the residents of this city by expanding our outreach efforts
   • Actions:
     • We will solve the age-old question of “how to get something on the agenda?” Support the concept that any councilmember can place an item on the agenda and it must appear within a reasonable, council agreed upon, time period.
       

     • Revisit the General Plan in order to address the conflicts that exist pertaining to land use protection vs. development (especially with respect to Golf Club Dr. coming development, Front Street development, Hwy. 1 and 9 intersection widening, and the Corridors Plan.
       

     • Full Disclosure ordinance. Develop a policy in which city councilmembers have to disclose all meetings they’ve attended wi       with interested individuals before deciding an item in which the council sits a          as a quasi-judicial body.
     • Change to threshold for staff bringing items to the council from the current $100,000 to $50,000

“Mr. President, you’re from Queens. You may fool the rest of the country, but I’ll call your bluff any day of the week. Opening an impeachment inquiry is exactly what we must do when the President obstructs justice, advises witnesses to ignore legal subpoenas, & more. Bye” (June 17)

(Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, and was on the Santa Cruz City Councilmember from 1998-2002. Krohn was Mayor in 2001-2002. He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 14 years. He was elected the the city council again in November of 2016, after his kids went off to college. His current term ends in 2020. Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

June 13, 2019
#164 / One More Sunbeam (That’s Our Problem)

The latest edition of The Sun magazine showed up in my mailbox recently. You can, by the way, get a free trial issue, if you’d like, by just clicking this link and going from there. 

I often turn to the “Sunbeams” section of the magazine first. That section comes right at the end and has various quotations that both energize and inspire. 

This time around, readers heard from Howard Zinn (among other persons). What Zinn had to say is worth passing along: 

“Civil disobedience . . . is not our problem. . . . Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government. . . . Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem”. 

Howard Zinn

Gary Patton is a former Santa Cruz County Supervisor (20 years) and an attorney for individuals and community groups on land use and environmental issues. The opinions expressed are Mr. Patton’s. You can read and subscribe to his daily blog at www.gapatton.net Email Gary at gapatton@mac.com

EAGAN’S SUBCONSCIOUS COMICS. Just a peek will do it for our wild and wooly deeper thoughts. Scroll below…just a bit.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s ” The Underlying Crime” down a few pages. As always, at TimEagan.com you will find his most recent  Deep Cover, the latest installment from the archives of Subconscious Comics, and the ever entertaining Eaganblog.

MUNCHING WITH MOZART. Every third Thursday of almost every month there is a free concert held in the upstairs meeting room of the threatened Santa Cruz Public Library. This month the musicoians areThe Fourtes and it happens June 20, 12:10-1 p.m. The program contains… Miles Crawford • Alexander Lee • Olivia Kang • Hannah Kuo on VIOLINS.

They’ll be playing works by Telemann, Lachner, Mozart, Hiller, Bacewacz and Piazzolla.

Remember…it’s free and at the Santa Cruz Library, April 18, 2019 12:10-1:00

Central Branch Meeting Room upstairs.

LISA JENSEN LINKS. Lisa writes: “In some circles, the words “Jim Jarmusch zombie comedy” would be all the PR you’d need to sell a movie titled “The Dead Don’t Die” Especially when you factor in a cast that includes Bill Murray, Steve Buscemi, and Tilda Swinton (among many others). Find out why it never quite comes to life this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com/).” Lisa has been writing film reviews and columns for Good Times since 1975.

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer, (live only or archived for two weeks… (See next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. On June 18 Phillippe Habib from Coastal Haven Families and Common Roots Farm talks about the issues and plans the groups are dealing with. Then Kara Meyberg Guzman and Stephen Baxter from “Santa Cruz Local” news organization reveal their ideas about local news and today’s politics. OR…if you just happen to miss either of the last two weeks of Universal Grapevine broadcasts go here… https://www.radiofreeamerica.com/schedule/kzsc   You have to listen to about 4 minutes of that week’s KPFA news first, then Grapevine happens. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening. Email me always and only at bratton@cruzio.com

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE ARCHIVES. In case you missed some of the great people I’ve interviewed in the last 9 years here’s a chronological list of some past broadcasts.  Such a wide range of folks such as  Nikki Silva, Michael Warren, Tom Noddy, UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal, Anita Monga, Mark Wainer, Judy Johnson, Wendy Mayer-Lochtefeld, Rachel Goodman, George Newell, Tubten Pende, Gina Marie Hayes, Rebecca Ronay-Hazleton, Miriam Ellis, Deb Mc Arthur, The Great Morgani on Street performing, and Paul Whitworth on Krapps Last Tape. Jodi McGraw on Sandhills, Bruce Daniels on area water problems. Mike Pappas on the Olive Connection, Sandy Lydon on County History. Paul Johnston on political organizing, Rick Longinotti on De-Sal. Dan Haifley on Monterey Bay Sanctuary, Dan Harder on Santa Cruz City Museum. Sara Wilbourne on Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre. Brian Spencer on SEE Theatre Co. Paula Kenyon and Karen Massaro on MAH and Big Creek Pottery. Carolyn Burke on Edith Piaf. Peggy Dolgenos on Cruzio. Julie James on Jewel Theatre Company. Then there’s Pat Matejcek on environment, Nancy Abrams and Joel Primack on the Universe plus Nina Simon from MAH, Rob Slawinski, Gary Bascou, Judge Paul Burdick, John Brown Childs, Ellen Kimmel, Don Williams, Kinan Valdez, Ellen Murtha, John Leopold, Karen Kefauver, Chip Lord, Judy Bouley, Rob Sean Wilson, Ann Simonton, Lori Rivera, Sayaka Yabuki, Chris Kinney, Celia and Peter Scott, Chris Krohn, David Swanger, Chelsea Juarez…and that’s just since January 2011.

QUOTES.   “DEBATES”

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum….” Noam Chomsky, The Common Good
“If you’ve got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn’t prove it.” Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
“Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.” Desmond Tutu
“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.” Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100/Methuselah’s Children