CAPITOLA, CIRCA 1913. Here we see in this Ole Ravnos photo a trolley crossing the trestle. In the same time frame, the Southern Pacific Railroad used the same trestle. According to Carolyn Swift’s book, Ravnos staged the boats and the locals – just for the photos.                                           photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection. Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

DATELINE May 17 

SUPERVISOR SOUFFLE (“SOUP” WAS GETTING COLD). Last week I mentioned that Rachel Dann was rumored to run for Third district supervisor. After diligent stealth, I learned that she’s not going to run…and that’s final. The most frequent negative reaction I saw was that everyone I connected had hopes that Ed Porter wouldn’t run. He would probably draw just enough votes from qualified candidates to make our lives miserable. Martine Watkins has been mentioned many times, but I repeat that she doesn’t live in the third district. Donna Meyers seems to still have the most talked-about lead. 

THE RTC & WIDENING HIGHWAY ONE. Rick Longinotti, the hard-working head of the Campaign For Sustainable Transportation, sent out a letter last week. In it he explains the Regional Transportation Commission’s sad plan to widen Highway One, and why it can’t work. He also talks about the lawsuit the Campaign has created to stop future widening. Read his letter…take some action and help save our County community.

“Amid all the sound and fury over the future of the rail corridor, the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation has been quietly working to transform our County’s policy to widen Highway 1. You can help this quiet work succeed. 

The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC)  and Caltrans intend to double the lanes on Highway 1 between Santa Cruz and Watsonville  (Adding a high occupancy vehicle (HOV) Lane and an auxiliary lane in each direction.)  In 2004, voters decisively rejected a sales tax measure for highway expansion. But transportation leaders went back to the voters in 2016, this time with a sales tax measure that limited the Highway 1 allocation to 22% of proceeds. That’s only enough to put a down payment on the project: four miles of auxiliary lanes from Santa Cruz to Aptos. In fact, the RTC’s Unified Corridors Investment Study (2019) says the project “will require seeking a significant level of funding at a time when state and federal funding for highway capacity increasing projects is extremely limited and therefore will not likely be implemented until after 2035.”

Though the project’s completion is extremely doubtful, continuing to spend money on pieces of the project will have no benefit in congestion relief or highway safety, according to the Caltrans EIR. It’s a waste of precious local funding that could finance better transit and safer streets for bicyclists and pedestrians.

The only thing standing in the way of the next step in highway expansion is our lawsuit. Our lawsuit recognizes the empirical evidence: widening highways doesn’t reduce traffic congestion beyond the short run. Our lawsuit points out that none of the transit alternatives to highway expansion were examined by the EIR—not bus-on-shoulder; not transit on the rail corridor; nor increased transit frequency. 

If we stop going down the highway expansion path, we can fund an alternative in the short term that would work for many commuters who now take Highway 1: express buses traveling in bus-only lanes on the shoulder of the highway. (The RTC’s plan is to run buses in the auxiliary lanes, mixed with other traffic. See my 11 minute video explanation of bus-on-shoulder on Highway 1)

We have to raise just $9000 more to pay our attorney. Please help by Donating online  Or mail checks to Campaign for Sustainable Transportation, PO Box 7927, Santa Cruz, 95061. For a tax deductible donation, make your check out to Sierra Club Foundation, with “Caltrans Litigation Project” in the memo. This lawsuit could have statewide significance in sending Caltrans a message that it needs to follow Governor Newsom’s Executive Order to align transportation spending with the state’s climate goals.
Thank you!

-Rick Longinotti

UPDATE/CORRECTION ABOUT WINGSPREAD DEVELOPMENT. Pat McCormick (former head of LAFCO) was kind enough to send me the “news” that the 66 acre development slated for the property across the Highway from Cabrillo College was NOT defeated due to the Coastal Commission, as I had remembered and written. It was voted on, and defeated, by a County Referendum. And again it was a huge community issue back then (June 1988), led devotedly and nervously by Vickie Powell. 

JOHN TUCK’S FAREWELL PARTY. Plans are racing along for John Tuck’s wake. All his friends are invited. It’ll be Saturday, June 5th – starting at noon. Wear your favorite Hawaiian shirt and go to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship at 6401 Freedom Blvd. Aptos, Calif. 95003.

GRANDSON PLEA! I received some good advice but not one real offer for a place that my grandson Henry can live when he becomes an UCSC student in the fall. He’s willing and able to finesse money and any paper work necessary. He’s majoring in Environmental Science and is simply brilliant, if I do say so. He’s also just about expert at wood-working and is looking for a job starting now or anytime…let me know if you hear of anything. 

May 17

A SENSE OF PLACE

The first round of demolition of familiar businesses is now happening on Pacific and Front streets. This shoving aside is to clear the way for a modern six-story mixed-use structure extending half the length of the block. The photo above shows the remains of Santa Cruz Glass, Mumbai Delights and the Salvation Army store. The Haber building next door is next in line for the wrecking ball and bulldozer. This is how we lose a sense of place. My heart sinks as I survey destruction where once stood solid, modest buildings with well-loved small businesses, which won’t return. This is just the beginning. Many more downtown demolitions are in the works. First downtown, then south of Laurel, then along Soquel, Water, Ocean and Mission. Over a year ago I wrote a piece on the meaning of a sense of place. It seems a fitting time to update it and share again as our sense of place is being reduced to rubble and carted off to the dump.  

San Francisco essayist and author Rebecca Solnit has a quote that resonates with me. She writes: “Sense of place is the 6th sense, an internal compass and map made by memory and spatial perception together.” A sense to be acknowledged, fostered and not trivialized it would seem. 

For me, a sense of place includes all of nature that is familiar as well as structures that have some history and longevity and are of human scale. In the natural world, it includes the weather patterns, the ocean tides, the changing beach profiles, the trees and migratory birds to name a few. It takes time for these to become an internal compass. When I first arrived in Santa Cruz in 1975 I had yet to internalize a sense of place. The birds were sparse compared to Australia, the water cold, and what was this stuff called fog? Yes it was objectively pretty but it was not yet a part of me that I would fight to defend. That would soon change.

“Oh you’re the tree lady!” is a frequent bemused comment when I’m introduced to someone new. I say “yes” and think, “I wouldn’t need that identity if you bastards cared more for big trees.” The number of big trees, especially cypress and eucalyptus that graced the lower Westside in the 1970’s was prodigious, with many close to a century in age. Now all but a few have been cut down. Gone with them are the owls and hawks. Bearing witness to their removal is not easy and I feel the needle of my compass de-center with each death.  

A sense of place is personal and to each their own. Many prefer a city with bright lights, hustle and bustle. Fortunately for them, no one is working to knock down the tall buildings, turn off the lights and plant trees. My preferred sense of place has sunshine, trees and skies dominant, with human buildings small and reflecting a past age. Unfortunately for me, there are those who are working to knock down the old buildings, yank out the trees and urbanize the town, destroying my sense of place and imposing their own. That others have done this before to indigenous peoples does not make it more tolerable.  

I didn’t come to Santa Cruz, look around and decide I’d prefer it if the town were bigger, more upscale and then set about to achieve that vision. I allowed Santa Cruz to reach into my heart and build a sense of place for me. Not so the new urbanites. Where I see familiarity and feel comfort in the small-scale businesses on Pacific, Soquel, Water, Mission and Front streets they see “underutilized space,” “dated buildings” and apparently feel nothing in their heart. An example of lack of a sense of Santa Cruz place was when the head of ROMA, the San Francisco firm hired for a million bucks to write up the Wharf Master Plan, which is planned to morph the Wharf into an unrecognizable upscale tourist destination, said over his power point: “And here’s Gilda’s (mispronouncing the name)… not awful but we can do better.” My internal compass swung wildly at that insult. If Santa Cruz is in the heart, then the Wharf and Gilda’s are its center.  

The city’s Economic Development Department and Planning Department are central players in this transformation of Santa Cruz city with developers courted to sit at the table as they figure out how to make the most money out of urbanizing the town.  That most don’t live in the city helps explain their surprise that some of us care about the old buildings and familiar places. Accusing us of “nostalgia” is a cheap shot at dismissing a sense of place that is Solnit’s sixth sense. Destroying our sense of place is like tearing out our eyes. 

Tearing down the modest buildings on Pacific and Front Streets is but the first in a long list of transformative city planning projects. The passion that motivates some residents to try to stop this destruction of our sense of place wells up from a deep and sacred place. It should not be underestimated.  

Gillian Greensite is a long time local activist, a member of Save Our Big Trees and the Santa Cruz chapter of IDA, International Dark Sky Association  http://darksky.org    Plus she’s an avid ocean swimmer, hiker and lover of all things wild.

May 17

REVISION OF SUPERVISOR SALARIES TIED TO JUDGES SALARY
I had not found the information presented to the Board in April when this was initially discussed.  Judges salaries are higher than information I had found (not on Transparent California) so in reality, the Supervisors will not take a significant salary decrease, as I had reported last week. My apologies.  The good news is that the Supervisors will no longer be voting on their own salary increases.  Thanks again to Supervisor Greg Caput.

Below is the information from an earlier Board agenda that I had not found last week:

BACKGROUND:
Historically, the Board of Supervisors’ salary increases were linked to the salary of judges based on Government Code 68203 which in turn ties judicial increases to the average percentage salary increase for California state employees.  Specifically, the County Code articulated that board members would receive 45% of judicial increases when effectuated.  In December of 1997, this linkage was eliminated by the Board of Supervisors when deep budget constraints were looming. Additionally, language was incorporated to permit a board member to waive salary increases and divert funds back to the County or a charitable organization. Although the Board’s actions were well intended, the ordinance struck out language that provided an objective external standard and replaced it with what can be perceived as the power to decide one’s own salary. 

With the elimination of the tie to judicial increases in 1997, Board salaries are predicated on salary recommendations based on the consumer price index, comparisons with other public agencies, or internal alignment based off of negotiations with bargaining units. Board salaries are considered at the conclusion of the Middle Management and Executive Management negotiations cycle, which occur every 2-3 years depending on the length of multi-year agreements, which are common for the managerial groups. Many Counties throughout the state link their Board compensation to that of Superior Court Judges. Some do it as a fixed percentage (such as 75 percent) of what Superior Court Judges make and others simply connect it directly (meaning they receive 100 percent of the Superior Court Judge salary).

ANALYSIS:
Each year the Judicial Council addresses pay adjustments in or around July resulting in a percentage increase to the existing judicial salary scales.  This item proposes modifications to County Code Section 2.02.060 that reestablishes linkage to judicial salary increases by incorporating language that maintains the Board of Supervisors’ salary at 62% of the salary for Superior Court Judges.  Currently the Superior Court Judge salary is $214,601 compared to the Board of Supervisors’ salary of $134,698 which is 62% of the judges published salary.  Traditionally the Judicial Council releases salary information annually, but the actual date may vary year to year.  In order to establish a consistent process for the salary review, we propose that the Board of Supervisors consider an annual review during budget hearings to consider salary changes based on the available pay information at that time from the Judicial Council.

COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS TO ALLOCATE $53 MILLION FROM FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WINDFALL
A pile of money has descended upon the County, but how will it be spent?  Claims re-imbursing the County tax assessor for $5,200 postage costs; $30,000 in unspecified “special services”, $1,036,642 to the CAO for sick leave; $1,142,537 for Parks Dept. COVID issues; $105,830 to the Sheriff Dept. for unspecified janitorial services….it goes on and on in the 11 Resolutions that the Board will dole out at the feeding trough on Tuesday, May 18, as Item #17 on the Consent Agenda!

How will our society ever pay this trillion-dollar debt the federal government has created?
[ Agenda Item DOC-2021-420]

Consider this staff report:

The County of Santa Cruz will receive $53,068,442 in ARPA funding with half in May 2021 and the second half no earlier than May 2022. Based on the legislation, the County can recover an estimated 28.4 million in revenue losses, $21.9 million of which would remain in the General Fund, $5.3 million would cover Health Services Agency clinic losses, and $1.2 million would cover Highway Gas Tax revenue losses. The remaining amount will fund $24.7 million in recommended COVID-19 related expenditures. Of this set of expenditure programs, $10,110,030 is being recommended to accept and appropriate in the FY 2020-21 Budget. In anticipation of FEMA funding being obligated to the County’s various emergency claims, the recommended resolutions outline $9,768,587 in FEMA funding to HSA for the ongoing public health response and $20,386,351 for shelter and care operations to HSD related to COVID-19. Additionally, the resolutions outline $3,593,772 in funding from Cal OES and $53,450 in Park and Recreation Fees. Therefore, the recommended actions accept and appropriate a total of $43,912,190 from ARPA, FEMA, Cal OES, and Park and Recreation Fees in the FY 2020-21 Budget.

THREE-STORY PARKING GARAGE AND EXPANSION COMING FOR DOMINICAN HOSPITAL
There will be a public hearing on June 8 before the County Board of Supervisors to consider a revision to the Dominican Hospital District to include 85,000 sq.f. expansion and a new three-story parking garage bordering Soquel Drive.  (see Consent Agenda Item #37)
[ Agenda Item DOC-2021-437]

Think about that, along with the proposed new four-story Kaiser Medical Facility across the freeway in the same area, and the attendant 700 car four-story parking garage.  It seems a big market for sick people is on the horizon.  Wouldn’t it be nice to get a local Trauma Center so people don’t have to pay for expensive helicopter rides to the Santa Clara Valley?  

NEW DATA FOR 1500 CAPITOLA ROAD CONTAMINATION …WHERE?
I received this notice for new information regarding the contamination of the 1500 Capitola Road MidPen Housing, Dientes and low-cost Medical Clinic development.  But I could not find the report…maybe you can. I wrote the two officials who are overseeing the soil and groundwater contamination issues, which will NOT be cleaned up, as the development goes forward.  No news yet.

(Brattonote…1500 Capitola Road is/was the site of the historic Robert Merriman House).

Development at Capitola Road (T10000014098) – Capitola Road, SANTA CRUZ –  GeoTracker   

• Site Assessment Report – Data Submittal Package: Soil Vapor, Groundwater and Soil Sample Results – Expedited Site Characterization for an Imminent Multi-Use Development– Date Activity Completed: 4/16/2020 

APTOS LIBRARY WILL CLOSE JUNE 11 FOR DEMOLITION…WILL THOSE LARGE WOODEN BEAMS BE SALVAGED?
According to a recent message from Santa Cruz Libraries Director Susan Nemitz, the many massive wooden beams in the Aptos Library will be salvaged.  That is good news. It would be a good idea if others contact Ms. Nemitz to ensure this happens. 

Susan Nemitz: nemitzs@santacruzpl.org (831) 427-7700 x 7611
The new Capitola library is due to open June 15. 

AND QUICKLY……

1) June 8 Public Hearing set for County Board of Supervisor to hear updates regarding developers paying in-lieu fees for park development.  Remember that this is how the County waived Swenson’s Park Development Fees ($1000/bedroom) in the Aptos Village Project and provided FREE storm water drainage easement across the Aptos Village County Park land to dump the parking lot water on the bank above Aptos Creek.  The money the County would have received, had the CAO, Assistant Planning Director and Supervisor Ellen Pirie not cut a backroom deal, would have paid for renovations to the County Park and maybe even some improved trails that local residents are working hard to beg for funding now to do.  What made the deal happen?  Swenson donated a 0.71 acre steep hillside to the County as an “active recreation park parcel”.  The County Parks staff who visited the site a few years ago said they had no idea how it could be used for such a use, but it is up to the County to figure it out and fund it 100%.  (Consent Agenda Item #36):

Schedule a public hearing on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, beginning at 9:00 AM or thereafter, to consider: changes to Santa Cruz County Code sections 15.01 and 13.03.050 regarding Parkland Dedication and In-Lieu Fees, additions of section 15.03 regarding P

2) THEY KNOW HOW TO STOP MEGAFIRES…WHY WON’T ANYONE LISTEN?
If you are concerned about the future of California’s rural and suburban areas burning, I think you will find this article of interest

PLEASURE POINT COMMERCIAL CORRIDOR POP-UP 
Pop-up demonstration coming to Portola Drive!

Dear Community Member,  

Today we are reaching out to those of you on the Pleasure Point Community Meetings list with an update on implementing the Pleasure Point Commercial Corridor Study (“Study”), and to let you know about an upcoming temporary pop-up demonstration project on Portola Drive to try out key streetscape concepts for the Corridor!

As directed by the Board of Supervisors, County Planning staff is incorporating the Pleasure Point Commercial Corridor Study (“Study”) into the Sustainability Update. The purpose of the Sustainability Update is to implement new General Plan policies and update the County Code to support more sustainable communities, including the community of Pleasure Point. We anticipate releasing draft Sustainability Update documents and the Draft EIR this fall, and holding community meetings beginning in the late fall/winter. We will notify all those on the Pleasure Point Commercial Corridor meeting list of these meetings. You can visit the Sustainability Update Webpage for more information. Meanwhile, Planning staff continues to apply the Guiding Design Principles in the Study to all new commercial projects in the Commercial Corridor.

The streetscape concepts are also an important part of the Community Vision for the Pleasure Point Commercial Corridor. Key concepts include redesigning the portion of Portola Drive in the Corridor to improve safety and convenience for all users, with one driving lane in each direction and a center turn lane, more street trees, wider sidewalks, improved pedestrian crossings, and safer bike lanes. The key streetscape concepts will be moving forward as part of the Santa Cruz County Active Transportation Plan (ATP).

From June 25 to July 21, the County will be trying out key streetscape concepts for the Corridor in a temporary pop-up installation on Portola Drive between 36th and 41st Avenues. The pop-up demonstration introduces protected bike lanes, and includes some other minor variations from the detailed Streetscape Concepts presented in the Study which are identified in the Pop-up infrastructure FAQs. The pop-up provides an opportunity for the community to try out key concepts for the streetscape and provide feedback to the County. The pop-up will help to position the County for future funding, to help ensure that the Community Vision for the Corridor becomes a reality. Stay tuned for an email from Ecology Action with more information. 

For questions regarding the Pleasure Point Study implementation, contact Annie Murphy at Annie.Murphy@santacruzcounty.us.

For additional information on the Pop-up installation or the Active Transportation Plan, contact Amelia Conlen with Ecology Action: aconlen@ecoact.org
 
Thank you for your active participation in Community Planning!
 
Sincerely, Annie Murphy
Senior Planner, Sustainability and Special Projects
Santa Cruz County Planning Department

MAKE ONE CALL.  WRITE ONE LETTER.  ATTEND A VIRUAL PUBLIC HEARING IN YOUR PAJAMAS.  JUST DO SOMETHING…YOU CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE!

Cheers, Becky 

Becky Steinbruner is a 30+ year resident of Aptos. She has fought for water, fire, emergency preparedness, and for road repair. She ran for Second District County Supervisor in 2016 on a shoestring and got nearly 20% of the votes. She ran again in 2020 on a slightly bigger shoestring and got 1/3 of the votes. Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com

May 12

#132 / Crypto Mania

On April 15, 2021, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal published articles about cryptocurrency.

The Times’ article was titled (in the hard copy edition), “A Coming-Out Party For Cryptocurrency.” The Wall Street Journal’s article was titled (again, in the hard copy edition), “Coinbase IPO Mints a Billionaire.” 

Both articles referenced the fact that Coinbase, a cryptocurrency-trading company, was the first of such cryptocurrency companies to “go public,” selling stock to whatever members of the public might want to buy it. Lots of people did want to buy that stock, as it turned out, and the thirty-eight year old founder of the company, Brian Armstrong, instantly became one of “the wealthiest people in the world,” as The Wall Street Journal put it.

Don’t you just love to read about the rich and famous? Lots of people obviously do!

The New York Times’ article kicked off its coverage of the event this way: 

Digital currency, once mocked as a tool for criminals and reckless speculators, is sliding into the mainstream. 

Traditional banks are helping investors put their money into cryptocurrency funds. Companies like Tesla and Square are hoarding Bitcoin. And celebrities are leading the way in a digital-art spending spree using a technology called an NFT. 

On Wednesday, digital or cryptocurrencies took their biggest step yet toward wider acceptance when Coinbase, a start-up that allows people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, went public. Coinbase shares began trading at $381 each, up 52 percent from a reference price of $250, eventually closing at $328.28. That gave the company a valuation of $85.7 billion based on all its outstanding shares, more than 10 times higher than Coinbase’s last private valuation. 

Call it crypto’s coming-out party. Coinbase, based in San Francisco, is the first major cryptocurrency start-up to go public on a U.S. stock market. It did so at a valuation that rivaled that of Airbnb and Facebook when they went public. 

Cryptocurrency advocates — many of whom expect the technology to upend the global financial system — are celebrating the watershed as vindication of their long-held belief in their cause’s potential. 

Coinbase’s listing answers the question “Is crypto a real thing?” said Bradley Tusk, a venture capital investor whose firm, Tusk Venture Partners, backed Coinbase. “Any industry that can launch an I.P.O. of this size is without a doubt a real thing, and it’s proven by the market.”

I remain among those thinking that digital currencies should continue to be linked in our minds to reckless speculation and potential criminal conduct. With apologies to Mr. Tusk, I don’t think that “the market” is always the best way to discern what is “real” and what is an illusion. I have my doubts! 

Maybe this is because my father took me aside, at a young age, and thrust a book into my hands, and told me to read it: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds, by Charles MacKay. If some authoritative person in your life hasn’t done the same thing to you, please let me step into that void, and urge you to read MacKay’s book. Bernie Madoff recently died in prison, at age eighty-two. That news made the papers on April 14th, the day before the Coinbase story. Madoff had cheated thousands with his seemingly solid Ponzi scheme. His victims had definitely NOT read MacKay’s book!

Cryptocurrencies are not guaranteed by anyone (like a bank, or a country), and invite speculation. Putting one’s money into this form is done because of an expectation that the value of the money will increase in value – and increase significantly, way beyond what normal interest would bring. 

Why should the money invested in cryptocurrencies increase in value you might ask? Good question. If you have $1,000 in hundred dollar bills in a locked drawer in your desk, you do not expect that you will find $2,000 there when you check the drawer next month. BUT… you do expect that the $1,000 will still be there. With cryptocurrencies, these expectations are completely reversed. People investing in cryptocurrencies expect their value to go up, and yet they know that it is also quite true that their value may diminish, or even that their investment may have disappeared entirely, by the next time they look.

Of course, people like to visit casinos, Las Vegas, and the racetrack, and to place their bets there. I just think it’s important that we all recognize what’s going on!

Besides the fact that I am clearly a stodgy and conservative person where the investment of money is concerned, there is another problem with cryptocurrencies that I believe is of critical importance. This aspect of the matter was highlighted in another New York Times’ article on April 15th. That article was titled, “Though the Money’s Digital, The Energy Impact Is Real.” Here’s a quick summary:

The stock market debut of Coinbase, a start-up that allows people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, is a watershed moment for digital money. 

It also threatens to lock in a technology with an astonishing environmental footprint. 

Cryptocurrencies use blockchain technology, which relies on specialized computers racing to solve complex equations, making quintillions of attempts a second to verify transactions. It’s that practice, called “cryptomining,” that makes the currencies so energy-intensive. 

Researchers at Cambridge University estimate that mining Bitcoin, the most popular blockchain-based currency, uses more electricity than entire countries like Argentina do. 

“All this accounts for so little of the world’s total transactions, yet has the carbon footprint of entire countries. So imagine it taking off — it’ll ruin the planet,” said Camilo Mora, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (emphasis added).

Read MacKay’s book, and start taking global warming seriously! That’s my advice. 

I am pretty sure my father would have agreed. I know Bill Maher does!

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. View classic inner view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s ” Deep Cover” 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. 

    STORMS

“If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine”. 
~Morris West

“Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them”?  
~Rose Kennedy

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore”.
~Vincent Van Gogh

CABRILLO COMMUNITY COLLEGE, 1974. This great aerial view shows what could have become the Wingspread Development. Developers Hare, Brewer & Kelly tried to build 630 residences, a performing Arts Center, three theaters, stores and more – right here directly across from Cabrillo Community College. Activist Vickie Powell (along with many of us) fought it. The Coastal Commission eventually sided with the citizens, and the space remains as we see it here.                                         photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection. Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

DATELINE May 10

SUPERVISOR SOUP, Part 2. Many sources tell me/us that Gail Pellerin is going for State Assembly, with Mark Stone already almost-endorsing her. So is Fred Keeley. Rachel Dann, Ryan Coonerty’s political analysist and Chief of Staff, looks like the most obvious candidate. Folks reminded me that neither Sandy Brown nor Martine Watkins live in the third district, but that Martine could move. Other suspects include Justin Cummings and Donna Meyers, whose terms both end in December 2022. Many more changes to Supervisor Soup before the final filing… so we’ll just wait and watch.

RAIL PLUS/INCLUDING TRAIL ISSUES. The debate continues with anger, deceit, and rumor all running rampant. There’s so much distortion involved that anyone trying to catch up on this hot-fought issue has to really want to get the facts. In addition to all of above and mostly below one reader sent…. “I understand Bud Colligan has donated to Santa Cruz Local. Also, Will Mayall, Greenway co-founder is now employed there”. 

Here’s what returned Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) executive George Dondero wrote in his very clear support of Rail & Trail on   May 3, 2021.

George Dondero
PO Box 99
Murphys, CA 95247

May 3, 2021

RE: Comments on Agenda Item 25, May 6, 2021 agenda

Dear Commissioners:

I am writing to encourage you to vote ‘YES’ to accept the Business Plan for Electric Passenger Rail on the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line. Accepting the Business Plan will keep future options open for use of the corridor and does not commit the RTC to building the project. 

In 2004 the RTC took Measure J to the voters. It was a sales tax to fund the Highway 1 corridor improvements, and very little else. The voters rejected it strongly. When I was hired in 2006 as the RTC Executive Director, much of the community believed it to be impossible to pass a transportation sales tax in the County, let alone one that would provide funding for Hwy. 1. RTC staff and commissioners worked hard to build a consensus in the community to support a fully multi-modal plan that would gain the required 2/3 voter support. “Impossible!” was the response from many. The state was not supporting investment in capacity-increasing highway projects. The cost increases (due to inflation) for the highway project were daunting. Yet In 2016 the doubters were proved wrong, and Measure D was passed. How did this happen?

During the decade leading up to the 2016 election, the RTC developed a clearer vision for a sustainable future. The Triple Bottom Line concept was introduced into the Regional Transportation Plan, and the community supported that vision. It was driven by planning based on advancing goals and outcomes tied to People, Planet and Prosperity. That vision includes informed use of the rail corridor to best serve the entire county while also improving Highway 1 for all users – including bus riders. It supports extensive trails for cyclists and walkers. Chapter 4 of the Regional Plan outlines the vision for 2040.  It is the vision statement of the RTC.

The RTC was recently awarded a $100+ million dollar grant from the state, to match Measure D funds for improvements on the corridor. Today you are constructing these projects. But remember, not many years ago many said it was IMPOSSIBLE!

Some people today say that constructing commuter rail is IMPOSSIBLE – for some of the same reasons we heard that improving the highway would be IMPOSSIBLE – it was too controversial, too expensive or the voters won’t support it. Indeed, the tide has turned in favor of rail projects. Caltrans is implementing the State Rail Plan to build an integrated rail network across the state. Caltrans is willing to fund the next phase of work on the Santa Cruz rail corridor. There is in fact resonance between the State’s vision embedded in the Rail Plan and the local vision in the SCCRTC Regional Transportation Plan. With this kind of momentum in place, this is not the time to close the door on future options to effectively use the rail corridor. 

If we had listened to the doubters on improving Highway 1 and gave up on the vision, none of the projects you are building today would exist. So the question arises, “what is different between the rail project today and the Highway 1 project in 2006?” The answer: very little. 

In addition to the historical perspective, there is also the matter of recognizing where the voters stand. The city councils of Watsonville and City of Santa Cruz recently unanimously passed resolutions supporting acceptance of the Rail Business Plan.

Please keep the door open to future options. I urge you to strongly consider supporting acceptance of the Rail Business Plan.

Sincerely,

George Dondero

RAIL AND TRAIL another view. James Weller is an expert in property rights, and an advisor to law firms on legal land use issues. He’s also a former Deacon, and a congregational leader. He’s followed and led much of the ongoing battle to maintain and develop both rail and trail here in Santa Cruz County. Here’s what James Weller wrote to the San Cruz Regional Transit Commissioners;

“Disappointed is the least I can say, damn it!

I was profoundly saddened and ashamed on behalf of us all, the people of Santa Cruz County, when six of you RTC Commissioners irresponsibly stalemated the due and proper vote to accept your staff’s “business plan” document and to authorize them to obtain a $17 million Caltrans grant for design, engineering, and environmental review.
You had one job on April Fool’s Day. You failed. You voted against the plain and simple public interest, the public good, and the public institution for which you are responsible.

Suddenly you, Commissioners McPherson, Mulhearn, and Petersen flipped the votes you cast just weeks ago to approve and accept the staff’s “preferred alternative” plan for an electric passenger rail transit system.

Why? Tell us the truth. Don’t roll out all the stage dressing and social media propaganda. We’ve heard all your rhetoric and your perfidiously coordinated talking points. We’re not impressed.

Let’s be honest about all the Trail Only vs. Rail+Trail propaganda.

This is no even-handed public policy debate. The Trail Only partisans are setting up a fallacy of false equivalence. The pro and con factions are anything but equivalent. What’s happening is an open assault by wealthy and self-interested private sector agents against the public interest, the public good, and the integrity of our public institutions.

The Greenway partisans are contemptuous of the work of the public sector. Their aim is to sabotage our long-term public transit infrastructure project.

Our RTC purchased our railroad corridor for public transportation. The Greenway privateers want to hijack our public assets for entirely private purposes. Greenway’s imaginary three-lane “linear park” of asphalt for walking and biking would not be for public transportation. It would be for private recreational use only.

Don’t be bamboozled by the Greenway disinformation machine.

The other three anti-transit commissioners were already pretty obviously bought and paid for by the Greenway gang and their accomplices. Now, I’m even more convinced there are hidden agendas and ulterior motives at work.

What did it take for the Greenway Godfather to turn you against the public purpose of planning for future passenger rail transit? Was it promises, or threats? Bribery, or extortion?

Reason is not involved. None of you six nay-sayers have articulated any compelling reason not to proceed in good order with your professional staff’s planning and design work. You just haven’t. The results of that work would answer many of the objections the anti-rail transit partisans have raised. And the State of California would have paid for it, not local taxpayers.

The public rail transit system your staff envisions, and its companion pedestrian/bicycle pathway, and Metro bus connections, will be nothing but good for all of us – except NIMBIES who selfishly want nothing affecting them to change.

This Green New Deal electric passenger rail infrastructure project’s fiscal impact on our local economy will be entirely positive. It will enhance local commerce, and local tax revenues. It will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It will reduce neighborhood street traffic. It will reduce parking demands.

The federal and state funding involved in building the rail transit system will also benefit the Santa Cruz County Metro transit system by funding intermodal infrastructure. No local property taxes or parcel taxes will be needed to support the rail transit system, ever. For the property taxpayers of Santa Cruz County, the effects of the rail transit system will be all benefits, and no cost.

It is patently false to say, “We can’t afford it!”  If a 1/2-cent or less countywide sales tax increase is required to fund the project, say in 2030, then the project will not proceed without a vote to approve it. Until state and federal infrastructure funding is available, the project will not commence construction. When funding is in place, it will be built.

Why not proceed with project planning, design, engineering, and environmental review? The cost of it will be externalized. There will be years yet for scrutiny of every last matter under consideration. Your staff are faithful and diligent public servants. You should be supporting them in their work, not subverting them.

Opposition to this Countywide Green New Deal infrastructure project transforming the Santa Cruz Branch Line is spectacularly selfish, short-sighted, obstinate, and contrary to the public good.

Whatever the actual offer you couldn’t refuse the Greenway Godfather may have made, I sincerely hope that you, the three who flipped your votes, will take into consideration the distinct appearance of political corruption, and stop trying to sabotage your staff’s work furthering the important long-term local and statewide public interest in developing new passenger rail transit systems.

For Goodness’ sake, people, do the right thing!

Won’t at least one of you cease being used as a tool to repurpose major public assets for private purposes, against the greater public good?”

Jim Weller

CHUCK HILGER TRIBUTE.
Chuck Hilger was the most knowledgeable, talented, and competent director the Museum of Art and History ever had. He retired in 2003, and died in 2020. A commemorative plaque in his honor will be placed in June in the Sculpture Garden high atop MAH. This year will also mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of MAH, in 1996. There’s also going to be a showing of Chuck’s large paper works. There won’t be a public reception (due to COVID issues) but there’s a private reception on Saturday, June 12. Check the website for more details.

TIM EAGAN NOTE. Tim has been working on a graphic novel. Or “comics novel” if you listen to his megalomania. Here’s this week’s blog, which is his most recent update on the project.

GENTLEMANLY BEHAVIOR. We (or I) should probably ask Miss Manners, or write to Dear Abby, but how much of formerly gentlemanly manners should we maintain in this age of equal rights? Do we still hold the door open for a female guest? Do we pull out the chair when she’s ready to sit down? Do we make sure to walk on the street side of the sidewalk when we’re with her? How about paying for the coffee or eats on the first date? More importantly, do we give up our seat when it’s crowded? Yes there’s more urgent questions, but think about it !!!  

May 10

BEWARE OF HOUSING HYPE

If you have been following housing debates and decisions, locally and at the state level, you are probably aware that there is a strong push from some quarters to re-zone single family neighborhoods to allow for up to 4-plexes on a single family lot. Senate Bill 50, Scott Wiener’s bill would have mandated such re-zoning statewide, but failed to get sufficient votes to move it out of committee. The bill was opposed by groups of homeowners and social justice activists: the former protecting their neighborhoods’ low-density character and the latter recognizing that such rezoning, without strict, enforceable protections for low-income tenants, would lead to gentrification and displacement. Expect new versions of the bill to follow.

Then there is the question of for whom is this extra housing being built? Does additional housing lower the cost and lead to affordability? And just what does “affordable” mean?  Research and data would be helpful, especially locally. We have had a number of larger housing developments built in the last 20 years that were supposedly for our “teachers, firefighters and police” (low-income service workers were then still invisible). 1010 Pacific Avenue and Pacific Shores on the far west side exceeded the inclusionary (below-market) rate of 15% but nobody at the city or among housing activists has done the research to know if they lived up to the hype. Did it just become student housing? Absent data, we get no end of feel-good rhetoric and liberal guilt to fill the void.

The Sentinel recently ran a two part series on housing and prior to that, architect Mark Primack scolded us for being in love with our single family homes which he labels in Santa Cruz as “suburbia” and a prime cause of the housing affordability and climate crises. He touts new state laws as the solution. Tell that to the folks who live in modest single family, single story homes on Water and Branciforte Streets who face a future 6 story twin blocks of housing and retail with bar on top, pictured above and largely a result of new state housing bills. 

It’s important to examine the rhetoric and jargon that surrounds the push for increased housing density and who is doing the pushing. Wiener’s bill had strong support from real estate interests and high tech companies. First off, let’s recognize we have a housing cost crisis that is a separate issue from the availability of housing. If every unit of new housing built from this day on is affordable to someone making $15 an hour as a cook in a local restaurant and with a family, I would find nothing to criticize. If, however, rezoning raises the value of land, which it surely does, then such rezoning aggravates the cost crisis as speculators flood in to snap up properties that are now valued far higher due simply to the rezoning. My piece of land with a 700 square foot house is overvalued enough but rezone it to permit 4 houses and the value of the piece of dirt skyrockets with nary an affordable unit in sight since the inclusionary requirement does not kick in at the new density. How is this helping the housing cost crisis? It isn’t. Neither the Sentinel’s two part series, nor Primack’s op-ed mentioned the role of speculators, the hidden force pulling the strings.

Rather than making the big players visible and accurately framing the cost analysis they use guilt to blunt dissent. The Sentinel ends its editorial with a familiar refrain: “But changes will have to come, if we, as a community, want our own children and our local workforce to live here.”  Really? Exactly how will rezoning and high-density expensive housing allow “our children” to live here? Four new houses on my piece of dirt will each be more expensive than my old small cottage after the land is snapped-up by a developer. As for “our local workforce”…well yes, if they mean single high tech, highly paid workers, most of whom will flock from elsewhere to live and work in Santa Cruz, further displacing the local low income workforce while upping the need for more service workers. 

There’s also a new angle to subdue us into uncritical acceptance and that is the charge that we have benefitted from past redlining. Redlining was a practice used against particularly black prospective homeowners in the 1930’s that denied them loans for the upkeep on their homes and resulted in segregated communities of wealthier white neighborhoods where loans were easy to obtain and failing black and brown communities (class played a big part) where loans were hard if not impossible to obtain. It was based on the premise that homogeneity of ethnicities was an inherent good. Diversity as a positive is a more modern construct. Los Angeles is a poster child for past redlining. 

Redlining pops up in opinion pieces and even city staff presentations. In a recent zoom meeting, a senior planner from the city, discussing the above project had a whole video presentation on redlining with maps showing the sections of Santa Cruz that are currently predominantly white (the more affluent neighborhoods) and the neighborhoods predominantly brown (the lower income neighborhoods). The point is to get us to accept rezoning as a corrective to past racist redlining. However it doesn’t work that way unless all the rezoned new housing units are also affordable to very low and low income tenants or buyers and that is obviously not the case. And, since the city has for the past 30 years accepted in lieu fees from developers rather than requiring the lower income units to be included in the development, it is also just a tad hypocritical since it continued the redlining practice of separating people by ethnicity and income.

Solutions to the housing cost crisis may be available but they are not contained in the slew of current state housing bills that serve only to worsen the crisis.

Gillian Greensite is a long time local activist, a member of Save Our Big Trees and the Santa Cruz chapter of IDA, International Dark Sky Association  http://darksky.org    Plus she’s an avid ocean swimmer, hiker and lover of all things wild.

May 12, 2021

Putting Theory into Practice

The Privilege of Working with UCSC Students
Putting theory into practice, that’s what an internship is. An internship allows a student to practice the classroom theories, lectures, and conversations in an outside the classroom opportunity that might yield real life experiences and usually involves problem solving. The more politically conservative voter in Santa Cruz would have you believe the UCSC student body does not deserve to vote because they’re not really local residents and may actually constitute a burden on this community. I disagree. Many of the students I work with, even remotely, are performing valuable service, which bring great benefits to this community and beyond. Let me take a moment here to explain my day job. I have the amazing privilege to surround myself with bright, inquisitive, sensitive, and enthusiastic learners. I do double-takes when folks over 40 talk about the hopeless youth of today who can’t seem to put down their cell phones. Again, I’ve lucked out to be able to work with caring undergrads who roll up their sleeves every day and are on a mission to save the world. While many of us oldsters are trying to grasp the concepts of a warming planet this younger generation has lived their entire life with it. They’ve intuited from a young age that the world they were born into is in trouble of outright collapse, and is in need of fundamental consumer, economic, and social change. The many who land at the Environmental Studies Department doorstep at UC Santa Cruz realize they’ve come home. It’s just where they need to be in their journey across an ailing planet and on a mission to ward off the slings and arrows of an unequal society. I’m moved to highlight here a few of their internship experiences because what they are doing, while delighting and amazing me, is instilling in themselves that learning about Surf City and its micro-climates is opening up a wider lens in which they might help fix that way-off horizon, Mother Earth. And to think, they are learning it here in Santa Cruz.

Burn Recovery
The California Native Plant Society is conducting an inventory on new plant growth within the burn zones of what was called the CZU Lightening Fire. That fire scarred far too much of our county last year. Several students are involved in hiking into these burn zones. What do they do? Survey plants, record locations and percent surface cover, note the topography and stand size including burn severity. One remarked that every tree [he’s seen] that got burned has greenery in its canopy. Another intern reports that she will be doing post-fire monitoring at Wilder Ranch and Henry Cowell in both burned and unburned areas. The terrain is often steep and the trekking rigorous. Something I’ve learned about myself…is that I feel most focused and comfortable outside doing school work, remarked another intern. Though this work can be tedious and sweaty, these students are part of a longer-term project the hopes to restore the charred parts of our county.

Coho and Steelhead Preservation
We are blessed to find an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) right here in Santa Cruz. While NOAA is involved in a range of activities locally, it utilizes student interns in their research. In one project, interns involve themselves in weighing, measuring, and taking DNA samples of Coho and Steelhead salmon in order to expand the population of these threatened aquatic species. While the fish hatchery burned in last year’s fire, the research and monitoring continues. Because of where Santa Cruz is located these undergraduate researchers are using these learning opportunities that only graduate students might have available elsewhere.

Climate Action
Student interns have become integral to the work being done on the city’s Climate Action Plan. Under the mentorship of the city’s Climate Action Coordinator, Tiffany Wise-West, interns are doing calculations around electrifying the city’s fleet of over 800 vehicles. In addition, another intern is investigating public policy issues concerning the pollution emitted by landscape equipment. The students receive first-hand experience and develop the parry and thrust skills-set in order to work within a municipal bureaucracy, while hopefully making a difference.

Sustainable Fish Farming
The Kapuscinski-Sarker Lab at UC Santa Cruz conducts research on developing a micro-algae or insect-based diet for trout and tilapia. Led by professors Ann Kapuscinski and Pallab Sarker, undergraduate interns engage at the edges of this research, which is so important if we are to truly reach a sustainable level of fishing. Interns are able to glimpse firsthand what professional researchers actually do and how they work with their graduate students. Interns report that it is satisfying work to find lasting alternatives in reducing aquaculture’s dependence on fish meal and fish oil. Interns attend graduate lab group meetings, make presentations, learn coding (“R”) and do research on developing an “aquafeed decision support tool.” The lab also works on coastal policy reform.

The UCSC Arboretum is at the forefront of breeding and preserving various local plant species as well as maintaining exotic gardens representing plants from New Zealand and Australia. Student interns perform a variety of duties including watering, mowing, and weeding, but also conduct research and writing about it. One student intern is obtaining “a baseline data-set of what microfungi are found on the Arboretum premises, which they enter into on-line data bases such as BLAST, GenBank, and iNaturalist programs that are open to the public. Others are actively working on seed-saving, writing a history of the Arboretum, and learning fundraising techniques to keep the valuable work going on, which is thus far beyond the reach of corporate America.

Interns on a Mission
This academic quarter alone UCSC Environmental Studies interns are engaged in conservation efforts in Hawaii to preserve the Hawaiian Monk Seal; helping to thwart PG&E’s efforts to charge customers for producing their own solar energy; turning swords into plowshares at the former military base, Fort Ord; building the necessary fences for six sheep to graze a 3-acre winter cover crop at a local farm; writing a field guide about at-risk plant and animal species on the UCSC Natural Reserve; assisting in preparing a law suit against a corporate polluter; harvesting vegetables bound for farmer’s markets locally and in the Bay Area; confronting the moral and ethical questions around caged animals at a Bay Area wildlife center; and also, interns are producing podcasts that highlight the work of climate change scientists.

Interns with a Secret
There is also work being performed by student interns that may never be known directly by the public. Two interns had to sign confidentiality agreements with their agencies because of the sensitive nature of their work. One is involved with building “tiny homes” for impoverished residents using an innovative building material, while the other is working on preserving and restoring an endangered ocean species which lives along the California coast.

Finally
I kid you not, there’s also an intern who has video-taped interviews with K-6 students discussing aspects of UCSC’s Long Range Development Plan and how campus development in the upper campus will adversely affect their after-school nature program. This intern is working on distributing the video to local political decision-makers.

“75% of seniors with hearing loss don’t have a hearing aid because of the cost. 65% have no dental insurance and no idea how they’ll afford to see a dentist. Over 70% of Americans 65 & older have untreated gum disease. We cannot tolerate this any longer.” (May 11)

The “Agreement Camp” at Harvey West Park seems to be the biggest little secret in addressing the houseless community crisis…and read the fine print below on what the “agreements” are:

(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 16 years. Krohn was elected to the city council again in November of 2016, after his kids went off to college. That term ended when the development empire struck back with luxury condo developer money combined with the real estate industry’s largesse. They paid to recall Krohn and Drew Glover from the Santa Cruz city council in 2019. Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

#128 / And Just A Quick Little Follow-Up

In yesterday’s blog posting, I discussed what I thought was a helpful perspective on practical politics from conservative commentator Bret Stephens. Stephens used one of his columns to discuss the fact that it is tempting to try to advance one’s political objectives by portraying opponents, and those with whom you disagree, in the worst light possible, at all times, and with no concessions ever being made, and with the details distorted, as necessary, to make the opponent look as bad as he or she can possibly be made to look.

It was Stephens’ argument that this is how the “mainstream media” operate, in their effort to undermine and depreciate conservative politicians. I, personally, think the conduct objected to comes from both the liberal and the conservative side, but Stephens’ point was that the technique has a tendency to backfire, and to wind up having the opposite effect from that desired. I tend to agree. In fact, I have made the point more generally, highlighting the value of a good “concession” to help one win an argument. 

Today, I am providing a quick little follow-up to Stephens’ attack on the “mainstream media” by talking about another “mainstream media” problem. This is a different problem, but somewhat related. This complaint about the media is coming from a more liberal part of the political spectrum. 

Matt Taibbi (pictured above) and Glenn Greenwald have been making the point, during the last couple of years, that the “mainstream media,” and some other parts of the media world, are now regularly treating figures whom they dislike, and who are accused of wrongdoing, as “guilty” before any actual proof has been adduced. Surely, we must think, this would be wrong! Yet, Taibbi is pretty convincing that it is now happening all the time, and I think his cautionary words are worth taking seriously. 

Here is a link to one of Taibbi’s recent postings in his Substack newsletter, TK News, “Due Process Is Good, He Said Controversially.” He provides a number of examples of what he is talking about:  

One of the first things that caused Greenwald to run afoul of conventional wisdom was the observation with regard to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation that indictments are not proof. He was slammed, but what do you know, the government ended up dropping at least one of the cases Mueller filed against a Russian defendant, once the issue of having to publicly disclose evidence was raised. This was after the defendant called the government’s bluff and showed up in court — demonstrating, prosecutors later said bitterly, the defense’s “intent to reap the benefits of the Court’s jurisdiction.” 

That argument — that the defendant’s intent to actually exercise legal rights shows guilt in itself — is the kind of thing liberals used to decry all the time, coming from “tough on crime” Republicans. Opinions like that occur when you’ve fallen too far into the habit of judging people rather than evidence. Suddenly process becomes a canard, and you even get lawyers saying that hiring a lawyer is evidence of guilt…. 

Whether it was unconcern with attorney-client privilege after the raid of Michael Cohen’s office, disinterest in the implications of the case of despised Julian Assange, or the embrace of concepts like “not exonerated” (the opposite of presumed innocence), people who probably once described themselves as progressives seem to have lost touch with core ideas in recent years.

That doesn’t mean running around proclaiming that O.J. didn’t do it or that such-and-such a politician isn’t an awful person who should probably be voted out of office. It doesn’t mean you can’t say something like, “Matt Gaetz should probably be jailed for his haircut alone.” It does mean distinctions exist and it’s good to know what you’re dealing with before strapping people in the dunking chair. This is particularly true in accusations of sex crime, where the public can quickly lose interest in rights, something organizations like the ACLU used to understand after watching debacles like the Wee Care and McMartin preschool cases.

Taibbi has other examples, and his presentation is worth reading in its entirety. 

I believe that the polarization of our politics has increasingly led to a tendency for all of us to “assume the worst” about those with whom we differ, and that this is true for everyone, from whichever side of the political spectrum they hail. Assuming a political opponent is guilty of a crime because we know that he or she is “bad” can, indeed, undermine due process. Furthermore, to reiterate the point made by Stephens, unfair presumptions about those on the other side of a political division make it virtually impossible to have the kind of political discussions that we need to have, if we are to get out of the dilemma in which we find ourselves. 

What dilemma am I talking about? You might ask that. Pick one!

Whether it is the existential threat of global warming, or the need to enact and implement a fair and just immigration system, or the need to redress our nation’s long history of racial discrimination and inequity, or the need to eliminate the rampant pollution and environmental degradation that is a threat to our civilization and life on this planet, or the requirement that we find a way to eliminate the massive income inequality within our society, or the threat of nuclear war…. Whatever it is: pick one! We have plenty of problems. 

And the truth about every one of these dilemmas and problems is this: we are in this together. 

What Stephens and Taibbi are really pointing out is that we are ever more frequently celebrating the worst in those with whom we disagree, particularly when we proclaim the “worst” before the facts are truly in, or when we distort and exaggerate the facts to make the “worst” seem as horrible as possible, with no concession ever granted.

Focusing on the “worst” in those with whom we must collaborate, if we hope to have a chance to meet the challenges before us, is to doom ourselves to defeat. 

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. View classic inner view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s “Deep Cover” 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. 

    DOLPHINS

“No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal”.  
~Jacques Yves Cousteau

“Though pleas’d to see the dolphins play, I mind my compass and my way”. 
~Matthew Green

“I felt such a deep connection with dolphins. I felt like they were the only ones who understood me”.  
~Lykke Li

THE JUPITER ENGINE. 1878. Another part of our area’s railroad history. This engine was owned and operated by the Santa Cruz Railroad Company. It now resides in the Smithsonian Institute, and has been there since 1976.                                         photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection. Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

DATELINE May 3

THE KOCH BROTHERS AND THE GREENWAY ANTI TRAIN CAMPAIGN.
At the all-out May Day celebration at Tom Scribner’s statue last Saturday, a regular BrattonOnline reader told me about the financing of our local Greenway “movement” that is working so hard to stop any Rail and Trail. After going to the international site, I see the Koch Brothers headquarters is located in Wichita, Kansas. Then I scoured the media and found that the The Santa Cruz Sentinel published this… “It did not make sense that a rich organization, Greenway, would suddenly appear in our community with one purpose: kill rail-with-trail planned for almost 20 years when groundbreaking is within months. Especially when the current rail-trail plan essentially builds one half of the Greenway “concept plan” with walk and bike use beginning so soon. Bud Colligan, Miles Reiter and William Ow financially backed the Capitola initiative to undermine the current rail-trail project. It makes no sense to scrap this plan and start from scratch. Then I read June articles in New York Times and LA Times, which outlined how Koch brother’s organization is winning through removing rails against communities’ desires to keep them. The big money backing removing rails is “Americans for Prosperity”, a Koch-financed conservative group. Koch companies produce gasoline, asphalt, seat belts, tires and other automotive parts. I wonder if our local individuals are being used by the Kochs.

MONTHLY-ISH PITCH Bratton Online is a work of passion; the writers don’t get paid for all the time they put in. There are other costs associated with running a website, however. If you feel so moved, you can make a donation for the running of BrattonOnline. Every little bit helps, and is most appreciated! Secure payment through Square. Online Payment Donate

I got further into this and found this in the New York Times…

NEW YORK TIMES…

How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country

The Kochs’ opposition to transit spending stems from their longstanding free-market, libertarian philosophy. It also dovetails with their financial interests, which benefit from automobiles and highways. One of the mainstay companies of Koch Industries, the Kochs’ conglomerate, is a major producer of gasoline and asphalt, and also makes seatbelts, tires and other automotive parts. Even as Americans for Prosperity opposes public investment in transit, it supports spending tax money on highways and road”. In only temporary conclusion we can see that Colligan et al have huge money behind them and their campaign to stop any/all attempts to bring Rail and Trail to our community.

BEST RAIL TRAIL NEWS. So, new last week are three area Democratic clubs and two city councils voted to support Rail and Trail then add these to the Coastal Commission, TAMC, AMBAG, Caltrans, Sierra Club, et al. and the word and support is still growing.

SUPERVISOR SOUP. Now Ryan Coonerty has announced thathe’s not running again for County Supervisor, the political pot is boiling with candidates, guesses, fears and dreams. We have yet to hear from the usual suspects such as Cynthia Mathews, Mike Rotkin, Don Lane, Ed Porter, Hilary Bryant or Richelle Naroyan. With their miserable record as council veterans, there should be little support for that possibility. Greg Larson and Robert Singleton have such anti-women issues that a campaign would make them even more vulnerable. Existing city council “veterans” such as Donna Meyers, Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson, Martine Watkins, and Justin Cummings must be doing much county-based research right about now. Chris Krohn is busy calculating the same possibilities as his last run for County Supervisor in 2006. For now, that leaves us guessing as to which candidates will get support from Bud Colligan and/or Fred Keeley. The money and hidden backgrounds behind those two names could mean a lot. This leaves us with Sandy Brown, who has been doing an excellent job on the council. Will she decide to join in that higher tension…we’ll see. Cyndi Dawson, marine biologist and County Democratic Central committee member, has worked hard to unify the third district and would have good support. The name that came up more often than anyone’s — with tons of positive hope — is Gail Pellerin, our former Santa Cruz County Clerk. Gail has an incredible record of County-wide wheeling and dealing. She knows how the county works, and has proven over and over that she can deal positively with our local community. This will be a very long (more than a year or two) race….stay tuned.

May 3.

Adapt and Manage

At its last meeting, city council voted to accept the West Cliff Drive Adaptation and Management Plan. This Plan, developed over the past year by a team of consultants, city Climate Action and Public Works staff, a Technical Advisory Committee (I was a volunteer member) was funded by a $343,000 Caltrans grant with a matching city $44,000 plus $200,000 from the CA Coastal Commission with a match of $82,000 from the city.

In the words of the Agenda Report: The purpose of the West Cliff Drive Adaptation and Management Plan: a Public Works Plan was to develop a set of scientifically-informed, community-informed coastal management projects for the near-term 10 to 15 year time horizon and document the community’s current vision for the next 80 years of adaptation. This lays the groundwork to prepare the City for adapting to the inevitable future of accelerated coastal erosion and increasing vulnerabilities to the Santa Cruz community. Worthwhile goals.

From the outset I was alert to the possibility of hidden agendas. It is no secret that some people would love to see West Cliff closed to all traffic or reduced to one lane of traffic. It is a given that such a lane closure would have a massive traffic impact on the lower Westside. It is probably unpopular with tourists and visitors as well as the frail. A drive each way along West Cliff is a rare delight for many of our most vulnerable visitors and locals. Since there are alternatives to lane closure should future erosion necessitate moving the path, I wanted to make sure those alternatives were not buried. 

One alternative is to remove parking on the inland side of West Cliff and slightly narrow the road to historical (and still legal) widths to allow for a reinstated path further from the bluff when and where necessary, while retaining a two-way road. This was Al Mitchell’s written suggestion a year before he died. Sound advice from he of Mitchell’s Cove fame. 

Another alternative is to claim the 5-foot easement that exists the length of West Cliff and remove the inland sidewalk that is little used. The consultants included that alternative but it was never presented to the public with the same fanfare as was closing one lane. With respect to erosion, other than the sinkhole from a few years back, it seemed to me that the causes were more connected to activity and stability on top of the bluff rather than to rising sea levels. At each opportunity for input I offered those comments. 

While the lower Westside was largely unaware that their future quality of life was about to be presented to council, the organized transportation activists were fully aware. A letter from the chair of the Transportation and Public Works Commission to city council urged the council to not wait for future erosion to consider closing one lane of West Cliff Drive but to begin that process now. Writing such a letter as chair of a commission that has yet to hold public hearings on this controversial issue is most likely an ethics violation of the Fair Political Practices Act but I’ll leave that to the city to evaluate. His letter included the following comment:

“There will be reasonable neighborhood pushback about the traffic impacts. This can be adequately mitigated by making it less inviting to drive through the neighborhoods with traffic calming and street diversions. The circulation plan should focus on moving auto traffic back to Mission Street, again with traffic calming along the way.” 
Chair, city Transportation Commission.

“Reasonable neighborhood pushback” is the understatement of the year. No amount of “traffic calming” and “street diversions” could adequately address the impact of diverting thousands of West Cliff cars off the Drive and onto selected streets. As for “moving the auto traffic back to Mission Street” I’ll leave that to your imagination to evaluate. 

Picking up on the Commission chair’s letter, the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation sent out an email blast that generated 51 letters to council urging them to follow the chair’s recommendation and begin the process to close West Cliff to one-way traffic now. Some of the letter writers are friends and colleagues whom I respect so I concluded that they just hadn’t thought through the consequences of such an action and were unaware of alternatives. 

There must have been a behind the scenes scrambling since none of the letter writers except the commission chair spoke at the hearing, staff hastened to assure council that the Plan did not include Alternative 2, closing West Cliff to one-way traffic….for now…and that any future actions in that regard would be a lengthy public process. I did note that council member Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson made a point of saying such discussions should include the whole community. I took that to mean, include opinions from those not affected by such an action.

In the meantime, be aware that the city is applying for a grant to connect the new rail/trail bike path with West Cliff Drive along Swanton Blvd. and Natural Bridges Drive. This has the potential to add hundreds of additional bikes to West Cliff Drive especially as the rail/trail is expanded to Davenport. While we all love our bikes and trails, there is such a thing as carrying capacity. Overwhelm West Cliff bike path and the pressure to close one lane of traffic is magnified. Hidden and not so hidden agendas. 

Gillian Greensite is a long time local activist, a member of Save Our Big Trees and the Santa Cruz chapter of IDA, International Dark Sky Association  http://darksky.org Plus she’s an avid ocean swimmer, hiker and lover of all things wild.

May 3.

Forced to Flee, This Inn is Closed

SANTA CRUZ: RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH AND THE PAY IS TOO DAMN LOW

I have a radio show, Talk of the Bay, on Tuesday’s on KSQD at 5pm. Last week’s show was about those who’ve been forced out of town because they’re not able to pay the rent, or weren’t willing to work the number of hours it required to be a tenant. All of them wanted to stay, but felt they had to leave. Scott Graham is a carpenter in his 60’s. He lived for many years in a white clapboard fixer upper on Maple Street behind the London Nelson Community Center. The house likely would not have passed the city’s rental inspection ordinance, but he lived in it anyway for over two decades. Graham’s is a story well-known to Santa Cruz renters, many of whom are suddenly displaced. The parent or grandparent dies and a son or daughter comes in from Hoboken or Pasadena or Healdsburg and immediately upends the lives of the renter, demands everyone leave, and then sells the home to the highest bidder. Graham abandoned Santa Cruz a few months ago. He bought a house-trailer in Humboldt County where he now resides. Did Santa Cruz actually abandon him? Natalya Jackson is a single mom who lived in Surf City for six years while pursuing a Ph.D. in Mathematics. She found community within graduate student life. Upon becoming an ardent Bernie Sanders supporter, she joined the steering committee of SC4Bernie. Jackson told me she and her daughter would love to have stayed here, but rent was the biggest obstacle. As a teaching assistant at UC Santa Cruz she made $21,000 a year. Her rent for a studio apartment in Soquel was around $18,000 a year she said. It did not make sense to stay in Santa Cruz. Reached at her new home in Tacoma, Washington, Jackson said she is living in a two-bedroom apartment and got a job teaching math at a local college. She says she now pays less than half the rent she paid for that studio in Soquel. Bob Guzley is the former principal of the Delta School, which is located on the Cabrillo College campus (or is the Ohlone College?). The children of his former landlord sold the ramshackle, but cozy home in Seabright where he was living to developers. It became another tear-down. Now, the lot is packed with a few market rate town homes which Guzley could never afford. He moved first Phoenix then to Chico and is now planning on moving to Flagstaff, Arizona.

Demographics of Santa Cruz
The Census Reporter offers details on the demographics of Santa Cruz from 2019. Santa Cruz County has a population of 273,213. The median age is 38.5 with 56% of residents checking the box for “white/Caucasian.” The per capita income in the county is $46,714 for an individual, that’s about 20% higher than California as a whole. The income for a “household,” two or more people’s income combined, is $89,269, about 10% greater than the state average. There are 97, 710 households and 107,137 units of housing in the county. Sixty-percent of the occupied units are owner-occupied, while 9% of the total number of housing units, about 9,600, are vacant. If that is true, it sounds astounding. How many of those units are in the city of Santa Cruz I wonder? There are likely no more than 5,000 houseless people in this county and with over 9600 units of vacant housing, maybe we do have the solution to homelessness within our grasp after all.

Forced Out
The following is poignant and bittersweet, but a common anecdote about living in one of the half dozen costliest cities on earth. It is a story written by a former Santa Cruz resident, Jessica, who was forced out by high housing cost. She was invited to be on the radio show, but was traveling at the time. She is finding that there is actually life elsewhere, far from the Santa Cruz coastline. It is lightly edited.

I lived in Santa Cruz from 2014 until 2019. Sometime near the end of my stay in the city, I moved into one half of a duplex on Laurel Street with my partner and three other housemates. For one bedroom in that smallish duplex, my partner and I paid roughly $600, each! We shared a tiny closet and a room with one electrical outlet. The windows were not weather-proofed and had no caulking, whatsoever. Our room ($1200 total) was one of four bedrooms, which altogether totaled $3,450 per month in rent. Our house was just one half of the duplex, mind you. The carpet was so old, every time we used a vacuum cleaner, the carpet strands would come undone and break the vacuum. We probably had five vacuums in the house and I don’t think ANY of them worked by the end! The tile flooring, and I’m not even really sure it was tile, was so damaged that no matter how often you mopped it, it never looked clean. The house had mold, water leaks, and a Victorian claw foot tub that I was convinced would fall through the second floor into my housemates’ pantry-sized bedroom at any moment. I still get chest pains from whatever lived inside the paint of that house. 

Despite all of this, and for a long time, I felt lucky to live there. Lucky only because we found a place where enough of us could live without feeling TOO overcrowded and we were able to split the rent into something that was manageable. I felt lucky because others who I knew were living in tents in their friend’s backyards, or paying the same amount to live in someone’s closet. Or, in some cases, I found friends paying twice as much to live in worse conditions.

Eventually, my partner and I split ways and moved back to our families because we agreed that housing in Santa Cruz was unsustainable for us. I miss Santa Cruz and the community I made there over the years, and for the most part, when I think about my housing experience there, I can’t think of anything profound to say about it. I’m simply overwhelmed with both the grief of having to say goodbye to the friends and family I made there, and the relief that I was able to escape the situation. I’ve heard many similar stories from other people who have had to leave Santa Cruz, by their own choice, or not. I’m not sure that I can really write much more because it still hurts to think about.  

“Not enough credit is given to the countless activists, organizers, and advocates whose relentless work is why we are even hearing anything about universal childcare, white supremacy as terrorism, labor, and living wages tonight. Yet we cannot stop until it’s done. Keep going.” (April 28, Tweeted out immediately after Joe Biden’s “state of the union” message.)

Grant Wilson reading from local author, rabble-rouser, and IWW member, Tom Scribner’s work. (Bruce Bratton, wearing a brown hat, is gazing forlornly at the statue of Tom and looking for the next great Santa Cruz Revolution.)

(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 16 years. Krohn was elected to the city council again in November of 2016, after his kids went off to college. That term ended when the development empire struck back with luxury condo developer money combined with the real estate industry’s largesse. They paid to recall Krohn and Drew Glover from the Santa Cruz city council in 2019. Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

 May 1
#121 / More On Disasters

“Collapsology,” though it may be a “neologism,” as Wikipedia tells us, is giving us a name for a real thing. How Everything Can Collapse has certainly convinced me of that. The subtitle of that book, by the way, is “A Manual For Our Times.” I recommend it!

As I wrote yesterday, when disasters strike, the monkeys of Puerto Rico can give us some guidance. However, many may bridle at the thought that we ought to be taking advice and guidance from a bunch of monkeys.

Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens, the authors of How Everything Can Collapse, actually do concur that the monkeys are right, and that building broader and more tolerant social networks is exactly the right thing to do in the face of disaster. Their book, however, doesn’t put this advice into the form of an admonition about what we “ought to do.” Instead of a prescription, the book provides description, and says that we (like the monkeys) actually do the right thing when disasters strike, and become more cooperative and collaborative: 

After a catastrophe, i.e., an event that suspends normal activities and threatens or causes serious damage to a broad community, most human beings behave in extraordinarily altruistic, calm and composed ways…. Decades of meticulous sociological research on behavior in disasters, from the bombings of World War II to floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and storms across the continent and around the world, have demonstrated this….  The image of human beings as selfish and panic-stricken in times of disaster is not at all corroborated by the facts…. The overwhelming majority of those involved remain calm, help each other and get organized. In fact, individuals seek security first and foremost, so they’re not inclined to violence and are unlikely to do wrong to their fellows. In sum, behaviour associated with competitiveness and aggression is set aside in a general upsurge of feeling where all “I’s” instantly become “we’s” with a force that nothing seems to stop. [pp. 150-151]

If this is a verifiable sociological and anthropological truth – and I am pretty much convinced that it is – the main problem we have right now is making sure that everyone understands that the disaster is present, that it has already occurred – that the crisis is NOW. 

Perhaps the pandemic, with which we still grapple, may help us to understand. 

Ojalá!

Until that news does come down the wire, and the message gets through, Servigne and Stevens leave us with some words from Gary Snyder. I will do just the same: 

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
The steep climb of everything, going up,
up, as we all go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

Gary Snyder, Turtle Island, 1974 

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. View classic inner view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s ” Deep Cover” 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. 

    TRAINS

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction”.    Dietrich Bonhoeffer 

“Life is like a train station, people come and go all the time, but the ones that wait for the train with you are the ones that are worth keeping in it”. Unknown 

“Don’t let the train of enthusiasm run through the station so fast that people can’t get on board”.    H V Morton

ARLENE’S COUNTRY SERENADERS aka THE LOST SOUND. Left to right, that’s Tom Scribner on the musical saw, Arlene Sutton at the accordion, and Herman Olson, also on saw and accordion. Tom, Arlene, and Herman made up “The Country Serenaders” — playing many, many senior homes and benefits around the county for years. Tom’s colorful vest says “The Lost Sound”. He’d played the saw for fun and to meet people since 1910, but never “busked” or passed the hat. He wasn’t the greatest saw player in the world, but as a result of our creating Santa Cruz’s annual Musical Saw Festival, we did get to hear many, many of the planet’s greats.                                         photo from my personal collection. Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

DATELINE April 26 

TOM SCRIBNER & POLITICS. (from my April 4, 2016 column) Tom cared much more about politics than the musical saw. Born in 1899, he was a tree cutter, and very active with the Industrial Workers of the World. (I.W.W.). He moved here in the mid 60’s and from his home in Davenport published a monthly/occasional publication called “The Redwood Ripsaw Review” which took on all comers, locally and internationally. Santa Cruz City Council Republican members (Larry Edler, Dr. John Mahaney & Joe Ghio) back in the late 70’s didn’t like Tom’s left-Socialist politics, and fought hard to stop Marghe McMahon’s statue from being placed in SCOPE Park next to the Town Clock in 1978. The square later became known as Scribner Square. It was later tagged for development, and the statue was moved in front of Bookshop Santa Cruz in July 1993. 

MAY DAY CELEBRATION. Grant Wilson has been organizing hard for weeks to create a celebration for Tom Scribner. It’s going to be on May Day, at Tom’s statue in front of Bookshop Santa Cruz. Grant says: “… I’ll be doing a reading-performance on Saturday, May Day at 2pm with Jimmy Kelly (embodying the musical spirit of Utah Phillips)”  playing, singing appropriate songs. I came upon Tom’s autobiography “Lumberjack” published in Davenport in 1966 at the socialist Santa Cruz Public Library ~ Fascinating! and so Tom!  Yes, May Day is still International Workers Day. As Wikipedia states… “May Day has been a focal point for demonstrations by various socialist, communist and anarchist groups since the Second International”.

CABRIO COLLEGE NAME CHANGE. More and more “news” and opinions keep hitting as the Name Exploration Subcommittee keeps up their online/Zoom meetings. Por ejemplo, some students claim a name change will cost over one million dollars, and ask where that amount could be better spent. Others say it’s worth it. I asked retired Cabrillo history professor Sandy Lydon. He said that our County Board of Supervisors voted twice (1948, 1954) against having a junior college district in our county. They were then informed, and so were the voters, that there could be no UCSC in the county without a junior college.

“Thus, the 1958 second attempt to form a junior college district was huge to not only reverse the anti-education stench, but also to get the junior college that was a pre-requisite for getting a UC campus. In fact, part of the over argument by folks in and around Santa Cruz in the 1958 junior college election was just that — the junior college was a necessary step if they wanted to get the attention of the UC Regents. 

Go here to get in on the renaming of our Community College, if you want to call it that. 

CHANGING THAT “COMMUNITY COLLEGE” NAME. As long as so many students want to change Cabrillo College’s name…let’s get into it for real. Change “COLLEGE‘ (which is from the Latin “collegium”) and “COMMUNITY” (also from the Latin word “communitas”). Everybody knows how evil those Romans were. Caesar Augustus, the barbarians of Odacer, Julius Caesar, Tiberius they were some evil, tricky rulers. Much worse than Joao Rodriguez Cabrilho himself could have been.  

GRANDSON RENTAL, part 2. Nothing yet in response to my pleas last week to find a student rental situation for my grandson Henry, who’ll be attending UCSC this next semester. He’s tech savvy, neat, handy around the house, and will work out any/all details with sharing, co-existing, whatever it takes to make Santa Cruz his new home. He’s been here many times over the last bunch of years, and loves and respects our community. Do get in touch and we’ll work out details bratton@cruzio.com

THE NEW CITY MANAGER. Much grumbling and grousing about our getting a new city manager to replace Martin Bernal. A nation-wide search was – and is – being heralded as a perfect way to find the right person. Oft-repeated rumors say Lee Butler, our present Planning Director, is going to land the job. Aside from him not being the world’s greatest communicator, and carrying an arrogant demeanor, he’s made some miserable decisions regarding our homeless/houseless — such as the Seabright Neighborhood tent possibilities. More importantly, most folks in the know believe Butler would be just another supporter of the high price high rise developments that threaten us.

April 26

EARTH DAY 2021

Picking up tax forms and a long-awaited book at the downtown library last Thursday I felt a strong rush of disgust at the prospect of this sacred place being bulldozed and carted off to the dump. Like family members ogling the inheritables before the widow is dead, the city held two zooms to solicit public input on what should fill this site once the library is demolished. Like most public input, that which supports the city’s a priori plans for whatever they want will be handled with care and that which doesn’t will be shuffled to the bottom of the pile. I don’t say such things lightly. I’m not a cynic. Such are observations drawn from long experience. Recall that the early survey put out by the library committee soliciting opinions on what the public wanted to see in a new downtown library omitted any reference to the option of moving the library to a new location. But they knew that was the plan.

As a happy contrast, Saturday’s Earth Day event at the Commons, parking lot 4 at Cathcart and Cedar was filled with people who tried to save the library in situ. I’m glad I went. Organized by Downtown Commons Advocates and Santa Cruz Climate Action Network with the tireless work of Judi Grunstra and Pauline Seales amongst others, it was a fine event. The music was especially good, the few speakers short and focused with plenty of booths from local organizations to bend your ear. Council member Sandy Brown spoke, reminding us what a difference a council member who listens to the public can make. 

Chalk art of trees and leaves brightened the sidewalks and awards were given for a photo contest with prints of all the contributions on display. Many recipients were local youth, a reminder of for whom the struggle is being waged. The lovely piece of chalk art in the photo above (sorry, I don’t know the name of the artist) is a reminder of what else will be sacrificed if/when the library is torn down and the trifecta of new library/parking garage/”affordable” housing erected on this site. The beautiful old magnolia trees are old and in the way of all that new construction or so the narrative will play out. The Heritage Tree Ordinance should protect the trees since only “if a construction project design cannot be altered to accommodate existing heritage trees or shrubs” (Criteria and Standards 1.3) can heritage trees be removed.  Since the construction project is not yet final it can be sited around the trees. If we had a council majority and a city Planning Department that cared about such living things the trees would be protected. As usual it will demand vigilance and action from the public.

However protecting the trees from the proposed development is already running up the white flag and the Downtown Commons folks are not prepared to give up. The goal is to preserve Lot 4 for a central park or Commons, and in so doing also protect the current location of the Farmers’ Market. An alternative city parking lot is well-suited for affordable housing. And by no means least, renovating the current library right where it stands as the third pillar of the Civic Center: library, city hall and civic auditorium. Check out their website    https:/downtowncommonsadvocates.weebly.com   

I understand that people will have different opinions on what is treasured about a community and what is not. However the apparent disregard by city planning and economic development staff for that which gives the town its character and sense of place seems excessively indifferent. Do they feel nothing at the bulldozing of the familiar buildings that house small local businesses or perhaps a library? I wonder how many don’t live in Santa Cruz? Easy to ignore the transformation of the town from small, human scale with history to high rise market rate mixed use generic buildings if Santa Cruz is not in your heart: if you can escape to a bucolic somewhere else where you don’t have to look at the results of your actions. 

Gillian Greensite is a long time local activist, a member of Save Our Big Trees and the Santa Cruz chapter of IDA, International Dark Sky Association  http://darksky.org    Plus she’s an avid ocean swimmer, hiker and lover of all things wild.

April 26

UCSC ON THE GROWTH TRACK.

Will We be Able to Stop the UCSC Growth Machine?
The Santa Cruz chapter of the Sierra Club hosted a forum attended by 75 people this past Sunday. It was billed as “an informational community event to better inform city and county residents about the UCSC Long Range Development Plan,” or LRDP for short. Several local groups sent representatives to participate in a wide-ranging discussion that quickly became a Who’s Who political event. And by political in this case, I mean community members coming together to discuss a university plan that if left unchecked will surely make life worse in Santa Cruz not just for those in town, but for students who are invited to a pitiful under-resourced campus. The result of this forum was a solidifying of a decade-long plea, and a firmer line in the sand, between this community and the University Growth Machine (UGM). Community message to UGM: no more cars on campus above the 2005 agreed upon number, no more staff, faculty, or student body increases above current numbers unless all of them are housed on campus, and finally, no building, none, zero, nada, on the East Meadow. There was passion, clear articulation of the issues, and signs of an informed electorate ready to go to war if the UGM follows through on their threats (idle?) to bring 12,000-14,000 more bodies to Surf City over the next 10 years.

The Discussion
Rick Longinotti,of the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation, outlined imperative transportation issues and emphasized that there can and must be alternatives to the car culture. Campus authorities cannot continue to facilitate bringing more cars to campus. Longinotti promoted electric buses, bus passes for all staff and faculty, and urged more funding from the UC Regents to supplement the already exorbitant amount students pay to get around the most spacious in the ten-campus system. Karen Bassi and Chris Connery represented EMAC, the East Meadow Action Committee, which is trying to preserve and protect the campus East Meadow from development. They have filed two law suits contesting UC’s end-around the CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) process, and another disputing the UCSC administration’s lack of transparency concerning exactly how much it would cost to build on other campus locations instead of in the scenic and iconic East Meadow. Connery invoked the great landscape architect Thomas Church and his concept that the redwoods must be the over-arching dominant of campus structures. Connery also mentioned that the first UCSC Chancellor, Dean McHenry, would not permit any redwood over 12 inches in diameter to be felled. Jerry Busch of the Sierra Club offered a credible presentation on the critical habitat of vulnerable campus plant and animal species that would be endangered if the LRDP went forward. Busch said the Sierra Club joins other organizations calling for a no development policy on the lands which the university administration calls “North Campus.” Lecturer and union organizer, Josh Brahinsky, spoke about the over-reliance of using lecturers instead of hiring more tenured faculty. The precarious job security of the lecturers have them teaching at 2 or 3 institutions he said. The low pay and constant travel makes Lecturers less available to their students. Professor Emeritus Ronnie Lipshutz, pointed out the existing vulnerability to fire that currently exists in and around the campus and the absence of any competent and complete evacuation plan for existing students, staff, and faculty, not to mention a plan that contemplates the addition of twelve to fourteen thousand more.

The Debate
Professor T.J. Demos and Ashley Weil represented the Eco-socialist working group of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Santa Cruz. They outlined the unaffordable nature of on-campus housing and presented information that “on-campus housing must be tied to livable wages” not market forces. Demos said that the “LRDP must be discussed within the parameters of the Red-Green New Deal.” Gillian Greensite, former campus staff Rape Prevention Coordinator and member of Don’t Morph the Wharf, emphasized the fact that the absurdly high dorm fees charged for campus housing act as the singular force behind ever-higher rents in town. She pointed out that more campuses need to be added, offering the example of the very last UC campus that was built, UC Merced (2005), which was constructed following a previous debate on university growth. The last two speakers, Councilmember Sandy Brown and city-county full-time liaison Morgan Bostic pointed out that students and community members must approach their elected officials–State Sen. John Laird and Assembly member Mark Stone–and let them know the dire results of packing so many students onto campus and into town without providing the necessary classroom space, transportation amenities, or living spaces. It was a well-done, “Don’t Mourn, Organize,” moment.

The Great Fallacy
UCSC Chancellor Cindy Larive’s deal with UC Regents’ devil, concerning Student Housing West (SHW), was a heated point of discussion that most attendees at the Zoom forum believed could not happen. The chancellor apparently agreed to keep all units in the new SHW development at 30% under market-rate rentals in Santa Cruz, if the Regents would approve the project. Jim Clifford of EMAC was also present at this session and had written recently in that group’s newsletter: “The only hitch in the SHW re-approval process was a demand by several important Regents that the University guarantee the affordability of the housing it is building by committing to rents at least 30% below market rates in town. The Chancellor was reluctant to make such a pledge, but to secure approval she finally did.” The minimum of what we can do as a community is to hold the chancellor’s feet to the fire on this one, which appears to be absolutely impossible if past is prologue. In fact, short of a hefty subsidy, the vaunted “3-P” (Public-Private-Partnership) agreement with an Alabama-based developer, Capstone Development Partners LLC is unlikely to charge rents less than the current SC market rate because it is a private company in business to make money. For a rich discussion of the housing issue, go to the Sierra Club’s document here 

Given the fact that UC and CSU just announced that they are planning for in-person fall classes and have issued a mandatory vaccination order for everyone who plans on being on campus, along with on-going labor issues among Teaching Assistants and Lecturers unions and a so far viral, but spreading like a virus, “Cops Off Campus” campaign, this fall is shaping up to be anywhere from partying like its 1999 to liberating the university of gun-toting cops. Stay tuned, should be more than interesting.

“We must take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, lower drug prices and use the savings to expand Medicare by lowering the eligibility age and providing dental, hearing and vision care to tens of millions of older Americans.” (April 25)

Look for the UCSC campus to heat up again come fall quarter. This picture is the closing of the east campus entrance by protesters because of labor issues involved the UC grad student strike of a year ago, shortly before Covid-19 closed the entire campus.

(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 16 years. Krohn was elected to the city council again in November of 2016, after his kids went off to college. That term ended when the development empire struck back with luxury condo developer money combined with the real estate industry’s largesse. They paid to recall Krohn and Drew Glover from the Santa Cruz city council in 2019. Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

#115 / The Eggplant That Ate Chicago 

Apr 25

 

Proposed Development 831 Water Street

Probably not everyone will know of or remember the inspiring lyrics of “The Eggplant That Ate Chicago.” This was a 1966 hit song by Dr. West’s Medicine Show and Junk Band.  

I have never forgotten this song, which became a family favorite, way back in the day. I like the song on its own terms, and I have always thought that the lyrics have manifold metaphorical applications: 

He came from outer space, lookin’ for somethin’ to eat
He landed in Chicago, he thought Chicago was a treat
(It was sweet, it was just like sugar) 

You’d better watch out for the eggplant that ate Chicago
For he may eat your city soon (wacka-do, wacka-do, wacka-do)
You’d better watch out for the eggplant that ate Chicago
If he’s still hungry, your whole country is doomed  

You can hear the original song, which I encourage you to do – it’s a lot of fun – by clicking on the YouTube link at the bottom of this blog posting. The song came to mind, yesterday, as I visited “Lot #4,” in downtown Santa Cruz, to celebrate Earth Day and to lend support to those who are opposing a mammoth, six-story building that is proposed on the site of the current Farmer’s Market.  

The proposed project on Lot #4 would displace all current uses, and require cutting down the heritage magnolia trees on the site. It would include a 400-space parking garage and a library conjoined with and conjured into what is billed as an affordable housing project.  

If you thought that Santa Cruz already had a Library downtown – and had actually voted for the funding necessary to renovate it – you’d be right. The City Council, however, has opted for what some have called the “Taj Garage,” and is planning to use the Library renovation funding to move the Lot #4 project ahead. The Council, in fact, is now actively investigating what other kinds of high-density development could be placed on the Library site, right across the street from City Hall. Once our existing Library has been razed to the ground, all sorts of possibilities are opened up for a high-rise, high-density replacement structure right there. 

High-rise and high-density seem to be going around.  

oooOOOooo 

What actually put me in mind of the “Eggplant” song wasn’t so much the Taj Garage – although it certainly could have. I happened to meet someone, yesterday, at the Earth Day event, who was trying to inform the public about the proposed project pictured at the top of this blog posting. The rendering is of the increasingly infamous “831 Water Street Project,” a proposal to place a six-story building on the corner of Branciforte and Water Streets, with a rooftop bar to cap it all off. The massive dimensions of the proposed building would totally overshadow a pretty nice residential neighborhood next door. That is where the person who talked to me actually lives. He thought the proposal was way out of scale and inappropriate. I agreed, and started thinking about that “Eggplant That Ate Chicago.”  

 oooOOOooo

 

Just in case any Santa Cruz resident is not following current planning decisions, I am providing some pictures of a couple of developments already approved, and one that is pending approval. If ultimately constructed, these high-rise, high-density developments will fundamentally change the character and scale of downtown. The ones approved so far don’t do much to provide affordable housing, either: 

 

Laurel – Front Street (Approved)

 

Riverfront (Approved)

Soquel – Front Street (Proposed)

 

Soquel – Front (From the South, On The River)

oooOOOooo

Maybe downtown is the right place for such massive new mixed-use projects – though I am personally dubious, and particularly when these projects are designed to attract more upper income residents from outside the existing community. Ordinary income Santa Cruz residents are already being priced out of the community, and these new projects are only going to speed up the process. 

However, downtown developments are, traditionally, higher density and higher rise than developments in and adjacent to our residential neighborhoods. But take a look at that ever more infamous 831 Water Street project. It too is six floors. It demonstrates (and it’s not the only one, by any means), that the high-rise, high-density “Eggplant” that is eating up our downtown is hungry for more, and is heading right for our neighborhood areas. If that “Eggplant” of big development is still hungry, then Dr. West and the Junk Band may be right on target, and all of our corridors and all of our neighborhoods are ultimately doomed. 

Of course, I don’t really believe in “doom.” I believe in democracy. There is something we can do about this. It’s called “politics.” 

But those of us who like our existing neighborhoods pretty much the way they are had better watch out, just as Dr. West and the Junk Band advise. Click the link below, to listen to the song, and see if you don’t think there is a metaphorical application, right here in Santa Cruz, California. We are a long way from Chicago, but when I consider the “Eggplant” developers, and their collaborators down in the City offices, I’m thinking that we in the neighborhoods are looking pretty sweet, too! 

oooOOOooo

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. View classic inner view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s ” Deep Cover” 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. 

    TYPEWRITERS

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed”.
~Ernest Hemingway

“I had a TV set and a typewriter and that made me think a computer should be laid out like a typewriter with a video screen”.
~Steve Wozniak

“I don’t have a computer. A computer’s a typewriter. I already have a typewriter”.
~Ray Bradbury

“I take a certain pride in having maintained a reputation for fast copy throughout my newspaper career. Fast-breaking stories left my typewriter in a hurry. Not great literature, perhaps, but fast, and usually accurate”.
~Walter Cronkite

TEMPORARY GREYHOUND BUS STATION. November 25, 1964. The train station at Depot Park being used as our Greyhound Bus Station, while the “new” one was being built over on Front Street.                                         photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection. Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

DATELINE April 19 

FRIENDS OF THE RAIL – INCLUDING TRAIL. The concept of a railroad train AND a trail alongside it, running all the way from Davenport to Monterey, seems like such a great addition to the Monterey Bay that any opposition – or doubts about the benefits – seem like nit-picking. Here’s what Friends of the Rail & Trail said… “For the last 20 years, Santa Cruz County has been working towards implementing clean, fast transit between Santa Cruz and Watsonville, serving all points in between.

On April 1st 2021, ignoring the recommendations of Caltrans, the Coastal Commission, the Santa Cruz City Council, the Watsonville City Council, and many years of work by transit planners including their own staff… The RTC failed to approve the next step!  

In study after study rail has been shown to be the best option to expand public transportation in Santa Cruz County because rail has the most funding, will provide the best experience and has the biggest impacts to improving equity and the environment. Investing in green equitable infrastructure is not controversial, it’s a necessity.  We all need to let our representatives know how much we value Rail plus Trail; go here…  fill it out asap.

THE POWERS THAT BE. Santa Cruz City will be getting a new city manager. More than any other position of authority, the City Managers’ influence has caused enormous problems. There’s now a survey issued by the city asking 3 questions about what we think are the most important issues and qualifications for the role. My guess is it’s just a publicity stunt so the powers can claim they listened to us. Go here, fill it out and we’ll see.

LIBRARY NOTES. Years have passed, and still our Santa Cruz Public Library’s future has loopholes. Here’s the latest report from DON’T BURY THE LIBRARY group …

“Our last update was back in October 2020, before City Council elections, before a new council was seated with a majority who approved abandoning the downtown library rather than using Measure S funds for a creative rejuvenation, before city staff hired a consultant to move forward with a 5 – 6 story structure that will cover a city block (Lot 4) and include a library on the first floor, before city staff began its consultant process to decide what to build on the site where the downtown library is, after its demolition (and burial in a landfill). Sounds grim, huh? We often despair, but we persist and hope you will too.

DBTL remains steadfastly committed to our original position, established over five years ago. That is, a restored, rejuvenated, modernized, renewed downtown library right where one has been for 107 years, saving all the best parts of the building and its contents. At the risk of sounding mean-spirited, we hope the city’s flawed plans for Lot 4 fall fatally flat and that they must return to restoration of the existing library before time runs out on the bond financing. 

Meanwhile, on a lighter note, work by several groups continues behind the scenes and out in public to force the city to do the right thing. For example, Downtown Commons Advocates continues its work to promote an alternative vision for Lot 4. That official Vision is:

“We see a Downtown Commons that offers a much needed public space for the community in downtown Santa Cruz. It would offer a public gathering place, a location for cultural performances and art, and a permanent facility for the Downtown Farmers’ Market, the Antique Faire, and similar events. A Downtown Commons will enhance the enjoyment and well-being of residents, and attract visitors to a revitalized downtown business community“.

Survey for city manager. 

DAVE STAMEY and ANNIE LYDON May 8th. Western music fans probably know all about Dave Stamey, the guitarist. Here’s what a recent note from Sandy Lydon said…Dave Stamey is  a BIG DEAL in the Western Music biz – he has been the Western Music Association’s songwriter of the year many times, as well as winning album of the year, etc. Annie’s been singing with him for 25 years – and  harmonizes with him on his last dozen albums. They work together in recording studios, but it’s only now and then they work together live. Dave’s concert schedule takes him all over the country. When schedules permit, they sing together.  They’ve sung at Don Quixote’s, and Michael’s on Main – the last time was in Soquel in 2019, and in fact did two sell-out shows one evening at M on M. Their tickets are moving (COVID requires limited capacity). Dave’s in the Western Music Hall of Fame, along with Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, etc.”. Get tickets right now, because there aren’t many left. That’s Michael’s on Main Saturday, May 8th.

GRANDSON RENTAL. If you – or any of your friends – know of a nearby student rental possibility, please let me know at bratton@cruzio.com My grandson Henry will be attending UCSC, and wants to move here asap. He’s kind, brilliant, very tech savvy, and already loves Santa Cruz from many visits here over the years.

 April 19

CITY MANAGER HUNT
The city of Santa Cruz is looking for a new city manager. The current manager, Martin Bernal, was shown the door three different times, by three different city councils, but he is going out on his own timeline and maximizing his retirement largesse. He will likely receive in excess of $200,000 each year for the rest of his life. That’s a lot of tax dollars. I believe he is in his mid-fifties. He may even try to get a city manager job somewhere else and receive two monthly pay days. The story of how Martin Bernal was able to defy the council timeline, and that includes the intentions, of at least 10 elected city councilmembers, is a story in itself. It is a story perhaps whose moral is to question whether Surf City would be better served by a strong mayor and council, rather than an unelected strong bureaucrat who de facto, leads the government and knows how to get bureaucratic things done?

Traits of a New City Manager
But let’s move on. It is unlikely that the strong manager-weak council system will change any time soon, and it is not because it is a fair and just system presently, but rather one that is an opaque and byzantine one at best. We are a modern, politically sophisticated city and we’ve outgrown the strong city manager system. In their infinite wisdom, this same city bureaucracy has set up a survey essentially asking three questions concerning what the good people of Santa Cruz would like to see in their next city manager. A few people heavily engaged in local politics who I know, responded. I reprint their responses below, but not their names. The responses have been lightly edited.

City Manager Survey Questions

1. What are the most important issues facing the community that you would like the new City Manager to impact?
2. 2. What are the most important skills, qualities, and characteristics of a successful City Manager?
3. 3. Is there anything else you would like the City to consider when selecting the new City Manager?

Take the survey

Respondent 1

1. Interaction with the community, that includes the homeless community AND improvements suggested by the Grand Jury; will the new City Manager actually take direction from Council and not the other way around?
2. He or she listens to the community and not just the ‘wingers’ who hate everyone. Institute a Kitchen Cabinet that meets 2 times a month composed of citizens & City Manager.
3. No promotions from in house; all city public governing documents are to be printed in Spanish.

Respondent 2

1. a) Build appropriate affordable housing construction without bulldozing the historic character of Santa Cruz! 
   b) Act on creating first one, and then several, KOA-style MANAGED campground small sites (50 – 100 people each, max), and using “Tiny Homes” to create civilized accommodations both emergency and transitional shelter. Where? Look at North East corner of Natural Bridges where most of the Monterey Pines have died off from Bark Beetles.  Also, look at the south side of Delaveaga Park next to the Armory, and an acre of Arana Gulch Park as temp sites. Several other sites are also possible.
2. a) A successful candidate must understand our City Charter and our Council-Managerform of government. Our City Council creates and sets policy and the City Manager enacts it.   Definitely not the reverse!    
3. b) The new City Manager must acknowledge this early, often, and LIVE IT in the job.   This manager must give strong, clear direction to department heads and not the opposite.
4. c) GENUINE humility is an absolute perquisite!  
5. d) A successful candidate must acknowledge and pledge to support the desire and right of residents to participate in virtually all City Government affairs. Any candidate who supports current throttling of public participation should be rejected.
6. The successful candidate must arrive and want very much to live and work in Santa Cruz and be very fond of its historic character. Such a candidate will live the philosophy that community character and historic sense of place are paramount while catering to property speculators, outside investment, and developers is not on the top 10 list. 

Respondent 3

I feel uncomfortable with the idea that the city is looking for a city manager based on issues. I mean, there are plenty of important issues, which I think the city should take on, but I don’t think the city manager should do that. We shouldn’t be hiring a city manager based on anything involving policy. She or he should not be making policy. The people who are elected should be making policy. The manager’s job is to manage staff and make sure they are doing the will of the people, as expressed by those they elected.

Respondent 4

1. Housing affordability and long term solutions for unhoused residents. Funding/converting permanently affordable units for extremely, very and low income people.  Enacting government policy that ensures low income workers (i.e. almost everyone not in tech) can pay affordable rent to live where they work. Transformative solutions to transportation including expanding and accelerating carbon neutral rail options across the county and significant increased investment in expanded carbon neutral options within the city including improving bike lane safety to encourage use of carbon neutral alternatives to cars. Ensuring Santa Cruz retains and expands an economically diverse population. 
2. Having a focus on justice, equity, diversity and inclusion that has proven to be a central element in their past work. Proven ability to think outside of the box and ability to implement and fund solutions to complex challenges. Ability to look for models across the US and globally that can be adjusted and implemented in Santa Cruz. Comprehensive understanding of the state and federal funding landscape and how to access those funds to advance community priorities. 
3. Specifically asking questions about what they see the role of a city manager is in relation to the City Council and the community members of Santa Cruz. Ask city manager candidates to provide examples from their past work that demonstrates them putting that role as they define it into action. 

Respondent 5

1. a) Construction of appropriate, 100% affordable housing, consistent with the historic character of Santa Cruz. If the City Manager and Council insist, developers will figure out a way to build what we need.
   b) Until enough permanent housing is built to accommodate the un-housed members of our community, create sufficient safe parking, managed campgrounds, and tiny home sites to provide them stable housing.  This is the best way such residents will have a chance of breaking the cycle of disengagement with the community.
2. a) Compassion for all residents of the city; the next city manager should not harbor any undue affinity for landlords, developer and speculators.
   b) Respect residents of the city and genuinely seek public input on governmental matters.
   c) Know their place as an employee of the residents and Council.
3. The City Manager must love this city, be or become a resident of the city, and fully participate in its cultural life.

Respondent 6

1. Planning and Public works should not be permitting and working hand-in-glove with developers who are building housing at $650k to $1 million, but rather ONLY work with affordable housing providers who commit to building housing for those who live here now. In other words, the next city manager ought to oversee a moratorium on for-profit housing. 2) should have demonstrated success with houseless population in a previous city manager job, 3) a plan on how to get our downtown businesses back, and 4) a plan on getting back in-person city council and commission meetings asap, like by June 15th as governor stated when California would be fully open for business, and 5) a plan on scaling back the police budget and using 30% of police budget for mental health, substance abuse counseling, and a Eugene, OR. Cahoots style program that is separate from police dept.
2. Knowing the community and then knowing how to hire the right dept. heads, and then knowing how to delegate work. You can’t do it all, but you have to manage it all. I would expect city manager to a) be a good listener, b) walk the streets and be seen, c) report to council all meetings attended, d) not to meet with more than 3 councilmembers before a council meeting so as not to violate the Brown Act, e) be willing to admit a mistake when a mistake was made.
3. He, she, they, should live in Santa Cruz, expect to make no more than $200k per year (rent if they cannot afford a house), have an open office hour every week for community members to sign up and meet him, her they, have a demonstrated past/experience of working with communities of color and demonstrated skills as a mediator…He, she, they needs to possess the ability to bring people together around an issue, and the next city manager should be in love with Santa Cruz and be a cheerleader for our civic, political, and moral values.

Take the survey

“Today, we’re reintroducing the Green New Deal for Public Housing because — with millions on the brink of eviction, millions under/unemployed, and with a coming climate crisis — investing in our housing infrastructure has never been more important.” (April 19)

Just dropping my California delegate ballot into the Post box…#1 task for state party democrats is to reform the party from within…that means a vote for Delaine Eastin for CA Party Chair! State convention takes place on Zoom from April 29 to May 2.

(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 16 years. Krohn was elected to the city council again in November of 2016, after his kids went off to college. That term ended when the development empire struck back with luxury condo developer money combined with the real estate industry’s largesse. They paid to recall Krohn and Drew Glover from the Santa Cruz city council in 2019. Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

April 18
#108 / Hang On, Sloopy!

Paul Krugman, an economist who writes for The New York Times, is pictured to the right. In his column on March 26, 2021, Krugman addressed “The Decline of Republican Demonization.” In using this phrase, Krugman was contending that the Republican Party used to be able to find political success by “demonizing” Democratic Party economic and other initiatives, calling them “job killers” and “socialist.” This strategy of “demonization” almost always caused the Democrats to fall into “disarray,” says Krugman, and so can be considered to have been a successful political approach. However, according to Krugman, the Republicans are not really doing that right now, or at least they are not pursuing that strategy very effectively. They’re “low energy.” 

Krugman’s column advances some theories on why the Republicans have failed successfully to pursue their traditional strategy, based on a “Demonization of the Democrats.” Krugman’s conclusion is that the Republicans have largely “forgotten how to govern.” 

The Democrats, on the other hand, says Krugman, who are popularly thought to be always in “disarray,” have “held together and have done virtually everything they promised,” as the Democrats have worked to pass the CARES Act, the recently-enacted two trillion dollar pandemic recovery bill. 

In essence, though Krugman doesn’t point this out specifically, Krugman is saying that one of the keys to “governing” (which the Republicans seem to have forgotten) is to “hold on” to a policy or political initiative and to push ahead until success is achieved. 

As I read Krugman’s Friday morning column, the words of a once-popular song sprang into mind. That song, “Hang on Sloopy,” by the McCoys, a rock group from Union City, Indiana, was a big hit in 1965, the year I graduated from college. Somehow, and against my better judgment, that “Hang on Sloopy” refrain has been stamped indelibly into my auditory memory. 

My judgment in the arena of musical appreciation can, I admit, be legitimately questioned. As frequent readers of this blog will know, I tend to operate on an approach to popular music that strongly favors songs that are written and performed by Nobel Laureates. This is, of course, an elitist approach, and in some ways my Bob Dylan prejudice is a kind of personal failure. Still, I would contend that “Hang on Sloopy” is mediocre, at best. Mediocre or not, I still do hear those words, “hang on Sloopy, Sloopy hang on,” whenever I think about how “hanging on,” in adverse circumstances, is the best kind of advice – and particularly in politics. 

“Hanging on,” in fact, is a requirement for good government. “Insistence,” as I recently wrote, is another word for this vital ingredient. And way back in 2010, in “Under Weigh,” and in Under Weigh #2, I spelled out that “hang on” principle, based on my personal experience in the Merchant Marine: 

What I learned on the ship was that when it’s time to change course, you have to do more than turn the wheel. First you turn the wheel. Then, you hang on! Try applying that rule to your evaluation of our Presidential politics – or our politics in general! Patience and persistence might be the necessary prescription for the kind of change we can believe in. 

I also learned the principle from my own political experience. In 1978, the people of Santa Cruz County adopted Measure J, a growth management measure that I wrote, and that the Board of Supervisors placed on the ballot as a referendum measure. The passage of Measure J marked a fundamental change in land use policy for Santa Cruz County. It mandated the permanent protection of all commercially productive agricultural land, and directed new growth into areas already committed to urban development, thus stopping the sprawl that was devastating our environment (and the county budget). 

Measure J also required that the amount of future growth that our county would accept should be decided, each year, by a public vote of the Board of Supervisors, so that our community could itself decide what kind of future growth it desired, and so that growth wouldn’t just “happen to us.” Measure J also required that a minimum of 15% of all new housing constructed in the unincorporated areas of Santa Cruz County must price restricted, so as to be permanently affordable to persons with average and below average incomes. That was an ambitious goal in 1978!

I considered Measure J to have been a major public policy achievement by our local community (one that has not been duplicated anywhere else in California, even to this day). I was proud to have been part of this successful effort. As I continued to serve on the Board (until 1995), the policies established by Measure J were under continuous attack – and this is one of the main reasons I “hung on” for so long (I served for twenty years on the Board of Supervisors). 

Maybe it was after the passage of Measure J that the refrain of “Hang On Sloopy” found a permanent home in my brain! As a political principle, it’s vital. Let’s hope the Democrats remember that, right now, as our country faces a turbulent period in our national politics.

EAGAN’S SUBCONSCIOUS COMICS. View classic inner view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s “Deep Cover” 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. 

    May Day

“As full of spirit as the month of May, and as gorgeous as the sun in Midsummer.” 
~William Shakespeare 

“If suddenly the whole workers of the whole world disappear then the whole world will stop! Let us all realise this and let us celebrate the workers – these great people who make our world move!” 
~Mehmet Murat ildan 

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”
~Pablo Neruda

SANTA CRUZ RAIL, TRAIL AND BOARDWALK. 1940.  Rails and our community have peacefully and popularly co-existed for well over a hundred years. Extending the rail plus trail all the way from Davenport to Monterey would be perfect for our community and our tourists.                                                     photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection. Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

DATELINE April 12

WHEN THE SHW HITS THE FAN re. UCSC. (SHW = Student Housing West)The overcrowding of the campus and Santa Cruz continues. The East Meadow Action Committee works hard and long to spread their work and concerns. Here’s their newest update from April 4.

“In our last update we asked our supporters to write to the UC Regents urging them to pause and consider alternatives before re-authorizing UCSC’s Student Housing West (SHW) proposal. Many people wrote (some of the letters can be found on our website), but to little effect. In fact, all the “public comment” documents, including EMAC’s letter, sent a week earlier, were uploaded to the Regents only the night before the meeting. Given the usual full agenda, it’s hard to imagine these comments were read at all. So much for openness and broad consultation.

The Regents seem to have simply accepted the campus administration’s plan without confronting its flaws or considering the opposition it has stirred up. But this is not a done deal. With your help, we’ve been able to sustain our CEQA litigation, now entering the appeal stage. This keeps the meadow undisturbed at least for another year, raises significant issues with the EIR for this project, and provides a context for ongoing discussion.

The only hitch in the SHW re-approval process was a demand by several important Regents that the University guarantees the affordability of the housing it is building by committing to rents at least 30% below market rates in town. The Chancellor was reluctant to make such a pledge, but to secure approval she finally did. 

It is a commitment that is unlikely to be kept. The cost of construction and long-term bond repayment for the private partner will require a much higher rent. UC has never managed to provide student housing priced below the prevailing market rate, so students have migrated off-campus, a pattern likely to continue. 

This is made clear in a very acute Sierra Club analysis of housing on pp.2-3 of their recent LRDP comment

Past performance also throws serious doubt on the University’s commitment to house on campus almost all of the projected growth in enrollment. 

SHW, in its present form, is unlikely to improve the present housing crisis, either on campus or in the city. Moreover, the administration’s inflexibility has only resulted in delay. We strongly support new student housing, but this is not the best way to deliver what’s needed.

SHW is being pushed forward by an Administration badly advised by UC’s lawyers and unwilling to consider more effective alternatives. The East Meadow portion is particularly misguided and unpopular. There are better ways to begin building much sooner and reduce the risk from opposition and delay.

Several alternatives have been discussed and rejected because of inflated cost estimates. The path we now most favor is one that would correct the original mistake that carelessly off-loaded a portion of the project to the East Meadow. The administration should negotiate with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, as it might have done in Summer 2017, to better protect Red Legged Frog habitat and restore to SHW as much as possible of the original buildable footprint entirely on the West side of campus.  

While pursuing this course, the administration should reactivate the already fully approved housing project behind Crown College (“East Campus Infill”). Its 600 beds would address the crunch on campus more quickly than waiting for the entire massive project to clear all obstacles. By relieving pressure on an artificially constrained building site, these initiatives would make SHW, once again, a truly Westside project. Student residences would be more widely distributed, with a lower profile. And space could be created to buffer the Family Housing and Childcare centers from student life. 

In the current LRDP context, SHW (the largest building project in UCSC’s history) becomes part of a wider public conversation about the overall pace and shape of campus expansion. Pushing ahead with a project that was imagined in a different growth environment and that violates long-established traditions of environmental design will not contribute to the trust needed for a beneficial future relationship between the university and the community. 

The University of California often acts like a steamroller. Can UCSC find a different approach? Unfortunately, the Regents’ recent SHW decision does not augur well for respectful discussions and good-faith negotiation in the coming months. 

With thanks, again, to all our supporters, East Meadow Action Committee 

remember…

UCSC’s Long Range Development Plan would allow 28,000 students. (Current enrollment is 18,500). It would add 5.6 million square feet of building space (1.5 times the existing buildings on campus)

Land Use & Transportation Events 

• April 23, Brown Bag discussion of parking requirements  Register here
• Sunday, April 25, Forum on UCSC’s Long Range Development Plan   Register here

MORE ON THE TOPIC…The Campaign for Sustainable Transportation sent this public notice… “It’s hard to imagine anything that would have more impact on local housing prices and transportation than UCSC’s growth plan.

Two years ago the UCSC chancellor convened a Community Advisory Group to give input into development of the LRDP. The Group called for a binding commitment to housing 100 percent of new student enrollment. The Long Range Development Plan expresses a goal of housing the new students. Without a legally enforceable mechanism to tie enrollment growth to achievement of housing goals, the goal has no more credibility than the goal of the 1988 LRDP to house 70% of undergraduates, 50% of graduate students and 25% of faculty and staff.  (Currently UCSC houses 53% of its student enrollment. UCSC employs 4700 faculty and staff. Currently there are 239 units of faculty and staff housing on campus.)

On April 25 the Sierra Club and a number of co-sponsors are convening a discussion of what the Long Range Development Plan means for our community, and how to have an influence on UCSC’s growth plan. Register here

For more information; see the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation’s webpage, UCSC Growth.
-Rick Longinotti

LONDON NELSON’S RIGHTFUL NAME SPELLING. By now the City Council will have, and should have, corrected the misspelling of London Nelson’s name. For more than 20 years I’ve been beating the drum to change and correct the name of our community center. Here’s a link to what I wrote in the Metro in September of 1999. There’s a lot more here than just London Nelson…check it out. When you realize that London had three brothers named Canterbury, Cambridge and Marlborough, it should have been obvious. Let’s thank the City Council for the correcting!

WHAT’S IN A NAME? Be sure to watch/Zoom the ongoing series about re-naming Cabrillo College. Dr. Iris Engstrand, a professor from San Diego, gave a presentation on March 18 and said Cabrillo was a man of his time, and not as evil as some have believed. Cabrillo College actually made a public disclaimer zinging her presentation. Read it all here…

This Thursday, April 15, at 6 p.m. retired history Professor Sandy Lydon will give a presentation on just the how and why the name was chosen. All in all, I think this series helps us be aware – or stay aware – of just how much a part of our community the college is. Don’t miss it, or the debate on April 22 at 6 p.m. on the student reactions to the possible name change. 

SPEAKING OF NAMES. On the topic of naming and re-naming, Dr. Martin Rizzo – historian, author and friend – never mentioned on his section of the Cabrillo Re-naming Series what I’ve always thought the “original” name of Soquel was….Osacalles. So I wrote and asked him. He said….

“It appears that the Spanish started to refer to the Uypi people as the Soquel or Zoquel tribe by around 1810. The chief had died in 1805, so I think it is likely that they applied the chief’s name to his people posthumously. 

I do find a mention of a Osocalis village among the San Joaquin Valley Yokuts people who arrived at the mission in later years. 

In the ethnographic studies by Kroeber in the early 1900s, he notes that there is a Sokkel village in modern Soquel. I believe it is likely that he was confused, though it is possible that there was actually a village called that, especially given the linguistic connections of the word itself. 

I have a footnote on this in my forthcoming book on exactly this. It reads:

Soquel’s name is recorded in a variety of spellings: Suquel, Sugert, Suquer, and Suquex. By 1810, Spanish accounts began to call the Uypi tribe the Soquel or Zoquel tribe. The name remains, given to the Rancho property and later the township of Soquel, as well as the modern street that connects the cities of Santa Cruz, Soquel, and Aptos (another tribal name). As pointed out to me by Dean Silvers, the word Soquel may have linguistic connections in addition to those with the Uypi chief. Awaswas-speaking informants told linguist Pinart that the word for the laurel tree, found commonly in the region, is šokkoce or šokoci, Pinart, California Indian Linguistic Records, 17. The Mutsun language has a similar translation, with the word for laurel given as sokkoci or sokco, Warner, Butler, and Geary, Mutsun-English, English-Mutsun Dictionary, 350. There is some speculation in the public about the name Soquel coming from a village site in the area called Osocalis (there is even a distillery by this name in the area which is named for this possible village site). In my research I have not come across Osocalis in reference to this area but do find mention of an Osocalis village in Yokuts territory, which will be mentioned in chapter 4. In any case, it is possible that a village named Osocalis and the Uypi chief both might share linguistic connections with the laurel tree.  

TODAY’S “SLAVERY”? As long as we’re denigrating all past slave owners, lets all guess and predict the future!!! Will our next generation look at all the companies and institutions that pay less than minimum wage today and regard them as “slave owners”? How about the way we treat field workers now? Will we be viewed the same way we now look back at slave owners?

UPDATE ON RAIL INCLUDING TRAIL. A reader/writer sent this important piece on the reporting and manufacturing of the news and developing progress of the Rail PLUS Trail issue.

“I have some serious concerns with the both-sides narrative that is playing out around this issue and the way that media coverage is serving to amplify the very few opinions/voices that are against the project and elevate them in importance to the same level as the large and diverse community of people who have been supporting the project all along.  

Bud Colligan has manufactured a fake controversy around an incredibly popular public transportation project, and bankrolled a candidate and two fake grassroots organizations to push his narrative.  And every time FORT goes on a radio show with these guys, or does a newspaper interview that also carries a quote from them, it amplifies that that false narrative that there are two sides of equal weight. It’s a false equivalence.  

Please see this article to get what I mean“.

Just in case you need reassurance, check out this website and list of supporters of Coast Connect.

More than that, if you still are puzzled by the Rail plus Trail, drive over to the Westside of Santa Cruz on Almar Street. See how perfect and well used the new rail and trail section has become. See also what it has added to the community.

BACK INTO THEATRES AGAIN.  After all those months (years?) of avoiding seeing movies in theatres, I went to the “new” Santa Cruz Cinema last Saturday afternoon. The only changes from the Regal ownership years is that the Pacific Street box-office isn’t open and you buy your ticket online (or pay $1 extra) and then exchange it at the upstairs candy counter. The escalator wasn’t working either, but it’s been out of order many, many times with the previous owners too. I saw Anthony Hopkins in “The Father” in the 50 seat theater 5. With only four other attendees watching, there was no Covid scare. Hopkins and his co-stars Olivia Colman and Rufus Sewell should all be given awards. (see critique below). What is/was completely amazing is how much of a difference it was to see a movie on the big screen in a theater. The extreme concentration, the absolute commitment to never taking your eyes off the screen was surprising. No pauses, no texting, no emails, doorbells, phone calls, and sitting in a reclining easy chair was excellent. You totally center and focus on the screen. In spite of everything, go to a theatre the next time you want to see and remember a movie worth really watching.

April 12

WHOSE TOWN?
On Tuesday of last week the Downtown Association (DTA) of Santa Cruz held a roundtable zoom on the big scale developments under way, planned or approved for downtown and south of Laurel: developments that will forever change the small town character and class make-up of Santa Cruz. 

Below is a shot of the current corner of Front and Soquel and below that, the 70- foot development proposed for that corner. Well, not just the corner: 530 Front Street will extend halfway down the block. Next to it will be the already approved Front/Riverfront Project of similar mass, only taller at 85 feet.  

Even panel participant, developer Owen Lawlor had to admit the change in the character of the town will be “jarring.” However, as developers tend to do, he found such change to be positive, exciting and different, no doubt thinking of the bottom line. He reminded us of the non-existent issue that Santa Cruz has “suffered from not enough housing at all income levels” and stated as fact the myth that the hundreds of new residents “will live without cars.”

Feel-good jargon was in abundance and buzzwords hummed. Everyone loved that the developments will”reconnect downtown to the river.” The verb “activate” was on everyone’s lips. Transform a quiet river with abundant bird life and “activate” it. Transform a familiar part of downtown or a modest one story building south of Laurel and “activate” it. Bringing in more and more people to shop, buy, consume is the goal. Nothing can be “under-utilized”. This same trend is creeping into our open space lands. Human presence rules and preferably with high priced leisure toys. 

City staff was well represented at the DTA roundtable with a presentation on the new relocated Main Library, which we were told will: “bring positive energy to downtown” and act as an “anchor, bringing in visitors.” If anything screams locals, it is a library. 

Chris Murphy of The Warriors joined the chorus of finding all this development, particularly the transformation of the lower end of Pacific as “exciting”.  The plan for the current site of the Warriors Arena plus the adjacent site is big time. Murphy described a future Arena, plus housing, plus commercial plus retail plus community space and even partnering with the Symphony. Not only will all this “engage the river” he assured us it will “activate the river.” The Seaside Company owns the land. They no doubt will find such development of their former overflow parking lot for employees and UCSC students as welcome and lucrative. The current council move towards re-zoning south of Laurel from 35 feet height limits to 85 feet height limits has big supporters in high places and a significant number of the old guard. Former councilmember Cynthia Mathews was a DTA cheerleader on chat at the zoom.

It’s hard not to be depressed as we lose our town to the highest bidder. More depressing is the fact that all this development, including the token so-called “affordable” units will only raise the Area Medium Income putting even the scarce below market rate units out of reach of the average low-wage service worker. 

The days when we were assured that vocal locals could push back on these generic, outsized developments has gone, overruled by new state housing legislation. Gone also is a council majority critical of bulldozing what is left of Santa Cruz. 

However policies are human constructs not forces of nature. It’s time to show our state legislators and senators (don’t we have one called Laird?) that we care and we are prepared to fight back. It’s time to activate the state halls of power.

Gillian Greensite is a long time local activist, a member of Save Our Big Trees and the Santa Cruz chapter of IDA, International Dark Sky Association  http://darksky.org    Plus she’s an avid ocean swimmer, hiker and lover of all things wild.

April 12

“LUXURY CONDOS FOR NO ONE” 

Hundreds more people are expected to find themselves living outside in Santa Cruz in coming months. I was impressed by Keith McHenry’s recent insight into the plight of the houseless in Santa Cruz, so impressed that I am re-printing it here. Check it out.

By Keith McHenry

Santa Cruz City and County officials are struggling to find a legal means to remove the unhoused from sight while not offending their liberal base at the same time. In an attempt to circumvent the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that sweeps are an unconstitutional violation of the Eighth amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment they have spent the last year formulating their “Temporary Outdoor Living Ordinance” (TOLO) set to be revisited by City Council on Tuesday, April 13. As it currently stands people can set up a tent, tarps, blankets and other survival gear from the hours of 8 pm to 8 am on the sidewalks of Mission, Ocean, Water and Soquel Streets and in industrial areas of Seabright, Harvey West and Mission extension. Using the same ploy that the City Manager, Martin Bernal, used to mobilize West Side opposition against any humane solution, tagging Drew Glover with a Depot Park Safe Sleeping Zone, they have mobilized the East side against their already cruel ordinance.

Sweeps, Part II

It is not clear yet what the city and county plans to do as hundreds of people a month find themselves living outside. Local shelters are closing and people will soon be forced from the few provided hotels, sending several hundred into the doorways and along the highways. The city also plans to sweep San Lorenzo Park including the Benchlands temporary managed camp as soon as the COVID emergency is over. Gov. Gavin Newsom says that will be in June.

No Room at the Inn

In the April 5th article in Lookout Santa Cruz, “COVID-spawned budget woes will force shutdown of River Street homeless shelter next month,” county supervisor Ryan Coonerty expresses, “the bigger issue the county will have to solve soon is what to do with hundreds of people in shelters that were expanded during the pandemic — but where federal funding is expected to wind down as the virus-induced crisis begins to ebb this summer and fall”.
Coonerty went on, “I think we have 650 people in shelter for COVID, mostly in motels and others, and you know that funding is disappearing and so in terms of what we’re worried about that continues to be the major issue,” he said.

The Plot Thickens

Adding to the crisis resulting from an end to these marginal accommodations for those unhoused the moratoriums on evictions will end soon causing millions of Americans to live in cramped apartments doubling up with family and friends or even more likely, they will be forced out into the streets seeking shelter in cars or tents. So far there is no plan to pay the back rent or mortgages of nearly 40 million families. That $1,400 check, if it ever arrives, will do little to slow this crisis. Money allocated for rental assistance has been difficult or impossible for many to access. If local officials have any plan at all I worry that it includes shipping everyone to a large managed camp in an unincorporated area of the county.

SC Santa Cruz Brain Drain Trust
An October 10, 2020, article in the Sentinel says “Vice Mayor Donna Meyers, however, called Santa Cruz’s situation “dire,” citing the concentration of 53% of the county’s homeless services located in a city with 23% of the county population. The Santa Cruz City Manager, citing the armory shelter, the county’s Emeline Center complex and the city’s largest homeless shelter at Housing Matters on Coral Street, said that community members are concerned, and appear to be asking that future resources be located elsewhere in the county. When Fred Keeley was facilitator of the city’s “Community Advisory Committee on Homelessness” he asked several of us if we supported a mega Navigation Center, “five or six times larger” than the current Housing Matters site.

The Eviction Crisis, Elsewhere
NPR reports on April, 7, 2021,”We’ve had a failure of leadership that’s going to result in tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Texans becoming homeless in relatively short order,” says Mark Melton, who heads up a pro bono team of 175 volunteer lawyers in Dallas. On paper, landlords could still face hefty fines and jail time for violating the CDC rules on evictions. But Melton says in reality there has been virtually no enforcement for landlords who violate the CDC order. He expects a significant number of landlords will now push ahead with evictions.” Melton says, “I think we just stepped off a cliff that we really didn’t want to step off.” As is the case in most states rental assistance is difficult if not impossible to get in South Carolina. Rebecca Liebson writes in the State, “Since the moratorium went into effect, according to court records at least 50,000 evictions have been filed across five of the state’s most populous counties — Richland, Lexington, Horry, Greenville and Charleston. Though there’s no way to tell how many of those tenants will ultimately be forced to vacate their homes, data from the Census Bureau shows that many South Carolinians have serious concerns about losing housing. Nearly 53% of renters said they were very likely or somewhat likely to be forced to leave home due to eviction in the next two months.”

Back at Home

Six people came to me in March and were seeking a safe place to sleep in their car. Sadly, like most people they do not qualify for the City’s Safe Parking Program and are likely to have their vehicles confiscated under the crush of tickets they are now being issued. The Biden administration has not announced the cancellation of rents and mortgages nor are they offering to issue $20,000 checks to everyone who has not been able to pay their housing costs during the past year. The Eviction Lab at Princeton is warning that as many as 40 million Americans are facing eviction. At the same time a luxury condominium building boom is underway. Poor people are being “Red Lined” from their communities and are forced to seek shelter under bridges, doorways on along highways. Tragically everyone could be housed. Bay Area business journalist Aaron Glantz’s book, “Homewreckers,” is about the 2007 housing foreclosure crisis. He provides evidence that property speculators had a strategy that included parking their money in housing that they intended to leave empty. The current wave of building here in Santa Cruz is also likely to sit vacant. The Pacific and Laurel property was already sold to another out of town investor before any construction had begun.

Some History
I was first confronted by the now common use of language to justify the elimination of the homeless in the fall of 1986 in Massachusetts. I had a graphic design business in Kenmore Square, in Boston and I lived in an apartment across the street from my office. The Boston Red Sox were among my Kenmore Square clients. I also volunteered my services to the Kenmore Association, a local civic group organized by local property speculators where they called the people who lived outside in our neighborhood, tramps, vagrants, punks, druggies, transients, vermin, and streetpeople. The October 1986 issue of the association’s newsletter, the Kenmore News, included this: “The Security & Maintenance Committee encourages all KA Members to assume an active role in cleaning up Kenmore Square. In order to prevent the attraction of streetpeople (especially the “rough element,” new to Kenmore Square), following guidelines were suggested at the breakfast meeting… “Please don’t give free food to these streetpeople…”Please lock all dumpsters. Unlocked dumpsters will be cited by the City inspectors and all infractions will be subject to fines. Open dumpsters attract street people looking for collectibles and food…”Please refrain from throwing returnable cans and bottles in public trash receptacles. The streetpeople find Kenmore Square a profitable location for collecting on these cans and bottles… “Start calling the police if certain annoyances persist and keep a record of your calls (i.e. date, time of day and response time).”

Fema Camps?
The decade’s long drum beat of dehumanization maybe coming to its logical conclusion. The time is coming where we are either going to turn our gaze away from the inhumane policies of the property speculators and their employees in government, or we are going to unite against these plans to drive the unhoused into camps. Three decades of the dehumanization of those who cannot afford rent has set the foundation for forced removal of America’s “Useless Eaters.”
We better act now or as the poem of from German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller,
First they came for the homeless, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not homeless.
Then they came for the Mexicans, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Mexican.
Then they came for the Muslims, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Muslim.
Then they came for me —
and there was no one left to speak for me.

“On #HolocaustRememberanceDay, we recommit to stopping the cycle of amnesia &violence that spreads white supremacy, anti-Semitism& bigotry in all forms. If we’re to stop history from repeating, we must remember not just what happened but also how it happened. #ItStartedWithWords” (April 8)

Just out walking my Donkey…As(ses) seen on Cooper Street in downtown Santa Cruz last week near the corner of Pacific Avenue.

(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 to the city council again in November of 2016, after his kids went off to college. His term ended in April of 2020. Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

April 11
#101 / The New Left

This picture, dated 1964, appeared at the top of an article in The New Yorker on March 22, 2021. The image was provided to the magazine courtesy of the Oakland Tribune Collection and the Oakland Museum of California. Design credit for the illustration was given to Paul Sahre.

What attracted me to the article, besides the picture, which brought that era right back into my immediate consciousness, was this statement, which served as a “sub-headline.” 

The movement inspired young people to believe that they could transform themselves – and America.

In fact, I believed that then, and I still believe it now. And the truth that we can transform ourselves, and America, is not a truth that applies only to “young people,” either.

If you weren’t part of the “New Left” yourself and so don’t really have a clear idea of how it started and what it was all about, I commend that New Yorker article to your attention. The article was written by Louis Menand, a professor at Harvard, and is titled, “The Making of the New Left.”

Not only did I like that sub-headline at the very beginning of Menand’s article, I liked how his article ended, too:

The nation was at a crossroads in the nineteen-sixties. The system did not break, but it did bend. We are at another crossroads today. It can be made to bend again.  

That’s true. I can speak from personal experience. I was there. 

I have only one amendment to Menand’s closing, though. It’s just a one-word change: 

The system did not break, but it did bend. We are at another crossroads today. It MUST be made to bend again.

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. View classic inner view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s ” Deep Cover” 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. 

    TRAINS

“…what thrills me about trains is not their size or their equipment but the fact that they are moving, that they embody a connection between unseen places.”  
~Marianne Wiggins 

“Trains tap into some deep American collective memory.”  Dana Frank, Local Girl Makes History: Exploring Northern California’s Kitsch Monuments 

“A good country is the one in which trains run on time, and carry happy passengers.”
– Mantaranjot Mangat, Plotless

SANTA CRUZ RAIL & TRAIL 1889. A beautiful and environmentally-friendly concept of lots of Santa Cruzans using the beachfront trail, right next to the train. That merry-go-round on the right was steam-powered. photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection. Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

DATELINE April 5

RAIL AND/OR TRAIL DIVISION. Last week, I expressed the opinion that the Rail and/or Trail plan had split our area environmentalists more than any issue I could remember. One astute reader wrote: “I agree with you that the rail trail proposal is dividing the environmental community more than any prior issue, but I do recall that the development of the park at Arana Gulch pitted two environmental groups against each other: the “get people out of their cars and make it safer to bike to work” crowd, which supported the paved trails, and the Native Plant Society, who felt that it would be worse for the native tarplant than leaving the property undeveloped. As for me, I liked it better before, when you could tramp over the fields and have it mostly to yourself, compared to having paved trails and most of the land fenced off.  But that’s not for environmental reasons. I just think it was nicer to visit in those days”.

RAIL AND TRAIL PAUSE. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported, “After three hours of discussion, the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission on Thursday continued an agenda item around the business plan for electric passenger rail on the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line. During the morning meeting, the RTC staff asked the commissioners to review and provide input on the business plan for the rail option, adopt a resolution accepting that business plan and direct staff to seek federal and/or state funding to complete the first phase of the electric passenger rail project — preliminary engineering and environmental review.

Ultimately, half of the commission voted against approving the business plan while the other half were on board with Commissioner Eduardo Montesino who created the motion and Commissioner Mike Rotkin who propelled it forth to a vote. Commissioners Brown, Greg Caput, Montesino, Rotkin, Schiffrin and chair Aurelio Gonzalez voted for proceeding with planning the implementation of the “locally preferred alternative” of electric passenger rail selected by the commission Feb. 4. Commissioners Jacques Bertrand, Bruce McPherson, Mulhearn, Kristen Petersen, Manu Koenig and Randy Johnson voted against the motion, bringing a more intense discussion around the seriousness of the project. 

 “Friends of the Rail and Trail saw the tie vote as a delay in further planning and construction of the project. “It is sadly ironic that six commissioners voted to halt progress on local rail service one day after President Biden called for massive investment in public transit, including rail,” Friends of the Rail and Trail President Faina Segal said in an email. “President Biden said he believes that we will one day look back and say, ‘This was the moment that America won the future.’ We can say that those six commissioners gave up today on a better future for transportation in Santa Cruz County.”

In addition to all the above, Barry Scott of Friends of Rail and Trail writes: “The 6-6 tie is frustrating but we’re happy that the business plan comes back to the Commission in May with minor revisions to permit flexibility in the implementation timeline and this could win over a commissioner or two. It seems that commissioners might not all have understood the information in the business plan; that lighter, more affordable technologies would be investigated that could cut construction and operations costs in half.

Caltrans has indicated support to cover costs of up to $17 Million for the next phases of planning: “RTC is working with Caltrans Division of Rail and Mass Transportation on options for fully funding the project’s Preliminary Engineering and Environmental Documentation with a combination of state funding sources including the State Rail Assistance (SRA) program, which permits funds to be used to fully fund environmental analysis.”

“The environmental review process provides an in-depth opportunity for the public and government stakeholders to understand and comment on the proposed project. Environmental review provides preliminary design to be completed to 30%.”

Concerned commissioners have questions about costs and ridership; these next steps are designed to get the answers they say they still need… so it’s puzzling, even disturbing, that any of them are willing to shut down the process at this critical juncture.

We urge voters and businesses in the 5th District to contact Bruce McPherson and his RTC alternate Virginia Johnson to reconsider the no vote and to support the business plan resolution which directs RTC staff to work with the Caltrans funds to begin the environmental review and explore funding opportunities.

The resolution seems so simple to understand, making it difficult to comprehend the failure of certain commissioners to support what prior studies and recent surveys indicate is the right thing to do.

NOTE:  Watsonville and Santa Cruz city representatives on the RTC are “yes” votes, while the “no” votes come from commissioners representing the relatively more affluent communities of Aptos, Capitola, and Scotts Valley”. 

April 5

VOTING RIGHTS, AGAIN?
I’ve been thinking a lot about voter suppression this week and how it is being used by the Republican Party in order to maintain their minority rule in several states. I’ve also come to realize that the election of Joe Biden was actually a survival mechanism for the threadbare garment of American sovereignty. It would have been very difficult to live another four years in Trump’s fascism-creep country. His was a government moving inexorably towards authoritarianism, just look at who he admired on the world stage: Victor Orban in Hungry, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, India’s Narendra Modi, and Vladimir Putin of Russia. It is a global creep machine no longer enabled by the American President. I don’t know about you, but every day I breathe a little bit better not hearing The Donald dominate the airwaves. 

Voter Suppression, as American as Apple Pie
At this point, it seems totally appropriate to get involved in what I’m calling, the movement against voter suppression (MAVS?), doesn’t it? Making it more difficult to vote is not what we learn in school about American democracy, but our history is indeed replete with examples of those in power seeking to limit the number of people who can vote so that they will stay in power. When the Republicans look into the future these days, they see less and less red if they don’t do something fast, namely yell vote fraud and election security enough times and with enough zeal and those who might stand in the way become fatigued. This is an all hands-on deck not so secret GOP plot to maintain their illegitimate hold on the American system of elections by putting up barriers in front of those who simply want to cast a ballot and election officials who want to count ballots. But, if you look a bit closer at our history, beginning with the Declaration of Independence, voter suppression and rule by the minority has been a mainstay in how the powerful speak their truth to the powerless. At the birth of this nation the founding documents made it clear who could participate and who couldn’t.

“He (the King) has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

With the Founding Fathers’ attitudes not towards the Brits, but towards the native inhabitants, how would anyone honestly expect those same white male leaders to embark upon any authentic mission in creating true equality for all?

Voting Rights Again, Post-14th Amendment, Read the Fine Print
Even the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which were all ratified between 1865 and 1870 in order to level the “equal rights” playing field, but also at the same time, dismissed the voting rights of an entire sex (1865).

“…any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.” (14th amendment, sec. 2) Those amendments made slavery illegal (1865) and “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied…” (1870) It was 50 more years before women, black and white, could legally vote, that coming by way of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution. But being black, and a woman, has perhaps been the most difficult place to be in the American emancipation process. I delved this week into the term, “intersectionality.” It was first used in 1989 by legal scholar, Kimberlee Crenshaw. “In other words, the law seemed to forget that black women are both black and female, and thus subject to discrimination on the basis of both  race, gender, and often a combination of the two.” Intersectionality can also be looked at as “interlocking systems of oppression.”A wonderful panel discussion on intersectionality led by Law Professor Crenshaw can be seen here. Her law review article, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: a Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” can also be read on-line.

Stacey Abrams
Why am I hitting the voter suppression issue so hard this week? Because Stacey Abrams who is eyeing a run at the Georgia governorship and is leading the charge to empower and bring out thousands of that state’s voters, and has in unprecedented numbers in both the 2020 presidential election, and in the January special election that saw both US Senate seats go to the Democrats and thus yield the current 50-50 tie within this body. Well, the Republican establishment is striking back and it does not look pretty if you believe open and maximal voting is the basis of a beautiful democracy. The New York Times dug deep this past Sunday into Georgia’s recently passed 98-page voting law, “identifying 16 provisions that hamper the right to vote for some Georgians or strip power from state and local elections officials and give it to legislators.” It’s happening in Georgia, but legislation to limit voting is also in the works in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona, places where Joe Biden barely won. In following the historical precedents of the fugitive slave act, the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, the existence of a Senate filibuster, and the post-reconstruction Jim Crow laws, it is evident that there has always been a consistent drum beat in American history toward make it harder for black people to vote. Now, along comes the Republican Georgia legislature continuing this history making it more difficult for “some” Georgians to vote. These legal obstacles to voting that were recently erected in Georgia include offering less time for voters to request an absentee ballot, stricter ID requirements, “essentially” banning mobile (RVs) voting centers, significantly lowering the number of legal ballot drop boxes, making it difficult to extend voting hours if people are waiting in line, and maybe most egregious on the face of it, you can no longer offer food or water to voters waiting in line on a warm or cold Georgia day as the legislature now deems this as “soliciting” votes. The Democrats in Washington, for good reason, are gearing up to pass a federal voting rights bill. All this goes to show what is at stake and that Republicans have become political aliens from an undemocratic planet. They will fight by any means necessary to suppress the vote and avoid the kind of future they see unfolding in most of California for example, where the Republican party is a third party trailing both Democrats and NPPs, No Party Preference.

Don’t Mourn, Organize
There’s a lot to like about the US Constitution and the Amendments to that constitution–“The right of citizens to vote…,” being a principal one, due process, and maintaining a balance act of power between the presidency, congress, and the courts. These precepts are arguably laudable, but it has taken more than 230 years of trying to get it right of creating avenues for people to vote. This past week, as universal suffrage was again under attack in Georgia, the historical remnants of pre-civil war slave catching were on display in a Minneapolis court room. A nation is being brought to a reckoning whether it wants it or not, as ex-cop Derek Chauvin is on trial for the murder of George Floyd. If the constitution is a living document, flexible and relevant to today, and all people are created equal in practice and not just theory, why is it that not all have had access to its rights life-support system? Why has the history of democracy in this country always been about the law being tilted in favor of the few? In 1789, when the constitution was approved, it actually only afforded protections to a small percentage of Americans. By that standard, Chauvin might very well walk. While the percentage of citizens with rights has grown, Republicans in Georgia, Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona are working hard to shrink those numbers. Will the outcome of the Chauvin murder case contract or expand the constitutional notions of equality and fairness? All I know is that voter suppression is real, has been around in this country since the beginning, and if good people fail to confront it, our inaction will only lead down more authoritarian rat holes. We must overcome.

“Cost to consumers:  Nike Air Max 270s: $150  Dish Network basic package: $64.99  FedEx “large” box delivery: $20.00  Zoom Pro monthly membership: $14.99  Federal Income Taxes paid in 2020:  Nike: $0  Dish Network: $0  FedEx: $0  Zoom: $0  Yes. We must end our rigged tax code.” (April 4)

Will we get a remodeled library on Church Street as the cornerstone to a Civic Plaza? Will the Farmer’s Market find a permanent home where it now resides? Can we successfully offer a range of transportation alternatives in the midst of a car culture? Only if we organize can we save those magnolia trees on “Lot 4” downtown and achieve transportation infrastructure security. For a discussion of the Library-in-a-garage project, go to KSQD’s archive and search for Talk of the Bay, April 6, 2021.

(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 to the city council again in November of 2016, after his kids went off to college. His term ended in April of 2020. Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

EAGAN’S SUBCONSCIOUS COMICS. View classic inner view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s ” Deep Cover” 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. 

    The Border

“The world has only one border. It is called humanity. The differences between us are small compared to our shared humanity. Put humans first”.   
~Nadia Murad

“Let borders become sunlight so we traverse this Earth as one nation and drive the darkness out.”
~Kamand Kojouri 

“What does the border look like?” A child’s question. A question whose answer means nothing. There is nothing but border. There is no border.”
~Jeff VanderMeer, 

RAIL SCENE IN SANTA CRUZ TURN OF THE CENTURY. Both narrow gauge and Broad gauge ran daily at this Union Station in 1905. If you look closely you can see an electric open car train (looks like a cable car) on the far right . Rails took us everywhere back then. photo by Sam Vestal, courtesy of Carolyn Swift Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

DATELINE March 29

CLEANING UP DOWNTOWN ie. TOLO (or  Unmanaged encampments in neighborhoods.”) TOLO means The Outdoor Living Ordinance.

As the 3/25/21 Santa Cruz Sentinel stated, “Santa Cruz’s latest anti-homeless ordinance criminalizes the existence of unhoused people using methods that have long proven to be expensive, ineffective, and harmful. For these reasons the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Interagency Council on Homelessness, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the American Medical Association, and the American Public Health Association have all unequivocally condemned policies that penalize homelessness.

A BrattonOnline reader wrote,  ” I hope County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty will put pressure on the city about this, but I doubt it. I think it’s all about cleaning up downtown for developer’s condo sales. ..Another friend said it’s to make the court in San Jose believe that the city has the Martin/Boise safe sleeping locations all ready”. However it’s intended we need to realize that Santa Cruz County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty stated, “It’s the city council’s decision, but I don’t support unmanaged encampments in neighborhoods.”

Another subscriber wrote and attached a letter that was sent to Supervisor Ryan Coonerty… 

“Hello Supervisor Coonerty,                                                                                                      

As you are aware, the city’s proposed TOLO ordinance is in its third iteration but could be the final straw for the lower Seabright businesses that are open at night and have struggled to stay open during the last difficult year.                                                                             

Their 6′ wide sidewalks will host the overnight campers as well as the many pedestrians and customers who walk there already.  . Some are out for an evening walk, many beach bound with coolers and their kids in strollers, their leashed dogs, and maybe grandma in a wheelchair too. Because we are a well used avenue to the beach and because the night businesses are quite busy , this part of the plan will be a disaster for those businesses, and a danger to pedestrians and customers as a bonus.                                                             

Will the pedestrians and customers be forced off the sidewalks into the roadway because of fear of altercation with campers, or just because the 6′ sidewalks are not wide enough to support all activities, including waiting customers? Most likely they will be forced into the roadway and they will eventually avoid frequenting those businesses.                                          

Who could possibly envision these two uses being compatible in an already heavily utilized by pedestrian’s business district, particularly heavy at night?  This has been hard on downtown merchants for years, but their 12′ wide sidewalks make it a bit easier for peaceful coexistence in limited space, but imagine all this activity on space half the downtown width.  I can easily imagine the problems that will be delivered if this becomes a reality.  And it will not be safe for anyone involved.”

Once again I want to thank any/all readers/writers for keeping us informed…do stay in touch. Now we wait and watch and see just what Supervisor Coonerty does about this.                                            

THE RAIL TRAIL PROJECT CONTINUES. Again many more “letters” came in in response to last week’s remarks/opinions on the future of rails in Santa Cruz and all around Monterey Bay. One of the first reactions was from Bud Colligan who wrote three pages of basically denying everything, which was to be expected. Another response was from Barry Scott one of the foremost leaders in saving and promoting keeping the rails and adding more trails. Barry suggests, “Join the Regional Transportation Commission, Coastal Commission, Caltrans, Sierra Club, Coastal Conservancy, TAMC and others and support rail transit and trail”.  

Here’s a link to the complete Monterey Bay Rail and Trail project…and who supports it. 

The broad vision is for a Trail Network project that will span the coast of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary from the San Mateo/Santa Cruz County line to Pacific Grove, in Monterey County. The RTC is leading the planning effort for project development in Santa Cruz County and the Transportation Agency for Monterey County (TAMC) is responsible for Monterey County projects. This approach will ensure that the planned bicycle/pedestrian network will provide connectivity throughout the county and into the Monterey Bay region, and serve as the California Coastal Trail in Santa Cruz County.

We Believe in the Coast Connect Vision

Check it and read names like Sam Farr John Laird, John Leopold, Linda Wilshusen, Adam Spickler, Peter Scott, Kristen Raugust, Don Lane, Justin Cummings, John Brissenden,  Dennis Norten, Donna Meyers, Rock Photenhauer, Sally Arnold , Trician Comings, Greg Larson, Trink Praxel, and many more.

Excerpts from Bud Colligan’s letter…”Rail and Trail is a fantasy—unfundable, unbuildable, infeasible”. ” The proposed train has very little forecasted ridership”. And much more of the same.

Bud Colligan has no way of predicting or stating that there will not be funding for the rail trail. With the enormous changes happening in both Washington and in Sacramento new possibilities for funding environmental and popular people moving projects could become very feasible.

In my many, many years of being involved with issues in this county I’ve never seen one that divides “environmentalists” like the Rail/Trail debate. To visualize a future where seniors, disabled, and of course our tourists could take an oceanside train ride from Davenport to Pacific Grove is nearly perfect. 

Our big car manufacturers in the past welcomed and helped support the removal of trolley and train tracks all across our nation. They rightfully planned on more and more folks being forced to use their automobiles. That hasn’t changed and we are consumed by autos only commuters all our lives. Travel by rail will ease that congestion. 

OUR PART OF THE ACTION (WHAT TO DO IMMEDIATELY) Friends of The Rail and Trail (FORT) has been keeping in touch with the commissioners and several are on the fence.

We know that Randy Johnson and Manu Koenig are hopeless but the following are either No or are on the fence.

Mass emails to the RTC and to all of them have limited impact.

Better for citizens in each district to email their supervisor and council member individually and follow up with phone calls/left messages.These individual efforts carry far more weight than the auto-generated emails FORT creates or contacting info@sccrtc.

Subject line of email or message left:  

Vote YES to approve the Rail Transit Business Plan

Let’s remember to personally contact Patrick Mulhearn, Jacques Bertrand, County Supervisor Bruce McPherson and his alternate, Virginia Johnson, Supervisor Ryan Coonerty and his alternate Andy Schiffrin and Kristen Petersen.
They are all potential no votes on the vote to approve the Electric Rail Transit Business Plan, we need to ask them to vote YES.

Why?  Every study done has shown rail transit to have the greatest benefit to equity, the environment, and the economy.

We don’t yet know the full range of solutions, some may be very affordable, and the next steps will tell how to get it done right.
Rail will provide more funding for Metro and help stimulate use of a new expanded public transit network.

The adjacent trail will encourage use of bicycles and ebikes, which will be permitted to roll on the rail system.

We need people to remind Commissioners that their yes vote permits us to find the transit solution we can afford, there’s $17M in Caltrans money for study and a new administration in Washington that supports new funding for transit.

55% of the funding has been identified for construction and operations and more is likely to be available. Public/Private Partnerships and smaller lighter systems could avoid the need for a local sales tax measure, we won’t know if we don’t try.

A YES vote lets us find answers to these important questions.

A NO vote essentially gives up trying, and they should want to be on the right side, the FDR side, of history and do the right thing.

Emails:

jbertrand@ci.capitola.ca.us
ladykpetersen@gmail.com
ryan.coonerty@santacruzcounty.us
andy.schiffrin@santacruzcounty.us
bruce.mcpherson@co.santa-cruz.ca.us
gine.johnson@santacruzcounty.us
Bruce.mcpherson@santacruzcounty.us
Patrick.Mulhearn@santacruzcounty.us

Phone:

Follow up the email with a phone call to your representative depending on district or city or both:

Jacques Bertrand: 831-247-6199
Kristen Petersen: 831-475-7300
Ryan Coonerty: 831-454-2200
Andy Schiffrin: 831-454-2200
Bruce McPherson: 831-454-2200
Gine Johnson: 831-454-2200
Patrick Mulhearn: 831-454-2200

Note, if you’re in Bruce McPherson’s  district, leave your message for him and for Gine Johnson. If you’re in Ryan’s district, leave your message for him and for Andy Schiffrin.

March 29

SAN JOSE BY THE SEA
Breaking ground at Pacific, Front, Laurel in downtown.

The attempt by city Planning staff to bypass initial public input for the Downtown Plan Extension Project that I wrote about last week caught the attention of at least some city council members, particularly Justin Cummings and Sandy Brown. This resulted in a lengthy agenda item with staff both rationalizing and apologizing for the process or lack thereof. 

Planning staff assured council they did not intend to bypass the public but didn’t see how the public could make a better decision than the one staff was proposing on the new extended downtown boundaries. They claimed the staff recommendation was “head and shoulders the best option.” They clarified that any action taken, “does not constitute a rezoning per se but is a preliminary geographical scoping of where we are going to be heading with expanding Downtown.”  They added, “when the project starts is when the process starts”. 

Hold it right there. When exactly did the public get to weigh in on whether we want to expand Downtown? That has to be the topic. It was barely mentioned. When it was raised for a brief moment, the city Planning Director didn’t recall if it was raised in the 2017 Zoning Amendments to the Downtown Plan. He thought it might have been mentioned in the context of a grant proposal but it may or may not have meant further south of Laurel. He thought there was some discussion and that council has considered this in the past. 

Given that this rezoning if adopted may be the most significant change in decades to the character, congestion and cost of our town, such vagueness as to whether it has  been publicly noticed, discussed and voted on is surely a violation of public trust? We are being asked to accept that extending and expanding downtown is a given. We will be allowed to weigh in on the details “when the project starts” but the Plan itself is a fait accompli?

Let’s review what the Downtown Plan Zoning Amendments, approved by council in 2017 have meant for the downtown and consider if this is what the community wants to extend towards the beach and lower Westside neighborhoods.

After the 1989 earthquake, the 19- person committee, which guided the downtown re building under the Downtown Recovery Plan was comprised of diverse interests, including business and neighborhoods among others. A difficult consensus was reached to keep a relatively low vertical building profile for downtown. We did not want to become San Jose by the Sea. There were to be a few well-chosen exceptions to the 35 feet height limit (1010 Pacific is one) and of course the historic Palomar is an impressive 93 feet but that was it.

The Planning Department and Planning Commission of 2017 threw that model out, all the while insisting they were not changing the original intent of the Downtown Recovery Plan. Some of us sat through countless meetings in council chambers open-mouthed at the doublespeak. 

You can see the result breaking ground now at Front, Laurel and Pacific where a Taco Bell eatery stood until a few weeks ago, depicted in the graphic above. 

This one under construction is the first with the new height of 80 feet, made possible by the Downtown Plan Amendments. The Front/Riverfront Project at a height of 81 feet will break ground soon, forever changing the character and habitat of the lower San Lorenzo River. These are the first of many. 

If the Downtown is extended to south of Laurel, that area will be included in the Downtown Plan zoning, allowing building heights of 85 feet. The current zoning south of Laurel has building height limits of 35 feet.

Planning staff is full of reassurances that not all new buildings have to be 85 feet. Some may be 50 or even 35. Except thanks to recent state law, if a developer presents to the city a project that meets all zoning and other ordinances, neither the city nor council can reject the project. It is illegal for the city to say no. The city can be sued. Thanks Sacramento! The state has removed local control over land-use decisions.

This is not the time to change zoning boundaries! Right now council and city staff can reject an outsize 85 feet building south of Laurel since it exceeds the current zoning code height of 35 feet. But not if the downtown boundaries are extended and zoning changed to 85 feet. Density bonuses can be 50% of zoning. Imagine those heights all the way to the first roundabout!

If you are thinking that at least we will have more housing then consider that we have already exceeded our regional mandated market rate housing, even before the new 7 story buildings are occupied. That is, if they are occupied. 555 Pacific is currently short on occupants, as is the one near the clock tower.

And higher does not mean providing more affordable units thanks to a 2018 amendment proposed by staff and voted in by then council members Mathews, Noroyan, Watkins and Terrazas. That’s why the Front/Riverfront Project could get away with providing only 11 % of the units at the affordable rate. 

To sweeten the pot, the City Manager talked about the “emergency” for this Downtown Expansion process given that the Warriors have to have a firm commitment for a new permanent arena. And soon! And we all love the Warriors who have given so much back to the community.

Somewhere there’s a fly who sat on a wall and watched all the business heavies and tourist industry heavies and investors and city staff dissect this sweet part of town for profit. No wonder they saw public participation not needed until they are good and ready with plans, proposals and projects. 

Gillian Greensite is a long time local activist, a member of Save Our Big Trees and the Santa Cruz chapter of IDA, International Dark Sky Association  http://darksky.org    Plus she’s an avid ocean swimmer, hiker and lover of all things wild.

APRIL 1ST (March 29)

FOOLING AROUND BUT WHAT IF?

STOP the PRESSES! I hope you’re sitting down. A major political tsunami struck Santa Cruz over this past weekend. It was midnight last Friday night when Santa Cruz city manager Martin Bernal realized he had nowhere else to turn. The city budget was in the toilet as red ink surrounded him, Covid-19’s killing businesses faster than an earthquake, self-centered grumpy city council members want him gone, and the appearance that he is not just callous towards the city’s homeless population, but the sole force behind pushing them out of town and cleansing Surf City of its human detritus, but now Bernal had an exit strategy. He left city hall for the last time early Saturday morning and decided he would never look back. Two hundred and forty G’s a year were his for the remainder of his time on earth with tax payers on the hook. Even though he’d been fired at least twice, by two different councils, Bernal hung on until now because only he, himself, would decide when to get off this stage. 

Bernal Breaking Point

It had all become too much when just last week, while sitting in front of his office computer and watching Zoom, upstart Homeless Union attorney Anthony Prince made mince-meat of his city attorney, right there in Federal court. Now he decided, it was his time to get out. Good riddance Santa Cruz. These terrible Covid days were to be his swan song, a time when he would come out the savior. This Stanford-educated golden boy was to save the hapless post-hippie colony he happened upon twenty years ago from a dreary Mountain View outpost, just one more time. The Monterey Bay beach town had been his for the taking and now he realized it was over.

The City That Might’ve Been

The city council on Saturday acted quickly. Former five-term supervisor, Gary Patton was installed as Interim City Manager. Patton moved to freeze all police over-time, rescind all new positions in the city manager’s office, and rapidly put the brakes on Homeless-Planning Director Czar Lee Butler‘s drive to extirpate the houseless from Santa Cruz while stifling any implementation of his brand of build-baby-build-as-many-condos-as-possible philosophy. It seems Butler was promptly demoted to Interim Planner I, or receive a severance package. He gladly accepted the latter. By Monday morning Butler was even looking forward to the Highway 17 commute while looking to re-capture for his old planning job in San Jose after basically being fired by the new progressive city manager. With the B and B developer shield eviscerated, the Mayor then suddenly stepped down, which made newly-elected Westsider, Councilmember Rene Golder, wince and do the same. If her bestie political bedfellow was headed for the exit, she in turn wasn’t hanging around to see any more governing carnage that might be carried out by a new city manager who prized open space and facts over the unfolding Swenson-Devcon developer nightmare that’s engulfing the city from Branciforte all the way to Front Street. The development blob would finally be thwarted by ghost-buster Patton. By this past Sunday morning, Patton was already reigning in the city attorney’s legal assaults on the homeless, even getting Homeless Union attorney Prince together with city attorney Tony Condotti for an afternoon peace-party beer at Lupulo. Patton left the lawyers to “meet and confer” on homeless encampments while he headed back to city hall and initiated a never before used ordinance to replace the two resigning council members. He called Kayla Kumar to come downtown immediately and be sworn in to replace the outgoing Golder, and then he emailed Public Works Director Mark Dettle demanding his immediate resignation and naming Tiffany Wise-West as the new director. Wise-West emailed Patton back writing she would only accept the new position if Rick Longinotti would be named head of the Parking division, Pauline Seales would be named the new director for Climate Action Planning, and Patrick Siegman would take retiring Traffic Engineer Jim Burr’s position. Longinotti, Seales and Siegman all accepted and immediately began planning for community town hall on transportation. Patton then made a boldly empathetic move, he telephoned Drew Glover in Selma, Alabama.

April 1st, Let the Light Shine

Glover arrived on Thursday, April 1st, to a hastily arranged parade down Pacific Avenue that drew hundreds. He was celebrated as a hometown hero coming home. It began at the Boardwalk and ended at city hall where a new city council majority installed him as Mayor of Santa Cruz. Glover’s first act was to visit the San Lorenzo homeless encampment and assure residents they would no longer face harassment and in fact, would receive his support and city services. He ordered cleaning supplies and dumpsters to the park and after sprucing things up he led over 100 volunteers up the river to the Highway 1 and 9 interchange to clean up that camp as well. He held a press conference after the cleanup. Flanked by council members Justin Cummings and Sandy Brown, he announced he would be bringing resolutions to the next council meeting rescinding the widening of Highway 1 and 9, as well as the city purchasing the Beach Flats Community Garden for the residents of Beach Flats, and the Sea Berg property on Coral Street for a future homeless shelter and RV parking area. This announcement was greeted by thunderous applause. Crowds of locals spilled out onto Highway 1, which brought traffic to a halt, but no one seemed angry. Next, he said that the Harvey West Pool, Junior Guards, and the Metro Bus fare would all be free to any resident under 18 years old; Pacific Avenue would be closed to vehicle traffic; West Cliff Drive would be made one-way to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists; and finally, the city would create public outdoor seating areas so that everyone coming downtown would be able to sit and socially distance. Mayor Glover also pledged to explore the closing off of Soquel Ave. to cars from Pacific all the way to Branciforte Ave. He also announced the council would resume in-person meetings with the entire city council deliberating either outside or in the Civic Auditorium. More applause. Councilmember Brown took to the podium next and said she would immediately be pushing to quash the five-story parking garage fiasco, keep the Farmer’s Market on Lot 4 permanently, and rebuild the library where it is making it the cornerstone of a revitalized and revamped civic plaza at Church and Center Street. Meanwhile, that same April 1st day back at city hall, city manager Patton was drawing up plans to rename the Economic Development Department. It would now be called the Santa Cruz City Office of Housing and its new mission would be to focus on creating and obtaining housing for locals who make less than 60% of the Santa Cruz median income. In addition, he named Kara Meyberg-Guzman as the city communications officer along with Bruce Bratton as Communications Officer Emeritus. A new day was dawning and a community of the people, by the people, and for the people was just beginning. A lot happened in Santa Cruz this past week.

Happy April First Santa Cruz!

I am proud today to take up the Presidency of the United States of America and with my Vice-President, Elizabeth Warren we pledge to rebuild America under the Green New Deal. My Chief of Staff will be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I welcome the new Secretary of State, Barbara Lee. It also gives me great pleasure to put in charge of the nation’s defense, Ro Khanna. (Happy April 1st Bernie!)

…get out, get out 

Welcome to Point Reyes and the Five Brooks Trailhead. Great place to hike, very few people last weekend too.
Camp sites available. (Me, my daughter, and life partner also pictured)

And if you cannot get away to Point Reyes, here’s a book from a couple of local writers touting 28 walks right around town. 

(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 to the city council again in November of 2016, after his kids went off to college. His term ended in April of 2020. Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

March 28
#87 / Safe At Home!

This great picture was scavenged from one of the many political bulletins that routinely penetrate my email inbox. The thought that came to my mind, immediately upon seeing the photo, was that this ballplayer would soon be celebrated: “Safe at Home!”

That “Safe at Home” phrase, of course, is most commonly utilized in baseball commentary, in just the way I imagined it, and that “Safe at Home” proclamation is almost always expressed with great enthusiasm. When a runner on third base tries to score on an infield hit, the question will necessarily be posed. What’s going to happen? Will he make it? Those who try to make it “Home” aren’t always successful – but it’s most exciting when they are!

“Safe at Home” has now also acquired another meaning. During the last year, almost all of us who are lucky enough to have homes to repair to have found ourselves self-isolated inside the protective space that our homes provide. Sometimes, our self-isolation at home has been willingly accepted. Other times, perhaps, not so willingly. Knowing, however, that venturing out into public spaces would inevitably expose us to the dangers of the coronavirus has kept a lot of people inside. When congregating with other people is verifiably risky, we all have learned that we might be better off to be “Safe at Home.” 

That “Safe at Home” position has had some consequences for the kind of public participation that is the sine qua non of democratic politics. Anyone following local politics in Santa Cruz, California, for instance, has observed how the Santa Cruz City Council and the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors have so quickly and readily accepted the idea that members of the public should not be allowed into the same room with the elected officials who supposedly represent them. Both bodies could have made arrangements for socially distanced meetings, with remote access as an alternative. Both bodies have chosen not to. 

The result (particularly at the City Council) has been decisions that seem oddly detached from an understanding of the real impact that the decisions will have on the public. For instance, the City Council has just recently voted, unanimously, to begin a process to apply high-density (high-rise) General Plan designations on the “South of Laurel” neighborhood. Any decision to begin such a process was supposed to follow a vigorous public outreach effort, but no such public outreach effort was ever made. Still, the Council forged ahead. There was no one in the room but the Council Members and the staff, as this staff-recommended proposal was ratified. Well-connected landowners in the area may be expecting a windfall – and may get one, too – but city residents in general, and those whose neighborhood is about to be transformed, have had no in-person opportunity to have their say.

Even more amazing was another recent City Council decision, again decided upon with no members of the public in the room. That decision, to enact a so-called “Outdoor Living Ordinance,” directed the City Police Department, and other city staff, to require any homeless person found sleeping or living in a tent (and particularly in any homeless “camp”) to pack up that tent at 7:00 a.m. every day, along with any sleeping gear and any personal possessions that the homeless person might have, and then to walk the streets during daylight hours. Homeless persons would be allowed to sleep at night, just not in any area where homeless persons are now sleeping, and where there might be some public facilities they could utilize. The City ordinance suggests that the best place for homeless persons to sleep (and only between sundown and sunup) would be on the sidewalks of residential streets.

Self-governing communities need to interact, in person. Elected representatives who find it comfortable to make staff-recommended decisions without having actually to see the members of the public who will be affected, and who care about what the decision might mean, are undermining the democratic process. 

Democracy is a “public” thing. It will not be “Safe at Home.” 

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. View classic inner view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s ” Deep Cover” 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. 

    APRIL

“Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives”.
~William Shakespeare

“Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever”.
~Charles Lamb

“The air soft as that of Seville in April, and so fragrant that it was delicious to breathe it”.
~Christopher Columbus

CABRIO CONSTRUCTION 1959. Watsonville’s Register Pajaronian printed this photo, taken by Sam Vestal, their staff photographer. It directed the trucks and construction workers to the present day site of the college. Those folks interested in using the original local Indian tribal names could choose from this Wikipedia list… Achilla, Aestaca, Agtisrn, Apil, Aulintac, Chalumü, Chanech, Chicutae, Choromi, Coot, Hauzaurni, Hottrochtac, Huachi, Hualquilme, Huocom, Locobo, Luchasmi, Mallin, Nohioalli, Ochoyos, Onbi, Osacalis (Souquel), Payanmin, Sachuen, Sagin, Shiuguermi, Shoremee, Sio Cotchmin, Tejey, Tomoy, Turami, Utalliam, Wallanmi, Yeunaba, Yeunata, Yeunator.[3] And of course there’s Awaswas, Ohlone, Amah Mutsun, even Sokel! The online college Name Exploration Subcommittee continues its zoom online meetings on April 8, April 15 and April 22.  photo by Sam Vestal, courtesy of Carolyn Swift Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

DATELINE March 22

CONFIDENTIALITY, SECRETS, OPINIONS. Every so often I like to remind folks that BrattonOnline is an opinion column. There’s plenty of news here too, but it’s founded and exists on opinions. That means whenever you send me anything, I guarantee anonymity. Unless you want attribution, that is. In the 46 – yes, forty six – years that I’ve been writing this weekly opinion collection, I’ve kept more secrets than J. Edgar Hoover (remember him?) This is in response to the many, many notes, phone calls, emails, and hints I’m receiving in response to the Rail Trail debate now underway.

COLLIGAN, KOENIG, OW & RAILS REMAINING. Very many of the readers/writers clearly suggested that the big money behind the push to remove the rails is Bud Colligan, the George Ow, family and other nearby land owners who will profit from the trail-only future. Relating to the phone survey call I reported on last week, I got this response…

“So, you got hit up with the survey from Greenway/TrailNow/Manu? If you want to know who is behind it besides Bud Colligan, Ow Family, Miles Reiter (CEO Driscoll’s), Gayle’s, etc. go to the Greenway website, which has been seriously misleading folks. Those people who early on signed the “10,000” petition did so at “informational” presentations to business groups and at Dominican events (recipients of big bucks from guess who?) They were bamboozled.

There is a lot more to that story. 

Those early signers were “sold” on the healthy idea of a trail, “Wow! Yes, that sounds great!”, neglecting to mention that a trail had long been in the works by the Regional Transportation Commission. Understandably, they were too busy to keep up with what RTC staff and the Friends of the Rail Trail were advocating, which was to plan for clean light rail for our County (with connections to the rest of the State).  

Anyway, FORT/Coast Connect recently commissioned their own survey by the same firm that did the one for Measure D, which turned out to be very accurate.

Here are the results

The recent RTC vote (9 to 3) to designate the rail line for passenger light rail is a major achievement! Besides excluding a trail-only option, it means that staff can start applying for federal and state funding. If we have the plans shovel ready, we could be first in line.  

FYI in case you haven’t already seen it, here’s a press release from FORT about their recent poll (not the Greenway/Trail Only one you were called about) showing 74% support for clean energy light rail on the coast rail corridor ‘.

STILL MORE ABOUT TRAIL ONLY BACKERS. Grateful readers continued to write…
“Who are they & why is there a lucky-in-life rich white (mostly) guy cabal against this? Bud Colligan. William Ow. Miles Reiter. Robert Stephens. Rowland Rebele. Sibley Simon. and others. Colligan is the ringleader: I’ve heard it’s because he’s heavily invested in futuristic personal mobility devices (google future personal mobility devices images) but I don’t know that for sure. Because of their demographic, he & the others tend, in my experience, to believe that they know what’s best for all the rest. Also, it’s always interesting to me that rich folk are so concerned about how the government spends its paltry share of the world’s wealth. 

An article in the recent Atlantic about private schools includes this quote: “Money is how rich people express their deepest feelings.” That sure feels true to me…even if it’s not their money to spend. & it sort of explains how a very nice person like Rebele can be roped into this nasty group. Colligan moved into SC when he retired from being lucky in Silicon Valley & immediately started throwing his angry, moneyed-wrench around: large donations in trade for support for the anti-rail position. Dominican, SC Community Health Centers, Housing advocates, etc. It’s sickening. & of course you know that they were behind Manu Koenig’s win & are now threatening both Ryan Coonerty & Bruce McPherson with running anti-rail candidates against them.

Thank you for challenging the Greenway myths, perpetrated by liars such as Colligan who are not all that dissimilar from our thankfully-former president”.

An early responder writes…”What I don’t get… and I realize this is coming from me, someone with a deep appreciation for cities and people… is why the Santa Cruz Business Council isn’t in favor of rail. Local shops could do with more foot traffic. It makes no sense to me. Sprawl is pro big-box retailer and pro-Amazon. We’ve got to build better cities that are more inclusive and equitable. Then again, maybe the key issue is that some bigger companies do not want their nearby labor force to have more options (Santa Cruz has a higher minimum wage than Watsonville and commuting by rail costs less than a car over the long haul). Where’s the business coalition in favor of the rail? We’re currently trapped in car culture when we could be embracing walkable & bikeable cities with transit options for everyone. What do you think is the deal there?

MORE ABOUT THE MONEY BEHIND TRAIL ONLY. The intensity and research behind the letters is as amazing as it is useful. Read this one too:

“You don’t know me but I’m a reader of your newsletter. I saw your question about why would local big-money interests want the tracks removed and I can offer a little insight. I did a bunch of research on this topic a few years ago when I first started learning about the Rail Trail project. I called the Surface Transportation Board public info line and spoke with them for about an hour, and also read a bunch of legal articles. After doing this research I ended up becoming a volunteer with the Friends of the Rail & Trail. 

What I found was that because of the way that the federal regulations are written, if the RTC were to ‘Railbank’ the rail corridor, whether or not they remove the tracks, that officially makes it not a freight rail easement any more. Railbanking preserves the option that freight rail might someday return, and preserves the corridor as an intact property, including any easements, but it is no longer a current active freight rail facility. Once that happens, anyone who owns land within the corridor easement can participate in a class action lawsuit against the federal government saying it is a new ‘taking’ (because the easement land isn’t being returned to the original owners, even though the corridor is no longer a freight rail facility.)

These Railbanking class action lawsuits have happened all over the country and resulted in 100% win rates for the landowners: the federal government has had to pay the landowners the full current market value of the easement land.

This doesn’t impact the ownership or integrity of the rail corridor. The RTC still would own it and it would stay intact, including easements, and there would be no cost to the RTC. It would basically be a gift to these local landowners from the fed. 

I think there is a lot of noise from these local landowners (the Rieter family and the Ow family specifically) about wanting Trail Only or a ‘Greenway’ in the rail corridor because that would justify track removal which would in turn justify railbanking. It’s interesting to notice that the RTC has officially decided on passenger rail for the corridor but is now considering Railbanking (while keeping the tracks). Possibly this is intended just as a gift to the local landowners to get them to stop pushing so hard for track removal. The problem is, if they do Railbank they are more vulnerable to political pressure to abandon the passenger rail plan and remove the tracks. So it may be a poison pill.

As for why Bud Colligan is so invested in tearing out the tracks, I have no idea other than he’s a libertarian type who dislikes public transportation and wants a playground for personal electric vehicle toys, like the electric skateboards in which his Central Coast Angels venture capital group is invested. He thinks only people who own self-driving electric cars deserve to be in the road, and wants to give Watsonville residents electric bicycles they can ride to their jobs in Santa Cruz instead of investing in public transportation. I’m not even kidding, this was his real proposal. He bankrolled Koenig’s run and successfully bought himself a supervisor. As for Koenig he’s a straight-up libertarian, same as Bud. Doesn’t support the minimum wage increase, thinks we should give tax breaks to businesses instead, etc”.

SUMMING UP. Concluding our reader/writers reactions we have… 

“If we are concerned about Climate Change, we must reduce fossil fuel use.

Transportation is the biggest user of fossil fuels.

Highway 1 is already congested many hours of the day.

Highway widening is very expensive and eventually doesn’t work.

Santa Cruz County continues to grow, especially in South County.

We need to move people across our County.

Think 20 years down the road. 

To those against a train, tell me – WHAT IS YOUR PLAN?

The RTC had been working on a plan long before Trail Now/Greenway/Manu came on the scene (with their own interests in mind).

Service and restaurant workers, students and others who need to go from Watsonville to Santa Cruz waste hours and gas every day. 

The RTC plan is the Coastal Rail Trail for 32 miles with zero emission “streetcars” for 20 miles with hubs with busses or jitneys circulating to inland places like Soquel, Cabrilho, UCSC, etc.  

The Westside rail trail is finished and open and a segment in Watsonville is almost done. Other sections are in design and planning stages and will be built as funding comes in from Measure D and other sources.  

This survey was just released a couple of days ago  

For more info, ask at: info@railandtrail.org  

or see the websites: www.railandtrail.org and coastconnect.org“. 

IN ALMOST CONCLUSION. This is one of the rare issues I’ve been aware of that really divides some environmentalists. I got notes from some readers supporting rail removal on an environmental basis, but I fail to see their point. This topic will be continued, even though the majority of residents support Rail & Trail.

RALPH ABRAHAM’S NEW BOOK. Ralph Abraham – formerly of UCSC and longtime area resident – has another book now in print titled “Vibrations and Forms”. The book features many articles describing the meaning of what’s been seen, felt and deciphered from types of trips. That means LSD, and various psychedelic excursions. If you’ve never tripped or experienced other-worldliness you’ll learn a lot. Rupert Sheldrake, Ken Kesey, Soquel, Ram Dass , Tabory, are all names we know in the book. If you are a veteran, you’ll recognize spaces and eternities you’ve seen before and will be happy to share. The book is available at Bookshop Santa Cruz and online at Amazon.

GREY HAYES ON CZU FIRE SAFETY. As we sit and stare at the clouds and read the rain predictions, and wonder just how dry our yards will get before the next big CZU season, there’s lots more planning we can do. Naturist Grey Hayes – an authority and veteran of our local blazes – describes in detail what, and how, we can prepare for the next danger period. Whether you’re sitting on a dozen acre ranch or little more than your rented porch, we all should be memorizing Grey’s words of wisdom. Go here to read it…

STOP THEM SCAMMERS. If you have ever wondered how people can fall for scammers on the internet, going so far as to send them money, be sure to scroll down for the “Webmistress video pick” this week. It’s humorous, but also very informational about internet scammers. Do watch!

March 22

Years from now, when Santa Cruz history is closely examined, historians will note the economic mayhem of this era as possibly mirroring a larger nationwide wealth gap trend. They may even analyze this period as a kind of (20)20’s Covid Gilded Age. This widening gap between rich and poor is surely a train wreck, or a series of train wrecks. The station it occupies now is Obscene Rift, in which twenty-first century capitalism is delivering for the rich and shafting the poor. They will see it was a time when the US experienced its highest unemployment rate ever and likely is largest homeless population. “[E]stimates of homelessness in the United States range from fewer than 600,000 to more than 1.5 million people…” The higher numbers may include homeless students and people living with friends and family, while the lower number is derived from Housing and Urban Development’s flawed “point in time” (PIT) yearly counts, not at all scientific which even “HUD itself cautions against drawing conclusions or trends…” (Population Research Bureau) If the larger number is to be believed, we now have the largest homeless population in history pushing shopping carts filled with meagre belongings from one sidewalk destination to another. The war on the homeless is nothing like LBJ‘s “war on poverty” in the 1960’s.That “war” had a goal: put an end to poverty. The war on the homeless people who now dot the cityscape of Santa Cruz, is called “TOLO,” or The Outdoor Living Ordinance. It is a war directed by some well-off people looking for a way to escape the omen of the miner’s canary, The houseless have become such a disquieting tone among those searching this beach enclave for the perfect second or third home. Homeless people are the human sentinels of the outrageous upsurge in capitalist accumulation for the few.

TOLO—A Too Obvious Loser Operation
The enactment of TOLO by the Santa Cruz city council will be a legal ban on houseless people, a discarding of human life, a dismissal of the many who are experiencing a Dickensian existence as they exist among untold wealth. That untold wealth seeks to abandon, discard, dissect, and dismantle the many houseless pods, and abandon these scraggy denizens forever. Move on! There is no room for you in Santa Cruz. You are the product of another kind of urban species unlike us or you would have a nice house, a fast car, and a reasonable latte budget. This is the constant rhetoric flying out of the mouth of an increasingly smug, imperious, and frankly deluded Santa Cruz Planning Director-cum-Homeless Czar, Lee Butler. Butler assists greed-driven developer’s wettest dreams, directing them through the Byzantine Santa Cruz permitting process while at the same time spending the bulk of his time eliminating the homeless who constitute that last obstacle to developer uber-success in effectively marketing their seaside condos to the non-local well-off. It’s Butler’s perfect gig. The homeless, many of whom grew up here, will be displaced by Butler-ian logic, by moneyed interests who found Santa Cruz on some Forbes list of Best Places to live, but only if the homeless would go away. And poof! Team Butler-Bernal, Martin Bernal is the current city manager but not for long, is leading the charge to oust the houseless from Serf City as fast as Charlemagne’s ouster of the German-Saxons at the Massacre of Verden. I use the Charlemagne analogy here because he was exceptionally ruthless and it went on over a 30-year-long war. That Massacre of Verden in 782 slaughtered some 4.500 Saxons, which is likely the same number of people now living houseless in Santa Cruz County. 

Go Team Butler-Bernal, go!
But don’t forget, we still have a functioning court system. Team Butler-Bernal was again confronted by the law on March 16th, most notably in Federal Court in San José, and the law won. The homeless can still stay within the confines of their insufficient encampment in San Lorenzo Park. Big win? It was neither a win for the houseless, nor for the dozens of activists who agitate for better and more humane public policy, but it was a brief moral victory that thrusts a potent right hook onto the jaw of the city bureaucrats’ many wrongs. It was a classic televised face-off, if anything can be “classic” on Zoom, between the city attorney, Tony Condotti and his minion assistant, Cassie Bronson, vs. Homeless Union defense counselor, Anthony Prince. The event was presided over by Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen whose Wikipedia page states, “[S]he has also regularly represented pro bono clients in cases involving immigration law, landlord-tenant disputes and remedies for victims of domestic violence.” Aha! We potentially have a good “cutman” in our corner, someone who just might care about the problems faced by homeless people, especially within our unfolding and persistent pandemic. And yes, Prince scored again.

The Case
The Santa Cruz city attorneys entered the Zoomzone this time on bended knee and with heads bowed. It was nothing like their January 6th bombastic and rather aloof performance, which Judge van Keulan would have none of and stated, “…the CDC Guidelines before this Court are clear and specific: if there is no alternative housing available, leave the encampments to remain where they are because clearing encampments may increase the potential for infectious disease spread.” The results of this Judge-just-checking-how-the-camp-is-doing court appearance were somewhat similar. She directed the two parties–houseless and houseful–to get together and work out both a vaccination plan and a place where campers could go to shelter in place and sleep when necessary. The current TOLO plan identifies few habitable spaces where people could, or would, want to reside. While the judge cited the coming rains posing perhaps a flooding danger, city attorneys threw up verbal blockades against any kind of homeless storage and access program and seemed to contend that only around 100 people resided at the San Lorenzo camp. Prince countered with a left. He pointed out that the current 200-person San Lorenzo Park camp was perhaps even much larger when you consider that tents dot the river landscape from the Benchlands up and down the San Lorenzo River.

The Decision
The judge left it up to the parties to get together. It was likely a TKO (technical knock-out) for now. She also wanted to know about a vaccination plan–more J&J supplies to arrive on March 19th according to Assistant City Attorney Bronson–and about past “data points” on the flood status of the area. The judge was concerned how moving campers to a flood prone area might change any city plan and the city needed buy-in from campers. Supposedly the city plan is to prepare 122 camping spots on the Benchlands, which Prince immediately disputed would be far too few given the actual numbers of homeless people needing a spot. Prince also made the point that if the camp were to be moved before all campers had access to vaccines, many campers might likely forgo a vaccination before choosing to relocate elsewhere. The judge’s order was that parties must “meet and confer” by March 24th or 25th and “by noon on the 26th submit materials to court.” Judge van Keulen scheduled a new court date for March 30th to try and work out an initial final plan. Assistant City Attorney Bronson would like the court to allow the city to also enforce a “park stay-away order” from San Lorenzo Park against campers if and when they are moved to the Benchlands, a short distance away. The Judge said the court might take up that submission later, but for now Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulan held firm that the park encampment was not to be moved. Again, not a victory for the environment or for neighbors of the park, and especially not for the sad-sack city manager’s office, but it was a victory for those of us who love justice and would still like to love our democracy. The courts, as the third branch of government, are still serving the American people post-Trump, including Santa Cruz.

Ps. I found an informative, and brief, history of homelessness on a National Institute of Health website

“Every benefit, from the minimum wage to the 5-day work week, was earned when people organized. It’s never easy. But workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama are standing together right now and if they win, it will send a shockwave throughout this country.” (March 20) “CEO pay growth from 1979-2019: 1,167% Worker pay growth from 1979-2019: 13.7%” (March 21)

(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 to the city council again in November of 2016, after his kids went off to college. His term ended in April of 2020. Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

#80 / Problems Of Contemporary Censorship 

March 21

Spiked is a British Internet magazine focusing on politics, culture and society. The magazine has been funded in part by donations from the Charles Koch Foundation, and Wikipedia says that Spiked is generally considered to be “libertarian” in its editorial approach. 

On February 19, 2021, Spiked published an article by Editor Brendan O’Neill, who is pictured above. O’Neill’s article is titled, “It’s time to get real about freedom of speech.” Wikipedia reports that O’Neill was once a Trotskyist, and was formerly a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party writing for the party’s journal, Living Marxism. O’Neill apparently now self-identifies as a “Libertarian Marxist,” though I must confess that the “Libertarian Marxist” category is not one that is exactly crystal clear in my mind. 

At any rate, I thought that O’Neill’s recent column raised some important issues related to censorship and free speech. I think it’s well worth reading. Here’s how O’Neill starts out:

It’s hilarious when activists piss on the door of a feminist academic’s office because they don’t like her criticisms of gender self-ID. It’s hilarious when a disabled working-class grandfather is sacked from his job at Asda because he posted a Billy Connolly skit on social media that made fun of Islam. It’s hilarious when a Labour shadow minister loses her job because she dared to raise concerns about the grooming and rape of working-class girls in various parts of England. It’s hilarious when JK Rowling is bombarded with messages saying ‘fuck you bitch,’ ‘bitch I’ll kill you’ and ‘choke on my cock’ because she wrote an entirely non-prejudiced essay on trans issues. It’s all so funny. ‘FREEZE PEACH’ lol.

Make no mistake: when the cultural and media elites mock the idea of a free-speech crisis, when they insist cancel culture doesn’t exist, this is the reality they are denying. This is the abuse, demonisation and, yes, censorship that they claim is not real. Actually, it’s worse than that. These censorship deniers do not merely question the reality of these grim assaults on people’s free expression – after all, we can all see the tweets calling JK Rowling a ‘cunt’ and a ‘whore’, and we all know what urine splashed on someone’s door looks and smells like, so we know this stuff is real. No, they also implicitly justify these chilling crusades against open discussion. By refusing to describe these attacks as attacks on freedom of speech, they normalise them, they green-light them.

Most obviously, the censorship deniers, those nominally leftish people who claim there is no free-speech crisis on campus or anywhere else, just cannot be taken seriously. Such is their ideological blindness to the problem of contemporary censorship that they have become impervious even to facts and information. I know from personal experience that you can provide these people with loads of examples of ‘controversial’ individuals being No Platformed, arrested and even physically assaulted for their political or moral points of view, and it makes no difference. ‘Nope, there’s no free-speech crisis’, they’ll say.

Glenn Greenwald, who once wrote for another British publication, The Guardian, has also been thinking about issues related to censorship and free speech. Greenwald’s article, which appeared in his Substack newsletter on February 20, 2021, was titled, “Congress Escalates Pressure on Tech Giants to Censor More, Threatening the First Amendment.” Greenwald pays less attention than O’Neill to individual attacks intended to shut down someone’s ability to comment on contemporary issues. Greenwald is specifically concerned about how elected officials are trying to compel various social media corporations to suppress opinions with which the politicians disagree:

House Democrats have made no secret of their ultimate goal … to exert control over the content on these online platforms. “Industry self-regulation has failed,” they said, and therefore “we must begin the work of changing incentives driving social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation.” In other words, they intend to use state power to influence and coerce these companies to change which content they do and do not allow to be published.

I’ve written and spoken at length over the past several years about the dangers of vesting the power in the state, or in tech monopolies, to determine what is true and false, or what constitutes permissible opinion and what does not. I will not repeat those points here.

Instead, the key point raised by these last threats from House Democrats is an often-overlooked one: while the First Amendment does not apply to voluntary choices made by a private company about what speech to allow or prohibit, it does bar the U.S. Government from coercing or threatening such companies to censor. In other words, Congress violates the First Amendment when it attempts to require private companies to impose viewpoint-based speech restrictions which the government itself would be constitutionally barred from imposing.

Both O’Neill’s article, and Greenwald’s, address problems of contemporary censorship that I think need to be taken seriously. Lots of things that people say are things with which I disagree, and some of them I consider to be truly horrible and obnoxious. 

Still, while no “Libertarian,” I am uncomfortable with the idea that obnoxious and horrible ideas should be suppressed – however that is accomplished. I particularly think that Greenwald’s point, that when government officials try to use the power of our government to eliminate opinions which disagree with their own, we are treading into extremely dangerous territory.  

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. View classic inner view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s “Deep Cover” 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. 

    Just good Quotes

“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
~Dr. Seuss 

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
~Mark Twain 

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
~Maya Angelou 

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
~Oscar Wilde 

CABRILHO COLLEGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION 1962. Cabrillo became a community college in 1959, in Watsonville. It has a quite a “changing” history. Now it’s a discussion topic because of plans to build student housing on campus… one of the very few community colleges to even consider such a thing. photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection. Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

DATELINE March 15

CABRILHO NAME AGAIN. Last week I plugged the Cabrillo College Name Exploration Committee’s events. The Committee’s ability to publicize its efforts seem to be non-existent, as no one I know has even heard of this community effort and event. So I’m repeating this “NEWS” about our local community college.

CABRILHO BY ANY OTHER NAME! There’s a huge amount of interest in the name, and even the intentions, of the Cabrillo College institution. There is a Name Exploration Subcommittee in existence. They are staging three online events in the next few weeks to canvass community opinions on the name of our local college. Plus, there’s the talk of building student housing for the college – very rare for a community college in California. On March 18, at 6pm, Dr. Iris Engstrand – a retired professor from San Diego – will talk on “Who Was Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo”. We can Zoom it here. My guess is that, being from San Diego, she’ll claim Juan Cabrillo was Spanish (born, raised in Spain) She claims to have proof from a book by Wendy Kramer that he was born there, and not in Portugal – which a book written in 1986 by Harry Kelsey claimed to prove. If you go to Wikipedia, you’ll see that it presents both sides of his birthplace issue. Next on the Name Exploration Subcommittee’s series is retired professor Sandy Lydon, who’ll talk on “How and Why Cabrillo College got its name”. That’s on April 15 at 6 p.m. I talked to Sandy and he’s got the full story on the local angle. Don’t miss this one; it’s full of surprises and area tidbits you’ve never heard. To round it all off at 6 p.m. on April 22 there’ll be a student debate on “Should Cabrillo College Change its Name?” If they do ever change the name, my suggestion in now and has been that they change it to Harrison. That’s of course after Lou Harrison, our world-famous composer… or maybe Wormhoudt after Mardi Wormhoudt, or Patton, after our devoted office-holder Gary Patton. But those names would probably cause some fuss too.

RAIL TRAIL PHONE SURVEY. There’s big money and sneaky plans behind the folks who want to rip out our rails. I got a so-called “phone interview survey” from them last week. They wanted to know if and how often I vote, and asked how I’d vote on which of the many phrases they want to put on a ballot. Why the money interests are supporting rail removal, is a question I can’t figure out. If any of you readers know who’s behind this, let me know…please.

VACCINE SAME FOR SECOND SHOT? I asked the folks who gave me my second Pfizer shot last week (and a few doctors, too) if the contents of shot number two are the same as the first bottle? I still can’t get or find a definitive answer. Any word or words from your sources?

March 15

AND YET ANOTHER-

The above is a rendition of the latest in a growing number of 6 and 7 story proposed new developments in the city of Santa Cruz, currently at the Planning Department stage. Named Calypso, Ancient Greek for “to cover, to conceal, to hide, to deceive” this one from developer Barry Swenson takes advantage of all that Senate Bill 35 (Wiener 2017) has to offer in terms of density bonuses, streamlined approval and reduced parking.

The site is 130 Center St., where two small businesses are located, a Hertz Rent-a-Car and an Auto Body Shop, almost opposite Depot Park and the soccer fields. 

The carrot in this case is the inclusion, required under SB 35, of 10% of units (23 out of 233) at the Very Low Income level, that is, for those making less than $62,000 a year for a family of four. A further 8 units are for Medium Income earners, those making less than $132,000 a year for a family of four. The other 202 units will be market rate.

The folks I know at the VLI level work two jobs at $15 an hour, which is about $15,000 a year. They have children. The units at Calypso do nothing for their affordable housing needs. 

All of the units in this proposed development are SRO’s or Single Room Occupancy, that is, a unit from 40 to 140 square feet for one individual with shared kitchen, fridge and bathroom outside of their SRO. Some may have a microwave and small fridge but you get the picture… student dorms. This is how UCSC in their comments on whether an additional 10 thousand students would impact off- campus housing could claim, well not really.

While SB 35 has all but taken local control over land-use decisions out of our hands, there are choices and issues with this one that are worth getting out of bed for. Developer Swenson has offered the city two models. One is the above. The other is a 3-story model with 155 SRO’s and the same percentage of Very Low Income units. Many communities limit heights of new development to 3 stories to keep a balance, retain at least a sense of human scale if not a sense of place as the old familiar businesses are bulldozed for the generic new. Three stories are preferable to six.

Every new development has impacts far beyond the provision of market rate housing even with the obligatory small percentage of affordable units. Whether traffic, water use, overcrowding of parks, open space and facilities, more is not necessarily better. The mantra of “we need more housing” is mindless when each new development makes living here more expensive by attracting the more affluent newcomers who generate the need for more low-income service workers who cannot compete for the pittance of affordable offerings and are forced to find housing further and further away. More housing raises the Area Medium Income on which the VLI rates are set. The deceptive need for more housing was used last week by the CA Coastal Commission to support the mammoth new development on the San Lorenzo River and is used by YIMBY’s (Yes In Your Back Yard) at every hearing. 

In this case the developer is offering a choice. It is up to us to convince the staff at the Planning Department, the Planning Commissioners and ultimately the elected city council members of the wisdom of the smaller choice. 

Gillian Greensite is a long time local activist, a member of Save Our Big Trees and the Santa Cruz chapter of IDA, International Dark Sky Association  http://darksky.org    Plus she’s an avid ocean swimmer, hiker and lover of all things wild.

March 14 
#73 / Persistence

Pat Bakalian, pictured, has written a very nice book, Persistence: The Power To Make Change. Pat’s book is a “Memoir,” filled with stories of her family life, and with personal recollections from Palo Alto and Santa Cruz, and detailing her forays from Santa Cruz, to San Francisco, and all around the country, and even to China – not to mention her long-ago recollections of a girlhood sojourn in Switzerland.

A lot of of Pat’s memoir is about “politics,” how ordinary people can change the world. I already knew how this can be done – from my personal experience, and because I do know Pat. I found her book nostalgic, since I did know quite a bit (but not everything) about the track she charted in her memoir, from her involvement in politics at the local level to her activism at the state, and national level. Pat traversed that entire route, and she says it’s a story of “one woman’s evolution from shy girl to feminist political activist.” 

Quite an evolution! Did Pat’s memoir make me feel nostalgic? Yes it did – but it’s not just a trip into nostalgia. It’s inspiring, too!

Adelante!

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. View classic inner view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER . See Eagan’s ” Deep Cover” 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. 

“I don’t mind going back to daylight saving time. With inflation, the hour will be the only thing I’ve saved all year”.
~Victor Borge

“An extra yawn one morning in the springtime, an extra snooze one night in the autumn is all that we ask in return for dazzling gifts. We borrow an hour one night in April; we pay it back with golden interest five months later.” 
~Winston Churchill  

“Daylight time, a monstrosity in timekeeping.”
~Harry S. Truman

“Daylight saving time: Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.”
~Anonymous

I think I may have posted this once before, a long time ago. It bears repeating, however.

COLUMN COMMUNICATIONS. Subscriptions: Subscribe to the Bulletin! You’ll get a weekly email notice the instant the column goes online. (Anywhere from Monday afternoon through Thursday or sometimes as late as Friday!), and the occasional scoop. Always free and confidential. Even I don’t know who subscribes!!

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