February 19 – 25, 2018 - Bratton Online - A Weekly Column By Bruce Bratton - Page 41Bratton Online – A Weekly Column By Bruce Bratton | The latest incarnation of Bruce Bratton's weekly opinion columns, 34 years and running

February 19 – 25, 2018

Posted on February 20, 2018 by Bruce

Highlights this week:
BRATTON…No hotel at 7th and Brommer?, Octagon and MAH opinion, loud motorcycles — an explanation, sad farewell to Santa Cruz, Presidents’ Birthdays…GREENSITE on gun violence…KROHN about City Council and the Rent Freeze, UCSC and water rights, beverage tax and sales tax…STEINBRUNER and Soquel Creek Water District decisions, Watsonville giant “Sunshine Villa” development, New Leaf not locally owned, local government fraud and waste, Coonerty and Zach’s personal gain from Davenport new cell tower, Redman-Hirahara farm loss…PATTON and government spying…EAGAN and White House Hires…DeCINZO and motorcycle maniacs…JENSEN re Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool…BRATTON critiques Black Panther, The Insult, Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool.

SPIVEY’S RESTAURANT AND COFFEE SHOP, Nov. 13, 1964. Once upon a time an important meeting place on the South east corner of Water and Ocean Streets — for locals and young folks from nearly everywhere. Now it’s that CHASE bank institution.

photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection.

WORLDS LARGEST MODEL RAILROAD. Cousin Dean Hagen found this one

REAL DOG MEETS ROBOT DOG.

GREAT MICHAEL FLATELY PARODY.

DATELINE February 19, 2018

HOTEL AT 7TH AND BROMMER? Last week I wrote that many folks are questioning the hard drive that Ryan and Neal Coonerty continue pushing to have Barry Swenson Builders build a hotel at 7th & Brommer. Jean Brocklebank, a member of Harbor Neighbors Organization, sent this response…

“For those who hear that Ryan Coonerty and his father are pushing a hotel, remember that a hotel is possible at 7th & Brommer only because the County Redevelopment Agency (RDA) voted to include “visitor accommodations” at the site. Rather than stay with the Preferred Priority Use specified in the 1994 County General Plan (“Proposed Parks, Recreation and Open Space: Development of Community Park Facility”) in a letter to the RDA Board of Directors for an agenda item of their June 5, 2007 meeting, the Planning Department Director stated “the property is being acquired with the intent of using it for a future public park and visitor serving uses, including visitor accommodations, consistent with the designated General Plan/LCP priority uses.” In other words, Planning combined the Preferred Priority Use and the Alternate Priority Use (“Community Commercial: Development of visitor serving commercial uses with a minimum of 50% of the project devoted to Type A visitor accommodations available for rental to the general public.”) The RDA Board drank the combined Kool-Aid. Members of the RDA Board of Directors in 2007 were Jan Beautz, Tony Campos, Neal Coonerty, Ellen Pirie, and Mark Stone.

Fast forward from 2007 to August 12, 2016 when the County Economic Development Department (EDD) jumped into development plans feet first and issued a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) “To develop a landmark waterfront, infill site owned by the Santa Cruz County Redevelopment Successor Agency (RSA) with lodging, other destination oriented commercial uses and public open space. Development of this site aims to strengthen the local tax base and enhance economic vitality and quality of life in the County.” District 3 Supervisor in 2016 was Ryan Coonerty.

That 8/12/16 RFQ description of the property changed the emphasis of the land use from parks to visitor accommodations. The EDD RFQ also minimized the “Proposed Parks, Recreation and Open Space” part of the Preferred Priority Use as described in the General Plan. Here’s what we got from the County EDD:

• “Priority Use: The General Plan designates the site for visitor-serving commercial uses with a minimum of 50% of commercial uses dedicated to standard hotel/motel visitor accommodations.

• Height Limit: Three stories/35 feet; potential for additional five feet with design review.

• Park Facilities: The project will require one acre of land to be dedicated to passive or active recreation open to the public.” [Note: What most people do not know is that 2.3 acres of that parcel cannot be developed and will remain natural and undeveloped because of topography. So we will be insisting that another separate acre of the parcel be dedicated to passive recreation also.]

The language of the first RFQ was used in the second RFQ issued June 2017. In November 2017 Barry Swenson Builder was selected as the developer on the parcel. To date we do not know what BSB proposes to build at 7th & Brommer, but a hotel is most certainly not a done deal! Sometime this year the process will continue with Public Visioning, Project Scoping and Negotiation, CEQA Process, and the Draft Disposition & Development Agreement (DDA), which will have to be approved by the Board of Supervisors and Successor RDA Oversight Board. Harbor Neighbors will be involved in every step of the process”.

Check out Harbor Neighbors website. Read the history of the property. Read the possible uses. http://harborneighbors.weebly.com/

THE OCTAGON AND MAH. Ed Penniman, a native of Santa Cruz writes to say…The Octagon was our Santa Cruz County Recorder’s Office and is the heart of our Santa Cruz history. If the MAH doesn’t value its historical status, what value is the museum of history? Why not make the Octagon building the face of Santa Cruz? It’s a natural center of our town. Hearing of it languishing vacant and unlocked make my native Santa Cruz soul feel violated.

LOUD MOTORCYCLES. Lee Quarnstrom — long time reporter and author who now resides in Orange County — emailed to comment… “I once asked a Santa Cruz cop whose opinion I respected the same question: Why don’t police officers stop loud Harley-Davidson motorcycles and issue citations when they’re clearly breaking the noise limits? “Because,” he responded, “every cop either owns a Harley, or wants to own a Harley.”

A SAD FAREWELL TO SANTA CRUZ. BrattonOnline.com webwoman Gunilla Leavitt found this letter online. She got permission from the author, who had also sent copies to the mayor and the city council. It’s sad, expressive, and puts into words exactly what so many are feeling today…

“Dear Santa Cruz,

I moved here in 98. I was 18 and wanting to live closer to my surfer, artist, and teacher of a dad. I fell in love with the ocean air, the music scene, and all the people. I grew up into an adult here. I got in trouble here and cleaned up my act here. I struggled and scraped by. I had my two beautiful children here. I found that my happiness was in working in the community and being of service. I had a wonderful opportunity to live in pleasure point for a reasonable amount.

But now it’s come to an end after 13 years. Our apartments have been sold to a developer in Morgan Hill and we and 7 other families have 60 days to be out. Now I will be the first to tell you my credit score is awful. Not because I am unreliable or negligent but because of no credit cards and a student loan. I love this community but how is my family of 4 supposed to afford to live when your rent is over 3k a month?! How are we supposed to feed our kids, clothe them, pay for health insurance, and then childcare for the baby?! No one will give us the time of day because of a Boston terrier and a Chihuahua?! We are a good family with reliable income. I’m a medical assistant and my husband an electrician, it shouldn’t be this hard.

I love you Santa Cruz and I care about you and your future but now I may have to move my family to another area of the country and start from scratch. I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me every time I wake up because I don’t have a solution for my 11 year old daughter who is being told she has to leave her child hood home. No more junior guards, no more dance at PAC, no more softball with papa. Who is going to pour your coffee, immunize your children, and clean your houses when we all have move? And to where? A more impoverished area of California? What a sad set of options.

How did we let it get this bad? How come good families are leaving? What happened and who has the solution? Unfortunately not me.

Wish us luck Santa Cruz

We want to stay but the clock is ticking….”.

PRESIDENTS BIRTHDAYS. Peter Scott of “Campaign For Sensible Transportation” replies… Hi Bruce, At this time of year, I always feel resentful that we no longer celebrate Lincoln on February 12 and Washington on February 22. So seeing your column, I decided to look it up. Here’s the story.

I always assumed it was Nixon who changed it, but while that’s at least partly true, I never knew that there is now no official “Presidents Day“. Interesting. — Peter

Dateline February 19, 2018

THE INVISIBLE VARIABLES IN GUN VIOLENCE.
With respect to guns and gun control, most Californians regard restrictions on the availability of high-powered semi-automatic weapons for the general public as a no-brainer. Perhaps also does most of the country. The failure of politicians of all parties to enact gun control legislation speaks to the power of the NRA and the influence of big money in politics.

The data comparing the US with other similar countries and the huge gulf separating us from them in terms of gun violence is well known. A comparison between Australia and the US is often cited. After the gun massacre at Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996, where 35 people were killed, the Australian Prime Minister said “enough is enough” and spearheaded legislation to enact strict gun controls. In the 20 years before Port Arthur there were 13 mass shootings: in the 22 years since, there have been none. If you don’t mind lots of four letter words including some you don’t use often, the Australian comedian Jim Jefferies has a brilliant segment comparing the US and Australia on gun violence. You can find it at:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4g8777.

There are other differences between the two countries that help explain the relative ease with which gun control was achieved in Australia. Australia has never been much of a gun toting country. It lacks the mythology of the iron-jawed gunman as hero, woven into the fabric of American lore via Hollywood. Australia’s iconic hero is Ned Kelly, a bushranger, loosely compared to Robin Hood. He saw himself and his family persecuted by the squatter (read upper) class, the government and the police. Australians remember Ned Kelly, not as a big man with a big gun but as a working class icon. Mick Jagger seemed an unlikely choice but he did a good job at portraying Ned Kelly in the 1970 film of the same name.

Australians also have a different relationship with their government. While differences are shrinking in the sway of global neo-liberalism, most Australians are pretty law abiding and don’t regard their government as the enemy but rather as the site of collective decision-making. There is less of the individualistic streak. And it’s relevant to note that Australian media have far more explicit sex and far less gratuitous violence than do its American counterparts.

As most Republican politicians point every which way except gun control in their bluster that passes for a response to this latest gun massacre, its important not only to drag the attention back to gun control but also to examine and weigh other variables. While mental health always needs more funding plus an approach that focuses far less on medication as the first line solution, mental health does not appear to be the relevant variable since the US does not have a greater incidence of mental health problems than other countries. Other variables such as “if you see something, tell someone”, while well intentioned and maybe in this one case might have made a difference if the tips had been pursued, is unlikely to make a difference overall. There are limits on how possible it is to take away peoples rights and that is a good thing. If there is a right to acquire a semi-automatic rifle, that right will probably trump all but the most severe mental health cases.

Other variables that scream out for recognition in the gun control debate are invariably rendered invisible: that is the gender, class and race of those committing gun massacres. Intersectionality, the theory coined by legal scholar, Kimberle Crenshaw is usually applied to intersecting oppressions of race, gender and class that have been largely missing in feminist discourse. It is a term not usually applied to intersecting privileges. Yet it can be illuminating. Ninety seven percent of gun massacres are committed by males and eighty percent of them are white, usually middle and upper class. These facts are rarely mentioned and if they are, it’s as a side-note rather than the most critical variables to be unpacked. Some mass shooters have a premeditated aim to shoot only girls as in the statement of one that his intention was to “slaughter every single spoiled stuck-up blonde slut I see.” Others have drifted towards white supremacy, as had the Parkland, Florida shooter.

We can label them villains and evil persons, lock them up and throw away the key. But until we begin a serious, compassionate conversation with resources at a national and local level on masculinity, white male alienation, misogyny and racism, the underlying causes will remain unexamined. The NRA slogan of “it’s not guns that kill people, it’s people that kill people” will continue to fuel the resistance to gun control. While controlling the availability of semi-automatic rifles will remove the weapons of mass destruction from the hands of such males and gun violence will predictably fall, unless the hidden variables are brought into the light of day, the prospects of a society based on respect, equality and peace will remain elusive.

As Frederick Douglass so wisely said so long ago, “It is easier to build strong children than to heal broken men.”

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.

Now you don’t see ’em on the Benchlands…it’s cleaning day.

Now you see ’em under the Water Street Bridge…

Now, they’re back in the Benchlands, but soon 1220 River Street…or not?

Dateline February 19, 2018

RADICAL TIMES REVEAL A PRAGMATIC COUNCIL.

Rent Freeze Passes Unanimously

This Santa Cruz City Council fell into the history books last Tuesday night February 13. While myself and Councilmember Cynthia Mathews were sidelined as spectators having been advised by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) not to participate in this historic vote, likely one of the most consequential city council decisions in decades, did not seem to matter. The five remaining members–Terrazas, Brown, Watkins, Noroyan, and Chase–voted unanimously to freeze Santa Cruz rents. By 11pm on February 13th both a rent freeze and a just-cause eviction ordinance were enacted on an emergency basis “to make it safe for renters to discuss rent control without fear of being evicted,” was how the Movement for Housing Justice put it. They’re the community group behind the rent control petition ( movementforhousingjustice.org ) now being circulated. The rent freeze only applies to multi-unit homes and it limits increases to about 2% a year while affecting about 24% of the rental housing market in Santa Cruz. Only rental properties built before 1995 are subject to the rent freeze because of state law. Mathews and I did not vote because we faced a “conflict of interest” in that we both own rentals. Despite over 200 tenants, landlords, real estate moguls and homeowners coming out to hear arguments for and against these ordinances, only 56 spoke before the council. My final, unofficial tally was 28 in favor of a rent freeze and 27, mostly landlords and real estate people, opposed. Several real estate people bemoaned the fact that rent control allows tenants to stay longer in their homes thus making the case for many of us worried about losing a cohesive community. High school physics teacher, Stacey Falls said because of the market “renter’s lives are being destroyed.” Long-time organizer Glen Schaller supported the rent freeze because “we want a stable community,” while a UCSC student, Kate, who said she lived in one house with 15 other students, argued that “housing needs to be treated as a community right.”Perhaps resident Dave Willis said it most poignantly when he urged the city council to “come on over to the right side of history.” It was a night to remember as pro-rent freeze people lingered long after the vote hugging and laughing. This night was the culmination of months of planning, walking neighborhoods, and gathering community input by a group known as the Organizing Circle. Their input was crucial in gaining unanimity along with the 1500 signatures they presented to the council, which supported passage of both ordinances. Now, it is up to some of the same people to continue their historic democratic movement of gathering enough signatures to rent control and an elected rent board on the November ballot. While it will not be easy, perhaps the $2370 studios now advertised at the new Five55 Swenson development on lower Pacific Avenue, will have voters siding with the plight of renters who are just looking for some relief.

Updates–More News from February 13th Council Meeting

Remember I said I’d get back to you concerning the various outcomes on the last city council agenda? Well, I am and it was quite a consequential set of results. One item, “Conference with legal counsel,” had to do with how the city might respond to letter received the previous week from UCSC Chief Counsel, Lorena Penaloza. She wrote in a December 20, 2017 letter to the city, “The University is evaluating its available remedial options, and therefore requests that the City confirm its obligation to provide water service to the Santa Cruz Campus.” Really, it’s H2O for North Campus development they seek. It’s how UCSC/UC Regents is spelling g-r-o-w-t-h these days. Stay tuned, the legal wrangling is just beginning with the Town seemingly more unified than ever against any Gown growth exceeding 19,500. Our beef is really with Oakland, and the Regents…and that’s where we need to take the growth fight. De acuerdo!?

A Fiscal Emergency was discussed and then put on hold until some rather simple and necessary questions get responded to by city staff:

Further explanation of the definition of fiscal emergency requirements under Article XIII C of the California Constitution, item in our Feb 13 agenda report, and any other relevant codes pertaining to other powers granted to local government under a fiscal emergency declaration.
The council needs written proof that the fiscal emergency does not give the city authority, with respect to budgeting, beyond placing tax measures on the ballot.
How long does the fiscal emergency last? Until staff recommends we vote to rescind it? Do we need to regularly re-approve it (e.g. every council meeting, every month, at budget time)?
Please provide a list of proposed cutbacks, should the sales tax and sugary beverage taxes not reach the ballot, or not pass, including:
represented bargaining units — temporary and permanent workers (SEIU temp,SEIU perm, OE3, POA, and Fire) and non-represented personnel (shorthand for, the admin. bloat portion of the equation)
Given that the sales tax polling was close to within the margin of error and did not take into account the negative campaigning, which has already begun for those who have read their council emails, why is it we could not use reserves to plug the CALPERS (pensions) hole this year and give the voters more time to consider what kinds of taxes they might approve?
While I appreciate the role that tourism plays in our economy in terms of jobs and revenues, we all know there are significant infrastructure and service costs (roads, traffic, trash, public nuisance, and public safety to name the big ones— items that several colleagues raised during discussion at our Feb 13th meeting on many agenda items), why are we not considering a 3% increase in the TOT, for $3 million — a fallback should the sales tax not pass and perhaps an easier sell to the voters?
Deadline for county elections is March 9, so couldn’t we call a special meeting if we cannot work out our revenue enhancement efforts in time for Feb. 27 meeting?

Hence, the two tax measures that were discussed, 1/4-cent sales tax and a sweetened 2-cent per ounce beverage tax, were put on hold until the February 27th city council meeting. Again, stay tuned! Funding for a first-ever city-sponsored campsite at 1220 River Street was approved unanimously. At first, it appears to be a Cadillac version (?), that is somewhere between $1000-$1500 per month per campsite. Up to 60 tent sites are being contemplated with a staff of 30. This is all new for the city, so once again, stay tuned; most of this revolution will not be televised of course, until it’s too late.

On My Radar Screen this Week

Student Environmental Center, at 2:30 pm on Tuesday at the Rachel Carson College Red Room at UCSC to discuss campus Long Range Development Plan with students.
Wed. 2/21, UCSC Chancellor and Executive Vice Chancellor will be addressing faculty and staff at Stevenson Events center at 230p.
Meeting with Gail McNulty of Greenways (“trail only people”) at Coffee Roasting at 830a on Tuesday (2/20) morning?
There’s a good old-fashioned SEIU informational picket line starting at 11am at Dominican Hospital on Tuesday (2/20).
Zoning Administrator will decide on the cutting of several heritage trees at 10a on Wed., city council chambers, (2/21).
I highly recommend the “Santa Cruz Neighbors” meeting Wed. night (2/21) at 7p…might be pretty interesting…the SC city manager, county CAO, and SC police chief will be there, likely discussing homeless and housing issues. This meeting will be held at police community room at Center and Laurel streets in Santa Cruz.
On Friday (2/23), there will be meeting to discuss UCSC “Dreamers,” Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students. It will take place at 330p in Stevenson 175, UCSC campus.
Of course, the state Democratic convention will begin on Friday in San Diego, (2/23-2/25).

Footnote

Of course, so much happens in this town every week. Don’t forget to also go listen to some music at Kuumbwa, or on the new patio of the MAH; or watch a movie at the Nick, or attend a play at Actor’s or Colligan theatres! Then again, there’s always free Sunday yoga at 8:30 am at Patagonia on River Street.

~
Bernie Tweet, Taking Care of the Weak

“It is absolutely imperative that the Mueller investigation be allowed to go forward without obstruction from the Trump administration or Congress.” (Feb. 16)

(Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, former Santa Cruz City Councilmember (1998-2002) and Mayor (2001-2002). He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 12 years. He was elected last November to another 4-year term on the Santa Cruz City Council).
Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

Dateline February 19, 2018

SOQUEL CREEK WATER DISTRICT AWARDED $2 MILLION GRANT FOR PROJECT THEY INSIST IS NOT A DONE-DEAL?
Last month, California State Water Board granted a hefty $2 Million in taxpayer Proposition 1 bond money to Soquel Creek Water District to propel the PureWater Soquel project into action. The District Board of Directors and staff continue to insist they will make no decisions about the future of this project, which will inject 3 million gallons treated sewage water daily into the area’s drinking water supply, until the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is out later this spring.

Do you believe that? I don’t. Not when the District is spending massive amounts of money and time to support the project and very little on any other possible solutions. The District spent $53,067.65 in January, 2018 alone on the deal, including $2,100 to Tom Burns for PureWater Soquel support services. Why would they pay Mr. Burns, the former Santa Cruz County Planning Director, that sum if not to help shove something through that requires a permit????
MAKE ONE CALL. WRITE ONE LETTER. ATTEND A PUBLIC HEARING. MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE. BUT JUST DO SOMETHING!
Take a look at other types of projects, such as stormwater capture and water storage projects, that Soquel Creek Water District could get Prop 1 funding to do, but for some reason, is not pursuing.

Prop 1 was passed by the voters in 2014 to spend $7.5 Billion funding projects that PREVENT AND CLEAN UP CONTAMINATION OF GROUND WATER THAT SERVES AS SOURCES OF DRINKING WATER. Soquel Creek Water District claims the sea water intrusion problem in the area, which is due to years of over-pumping, is a threat to public health and safety….and that qualified them for the $2 Million grant.

District General Manager, Ron Duncan, recently waved a clear glass bottle of water he told the Capitola City Council was hazardous to health because it was from a sea water-intruded well..,..it looked identical to the same bottle he has held up before, claiming the advanced treated sewage water in it is pure and safe to drink. Although District staff insists the PureWater Soquel treated sewage water would be safe to inject into the aquifer, the possibility of contamination with pharmaceuticals, carcingenic by-products of disinfections, such as NDMA, is real. Take a look at the State Water Boards website.

Soquel Creek Water District’s consulting engineer from Carollo admitted that NDMA cannot always be removed, but it can be reduced to acceptable levels according to State guidelines. Acceptable levels? Is this really PREVENTING AND CLEANING UP CONTAMINATION OF GROUND WATER THAT SERVES AS SOURCES OF DRINKING WATER, as is the mandate under Prop 1 funding????

Why does the Board continue, with the exception of Chairman Dr. Bruce Daniels’ standing “NO” vote, to grant all new applications for new hook-ups, exacerbating over-pumping and sea water intrusion into the drinking water supply? In June, 2014, the Board declared a Groundwater State of Emergency….which really should have been a moratorium, but Twin Lakes Church congregation showed up in force to shoot that action down so they could expand their private school facilities.

What’s really “On Tap” at Soquel Creek Water District? Take a look at the guest editorial in the February, 2018 Aptos LIFE on page 8

Take a look at the sensible and fiscally-responsible information that a local group of informed and intelligent citizens has put together as ‘Water for Santa Cruz County’

You might also look at that list of warrants in the 2/20/18 Board packet (item 3.3) and see that the District paid $5,100 last month to Magnolia Investments, Inc., owned by Wa Huong in Fremont, for toilet rebates….Hmmmmm.

FOREIGN INVESTORS AND SUNSHINE VISTA’S MASSIVE DEVELOPMENT IN WATSONVILLE
Public comment has been extended to March 31, 2018 for the Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) regarding a 13-acre massive development planned for Watsonville near the Watsonville Slough wetlands at 511 Ohlone Parkway. ‘Sunshine Vista’ is a phased development, along with ‘Sunshine Gardens’, all funded by 42 foreign investors to provide 238 residential units in the Riverside Business Park just east of Highway One. Watsonville City requires 20% to be affordable units. Valbridge Property Advisors estimate profits of $18 Million. CEO is Mr. Tony Qin of China, and Mr. Richard Tso of Ifland Engineering, Santa Cruz, is in charge of project planning and construction.

Read about the Project here

I read about this in the Register-Pajaronian 2/15/2018 on page A12 in the legal notices. The Assessor Parcel Numbers (APN) for the project are 018-372-14 and 018-381-01. The Draft EIR is available at the City of Watsonville Community Development offices, 250 Main Street, Watsonville, or online. Send comments to Mr. Justin Meek, AICP, Principal Planner, justin.meek@cityofwatsonville.org

I wonder where the water supply will come from? Maybe the critically-over drafted Aromas Aquifer? How will this affect the health of the nearby protected wetlands?

NEW LEAF MARKET NOT LOCALLY-OWNED AT ALL
Don’t be fooled into thinking that if you shop at local New Leaf Markets, you are supporting any local business venture. Portland, Oregon-based New Seasons Market bought all but the Felton and Boulder Creek stores in 2013. Now, those two hold-out stores, owned locally by the Locatelli family, will change their name to Wild Roots Market, according to the February 15, 2018 Santa Cruz Sentinel article

Interestingly, the article claims the New Leaf Market planned for the Aptos Village Project is still scheduled to open this fall…despite multiple rumors of pulling out. Maybe the soil contamination problem there is a concern? Barry Swenson Builder violated many laws when their crews and sub-contractor Santa Cruz Underground Paving (SCUP) illegally removed and transported a large metal tank in 2016, contaminating the area with diesel and other gasoline-related organics, and then covered the entire area before local County Environmental Health officials could visit the site. The actual tank location was never sampled or remediated. Crews just spread the soil around the entire construction area….and now there is uncontrolled storm water runoff potentially polluting nearby Aptos Creek and Valencia Creek. Here is the article about the New Seasons Market 2015 purchase.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU BLOW THE WHISTLE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT FRAUD AND WASTE?
Actually, you will never know if what you submit to the Santa Cruz County Whistleblower Hotline ever does any good. I met with County Auditor/Controller, Ms. Edith Driscoll, at the insistence of Board Chairman Zach Friend, who refused to publicly answer my questions on the issue, when I pulled the Consent Agenda item #14 for better public discussion as Regular Agenda item #55.1 at the February 6, 2018 Board meeting.

Ms. Driscoll, whose office screens all complaints submitted, said no one who submits a complaint is ever notified with the outcome. She insisted that in the 15 years the Hotline has been available to the public to report problems, there have been improvements, but she could not discuss them. I asked her if she felt submitting investigations of issues to the Department for which the complaint was lodged is really effective…she thinks its okay. No Public Records Act requests for information regarding the history of the investigations could be honored because of confidentiality. The Auditor/Controller office does, however, submit an annual report. You can view the 2017 Report, which had an unusually high number of complaints filed, at the Board of Supervisor’s agenda item #55.1
Here is the Whistleblower website
You can also try the Santa Cruz Grand Jury

Personally, I have little confidence in either actually getting action to address problems, but logging the problem with evidence may help a case later on.

WILL THIS 85′ TOWER IN DAVENPORT HELP SUPERVISORS ZACH FRIEND AND RYAN COONERTY WITH PERSONAL FINANCIAL GAIN?
Last week, I reported the potential conflict of interest issue regarding two Santa Cruz County Supervisors who refused to admit possible personal financial gain by construction of a new 85 foot tall tower in Davenport for law enforcement and probably cell phone communications, due to Pred Pol and Yardarm Technology interests. Let me again qualify that I whole-heartedly support good communication for emergency responders on the North Coast areas. However, I continue to claim that Supervisors Zach Friend and Ryan Coonerty should have recused themselves from voting to approve the Project to go to bid. I also feel the issue should have been delayed for vote entirely because the plans WERE NOT available for public viewing the day before the vote was taken.

Interestingly, the Project, now out for bid as 17C1-013, is listing the CITY of Santa Cruz as the tower buyer. The information available to prospective bidders shows Ms. Carol Johnson, Director of Santa Cruz County General Services Department, as having an office in the CITY’s 809 Center Street building. It was not clear to the public that this project, with estimated cost of $316,000 to taxpayers, and a total project cost with lease agreement of $1,050,000 would be shared by any other agency. Here is the link to what the public was able to see when the County Board of Supervisors approved the item #55.2 on February 6, 2018

Here is the info available to bidders, showing a link to the City

I also think it is interesting that the engineering was contracted out with Valmont Microflect in Salem, Oregon. I wonder how much that cost taxpayers? Are there no local civil engineering firms that could have done the work? The County taxpayers will now pay about $6,000/year to CEMEX for the land and easement to the tower. As I understand it, if a cell phone provider requests space on the tower, the government jurisdictions cannot refuse. Do you think Zach Friend and Ryan Coonerty should have recused themselves from approving this taxpayer expense? The California Fair Political Practices Commission would like to know.

NEW TRAFFIC LIGHT ACTIVATED IN APTOS VILLAGE
Last week, the taxpayer-funded road improvements in Aptos Village pretty much wrapped up with the new traffic lights at Soquel Drive and Trout Gulch Road lighting up. About five months late, this nearly completes the Phase I Aptos Village Traffic Improvement Project, a roughly $3 Million project to accommodate Barry Swenson Builder’s 8,000 additional vehicles projected by the County Public Works for the Aptos Village Project mixed-use development. This disgusting development on 9 acres will bring 69 new residential units, 20 new stores, 4 new restaurants, and a large New Leaf (not locally-owned) Market. Most of it is three-story. All of it is confined to two-lane access over a 90-year-old poorly-maintained bridge to the west and under a two-lane railroad subway and creek crossing (just restored) to the east.

The County Public Works now wants to add a SECOND TRAFFIC LIGHT at Aptos Creek Road and Soquel Drive….all at taxpayer expense. The Santa Cruz Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) just approved another $1.9 Million for this on December 7, 2017. Doesn’t this seem like a GIFT OF PUBLIC FUNDS to the Aptos Village LLC developers? The California Transportation Commission, which oversees all RTC projects, might like to know your thoughts on the matter

Make sure you include the taxpayer-funded Metro bus stop relocation that is not easily accessible for elderly and disabled, and the fact that Soquel Creek Water District ratepayers had to pay an additional $41,602.66 to John Madonna Construction, the County Public Works’ contractor for the Aptos Village Phase I Traffic Improvement Project, just to move water pipes for the bus stop relocation. (Page 10, item 3.2, of the Feb. 20, 2018 Soquel Creek Water District Board Agenda packet) Also, you may be interested in viewing the YouTube video of Metro Operations Director Mr. Ciro Aguirre admitting to the RTC Elderly & Disabled Transportation Advisory Committee that the only reason the bus stop is being moved is to make room for Aptos Village parking: “E&D TAC Meeting 10/10/17”

Here is the phone number for the California Transportation Commission: 916-654-4245. Ms. Susan Bransen is the person to ask for regarding these issues.

THANK YOU MONTEREY COUNTY SUPERVISOR LUIS ALEJO FOR THE FORMAL APOLOGY LAST WEEK TO JAPANESE-AMERICAN CITIZENS
I had the sincere honor of witnessing the Monterey County Board of Supervisors issue a formal and public apology to the area’s Japanese-American citizens for the 1943 letter the Board had issued to the US government in protest of plans to release more than 120,000 citizens and non-citizens from concentration camp imprisonment. Supervisor Alejo made this happen, the first such action in the United States. The Board had rescinded the letter only on February 19, 2002, but never apologized.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese-American, Italian-American, and German-American citizens and non-citizens to be forcibly moved out of restricted zones, mostly on the west coast. Some of these families had lived in the United States for two and three generations, but were ordered to report to Civilian Control Stations with only what they could carry. Their bank accounts and assets were all frozen and inaccessible.

Most lost their homes, farms and businesses while imprisoned, because they were unable to pay property taxes. In Monterey County, the farmers expressed gratitude to the US Government for removing their competitors, and followed with the protest action their Board of Supervisors enacted on April 12, 1943.

A DIFFERENT STORY IN SANTA CRUZ COUNTY NEEDS TO BE KEPT ALIVE…AT THE REDMAN-HIRAHARA FARM
In Santa Cruz County, neighbors of the Hirahara family gathered money and paid the taxes for the family, hence the family was able to return to their historic Redman-Hirahara farmstead after release from the concentration camps. They created apartments in the Carriage House to offer to other less-fortunate Japanese-American families to live while restoring their lives. This barn was recommended by archaeologists to be placed on the National Historic Registry in 2006, along with the house, designed by noted architect William H. Weeks, and also the 14 acres of farmland. The County never added the barn to the preservation list.

This barn collapsed last winter. The current owners, the Tut family, want to bulldoze it. The County Planning Department is all too happy to allow that to happen and is not acting aggressively to insist the house be kept from following the same path.

Here is a link to the YouTube video of the October 2, 2017 county Historic Resources Commission meeting where the Assistant Planning Director, Ms. Wanda Williams, argues against historic significance of the Redman-Hirahara barn, beginning at 34.14 on the video clock.

You can see this property near the Highway One Riverside exit of Watsonville, on the ocean side of the freeway. It is in the County jurisdiction, while the Tut family development just across the street is in the City of Watsonville jurisdiction. Please contact me if you are interested in helping to preserve the story of the Hirahara family and their farm, modelling the effort after the Emma Prusch Farm Park in San Jose.

Becky Steinbruner 831-685-2915 or ki6tkb@yahoo.com

It is critical that we work to never let the future generations repeat the tragedy of Executive Order 9066….related current affairs have become alarming, in my opinion.

~Cheers,

Becky Steinbruner

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.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com

Dateline February 15, 2018
#46 / Smith, Jones, And Carpenter

What kind of “privacy” do we have, in a time in which new technologies increasingly send detailed information about everything we are doing to private companies, which then provide that information about us to the government?

In the case of Smith v. Maryland, decided on June 20, 1979, the United States Supreme Court held that the police did not need to obtain a search warrant to install a “pen register” on a telephone owned by Michael Lee Smith. Using the pen register, the police were able to collect information about calls made from Smith’s phone, including the telephone numbers called, and the date and time of all calls made. Evidence about the calls made from Smith’s telephone was provided to the police by the telephone company, and was used to convict Smith of robbery. Smith argued that the police should have gotten a search warrant, based on probable cause, before using the pen register. He wanted the evidence collected by the pen register suppressed. The Supreme Court reasoned that Smith had no “expectation of privacy,” since Smith well knew that the phone company was recording all the information associated with the calls he made from the phone. There was nothing “private” about that!

In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the United States government was obtaining exactly the same kind of information the police had collected in the Smith case, but was collecting this information about EVERYONE’S phone calls, and was retaining all these records in a giant database, essentially forever. A federal trial court judge, William Pauley, said that the Smith case controlled, and that there was nothing wrong with the practices that Snowden revealed. According to Pauley’s decision in American Civil Liberties Union v. James R. Clapper, no one in the country has any “expectation of privacy” about the kind of “metadata” that the government has been collecting, since anyone using a telephone understands that the information collected by the government is being recorded and retained by their telephone service provider. It’s not really, “private” if the telephone company has it!

Judge Richard Leon, another federal trial court judge, came to an exactly opposite conclusion in a case called Klayman v. Obama, decided at virtually the same time as the Clapper case. Judge Leon reasoned that United States v. Jones, a case decided in January 2012, pretty much overruled Smith. The decision in the Jones case was unanimous, and was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, pictured above. Scalia, who died in 2016, was one of the Court’s more conservative members. The Jones case was not a case about telephones; it was about the use of a GPS tracking device, which the police had placed on Jones’ automobile. Expectations about privacy, however, was at the heart of the Jones case. Using the GPS information they gathered from the device, the police were able to track Jones’ whereabouts over an extended period of time, and they used the information to convict him. Scalia’s opinion pointed out that new technologies dramatically increase the ability of the government to surveil the citizenry, so that the old rules have to be reevaluated.

You might think that since diametrically opposite conclusions were reached in the Klayman and Clapper cases, on an issue of such fundamental importance to everyone using a telephone, the Supreme Court would want to provide some definitive guidance, and to decide whether Smith or Jones was right. Absent such guidance, it is totally unclear whether it is constitutional for the United States government to undertake a mass collection of telephone metadata, mobilizing modern spy technologies against every person in the United States who makes telephone calls. Whatever we might think about what would make sense in terms of the public interest, the Supreme Court gets to pick its cases, and has dodged making a decision about whether Judge Pauley, or Judge Leon, got it right.

Maybe, however, there is going to be a resolution soon.

Consider the case of Carpenter v. United States. The Supreme Court of the United States Blog (SCOTUS Blog) describes the Carpenter case as follows: “Issue: Whether the warrantless seizure and search of historical cellphone records revealing the location and movements of a cellphone user over the course of 127 days is permitted by the Fourth Amendment.” The Carpenter case was argued on November 29, 2017, so a decision can be expected by June of this year.

Check out the arguments. I’m hoping that the Supreme Court is going to decide that our government is simply not allowed to spy on me unless the government can convince a judge that there is some reasonable, probable cause to think I’ve done something wrong.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you, dear reader, feel just the same!

Gary 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

CLASSICAL DeCINZO. Tackles those motorcycle maniacs. Scroll below.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s “White House Job Fair” 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….with thoughts about “Dead Etiquette”.

EVENTS

The Santa Cruz Chamber Players present the fourth concert in this year’s series…

“Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms: An Arc of Romanticism” Brian Johnston is the artistic director and the players are Brian Johnston, violin. Shannon Delaney, viola. Aude Castagna, cello. And Ben Dorfan, piano. They’ll play…

L. v. Beethoven (1770 1827) Serenade Op. 8 for string trio (1797)

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) Piano Quintet in E -flat, Op.44 (1842)

Beethoven Serenade Op. 8 for string trio (conclusion)

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Piano Quartet in c minor, op. 60 (1862-1864) . The concerts are Saturday and Sunday February 24 at 7:30 and the 25th at 3 p.m. At Christ Lutheran Church 10707 Soquel Dr. Aptos, CA. Purchase tickets at Brown Paper Tickets or maybe at the door the day of the concert. :30 pm

Sypm

Christ Lutheran Church

10707 Soquel Dr.

A CA

LISA JENSEN LINKS. Lisa writes: “Learn my strategies on how to steal more time out of the day to do stuff you really want to do, this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com/). Also, if we’re lucky, the wistful memoir, Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool will spark renewed interest in the life and career of the exceptional, much-beloved film noir actress Gloria Grahame.” Lisa has been writing film reviews and columns for Good Times since 1975.

FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL. Gloria Grahame was an Academy Award winning sultry, smart “actress” (old term) in the 40’s and 50’s. In her later years she did some stage work in Liverpool and had a very serious affair with a much younger man. He wrote a book about it, this is the movie from that book… and it is an entirely captivating movie.

THE INSULT. This is one of five foreign language films up for an Oscar on March 4. It’s a challenging film to understand, and having white subtitles on white backgrounds doesn’t help. A courtroom drama dealing with Christians vs. Muslims, it takes place in Beruit. The actions and accusations by political and religious factions are hard to follow. Absolutely perfect acting, and a lot of tension… but unless you know the history of Palestine and Lebanon you’ll miss some important points.

BLACK PANTHER. Just as Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman created a lot of good will and empowered women, Black Panther is doing the same for Blacks in America and around the rest of the world. Both are Marvel Comics creations, and full of violence, killings and special effects. Black Panther is science fiction, and still the characters use spears to kill each other? There are messages in this movie, so I read…but I struggled to find anything positive in it. I’m finding it more and more difficult in general to see these action films — with messages like revenge, torture, and blood and guts — as bearing any real semblance of cinematic art.

LADY BIRD. This film restored my faith in great films! RT gives it 100% and it’s the highest rated film in RT’s history!!! Greta Gerwig directed Saorise Ronan and others in this sincere, well thought out movie. A teen aged daughter and her Mom have a terrible, never ending battle over clothes, religion, dating, sex, college and everything. It all happens in Sacramento in about 2003 , which is somehow appropriate. It’s sensitive, subtle, and surprising. Gerwig breaks many directing rules and creates new plot possibilities. Go see this film. Ps….as I’ve told many folks, it’s definitely not about Lady Bird Johnson!!!

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME. No matter where you’re at sexually this beautiful film deals with a young 17 year old boy in Italy working his way through his sexual coming of age. Armie Hammer plays the 30 year old scholarly hunk who visits the kid’s parents. You remember Armie Hammer heir to the Armand Hammer oil fortune and who played The Lone Ranger to Johnny Depp’s Tonto (2013)!!!

THE SHAPE OF WATER. A 93 on RT and that means something! Sally Hawkins plays a beautiful mute working in a lab who cares for, and falls in love with a mysterious water creature. It’s a fable, a fairy story, and reminds us of the black and white fantasy films from the 40’s and 50’s. It’s vital to know that it’s directed by Guillermo Del Toro who also did Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy. It is such an enormous change from every other film we’ve seen in years that its’ worth going just for the fun of it.

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI. First, please note the 95 RT rating. When you have Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell working in a film directed by an Oscar winning director you almost can’t miss. It is definitely a dark comedy. The plot contains murder, rape, loyalty, cancer, and some absolutely brilliant acting. Go see it, and force all your friends to see it too.

DARKEST HOUR. Gary Oldman takes the role of Winston Churchill to new heights…and depths. Its world War II history and it’s the background story of what Churchill had to endure when he first took office as Prime Minister. He deserves the Oscar like few stars ever have. The story is absorbing, educational, and it makes you wonder why the USA doesn’t have someone like Churchill to handle Trump like Churchill handled Hitler and Mussolini.

THE POST. This is Steven Spielberg’s answer to the Trump administration’s corruption and misuse of presidential power. Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks rip up the acting as we expect them to do. It’s the story of the then little Washington Post trying to catch up to The New York Times printing Daniel Elsberg’s Vietnam exposure papers. It makes easy parallels to Nixon and Trump’s dictatorships. It also makes great pitches for freedom of the press…and what we need to do to keep that freedom alive…especially now. Go see it, bring your friends. But truthfully it’s not as interesting or revealing as the MSNBC documentary two weeks ago… “The Most Dangerous Man In America” the same story from Elsberg’s view.

I TONYA. A very dark, depressing movie about some very depressed people. It’s got loud rock period music as the film score which almost qualifies it as a fun comedy but you’ll be able to count your laughs. Somewhere in the movie somebody says Americans love to hate or love their current sport stars…and its sure true here. Allison Janney plays Tonya’s seriously disturbed mother and deserves some award this Award season…but not for this one. Warning IF you do got you’ll leave wondering why you cared about Nancy Kerrigan or Tonya Harding.

COCO. A genuine Pixar animated cartoon. And, the animation is amazingly three –dimensional. The plot is totally focused on the very rich and traditional Mexican culture. Day of the Dead, plenty of food, religion, music, and only a little boring after the first half hour. It’s completely original, you’ve never seen anything like this before, its way more creative and developed than what we usually think of as a Disney Cartoon. Go see it. (ends Feb.15 again!)

MOLLY’S GAME. This is an unusual “true” film about a once Olympic ski champion who becomes the owner/manager of zillion dollar poker games. Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba play the top roles and good old Kevin Costner has a bit part as Jessica’s father. It’s a fancy film with plenty of cinema tricks to keep us interested, and the acting’s ok too. But think twice before going, especially if you’re trying to give up movies for the New Year.

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI. Yes, 93 on RT and I thought it was a complete fake of a billion dollar move machine. I’ll always remember going to our Soquel Drive in (just a little stoned) and being completely taken into outer space with Star Wars 1. It had humor, empathy, great imagination, tension and a story you could care about. The franchise now stages monotonous, uncaring, space attacks and wars so numerous that you can’t remember who is on who’s side…and you don’t care much either. There’s the Dark Side, the Resistance, Adam Driver, R2D2, a very dull Carrie Fisher, an aging Mark Hamil as Luke Skywalker and those endless space battles that take up probably 33 1/3 of the movie. A great disappointment…go at your own peril, and its 2 ½ hours extra long.

THE HOSTILES. In 1892 The Comanches fight the Cheyennes, settlers battle all American Indians, while Christian Bale leads a group that includes Rosamund Pike through all sorts of ethnic and tense battles. It’s a bit more sensitive than the John Ford John Wayne westerns but nowhere near as exciting. The photography is not just scenic, it’s gorgeous.

OSCAR NOMINATED SHORTS..LIVE ACTION. Not as good as last year’s crop but “The Eleven O’Clock” is hilarious, “The Silent Child” will make you cry…and think and “Watu Wote” will give you hope for the world, in spite of everything. Go for it.

OSCAR NOMINATED SHORTS …ANIMATED. Not funny, not great, not far out, not profound but “Dear Basketball” produced, directed and narrated by Kobe Bryant himself is beautiful.

12 STRONG. This is almost a Hollywood western. Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon fight Taliban attacks in the Afghan War right after 9/11. It was actually shot in New Mexico and southern California…and you’ll believe it when/if you see it. It’s very confusing, and hard to figure who is on whose side. Apparently it’s “based on a true Story” but what isn’t nowadays? I counted three audience members actually playing computer games while the movie was grinding on for two hours and ten minutes plus the usual 20 minutes of Regal ads and previews.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN. This is Hugh Jackman trying his best to bring life to the bio of P.T.Barnum. Jackman is an excellent dancer, singer and showman but this movie just doesn’t have the heart or solidity that a good film should have. The music is just more copying of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s gooey showbiz. It’s shallow, trite, and repetitious to a fault. Don’t bother seeing it.

WINCHESTER. To see Helen Mirren in a miserable movie like this flop is just embarrassing. You know where 98% of it was filmed right? Yes, on sound lots in Australia…NOT the famous Winchester Mansion just over the hill. It’s dull, boring, darkly lit, and for a scary movie it misses at every bump in the night. Even Helen Mirren does a shameful job of acting…it’s her worst ever!!

50 SHADES FREED. I am probably required to admit that I actually saw “50 Shades of Grey” (2015) it was the last movie I saw at the Aptos Theatre. I will not reveal the name of the person I saw it with however because we are still friends. 50 Shades Freed (2018) the third and final film of this series from the book got an 11 on Rotten Tomatoes. Fifty Shades Darker #2 (2017) got 10 on RT. The original 50 Shades Of Grey (2015) got an 25 on RT. You can see there’s sort of a trend!!! Not that you should care and it’s not really what you’d call a plot, but it’s about Seattle, sex, money, and ice cream in your crotch.

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer, (live only or archived for two weeks… (See next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. Feb. 20 has former UCSC Alumni President Donna Mekis talking about UCSC and the community. Then Zav Hershfield and Nina Hertel talk all about the Rent Imitative. On February 27 Lesley-Reid Harrison talks about Santa Cruz’s Diversity Center and their activities and programs. AND …if you just happen to miss either of the last two weeks of Universal Grapevine broadcasts go here… http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/dj/bruce-bratton You have to listen to about 4 minutes of that week’s KPFA news first, then Grapevine happens. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening. Email me always and only at bratton@cruzio.com

This is a subject near and dear to my heart! More people should knit, it’s great for the mind – and you get soft and squishy wearables out of it! Hit me up at godmoma@gmail.com if you don’t know how and want to learn 🙂

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

QUOTES. George Washington
“Few men have virtue enough to withstand the highest bidder”. GEORGE WASHINGTON
“It is with pleasure I receive reproof, when reproof is due, because no person can be readier to accuse me, than I am to acknowledge an error, when I am guilty of one; nor more desirous of atoning for a crime, when I am sensible of having committed it”. GEORGE WASHINGTON, Aug. 27, 1757
“Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience”. GEORGE WASHINGTON,
“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated”. GEORGE WASHINGTON. Oct. 20, 1792

COLUMN COMMUNICATIONS. Subscriptions: Click and enter the box in the upper right hand corner of each Column. 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!) Always free and confidential. Even I don’t know who subscribes!!

Snail Mail: Bratton Online
82 Blackburn Street, Suite 216
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Direct email: Bratton@Cruzio.com
Direct phone: 831 423-2468
All Technical & Web details: Gunilla Leavitt @ godmoma@gmail.com

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

Posted in Weekly Articles | Leave a comment

February 14 – 20, 2018

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Bruce

Highlights this week:
BRATTON about whose birthday is it, Lulu’s and The Octagon history, Hoffman’s, New Leaf, City temp workers, new hotel at 7th and Brommer?…GREENSITE on PG&E and tree felling…KROHN and rent control, Armistice Day in February, Big Deal Council meeting…STEINBRUNER re Supe’s conflict of interest and the 82 foot Cemex tower, Aptos Village traffic lessens, Nisene Marks parking problem, Rancho Del Mar developer unfair to tenants…PATTON about good guys, bad guys and community…EAGAN displays Rotten Tooth Trump…DeCINZO relieves himself on Girl Scout Cookies…Munching with Mozart…Evening with Mahler…Jensen re Oscar Nominated Shorts…Bratton on 50 Shades freed, Oscar shorts…UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE GUESTS…QUOTES some great quotes from Abraham Lincoln.

GREYHOUND BUS DEPOT 1964. This was over in what we now call Depot Park. Buses, especially Greyhound were once an incredibly popular way to travel for anybody. I crossed the USA in one back in 1952.

photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection.

BARACK OBAMA’S PORTRAIT UNVEILING

ROBOT DOGS. Just what we need.

NAIL BALANCING TRICK. I know, I know but it was getting cold and rainy so…

DATELINE February 12, 2018

LINCOLN’S AND WASHINGTON’S FEBRUARY BIRTHDAYS??? Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, and George Washington was born on February 22, 1732. When I was little, we celebrated both of those days, separately, with school holidays. Then somebody combined them into President’s day — and who celebrates even that day, nowadays?

OCTAGON MYSTERY.
What happened to Lulu’s Coffeehouse at The Octagon seems to have become a mystery. Since I’ve been sitting there during the fair weather, dozens of locals and tourists peer into the unlocked and deserted Octagon and wonder exactly what’s going on. For newcomers… The Octagon was our County Hall of Records from about 1882. It became the Santa Cruz County Historical Museum in 1972. Charles Prentiss and Nikki Silva created a great and relevant City Museum display that answered many local history questions. Then it became the MAH store. Then Mark Primack designed the interior for Lulu Carpenter’s Coffee Shop. That location had an exclusive coffee-selling permit.

A few years ago, when the San Jose operation took over and erased all traces of what was Abbott Square to put in their six food operations, they wanted to have a coffee operation going on but Lulu’s had that exclusive clause — so MAH bought out Lulu’s lease. Lulu’s owner sued and lost. The San Jose group intended to open a whiskey-tasting bar in there. Obviously it fell through. Then two little restaurants were going to open last November… that too fell through.

So now the Octagon — one of our once proudest historical structures — sits with usually unlocked doors, totally destroyed inside. It’s lousy and irresponsible management of our County’s heritage on MAH’s behalf. Why the County does absolutely nothing while the Octagon rots to hell is beyond understanding.

PACIFIC AVENUE PONDERINGS. Just hanging out on the avenue during all the “summer” weather, I wonder how many folks have noticed the pair of sneakers hanging straight above the front entrance to New Leaf. Then we have to guess how they got there, and how many throws it took?? Then I got maybe a ” fractured fact” that Hoffman’s closed because they couldn’t afford the $13,000 per month rent. Remember that big deal TV Makeover show that brought in so many customers that night, and changed the atmosphere of Hoffman’s completely?

It seems ridiculous to bring it up again, but why can’t our City stop those roaring, racing motorcycles from ruining what atmosphere and sense of friendliness? Somehow the Fuzz manages to track license plates to give tickets for everything…why not for disrupting the peace? With our new policing practices in place, there should be dozens of trained citizen/authority people who would act as witness against these witless peace destroyers.

Then I just got an email stating that the City of Santa Cruz has over 35% temporary workers on the payroll. That alone is enough to make you wonder — and perhaps even accuse our city of some very criminal and hidden actions…more than before!!!

NEW HOTEL 7TH & BROMMER,WHY? (and who?) Many questions need asking about the hotel being pushed so strongly by both County Supervisor Ryan and dad Neal Coonerty. It’ll be built at the corner of 7th and Brommer. Why there? Why another hotel? And again why are the Coonertys involved? It’s far from Ryan’s District!

[oops!!! I just checked and 7th and Brommer is within Ryan’s (3rd) District which runs all the way from our north county line to where he wants the hotel. BUT why is a Supervisor pushing for a hotel? Ask him when you see him.]

February 12, 2018

TIME TO STAND UP FOR TREES
The whine of a chain saw is a fitting back-drop to my writing about PG&E and tree destruction. Fortunately the nearby chain saw is trimming not killing. I don’t use the term killing lightly. As tree expert Dr. Matt Ritter from San Luis Obispo reminds us: “trees are alive! Do not forget that.” They are very different from us but cutting down a tree is equivalent to shooting a man in the back. As John Muir cautioned: “any fool can destroy trees: they cannot run away.”

In California only 19 species of trees are natives out of 8,000 different tree species. Of course native trees should be protected and planted whenever possible. But to advocate the eradication and hatred of all non-native trees no matter how old or large is in my mind folly of the worst kind. Fuelled by all manner of myths and distortions, the assault on non-native tree species is not shared by birds or bees, which happily nest, perch, forage and thrive on a wide variety of non-native trees. Even the much maligned blue gum eucalyptus, hated by many and incorrectly blamed for the tragic Oakland Hills fire, is home to 59 species of birds that nest within its branches. In all, 90 bird species make regular use of these iconic trees, which are in decline due largely to wanton destruction and ignorance.

A mature tree stores an average of 1-2 metric tons of carbon, which increases each year the tree grows. For newly planted trees to become equivalent carbon sinks many decades of growth are needed. Given what we know about climate change due to carbon emissions, one would think that every viable big tree would be lovingly protected and revered. It is in this context that the massive tree removal project proposed by PG&E, which has just begun in the city of Santa Cruz, should stir alarm and action.

Under the label, Pipeline Safety Initiative, this project aims to remove many thousands of trees in counties served by PG&E. The stated aim is to increase the safety of gas transmission lines many of which were situated decades ago and in many cases are under private properties, which were developed after the pipes were laid. No one can argue with a project that aims to increase gas transmission pipeline safety, especially after the tragic San Bruno fire, which is often referenced as justification. The only problem is that the San Bruno fire had nothing to do with trees. It was PG&E negligence and failure to inspect pipelines and install automatic shut-off valves that caused the San Bruno fire. Not a guilty tree in sight. Nor is there one example nation-wide of a tree causing a gas pipeline accident. New technology allows for the internal inspection of gas pipelines without the need to dig. The other justification put forward by PG&E is that the tree removal will allow first -responders easier access in an emergency should there be a leak in the pipeline. Their pamphlets contain graphics of fire-trucks trying to reach a pipeline with a tree in the way. The only problem is that no fire-trucks or any vehicles are allowed by regulation in the vicinity of a gas pipeline leak until the gas has been shut off. With the gas off, the fire trucks and heavy equipment are then allowed on site. If removing a tree is necessary, which is not common, time is then not critical.

When it learned that PG&E planned to remove over 1500 trees on Graham Hill Rd. alone, with evidence presented by environmentalists, especially the Valley Women’s Club, and under the leadership of supervisors John Leopold and Bruce McPherson, the county pushed back and demanded that PG&E prepare an environmental review prior to any tree removal and justify to their satisfaction the rationale for any single tree removal. As of writing, no trees have been cut down in the county. By contrast, the city of Santa Cruz accepted PG&E’s position that neither the city’s Heritage Tree Ordinance nor CEQA applied to tree removals in the city, except in the coastal zone and riparian corridors, which constitute a relatively small area compared to the range of proposed tree removal.

And so the tree killing has begun in the city. Last week 34 heritage trees, some over a hundred years old by neighbors’ estimates have been felled near the cemetery on Ocean St. Extension. Many more are forthcoming.

To her credit, city arborist Leslie Keedy has tried to negotiate with PG&E to save as many public trees as possible. However most heritage trees in the city are on private land. Here, PG&E negotiates with the property owner and will not share details of how many trees will be cut, or their whereabouts. The number could be in the hundreds or more.

Conveniently, at PG&E’s request, the contract between the city and PG&E was removed from the council agenda and signed in private. Thus no public comment was allowed for. Had it been put back on the agenda, I would have challenged the city manager and city attorney’s deference to PG&E’s claim that CEQA does not apply. The previous city attorney, John Barisone, years ago shared the legal opinion that a heritage tree removal on public or private land constitutes a project under CEQA and therefore is subject to environmental review. It appears that the city has not gone to battle to save trees with as much commitment as has the county. It has taken the easy way out. The $10,000 the city gained from PG&E in exchange for the loss of hundreds of heritage trees is no bargain.

If you care about saving our fast disappearing big trees; if you feel the city of Santa Cruz should stand up to PG&E as strongly as has the county and many other counties in California, you know where to write. A hearing before the Zoning Administrator to consider granting permission to PG&E to cut down trees in the coastal zone is at 10am on Wednesday February 21st. I’ll see you there.

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.

Feb. 12, 2018

GOINGS – ON
Rent Control Now
The Movement for Housing Justice along with the student group, SUR, Students United with Renters (“No more students without more resources!” too.) combined to turn out over a 100 petition-gathers this past Sunday. It was the first official day for rent control signature-gathering in the city of Santa Cruz. Wow, what a crowd! The Resource Center for Non-Violence was abuzz with anxious, frenetic, and giddy groups of students, labor union members, and seniors ready to take to the streets, but first a training session took place. It was remarkable how the 100-plus-person training ensued as they strived to collectively figure out some common problems like who is eligible to sign the petition (registered city voters only), who can collect signatures (anyone), and how to list student addresses (need both dorm and UCSC campus addresses).The signature training session was presided over by Zav Herschfeld and Viveka Jagadeesan. At 3:45pm, everybody hit the streets for a first-run through of practicing the process. By 5:30pm they returned to a potluck dinner and a facilitated conversation about what went right, and what went wrong on Rent Control Day 1. They also returned with more than 700 signatures, towards the 8000 needed to place the initiative on the November ballot. Not bad for the first day.

Celebrating the Armistice

ar·mi·stice ‘ärm?st?s – a noun, an agreement made by opposing sides in a war to stop fighting for a certain time; a truce.

Darrell Darling at last Sunday’s kick-off of Armistice Year. VFW Bill Motto Post’s, Steve Baer is also in picture.

Over 60 peace-people met at the Town Clock this past Sunday (2/11) to celebrate the end of war. Yes, that war, “The Great War,” “the war to end all wars.” It was November 11th 1918 when the allies of World War I, and representatives of the German government, met on a private train in a forest near Compiegne, France to sign an agreement towards ending what many thought would be the last war–20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. Veterans for Peace activists, Steve Baer and Rico Baker carried out the first of a planned nine peace-making events leading up to a Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium celebration and commemoration this November 11th. Present at this gathering was like a who’s who in Santa Cruz peace history: Darrell and Karen Darling, Tatanka Bricca, Sherry Conable, Dick and Marion Vittitow, Jan Harwood and the Raging Grannies, Steve Pleich, and I am sure I’ve missed several…

Is That Just One Council Meeting?
There are council meetings, and then there are council meetings…The February 13th meeting was set up to be one for the ages. No fewer than five rather significant issues landed on the desks of city councilmembers. While I shall report out the results–votes–next week, as BrattonOnLine is put to bed before the meeting, I include the topics here:

Declaring a “fiscal emergency” in the city of Santa Cruz…and this is on the heels of declaring a “homeless emergency” just two weeks ago;
Placing two general fund tax measures on the June Primary election ballot–1/4-cent sales tax AND a 2-cent per ounce “sugar sweetened beverage” tax;
Rent Freeze–“Interim emergency ordinance establishing a temporary moratorium on certain residential rent increases…” This ordinance would provide protection for tenants against arbitrary and capricious rent increases before the rent control ordinance can be voted on in November;
“Just cause for tenant evictions” ordinance, which would protect tenants from being put out of their homes by the whims of landlords. There would still be provisions for putting out tenants for failing to pay the rent or abusing the property and/or neighborhood
Opening of the first city of Santa Cruz-supported and sanctioned tent encampment on River Street.

And Then There is This Cryptic (nefarious?) Use of Closed-session Political Jujitsu Dept.

This appeared rather mysteriously on the February 13th Santa Cruz City Council “Closed Litigation Session:”

B.	Conference With Legal Counsel – Anticipated Litigation

Significant exposure to litigation pursuant to Government Code §54956.9(d)(2).

(1 potential case)

What the hell is that? Not even a subject or an organization mentioned who it is that is bringing, or threatening, or perhaps thinking about a legal action against the city. Why would it not be in favor of the city by naming names here? This to me is an abuse of closed session, and the Brown Act, and should be stopped. The public has a right to know the names, or organizations and institutions, who might be suing the city.

Bernie Sanders Tweet of the Week
“If you were wondering how Trump plans to pay for his tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, now you know: with $1.8 trillion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security”. (Jan. 12)

Picture of the Week

RENT CONTROL NOW It was a packed Resource Center for Non-Violence as the rent control initiative began collecting signatures in earnest several members of the print and visual media looked on.

(Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, former Santa Cruz City Councilmember (1998-2002) and Mayor (2001-2002). He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 12 years. He was elected last November to another 4-year term on the Santa Cruz City Council).
Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

February 12, 2018

WHAT A FLIMSY ACCUSATION!”
That’s what County Supervisor John Leopold told me last Tuesday when I asked Chairman of the Board Zach Friend and Supervisor Ryan Coonerty to recues themselves from voting on the new 82′ tall law enforcement communication tower at Davenport’s Cemex Plant. I support improved communication for emergency responders, but pointed out that the two County Supervisors both will financially benefit by the technology due to their personal investments in Pred Pol and , in the case of Supervisor Zach Friend, Yardarm Technology. I pulled the item from the Consent Agenda and had to wait all day for the issue to be heard as Regular Agenda Item 55.2 at the very end of the meeting.

MAKE ONE CALL. WRITE ONE LETTER. ATTEND A PUBLIC HEARING. MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE. BUT JUST DO SOMETHING!

That’s when Supervisor John Leopold took the floor and arrogantly stated my request was “based on a flimsy accusation not supported by facts. I am sure they would have reported any conflicts of interest in their Form 700.” I replied (not allowed further comment at the podium) that they had, and that was how I learned about it. County Sheriff Jim Hart stated that the Sheriff Dept. has no contracts with either Pred Pol or Yardarm Technologies, so everything was okay.

Did Chairman of the Board Zach Friend or Supervisor Coonerty recuse themselves? NO.

Pred Pol is short for Predictive Policing and is a company that provides recommended staffing information to law enforcement agencies based on local crime patterns and social movements. Yardarm Technology is a software company that provides technology linked to weapon deployment of law enforcement staff and sends signals to communicate real-time use of the weapons using cellphone technology. The Santa Cruz County Sheriff Department tested the technology for Yardarm when Phil Wowak was Sheriff. Zach Friend went to Sacramento on taxpayer time to lobby for the use of the technology in the state.

While the new 82′ tower in Davenport will, I have been assured, only support a microwave dish to link law enforcement communications with the tower on Mt. Toro across the Bay, it is my understanding that if cell phone providers in the future request space on the tower, the County legally cannot refuse to give them space.

Here is the link to Chairman of the Board Zach Friend’s Form 700 (look at page 4 for the Schedule A-1 and verify for yourself that his $10,000-$100,000 annual income from EACH Pred Pol and Yardarm Technology is an economic conflict of interest.

Look at page 3 of Supervisor Ryan Coonerty’s Schedule A-1 for his declaration of $2,000-$10,000 annual income from Pred Pol.

Do you think my request that they recuse themselves from approving a new tower in Davenport that will benefit their financial interests was a “flimsy accusation”?

APTOS VILLAGE TRAFFIC IMPROVEMENTS CAUSING PROBLEMS
Last week, I reported that a concrete curb the County had installed at the Trout Gulch Road / Soquel Drive intersection had damaged three vehicles and was finally removed. Last week, there was further hazard. Here is a photo that speaks volumes about the problems in Aptos Village traffic. Luckily, there were no kids on the bus at the time of the accident. The good news is that the repair just down the way at Aptos Street where Soquel Drive nearly washed out last winter is all nicely repaired and there is no longer a temporary traffic light causing traffic back-ups. Wait until the taxpayer-funded traffic lights get activated at this intersection and the Metro bus cannot exit the lane of traffic when stopped for passengers…..

NISENE MARKS STATE PARK VISITORS GET A BIT MORE ROOM
Since December 31, 2017, Nisene Marks State Park has been closed to visitors seven times due to lack of parking within the Park. This is all thanks to the Aptos Village Project development that demolished the parking that the Community has historically depended on for years to access the State Park. While some people stated that “Park visitors should be paying for entry anyway” and turned a blind eye to the real problem of inadequate parking space within Park boundaries, the fact is, without chopping down a bunch of trees to make a new parking lot, the Park will not be able to accommodate existing or future visitor levels. This week, State Park officials opted to open the gate normally closed for winter to allow visitor parking in upper areas of the Porter Picnic lot.

That helps a bit, but does not address the problem. Contact Mr. Chris Spohrer <chris.spohrer@parks.ca.gov> and ask that State Parks enter into a public/private partnership to purchase at least the “North Remainder” of the Aptos Village Project Phase 2 area. If the “South Remainder” were also purchased, the world-famous Post Office Bike Jumps could be rebuilt and Aptos would again be noted for something of Community benefit, rather than a disgustingly dense three-story development with vacant store fronts. I am willing to help fundraise for a Community Project that will benefit the youth for future generations….are you? Please give me a call: 831-685-2915

RANCHO DEL MAR SHOPPING CENTER MOVING FORWARD….TRC RETAIL CONTINUES TO ABUSE FORMER TENANTS
I was able to speak with one of the former tenants evicted with 30-days notice last October from the Rancho del Mar Center in Aptos. It seems the property owner, TRC Retail, refuses to pay $1000 moving costs to some, and refuses to return the $3000 administrative fee collected in former agreements and now legally due back to the tenant. Stay tuned for more action here…markings on the parking lot pavement indicate further big changes soon. CoAmerica Bank will be moving where the old Windjammer Restaurant used to be, near the gasoline station activity. Who knows where Fleet Feet will go….

REGIONAL WATER MANAGEMENT FOUNDATION GETS MILLIONS IN PUBLIC MONEY BUT IS NOT TRANSPARENT
How can the Regional Water Management Foundation, an arm of the Santa Cruz Community Foundation, accept $12,500,000 in Proposition 50 Integrated Regional Water Management Grant public money (awarded in 2006) yet not allow any public oversight at Board meetings or retrieve information via Public Records Act requests?

The recent ‘Connect the Drops’ water education event was sponsored by Santa Cruz County LAFCO and the Santa Cruz Regional Water Management Foundation. There is no information about the event on the LAFCO website, but the later agency provides a link. This agency also is a big player in the MidCounty Groundwater Agency (MGA) work to come up with a Sustainable Plan for healing the critically-over drafted Purisima Aquifer, as required by the State Water authorities. The MGA is composed of Soquel Creek Water District, Central Water District, and the County as a representative of private well concerns. The MGA participants each pay a portion of the expenses for the collaborative work and this includes paying roughly $140,000 annually to the Community Foundation’s Regional Water Management Agency Director Mr. Tim Carson. The County Environmental Health Department, according to Water Director Mr. John Ricker, also has handed over thousands of dollars in grant money awarded to the County by State agencies, supposedly to manage the money and grant work. Isn’t that why taxpayers fund the County Auditor/Controller Department, headed up by Ms. Edith Driscoll and a team of publicly-accountable staff? Maybe the Grand Jury would like to know more about this?

LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS ON NISSAN DEALERSHIP EIR FOR SOQUEL VILLAGE
Take a look at the Environmental Impact Report the County Planning Department did for the proposed Nissan Dealership at the 41st Avenue and Soquel Drive intersection and submit your comments by February 20, 5pm to the Planning Dept. You can also find hard copies at Porter Memorial Library, and the Aptos and Capitola Libraries, as well as the 4th floor lobby at the Planning Dept (701 Ocean Street). I recommend looking at the sections that concern you the most, and also the alternatives evaluation. Here is the link to the document.

Cheers,

Becky Steinbruner

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.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com

Thursday, February 8, 2018
#39 / The “Good Guys” Versus The “Bad Guys”

I was intrigued by an article by Catherine Nichols that appeared, recently, in the online magazine, Aeon. Entitled, “The good guy / bad guy myth,” the article notes that while “pop culture today is obsessed with the battle between good and evil, traditional folktales never were.”

The point of the article is that the locus of “morality” appears to have shifted from the individual to the mass, with the article making the point that it is precisely this shift in understanding that justifies and makes possible concentration camps:

When I talked with Andrea Pitzer, the author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps (2017), about the rise of the idea that people on opposite sides of conflicts have different moral qualities, she told me: “Three inventions collided to make concentration camps possible: barbed wire, automatic weapons, and the belief that whole categories of people should be locked up.” When we read, watch and tell stories of good guys warring against bad guys, we are essentially persuading ourselves that our opponents would not be fighting us, indeed they would not be on the other team at all, if they had any loyalty or valued human life. In short, we are rehearsing the idea that moral qualities belong to categories of people rather than individuals. It is the Grimms’ and von Herder’s vision taken to its logical nationalist conclusion that implies that “categories of people should be locked up.”

I am fond of saying that “we are not only individuals; we are also members of a community.” We need to remind ourselves of that all the time, because we often analyze things from an “individualistic” point of view, missing the fact that it is the “we,” not the “me,” that ultimately defines our human reality. We are all in this together!

That said, it is also true that the locus of moral choice (and moral responsibility) is at the individual level. Concentration camps, and the massive bombing of cities in which “enemies” reside (from Dresden, to Hiroshima, to Raqqa), are both examples of how the “good guy / bad guy myth” wreaks havoc on our common human world.

And to take another example, in which mass destruction is more metaphorical than actual, consider the hyper-partisan nature of our current politics. It might be best for us to go back to the old folktales. They have more than one lesson to teach us.

Gary 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

CLASSICAL DeCINZO. DeCinzo has another shot at Girl Scout Cookies…see below.

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

MUNCHING WITH MOZART. Thursday 2/15 @ noon.
Munching with Mozart presents “Music for Two Clarinets” featuring Tatyana Rekow and Penny Hanna on clarinets. From its origins as an Arabic and European folk instrument, and often resembling the sound of a trumpet, the single reed clarinet or chalumeau from France became more widely used beginning in the early Baroque period. By 1700, Johann Christoph Denner’s technical improvements helped turn the chalumeau into the modern clarinet. W.A. Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major K 622 is one of the earliest well known classical works, and the clarinet’s versatility and range have expanded it’s reach to military bands, Eastern European klezmer music, American jazz and big band swing.

Tatyana and Penny will be playing…Airs à Deux Chalumeaux (1706) Henry Ipermann (c. 1700), Selections arranged for 2 clarinets andante, Allegro, Menuetto Allegro, Polonaise

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart(1756 – 1791) June: Barcarole “The Seasons” op.37A

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893) Stardust (1929) Hoagy Carmichael (1899 – 1961)

And Clarinet Polka (late 19th. Cent.) A. Hupfa or Karol Namyslowski Gavotte: Symphony No.1(“Classical”) Op.25 Sergei Prokofiev (1891 – 1953)and Bartok, Waldeufel, Musiker, Curtis and Jerome Kern. It happens Thursday, February 15th 12:10 – 12:50p.m. Santa Cruz Public Library, Downtown Branch – upstairs Meeting Room. Remember it’s free, get there early.

ESPRESSIVO ORCHESTRA WITH MAHLER. Thursday2/15 @ 7:30 p.m.
Michel Singher conducts the Espressivo Orchestra playing Mahler’s fourth Symphony with Sheila Willey vocalist. It’s at the Peace United Church 900 High Street. Tickets at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/e/3198559 or maybe at the door.

LISA JENSEN LINKS. Lisa writes: “Decisions, decisions. Animated or Live-Action? Before you choose, check out my review of the Oscar Nominated Short Films (and, yes, there are two separate programs) this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com ). Also, feast your eyes on another vintage Beauty and the Beast illustration as the countdown continues toward the pub date of my next book!” Lisa has been writing film reviews and columns for Good Times since 1975.

OSCAR NOMINATED SHORTS. LIVE ACTION. Not as good as last year’s crop, but “The Eleven O’Clock” is hilarious, “The Silent Child” will make you cry…and think, and “Watu Wote” will give you hope for the world, in spite of everything. Go for it.

OSCAR NOMINATED SHORTS …ANIMATED. Not funny, not great, not far out, not profound… but “Dear Basketball” produced, directed and narrated by Kobe Bryant himself is beautiful.

50 SHADES FREED. I am probably required to admit that I actually saw 50 Shades of Grey (2015), and that it was the last movie I saw at the Aptos Theatre. I will not reveal the name of the person I saw it with, however, because we are still friends. 50 Shades Freed — the third and final film of this series from the book — got a 25 on Rotten Tomatoes. Fifty Shades Darker #2 got 10 on RT. 50 Shades Freed got an 11 on RT. Not that you should care, but it’s about Seattle, sex, money, and ice cream in your crotch.

WINCHESTER. To see Helen Mirren in a miserable movie like this flop is just embarrassing.

You know where 98% of it was filmed right? Yes, on sound lots in Australia…NOT the famous Winchester Mansion just over the hill. It’s dull, boring, darkly lit, and for a scary movie it misses at every bump in the night. Even Helen Mirren does a shameful job of acting…it’s her worst ever!!

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer, (live only or archived for two weeks… (See next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. . On Feb. 13 UCSC’s Felicia Rice discusses her new book “Doc/Undoc” an art piece centering on the immigration experience. Then Ashlyn Adams talks about her two new movie theatres opening soon in the former Circle Church. Feb. 20 has former UCSC Alumni President Donna Mekis talking about UCSC and the community. AND …if you just happen to miss either of the last two weeks of Universal Grapevine broadcasts go here… http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/dj/bruce-bratton You have to listen to about 4 minutes of that week’s KPFA news first, then Grapevine happens. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening. Email me always and only at bratton@cruzio.com

Shameless plug! I am so proud and excited, I can’t stand it! This is my friend Niki Leeman, who used to live around these parts, but is now living happily in Chicago with his girlfriend. This is the first time I’ve heard this song since he told me he wrote a song for me and my husband, and sang it to us in our kitchen, a decade ago. Take a listen; it’s a great song!

QUOTES. From Abraham Lincoln.

Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.
–August 27, 1856 Speech

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.
–ca. August 1, 1858

On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that “all men are created equal” a self evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim “a self evident lie.”
–August 15, 1855

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.
–April 18, 1864

Snail Mail: Bratton Online
82 Blackburn Street, Suite 216
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Direct email: Bratton@Cruzio.com
Direct phone: 831 423-2468
All Technical & Web details: Gunilla Leavitt @ godmoma@gmail.com

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

Posted in Weekly Articles | Leave a comment

February 6 – 12, 2018

Posted on February 8, 2018 by Bruce

Highlights this week:
BRATTON about Linda Vista Center “fake facts”…GREENSITE on an air taxi future…KROHN re revolutions, activism, homelessness, rent control, wealth gap…STEINBRUNER reports on AMBAG legality and confusion, Nisene Marks closed again and again…PATTON and Trump’s speech: unity — a questionable goal? …EAGAN and “IncredibleTkrrump“…DeCINZO and our bicycle problem…JENSEN reviews “Winchester”…BRATTON critiques “Winchester”…UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE GUESTS…QUOTES about “Valentines”.

HIGH STREET and SOUTHERN VIEW circa 1890. You can actually see the Town Clock Tower in its original location, and just about all the “original locations” of our city back 120 years ago.

photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection.

PREVIEW OF COMING EVENTS. DIANE GRUNES was/is kind and brilliant enough to send this amazing, well done, short video. Just watch CLOSELY so you don’t miss any frame of it.

DATELINE February 5, 2018

LINDA VISTA CENTER REVISITED. Last week I wrote that I’d been told by Center employees that the Westside Video Store building in the Westside Plaza was going to be demolished. It isn’t, and I should have checked first. Turns out that “the Linda Vista Center” is the correct name for what I called the “Westside Plaza”…(remember the Linda Vista Market where Shen’s Gallery now sits? It had paintings of dancing milk cartons on the windows?) The Center’s real estate management said, “Bruce’s had some bad informants… We are still evaluating what will eventually be done to upgrade the center, but demolition is definitely not on the table. A new roof on the entire building is scheduled to go on the 21st of this month.” Other businesses in the Center also told me last week there was no demolition planned…or announced! This must qualify as a “FAKE FACT”

Dateline February 5, 2018

DREAM ON
At the recent Titans of Tech night at the Dream Inn, local inventor JoeBen Bevirt of Joby Aviation, outlined his scheme to develop electric air taxis, with the “goal to liberate humankind from the automobile” and to “save a billion people an hour a day” in their commutes. He is seeking county approval to use part of the closed Cemex cement plant property in Davenport for this purpose. For some, such a future may generate goose bumps of excitement. The city’s Economic Development director Bonnie Lipscomb lauded the assembled techies with, “You are our super heroes!” For others, including myself, such a vision is a nightmare in the sky. Even a solitary drone with its swarm of bees hum drives me inside cursing as it invades my privacy, scatters birds and harasses marine mammals. Elephants en masse stampede to the hills at the sound of a drone. I’m with the elephants on this one. They outsmart us. When the 2004 tsunami hit Thailand, elephants took to the hills while humans went down to the shoreline to check it out.

Some will say, “thank goodness your sort of thinking didn’t prevail 100 years ago ,or we would never have developed the automobile.” Hmm….

As with the automobile, air taxis may sound good in theory and roads jammed with cars inching along at 5 miles an hour during commutes is not what Henry Ford probably had in mind. I predict that air taxis, if developed will share a similar fate.

To counter daydreams, air taxis will not be your personal aircraft. They will need a pilot. They will carry only two passengers. They will require ground infrastructure, which means that you will have to get transport from home to a hub. They will land at another hub, not plop you down at your workplace. Bevirt claims that the cost will eventually fall to be competitive with Uber but that requires mass usage and mass usage means a whole lot of air taxis in the sky. Most people don’t like living near an airport. How about multiple air taxi hubs? The most compelling objection for me is the vast invasion by human technology of our skies. Yes, we have planes, and fortunately, most are high enough to not intrude when we look skyward. LAX has 1500 take offs and landings each day and is the third busiest airport in the country. Now imagine hundreds of thousands if not millions of air taxis (remember the claim is to save a billion people an hour in commute time) flying at a far lower altitude (an air traffic control nightmare, even if automated) and suddenly the skies are as crowded as the freeways. Is it starting to sound less glamorous?

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.

Dateline February 5, 2018 | Majority Report 2018 #5

REVOLUTIONS ARE RARELY TELEVISED
Note: be ready for multiple exclamation points. They are small expressions of joy as I see lots of positive and powerful seeds being planted in an otherwise painful political era.

Resistance Is Futile?
Is resistance futile? Sanctuary cities are holding the line. Medical marijuana ordinances have given way to the complete legalization of cannabis, which may be under attack shortly by los Federales, but for now we’ve gone down our own California path. We were also busy taking on the federal government’s off-shore oil drilling scheme with renewed confidence this past weekend when over a thousand marched along West Cliff Drive to say hell no, no drilling here! This is what it’s going to take, and people are responding! The strategy may very well be delay, delay, delay through our court system (thank god for the third branch of guv!), like how He Who Shall Not Be Named’s deportation order was also scuttled awhile back. Millions participated in Woman’s marches around the globe, perhaps likely spawned by President Harasser (PH) himself. So many came away from that activist moment dedicated to the empowerment of women at the local, state, and national levels of government. In the face of a mountain of evidence–Weinstein, Spacey, Nassar, Keillor–a welcome tide of debate, discussion, and hopefully changed attitudes is washing across America. What will 2018 yield? Activism is not futile. It’s real, dynamic, emancipating, and it’s spreading. People in large numbers are holding the line against the PH factor. They’re holding community forums, passing local impeachment ordinances, which get people to talk more to each other, and people engaging in civic participation, while necessary, can also be rewarding and liberating.

Special Bernie REQUEST re-Tweet from Emily Holden

‘My request of you is please get involved in the political process. Start running for office. You can do it. You can run for school board, city council, state legislature, Congress or the http://Senate.Trust me. I work in the senate. I know, and you can do it.”

Resistance 2.0
We must continue to “think globally” and keep one eye focused on the dangerous shenanigans of this tin-eared President, while “acting locally” to keep, expand, and create policies and programs that nurture our community. And what is facing our community but the twin scourges of homelessness and the lack of affordable housing. This November voters will be asked if our city council has responded well to these thorny issues. Organizer and Santa Cruz County supervisor candidate, Steve Pleich spoke truth to power this past Sunday in a letter to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. He described how Police Chief Andy Mills seemed to get the homeless issue early on by centralizing camping in the Benchlands in order to provide some breathing room for the city council to figure how to acquire a homeless shelter. Unfortunately, “the positive effects of the chief’s strategy are now being bled off by the inability of city officials to create longer term emergency shelter.” Use your vote in November to get a new city council to adequately fund homeless services, hold developer’s feet to fire by including affordable housing units in all new construction, and standing up to UC Santa Cruz as it contemplates inviting 10,000 more to Surf City. Elections are about issues. Vote for your issues this November and don’t forget past elected officials’ voting records.

The Rent Control Initiative Coming-out Party
“In order to win such an effort, we will collect 8,000 signatures within 5 months, from February through June 2018. We will then contact thousands of voters in order to turn out enough supporters in November 2018 for our initiative to win.”

—Movement for Housing Justice, Santa Cruz

This Sunday, February 11th, if all goes well with the wording and it does not have to be sent back for revisions, a rent control initiative will be available for circulation. It is a huge effort that will need a few thousand-registered city-voter signatures along with a few hundred petition gatherers to be successful. Several groups including labor, student, homeowners and tenants, are being led by the Movement for Housing Justice. They are all joining forces to work on this initiative. They will meet up at 2:30 pm this Sunday (2/11) at the Resource Center for Non-Violence. A training will take place and then, over 100 canvassers will hit the streets for a couple of hours. Their goal for Day 1: 1000 registered voter signatures! Daunting? Yes. But that first day may be a reasonable barometer to show how people are feeling about the “too damn high” rents in this town. This effort has been months (some say years) in the making, and has attracted the efforts of several seasoned veterans of Santa Cruz organizing including ErnestinaSaldaña, Josh Brahinsky, Nora Hochman, Jeffrey Smedberg, Cynthia Berger, and Bruce Van Allan. Activists Nita Hertel and Roland Saher, along with Educator Stacey Falls, the NAACP’s Brenda Griffin, and bunches of tenants have also been deeply involved in this Herculean effort in putting an initiative together for the community to confront the out of control housing crisis. Talk about a Saul Alinsky “Organizing 101” powerhouse team! Well, let’s just see where the voters are at on putting some control on the outlandish rental market in this town. My money’s not on the mourners, but on the organizers. Why I’m so excited about the way this initiative has taken shape is because it includes a provision for an elected rent board, which if successful, means residents will actually have a place to go when they have complaints, want changes, or just wish to have a forum to discuss possible housing solutions. It’s hella exciting!

Rich and Poor Dept.
“When did this wealth gap problem start?
Basically, this wealth gap that we see today is something that has really skyrocketed since about the 1980s and certainly in the past decade, decade and a half.”

—University of Toronto Professor Richard Florida

While the number of tent campers continues to grow on the San Lorenzo Benchlands and all over California, the widening gap between the rich and poor seems to be correlated with that growth. If we want to know why there are more homeless than ever before, then look at income distribution in the United States. It is concentrated in the hands of the very few, and even as Jeff Bezos is announced as being the richest person in the world at $104.7 billion, it is presented as if we should somehow take pride that he is an American rich person. Actually, it is just the opposite. It is obvious that universal education and healthcare are still distant planets as the number of billionaires grows along with exponential growth in the number of have-nots. Perhaps because the U.S. accounts for over 41% of “total global personal wealth” (China is second at 10.5%), we are first in “wealth inequality.” (See for yourself.) Wealth continues to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and rapidly increasing homelessness is one clear symptom of this kind of unequal development.

Bernie Tweet of the Week

“Today, our government is controlled by the most extremist, reactionary, xenophobic, bigoted, and thankfully, in many ways the most inept and incompetent administration in modern American history.” (Jan. 30)

Can we picture 3 or 4 “villages” (communities!) of these tiny homes discreetly placed around the city with 20-30 houses positioned around a plaza-green space…can you?

(Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, former Santa Cruz City Councilmember (1998-2002) and Mayor (2001-2002). He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 12 years. He was elected last November to another 4-year term on the Santa Cruz City Council).
Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

Dateline February 5,2018

MAKE ONE CALL. WRITE ONE LETTER. ATTEND A PUBLIC HEARING. MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE. BUT JUST DO SOMETHING!

AMBAG’S ALPHABET SOUP WAS CONFUSING BUT SPELLS TROUBLE FOR PUBLIC PROCESS IN LOCAL FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
I attended the January 30 Open House and Public Hearing that the Associated Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG) held at Simpkins Swim Center. I had tried to do my homework on the issues that I understood would be discussed in the “Moving Monterey Bay Forward Draft 2040 Plan” at the event. What I found was: The massive MTP/SCS presented by AMBAG is an EIR done as required under SB375 to address GHG. The related RTP, submitted by SCCRTC includes GHG that includes emission levels from trucks that cannot be included in the GHG reports by the MTP/SCS AMBAG analysis. The RTP was created by the SCCRTC to represent Santa Cruz RTPA’s.

This all means multiple Projects being discussed in a swirling alphabet soup of acronyms not always defined, each with different standards for some topics such as Greenhouse Gas Emissions. One AMBAG representative at an information table was incredibly rude, never allowing me to finish asking my question before blurting out his interpretation of an answer and directing me to read the two-inch-thick document on the table that I was seeing for the first time. The “Moving Monterey Bay Forward 2040” Plan was not at that table…it was at a different table. I never got there because I was examining the new document, which presented much different information regarding Regional Growth Forecasts than I had read in the “Moving Monterey Bay Forward 2040 Plan”.

County Supervisor Bruce McPherson opened the Public Hearing. There were perhaps 25 people that stayed. No presentation was given by the AMBAG representatives to help interpret the massive amount of information in the documents. Some members of the public did speak. I voiced my concern that having multiple documents that seem to use different information yet address similar issues is incongruent analysis and confusing. No response. I also pointed out that the San Lorenzo River, North Coast streams, and Soquel Creek were not discussed in the documents regarding impacts on water and water quality. No comment.

I asked for an extension of public comment period because many, including myself, had just learned of some of the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) documents that evening…comment period ends February 5. “No, that would cause problems for the schedule of approval.” Luckily, the lady at the welcoming desk gave me a flashdrive with all documents loaded so I could examine them on my ancient computer at home.

Here is what I learned after digging in…alphabet soup that spells trouble for the public process.

The main EIR that the Associated Bay Area Governments (AMBAG) conducted makes it possible for city and county governments included in the Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito County areas to now have “provisions for CEQA streamlining for developments that meet a set of criteria specified in the California Public Resources Code Section 21155, which is under the Chapter 13 Environment Code. Here is the text of that:

CHAPTER 4.2. Implementation of the Sustainable Communities Strategy [21155 – 21155.4]

(Chapter 4.2 added by Stats. 2008, Ch. 728, Sec. 14.) 21155.
(a) This chapter applies only to a transit priority project that is consistent with the general use designation, density, building intensity, and applicable policies specified for the project area in either a sustainable communities strategy or an alternative planning strategy, for which the State Air Resources Board, pursuant to subparagraph (H) of paragraph (2) of subdivision (b) of Section 65080 of the Government Code, has accepted a metropolitan planning organization’s determination that the sustainable communities strategy or the alternative planning strategy would, if implemented, achieve the greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.

(b) For purposes of this chapter, a transit priority project shall (1) contain at least 50 percent residential use, based on total building square footage and, if the project contains between 26 percent and 50 percent nonresidential uses, a floor area ratio of not less than 0.75; (2) provide a minimum net density of at least 20 dwelling units per acre; and (3) be within one-half mile of a major transit stop or high-quality transit corridor included in a regional transportation plan. A major transit stop is as defined in Section 21064.3, except that, for purposes of this section, it also includes major transit stops that are included in the applicable regional transportation plan. For purposes of this section, a high-quality transit corridor means a corridor with fixed route bus service with service intervals no longer than 15 minutes during peak commute hours. A project shall be considered to be within one-half mile of a major transit stop or high-quality transit corridor if all parcels within the project have no more than 25 percent of their area farther than one-half mile from the stop or corridor and if not more than 10 percent of the residential units or 100 units, whichever is less, in the project are farther than one-half mile from the stop or corridor.

(Added by Stats. 2008, Ch. 728, Sec. 14. Effective January 1, 2009.)

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PRC&sectionNum=21155

This means that AMBAG’s studies will legally allow future development projects in the region to be termed “OPPORTUNITY AREAS” that will potentially permit less public input and allow the jurisdiction to do things “other than costly infrastructure improvements, such as ramp metering, promoting telecommuting, and expanding van pool services. It could require conservation easements. It could allow significant developments that negatively affect sensitive environmental areas to be resolved by developers or jurisdictions purchasing credits from Federal and State Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

This, in my opinion, does not bode well for the public’s involvement in the future of our communities or the quality of life for the average person. Write and call your County Supervisor, City Councilmembers and State Representatives. Demand the full California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process of public notification and environmental impact analysis be required for any and all significant development projects in the County and cities.

I found it interesting that the AMBAG report projects a 5% population increase in the Santa Cruz County unincorporated areas by 2040, and a 12% increase overall Countywide. Measure that against the projection for Gonzales in Monterey County: a 123% increase, and in Sand City, a 297% increase. How do these consultants arrive at these projections? Where will the water supply come from to fill these projected new demands????

NISENE MARKS STATE PARK ONCE AGAIN CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC

“PARKING FULL”

Last weekend, State Parks officials once again posted a sign at the Aptos Creek Road entry to Nisene Marks State Park: “NO ENTRY”

Contact State Park Facilities Director Mr. Chris Spohrer via e-mail at chris.spohrer@parks.ca.gov Ask that State Parks negotiate a private/public purchase with the Aptos Village Project developers to secure the “North Remainder” parcel in the Phase 2 development for State Park visitor parking and to re-build the world-famous Post Office Bike Jumps. That is the highest use of the land that will best serve the greater Community for future generations. I am willing to help fundraise to support the public/private purchase….are you? Please contact me. Becky Steinbruner rebuildthebikejumps@gmail.com or 831-685-2915

Cheers, Becky Steinbruner

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.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com

Dateline February 2, 2018 | #33 / Just What Kind Of “Event” Do You Mean?

President Trump gave his State of the Union speech on Tuesday. You can click right here for a complete transcript. While a case can be made that the speech was hyper-partisan and divisive – and that is what Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank thinks – I, personally, saw the speech as rather unexceptional, with a rather traditional conclusion:

Americans fill the world with art and music. They push the bounds of science and discovery. And they forever remind us of what we should never forget: The people dreamed this country. The people built this country. And it is the people who are making America great again.

As long as we are proud of who we are, and what we are fighting for, there is nothing we cannot achieve. As long as we have confidence in our values, faith in our citizens, and trust in our God, we will not fail. Our families will thrive. Our people will prosper. And our Nation will forever be safe and strong and proud and mighty and free.

Thank you, and God bless America”.

These sentiments (genuinely heartfelt as they may be) are quite conventional, and I believe the president’s State of the Union speech is a typical example of personal and national self-congratulation. This is an art form cultivated by all presidents. While I was not overly impressed by the president’s State of the Union address, I was riveted by some of the president’s remarks made earlier, before he gave the State of the Union speech. Here is a report from NBC:

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump stressed the need for “unity” Tuesday afternoon, hours before delivering a State of the Union address that White House officials have previewed as “bright and optimistic.” “I want to see our country united,” Trump told network news correspondents during a traditional, and otherwise off-the-record, lunch at the White House where he made the case that the same national divisions encountered by his administration had plagued his predecessors as well. The United States “was divided, not just under President Obama or President Bush. I remember the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Tremendous divisiveness, not just over the past year,” he said, adding that he would consider uniting the country “a tremendous success.”

“I would love to be able to bring back our country in a great form of unity, without a major event — very tough to do. I would like to do it without a major event, because that major event is usually a bad thing. Unity is really what I’m striving for, to bring the country together,” he said.

So, Mr. President, just what kind of “Major Event” are you talking about? Something like the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Twin Towers, perhaps? Or maybe a war with that dangerous, and villainous, North Korea?

The way I get it, the president is suggesting that some sort of national calamity, some huge “Event,” which is “usually a bad thing,” might not be so bad if it turned out to help the president “bring the country together,” to achieve a “great form of unity.”

Frankly, I prefer the self-congratulatory happy talk of the State of the Union speech to the implications of the president’s earlier remarks to the network news correspondents. Given who is making the remarks, I am nervous that our narcissistic president might decide that what he really needs to do is to create the “Major Event” that he thinks can bring the national unity for which he so deeply yearns.

I would like register not only my nervousness about the idea that a “Major Event” might be conjured up, as a way bring about some sort of national “unity,” but to question the desirability of national “unity” itself.

Our current president’s susceptibility to authoritarian ideas has been noted by many commentators. Authoritarians like “unity,” because then there is no “dissent,” no “opposition.”

I don’t think “unity” is a good thing. Quite the contrary. Our democratic government is based on the idea – on the reality, in fact – that there are many different, and conflicting, views within our society, and that the task of government is not to find a way to dispense with the differences, but that our government is the place where opposition and difference come to compromise. Our idea is not to demand “unity,” but to move ahead with a governance that does not disregard difference, but learns how to live with it.

That is precisely what we need today, not “unity,” but a celebration of our differences in a common effort to reconcile the differences and move ahead together.

~
“E pluribus unum,” our national motto, reflects not the elimination of “difference,” but a celebration of the fact that out of all our differences we can act together as one.

I don’t think that this is the way our current president understands it. Thus, I’m quite worried about just what kind of “Major Event” he might mean”.

Gary 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

CLASSICAL DeCINZO. Zeroes in on bicyclists…scroll below…

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s ” The IncredibleTrump”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. Read Tim’s take on Star Trek the original, and the series that follows.

RALPH ABRAHAM BOOKSIGNING & discussion.
Ralph Abraham will lead a discussion – “A Gender Tipping Point: Hip Santa Cruz in the 1960s and 70s”. UCSC Professor Emeritus Abraham is the creator of the Santa Cruz Hip History Project and editor of two books: Hip Santa Cruz Volumes 1 and 2, with Volume 3 on the way. He observes, “From the florescence of hip culture in Santa Cruz in the 1960s there emerged the longer lasting feminist revolution of the 1970s.” This presentation promises to be a fun opportunity to “speculate together on the dynamics of this important bifurcation.” When: Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 11am at MAH.

Lisa writes: “Get your art on, this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com ). Celebrate the return of a beloved tradition, Hearts for the Arts, a benefit for the Santa Cruz Arts Council, now open for bidding at Artisan’s Gallery, and take a virtual tour of the annual Take Away: Art to Go show at the Pajaro Valley Arts gallery. Also, more proof that truth is stranger (or at least more interesting) than fiction in my review of Winchester in this week’s Good Times.” Lisa has been writing film reviews and columns for Good Times since 1975.

WINCHESTER. To see Helen Mirren in a miserable flop like this is just embarrassing. You know where 98% of it was filmed, right? Yes — on sound lots in Australia…NOT the famous Winchester Mansion just over the hill. It’s dull, boring, darkly-lit, and for what’s supposed to be a scary movie, it somehow misses every bump in the night. Even Helen Mirren does a shameful job…it’s her worst ever!!

THE PHANTOM THREAD. Paul Thomas Anderson the director first made Boogie Nights, he topped that one with Magnolia, There will be Blood, and Inherent Vice and now there’s Phantom Thread. The star is Daniel Day-Lewis and seeing him and Anderson work together in this one makes it not a film but an experience. Day-Lewis in A Room With A View, My Left Foot, The Unbearable Lightness of Being became greater and greater with each role. Now he has promised to never make another film. If that’s true Phantom Thread is a brilliant masterpiece to end a career. It’s the story of a driven, crazed artist who designs women’s clothes…that’s all you need to know. As critics are saying it’s not a film for mass audiences, just those folks who appreciate genius. Closes Thursday, Feb.8th.

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer, (live only or archived for two weeks… (See next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. February 6 has Espressivo Orchestra director, conductor Michel Singher talking about their Feb. 15 concert then Edward Moncrief author of Raining Blackbirds talks about his book and farm laborers. UCSC’s Felicia Rice discusses her new book “Doc/Undoc” an art piece centering on the immigration experience. Then Ashlyn Adams talks about her two new movie theatres opening next month in the former Circle Church. OR…if you just happen to miss either of the last two weeks of Universal Grapevine broadcasts go here… http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/dj/bruce-bratton You have to listen to about 4 minutes of that week’s KPFA news first, then Grapevine happens. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening. Email me always and only at bratton@cruzio.com

This is good for a few chuckles…

QUOTES. VALENTINES

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt”, Charles M. Schulz

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us”, Joseph Campbell

“If my Valentine you won’t be,
I’ll hang myself on your Christmas tree”. Ernest Hemingway

“Love is the only shocking act left on the planet”. Valentine’s Day Movie

“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I let him eat in bed”. Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

Snail Mail: Bratton Online
82 Blackburn Street, Suite 216
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Direct email: Bratton@Cruzio.com
Direct phone: 831 423-2468
All Technical & Web details: Gunilla Leavitt @ godmoma@gmail.com

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

Posted in Weekly Articles | Leave a comment

January 29 – February 4, 2018

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Bruce

Highlights this week:
TWO (2) new movie theatres opening in town!!!, Westside Plaza demolitions, John Tuck has left Santa Cruz forever…GREENSITE checks out more on the library vote… KROHN and council majority votes, UCSC housing and capacity, rent control, rent freeze…STEINBRUNER and AMBAG control issues, Soquel Creek’s Pure Water, more on Nisene Marks parking…PATTON on Wikileaks, Facebook, Google, and Julian Assange…DECINZO and Santa Cruz style Monster Homes…EAGAN with Blame issues…JENSEN and her top 10…BRATTON critiques The Final Year, The Hostiles, 12 Strong…UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE guests…QUOTES for February.

SANTA CRUZ PUBLIC LIBRARY. This interior of the original, and first of our four Carnegie libraries in Santa Cruz. It was opened in April 1904, and Carnegie came here to see all four in 1910. It had 9000 square feet. It was demolished in 1966. The present one opened in 1968.

photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection.

AMUSEMENT PARK RIDE FAILURES. Couldn’t happen here!!!

ROPE JUMPING LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN

YET ANOTHER PERPETUAL MOTION INVENTION!!

DATELINE January 29

NEW ART/FOREIGN/INDIE MOVIE THEATRE IN TOWN!!! Ashlyn Adams, the owner of Westside Video, just sent a very exciting massive hunk of cinema news!!! She says…

“We’ll be in the former Circle Church, at 111 Errett Circle on the Westside. We’re busy at work getting the rooms built and soundproofed and wired every morning and evening, and I think we can do a soft open right around the second week of February. We’ll do a grand opening at the beginning of March for everyone. We’ll be showing first-run independent, foreign language, and local productions (especially stuff that isn’t otherwise playing in town), second run, bigger budget movies, and classics. We have contracts with Criterion, Kino, Lorber, Oscilloscope, and A24. We’ll be serving up cafe items, popcorn, drinks, and bulk candy, plus there’s a commercial kitchen for popup restaurants to come serve meals on the weekends. We’re running everything on a 4K UHD projector system with 5.1 surround sound.” Should be a real fun experience!

She added later that the entire Westside Video Store is moving to the Circle Church. It’ll be called the Westside Film & Cultural Center. Opening prices will be: adult regular $9 first run, $6 second run, $3 catalog. Kids and seniors will be $8/$5/$3. There will be two 30 seat theatres, with comfy sofas and great chairs. The films will be many of the ones that Landmark doesn’t bring to town. I’ll keep you posted.

WESTSIDE PLAZA NEWS. Reports from Westside Video staffers told me that the owner of that entire block of businesses — from the once Omei Restaurant to Shen’s Gallery — has big plans. He’s going to “demolish” the present Westside Video store building. The owners of the La Cabana Restaurant next door are petitioning him to leave their part of the building standing.

JOHN TUCK HAS LEFT THE COUNTY. More than one of the probably hundred-plus gang of friends that gathered to say good bye to John Tuck last week said it marked an end of an era. John has moved to Austin, Texas to live with his daughter Jaala and her family. John’s developed a few senior citizen type ailments and he’s better off there. John was a writer, a child placement specialist for the county, an actor, bon vivant and one of the closest friends I’ve ever had.

John and I had a great ceremony — we bought the very first drinks ever served at Randal Kane’s “new” Catalyst, Chris Mathew’s Poet & Patriot, Lou Caviglia’s Clouds, and the Old Lulu Carpenters when it opened as a bar in the mid 70’s. From 1970 onwards we partied… and worked together at the Cabrillo Music Festival, Save Wilder Ranch (Operation Wilder), The Santa Cruz County Fair (as board members) and political campaigns beyond count.

It’s not enough to say all of us will miss John…it’s the end of an era.

Dateline January 29, 2018

A LESSON IN CIVICS
After 10 meetings and with a rare show of transparency, the Downtown Library Advisory Committee (DLAC) voted unanimously for the option of closing the current library and constructing a new library on Cedar St. under a 5 story parking garage…. and then they opened the floor for public comment on the issue. More than one speaker noted that a process whereby the public speaks after the committee has voted is a waste of time. That is true only if speaking before a vote is not a waste of time. Why nurture the illusion that an elected or appointed body listens to and incorporates public comments into their decision making when that rarely happens? More honest to vote, then let the public vent.

The overwhelming public sentiment, expressed at this last meeting and all previous meetings, including the one devoted to public commentary attended by over 90 people, was against a new library under a 5 story parking garage, the option chosen by the committee. To be fair, DLAC did an impressive outreach effort, a fact I omitted to acknowledge in my last column on this issue. Over two thousand people were reached via their survey. Only one problem: the survey failed to ask even one question regarding a potential main library move and its placement under a parking garage. With the most controversial and significant issue out of the picture, the rest was an easy exercise in relative trivia, rendering the survey largely meaningless. Survey questions asked about what folks wanted in a library, what they did and did not like about the current downtown library and other similar enquiries. Answers were somewhat predictable: more computers, wifi and printing resources and problems with unhoused people, safety concerns, drug users and use of bathrooms. Such social problems have been largely addressed with the relocating of the homeless out of downtown. That doesn’t solve the homeless issues but it has largely addressed the impact on the library.

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.

2018 majority report #4

Dateline January 29, 2018

Pacific Collegiate School bike rack. There has been an enormous increase in getting students to ride to school. Perhaps locating some new Bike Share stations inside school grounds would be another assist in getting even more students on a bike, as bus service to PCS is sporadic at best.

TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY

“If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their characters by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with Democracy in America the consciousness of their strength.”

—Democracy In America, p. 287-88 (Harry Reeve translation, Penn State, 2002

Power Grab?
The basis for three council votes that the progressive community lost at last Tuesday’s (Jan. 23rd) Santa Cruz City council meeting is reflected within Alexis de Tocqueville’s phrase, one he coined while observing the potential downside of American democracy, “the tyranny of the majority.” It was practiced with impunity by a 4-member council majority. It happened when the mayor wanted to add the vice-mayor to the closed-door bi-weekly “agenda review” meeting. It’s a meeting I wrote about last week that is held to set the official city council meeting agenda. Fifteen department heads and the mayor sit down and discuss the essence of the coming week’s city business. While I support the vice-mayor attending this meeting I also support other councilmembers attending. So, I made a motion that a rotating councilmember be able to attend. My motion was seconded by Councilmember Richelle Noroyan. (Thank you Richelle!) The majority was having none of it. Why should they let minority members into such a meeting? I can only guess at the reason.

The next majority move was to not allow a discussion on an agenda item I brought forward to level the playing field in council appointments to city boards and commissions. The resolution I put before the council was to restore the one councilmember-one commission appointment process in order to avoid the current democratic charade of four councilmembers being able to appoint seven commissioners to each of the city’s thirteen active advisory bodies. Why not have some minority views on those commissions? I would have argued that, but since Councilmember Sandy Brown was under the weather and could not attend the meeting, I received nary a second for my motion from a tight-lipped majority.

The third item had to do with renter protection. If renters were forced to leave their domicile by the city because of health and safety violations not attended to by the property owner, shouldn’t the city compensate the renters in terms of paying for temporary housing so as not to be put them out on the street? The city could then sue the landlord to recover costs. Sandy Brown and I brought this to the council back in October and it was coming back now with a big stamp of disapproval by our Planning Director, Lee Butler cum City Manager, Martin Bernal. It would be a city budget buster they argued, put the city into too much risk, they declared. Let’s just try it, I argued. If it proved to be expensive, we could bring it back to the council and repeal it. After all, aren’t the city’s renters near the top of the council’s priorities list? Maybe, maybe not? Even if tenants in this town were in the minority, which they’re not, shouldn’t a majority of the council be taking care of tenants? It was too harsh a decision for me, one in which made me feel like I live in a parallel universe and could only watch the majority again step in doo doo. I have to believe the renters will weigh in soon.

Good-bye to UCSC College Community System?
Will Student Housing West (SHW) put final nail in UC’s once “different campus” dream?

“Each college is a vibrant living/learning community supported by faculty and staff who provide academic support, organize student activities, and sponsor events that enhance the intellectual and social life of the campus.” —From UCSC Housing, “UCSC’s 10 Campuses”

Where were the preliminary planning studies to decide on 3,000 beds? Seems like the last time the UC Admin. did a study of this kind for “west campus housing ” it was back in 2015 to look at around 1,000 beds. But, once the bed count was increased, the University changed their process and turned the question over to the three short-listed private developers who were tasked with inventing the project (so much for student and community input) and how it might be sited. As far as I know, the developers were not asked to carefully fuse the project into the campus’ legacy of residential colleges or even really acknowledge the 2005 LRDP, other than superficially (but how could they… the project seems to go against what the 2005 LRDP advises.) Yes, more bed space on campus is needed, desperately, but not so the campus can grow, but so it can catch up with its inordinate bigness within a community of only 62,000 residents. When UCSC houses at least 75% of its currently capped 19,500 students, then maybe we can discuss any further growth.

It is a fair guess that UCSC abandoned the process of doing planning studies and jumped in bed with “3P”–public-private partnership– developers because the UC Admin. is under enormous pressure to meet deadlines, so they are essentially cutting corners. They likely view the 3P developer scheme as one-stop shopping, thus killing the “vibrant living/learning community” concept and not yet agreeing how to control its growth impact on the town. In other words, no one has clearly stated that 3,000 more beds are not just a license to grow the campus by 3,000 more bodies. It is beyond irony that with each new revision of the Environmental Impact Report’s Notice of Preparation (EIR NOP), it has come to light some assumptions that were enabling the 3,000 beds, and it just won’t work. For example, the University thought it could build on the Porter Meadow, site of the annual student 4/20 cannabis event, or to the north of the Meadow below Kresge College. Seems like it turns out, due to environmental constraints, the only part of the west campus site that can be developed is the existing Family Student Housing location. This essentially forces that small parcel of 200 apartments–arguably the most affordable housing site in Santa Cruz County for families to live–to fit an even more absurd density of five to seven story residential blocks.

Rent Control, Rent Freeze, and Just-Cause Eviction
People make history, but not necessarily under conditions of their own choosing.
Will this be the year Santa Cruz finally realizes its electoral power and makes some significant community quality of life changes? If so, when historians look back they just might note that February 13th was perhaps the start of a great Surf City march forward, a regular Movement for Housing Justice campaign that woke a once sleepy electorate. I hear that three Santa Cruz city councilmembers may be placing rent freeze and just-cause eviction ordinances on the upcoming Tuesday, February 13th council agenda. If so, this will be an historic occasion you will not want to miss. What these ordinances just might do is provide cover for rent-weary tenants during the lead-up to the November rent control vote.

EXTRA: Bernie on the plight of the working-class:

Let me back up. There is a rent control initiative that was submitted last week to the city clerk’s office and “if all the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed” an officially blessed and sanctioned initiative will hit the streets on Sunday, February 11th, I hear. So, come the 13th, folks will be asking the city council to stop landlords from raising rents until the people can decide during the November 6, 2018 election. No, my friends, rent control is not THE solution, but it is an enormously powerful tool, a community bargaining chip in getting the attention of property owners in one of the most expensive real estate markets in California. It also throws down the gauntlet and sends a unified message to those out of control capitalists who are gouging renters and exploiting a housing market that has come to place too much power in the hands of too few landlords. It doesn’t take a weatherman, or women, to predict that fed-up tenants will be trying to stick it to the man this fall by employing Bernie Sanders’, ‘enough is enough,’ and going about leveling the playing field through the ballot box.

Bernie Quote of the Week

Bernie Sanders recalled his own childhood growing up in a rent-controlled apartment in Flatbush Brooklyn, which “meant that my family, which did not have a lot of money, did not have to spend 50 or 60 percent of its limited income on housing.'”

We Have A Housing Emergency. Here’s How We Face It

Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, former Santa Cruz City Councilmember (1998-2002) and Mayor (2001-2002). He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 12 years. He was elected last November to another 4-year term on the Santa Cruz City Council.
Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

Dateline January 29, 2018

AMBIGUOUS ORGANIZATIONS WHO RUN THE SHOW FROM BEHIND THE SCENES
This week, citizens will have an opportunity to attend public events of two local agencies that I have learned seem to set policy for our area, yet few may be aware exist. The first is Associated Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG) based in Seaside, and the second is the Regional Water Management Foundation, housed within the Santa Cruz Community Foundation in Aptos.

Here is a video a private citizen took at the January 10, 2018 roll-out of the Plan:

ACTION ITEM—> GO TO AMBAG’S “Moving Monterey Bay Forward Plan 2040” Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) public hearing this Tuesday, January 30, 6pm-7pm, at the Simpkins Swim Center. This Plan will set land use, transportation and water use policy for the Counties of Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Benito that local government will insist they must abide by.

Here is the link to the AMBAG website’s information on the 2040 Plan,
here is a link to the Board’s audio recording files and agendas/minutes of meetings, and
here is the phone number to call with your questions: 831-883-3750.

ACTION ITEM—> GO TO the “Connect the Drops” water informational event this Thursday, February 1, 6:30pm-9pm, at New Brighton Middle School Auditorium (250 Washburn Ave., Capitola). Keynote speaker is Ms Taryn Ravazzini, Deputy Director, California Dept. of Water Resources. This event is sponsored, in part, by the Regional Water Management Foundation.

Here is a link to the Foundation’s website

Please take note that NONE of the Board members are elected representatives of the people. The Foundation’s Board meetings are NOT open to the public.

There was an OpEd article in last Friday’s (Jan. 26) Santa Cruz Sentinel (page A7) describing the event and area efforts. (The Sentinel seems to have recently blocked the ability to read even archived articles online unless you are a subscriber, but you can read last Friday’s article at the public library.)

Because the Regional Water Management Foundation is not a public government agency, Mr. Carson, the Director, refused to respond to my Public Records Act request. He agreed to meet with me, but would not supply documents. This organization accepts nearly $150,000 annually from the Mid-County Groundwater Agency (MGA) to manage their affairs. The MGA is comprised of Santa Cruz City Water Department, Soquel Creek Water District, the County of Santa Cruz Water Resource Dept. (Environmental Health) and Central Water District. All are public agencies financed by public money.

Further, according to Mr. John Ricker, the Santa Cruz County Environmental Dept. regularly hands over various grant money that his County agency has received to the Regional Water Management Foundation to manage. IS IT LEGAL FOR A PRIVATE AGENCY TO MANAGE PUBLIC MONEY BUT NOT BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE TO THE CITIZENS? Mr. Ricker assured me it is. Why can’t a citizen see how that money given to the Regional Water Management Foundation is spent?

I urge you to attend Thursday’s “Connect the Drops” and ask questions.

There will be a panel discussion of five agencies but Regional Water Management Foundation is not one of them. There is a private group, Conservation Collaborative, that is included. I suspect people will not be allowed to publicly, ask any questions of the speaker or the representatives of all water agencies on the panel, but just in case, I think a good question would be why Soquel Creek Water District is determined to impose a $70 Million PureWater Soquel Project to inject treated sewage water into the area’s drinking water supply when there is cleaner water in ample supply from the streams on the North Coast? The intertie connections between Santa Cruz Water Dept. and Soquel Creek Water District already exist and were put to use last winter.

I hope to see you there. I will be handing out information about Water for Santa Cruz, a local group of informed and well-educated citizens who support a regional solution to the County’s water storage problem. https://waterforsantacruz.com/ and gathering petition signatures to ask Soquel Creek Water District to place the PureWater Soquel Project on a ballot for all who depend on the Purisima and Aromas Aquifers to be able to vote on having treated sewage water injected into their drinking water supply.

ACCESS DENIED TO NISENE MARKS STATE PARK FOR THE FIFTH TIME DUE TO LACK OF PARKING
It happened again last Saturday and Sunday…State Parks denied access to Nisene Marks State Park because parking within Park boundaries was full. Now that the Aptos Village Project construction has wiped out the area along Aptos Creek Road that runners and cyclists historically have used, with no alternative, State Parks is denying access repeatedly to the public. What will happen when the next Blues Festival or Beer Festival brings throngs to the adjacent Aptos Village County Park?

Call State Parks District Services Manager, Mr. Chris Spohrer 831-234-5140 and ask that State Parks negotiate half of the Aptos Village Project Phase 2 for parking and Community benefit, rather than more three-story mixed use development.

Cheers,

Becky Steinbruner

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.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com

Dateline January 25, 2018: #25 / Those Digital “Super States”

Julian Assange (pictured right) is the founder of Wikileaks. Both he and Wikileaks get mixed reviews. A profile in the August 21, 2017, issue of The New Yorker, for instance, “Julian Assange, a Man Without a Country,” has both good things and bad things to report about Assange.

I was struck by a recent blog posting by Caitlin Johnstone, “Assange Keeps Warning Of AI Censorship, And It’s Time We Started Listening.” Johnstone is a self-described “rogue journalist,” and is a radical voice on the progressive side of the blogging spectrum. She doesn’t have much use for establishment Democrats, and evidences some periodic sympathies for the Trump “base.” She is not everyone’s cup of tea, in other words.

Johnstone cites to a January 16, 2018, statement by Assange that is reproduced below. Read Johnstone’s posting if you are as intrigued as I was by two things I gathered from the Assange statement:

First, Assange thinks that Google and Facebook are “digital super states,” which he ranks right up there with the Chinese government.

Second, Assange says that “discourse” is humanity’s immune system for existential threats.

I, personally, think Assange is right on target on both those observations!

Gary 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

CLASSICAL DeCINZO
DeCinzo takes on housing options… scroll down to see.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s “The Blame Game” 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 with Tim’s deeper thinking about blame and the energy behind it.

NEW MUSIC WORKS presents the annual “NIGHT OF THE LIVING COMPOSERS”.

THEY’RE ALIVE!! And composing in our neighborhoods!! (all Santa Cruzans at one time or another) Susan Alexjander ,Philip Collins, Steed Cowart, Michael McGushin, Jon Meyers, Barry Phillips and Scott Stobbe (not in attendance). There’ll be a Composer Panel Discussion: 6pm. TICKETS: Night of the Living Composersat Cabrillo College Box Office: http://cabrillovapa.com/tickets 831/479-6154

CELEBRATE PIANO ENSEMBLE presents “An Afternoon of Piano Ensembles”.
Selections are from both one-piano and two-piano repertoire. An eclectic group of composers will be featured ranging from Brahms, Saint-Saëns, Inghelbrecht, Nazareth, and Fina to a medley of dances from Bernstein’s West Side Story to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth. Performers include Erica Arul, Mary Jane Cope, Roger Emanuels, Rose Georgi, Irene Hermann, Nicki Kerns, Lynn Kidder, Lavinia Livingston, Michael McGushin, Vlada Volkova Moran, Carol Panofsky, Barbara Ruzicka, Kumi Uyeda, and Leah Zumberge.

Suggested donation is $10 at the door. If you are not able to attend but would like to make a donation for scholarships please write a check to SCCMTAC and mail to Barbara Jirsa, Treasurer, Santa Cruz MTAC, 221 Nevada St, Santa Cruz CA 95060.

Sunday, February 11, 2018, 2:00pm UCSC Recital Hall

LISA JENSEN LINKS. Lisa writes: “Now that the awards season is here — and most of the movies in contention have finally played in Santa Cruz— it’s time to reveal my top 10 movies of 2017, this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com ). Also, some unsung, real-life female astronomers from a century ago finally get the props they deserve in Jewel Theatre Company’s lyrical new production, Silent Sky. And find out how you — yes, you! — can enter a giveaway for an advance copy of my next novel, Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge!” Lisa has been writing film reviews and columns for Good Times since 1975.

THE FINAL YEAR. A documentary covering the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency, this is an insider’s view of the hard and sensitive work it takes to run a government…especially the United States government. It shows the surprise and reactions to the Trump victory. You’ll get a vivid impression of our place in the world, and the heavy responsibilities that Barack felt. You’ll also be more afraid than ever of the danger our country is in, with Trump at the controls. Well worth seeing. No cutesy stuff about Barack’s kids, wife and family life…it’s all politics. See it quickly, it probably won’t stay on our screens long. It ends Thursday, Feb. 1st.

THE HOSTILES. In 1892, the Comanches fight the Cheyennes, settlers battle all American Indians, and Christian Bale leads a group that includes Rosamund Pike through all sorts of ethnic and tense battles. It’s a bit more sensitive than the John Ford John Wayne westerns, but nowhere near as exciting. The photography is not just scenic, it’s gorgeous.

12 STRONG. This is almost a Hollywood western. Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon fight Taliban attacks in the Afghan War right after 9/11. It was actually shot in New Mexico and southern California…and you’ll believe it when/if you see it. It’s very confusing, and hard to figure who is on whose side. Apparently it’s “based on a true story” but what isn’t nowadays? I counted three audience members actually playing computer games while the movie was grinding on… for two hours and ten minutes plus the usual 20 minutes of Regal ads and previews.

THE PHANTOM THREAD.
Paul Thomas Anderson the director first made Boogie Nights, he topped that one with Magnolia, There will be Blood, and Inherent Vice and now there’s Phantom Thread. The star is Daniel Day-Lewis and seeing him and Anderson work together in this one makes it not a film but an experience. Day-Lewis in A Room With A View, My Left Foot, The Unbearable Lightness of Being became greater and greater with each role. Now he has promised to never make another film. If that’s true Phantom Thread is a brilliant masterpiece to end a career. It’s the story of a driven, crazed artist who designs women’s clothes…that’s all you need to know. As critics are saying it’s not a film for mass audiences, just those folks who appreciate genius.

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer, (live only or archived for two weeks… (See next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. On January 30 UCSC Music prof. Linda Burman Hall talks about the 45th annual Santa Cruz Baroque Festival opening February 10. She’s followed by James Weller United Peace Church minister talking about Sanctuary Santa Cruz and the current DACA issues. February 6 has Espressivo Orchestra director, conductor Michel Singher talking about their Feb. 15 concert then Edward Moncrief author of Raining Blackbirds talks about his book and farm laborers. UCSC’s Felicia Rice discusses her new book “Doc/Undoc” an art piece centering on the immigration experience. Then Ashlyn Adams talks about her two new movie theatres opening next month in the former Circle Church. OR…if you just happen to miss either of the last two weeks of Universal Grapevine broadcasts go here… http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/dj/bruce-bratton You have to listen to about 4 minutes of that week’s KPFA news first, then Grapevine happens. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening. Email me always and only at bratton@cruzio.com

Isn’t it amazing how obvious things become when the tables are turned…?

QUOTES. “FEBRUARY”
“Why do all our friends and relatives destroy the summer for us? Why can’t they get married in February?” Jerry Della Femina
“Without Valentine’s Day, February would be… well, January“, Jim Gaffigan
“Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what’s the matter, That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?” William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing
“February – the month of love..?!!
No wonder the shortest one in the calendar.” Dinesh Kumar Biran

Snail Mail: Bratton Online
82 Blackburn Street, Suite 216
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Direct email: Bratton@Cruzio.com
Direct phone: 831 423-2468
All Technical & Web details: Gunilla Leavitt @ godmoma@gmail.com

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

Posted in Weekly Articles | Leave a comment

January 23 – 29, 2018

Posted on January 24, 2018 by Bruce

Highlights this week:
Genuine and unique historic photo, LONDON Nelson shamed again, the still empty Octagon, About going topless?…Greensite on library issues…Krohn on What Homeless shelter Crisis?, the Mayor and Department Head meetings, Sierra Club changes, Santa Cruz Women’s March…Steinbruner and Aptos Village secret modifications, Nisene Marks closed, Swenson Builders and illegal storm water, Aptos Fire District and the Brown Act, our County Railroad failures, AMBAG question… Patton and Putin Problems…DeCinzo and the Pope’s ongoing issues…Eagan and Trump’s inner secret…Jewel Theatre’s Silent Sky…Jensen and #timesUp movement and The Golden Globes…I critique The Phantom Thread and most of the rest…Universal Grapevine guests…Quotes on FLOODS.

VERY HISTORIC PHOTO. For the first time since creating BrattonOnline almost 15 years ago, we decided to have a get-together/meeting. Not all the group had met all the other contributors. Some great, new, challenging ideas sprung forth…you’ll see them in a while. It was good fun and very friendly. We met at the East side of the obvious (and empty) Octagon Building. Front row seated left to right; Gunilla Leavitt our webwoman, Me, Lisa Jensen film reviewer,Tim Eagan cartoonist.

Back row, standing left to right; Gary Patton columnist, Chris Krohn city councilmember/columnist, Gillian Greensite columnist. Becky Steinbruner had to miss it because she works at a very busy nursery and couldn’t get off that day. Steven DeCinzo wasn’t present because he, his wife and new baby live in France. Michael Smith our new and erstwhile part editor also missed it due to incredibly engaging commitments.

photo credit: Jeffery Sargent
Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

IGUANAS AND SNAKES. Another contribution from R. Davila. Like your worst dream!!!

PERPETUAL MOTION. As a kid I used to work on and dream up some wild perpetual motion ideas…this one works…or seems to!

5 OCTAVE MBIRA. I still have an 8 note African mbira that Fantasy Records gave me in lieu of the royalties they owed our Goodtime Washboard 3 trio for the album.

DATELINE January 22, 2018

THE NEW LONDON NELSON SIGN…I’ve been campaigning, pleading and questioning why the people in charge of the “LOUDEN NELSON” Community Center stop disrespecting the honor of London Nelson, a good man, former slave, and a very honorable Santa Cruz citizen. In the last week or two again the dimwits unveiled the new sign/plaque once more misspelling London’s name. It isn’t just me that cares or knows the correct way he spelled his name: check out these sources…

Read what the Good Times story on LONDON NELSON — with much data from historian Phil Reader — says, in the article by Elizabeth Limbach from May 3, 2013, titled: ” Seven Things to Know About London Nelson”. If the dimwitted City admin needs more evidence re LONDON NELSON, the local Wikipedia says, “London’s first name was erroneously changed to “Louden” in documents after the 1930s, but almost no documents before that time show his name as anything other than “London.” London Nelson was buried in Evergreen Cemetery,where his headstone can be visited; the specific location of his grave is uncertain”.

Still more of LONDON NELSON’s story is at Mobile Ranger
Santa Cruz Waves also has a story titled… The Early Schools of Santa Cruz and London Nelson’s Legacy by Julia Gaudinski on May 4, 2015.
The Santa Cruz public Library History collection has this piece by Phil Reader… “Once these intrepid pioneers established themselves in the Monterey Bay area, they went on to leave their mark on local history. Much has been said and written about London Nelson, the Carolina born ex-slave, who, through a generous bequeath, saved the floundering Santa Cruz School District”.

Good Times also has this definitive piece …

“Nelson’s legendary act of generosity to the local school system has been a cultural touchstone in the community for more than a century. But for much of that time, the legend was more than a bit vague, if not distorted, and a significant error was made in the spelling of his name from London to Louden. Eventually, historical research caught up to the legend. Using slave records and genealogical materials originally compiled by the Mormon Church in Utah, historian Phil Reader was able to trace Nelson’s birth to a North Carolina (not Tennessee) cotton plantation owned by a slave master named William Nelson. As was the practice at the time, slaves were forced to assume the family name of their owner. William Nelson, in turn, named the slave children born onto his plantation after English place names: Canterbury, Marlborough, Cambridge—and London. William Nelson’s youngest son, Matthew, eventually inherited the Nelson slaves from his father, and moved the family plantation to Tennessee.

The discovery of gold in California in 1949, however, lured him farther westward. Promising both London and his younger brother, Marlborough, their freedom if they joined him, Matthew set up a claim on the American River, where the trio was to mine successfully for four years. With his freedom secured, London Nelson eventually found his way to Santa Cruz in 1856, where, with his earnings from the goldfields, he bought a small piece of land (near what is today the rear parking lot of the downtown post office”. In spite of all of the above our city refuses to do the decent think and give credit and devotion where its due…shame.

OCTAGON STILL EMPTY. Every time I sit at my favorite spot at the Octagon Platz corner of Front and Cooper Streets many, many folks either climb the new steps or walk around the corner of the historic Octagon building hoping to enter it and see either (1) The historic Octagon as a museum store, (2) Lulu Carpenter’s Coffee Shop, or (3) something befitting one of our most precious historic buildings. The Octagon has been vacant since October 2016, when Nina forced Manthri Shrinath and Lulu Carpenter’s great Coffee Shop to leave. And why did that happen? It has become a huge shame to Nina Simone and the Museum of Art & History, as well as the San Jose-based developer John McEnery IV — who brought in and controls/manages the out-of-town restaurants in Abbott Square. As of last Wednesday (1/17) a staff member told me there are no plans in sight for any new Octagon occupant.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS TO GO TOPLESS? What about that? A strange and very current freedom topic. Taken further, don’t we all have a right to go totally naked? Now? Somebody way back when decided that women’s breasts had to be covered…but not men’s??? The entire concept of nudity is odd, when you think about it.

Dateline: January 22, 2018

SPEAK UP LOUDLY FOR OUR LIBRARIES
While I often disagree with Stephen Kessler’s analyses, especially when it comes to his Freudian take on male sexual aggression against women, I found his column in Saturday’s Sentinel (1/20/18) to be an eloquent statement against the odious plot to tear down and relocate the downtown public library under a future 5 story parking garage on the site of the current weekly Farmers’ Market. I recommend you read his column.

I don’t believe that using the term “plot” is hyperbole. What else can one conclude of a process whereby a committee (Downtown Library Advisory Committee or DLAC) charged by the city council to involve the public in discussions about options for the future of the downtown library, makes little if any effort to publicize its nine meetings so far, with the last and deciding one on Thursday January 25th; allows no public comment until the end of the meetings; ignores the 90 attendees at the last meeting who expressed their preference to keep the existing library onsite with renovations and instead chooses the option of tear down and relocate under a five story parking garage? There are other factors such as questionable estimates on the cost of renovation versus tear down and build anew but the overall message is clear: public be damned! Try to attend this last meeting in the upstairs library meeting room at 6:30 PM on Thursday January 25th.

This last DLAC meeting is where the final vote will be taken before the issue is forwarded to city council for its vote. If the discussion at the council meeting when the issue was first addressed in mid 2016 is any guide, it will be an uphill battle to have the will of the public represented by the council majority. At that meeting which I attended, I heard no murmur of concern for locating the library under a parking garage, no voice raised to preserve this long-standing familiar public resource in our downtown center, no word of respect for the institution of a library itself. And while it was laudable that the council voted to form a committee to hear from the public, that the public has largely been excluded and ignored is why committees are often so roundly lampooned.

Another indication of the city’s lack of respect for libraries and for library patrons is staff’s decision to locate one of its 25 hubs or stations for 20 rental bikes in front of Garfield Park library, which serves the west side. I wrote on this topic in the January 4th issue of BrattonOnline. An update is timely. While I support the bike-share program and wish it success, the choice of some of the locations reveals lack of care and shoddy decision-making. The choice to remove 40 feet of parking in front of a public library that has no onsite car parking space is one example. Parents who can now easily drop off and pick up children for and from library activities will no longer be able to do so. I wanted to appeal this unwise decision but was prevented from doing so by the Transportation Code, which states that one has to live within 300 feet of the site in order to appeal a decision to remove public parking. Given that the reach of the library is far wider, this should have been an occasion to allow for a wider appeal range. Since no one within that limited radius appealed, the decision is final. I plan to attend this evening’s Transportation and Public Works commission, which has already approved this site and speak to the issue at oral communications but no action can be taken at oral communications. The only small hope for wiser heads to prevail is when the permits come for approval before city council, probably on the consent agenda. We can request that the council reconsider this site and deem it inappropriate. There are many better alternatives.

In the late 1970’s Westside Neighbors, including leaders in the long-standing Black community fought hard to save Garfield Park library from closure by the city. I was part of that effort. This beautiful Carnegie library is deep in my heart. That its patrons can be so easily ignored disturbs me. When disturbed I tend to act. I hope you will join me. Email council members at citycouncil@cityofsantacruz.com.

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.

Dateline: January 22, 2018

THE WEEK THAT WAS

Declaration of a Homeless Shelter Crisis
The WTF Dept. A homeless shelter crisis will likely have been declared, officially, by the Santa Cruz city council by the time you are reading these words. “Declaring a Homeless Shelter Crisis enables the city to suspend any state or local regulatory statute, regulation, or ordinance prescribing standards of housing, health, or safety to the extent that strict compliance ‘would in any way prevent, hinder, or delay mitigation of the effects of the shelter crisis.'” OMG. Who would’ve known there was a shelter crisis without this declaration, raise your hand? The most recent “point in time” homeless census count was 2,249 countywide last year, with 1,204 individuals residing in the city of Santa Cruz…934 were “unsheltered,” that’s 78% of the total number of homeless-houseless. Why is there a shelter crisis now because most of us who have been paying attention for the past decade know there has been a crisis for a long while? Has there also been a concomitant crisis of governing? Why haven’t our various city departments been working in concert to address the growing problem of the housing…until…until a certain police chief came along and said, ‘Hey, let’s try something new!’

The hope here is that by declaring a crisis we can a get torpid bureaucracy when it comes to the homeless, rolling into action. Where will they roll to? First stop, San Lorenzo Park Benchlands. I counted 57 tents at 1pm last Sunday (1/21). This encampment will be relocated by city staff (I hope the homeless and their advocates have been asked for their input into this move…) to 1220 River Street. When? Dec. 15th? Jan. 15th? Now, we’re hearing Feb. 15th. It is expected that there will be storage and charging stations, and the with the Homeless Services Center’s extended shower hours, the plight of the homeless will be lessened as we move toward the longer term (intractable?) issues surrounding homelessness. Yes, the addiction and mental health issues. But as you read this you may be wondering, what about the encampment along the bike path alongside Holy Cross Church, or the Highway 1 encampment, or the various 2 and 3 tent encampments along the river that are now so visible? Folks, we have a crisis and it did not just begin because the council declared an emergency on January 23rd. The good news is that we are finally getting people to the table, city and county, and will be moving forward with (a) a relocated campsite, (b) a temporary structure with camping, and (c) an expansion of the current Homeless Services site to include a 24/7 year-round shelter.

City Council Agenda Review
The Revisited Power Struggle Dept. There’s a meeting, perhaps it’s the most significant policy meeting that takes place in the city, which happens on the Wednesday before each city council meeting. At this meeting, the mayor of Santa Cruz sits down with all the department heads, there’s 15 if you’re interested (http://www.cityofsantacruz.com/government/city-departments), and sets out to craft an official city council meeting agenda. When I was mayor in 2002 I always invited Vice Mayor, Emily Reilly, to join me. It was at first daunting to see all the department heads together in one room, and you as mayor feeling like you somehow are supposed to facilitate the meeting. You try, but you keep looking to the city manager in the early days for advice and some bread crumbs that might clue you into a culture you are distinctly not a part of because of your elected status. Sometimes there were cries for help, but mostly it was anthropological experience. You are in a role of “participant observer,” but it’s not like Franz Boas hanging out with the Inuit on Baffin Island in Canada, or Margaret Mead observing and writing about the sexual practices of Samoans. Trying to facilitate an Agenda Review meeting is much more about encountering a part of your own culture that you were not aware of. What it comes down to is that you, as mayor of Santa Cruz, have been thrust into a position of apparent power, but with little juridical heft. You do have at least four out of seven city councilmember votes and that’s what provides your fly on the wall status at Agenda Review. All of this I offer as an introduction to a rather obscure practice of city council agenda-setting. Last week, there was an item on the agenda that would approve and offer for the first time officially, an invitation to the vice-mayor of Santa Cruz to attend these meetings. I actually tried to attend this Agenda meeting last January and it was suddenly cancelled because of my presence. It was never explained why; even the city attorney said yes, I could attend, before he said no. It’s up to the mayor he ultimately opined. My suggestion, since not more than three councilmembers can be in a non-public place discussing city business, is that we rotate two councilmembers, or at least one now that the vice mayor is officially part of the party, into that meeting. More eyes on government behind closed doors is always better for the public. So far, I have heard no real or rational reason to not allow three councilmembers into a biweekly meeting that decides what is on any given city council agenda. Do I hear any public oooohs and aaaahhs out there about three councilmembers attending? Me neither, except from a certain unelected decision-maker. One of my main jobs is to get the city council to do the public’s business in public, and I shall continue to advocate for the public to be represented in these as yet, un-public and un-noticed Agenda Review meetings.

Felicidades
The Environmental Dept. Help is on the way. Big congratulations to recently elected Santa Cruz Sierra Club Board members, Jane Mio, Rachel O’Malley, Steve Bakaley, and Keresha Durham! Wow, we’ve got some great people looking after our environment and helping protect it from predatory practices of the good ole capitalist system. Welcome y’all! With the twin engines of environmental attack constantly percolating–Donald Drumpf running around our capitol and the real estate-developer class running amok in the People’s Republic of Santa Cruz–we need good old environmentalists (feminists, socialists, and civil rights activists too!) to hold the line on some of our most cherished vistas: West Cliff Dr., the Jessie Street Marsh, Natural Bridges, San Lorenzo River corridor, Cowells Beach, and our fast-diminishing urban forest. Four new members ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work is just what the doctor ordered!

Binders Full of …
The Collective Power of Women Dept. Remember Mitt Romney’s comment during the 2012 election? No, not the “47%” one maligning the folks who would never vote for him, but the “binders full of women” that were just waiting for him to be elected so they could get jobs in his administration, he maintained. Well, women were out in full force in Santa Cruz this past weekend, reclaiming history and maybe a whole lot more. It was anti-Trump but also pro-peace and love and understanding. I asked a 13-year old who was wearing a tee-shirt that had the word “feminist” written across, what the word meant. She said, “For me, it’s the idea that women and men are equal.” Women had a lot of allies joining them too on the march down Pacific Avenue from Cooper Street to the Louden Nelson Community Center. I was struck by all the signs people displayed. Truly remarkable. (click each image for a larger version)

Bernie Tweet of the Week

“People are more determined than ever to build a nation based on love and compassion, not hatred or division. Congratulations to the women around the world who are once again sending a powerful message of solidarity today.”#WomensMarch2018

(Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, former Santa Cruz City Councilmember (1998-2002) and Mayor (2001-2002). He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 12 years. He was elected last November to another 4-year term on the Santa Cruz City Council).
Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

Dateline: January 22, 2018

“I’LL LOOK INTO THAT…”
That is what Assistant Planning Director Wanda Williams kept saying during the meeting I was finally able to arrange with her to discuss what the “Minor Modifications” to the Aptos Village Project Phase 2 Building Designs really entail. I was glad a couple of other citizens joined me because it was amazing to hear Ms. Williams repeatedly stonewall us every time we asked for clarification on various issues. She did not have the document available that outlined the proposed building design changes. I found it later in the Records Room…and she had signed it, along with Planner Randall Adams. She refused a follow-up meeting with us next week before the Appeal deadline. She refused to recommend a Community Meeting to have staff discuss the proposed design changes with the public. She instructed us to continue to send our comments to Planner Randall Adams. “But he has already approved the changes,” I pointed out. She looked at me sternly, “Well, then you can appeal.” She did not seem to know the process, even though an appeal action would be referred to her, as the Zoning Administrator.

She wrote down our questions (I think) and told us she would “get back with answers” but said it might take a week….after the Appeal deadline.

Stay tuned for more about your local “transparent” government.

ENTRY DENIED TO NISENE MARKS STATE PARK FOR THIRD TIME IN THREE WEEKS
Last Saturday, Nisene Marks State Park was again closed to vehicle access because there was just no more parking available inside the Park. People parked alongside the narrow road, on blind corners, and any other place available…what would this picture look like during fire season? Not good. Obviously, the highest use of the Phase 2 Aptos Village Project area is to re-establish the parking for the Community who used to park in the dirt along Aptos Creek Road and run/bike into Nisene Marks and to re-build the Post Office Bike Jumps. Is State Parks paying attention? Is the County? How about you?

Contact State Parks District Services Manager Mr. Chris Spohrer 831-234-5140.

Please contact me if you are interested in working on this project. Time is running out. Becky Steinbruner, email ki6tkb@yahoo.com or phone 831-685-2915.

BARRY SWENSON BUILDER CREWS DUMP ILLEGAL STORMWATER INTO LOCAL CREEKS AGAIN
The crews working for Barry Swenson Builder once again pumped muddy storm water from the utility trenches in the Aptos Village Project into nearby Valencia Creek last Friday morning. I saw the muddy water draining directly into the storm drain at the intersection of Cathedral Drive and Trout Gulch Road at 8:30am…and again at 10:30am. The State’s Regional Water Quality Control Board frowns on such illegal activity.

Barry Swenson Builder, contractor license #342751, ought to know better. Call them up and ask why their crews and Santa Cruz Underground Paving (SCUP) crews continue to pump storm water from the construction site into local creeks, smothering any possible salmonid eggs with silt from an area with a history of diesel tank soil contamination. Remember the illegal underground storage tank these same two contractors extracted, transported and tried to cover up? Thank goodness, the District Attorney issued a Judgment and fines for all those violations, but the fact remains that the real site of the tank was never remediated because it all got covered up before County Environmental Health got tipped off and arrived on scene over a week later.

Here is the contact for Mary Gourlay, Swenson Project Manager: 415-302-4634 or mary@swenson.com

Here is the contact for Carolyn Burke, County Environmental Planner: 831-454-5721 carolyn.burke@santacruzcounty.us who oversees compliance with storm water and erosion control matters for the Project.

Try contacting Public Works inspector assigned to the Project:Geoffrey Padgett 831-454-2160 or Public Works Information Officer Ms. Christine Berge 454-2160 christine.berge@santacruzcounty.us

NEW TRAFFIC AND STREET LIGHTS ON SOON AT APTOS VILLAGE TROUT GULCH INTERSECTION…AND CARS CRASH INTO NEW CURB
You and I have paid for nearly all street improvements at the Trout Gulch Road intersection in Aptos Village. What a hazardous mess. At least three cars have already crashed into the 8″ high cement curb that protrudes into the bike lane on Soquel Drive in front of Trout Gulch Crossing businesses. That explains why the curb is already cracked. The relocated bus stop will obviously not allow the Metro buses to get out of the lane of traffic when stopped for passengers, and line-of-sight visibility for approaching motorists is extremely poor. Where is the bike lane??? Gone. Will bicyclists continue to use this route anyway? Probably. “It’s an accident waiting to happen,” say the Route #71 Metro drivers.

Meanwhile, Collins Electric crews were testing the glaring LED streetlights last Friday. That light, along with the traffic surveillance cameras, will add such ambience to the historic Aptos Village. If I could, I would avoid the area when it all gets activated. However, like most of the 1200 rural residents and elementary school families of the area, there is no other practical route into or out of the Aptos Village. What would this area look like in the event of a major wildland fire in the area? Not good. Call Aptos / La Selva Fire District and talk with the Chief about that: 685-6690

SOME ENCOURAGING NEWS FROM SOQUEL CREEK WATER DISTRICT ENGINEERING DEPT.
According to Taj Dufour, District Engineer, the water quality testing for mixing groundwater from the aquifer with water from the streams sent by Santa Cruz City Water Dept. is going better than had been expected. “It seems that the waters are more compatible than we had anticipated,” he told the Board last Tuesday.

That is great news to begin addressing the critical groundwater overdraft problem caused by pumping too much water for so long. Blending surface water from Loch Lomond and North Coast streams will not cause problems of the magnitude that Flint, Michigan experienced.

That’s good news…a solution that could begin right away for a fraction of the cost of the District’s PREFERRED PROJECT: PureWater Soquel, which would cost $70 million and take five years to become operational. The District, nevertheless, is moving forward on the expensive and questionable Project, despite claiming they will wait for the EIR to be complete before deciding on a Project. Rates just went up 17.5% to help pay for this “Preferred Project”.

SOME NEW SOQUEL CREEK WATER DISTRICT CUSTOMERS ARE EXEMPT FROM WATER DEMAND OFFSET REQUIREMENTS TO SAVE WATER
The District Board insists that all new construction and service connections are really saving water because of the Water Demand Offset requirements. In order to get a new service connection, the applicant has to replace a certain number of toilets elsewhere and pay the remainder with a $55,000/Acre-foot new demand in lieu fee.

Why then did the Board approve a new service connection last Tuesday for the Seascape area and waive the Water Demand Offset requirement? The Board, with the exception of Director Daniels, continues to hand out new service connections, even though the District declared a Groundwater Emergency in June, 2014. The Water Demand Offset program has been in place since 2003, and District staff continues to claim the smoke-and-mirrors tactic that the program makes it okay to keep adding more and more new water demand on the over drafted Purisima Aquifer.

District staff has admitted not being able to verify all claimed Water Demand Offset work claimed…such as Barry Swenson Builder’s supposedly large toilet replacements at Cabrillo College. The College has no record, either and the Facilities & Operations Director at the time did not sign off on the work…a Swenson foreman did. The Cabrillo Director recently told me he had to keep phoning Swenson to send the crews back because toilets and urinals scheduled for replacement were NOT replaced.

A NEW WELL FOR SWENSON’S APTOS VILLAGE PROJECT
Part of the conditions Soquel Creek Water District placed on approving the new 32 Acre Foot/year demand that the Aptos Village Project would add to the over drafted Aquifer was the new well site. In 2015, the actual location was changed from the middle of the development to the corner of Cathedral and Soquel Drive. The District drilled the 620′ deep-well over a year ago, stopping the work at a shallower depth than planned, due to the solid clay, low-producing strata encountered.

Even though the new Granite Way Well, serving the Aptos Village Project, will most likely be a very poor producer, the District is pushing forward on the Well’s development plan. According to District Engineer Mr. Taj Dufour, the construction bids will appear for Board approval soon, and the Well may come online by this fall…just in time for the grand opening of New Leaf Market (maybe).

Will this deal provide enough water to supply the new 69 residences, 20 new shops and the large grocery store? Will the water be contaminated with the pollution from the leaking diesel tank nearby in the Project? The Board said the water will be tested for those contaminants once the well is developed, even though County Environmental Health Hazardous Materials Specialist Mr. Tim Fillmore recommended the District test immediately for that panel of contaminants.

Meanwhile, the new O’Neill Ranch Well in Soquel has been shut down since last October due to ammonia contamination. Hmmm…….

DID THE APTOS/LA SELVA FIRE DISTRICT BOARD VIOLATE THE BROWN ACT?
Maybe. The Board met in Closed Session January 11 to discuss employment issues for finding a new Fire Chief.

The Ralph M. Brown Act specifies that the agenda must provide sufficient information regarding the nature of the Closed Session to give interested persons an understanding of the subject matter to be considered. This was not the case for Items 9.2 (something related to the Fire Chief) and 9.3 (something related to the Administrative Assistant). That violates Govt. Code 54954.2(a) of the Brown Act.

Further, the Chairman did not allow the public to comment on the action the Board voted to take on the two Closed Session items. The Brown Act specifies that the “Public must be given opportunity to comment before or during the legislative body’s consideration of the item. The public testimony requirement appears to apply to Closed Sessions as well as open meetings.” Gov’t. Code 54954.3(a).

Contact the Board and let them know what you think they might do to address these apparent violations:

Aptos/La Selva Fire District Board of Directors c/o Tracy New tracyn@aptosfire.com and specify that you want your letter included in the Board agenda packet and want response (otherwise, it will go nowhere).

LOCAL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS ERRONEOUSLY CITE THE BROWN ACT AS AN EXCUSE TO IGNORE THE PUBLIC’S QUESTIONS
A kind reader pointed out to me last week that the Brown Act cannot be used as an excuse for ignoring public comment and questions at public meetings. Ms. Nancy Abbey kindly questioned County Housing Planner Julie Conway (who happens to sit on the Santa Cruz City Planning Commission, by the way) why the Housing Advisory Commission Chairman continually ignores public comment at the meetings. Ms. Conway quickly replied, “It would violate the Brown Act to address the person because the issue is not on the agenda.”

Well, that is not true.

The Ralph M. Brown Act in fact sets forth legal guidelines to address issues brought forth by the public at open meetings. According to Gov’t. Code 54954.2(a) “The purpose of the discussion is to permit a member of the public to raise an issue or problem with the legislative body or to permit the legislative body to provide information to the public, provide direction to it’s staff , or to schedule the matter for a future meeting.”

So, for example, when I raised the concern at the County Housing Advisory Commission that multiple members had casually admitted that large developers had contacted them to discuss the in lieu affordable housing developer fees up for Commission consideration, Chairman Reed Geisreiter ignored my comment and request for Ex Parte declarations to be required of all Commissioners.

Afterall, I feel the public needs to know when Barry Swenson Builder and other large developers are whispering into the ears of people who advise in making public policy that affects us all.

The issue needs to be placed on the Housing Advisory Commission agenda for the March meeting….maybe you can write to request it, too:

County Housing Advisory Commission c/o Julie Conway julie.conway@santacruzcounty.us

Thanks again to Ms. Nancy Abbey for advocating on behalf of the interested public that public input is indeed valuable and ought to be addressed by the Commission. The Ralph M. Brown Act actually encourages public input and lays the path for transparency in respectfully addressing it.

Hold government officials accountable to addressing public input at meetings.

THIS TRAIN IS BOUND FOR GLORY….
Minnesota-based Progressive Railroad is coming to the County’s rail road line, hoping to re-kindle local agricultural businesses to use rail transport, and to eventually build a special events customer base for passenger rail. Freight service to Watsonville could begin later this year. No discussion, though, about a commuter passenger service. “Storage” is to be interpreted as commodity storage, not an endless row of box car and fuel oil cars parked on the tracks.

I wonder what those other businesses are that Mr. Craig McKenzie, CEO of Progressive, said that he is already courting to set up shop in Watsonville for rail freight service? Will Progressive use their electric locomotives here? Will the local jurisdictions give their blessing to “Quiet Zones” that were written into the Progressive proposal? How will all this affect our beloved and well-established Roaring Camp and Big Trees Railroad local business?

Will the RTC pay to repair the damaged tracks between Watsonville and Aptos? When did the RTC approve this Request for Proposals (RFP) that suddenly appeared with results days after the former rail operator, Iowa Pacific, bowed out? Hmmmm……

The revenue numbers Mr. McKenzie presented are impressive. The company seems willing to invest money into the system. Mr. McKenzie vowed to be transparent with the public and work with interested parties…just like the company did in the Midwest areas when the company started hauling fracking sand. I hope something can finally happen for the rail and trail system our County needs in order to offer additional transportation options. So much money has been wasted on study after study…it is time to get a trail and rail going.

ATTEND THE AMBAG PUBLIC HEARING JANUARY 30 AT SIMPKINS SWIM CENTER (6PM-7PM)
I attended the Santa Cruz Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) Board meeting last week to comment at the Public Hearing regarding the Draft Environmental Impact Report regarding the RTC 2040 Transportation Plan. This document is being shepherded by the Associated Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG), a nebulous regional group currently holding some public hearings on the matter. I wrote about this last week. It is really worth investigation. Several members of the public requested an extended comment period for the document, but the Board refused to grant it. AMBAG is really the lead agency on this document.

Plan to attend the AMBAG public hearing January 30 at the Simpkins Swim Center (the flyer has already re-named it to “the Live Oak Community Center”) at 6pm to learn more about the ‘Moving Monterey Bay Forward’ Draft Plan. Research it in advance on the AMBAG website.

~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.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com

Dateline: Jan 20, 2018 #20 / Mr. Nice Guy?

Whether or not Donald J. Trump and his campaign “colluded” with Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, to influence the 2016 United States presidential election in Trump’s favor, is not yet clear. Many Democrats seem to be extrapolating from smoke to fire, and have made up their minds that there was such collusion, but that isn’t, actually, how our legal system, or even “science,” works. Appearances can be deceiving. Maybe, in this case, they are.

President Trump says there was “no collusion,” and he says that repeatedly! Such repeated denials, of course, mean nothing – particularly taking into account the president’s well-known propensity for prevarication. Still, maybe there really wasn’t any collusion about the election. Maybe money laundering, not campaign assistance, was what was discussed in the various meetings that are now public knowledge. Or, maybe something else was going on! Let’s wait for what radio commentator Paul Harvey used to call “the rest of the story.”

As we do wait for some more definitive word about why Trump family members and campaign representatives were in significant contact with various persons connected to Vladimir Putin and the Russian government, it might be well to consider what kind of a guy Vladimir Putin really is.

Our current president has been known to shower Mr. Putin with fulsome praise. A 2015 book by Garry Kasparov, who was the world’s number-one-ranked chess player for twenty years, presents a contrary view. Kasparov thinks that our president’s words of praise are just one more example of how successful Putin has been in convincing governmental officials in Western democracies (including former President Obama) that Putin is just one more democrat like they are, and that the Russian President is really desirous of being a great partner in various kinds of governmental good works.

Kasparov calls that the “audacity of false hope.” He thinks that Putin is a world class dictator, right up there with Hitler and Stalin, and that we had better wise up before it’s too late. Kasparov’s book is titled, “Winter is Coming,” referencing the popular television series Game of Thrones (and the books that came before that).

Kasparov’s book appeared in my house as a Christmas present, and I’ve just read it. I don’t really know enough about the former Soviet Union, and the current situation in Russia, and in the former parts of the Soviet Union, to be able to evaluate the book in any definitive way. However, when journalists and others who oppose Mr. Putin keep turning up dead, in suspicious circumstances, that is not a good sign.

Our current president is wrong in many ways. I think he is wrong to be praising Putin.
Kasparov makes a good case that Putin is no “Mister Nice Guy!”

Gary 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

CLASSICAL DeCINZO. DeCinzo views the Pope’s latest challenge!! Just below a ways.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s “A wrinkle in time” 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 with his new saga “Sweat Logic”.

SILENT SKY…the play. Jewel Theatre is presenting this play about the women at Harvard from 1920 to the late 30’s who made great astronomical discoveries and had to fight their way through enormous pressures from the man’s world. It plays Jan. 24 through Feb 18 at the Colligan Theater in the Tannery . Tickets and info at their website. www.JewelTheatre.net or 831 425-7506.

LISA JENSEN LINKS. Lisa writes: The powerful #Time’s Up woman’s movement swept through this year’s Golden Globes like a rampaging Fury. What might it portend for this year’s Oscars? Let’s take a look, this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com ). Also — stop the presses! (Gee, I’ve always wanted to say that!) Literally — my publishers (and me, too!) are so delighted with this endorsement from the great Laurie R. King, they’re re-designing the jacket for my new book, Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge, to include it!”

~Lisa has been writing film reviews and columns for Good Times since 1975.

THE PHANTOM THREAD.
Director Paul Thomas Anderson first made Boogie Nights, then topped it with Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, and Inherent Vice. Now there’s Phantom Thread. Daniel Day-Lewis is the star, and watching him and Anderson work together in this one makes it not just a film but an experience. Day-Lewis starred in A Room With A View, My Left Foot, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and became greater and greater with each role. Now he’s promised to never make another film. If that’s true, Phantom Thread is a brilliant masterpiece on which to end a career. It’s the story of a driven, crazed artist who designs women’s clothes…and that’s all you need to know. As critics are saying, it’s not a film for mass audiences, just for those folks who appreciate genius.

I TONYA. A very dark, depressing movie about some very depressed people. It’s got loud rock period music as the film score which almost qualifies it as a fun comedy but you’ll be able to count your laughs. Somewhere in the movie somebody says Americans love to hate or love their current sport stars…and its sure true here. Allison Janney plays Tonya’s seriously disturbed mother and deserves her many Awards this Award season…but not for this one. Warning IF you do got you’ll leave wondering why you cared about Nancy Kerrigan or Tonya Harding.

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer, (live only or archived for two weeks… (See next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. . Dr. Carlos Arcangeli, noted PAMF Urologist, bring us up to date on those problems on Jan.23. He’s followed by UCSC Professor emeritus Ralph Abraham talking about his newest book, “Hip Santa Cruz Vol. 2” about the hip Santa Cruz scene in the 1960’s and 70’s with articles by local veterans. Then on January 30 UCSC Music prof. Linda Burman Hall talks about the 45th annual Santa Cruz Baroque Festival opening February 10. February 6 has Espressivo Orchestra director, conductor Michel Singher talking about their Feb. 15 concert. AND/OR…if you just happen to miss either of the last two weeks of Universal Grapevine broadcasts go here… http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/dj/bruce-bratton You have to listen to about 4 minutes of that week’s KPFA news first, then Grapevine happens. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening. Email me always and only at bratton@cruzio.com

This is Halsey. She spoke at the women’s march in New York City, and it’s a very powerful performance. (TW: rape, sexual assault)

QUOTES. “FLOODS”

“What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What’s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?”. Buddha

“We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear”. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Nobody’s strong enough to stand up under a flood of weak material“, Alan Ladd

“I noticed that volcanoes, earthquakes and floods, though are not good events, they are better than the silence of good people when bad people take the podium. The latter are to an extent uncontrollable, but the former can be stopped”. Israelmore Ayivor,

Snail Mail: Bratton Online
82 Blackburn Street, Suite 216
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Direct email: Bratton@Cruzio.com
Direct phone: 831 423-2468
All Technical & Web details: Gunilla Leavitt @ godmoma@gmail.com

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

Posted in Weekly Articles | Leave a comment

January 16 – 22, 2018

Posted on January 17, 2018 by Bruce

Highlights this week:
Where’s the Revolution, UCSC Students as Immigrants, No on Nissan, Public Cannabis meeting…Greensite on further growth at UCSC…Krohn on MLK March and UCSC Moratorium…Steinbruner and Nisene Marks parking, Nissan EIR on Feb12, Redman-Hirahara and Merriman Houses, Aptos Fire chief news, Soquel Creek and Aptos Village water issue…Patton and 25th amendment and impeachment…DeCinzo and early immigrant problems…Eagan and a national health alert…Munching With Mozart…New Music Works…Radical Mindfulness Class…Jensen and Call Me By Your Name…I critique The Post and Call Me By Your Name…Universal Grapevine guest list….Quotes about MUD.

61 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK ON PACIFIC AVENUE. This is a March Of Dimes Promotion happening at J.J. Newberrys (later Woolworths) store at the corner of Pacific and Walnut streets on January 17,1957. You can see the Bank of America (New Leaf now) right at the corner, and we can almost read the marquee of the Del Mar theatre through the store windows. If you squint carefully you can see quite a few young girls in the group along with the boys.

photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection.

Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

TOMMY SMOTHERS IMITATING JOHNNY CARSON. Just for old timers, who remember these guys.

Bee Gees accompany some North Korean marching and North Korea needs some humor!!!

DATELINE January 15, 2018

WHERE’S THE REVOLUTION? Doesn’t it seem to you, as much as it does to me, that with all the NATIONAL support, fire, eagerness and need to demonstrate, march, and protest in infinite ways… that all we really lack is a leader, to get almost all Americans to really revolt? More than just waiting for the local elections, more than knitting and picking and choosing our local candidates, but aactually revolt…as in REVOLUTION ?

UCSC STUDENTS-OUR IMMIGRANTS! What’s terribly wrong with our reaction to the news that UCSC is estimating 10,000 new students in 22 years? We should be, and mostly are overjoyed that young people are jamming our colleges. It says so much positive good for their hopes and plans and also so much bad about our colleges and our community’s lack of plans and faulty policies. More details follow further down in both Gillian Greensite’s and Chris Krohn’s articles.

NO TO AUTO ROW! Or NIX ON NISSAN!
Bob Morgan is a very community-involved guy. Bob is a former high school English teacher and K-12 principal. He’s active in Climate Action and local transportation issues. Plus he’s also active with Campaign for Sensible Transportation, and now Sustainable Soquel. He emailed to say… “A looming disaster in progress, the 29,000 square foot aesthetic nightmare of a NISSAN car dealership at the corner of 41st and Soquel Dr., is an enormous mistake. This is the proposed site for the OUT OF TOWN (from VISALIA) NISSAN DEALERSHIP OWNER DON GROPETTI’S ITALIAN CREAM-—HIS MAMMOTH NEW AUTO DEALERSHIP. Don Gropetti doesn’t care if he’s from Visalia and helped to make congestion and greenhouse gas emissions worse in the once beautiful San Joaquin Valley with his FIVE auto dealerships, because he now calls his palazzo on Carmel’s 17 Mile Drive home. Oh, that fresh Pacific Ocean air! No worries about his newest venture: it completely DISREGARDS the wishes of the community, so caringly (and dutifully) crafted during community workshops in Soquel. These “community input” sessions that brought out so many car dealership issues and were designed to put together Santa Cruz County’s Planning staff’s “SANTA CRUZ COUNTY SUSTAINABLE PLAN”, now are being laughed at by that same County Planning Department. Re-zone? Change the General Plan?, Ignore the Sustainable Plan?, make a more industrially intense use of the land? No problem, says the County.

Some of the workshop’s lofty tenets were that we need to build community, create connections among residents, and guide our community development with a VISION of mixed retail and housing, walkability and bike-riding along safe roads on a scale suitable for Soquel. I guess former County Economic Developer, BARBARA MASON, and replacement ANDY CONSTABLE, a former real estate developer from San Jose, now living here (new Central Coast residents love being FROM San Jose and Visalia), landed a big county catch — helping to justify Constable’s yearly $250,000 salary and benefits package. So, Soquel Village neighbors will just have to deal with being a regional destination hub for automobile buyers who will come and go, leaving locals in the dust and exhaust, fighting more traffic, noise and glaring LEDs while they stare at the homogenized behemoth at the gateway to their village, and wonder what could have been. What about all that “community input” to create the Santa Cruz County Sustainable Plan? So much for “sustaining” the unique community zeitgeist of Soquel. Heck, soon enough we might even look like Visalia and San Jose — seen one auto dealership, seen ’em all. The project has some ways to go before final Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors’ approval, so we can still RESIST this mistake by telling our County Board of Supervisors, NO. Instead, respect the community-generated Santa Cruz County Sustainable Plan and keep our trust. Trust in community needs to be the Supervisors’ mantra. (Are you listening, John Leopold?) Email, write or call your County Supervisor if you care what happens to our community. It’s a bad idea for Soquel. It’s time to BOYCOTT NISSAN. Say NO to Auto Row!”

CANNABIS MEETING FOR EVERYONE. Jim Coffis, the deputy director of Green Trade which is “a coalition of Cannabis Businesses” sent this press release Monday Jan. 15…

THE FUTURE OF CANNABIS IN SANTA CRUZ COUNTY
A public meeting on the future of cannabis in the County of Santa Cruz will be held Wednesday evening, January 24, at the Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean Street in Santa Cruz beginning at 7 pm. Hosted by a coalition of cannabis advocates, representing consumers, patients, caregivers, environmentalists, small growers and others involved in the local cannabis trade, the meeting is open to the public. The imminent release of the million dollar, year long, Environmental Impact Report on commercial cannabis is expected to renew the debate on the shape of local regulations. The Board of Supervisors is expected to take up the issue in early February.

Learn about your existing rights, current and proposed state and local regulations, and the economic viability and impact of cannabis in our community. Hear about the short and long-term future and how it will affect access, availability, cost, production and the environment.

Advocates supporting improved access to medical and adult use products and licenses; best farming practices; environmental improvement and social justice will share their insights.

Experts will be on hand for one on one advice on the regulatory process, consumer rights, and best practices. Leaders and luminaries from the local cannabis community will speak on the current state of affairs and the next steps that need to be taken. All interested stakeholders are invited to explore available options to ensure the preservation of our unique and rich cannabis heritage in this new era of legalization”.

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.

Dateline (January 15, 2018)

TIME FOR AN ENROLLMENT CAP
As locals opened their newspapers on January 13th I imagined a collective community gasp of dismay at the headline: UCSC plans for sizeable growth.” The impacts of current UCSC growth on its host town of Santa Cruz are as obvious as a poke in the eye and no less painful: escalating rents; local families outbid by groups of students and gridlock traffic. On campus, the negative impacts from UCSC growth are also painful: escalating rents; shortage of bed space; overcrowded classrooms, buses, facilities and resources. Only those at the top isolated in their ivory tower would fail to conclude that further increases in student enrollment are unsustainable, for the town, for the students and for the unique natural environment of the Cowell Ranch, site of UCSC, itself.

In response to the impacts of the current level of student enrollment, the Chancellor retorted: “the notion that we’re going to cap enrollment and live with a capped enrollment is simply not realistic in the world we live in.” A “pipe dream.” While I have long admired the current chancellor, that is until he falsified a state audit at the request of UC president Napolitano, I found his comment dismissive at best. Or maybe we do live in distinctly different realities. Ours is one of financial uncertainty, ever -rising rents, dislocated low wage, local workers, traffic nightmares and strained resources. His is one of expanding graduate programs and a larger UCSC as a prominent research institution. This departure from the original vision for UCSC as a predominantly undergraduate campus no doubt has its cheerleaders. At some point however the rubber hits the road and the chancellor’s reality has to grapple with finite limits and real life impacts of such growth.

A familiar refrain to justify continued growth at UCSC is that demand for a UC education is growing. This is true and has been for the last two decades. It is also why a new campus was funded and built as UC Merced. The University of California is a system of ten campuses and a student is guaranteed a first class education at each and every campus. Commonsense dictates that if growth at one campus is negatively impacting the finite resources of its host community then further growth could and should be directed towards a campus whose enrollment is under 7,000 students. Arguments that students would prefer to live in Santa Cruz rather than Merced are outweighed not only by the exorbitant rents in Santa Cruz but also because we are beyond carrying capacity on every meaningful measure of quality of life. You notice that UC Merced is rarely raised in discussions about UCSC growth impacts. The reason for that omission has less to do with concerns about student preferences for the coast and more about faculty and department jostling for greater resources and power, in my opinion. In other words, concern about growth impacts on our town doesn’t enter the picture. Nor, apparently does concern for the natural environment of this former Cowell Ranch. The proposal to locate the proposed 3000 beds (2100 are new, 900 are to relieve current overcrowded dorms) on the meadow at the corner of Hagar and Coolidge Drives may not arouse concern for those who see just acreage to build on, but for those who know the invaluable and unique natural environment that encompasses UCSC and which is a treasure for study, research and preservation, it is a sad departure from the founding values and vision for UCSC. Nor will such public/private building on campus lower rents for students on or off campus, let alone non-student residents in town since ten thousand more students on campus means five thousand of them will be living off-campus. If you think things are bad now…just wait. But waiting is what we cannot afford to do.

Our elected representatives at the city, county and state level must make it clear to the Regents and the Office of the President that a cap on enrollment at UCSC is critical for our survival as a community. And for those elected who have a conflict of interest because of ties to UCSC, remember which end of the hill you were elected to represent”.

(Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, former Santa Cruz City Councilmember (1998-2002) and Mayor (2001-2002). He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 12 years. He was elected last November to another 4-year term on the Santa Cruz City Council).
Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

Dateline January 15.2018

2 TWO Photos of the week.

Cooper Street closed for the large march on MLK Day! Over 2000 marched.

Super community activist, Ernestina Saldana holds her “Bell of Freedom” award, given to her this past Sunday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Justly and richly deserved. Si se puede!

January 15 2018

“The notion that we’re going to cap enrollment and live with a capped enrollment is simply not realistic in the world we live in,” (UCSC Chancellor George) Blumenthal said at a news meeting Thursday. “I think it’s a pipe dream, because the demand for the UC education is increasing by leaps and bounds.”

—Santa Cruz Sentinel, 1-12-18

We call it a moratorium, you call it a cap, let’s call the whole thing off!

UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal named the elephant in the room last week and yes, it’s a 10,000-pound one! In a community of 60,000, ten thousand more students are really a lot. You heard right, Blumenthal’s opening salvo at our UCSC-city community is a Long-Range Development Plan that will add a whopping 10,000 additional bodies to Santa Cruz and grow the university to 28,000. Will Santa Cruz become a university with a city somewhere on the campus? Will campus growth effectively create a Town dressed up and encased in a towering Gown? Twenty-eight thousand is a figure not even envisioned by the most dreamy and visionary planners way back in the day.

The 28,000 number seems to have been thrown out by an ambivalent bureaucracy that is playing perhaps an unwitting part in the deterioration of a once great coastal town. UC Administrators on the hill are either afraid to tell their bosses in Oakland the hard truth that there is no more room at the inn, or are they just resigned to a different truth that California students must go somewhere so why not here? Perhaps, this figure is an early trial balloon, put out by the administration to see how much pushback there might be by townies, student activists, county supervisors, and city councilmembers? No one I know does not want all California children to experience a UC education, but this UC city is maxed out. There are nine other campuses and the state legislature ought to be planning for even more. The city of Santa Cruz, given its size, resources, and carrying capacity has reached its limit. No más after 19,500.

T-W-E-N-T-Y E-I-G-H-T T-H-O-U-S-A-N-D Students?
I’m a member of CAG, the Community Advisory Group of 22 that was set up by the university to advise on the 2020 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) process. The LRDP is the university’s “general plan” document and its already begun in earnest some two years before it is due to be submitted to the UC Regents. Chancellor Blumenthal and his assistant, Executive Vice Chancellor, Marlene Tromp who is mostly responsible for the UCSC budget, spoke to our group last Friday and dropped the bombshell: T-W-E-N-T-Y-E-I-G-H-T T-H-O-U-S-A-N-D. It was not received well by most of the CAG. Although the Chancellor offered an olive branch when he said, “This needs to be a meaningful group (CAG) that provides meaningful input,” and then proceeded to pan the 2005 UCSC administration for not asking for enough community involvement back then. Blumenthal said, “I was struck by how little input there was from the community, it showed a lack of sensitivity on the part of campus.” Strong sentiments. I’m glad he wants to know our perspective, but those present wondered in various ways if things would be any different this time around, and if our community input would actually be taken seriously. After Blumenthal and Tromp left the room the CAG members were directed to pair up “with someone you don’t know,” and discuss our “core concerns” and be ready to report back to the group what those concerns are. We were limited to three. I immediately sought out someone who I thought might be my political opposite and there across the room was the former Sentinel editor, California secretary of state, assembly member, and current member of the Santa Cruz board of supervisors, Bruce McPherson. Turns out he and I share some similar concerns about university growth. We both liked it that the “U” wanted the community engaged in the LRDP process, but we were surprised by the 10,000-growth figure and wondered if it was simply a negotiating tool. Both of us agreed we want to see what resources UC will contribute to support these students before they arrive to our community. Financial resources that would cover their growth in the areas of housing, transportation, and water McPherson said. Moving around the large set of tables that formed a horseshoe at the Museum of Art and History downtown, each CAG member stated their “core concerns,” and they didn’t sound too supportive of growing the university more. I note a few of those concerns here:

Ted Benhari of Bonny Doon and the Committee to Limit University Growth (CLUE) said his concerns were the “quality of life impacts on the community and maintaining the urban services line…” Bill Tysseling, retired and the former Exec. Dir. of Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce said, “Funding of infrastructure, and an eastern access [road] has to occur or we have to keep everyone on campus.”Cynthia Mathews, Santa Cruz city councilmember noted that “UCSC will completely dominate…basically you will have a company town. We need to avoid a monoculture.”John Aird, Healthcare Executive and CLUE member was emphatic, “Fifty-percent growth is flat-out unacceptable.”Andy Schiffrin an Aide in Supervisor Ryan Coonerty’s office and also a Santa Cruz political observer for over 40 years said, “Input is meaningless without accountability…it would take a legislative solution…it’s a political problem that we have…”Robert Orrizzi said the university must “stop growth until beds are on-line because the currently planned 3000 beds will not be going in until 2020, so don’t grow anymore until those are in place.”

“An LRDP is like a city’s general plan. It designates areas of campus for certain types of use: open space, for example, or housing. It does not mandate growth.” (my emphasis)

–Chancellor George Blumenthal, Jan. 12, 2018

Pipe Dreams Revisited: “Ain’t no power like the power of the people and the power of the people don’t stop!

The community is calling for a moratorium on student growth until city services can catch up in the areas of housing, traffic, and water infrastructure. A five-year moratorium sounds about right. Blumenthal was quoted in the Santa Cruz Sentinel last week calling a cap on enrollment “a pipe dream.” Well, since we have a lot of dreamers in this town, we get called a lot of names. Pipe dreams are something we know about. Stopping a good-ole-boy convention hotel on Lighthouse Field was once considered a pipe dream; voters dreamed of approving the purchase of greenbelt lands–a choice of taxing ourselves to buy open space was pipe dreamy; stopping developers from building 10,000 homes on Wilder Ranch was at first an activist pipe dream; preserving the Beach Flats Community Garden for the community is still in the “pipe dream” stages, a work in progress. And of course, there was everybody’s favorite little pipe dream that would just not go away, the legalization of first, medical marijuana and now complete legalization. Some pipe dreams just will not die. This community’s been known to dream big. One might also ask which is the bigger pipe dream, a moratorium on accepting more students beyond the current cap of 19,500, or allowing ten thousand additional bodies to migrate here from all parts of California and beyond, to an already crowded Surf City? Will they be told there is no more housing here? Hey Regents, game on.

Bernie Tweet of the Week;
“Republicans in Congress must now summon the courage to stand up to the racist ramblings of our “stable genius” president. Democratic and Republican senators must continue efforts to produce a bi-partisan Dream Act to be voted on by the Senate as part of the overall budget deal.” (Jan. 12)

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.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY PLANNING DEPARTMENT APPROVES APTOS VILLAGE PROJECT PHASE 2…SAN JOSE AT THE ENTRANCE TO NISENE MARKS STATE PARK?
On January 10, County Planner Randall Adams quietly approved the massive building design and use changes for Phase 2 of the Aptos Village Project that will, if built, create a San Jose-like character at the very entrance to Nisene Marks State Park and further aggravate existing near-gridlock traffic. The modifications allow three-story structures throughout in Buildings 1,2,8,9,10 located behind the Aptos Station commercial area. I only learned that it had been approved when I had time to visit the Planning Department Records Room January 11 (Thursday) just before the 4pm closing to the public. Last week when I visited there, no Aptos Village Project records were available to review except the proposed Phase 2 modifications…but nothing else with which to compare them in order to determine the exact nature of the proposed modifications.

How can the public comment on modifications when it is not clear exactly how the Project is being modified? I wrote Assistant Planning Director, Wanda Williams (you may recall that Planning Director Kathy Previsich has recused herself from involvement because she and her husband have financially benefitted from the Project) and Project Planner Randall Adams to ask, but neither replied. Neither replied to my question about how the general public can review the material if unable to visit the Planning Department Records Room during the limited hours it is open to the public. I figured out on my own that if one visits the County Planning Department website, click on the left hand menu bar “Pending Projects”, click on “Level 4 Discretionary Projects” and then search for Application #171292 and click on the application number, the material is there. Here is the link to what comes up.

In order to compare those plans with what PREVIOUS Discretionary Approvals have morphed the Project, one must find the materials for Application # 151005, which massively changed the layout of the Project and may have changed some of the building designs, too. That is what Randall Adams approved in 2015 that changed the layout of the new Aptos Village Way internal street and necessitated dividing Building 6 into two buildings 6A and 6B to flank the new road at Trout Gulch, moved the Soquel Creek Water District’s new Granite Way Well site location to the corner of Trout Gulch Road /Cathedral Drive (where the clay layer is so deep that production will be minimal), reduced the size of the County Park Parcel (which allowed the County to waive the $1000/bedroom park developer fees for the 144 bedrooms), added an additional 6 residential units but did not increase the number of affordable units, reduced the number of parking spaces near the County Park Parcel (the Planner recommended just adding more to the on-street parking along Aptos Creek Road), and other massive changes that PROBABLY CONSTITUTED A NEW PROJECT.

One might also wonder about the CEQA Addendum quietly approved April 3, 2017 as part of Application 171095 that greatly altered the configuration of Aptos Creek Road and Soquel Drive areas to accommodate the Aptos Village Project traffic. That was all hidden under the “Change in Historic Preservation Plan” document and subsequently-related CEQA Addendum on page 17, for which the Board of Supervisors refused to hear an appeal of the approval made by the County Historic Resources Commission. All of those road improvements are being funded by public money, thanks to the County Department of Public Works and the Santa Cruz Regional Transportation Commission.

ISN’T THIS A GIFT OF PUBLIC FUNDS to the Aptos Village LLC developers? I wonder if the California Transportation Commission would be interested in this, as the final approving agency for these public money RTIP Grants?

I happened to find this information while looking through the file for the Aptos Village Project Phase 2 building modifications on January 11. It was noted “ADDENDUMS TO A PROJECT NEED NOT BE CIRCULATED FOR PUBLIC REVIEW.” Wow. Where is the government transparency???? Where can one find this material? Not anywhere on the Planning Department’s website. that I can find. I have asked Wanda Williams for an appointment to explain the exact nature of the RECENTLY APPROVED Phase 2 building modifications (Planner Randall Adams refused to meet with me when I asked him last week while visiting the Records Room). Ms Williams has not responded.

I have written County Supervisor Zach Friend to ask for a public meeting to discuss these proposed changes….he has not responded. Where is the government transparency here???? Where is the leadership?

The appeal window closes January 24. I have written Wanda Williams to ask for an extension due to the four-day closure of the County Planning Department Records Room and associated lack of public ability to review the Aptos Village Project materials. I WILL BE CALLING A COMMUNITY MEETING BEFORE JANUARY 24 TO UPDATE PEOPLE ABOUT WHAT THIS ALL MEANS FOR APTOS, AND START COLLECT MONEY FOR LEGAL FEES.

Stay tuned and please contact me at 831-685-2915 if you want to help (make sure to leave your phone number in the message) or e-mail me at KI6TKB@yahoo.com and put “Aptos Village Appeal” in the subject line.

I will be speaking at the Live Oak Grange Wednesday, January 17 at 7pm with other community activists who want to share their knowledge and research about what is really going on in Santa Cruz County and City.

NISSAN DEALERSHIP PROJECT NEAR SOQUEL VILLAGE PUBLIC COMMENT EXTENDED ON DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORT (EIR) TO FEBRUARY 12
Probably due to public outcry, the public comment period for the proposed Nissan Dealership for 41st Avenue and Soquel Drive has been extended to February 12. Here is a link to the document.

When I tried to search the Planning Department website for the Draft EIR, I could not find it. Here is all that seems available when searching under APN 030-121-027 (the only parcel in the proposed Project that seems to have a link to the Project Application #171179 (note lack of link to Draft EIR info.)

Here is a link to a YouTube video regarding the proposed Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StM6TsdQZ7g

Once again, the public must demand better government transparency. Luckily, there are copies of this document available in public libraries. How come that has not happened for the Aptos Village Project documents?

Contact Supervisor John Leopold about the Nissan Dealership and other massive developments planned for the Capitola Road area as well as 7th & Brommer: John Leopold john.leopold@santacruzcounty.us or phone 454-2200. He has constituent hours on Wednesdays 5:30-6:30pm at Porter Library (1st Wed.) and People’s Coffee on 17th (2nd Wed.) and Summit School (3rd Wed.).

Contact Supervisor Zach Friend about the Aptos Village Project: Zach Friend zach.friend@santacruzcounty.us or phone 454-2200. He sometimes has constituent hours on Wednesdays 9am-10am at the Aptos Sheriff Station or Corralitos Fire Station, but you are more likely to find one of his aides, Patrick Mulhearn or Alyson Violante there.

COUNTY HISTORIC RESOURCES COMMISSION MEETING CANCELLED DUE TO POTENTIAL BROWN ACT VIOLATION.
The County Planning Department still has not bothered to update the website for the Historic Resources Commission meeting schedule but had planned to hold a meeting anyway on January 8 to discuss important topics such as removing the Redman-Hirahara house and farm from the National Historic Registry so it could be demolished, how to bulldoze the historic Merriman House in Live Oak, and the first-ever “Annual Report to the State Historic Preservation Office”. No one on the automatic notification list for this Commission’s meetings was notified.

I am glad that Planner Annie Murphy decided the evening before this critical meeting was to take place that it should be cancelled….and notified those who are on her automatic notification list that the meeting was cancelled. Had it taken place, it would have been in violation of the Ralph M. Brown Act, which requires at least 72 hours advance notice of all public meetings with the agenda being made available to the public. If you would like to be added to this notification list for future County Historic Resources Commission meetings (and cancellations), contact Annie Murphy annie.murphy@santacruzcounty.us and ask to be added immediately to the list.

“GET OFF THIS PROPERTY. THIS IS NOT A PUBLIC MEETING.”
That is what the handful of public members who showed up last Tuesday morning to support Aptos/La Selva Fire Captain Ryan Peters was told by a man who, once questioned, identified himself as Allan Smith. I knew the name…he is legal counsel for Aptos/La Selva Fire District. We were not obstructing the passage into the building. We had no signs. We were just standing there (three of us) outside the entry to Grunsky Law Offices, staying out of the rain.

I had already asked inside for permission to wait outside the door, and had been given approval by the receptionist. We did not want to do anything to harm Captain Peters’ Skelly Hearing outcome, so we all stood out at the sidewalk under umbrellas and greeted him when he arrived. The hearing lasted over two hours. Results will be forthcoming as to whether the Board of Director’s recommendation to DEMOTE Captain Peters to Firefighter/Paramedic will be approved or if the whole disgusting retaliatory act against him will be dropped.

AMAZINGLY, FORMER CHIEF JON JONES SHOWED UP AT THE BOARD MEETING LAST THURSDAY. He casually shook hands with the Board before the meeting, glanced over the agenda, and left after about 10 minutes. Wow. During later closed session, the Board heard recommendations from their consultant regarding interviews for the new Chief. I stayed to hear the report, but was given no public comment opportunity and could not get many answers after the meeting was quickly adjourned.

SOQUEL CREEK WATER DISTRICT CONTINUES TO ALLOW QUESTIONABLE WATER SERVICE CONNECTION IN APTOS VILLAGE PROJECT BUT QUICKLY REMOVES OTHERS.
I reported a questionable water service connection on Redwood Drive in Aptos to Soquel Creek Water District last week. The 1″ black polyethylene pipe connected to the unmetered 2″ metal water pipe without backflow prevention became visible when the adjacent resident did some defensible space vegetation clearing. WITHIN TWO DAYS, the District workman had removed both the metal service connection and the black poly pipe that snaked up the hill to an unknown destination (maybe a large marijuana farm?).

I was amazed the District acted SO QUICKLY when they are so loathe to take action on similar unmetered service connections without contamination prevention devices being used within the Aptos Village Project and that have been repeatedly reported.

Last summer, a Soquel Creek Water District ratepayer and I both reported illegal, unmetered and potentially-contaminating water hook-ups that we observed in use within the Aptos Village Project along Granite Way and also at Pete Testorff’s new building next to the Bayview Hotel where he demolished the historic Aptos Firehouse. The District did nothing, the General Manager Ron Duncan merely replying “Thank you for notifying us. We are taking appropriate action.” But the connections remained in use.

Finally, when the ratepayer asked at a Board meeting for an explanation, Director Bruce Daniels told him “You can ask all the questions you want but you cannot demand answers.” One Board member then asked Ron Duncan about what was happening. He then admitted that it was an unauthorized connection but that since one of the developers had been paying a bill for a connection in the area, it was all okay. Really??? The Board accepted that answer without further question. (Later, Chairman Tom LaHue approached me after the meeting and, in front of public witnesses, called me a LIAR.)
Well, that Granite Way connection was covered in dirt the next day, but the connection at Testorff’s area remains. Ask Soquel Creek Water District Board of Directors to explain this discrepancy in policy:

Board of Directors c/o Karen Reese karenr@soquelcreekwater.org

“CONNECT THE DROPS” REGIONAL WATER WORKSHOP SCHEDULED FOR FEBRUARY 1 AT NEW BRIGHTON MIDDLE SCHOOL
Mark your calendar for this “State of the Groundwater” educational event sponsored by Santa Cruz County Local Area Formation Commission Office (LAFCO). It will be held at New Brighton Middle School in Capitola, 6pm-8pm, with a keynote speaker from the State Dept. of Water Resources featured along with representatives of all local water agencies.

It is unknown if the public will be given any time for PUBLIC question and answer, or whether people will be directed (as was the case at the last similar event) to tables of interest. I hope the people will be able to ask questions publicly because last time, when the second option occurred, the place became so chaotic you had to shout to be heard when asking a question at one of the informational tables. I expect we will hear glowing reports from Soquel Creek Water District about their “preferred project” PureWater Soquel and plans to inject treated sewage water into the area’s groundwater supply….against public protest. How can this District boast of “Transparency Awards”???

I hope to see you there…I’ll be handing out information about the “Water for Santa Cruz” group who seeks to find a solution to the area’s water distribution issues that won’t risk health and safety problems and that ratepayers can afford.
Happy Martin Luther King Day….we will continue to uphold and continue to fight for that Dream

~Becky

#14/ Before It’s Too Late?

Dateline January 14, 2018

“Just How Stupid Is Trump?” That’s the title of an opinion piece published on January 8, 2018, by Robert Reich. Reich served as Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, and is now employed by the University of California. He is, besides holding down his university position, a prominent political pundit. Reich doesn’t think that President Trump is necessarily stupid, but he does think that our president poses “a clear and present danger to America and the world.”

Reich concludes his article by saying:

The 25th Amendment must be invoked before it’s too late.

The 25th Amendment is pretty complicated. Click the link if you would like a briefing on how it works. My own sense is that neither the 25th Amendment nor an impeachment of the president is going to rescue the nation (and the world). This is also the conclusion of The New York Times editorial board. On January 10th, quite possibly in direct response to what Reich said, The Times ran an editorial with the following title: “Is Mr. Trump Nuts?”

Is he “nuts,” or is he “stupid,” and what should we do about it? The Times evaluates both impeachment and the use of the 25th Amendment, and comes to the following conclusion, which I believe is right on target:

The best solution is the simplest: Vote, and organize others to register and to vote. If you believe Donald Trump represents a danger to the country and the world, you can take action to rein in his power. In November, you can help elect members of Congress who will fight Mr. Trump’s most dangerous behaviors. If that fails, there’s always 2020.

The fact that we have placed a highly unsuitable person in charge of the Executive Branch of our government does not mean that we our normal governmental processes are no longer functional. In fact, they are!

CLASSICAL DeCINZO. The more than omniscient DeCinzo gives us an inside view of Immigrant issues…see below.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s “National Health Alert#13” 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 provocative “Roll of The Dice” in his Eaganblog.

MUNCHING WITH MOZART THURSDAY.
The MWM concert series presents The Wild Coast Brass. The Wild Coast Brass features Kevin Jordan, Trumpet-Charles Old, Trumpet- Ruth Jordan, Horn-Steve Mortensen, Trombone and James Paoletti onTuba. They’ll play Arthur Frackenpohl’s Brass Quintet, Don Sweete’s Mouse and the Elephant (Trumpet/Tuba Duet), J. S. Bach’s Fugue XI, WTC I (Low Brass Trio) from Well-Tempered Brass Quintet, Anthony Plog’s Trio for Brass (Trumpet/Horn/Trombone),Traditional pieceThe Water is Wide, then Jose Carli’s Estampas and closing with Kevin McKee’s Escape. The concert is free and happens Thursday, January 18th 12:10 – 12:50 Santa Cruz Public Library Downtown Branch – Upstairs Meeting Room.

NEW MUSIC WORKS-DEFINITELY!!!
For 39 years The New Music Works has created some of the most new music of our time. Now they say, “Nocturnal sonic emissions arising from next door-to-abroad, by living, tax-paying composers! A powerhouse line-up including four world premieres and a special line-up of guest artists.” Performing on Feb. 3rd will be Sheila Willey, soprano, UCSC Guitar Ensemble, NewMusicWorks Ensemble, Philip Collins, conductor, Barry Phillips Ostinato for Elly (2016) clarinet, bassoon trumpet, trombone, marimba, piano, violin, double bass and Michael McGushin A Queer Alphabet, (2017) text by Gertrude Stein, (world premiere)s soprano, flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, cello, double bass, harp, piano, percussion Heila Willey.

At 6 p.m. there’ll be a 45-minute Panel Discussion involving all seven of the evening’s featured composers.

Buy Your Tickets Now! Sponsored by the Cabrillo College Music Department it happens SATuRdAy, FEbRuARy 3, 7:30Pm
barbara Samper Recital Hall
cabrillo college, Aptos, cA

RADICAL MINDFULNESS CLASS.
Carla Brennan has studied and taught Mindfulness for decades. I’ve been attending her weekly sessions and her classes for a few years…and If you’ve wondered about Mindfulness or need to know more Carla says;” Radical mindfulness is the practice of being unconditionally present to life as it arises, to completely be here now. Rather than living with true wakefulness and awareness, most of us are engaged in an endless struggle to control and limit our experience. We resist feeling our basic aliveness and contract around patterns of fear and confusion. Our meditation practice may become yet another attempt to control what we feel. We discover that beyond this futile struggle is an untapped capacity for clear knowing and compassion” Her 5 week one night per week class is titled…” Radical Mindfulness: The Art of Being Alive”
5-week class, Jan. 31, Feb. 7, 14, 21, 28 Wednesdays, 6:30 -8:30, 920F 41st Ave, Santa Cruz, CA 95062 Registration required. Space is limited. Please only register if you can attend at least 4 of the 5 classes. To register, go to EVENTBRITE. More information

LISA JENSEN LINKS. Lisa writes: “The awards season kicks off with a few front-running Oscar contenders, this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com/). Also, please share your thoughts on authors rating their own books on Goodreads (useful or shameless?), and check out this week’s Good Times for my review of the sensual coming-of-age drama, Call Me By Your Name.” Lisa has been writing film reviews and columns for Good Times since 1975.

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME. No matter where you’re at sexually, this film deals beautifully with a young 17 year old boy in Italy working his way through his sexual coming of age. Armie Hammer plays the 30 year old scholarly hunk who visits the kid’s parents. You remember Armie Hammer, heir to the Armand Hammer oil fortune, and who played The Lone Ranger to Johnny Depp’s Tonto (2013)!!!

THE POST. This is Steven Spielberg’s answer to the Trump administration’s corruption and misuse of presidential power. Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks rip up the acting, as we expect them to do. It’s the story of the — then little — Washington Post trying to catch up to The New York Times, printing Daniel Elsberg’s Vietnam exposure papers. It makes easy parallels to Nixon and Trump’s dictatorships. It also makes great pitches for freedom of the press…and what we need to do to keep that freedom alive…especially now. Go see it, bring your friends. But truthfully, it’s not as interesting or revealing as the MSNBC documentary two weeks ago… “The Most Dangerous Man In America” — which is the same story from Elsberg’s view.

DARKEST HOUR. Gary Oldman takes the role of Winston Churchill to new heights…and depths. Its world War II history and it’s the background story of what Churchill had to endure when he first took office as Prime Minister. He deserves the Oscar like few stars ever have. The story is absorbing, educational, and it makes you wonder why the USA doesn’t have someone like Churchill to handle Trump like Churchill handled Hitler and Mussolini.

ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD. This movie will forever change your reaction to the Getty Museum in Malibu…trust me. And, you’ve probably read that this movie was completely finished with Kevin Spacey in the lead role of J. Paul Getty, then with Spacey’s sex problems looming so large they completely re-filmed the part and replaced Spacey with Christopher Plummer. Ridley Scott directed it, and of course he directed Alien, The Martian, Into The Storm and other big box office hits. Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg are the other stars. It’s a cruel, nearly true story about how J.Paul wouldn’t give Italian kidnappers any ransom money when they kidnapped his grandson. I felt far removed from the film, and never identified with anyone in the plot. It was cold, well filmed, and credibly acted but it never drew me into feeling anything for anyone involved.

THE DISASTER ARTIST. A curious movie, a very curious movie about the making of what has become known by critics and the public as the worst movie ever filmed. That movie is “The Room“. James Franco and his brother Dave Franco are the leads. Zac Efron and Seth Rogen are in it too but there are not that many laughs. If you’re not careful you’ll start pitying just about everyone in the film for being so desperate just to make a movie. I began to like or appreciate it about 20 minutes before it ended. The closing credits are a must watch to be believed item.

DOWNSIZING.Matt Damon plays a guy who for might be considered an environmental move agrees to be reduced to about 5 inches tall and go live in a Truman’s Show type world with other shrinkees. It’s cute, pointless, and feel good. No genuine issues or meanings are dealt with ‘ Nasty ol’ Christoph Waltz plays his usual smirking, almost nazi-like character and Kristen Wiig plays Damon’s wife until she decides NOT to get shrunk. Save your money, subscribe to Netflix and watch Black Mirror instead.

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer, (live only or archived for two weeks… (See next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. We learn about the problems of the proposed Nissan Dealership in Soquel from Bob Morgan and Lisa Sheridan and how many of the citizens are opposed to it. Then activist, conservationist, columnist Gillian Greensite talks about local politics. Dr. Carlos Arcangeli, noted Urologist, bring us up to date on those problems on Jan.23. He’s followed by UCSC Professor emeritus Ralph Abraham talking about his newest book, “Hip Santa Cruz Vol. 2” about that scene with articles by local veterans. Then on January 30 UCSC Music prof. Linda Burman Hall talks about the 45th annual Santa Cruz Baroque Festival opening February 10. OR…if you just happen to miss either of the last two weeks of Universal Grapevine broadcasts go here… http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/dj/bruce-bratton You have to listen to about 4 minutes of that week’s KPFA news first, then Grapevine happens. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening. Email me always and only at bratton@cruzio.com

This speaks for itself, I think 🙂

QUOTES. “MUD”
“Every struggle is like mud – there are always some lotus seeds waiting to sprout”, Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
“Maturity is when you no longer get the urge to make snow angels in mud season”, Josh Stern,
“Spend your time with the people who talk about the stars because to whichever place you put your mind in, you will move to that place! Stars pull you to the stars; mud pulls you to the mud!” Mehmet Murat ildan
“You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That’s a part of it“, Denzel Washington
“He who slings mud generally loses ground”. Adlai E. Stevenson
“They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies”. Orson Welles
“I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle”. Barry Goldwater

Snail Mail: Bratton Online
82 Blackburn Street, Suite 216
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Direct email: Bratton@Cruzio.com
Direct phone: 831 423-2468
All Technical & Web details: Gunilla Leavitt @ godmoma@gmail.com

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

Posted in Weekly Articles | Leave a comment

January 10 – 16, 2018

Posted on January 11, 2018 by Bruce

Highlights this week:
B.A.P. Store news, Swenson Suites at 1547 Pacific, Oprah for President?, My cannabis store visit… “GILLIAN GREENSITE is off the grid for a week so no piece this issue. Back as usual next week…CHRIS KROHN and Federal Power locally, Immigration, rent stabilization, end corridor plan, housing, homeless issues, public library moving…BECKY STEINBRUNER on Rancho Del Mar, property tax rising, AMBAG questions, Nisene Marks parking…GARY PATTON about a digital Republic, and the loss of personal data online…DECINZO and historic rainy days…TIM EAGAN and Deep Cover…LISA JENSEN and I Tonya…Santa Cruz Chamber Players…8 tens @ 8…I critique Molly’s Game, I Tonya, The Disaster Artist, Downsizing…Quotes about January.

SOQUEL AND BRANCIFORTE 1960. Why is it that even with all the changes in the last 58 years, we can still identify where this corner is? Sure it’s now Bay Photo Lab, Solar Technologies, and the good old Shoppers Corner and the Buttery. Look closely and you’ll see that the Auto Float Tire Store was selling gas for 30 cents per gallon!

photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection.

Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

EMMY AWARDS WITH TIM CONWAY & HARVEY CORMAN.

DEAN MARTIN with FOSTER BROOKS. Ralph Davila with his acute humor found this gem

BETTE MIDLER SINGS UKULELE LADY. Always been one of my favorite songs. Our Goodtime Washboard 3 performed it for years.

DATELINE January 8, 2018

BRITISH AUTO PARTS ON UPPER PACIFIC. In a small side question last week relating to the historic photo of the Town Square from high atop the hill at Mission and Pacific, I asked if anyone knew what the visible sign stating B.A.P meant. Some great responses came in…here’s the best…Will Roblin says: “I went to a wonderful BAR in that area in 1973 – The United. [Not sure if it’s got anything to do with this photo!; United might have been further away from Tea Cup, but that’s the correct side of the street.] Sign on the wall said: “BE GOOD OR BE GONE”; some very mellow, creative types could be found there. It was good (no frills, open atmosphere) but it’s still gone.

The Holgers wrote, “Bruce — Years ago an outfit named British Auto Parts went by that acronym. It purveyed MG and Austin Healy stuff in that era. Who knows?”

Mike Hess wrote, “Could not find out what B.A.P. stands for but attached is a newspaper clipping from 1965. It was a transmission shop. Always look forward to Bratton on-line!

Historian and author Stan Stevens wrapped it all up when he emailed saying…

“It appears that B.A.P. moved to a Front St. location at the start of its Santa Cruz branch operation in 1963. They had 16 other locations. Then, after the death of its manager in March 1964, they moved to North Pacific Avenue in Sept. 1964”. He attached a photo of another ad from The Santa Cruz Sentinel from Friday, April 29, 1966…here it is….

WAFFLING ON SWENSONS SUITES ON PACIFIC. The vote’s been taken, and Santa Cruz City councilmembers Sandy Brown and Chris Krohn’s pleas to make some of Swenson’s suites at 1547 Pacific affordable got outvoted. It’s a tragedy that — over and over again — our City Council majorities vote in favor of giving developers what they ask for, or what will “pencil out” over humane and usually undeniable civil rights to fair housing. Then again, I must say it’s been 29 — that’s twenty nine — years since the 1989 earthquake took out the Bookshop Santa Cruz and The Pacific Coffee Roasting buildings, and the resultant hole has not been all that much to look at…or think about. Especially since they took out that “suspended sidewalk” that took us to the parking lot that was behind it. In addition to retail space on the street level, the new Swenson monthly rents will consist of 2 bedroom units at $3,7000, 1 bedrooms at $2,500 and studios for $2,000 yes…per month. Those figures will undoubtedly shift upward. So yes, the council’s developer-kissing will be forgotten with a big ribbon cutting ceremony, probably by Mayor Martine Watkins in 2019. And Pacific Avenue will once again look more like a town that never had an earthquake.

MY FIRST POT/CANNABIS SHOP VISIT. It’s been decades since paying $5 for a matchbox of pot or $15 for a lid in and around Berkeley in the 50s. Taking Jim Coffis from Green Trade Santa Cruz’s advice, I went to the Treehouse, which labels itself “A full service cannabis dispensary”. It’s located at 3651 Soquel Drive, the former Senate Mattress store. It’s way upscale, much closer to an elegant jewelry store than a CVS store. They display only one or two of each of their “items”, and the clerk/attendant/guide punches your selections into his/her tablet and you pick up your total items at another desk on your way out. Very polite, regimented, and as they say, “Rooted in Community”. Whether you like pot or not, go visit Treehouse and see what the talk is all about. No, I didn’t buy anything…probably next time.

(Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, former Santa Cruz City Councilmember (1998-2002) and Mayor (2001-2002). He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 12 years. He was elected last November to another 4-year term on the Santa Cruz City Council).
Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

Dateline January 8, 2018 majority report #108

All Politics are Local, Even State, Federal and International Issues

Feds vs. the City of Santa Cruz
Just when you thought it was safe to go into the liberal, do-your-own-thing, can’t-we-all-just-get-along, feel-good political waters of both the Golden State and the People’s Republic of Santa Cruz, a political hell begins to erupt. Along comes Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to tell us that he’s going to allow off-shore oil drilling off the central coast. Then it’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions, he wants to stop all cannabis production. What does Acting Commissioner of the IRS, David Kauter require? That homeowners no longer deduct their mortgage payments from their federal taxes. Next in line is another “Acting Director,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Thomas Homan, he wants to deport our immigrant community members. And then there’s the FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, he wants to slow down our internet traffic. The master of this dog house, Donald Trump, lost California by over two million votes, so to some political watchers it would seem quite logical that he would come to hinder, thwart, hobble, restrict, and generally wreak havoc on the people of this state. He’s beginning. Not long ago I can remember letters to the editor, or to city hall, inquiring and questioning the wisdom of devoting city time to debating national and international issues. War for example has been debated by past city councils: Ronald Reagan’s contras, George Bush Sr.’s Kuwaiti expedition, and later his son’s Iraq War policies. Once the council passed a resolution to send Chilean mass murder, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who was being detained in London, back to stand trial in Santiago. More recently the council is set to discuss a resolution asking the legislature to prohibit importation of crude oil from the Amazon. Santa Cruz has a long track record of being involved in US domestic and foreign policy issues.

When the People Lead, the Leaders Will Follow
The city council of Santa Cruz, I would argue, possesses an enviable history of creating forums to offer locals the opportunity to bring forward national and international issues, debate the why and how each issue might affect their pocketbooks and their moral consciences. If an issue is significant to enough of our constituents, chances are a councilmember will request it appear on a council agenda and a resolution, or ordinance, may be voted upon. This usually takes up little council time and fulfills an obvious community need: our residents seek forums of engagement beyond the usual street sweeping, garbage pickup, parks, or public safety concerns. Council agenda items do in fact offer an outlet and an escape valve for dissent on local and international concerns. We have an active and engaged electorate who see local issues connected to the state, national, and international chess board. It is in this spirit that now more than ever we need to keep our eyes wide open as many of the national issues become in-your-face local ones. Buckle up, 2018 will present us with many conundrums and decisions.

Those Who Make Peaceful Revolution Impossible, Make Violent Revolution Inevitable
Take for example the issue of immigration. Since at least the 1980’s, this community has taken legislative stands in favor of welcoming immigrants. It started with Reagan’s war on Central America, notably El Salvador, and has led to the more recent city council resolution and ordinance denouncing last February’s Homeland Security Investigations-ICE raid on our immigrant community and restating that our city is truly a sanctuary city. Residents by the hundreds came forward to demand legal protections for immigrants and that we direct our police not to work with ICE when it comes to detaining Santa Cruz residents. The city council also passed a resolution urging Gov. Jerry Brown to sign Senate Bill 54, the Sanctuary State bill, into law. He did and as a result this past week we saw assurances on the part of our county Sherriff, Jim Hart that immigrants once they are released from county jail will NOT be turned over to ICE. This is HUGE! In fact, here is a portion of the email that immigrant’s rights advocate, Jim Weller sent out last week under the subject line, VICTORY: SANTA CRUZ COUNTY SHERRIFF IMPLEMENTS SB 54 FULLY!

Sheriff Hart met with us again today to announce his decision. He agrees with us. Henceforth, “not a dime” of effort, as Jim Hart put it, will be made to cooperate with ICE. From now on, our County Sheriff’s office WILL NOT INTERACT WITH ICE in any way at all. From now on, ICE will get zero information about anyone, and nobody will be turned over to ICE ever except in rare instances with a criminal warrant for arrest signed by a Federal judge – and even then, ICE agents will not be allowed inside the jail facilities; they will have to take custody outside. THIS IS A BIG STEP FORWARD IN THE RESISTANCE! The interests of human rights, civil liberties, and simple justice are being served in Santa Cruz! We should congratulate Sheriff Jim Hart, the ACLU, the Public Defender, the Watsonville Law Center, the deportation defenders in the Bar Association, and the Sanctuary Santa Cruz network for their principled deliberations.

If democracies are truly led by the people, this effort is indeed the pot of gold at the end of a legislative rainbow of actions.

Seen along Ashby Street in Berkeley, Ca.

What Just Might be Coming to the SC City Council This Year?

Revenue enhancement measures (taxes) to cover the increasing costs of city pension costs, mainly police and fire will be on the ballot. (Some options: Hotel, sugar beverage, real estate transfer).
Rent stabilization, rent freeze, just-cause eviction ordinance will all likely be debated vigorously this year, in Santa Cruz and at the state capitol. Link here
Will 2018 see a silver stake finally pierce through the Corridor Plan and exorcise the final ghosts of a plan that was never accepted by many on the city’s eastside? See here…
Will this be the year the Jessie Street Marsh actually moves toward restoration and the 2003 plan is finally implemented? Follow here
A housing plan is needed that designates 50% of the planned for 1000 downtown units be affordable and offered to people who live here now, not as short-term rentals or second homes.
A plan to confront homelessness that is authored by both the city and county, which includes a designated on-going revenue stream to get people housed and into programs that offer drug, alcohol and mental health treatment.
And lastly, there is that pesky $23-million-dollar question: will the public library bond money be used as bait to finally convince the public to support the Public Works Department’s five-story parking garage to be built on the current site of the Farmer’s Market at Lincoln and Cedar streets?

Predictions for 2018

The city of Santa Cruz will join other municipalities in forming a state bank!
Ranked Choice Voting will get on the ballot this November.
Rent control will be instituted in Santa Cruz come January 1, 2019.
Barry Swenson Builder will finally be convinced to build the damn affordable rental units.
Homelessness-houselessness ain’t going away.
The Giants will make it to the playoffs!
The Trump Administration gets into a spat with Santa Cruz, which makes national news.

Bernie Tweet of the Week
“We need to get our priorities right. Not giving tax breaks to billionaires. Not throwing millions of people off of health insurance. We have got to pay attention to the working families of this country.” (Jan. 8)

~ Chris Krohn

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.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com

RANCHO DEL MAR CENTER REMODEL IS MORE THAN A “FACE-LIFT”
Take a look at this amazing photo by Erik Chalhoub, editor of the Aptos Life and Register-Pajaronian. As you can see, the theater is gone, gone, gone…

Rancho Del Mar work underway
Still no reply to phone calls placed with the Rancho Del Mar tenants that were evicted on short notice last fall. Send them good thoughts and maybe a few bucks if I can get a Go-Fund-Me set up for them. Stay tuned.

WHAT IS AMBAG AND WHY DOES IT DICTATE LOCAL GOVERNMENT POLICIES?
I am curious about the influence that the Associated Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG) has over Santa Cruz County and other municipal land use and transportation policies. The County Planning Department sets the number of building permits it publicly states that MUST be issued based on a State requirement that is approved by AMBAG to make sure each County “takes its share of the burden” for the state’s population growth. These are the RHNA numbers that officials cite without any explanation to define what that means: “Regional Housing Need Allocation”. Here is a link to learn more about that.

AMBAG was formed in 1968 and comprises of 24 representatives from Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito Counties and all cities within. AMBAG has no ability to enforce the growth policies and transportation projects, according to Ms. Heather Adamson, the AMBAG Director of Planning, yet time and time again, I hear local government officials say “We have to do this because it is mandated by AMBAG”.

I think the real truth is that it all revolves around money. AMBAG gets grant money from State and Federal programs, so the local jurisdictions do what is necessary to get the money. Here is the website for AMBAG…take a look and see what you learn. http://www.ambag.org/about-us

I will continue to research this organization and all of its tendrils, and I encourage you to do the same because I think we are going to be hearing A LOT more regarding these issues in the near future. Read on…..

DRAFT 2040 MOVING FORWARD MONTEREY BAY PLAN PUBLIC HEARINGS TO BE HELD THIS MONTH (BY AMBAG)

Take a look at this link for the flyer that notices the five PUBLIC HEARINGS on the 2040 draft plan for a long-range regional transportation and LAND USE policies. http://www.ambag.org/programs/met_transp_plann/documents/MTP_Flyer_Jan2018_Combined.pdf

You can read the Draft Plan on AMBAG’s website, by clicking on the right column labeled “2040 MTP/SCS” (more unexplained acronyms). The Plan includes 7 chapters of long range policy recommendations and evaluations for different topics, and 10 appendices. I looked at Appendix A: Growth Forecast. I read the Executive Summary that begins on page 5 and found some information that does not match what the local elected officials are telling us. Here is a copy-and-paste section from page 6 of that Executive AMBAG Growth Forecast for the Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito County region, based on a model consultant Population Reference Bureau conducted recently:

“This forecast projects that the region’s population will grow by approximately 120,600 people between 2015 and 2040, for a total population of 883,300 in 2040. This is slightly lower than prior forecasts and follows the slowing growth rates seen at both the state and national level. This revised growth trend also reflects the most current population estimate for the region. The 2015 population estimate was more than 3,000 lower than prior forecasts predicted. As such, an adjustment was made to account for the sharp fall in fertility rates and international migration that occurred during the recession years that have not fully rebounded. In addition to slower growth, the new forecast predicts an older age distribution, with a larger proportion of the population age 65 and older. An aging population affects the household and housing unit forecasts. While population growth will slow, which reduces future housing demand, older people are more likely to live alone or in small households. This shift offsets the lower population forecast with a slight upward effect on housing demand. The net result is that the region is expected to build just over 42,600 housing units by 2040, for a total of approximately 305,300 units.”

I also found it interesting in this report that while the State forecasts agricultural jobs to decline, the AMBAG model predicts an increase in agricultural jobs in the tri-county region. I wonder if that is Cannabis-related? Hmmmm….

Santa Cruz County is relying on the Cannabis taxes to bail out the looming budget deficits.

Here is a link to the AMBAG website Draft Report

A NEW PROPERTY TAX COMING YOUR WAY ON THE NOVEMBER BALLOT
Former County and State legislator Mr. Fred Keeley and Mr. Don Lane, Santa Cruz City elected official presented their idea to help address affordable housing problems in the area to the Santa Cruz Housing Advisory Commission last week. I video-recorded most of it before exhausting the battery on my camera. I will provide the YouTube link for that presentation next week. I thought it was interesting that Mr. Keeley did not seem to know what RHNA numbers were but he said “we’re just a couple of old politicians” trying to solve this housing problem. It will be a substantial property tax to create $250 Million for affordable housing. There is no clear vision of how the money would do that but Mr. Keeley said it could be used to augment large developer’s efforts already underway.

So, in essence, local property owners would be taxed to help the likes of Barry Swenson Builder make affordable housing “pencil out”. What do you think about that?. Do you own property in Santa Cruz County? Will raising property taxes (which get recovered by landlords in local rent fees) make it more affordable to stay in your home? I predict it will get on the November ballot. It will be modeled on the Santa Clara County Affordable Housing Bond Measure A ($950 Million) and 2016 Alameda County Affordable Housing A1 Bond measure.

In the meantime, read a bit of background about the two (Fred Keeley and Don Lane) who will be pushing this through our County and note the close ties Mr. Keeley has with the Santa Cruz County Administrative Office and Economic Development Dept.

THANK YOU HOUSING ADVISORY COMMISSION MEMBER NANCY ABBEY
I was so grateful for the kind comment from Santa Cruz County Housing Advisory Commission member Ms. Nancy Abbey, who asked the Chairman and Planning Staff Julie Conway why the public’s questions and comments at the meetings never get addressed. The answer was that it would violate the Brown Act, but members could ask that the issues be put on a future agenda.

NISENE MARKS STATE PARK ACCESS DENIED TO VISITORS FOR LACK OF AVAILABLE PARKING
Thanks to the photo and report from a concerned Aptos citizen (who wishes to remain anonymous) who contacted me about State Parks posting the entry to Nisene Marks State Park as closed, due to lack of available parking in the park. Doesn’t it make sense to you that the Phase 2 Aptos Village Project could be used to re-instate the prescriptive use of parking for the State Park visitors and public benefit of re-building the world-famous Post Office Bike Jumps instead of adding more traffic to the nearly-gridlocked Village? Take a look at this photo: The sign was posted December 31, 2017 and AGAIN last Sunday, January 7.

CONTACT SUPERVISOR ZACH FRIEND ABOUT THIS AND OTHER ISSUES In the January 2018 issue of the “Aptos Life” Second District Supervisor Zach Friend wrote about all the wonderful things he has done in the past year. Under “Community Meetings” he reported “we’ve held 71 open office hours in Aptos, Corralitos, La Selva Beach and Watsonville and held or attended nearly 50 community and neighborhood meetings in Seacliff, La Selva Beach, Aptos, Watsonville, Capitola and Corralitos. ” Wow. Where are the Community meetings for the general public (not just the Rio del Mar Improvement Association buddies) regarding the Aptos Village Project???? Who can attend his Wednesday 9am-10am constituent meetings held occasionally?

Maybe he’ll schedule one if you ask for one regarding the significant building design modifications for the Phase 2 Aptos Village Project. He needs to do that SOON, before Planner Randall Adams makes his Level 4 Discretionary decision about adding MORE three-story buildings and San Jose-like structures at the Aptos Creek Road entrance…also the gateway to Nisene Marks State Park. That’s Zach Friend <zach.friend@santacruzcounty.us> 701 Ocean Street, 5th Floor, Santa Cruz, CA 831-454-2200

You might also ask him why he made NO MENTION OF WATER ISSUES in his 2017 Reflections of being County Supervisor (January 2018 edition not yet available on line but in local coffee shops, banks and libraries)

~Cheers, Becky Steinbruner

Gary 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

Dateline Saturday, December 30, 2017
#364 / The Digital Republic

An article by Nathan Heller, in the December 18 & 25, 2017, edition of The New Yorker, identifies Estonia as a “digital republic.”

In other words, the article is not talking about some “abstraction,” but is claiming that an actual country, a nation, is now qualitatively different from the kind of political republics that exist in what most of us still consider to be the “real” world, a world that is definitely more “analog” than “digital.”

Heller’s article is worth reading, perhaps particularly if you teach a course in “Privacy, Technology, And Freedom,” as I do. Here’s a sample of what Heller has to say:

I booked a meeting with Marten Kaevats, Estonia’s national digital adviser. We arranged to meet at a café near the water, but it was closed for a private event. Kaevats looked unperturbed. “Let’s go somewhere beautiful!” he said. He led me to an enormous terraced concrete platform blotched with graffiti and weeds.

Seagulls riding the surf breeze screeched. I asked Kaevats what he saw when he looked at the U.S. Two things, he said. First, a technical mess. Data architecture was too centralized. Citizens didn’t control their own data; it was sold, instead, by brokers. Basic security was lax. “For example, I can tell you my I.D. number—I don’t fucking care,” he said. “You have a Social Security number, which is, like, a big secret.” He laughed. “This does not work!” The U.S. had backward notions of protection, he said, and the result was a bigger problem: a systemic loss of community and trust. “Snowden things and whatnot have done a lot of damage. But they have also proved that these fears are justified.

“To regain this trust takes quite a lot of time,” he went on. “There also needs to be a vision from the political side. It needs to be there always—a policy, not politics. But the politicians need to live it, because, in today’s world, everything will be public at some point.”

What Kaevats says about the United States is accurate. I know that because of the readings I have done for my course. Citizens in the United States most emphatically do not control their own data, and this makes the possibility of totalitarian political control a continuing and looming threat. This is what the documents revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013 conclusively demonstrated. And the reaction of government officials in the United States has been anything but positive, if you think the politicians should be trying to “regain trust.”

Even more important to me than Kaevats’ criticisms, as outlined above, was the way he described why he got involved in an effort to establish a “digital republic.”

Kaevats admitted that he didn’t start out as a techie for the state. He used to be a protester, advocating cycling rights. It had been dispiriting work. “I felt as if I was constantly beating my head against a big concrete wall,” he said. After eight years, he began to resent the person he’d become: angry, distrustful, and negative, with few victories to show.

“My friends and I made a conscious decision then to say ‘Yes’ and not ‘No’—to be proactive rather than destructive,” he explained. He started community organizing (“analog, not digital”) and went to school for architecture, with an eye to structural change through urban planning. “I did that for ten years,” Kaevats said. Then he found architecture, too, frustrating and slow. The more he learned of Estonia’s digital endeavors, the more excited he became. And so he did what seemed the only thing to do: he joined his old foe, the government of Estonia.

To transform our world, we must be “for” something, and must say, “Yes,” not “No,” if we are to create a future that will respond to our deepest aspirations. New digital technologies are the latest way that human beings are projecting human agency into the world, to control it and make it theirs. Republics are, at least as Americans understand them, “democratic” in both their origins and intentions. This is, of course, the story of our American Revolution.

A new revolution is needed, now, and it cannot be a revolution premised on violence and destruction, if democracy and the nation are to survive. Maybe, just maybe, the “digital republic” of Estonia has some lessons we should learn.

~ Gary Patton

OPRAH FOR PRESIDENT? It takes a deep breath to think about it twice…then again, just maybe possible? There are rumors that she has been thinking about it, and last night’s Emmy Award speech was amazingly powerful. Yes, Oprah has little political history, but then again what has that proved for our past leaders? Who else is out there? Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders? As much as I like and would vote for either/both of them…Where are they lately? Hopefully Webmistress Gunilla Leavitt has found a way to link the Emmy Speech, so you too can consider the possibilities.

CLASSICAL DeCINZO. See DeCinzo’s extra classical view of our rain season problems scroll down a few pages…

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. Tim and I missed connecting this week for a new one, but…. 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.

SANTA CRUZ CHAMBER PLAYERS. This courageous, dedicated, talented musicians and the organization behind it has been presenting small group concerts of live chamber music for 39 years. Next weekend (Jan. 13 @ 7:30 and Jan. 14 @ 3 p.m.) their concert is titled “Czech, Please” and will feature musics by Smetana, Dvorak, and Suk. The musicians involved in this concert are Roy Malan, concert director and violin, Susan Freier Harrison, violin; Polly Malan, viola Stephen Harrison, cello; and Robin Sutherland, piano. Czech Please of course means music from Czechoslovakia. All their concerts are at Christ Lutheran Church in Aptos just off the freeway at the Freedom Blvd. turnoff. Then take an immediate right past the CHP headquarters and up the hill. You probably can’t miss it. Tickets may be available at the door or at Brown Paper Tickets

EIGHT 10’s at EIGHT PLAYS. For 23 years the Actors Theatre has performed and presented evenings of eight original plays submitted from everywhere… and each lasting only 10 minutes.

Funny, sad, profound, moving and even boring, but wait ten minutes and there’ll be a new one. There are now two evenings “A” and “B” each presenting eight different plays. It’s great fun.

They opened Jan. 5 and will run through February 4th at the Center Stage Theatre 1001 Center Street (near where the old India Joze used to be). Go to to the website for the rest of the information

LISA JENSEN LINKS. Lisa writes: “She was famous for all the wrong reasons, but the raucous biopic I, Tonya aims to set the record straight, this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com ). Also, something old, something new in the book department, with the gorgeously Gothic dust jacket of my next book, Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge, revealed in its entirety, while my last book, Alias Hook, racks up another boffo review! ” Lisa has been writing film reviews and columns for Good Times since 1975.

MOLLY’S GAME. This is an unusual “true” film, about a former Olympic ski champion who becomes the owner/manager of zillion dollar poker games. Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba play the top roles, and good old Kevin Costner has a bit part as Jessica’s father. It’s a fancy film with plenty of cinema tricks to keep us interested, and the acting’s ok too. But think twice before going, especially if you’re trying to give up movies for the New Year.

I TONYA. A very dark, depressing movie about some very depressed people. It’s got loud rock music as the film score, which almost qualifies it as a fun comedy — but you’ll be able to count your laughs. Somewhere in the movie somebody says Americans love to hate or love their current sport stars…and its sure true here. Allison Janney plays Tonya’s seriously disturbed mother, and deserves more awards this Award season…but not for this one. Warning…IF you do go you’ll leave wondering why you still care about Nancy Kerrigan or Tonya Harding.

THE DISASTER ARTIST. A very curious movie about the making of what has become known by critics and the public as the worst movie ever filmed. That movie is “The Room“. James Franco and his brother Dave Franco are the leads. Zac Efron and Seth Rogen are in it too, but there are not that many laughs. If you’re not careful you’ll start pitying just about everyone in the film for being so desperate just to make a movie. I began to like or appreciate it about 20 minutes before it ended. The closing credits are a must-watch-to-be-believed item.

DOWNSIZING. Matt Damon plays a guy who — for what might be considered an environmental move — agrees to be reduced to about 5 inches tall and go live in a Truman’s Show type world with other shrinkees. It’s cute, pointless, and feel-good. No genuine issues or meanings are dealt with. ‘Nasty ol’ Christoph Waltz plays his usual smirking, almost Nazi-like character, and Kristen Wiig plays Damon’s wife — until she decides NOT to get shrunk. Save your money, subscribe to Netflix and watch Black Mirror instead.

DARKEST HOUR. Gary Oldman takes the role of Winston Churchill to new heights…and depths. Its World War II history and the background story of what Churchill had to endure when he first took office as Prime Minister. He deserves the Oscar like few stars ever have. The story is absorbing, educational, and it makes you wonder why the USA doesn’t have someone like Churchill to handle Trump like Churchill handled Hitler and Mussolini.

THE SHAPE OF WATER. A 93 on RT and that means something! Sally Hawkins plays a beautiful mute working in a lab who cares for, and falls in love with a mysterious water creature. It’s a fable, a fairy story, and reminds us of the black and white fantasy films from the 40’s and 50’s. It’s vital to know that it’s directed by Guillermo Del Toro who also did Pan’s Labyrinthand Hellboy. It is such an enormous change from every other film we’ve seen in years that its’ worth going just for the fun of it.

COCO. A genuine Pixar animated cartoon. And, the animation is amazingly three –dimensional. The plot is totally focused on the very rich and traditional Mexican culture. Day of the Dead, plenty of food, religion, music, and only a little bor ing after the first half hour. It’s completely original, you’ve never seen anything like this before, its way more creative and developed than what we usually think of as a Disney Cartoon. Go see it.

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer, (live only or archived for two weeks… (See next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. January 9th has Otolaryngologist, Dr. Douglas Hetzler discussing surfer’s ear, ear wax and dangers of candling and many other health issues. Following the Doctor Jim Coffis and Pat Malo from Green Trade Santa Cruz talk about the latest legal cannabis scene. UC San Diego Professor Emeritus Roddey Reid comes from Berkeley to talk about his book, “Confronting Political Intimidation and Public Bullying” on Jan. 16. Then activist, conservationist, columnist Gillian Greensite talks about local politics. Dr. Carlos Arcangeli, noted Urologist, bring us up to date on those problems on Jan.23. He’s followed by UCSC Professor emeritus Ralph Abraham talking about his newest book, “Hip Santa Cruz Vol. 2” about that scene with articles by local veterans. Then on January 30 UCSC Music prof. Linda Burman Hall talks about the 45th annual Santa Cruz Baroque Festival opening February 10. AND ALSO…if you just happen to miss either of the last two weeks of Universal Grapevine broadcasts go here… http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/dj/bruce-bratton You have to listen to about 4 minutes of that week’s KPFA news first, then Grapevine happens. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening. Email me always and only at bratton@cruzio.com

I grew up on Dave Allen. I have vivid memories of watching him on TV in my grandmother’s apartment. I hadn’t thought about him for a long time, and I was delighted when I found this piece about him on Youtube.

QUOTES. “JANUARY”

“January is the garbage can of movies in America, directly after all the Oscar contenders have been out”. Michael Caine

“It snowed and snowed, the whole world over,
Snow swept the world from end to end.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.”
– Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago

Snail Mail: Bratton Online
82 Blackburn Street, Suite 216
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Direct email: Bratton@Cruzio.com
Direct phone: 831 423-2468
All Technical & Web details: Gunilla Leavitt @ godmoma@gmail.com

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

Posted in Weekly Articles | Leave a comment

January 4 – 10, 2018

Posted on January 5, 2018 by Bruce

Highlights this week:
SADLY SHRINKING SENTINEL, Digital First Media muck, Netflix’s Black Mirror, Sentinel’s questionable movie reviews…GREENSITE on the city’s Bike-share program…KROHN and People’s power, Housing, City Library issues…STEINBRUNER about Aptos Village Secrets, Nissan Dealer in Soquel, Pacific Avenue development, County Budget & pensions, Redman Hirahara House, Merriman House, Rancho del Mar lacking….PATTON and Netflix’s Black Mirror show re our high tech future…DeCinzo and San Lorenzo Park…Eagan re Hats…Eight 10’s at Eight…Jensen and The Shape of Water…I critique Darkest Hour, The Shape Of Water, All the Money in The World, The Greatest Showman…QUOTES about “The New Year”.

DOWNTOWN SANTA CRUZ, 1966. Again we see Spike Jones’s Union Tire and Gas Station at the corners of Water, Mission, Front and Pacific Streets. There’s the McHugh & Bianchi Market, The Tea Cup Restaurant (and bar). On the lower left there’s a sign with the letters B.A.P. does anyone know what B.A.P. stood for? Send answers (and any feedback) only to bratton@cruzio.com thanks.

photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection.

Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

BARBARA DANE & group! Barbara Dane has been singing for decades. We had
a jug Band together back in the day. That’s me on the jug.

BARBARA DANES 90TH BIRTHDAY PERFORMANCE. She went on to sing with all the greats!!!

10 AMUSEMENT PARK RIDES. Think about our local roller coaster then take a look at these thriller-diller rides

DATELINE JANUARY 1ST, 2018

SADLY SHRINKING SENTINEL First it was Wallace Baine, then Don Miller, then Karen Kefauver, Stacey Vreeken, and Haven Livingston…all gone. Now we have to wonder about such favorites as Donna Maurillo, Offra Gerstein, Jondi Gumz, Julie Jag — and how about the new column by Steve Kessler? As we’ve been reading, the cutbacks are all generated by Digital First Media. Go here… to see the extent of their print empire, consisting of 97 newspapers. Here’s an example (quote) of what they promise to do for advertisers… “Taking an omnichannel approach, we look at a comprehensive view of the purchase journey for your ideal customer group and model the optimal combination of digital touchpoints to increase your marketing efficiency”.

WIKIPEDIA says this about Digital First Media… “Digital First Media is a management company specializing in newspapers in the United States. It is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. It manages the MediaNews Group, Southern California News Group, Digital First Ventures, and 21st Century Media. Its website states it is “a business name of MediaNews Group”. .As of 2012, the combined newspapers and online media outlets managed by the company had 66.6 million readers. According to June[when?] comScore numbers, Digital First Media ranked No. 8 in comScore’s General News Category ranking. On March 21, 2016, a bankruptcy judge approved the sale of Freedom Communications and its two major newspapers, the Orange County Register and the Riverside Press-Enterprise to Digital First Media. The papers were integrated into Digital First Media’s Los Angeles Newspaper Group, which was renamed the Southern California News Group on the same day”. We just have to adjust to the fact that Santa Cruz has lost any semblance of a locally-owned or even locally-focused print newspaper. A similar story happened — and is still happening — at the Monterey Herald. Read this Herald story…. It tells how George Ow and Geoffrey Dunn tried to buy back the Herald to keep it local. It’s another rapid advance into the tech future that the TV program “Black Mirror” centers on.

BLACK MIRROR ON NETFLIX. Gary Patton in his column this week tips us off to the gripping, fearful, and excellently-acted British Television program Black Mirror on Netflix. It’s not a series: each segment is a complete story, and usually based on what the future will be like if our present day tech devices take over even more of our lives. It’s into its fourth season now, and a fifth has been promised. Famous American and British actors show up in each episode…and you’ll end up thinking in new ways as you use Facebook, You Tube, and iPhones.

ANOTHER SENTINEL GRIPE. When Wallace Baine was the Sentinel’s film critic we had consistency. You might agree with him a lot, or maybe never, BUT you knew what kind of films he liked, and you could judge accordingly. Now the Sentinel has any number of syndicated critics/reviewers to choose from. They can pick a positive film review or a negative review from any source. Wallace was forced to choose either a good or bad review too…but not very often.

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.

Dateline: January 1, 2018

A SPOKE IN THE CITY’S WHEEL
In contemplating what to write about at the start of another year’s journey around the sun, I decided on something small and ostensibly uncontroversial: the city’s proposed Bike-share program, due to start in March of 2018. What could possibly be at issue with such a positive gesture towards alternative transportation?

If the comments on Next Door are any measure of the community’s opinion, the program is already generating controversy — and it’s easy to see why.

The program will provide 250 bikes for rent at 25 stations around the city: so far so good. The bikes are bright red and designed to prevent theft with no removable parts, built-in U-locks and a GPS tracker: even better. These JUMP bikes, as they are called, are a joint venture between Social Bicycle of New York and the city of Santa Cruz, with the former being responsible for the provision and maintenance of the bicycles: better yet. What could possibly go wrong? Well, 15 of the 25 stations require the removal of 1-2 on-street parking places, many of which are in front of people’s homes, much to their surprise. One station is in front of the Garfield Park library, which caused me to fire off an email of protest long before I saw the comments on Next Door. I’m a regular user of the Garfield Park library, one of life’s simple pleasures, and mostly I walk or ride my bike to and from. However if I’m on my way home and driving, I’ll park outside and run in to return or pick up a book. There’s almost always a space available: that is until the spaces are turned into a bike-share station. Trying to park a car elsewhere on Woodrow is difficult since it’s a unique street and what about patrons with mobility issues? Grrr…

Then I saw the comments on Next Door. I’ll take their word for it that they weren’t asked whether they wanted a station in front of their houses. I can say without fear of contradiction that few of my Westside neighbors would welcome losing their on-street parking for a collection of ten bikes plus people. My hunch is the same sentiment exists on the eastside. A good idea was suddenly losing its appeal. How could this happen? According to the city’s blurb on the program, there was outreach, and people weighed in with comments with 80 suggested locations for stations. That sounds reasonable, although comments were mainly solicited from Santa Cruz Open Streets, a bicyclists-promoted event and Bike to Work Day: the stakeholders. That might not be a problem if the JUMP bikes were to be centrally located in a city garage or at Louden Nelson Community Center, rather than removing on-street parking in front of people’s homes and taking away access to a neighborhood library. If the goal is to encourage more visitors and residents to ride a bike then outreach should extend beyond the converted. Aggravating car drivers is not a good motivator. And if the city is taking away parking in front of my house and installing a new activity, I’d surely like to be consulted with the option of refusal.

A further look into the program raises other questions. The bikes will cost $4 an hour. In order to use one, you have to download an app, fill out a liability waiver, sign a contract and provide a credit card. That would seem to leave out a lot of young people. You have to be 18 to sign a contract unless your parent is there to sign. The bikes don’t have to be returned to a station since they can be tracked via the GPS and non-return costs a mere $1. Who will collect a bike left on the beach in Capitola?

While encouraging more people to ride a bike is worthy of support, there is no indication that a poorly thought-out program will achieve that goal. On a deeper level, the city’s practice of reaching out to self-interested “stakeholders” with a fait accompli while ignoring those who will be impacted is a recipe for failure. We have experienced that with the De-sal plant, the Wharf Master Plan and the Corridors Plan to name a few. Fortunately the Bike-share program is a relatively small program and hopefully it is not too late for a mid-course correction. Comments are being solicited until January 10th and should be addressed to Amelia Conlen, aconlen@cityofsantacruz.com.

CHRIS KROHN.

(Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, former Santa Cruz City Councilmember (1998-2002) and Mayor (2001-2002). He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 12 years. He was elected last November to another 4-year term on the Santa Cruz City Council).
Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

Dateline: December 17, 2017
“People Power Continues in 2017”

PEOPLE WOKE AND THE PEOPLE SPOKE

Leopold the cat. I love my cat…and he reads the NY Times daily.

The SC city council meeting was packed on Dec. 5th. These are just a few of the more than 50 comments that were heard at the public podium in council chambers. Taken together they reflect the essence of the housing debate in SC.

Bruce Van Allen said the city should be involved in offering legal services to tenants.
Zav Hershfield pleaded with the council, “all we are asking for is a level playing field.”
Vicky Winters asked the council to think about the impact of the housing crisis on young children.
Ernestina Saldaña was clear: “Property management companies are the problem.”
Deborah Marks was firm: “Treat neighborhoods as partners, not enemies.”
Josh Brahinski asked those present to join a new group, “Landlords for Rent Control.”
Steven echoed why so many showed up to what was supposed to be THE solution-oriented meeting during the Mayor’s year of housing, “We want a rent freeze now…we do not want to be punished for not owning property.”
Dawn Scott-Norris spoke against “gentrification.”
David Subock had an idea. “I’m putting together alternative standards” for building accessory dwelling units (ADUs) that are “deed-restricted.”
Mark Primack said the city has made so many mistakes in searching for housing solutions, “the corridor plan was a fiasco,” and the rental inspection ordinance was a “misstep.”
Gail Jack came with a complete recipe for lowering housing prices: rent stabilization, repeal Costa-Hawkins, vote for an immediate freeze on rents, provide legal support for tenants, support building affordable ADUs, and preserve existing affordable housing after their sunset date.
Walt Wadlow weighed in: “…overbuilding has the potential of destroying a gem of a town.”
Matt Nathanson said, “It’s really about affordability.”
Sarah was loud and clear: “Are you going to Oakland?…let’s bring it to the (UC) regents! Let’s make them accountable.”
Rick Longinotti said the planning department should cross off the “covered parking requirement” in residential neighborhoods. He also said his family has rented out five units in San Francisco since the 1950’s and have done just fine by that city’s rent control law.
Andy spoke for landlords, as did four others from realtor groups and the California Apartment Association, when he said there are “unintended consequences of rent control,” that we need to avoid, but he added that he’d “love to have rent control for my kids.”
Gary Patton said “don’t give away neighborhood integrity.”

The Downtown Library Advisory Committee Sends Its Recommendation to the City Council. Is it Reflective of the Community?

On December 13th, the Downtown Library Advisory Committee (DLAC), appointed to direct the spending of $23 million for a new or improved facility, decided to go with “Option B” and voted to go ahead with the consultants’ advice of placing a new library in a 5-story parking garage on the current site of the SC Farmer’s Market at Lincoln and Cedar Streets. Doesn’t sound so good on the face of it, does it? But after attending the meeting I have to believe DLAC members did what they thought was most prudent, and some actually said the committee’s charge was not about parking cars or about addressing homelessness. I think they’re right. So now it’s up to other committees and commissions like the Downtown Commission and the Climate Change Action Plan committee to weigh in and offer the city council their best advice. DLAC members heard an earful from the public with respect to the “library-garage” project. It is likely that over 200 members of the public came forward during their various meetings to tell them to separate the library from the garage. In the end, it seems to me they were offered options that were difficult to choose other than the one they did, which places the downtown library squarely inside of a 5-story garage. But wait. Perhaps asking the consultants to come back with other alternatives could’ve been a fifth option, but only four were put on the table for the committee to vote on. Stay woke and stay tuned on this one!

On December 3rd, I heard the voices of over 100 present at the DLAC meeting. They advocated for the following:

The library should be a cultural stand-alone place.
Wasn’t the group (DLAC) just to look at what to do with the $23 million (bond money)? If we go beyond $23 million we need another bond measure.
“Hell, no more parking” (structures)!
The current options are too vague and ambiguous.
Put a stand-alone facility at Cedar and Lincoln with a plaza for performance space.
More resident input is needed. Can we have more community meetings?
Why was the current downtown library not well-maintained?
What will the current library be used for if the move is completed?
There was nothing in the bond measure (Measure S, June 2016) about moving the library.

Bernie Tweet of the Year

“Now is the time to alter our government. Now is the time to stop the movement toward oligarchy. Now is the time to create a government which represents all Americans and not just the 1%… No more excuses. We must all become involved in the political process.”

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.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com

SIGNFICANT APTOS VILLAGE PROJECT PHASE 2 BUILDING MODIFICATIONS….MORE CLOSED DOOR DISCRETIONARY APPROVALS IN THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT.
I had three hours to comment on significant modifications to building design for the Aptos Village Project Phase 2, from the time I happened to learn about the Application #171292 Level 4 Discretionary Action. Most local residents, including me, had NO IDEA there are major changes in the works. Is this transparent government? NOPE! The two signs at the construction site are hidden from public view and do not state any close of comment period.

The Planning Department needs to extend public comment before Planner Randall Adams makes a determination. Write Randall.Adams and demand at least three weeks extension for public comment. Supervisor Zach Friend needs to hold a PUBLIC MEETING before any further changes are approved. CEQA process??? Write Zach Friend or phone 454-2200. Demand to see the Environmental Review for this Discretionary action and justification if there is none.

Here is the link to the Planning Department’s Level 4 Discretionary Projects, Page 3 — under “undeveloped land in Aptos Village”
APN 041-011-39 and -40 for Application #171292.

Now, compare the designs for Buildings 1, 2, 8,9, and 10 on the original Tentative Map Project here when you click on “Aptos Village Project Plans”

What I see are a lot of three-story buildings where there were none before, with wrap-around massive structures replacing landscaped areas at the entrance to Nisene Marks State Park on Aptos Creek Road. I cannot read the fine print of the occupancy details, but it appears that the nature of the mixed-use businesses has also changed, which may alter the traffic counts, traffic circulation and parking.

The community deserves a public meeting to weigh in on these issues. Where is the Environmental Review for these Discretionary Approvals of Phase 2 Building Design Modifications? Ask Randall Adams.

NISSAN DEALERSHIP EIR AVAILABLE FOR PUBLIC COMMENT.
Take a look at the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the proposed Nissan Dealership at the intersection of 41st. Avenue and Soquel Drive near Soquel Village: http://www.sccoplanning.com/Portals/2/County/userfiles/106/Nissan%20of%20Santa%20Cruz%20%20DEIR%20Complete.pdf

Public comment on this 312-page study is open until February 12, but if you care about the public process and how this will affect the quality of life in the area, start reading the document now. Send comment often, as you have time to read segments related to your greatest interests.

Were you at Supervisor John Leopold’s constituent meeting last year at Main Street School when he held a special Soquel Village Traffic Improvement discussion along with County Public Works Director John Presleigh? If so, you heard them clearly state that, in response to the public outcry that evening, there would be NO traffic light installed at Soquel Drive and Robertson, where there is a three-way stop sign now. However, that may be one of the traffic mitigations required for the Nissan Dealership approval.

Were you at any of the public meetings held by Supervisor John Leopold to develop the Sustainable Santa Cruz County Plan for what was to be at this intersection? How about the meetings held BEFORE the push for the Sustainable Santa Cruz County (dense infill) Plan? Does this give you any confidence that your input on anything will actually matter in future community issues and CEQA process when big money developers wave a check under the County’s nose?

Hold your representatives accountable. Write John Leopold or phone 454-2200 or go to one of his evening constituent meetings (at least he has them…Zach Friend only meets once in awhile on Wednesdays 9am-10am).

WILL PACIFIC AVENUE BECOME A TECH GIANT CAMPUS?
Santa Cruz City Economic Development Director Ms. Bonnie Lipscomb recently stated on a KION television interview that “500-700 new (residential) units have already been approved in Santa Cruz” to serve the needs of the high-tech industry workforce in the County. Here is the link to that interview

Now connect these dots….

1) The Santa Cruz Sentinel recently reported Cruzio’s installation of high-speed internet service to the DOWNTOWN area. Here is the link to that story: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/NE/20171228/NEWS/171229744

2) Take a look at this Silicon Valley Business Journal article about Amazon moving into DOWNTOWN Santa Cruz: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/10/11/amazon-santa-cruz-alexa-office-amzn-effect.html

3) Where will the water for all this development come from when local aquifers are critically overdrafted and we may be entering another drought? Dudek & Associates moved into DOWNTOWN Santa Cruz two years ago and recently submitted a study on a local DeSal project to the City Water Advisory Commission. Here is a link to Dudek and their Santa Cruz location

4) The Santa Cruz City Redevelopment Agency sold most of the 1100 block of DOWNTOWN Pacific Avenue to Canfield Laurel & Pacific LP. The sale is documented on the website data as being recorded December 27, 2016 in document #2016-0051727. According to Santa Cruz County Assessor website information, that parcel, APN 005-141-20, is owned by a corporation named 1101 Pacific LLC whose mailing address is 777 N. First Street, 5th Floor, San Jose 95112, WHICH IS THE ADDRESS OF BARRY SWENSON BUILDER. This address, by the way is the same address given for the owner of the Roaring Park Pacific LLC owner where Barry Swenson Builder is building the five-story 79-condos at 1547 Pacific Avenue DOWNTOWN (NONE of which will be affordable housing, thanks to Santa Cruz City Council) and four-story FIVE55 Pacific Avenue with 94 luxury apartments.

The recording fee for the 1100 Pacific Avenue block loan agreement fee (Document #2016-0052214) is $145.00. The fee rate for transfer of title recordation is $1.10/$1000 property sale value. On July 24, 2017, a document was filed (2017-0024462) recording a loan of $10,250,000 for the original principle amount with Wells Fargo Bank.

5) Now, think about the recent City of Santa Cruz action to build a five-story parking garage and use Measure S money to relocate the DOWNTOWN Library there. Do you wonder if there is something not completely transparent about this vision the City staff is adamantly shoving forth? The idea went before the City Council about the same time as the property transaction of the 1100 block was being finalized. Here is a Sentinel article from back then

Thankfully, there is an active group of local citizens involved in this and asking important questions…such as, WHY build a new library when the existing one can be modernized for less? Here is their website

What do you think the City has in mind for the existing DOWNTOWN library site if a new library gets built elsewhere? Hmmmm…..

Maybe Barry Swenson Builder is working on that as you read this…I’ll bet it would not include affordable housing.

COUNTY WARNS OF LOOMING DEFICIT
It was a grim report that County Administrative Office (CAO) Mr. Carlos Palacios and two Health Department Directors presented to the County Board of Supervisors at their final meeting for 2017. The Sentinel reported here

The issue at hand is looming CalPERS retirement pensions that have been underfunded and will come due in 2019-2020 from local jurisdictions. CAO Carlos Palacios warned that the current working employee: retiree ratio of 6:1 will become 1:1 in five years! He stated that Supervisors will have to approve $10 Million in County Budget CUTS each year for the next two years, and even then, the Budget will be $4-$9 Million in the red. Watch for the Official Mid-Year Budget Report coming to the Board sometime soon. The two health care directors painted a sad story regarding no funding for the County’s In-Home Support Service (IHSS) care workers who have many times come to the Board for a cost-of-living wage increase. They have not had one for a number of years.

DID THE BOARD DISCUSS REPEALING THEIR AUTOMATIC PAY INCREASES FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS THAT THEY GIFTED THEMSELVES IN NOVEMBER?
Nope! Call me if you want to sign or circulate the Referendum Petition to repeal that Ordinance 5256. I will be filing the Petition this Friday, January 5 by 5pm. Here’s my phone number : 831-685-2915. Please make sure to leave a message with your phone number.

WILL THE SANTA CRUZ COUNTY HISTORIC RESOURCES COMMISSION ALLOW THE HISTORIC REDMAN-HIRAHARA HOUSE IN WATSONVILLE TO BE REMOVED FROM THE NATIONAL HISTORIC REGISTER TO ALLOW DEMOLITION?
Although the County Planning Department staff has not bothered to update the website, I think the Historic Resources Commission will meet as soon as Monday, January 8. Staff mentioned at the last meeting October 2, the issue would be up for consideration on the January 2018 agenda.

Here is the YouTube recording of the argument Commissioner Carolyn Swift made to preserve the incredibly significant historic Carriage House barn that Assistant Planning Director Wanda Williams and Historic Resources Planner Annie Murphy argued to demolish.

In this video, you can also see how these two County Planning Department employees argue to demolish another significant historic and cultural resource, the Merriman House in Live Oak, in the interest of a large, dense development:

20:23 Becky Steinbruner commenting on plan to demolish historic Millsap House in Soquel
27:00 Historic Aptos Creek Bridge Decline/CalTrans Report
19:36-33:28 Comments on Bridge Report, concerns about structural integrity
34:14 Redman-Hirahara Barn
34:36 Staff Report
38:57 Commissioner Carolyn Swift describes draft 2004 archaeolgist report/recommendation that Barn be included in Historic Registry
45:57 Local Historian Ross Gibson comments on significance of the Barn and archaeological assessments
48:00 Planning staff comment
49:18 Becky Steinbruner asked for HOLD on demolition permit
50:50 Becky references work by Ed Silveira to save UCSC Hay Barn when it was deemed ‘unsafe’ but was able to be restored.
53:00 Citizen Marilyn Garrett requests the Commission place a hold on the demolition to further study preservation/rebuilding
53:35 Commissioner Swift asks staff for clarification of demolition permit status. “Barn is not a contributing element” says staff.
54:40 Commissioner Swift is upset “Why didn’t the {Planning Dept.} include the Barn on the Historic Registry?”
56:40-1:00:00 Ross Gibson relates similar case wherein owner had to prove an historic structure was not a contributing element.
1:10:05 Motion to ask Planning Dept. to send letter to Tutt family to ask for timeline of demolition, form a subcommittee to save wood.
1:11:14 Merriman House discussion begins
1:11:32 Ross Gibson begins with plea for and justification of Merriman house begging re-classified to NR-5 for local interest.
1:31:45 Commissioner Swift agrees there is new information for consideration
1:38:00 Commissioner Swift acknowledges errors in Circa consultant’s DPR evaluation and discusses critical information from Judy Stein, and chain of title
1:41:30 Commissioner Swift makes case for this Live Oak icon (Merriman House)
1:43:45 Assistant Planning Director Wanda Williams insists that staff refuses to acknowledge historic significance.
1:44:52 Wanda Williams insisting that Commission can make recommendations but staff still stands by refusal to consider NR-5 status
1:49:45 Staff recommends alternate form of recognition
1:50:40 Ross Gibson stated that after Board of Supervisors denied NR-5 status, that Board refused Blue Plaque historic recognition.
1:51:40 Chairman Phillips asks if CEQA will include changes proposed to historic registration?
1:52:20 Staff consideration of New Evidence
1:52:45 Ross Gibson asks why other house on the property has been given NR-5 status..what is different?
1:53:40 Other significance included first local coop, first subdivision
1:53:40 Wanda Williams rejected at local places. She urged the Commission to accept all issues and know that Annie will give full definition.
1:56:00 Commission asks staff if newer support information would get skipped over?
1:56:40 Ross Gibson recommends a new DPR
2:06:00 Chairman Phillips asks about process for new DPR? Staff replies it would not be included in Administrative Record unless Board of Supervisor action.
2:01:18 Staff states a new DPR is not meaningful or official unless adopted by Board of Supervisors.
2:02:00 Staff admits uncertainty in public hearing requirement process.
2:03:10 Ross Gibson describes similar situation re:NR-6 reclassification “This is what you can do. It is within your jurisdiction.”
2:04:08 Wanda Williams ARGUES that the Board of Supervisors must initiate any review. She recommends the Commissioners attend a Supervisor meeting and speak during 3-minute public comment period.
2:05:35 Wanda Williams ARGUES the Board of Supervisors has already determined that the former consultant is okay.
2:06:15 Wanda Williams insists CEQA process is adequate to analyze merit of reports.
2:06:15 Wanda Williams recommends “Let the CEQA process play out.” An RFP has been issued for the redevelopment of the area
2:07:30 Wanda Williams informs Commission RFP has already been awarded.
2:11:00 Motion made
2:12:10 Becky Steinbruner expresses doubt in strength of CEQA process and meaningful contributions to historic preservation.
2:16:00 Becky Steinbruner asked for a peer review of Circa Report
2:16:05 Errors were made in Circa report

STAY TUNED BY WATCHING THE COUNTY WEBSITE FOR A DEMOLITION NEAR YOU: link here.

Here is one video taken by Mr. Jeff Stallings of his backyard when Soquel Creek Water District demolished the historic Millsap Family House, built in 1890 for the prominent Soquel Village family: https://vimeo.com/239728570

It is more than disgusting that Soquel Creek Water District staff nor Board made NO EFFORT to relocate the house or to offer the structure to salvage of the incredible heart redwood beams, despite multiple pleas from the public.

SOQUEL CREEK WATER DISTRICT BOARD RECEIVES NATIONAL WATER RESEARCH INSTITUTE (NWRI) REPORT ON PROPOSED TREATED SEWAGE WATER INJECTION INTO AREA GROUNDWATER SUPPLY.

You can read the Report here on Page 217 of the December 19, 2017 Board agenda.

The NWRI Panel made the comment at the September 22 public workshop hearing that the proposed Project is small, and may not be financially feasible. Two of the Panel Experts also commented about the requirement to have staff and highly-advanced technology appropriate to make sure that the proposed system would function perfectly and shut down immediately if there were real-time problems.

The Report presented to the Board recommends building a small PILOT PROJECT first. What is the Public Process for comment on this Report? The public asked this question of the Board, but received NO answer.

In other action, the Board approved paying HydroMetrics Consultants $61,000 to model how the treated sewage water might move within the Purisima Aquifer once injected at the proposed sites near Cabrillo College sites. Cabrillo College has its own well that supplies most of the water for the College students and staff, as well as landscape irrigation. The reason the District needs this information is because the State will require all injected treated sewage water must remain in the aquifer for two to six months before pumping it out to sell to customers. I do not understand how this $61,000 model will be of real value, considering there have been NO SOIL BORING TESTS AND ANALYSIS of the actual sewage water injection well sites, as was stated by Carollo Engineers at the NWRI Public Workshop in September.

The reason the District was in such a hurry to demolish the historic Millsap House was to make way for the West Annex treatment plant for the PureWater Soquel Project. The General Manager, Mr. Ron Duncan, stated at a meeting the reason the two historic houses on the property were demolished because they were a public nuisance and hazard. If Soquel Creek Water District had not EVICTED the elderly Section 8 tenants who had been living in the houses, maybe there would not have been that “nuisance” classification.

The Board and Staff continue to insist there has been no decision made regarding supplemental water supply projects that are necessary to allow the District to CONTINUE TO HAND OUT NEW SERVICE CONNECTIONS to developers, even though the Purisima and Aromas Aquifers, their only source of water, are critically overdrafted. The District INCREASED RATES 17.5% this week to help pay for the PureWater Soquel Project new full-time engineer and administrative staff hired last year, and to pay for very expensive studies to support the Project.

Write the Board and let them know what you think: Soquel Creek Water District Board of Directors c/o Karen Reese karenr@soquelcreekwaterdistrict.org Attend the next Board meeting on Tuesday, January 16, 6pm at the Capitola City Council Chambers.

You might also ask the Board to give a price reduction to their low-income and fixed-income customers now that the District is selling water they have purchased CHEAPLY from nearby Central Water District. Many District customers have already been struggling to pay their water bills, and now that rates have increased 17.5%, the struggle to pay for this basic human need will be greater.

Do you think it is fair for the District to charge more for water than what it cost to produce? I think this may be a legal question. The reason Soquel Creek Water District is buying water from Central Water District is because of a large leak in the Rio del Mar area — and also the relatively NEW O’Neill Ranch Well on the end of 41st Avenue had to be shut down AGAIN due to mysterious ammonia contamination problems, effective October 13, 2017.

EXCELLENT WATER FOR SANTA CRUZ INTERVIEW ON COMMUNITY TELEVISION.
There recently was an excellent interview on the “Human Rights Now” program on CTV where Mr. Bruce Van Allen, Mr. Scott McGilvray and Ms. Cherie Bobbe discussed many different water supply solutions that could be happening NOW at a fraction of the cost that the PureWater Soquel Project or a desal project would bring. Take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAOLKAajtFs

Many thanks to Producer Ms. Mathilde Rand for getting this excellent information out to the public. You can find more information at https://waterforsantacruz.com/

There really are other ways to address the water issues here than treated sewage water with unknown health risks and exorbitant costs.

SUPPORT APTOS/LA SELVA FIRE CAPTAIN RYAN PETERS ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 9 at 9:30am IN WATSONVILLE
Show up on Tuesday, January 9 in front of Grunsky Law Offices (240 Westgate Drive, Watsonville) to support Captain Ryan Peters as he goes into a SKELLY HEARING to defend himself against demotion by the Board. Bring signs and let him know the Community supports him in the course of this outrageous action.

The Aptos/La Selva Fire District Board is proceeding with punitive action against Captain Ryan Peters, President of Union Local 3535 who organized the unprecedented 100% Vote of No Confidence against then-Chief Jon Jones when he prepared to ask the Board for a contract extension. Now, the Board is seeking to have Captain Peters DEMOTED to Firefighter/Paramedic. They would have terminated him had he not had such an exemplary employment and service history.

Here is information about what a Skelly Hearing involves
Write the Board and let them know what you think

Direct all communication to the Board of Directors to Ms. Tracy New tracyn@aptosfire.com AND SPECIFY THAT YOUR COMMUNICATION IS TO BE INCLUDED IN THE BOARD’S AGENDA PACKET. If you do not specify this, it will NOT be included.

LOWER RANCHO DEL MAR CENTER IS AN EMPTY ONE-WALL SHELL.
I hope to have photos for you next week of what this Project is looking like. No reply from the tenants who were evicted last October, but ShowTime Pizzeria has moved next door at 7960 Soquel Drive, Suite E.

NO REPLY FROM PUBLIC WORKS ABOUT IMPENDING ROAD IMPROVEMENTS ON SOQUEL DRIVE IN THAT AREA, BUT WATCH OUT FOR APTOS VILLAGE TRAFFIC GRIDLOCK FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS!
The Santa Cruz County Public Works Dept. website for the Aptos Village Traffic Improvement Project Phase I at Trout Gulch was recently updated to warn the public of LONG delays with paving work. The new traffic light may be operational by January 9. Gee, I can hardly wait. Take a look at the website info. here

Contact Project Engineer Carisa Duran carisa.duran@santacruzcounty.us or 831-454-3955 with your thoughts. You might also contact County District Supervisor Zach Friend zach.friend@santacruzcounty.us or 831-454-2200. He claims that he loves to hear from you. If that were true, one would think he would begin having public meetings about the Aptos Village Project Phase 2 Building Design Modifications and the 2004 Project Traffic Study that needs to be updated….don’t you think?

Cheers and Happy New Year,

Becky Steinbruner

Gary 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

Dateline: Friday, December 29, 2017
#363 / Nosedive

I have a recommendation for those who have not yet tuned into the Black Mirror series on Netflix. You should! For those not familiar with Black Mirror, here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Black Mirror is a British science fiction anthology television series created by Charlie Brooker, with Brooker and Annabel Jones serving as the programme’s showrunners. [Black Mirror] centers on dark and satirical themes that examine modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies.

The image is from Episode #1 in Season #3, “Nosedive.” This episode was a pretty compelling picture of how our society would look if we took seriously all those social media “likes.” In the world portrayed in “Nosedive,” a person’s ability to participate meaningfully in society depends on the “score” that he or she has received from those persons with whom he or she has interacted. Those “likes,” or “dis-likes,” add up. Every interaction gets a score from 1-5, and if your overall score is too low, you won’t even be able to rent a car, must less move into the gated community of your dreams.

As it turns out, the “Nosedive” world may already exist … in China. Here’s a report from The Wall Street Journal

Apple CEO Tim Cook looks forward to a “common future in cyberspace” with China, he told the Chinese government’s World Internet Conference earlier this month. This was an embarrassing gesture toward a state that aggressively censors the internet and envisions a dystopian future online.

The experience of lawyer Li Xiaolin may give a taste of what that future looks like. During a 2016 work trip inside China, he tried to use his national identity card to purchase a plane ticket. To his surprise, the online system rejected it, saying he had been blacklisted by China’s top court. Mr. Li checked the court’s website: His name was on a list of “untrustworthy” people for having failed to carry out a court order in 2015. He thought he had resolved the issue, but now he was stranded more than 1,200 miles from home.

Mr. Li’s dilemma was due to the Chinese government’s ambitious “social credit system.” Launched by the government in 2012, it vows to “make trustworthy people benefit everywhere and untrustworthy people restricted everywhere” by the time it is fully implemented in 2020.

The main character in “Nosedive” had problems getting on a plane, too.
What Black Mirror tells us is that our modern technologies may, indeed, have dark consequences. One good reason to watch Black Mirror is to help inoculate oneself against the glittering promises that our new technologies advertise. That iPhone X, with its powerful facial recognition capabilities, may not be such a wonderful invention, after all!

I have a hunch we may get a look at why facial recognition isn’t such a good idea in some future Black Mirror episode!

CLASSICAL DeCINZO. An old DeCinzo cartoon makes it clear some things never change!! Scroll down just a bit.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s “The Year In Hats” 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 with his “Bee Wars” commentary.

EIGHT 10’s at EIGHT PLAYS. For 23 years the Actors Theatre has performed and presented evenings of eight original plays submitted from everywhere… and each lasting only 10 minutes.

Funny, sad, profound, moving and even boring, but wait ten minutes and there’ll be a new one. There are now two evenings “A” and “B” each presenting eight different plays. Its great fun.

They Open Jan. 5 and run through February 4th at the Center Stage Theatre 1001 Center Street (near where the old India Joze used to be). Go here for the rest of the information.

LISA JENSEN LINKS. Lisa writes: “Happy New year to all! Why is Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water the most poignant love story of the year? Find out this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com/). Also, some further thought on beasts, and beauties, and the lure of non-traditional love stories” Lisa has been writing film reviews and columns for Good Times since 1975.

DARKEST HOUR. Gary Oldman takes the role of Winston Churchill to new heights…and depths. It’s world War II history and the background story of what Churchill had to endure when he first took office as Prime Minister. Oldman deserves the Oscar like few stars ever have. The story is absorbing, educational, and it makes you wonder why the USA doesn’t have someone like Churchill to handle Trump, like Churchill handled Hitler and Mussolini.

THE SHAPE OF WATER. A 93 on RT and that means something! Sally Hawkins plays a beautiful mute working in a lab, who cares for and then falls in love with a mysterious water creature. It’s a fable, a fairy story, and a reminder of the black and white fantasy films from the 40’s and 50’s. It’s directed by Guillermo Del Toro, who did Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy, and is such an enormous change from every other film we’ve seen in years that it’s worth going just for the fun of it.

ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD. This movie will forever change your reaction to the Getty Museum in Malibu…trust me. You’ve probably already heard that this movie was completely finished with Kevin Spacey in the lead role of J. Paul Getty, but then with Spacey’s sex problems looming so large they re-filmed the part and replaced Spacey with Christopher Plummer. Ridley Scott directed it, and of course he directed Alien, The Martian, Into The Storm and other big box office hits. Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg are the other stars. It’s a cruel, nearly true story about how J. Paul wouldn’t give Italian kidnappers any ransom money when they kidnapped his grandson. I felt far removed from the film, and never identified with anyone in the plot. It was cold, well filmed, and credibly acted but it never drew me into feeling anything for anyone involved.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN. This is Hugh Jackman trying his best to bring life to the bio of P. T. Barnum. Jackman is an excellent dancer, singer and showman, but this movie just doesn’t have the heart or solidity that a good film should. The music is just more copying of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s gooey showbiz, and it’s shallow, trite, and repetitious to a fault. Don’t bother seeing it.

LADY BIRD. This film restored my faith in great films! RT gives it 100% and it’s the highest rated film in RT’s history!!! Greta Gerwig directed Saorise Ronan and others in this sincere, well-thought-out movie. A teenaged daughter and her Mom have a terrible, never-ending battle over clothes, religion, dating, sex, college and everything else. It all happens in Sacramento in about 2003, which is somehow appropriate. It’s sensitive, subtle, and surprising. Gerwig breaks many directing rules and creates new plot possibilities. Go see this film. Ps….as I’ve told many folks, it’s definitely not about Lady Bird Johnson!!!

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI. First, please note the 95 RT rating. When you have Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell working in a film directed by an Oscar-winning director you almost can’t miss. It is definitely a dark comedy. The plot contains murder, rape, loyalty, cancer, and some absolutely brilliant acting. Go see it, and force all your friends to see it too.

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI. Yes, 93 on RT and I thought it was a complete fake of a billion dollar move machine. I’ll always remember going to our Soquel Drive in (just a little stoned) and being completely taken into outer space with Star Wars 1. It had humor, empathy, great imagination, tension and a story you could care about. The franchise now stages monotonous, uncaring, space attacks and wars so numerous that you can’t remember who is on who’s side…and you don’t care much either. There’s the Dark Side, the Resistance, Adam Driver, R2D2, a very dull Carrie Fisher, an aging Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker and those endless space battles that take up probably 33 1/3 of the movie. A great disappointment…go at your own peril, and its 2 1/2 hours extra long.

WONDER WHEEL. One of Woody Allen’s worst films. How he can hit so wonderfully like “Annie Hall”, “Purple Rose Of Cairo”, “Midnight In Paris”, ” and Blue Jasmine” and create a dull, unbelievable flop like Wonder Wheel? Kate Winslet has never been more unbelievable, Justin Timberlake does better than I would have predicted but he’s out of place in this muck and mire. It’s about their lives in Coney Island in the 1950’s and as I went to Coney Island a few times in the 1950’s so was really looking forward to this screening. Damn. Woody is now making a film titled, “Roda Gigante”…we can only guess! RT gives Wonder Wheel 30.

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer, (live only or archived for two weeks… (See next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. Santa Cruz City Councilman Chris Krohn opens the new year on Jan. 2 He’s followed by Attorney/activist Bob Taren, looking ahead to the new political year. January 9th has Otolaryngologist, Dr. Douglas Hetzler discussing surfers ear, ear wax and dangers of candling and many other health issues. UC San Diego Professor Emeritus Roddey Reid comes from Berkeley to talk about his book, “Confronting Political Intimidation and Public Bullying” on Jan. 16. Dr. Carlos Arcangeli, noted Urologist, bring us up to date on those problems on Jan.23. Then on January 30 UCSC Music prof. Linda Burman Hall talks about the 45th annual Santa Cruz Baroque Festival opening February 10. AND ALSO…if you just happen to miss either of the last two weeks of Universal Grapevine broadcasts go here… http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/dj/bruce-bratton You have to listen to about 4 minutes of that week’s KPFA news first, then Grapevine happens. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening. Email me always and only at.bratton@cruzio.com

The Ted-ed videos are often on interesting topics.

QUOTES. “THE NEW YEAR”

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been”. Rainer Maria Rilke
“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it”, Charles R. Swindoll
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment”, Buddha
“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you”, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Snail Mail: Bratton Online
82 Blackburn Street, Suite 216
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Direct email: Bratton@Cruzio.com
Direct phone: 831 423-2468
All Technical & Web details: Gunilla Leavitt @ godmoma@gmail.com

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

Posted in Weekly Articles | Leave a comment

December 20, 2017 – January 2, 2018

Posted on December 21, 2017 by Bruce

Highlights this week:
NO BRATTONONLINE NEXT WEEK… Last Year in Santa Cruz, not very good, missing Joyce Malone… GREENSITE on Sexual Harassment… KROHN on housing, UCSC growth, and that LRDP… STEINBRUNER about the Board of Supes self-voted pay raise and how we can stop it, The desperate County budget Problem, Homeless moved to Harvey West, Soquel’s water fees to go up, and the new fire chief in Aptos…PATTON and too many cars…DeCINZO and holiday deliveries… EAGAN and our Unwanted Growth… JENSEN went on a holiday…I critique Star Wars:The Last Jedi, Coco, and Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel…QUOTES on FIRES.

PACIFIC & WATER STREETS, December 26, 1951. This was SPIKE JONES (no relation) TIRE SERVICE and gas station, located right where the Town Clock is today. Even squinting I can’t read the gas prices… and it’s probably just as well.

photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection.

Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

ALDI-TRADER JOE’S OWNER’S. Here’s what little known about the world’s largest food market chain, Aldi. They are planning on growing in the USA. Our Trader Joe’s is a part of that chain.

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN BLOOPERS.

JERRY LEE THE PUPPET. Cousin Dean Hagen

DATELINE December 18, 2017

HOLIDAY IN VICTORVILLE & MAR VISTA. I’ll be busy counting my blessings — and trying to avoid forest fires — driving down to Victorville and back here from Mar Vista. That means that we won’t be publishing “a BrattonOnline next week. Have a great and happy holiday season… and we can be sure that next year just has to be better!!!

THIS LAST YEAR. As anyone who has lived here more than 5 years will agree… “Santa Cruz has changed”. We’ve seen our Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors (especially John Leopold) bend over forwards to give developers every possible financial break. Our Santa Cruz City Council has also sold us down the tubes, by creating new ways to give developers every break possible. As Becky Steinbruner reports here weekly, Supervisor Greg Kaput has been the one to surprise us with some good votes. Cynthia Chase was a let-down, however, after so many progressives supported her, and helped get her elected.

Chris Krohn’s weekly columns here have taught us more about the City Council than we’ve ever known, including how they’ve cleverly manipulated meetings, breaking the audience into small groups in order to control any community thinking, and stop any sharing of unanimous ideas…or complaints. Then there’s the stacked Library Planning committee, and their blinded and predictable support of building a parking garage that will destroy the Downtown Farmer’s Market and encourage more vehicles downtown…shameful. Now we’re seeing more anti-homeless fencing about to be erected around London Nelson Park.

As Gillian Greensite reminds us often, there are also enormous challenges in settling our relationship with the UCSC campus. Santa Cruz has changed for the worse, bottom line, and seems set to continue to change… and get worse. The biggest and most promising hope we have is to elect two people-oriented, positive thinking, and hard-working candidates to our City Council. Let’s start hearing about some of those good candidates!

JOYCE MALONE’S GONE. Joyce Malone and Bill Malone — her husband of 51 years — moved here about 20 years ago from Cambria. They made one hell of a team. They also made a big positive dent in our local progressive politics. Joyce was severe in her political stance but had a fine sense of humor. She would debate anybody on any topic, and be more friendly and helpful than just about anybody I ever knew. In addition to all that, she loved the quotes always at the end of this column! Typically she decided that she didn’t want any “services” when she passed, so we’ll just have to miss her forever and tell each other for the next century how much we loved her.

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.

A REVOLUTIONARY NEW LEVEL.
Over the 30 years that I worked at UCSC to help prevent rape, and offer resources for those who had been raped, the words from a member of a 1974 Vietnamese Women’s Delegation to Toronto, Canada (and featured in a poster from The Guardian) kept hope alive. It read: “When women become massively political, the revolution will have moved to a new level.” What we are witnessing today in the unprecedented breaking of silence around sexual harassment and sexual assault in the workplace may indicate such a shift. Whether the movement of women to no longer protect abusive men with silence and shame leads to significant structural changes depends, as always, on human agency and not on hope or fate or faith.

As many have noted, the most profound change in women’s overall status in the 20th century was the massive entrance of middle class women into the paid work force. Working class women have always worked at low wage jobs, and the raising of children has never been recognized as deserving of a paycheck — but the two wage earning family is now the norm not the exception. Sexual harassment aside, women have not entered the paid work force on an equal footing with men: occupations that are predominantly female are paid less than those that are predominantly male, and women working at the equivalent jobs as men are paid less. But economic independence is key to altering the global status of women, which makes the widespread use of sexual harassment by many men in power to keep women out of jobs or promotion if they don’t comply more egregious than the harassment itself.

Physical and sexual abuse and control of women and girls by men is not confined to the workplace, of course. Domestic/interpersonal violence and sexual assault committed by ex-boyfriends, current boyfriends, spouses, acquaintances or strangers are largely male-on-female crimes: although same-gender sexual abuse is part of the complex picture, and females as perpetrators is not unknown. As an educator in these issues, I have found it challenging to keep the focus on gender as the underlying cause while avoiding alienating all genders in the process. Few are comfortable seeing men as the problem (and not all men are) and the biggest defenders of men are often female. Such defense goes way beyond objecting to over-generalizations: it objects to the facts as presented. From national data, 91% of those who are raped are female; 9% are male and 98% of those who commit rape are male. And perhaps unwittingly, the otherwise positive movement to disavow the male/female binary feeds into the de-gendering of male violence towards females.

The majority of men do not rape, but — as we have seen with sexual harassment — many men were aware of the harassment, and kept quiet, thereby aiding and abetting those who exploit their power. There are many men who are aware of a friend with attitudes of contempt for females; always having to prove masculinity with tough talk, aggressive behavior and being in control; viewing sex as conquest and (if heterosexual), abusive towards gays and homophobic. Such men are at high risk for raping. That risk would be reduced if their friends and acquaintances would drop the tacit support and silence around such behavior. And females who find only aggressive, controlling men attractive might want to contemplate not only why, but also how this attitude supports a rape culture.

Females breaking the silence against workplace sexual harassment en masse is long overdue. Refreshingly, it is led by and energized by women. Its detractors are few (or I’ve missed seeing them) and so far few women are rushing to the defense of the men in disgrace. I think this is partly due to the sharing of details. If we had heard only that Harvey Weinstein had sexually harassed women, we may have reacted differently — details of bathrobes, erect penises and hairy, slobbery advances has produced a helpful “yuk” factor. And then there is the sacrificial lamb of Al Franken. Due process, a focus on the details and making the punishment fit the crime, will be important going forward.

In the meantime there is cause for optimism. When Anita Hill faced Clarence Thomas with charges of sexual harassment in 1991 — and I was glued to the hearings — I believed the revolution was at hand. A bit premature! Twenty-six years later we may well be in such a revolutionary moment, but we cannot be spectators. If we want this moment to continue, every one of us needs to participate. A parting suggestion: the city’s Commission for the Prevention of Violence Against Women recently terminated 35 years of continuous, year-round self-defense classes for women and girls. In my experience, this is a backwards step. If you agree, let city council know.

~Gillian

Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, former Santa Cruz City Councilmember (1998-2002) and Mayor (2001-2002). He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 12 years. He was elected last November to another 4-year term on the Santa Cruz City Council.
Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

Dateline: December 17, 2017

WOKE AND SPOKE
The People Have Spoken

Hiking in the Pogonip with some of my favorite people: former SC mayor Jane Weed, her daughter Allie and son Dash, and Councilmember Sandy Brown

I wrote a column back in July in which I quoted those who came to the podium to clue the city council in on what ails city renters concerning the dearth of affordable housing in Surf City. They pretty much covered the housing conundrum: 1) developers get away with bypassing the city’s own 15% affordable inclusionary by paying a pittance into the housing fund of what a unit actually costs to build and thus economically segregate our community even further; 2) high cost of housing on-campus has students streaming down the hill and dislocating working families. I’m sorry, but housing 52% of an ever-growing student population–19,000 and counting–just doesn’t cut it; 3) there are well over 500 vacation rentals in the city of Santa Cruz and that is beginning to severely reduce our available housing stock for working people; and 4) Silicon Valley high tech workers have found a refuge in our city…just stand out there and count the “Google Buses” on the Avenue any given day.

WE ARE IN A HOUSING CRISIS
What do “the people” who come out to city council meetings to be a part of the community debate advocate? Of course, most would likely sign a rent control initiative in a heartbeat, but contrary to what the landlord-property owner is yelling at anyone who will listen, rent control is not THE answer, but it certainly is a part of solution. If we pass rent control we definitely get the attention of the moneyed-class because then you’re talking about their money. Tenants united is the only way to confront free-market abuses. First, you do a rent freeze to protect existing tenants, then pursue the rent control initiative. But what else should be on the table according to local voters? Real estate transfer tax, a soda tax (Berkeley raised over $3 million in one year), a 3% hotel tax. And by the way, doing all three of those will perhaps double the former Redevelopment funding that was lost when the program was ended in February of 2012. If rent control is to be successful the voters must also pass an initiative that installs an elected rent board. Tenants and landlords would both benefit from a Santa Cruz office of housing that also includes money to defend tenants in court. Lastly, it appears a housing bond will be before voters next November. This is also another important piece of the ever-difficult housing puzzle. Folks, if you want to ensure that this community has a fighting chance to win this housing struggle, you must ask city council candidates running on the 2018 ballot the tough questions around housing, and scrutinize the records of incumbents who may be once again asking for your vote, but often voting contrary to your interests.

Then You Get Tough
The community is demanding that UCSC stop admitting students without guaranteeing them housing. The current situation has not been working for Townies. The city has been losing big-time to the “U” over several years now. The losing streak likely began in 2005 after the last Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) was agreed to by the then-city council and the UC regents. Seems like it’s time for some old-fashioned Nikita Khrushchev (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4JhyHz3M5U ) shoe-banging and prepare for the arduous negotiations that are about to come. Khrushchev got the world’s attention, but the Santa Cruz city council only needs to get the UC regents’ attention. This coming year is perhaps the time for much shoe-banging. The LRDP is set to expire and there’s a committee of community “stake-holders” who will meet six times with university officials and offer input on what a reasonable town-gown agreement should be. These conversations need to be frank, and clear negotiations with cards placed on the table, need to occur. No one that I know is wishing the university to go away. In fact, the opposite is true. We are a more culturally rich, diverse, and vibrant community with our city on a hill present and accounted for, but we cannot allow the hill to swallow the town. Are we nearing the point of having too much of a good thing? Where is the tipping point? It is up to this committee to provide input and help chart a course that has the town and the gown thriving. No one-sided agreements can be allowed this time around. We also need to get tough on short-term rentals and live within our means. If 500 is the magic number, then no more. We must hire a firm like Host Compliance a firm out of San Francisco, which would monitor this number and make sure the hotel tax is paid and that the number of short term rentals remains stable. We must also get tough with market-rate housing developers. They must get the message: if you build in Santa Cruz you will build the inclusionary (affordable) units in every development. You will not be able to pay your way out.

Bernie Tweet of the Week
“Congratulations to Senator-elect Doug Jones @GDouglasJones for his great victory. Congratulations to the people of Alabama for doing what few thought they would do. This is a victory not just for Jones and Democrats. It is a victory for justice and decency”. (Dec. 12)

~ Chris

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.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com

Dateline December 18, 2017

THE REFERENDUM PETITION TO REPEAL COUNTY ORDINANCE GRANTING AUTOMATIC PAY RAISE FOR COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS IS MOVING AHEAD…CAN YOU HELP?
As I have written here before, I think the Board of Supervisors needs to be held accountable on a regular basis. Voting to grant themselves an automatic pay raise for the next four years is unacceptable, without public performance, especially when one considers the looming debt as presented last Tuesday by County Administration Officer (CAO)Carlos Palacios. Please call 831-685-2915 or e-mail. I would really appreciate your help.

THE COUNTY BUDGET WILL HAVE A $4-$9 MILLION SHORTFALL IN 2019-2020, ASSUMING $10 MILLION IS CUT FROM THE BUDGET EACH YEAR BETWEEN THEN.
Item #64, near the end of last Tuesday’s County Board of Supervisor Agenda was alarming: the debt tsunami is coming and expected to hit you and me in 2019-2020. County Administrative Officer (CAO) Carlos Palacios warned the Board that they will need to cut spending $10 Million annually beginning in June, 2018 to soften the blow of the impending CalPERS debt expected to implode many municipal budgets. The County’s increase for retirement benefits is anticipated to be $9-$13 Million. In five years, the County’s ratio of active personnel: retired personnel will be 1:1 (currently, it is 6:1).

What can be done, the Board wondered?

New employees are now promised less in retirement benefits, but there was no discussion about adjusting pay for the rest, such as retired CAO Susan Mauriello’s roughly $300,000 each year plus full medical benefits for the rest of her life. Apparently, there is a lawsuit in process in San Diego regarding the issue of cities changing retirement benefit rates, due to be resolved next year. Will there need to be a hiring freeze, wondered the Board? Maybe in two years, said CAO Palacios.

I asked during public comment on the matter (by the way, the room was pretty much empty by then) how CAO Palacios could claim the County has a balanced budget now when he admitted at June budget hearings that the deficit was about $7.4 Million, down from the surprising $12.8 Million deficit bomb that retired CAO Susan Mauriello dropped the previous year during a mid-year report. I asked why the County continues to hire expensive outside consultants, such as the $15-$25 Million engineers for Dept. of Public Works, $35,000 consultant to “find” Mr. Palacios for the CAO job last year (when it was obvious he had already been personally selected by Susan Mauriello), and the multitude of consultants like MIG hired to facilitate public meetings for large, dense developments like the Aptos Village Project, Pleasure Point area, Capitola Ave/17th, Brommer/7th, and Nissan dealership at Soquel/41st Ave.?????

I ran out of comment time before I could ask why there have been multiple remodels of the Board of Supervisor offices and CAO area offices, and why the Elections Dept. is going to move from the 2nd Floor to the 3rd Floor and why the County needs TWO Assistant Directors for the Planning Dept. and Public Works Dept.? But it would not have mattered, because I got NO ANSWERS to any of my questions.

Stay tuned for the Preliminary Budget presentation to the Board in mid-February, 2018. Do you think the Board will vote to repeal their automatic pay increases? Please help me with the Referendum Petition work to encourage them to take this fiscally-responsible action.

“NO! YOU’VE ALREADY SPOKEN AND CAN’T HAVE ANOTHER BITE AT THE APPLE!” SAID CHAIRMAN JOHN LEOPOLD.
That was County Supervisor Chairman of the Board John Leopold’s response when I stepped to the public podium last Tuesday after Consent Agenda comment, to alert the Board that there were problems with the video recording screens in the Board Chambers for the public view of speakers. It might have indicated that the meeting was not even being recorded. I persisted, ignoring his rude and disrespectful comment, to report the difficulty.

“Well, unless someone tells me differently, I’m going to assume the meeting is being recorded,” was his only reply. About five minutes later, a technician entered the Chambers and fixed the problem. Nothing like making sure the Board is transparent and involving the public’s participation, right?

WILL SANTA CRUZ COUNTY DECLARE A LOCAL STATE OF EMERGENCY FOR HOUSING?
At last Tuesday’s County Board of Supervisor meeting, this issue was Item #11 on the Consent Agenda…which means no public discussion by the Board because it is considered non-controversial. Really? I asked that it be pulled and put on the Regular Agenda for better discussion and staff response. When citizens do this, they are doomed to having to wait the rest of the day for the item to come up AT THE VERY END OF THE AGENDA (Santa Cruz City Council is more respectful of the public’s and staff’s time and discusses pulled Consent Agenda items immediately following Council action on the Consent Agenda…maybe the County Supervisors could change their Draconian policy?)

At about 3pm, I finally got three minutes to ask what the process would be for the County to declare a Local State of Emergency? Would the public be involved? How would expediting building and zoning code and environmental restrictions affect the area? How would doing so affect funding and State mandates? How did staff choose to locate the Homeless Day Center in the Harvey West area? Why was nothing about a Center in Watsonville included in the staff report on Item #11 (now 64.1)? Why not put the Center in the vacant basement cafeteria at the 701 Ocean Street County Building instead of leasing industrial./commercial property (or other County-owned facilities)? I had written the Board in advance to ask all these questions, as Chairman John Leopold has tersely instructed me to do in the past, but had received NO response, which had prompted me to pull the Consent Item.

I only received chastisement from the Board because there apparently is discussion to open a Homeless Day Center in Watsonville (but it was not mentioned in the staff report. Supervisor Ryan Coonerty then said “You will get answers to the rest of your questions when staff reports to the Board at a later date.” Chairman John Leopold instructed me to contact Ms. Rayne Marr, the County’s Homeless Services Coordinator in the CAO’s office.

I had no idea there was such a person, did you? Here is her contact info:

Rayne Marr 831-454-3411 FAX 831-454-3420 Rayne.Marr@santacruzcounty.us

She let me know after the meeting was adjourned that the County is just considering the action of declaring a Local State of Emergency, viewing what resulted when cities of Anaheim and Los Angeles took similar action. I researched that a bit myself and saw that Los Angeles has twice declared a State of Emergency for Housing (June 14, 2016 and September 22, 2017) to streamline permits for affordable housing, making it easier to get permits. However, despite their hopes to gain $13 Million to house the homeless and $100 Million to help with the greater associated problems, those elected officials are still wondering where the money will come from to house their homeless. In 2016, Los Angeles County government officials unsuccessfully lobbied the State for a special tax on incomes over $1 Million to pay for homeless programs.

The City of Anaheim declared a Health and Safety State of Emergency September 13, 2017 to deal with homeless problems along the area’s river trail. That municipality is hoping to get State money to open emergency shelters, increase homeless outreach services and hire more law enforcement staff.

Keep your eyes on these efforts and contact Ms. Rayne Marr with your thoughts and questions.

Meanwhile, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that the County and Santa Cruz City are arguing about how much each should pay to help those who are sleeping on the area’s sidewalks and camped at the San Lorenzo Benchlands area in full view from the CAO’s office windows. It seems the Camp will be shut down soon, and relocated to a comfortable and out-of-view gravel parking lot in the Harvey West area. Out of sight, out of mind.

MAYBE TUFF SHEDS COULD HELP PROVIDE AN ANSWER AND LOW-COST SHELTER?
Last week, I talked with a man who was cleaning the Tuff Sheds on display at the Soquel Home Depot parking lot. He has the job of routinely cleaning the display shed for the Bay Area stores because homeless people move into them. He also works as a pastor at a church in Seaside and serves on a homeless advisory committee in that area. He told me about the project Oakland has begun, using Tuff Sheds to provide temporary shelter for the burgeoning homeless masses. He said the City of Seaside is also going to try it, and maybe Monterey.

Try an internet search for “Oakland Tuff Sheds” and see what you think.

SOQUEL CREEK WATER DISTRICT 17% RATE INCREASE TAKES EFFECT NEXT MONTH…HOW WILL STRUGGLING RATEPAYERS AFFORD TO PAY FOR THEIR DRINKING WATER?
The District will increase their rates by this hefty amount because customers have already done too much conservation, which reduced revenues to the District! However, the rate increase is also to help pay for the new engineering and administrative staff to put in place the PureWater Soquel Project to inject treated sewage water into the drinking water supply for the Midcounty Region.

While District Board members and staff insist the Project is not a done-deal, prioritizing it as the PREFERRED PROJECT has required the District to buy a parcel adjacent to District Offices for the future treatment plant, demolish the historic 1890 Millsap house, buy an educational outreach trailer to gain support for the Project, aggressively mention eminent domain possibilities to business owners in the proposed Chanticleer Avenue treatment plant area, and hire consultants costing $100,000’s.

The District will receive the report and findings from the National Water Research Institute (NWRI) on the PureWater Soquel Project at the December 19 Board meeting. Here is the link.

Take a look at this issue on Item #6.7, page 217. Take a look at the Board’s approval (Consent Agenda Item 3.6, page 23) of the additional $50,710-$61,930 additional money to HydroMetrics to further study the treated sewage water movement at PureWater Soquel injection well sites (without having real data on soil composition of the areas with soil boring work).

Contact Melanie Schmacher with your questions. 475-8500 melanies@soquelcreekwater.org

You might also find these issues of interest:

Page 68: The newest developed well, the O’Neill Ranch Well, has been taken offline again (as of October 16) due to the ammonia problem. There is still no public discussion or activity regarding the new Granite Way Well constructed a year ago in the Aptos Village Project.
Page 69: CONNECT THE DROPS public informational regional water issues event sponsored by LAFCO is scheduled for February 1, 2018 at New Brighton Middle School.
Page 65: The Pipe Study being conducted in Virginia Tech regarding use of water from Santa Cruz City. That report is due in June.
Page 107: The Comprehensive Financial Report for FY 2017.

The Board will hear the Report on the Danish SkyTEM study on January 16 to learn more about the sea water intrusion issue.

APTOS/LA SELVA FIRE DISTRICT BOARD WILL INTERVIEW PROSPECTIVE NEW CHIEFS NEXT MONTH
The Aptos/La Selva Fire District Board heard Interim-Chief Ron Prince announce that there were 33 applicants for the position of Chief, with three local applicants. The top five or six applicants will be interviewed next month. I asked if those interviews will be public? No.

Too bad….let’s hope the Board does not repeat the bad mistake they made when hiring former chief Jon Jones. Litigation is still rumbling along because the Board refused to take leadership on those horrible issues that ensued with beleaguered Local 3535. The Board held closed session discussion on the lawsuit, giving Chief Prince direction to contact the labor mediator. What an expensive and stressful mess. Meanwhile, retaliatory action is proceeding against Captain Ryan Peters, President of Local 3535, who organized the unprecedented 100% VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE against former Chief Jon Jones when the Board considered extending his contract. His Skelley Hearing will be in January.

~ Becky

Gary 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

Dateline December 16, 2017
#350 / Moving Right Along

Too many cars and not enough space on the road. That’s a problem!

Senator Dianne Feinstein wants to build a new Bay Bridge. See picture #1 for a depiction of the problem Senator Feinstein thinks a new Bay Bridge would address.

In Santa Cruz County, my own community, local officials are involved in a “Unified Corridor Study,” to try to find a way to reduce traffic congestion. See picture #2 for an illustration of how our local problem looks, from an on-road perspective. One major suggestion for alleviating traffic congestion on Highway One, in Santa Cruz County, is to widen the highway.

Too many cars on the highways? Let’s build more roads! That is the time-honored (albeit ineffective) way to deal with traffic congestion. As I have pointed out before, more than once, we can’t “build our way out” of traffic congestion.

While I know it seems counter-intuitive, building wider and more roads doesn’t, in fact, reduce congestion. “Induced demand” is a real thing. If we provide more space on the roads, more cars will quickly use it all up. “Wider highways and more cars stuck in the jam,” is how I usually phrase it. And if you are wondering where all those cars would come from, take a look outside at your residential street. Lots of our residential streets look just like picture #3. Thousands of cars are parked along the streets, or in driveways, just waiting for room to run.

If new construction isn’t the answer (and it is not) what can we do? My prescription is pretty basic. It’s one of those lessons we are supposed to learn in kindergarten. Instead of trying to make room for more cars, which is a costly and ineffective strategy, we should, instead, be finding ways to increase the number of people carried by the cars already on the highway.

“Sharing”, in other words, is that “kindergarten solution” that would actually work. “Sharing” is the magic word.

In the realm of transportation planning, as in all things political, we will start “moving along,” again, when we start moving along together.

~Gary

CLASSICAL DeCINZO. DeCinzo’s historic view of our housing problems. See below.

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

MUNCHING WITH MOZART. This free monthly concert presents Nicki Kerns and Lavinia Livingston solos & duets in a performance titled Celebrate Piano Ensemble plus Holiday Sing-Along. It’s happening..Thursday, December 21st 12:10 – 12:50 p.m. in the Downtown Branch – upstairs Meeting Room…of Santa Cruz Public Library.

LISA JENSEN LINKS. Lisa writes: “Wishing Happy Holidays, Merry Midwinter, Swell Saturnalia and an all-round festive Yule to all! I’m taking a holiday break this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com/). Actually, two weeks — don’t want to be accused of spreading fake news! But I’ll be back in the New Year with more fun stuff. Stay tuned!” Lisa has been writing film reviews and columns for Good Times since 1975.

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI. Yes, it gets 93 on RT… but I thought it was a complete fake of a billion-dollar movie machine. I’ll always remember going to our Soquel Drive-in (just a little stoned) and being taken into outer space with Star Wars 1. It had humor, empathy, great imagination, tension — and a story you could care about. The franchise now stages monotonous, uncaring space attacks, with wars so numerous that you can’t even remember who’s on whose side… and you don’t much care, either. There’s the Dark Side, the Resistance, Adam Driver, R2D2, a very dull Carrie Fisher, an aging Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, and those endless space battles that take up probably a third of the movie. A great disappointment… and at 2 1/2 hours, it’s also extra-long. Go at your own peril,.

COCO. A genuine Pixar cartoon, with amazingly three–dimensional animation. The plot is focused around the rich and traditional Mexican culture, with the Day of the Dead, plenty of food, religion, and music. You’ve never seen anything like this before: it’s way more creative and developed than what we usually think of as a Disney Cartoon — and only a little boring after the first half hour. Go see it.

WONDER WHEEL. One of Woody Allen’s worst films. How he can hit so wonderfully like
Annie Hall, Purple Rose Of Cairo, Midnight In Paris, and Blue Jasmine and yet also create a dull, unbelievable flop like Wonder Wheel? Kate Winslet has never been less credible. Justin Timberlake does better than I would have predicted, but he’s out of place in this muck and mire. It’s about their lives in Coney Island in the 1950’s — and I went to Coney Island a few times in the 1950’s, so was really looking forward to this. Damn. Woody is now making a film titled Roda Gigante…we can only guess! RT gives Wonder Wheel 30.

BLADERUNNER 2049. Denis Villeneuve directed this sequel with advice from Ridley Scott and it has many hidden plot lines from the original (try to see it before you see 2049)…it’s an unique addition to science fiction films. Dystopian is a very overused word describing a disaster based future. This film again has Los Angeles totally transfigured…and even darker and more devastated and bleak than the first one, was set in LA 2019. Ryan Gosling carries the entire story, with Robin Wright and Harrison Ford doing fine acting jobs too. I have rarely, if ever, seen or felt a theatre audience so still-so hypnotized-awed-puzzled-and silent as the one I joined last week. I’ve seen it 2 1/2 times now… it needs two viewings on as large a screen as possible, because the photography is so impressive and important.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. Most mystery nuts claim this is Agatha Christie’s best mystery but this isn’t the best movie version the 1974 was better. Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer are fine actors especially Michelle and they do their jobs in this new “Express”. However the cuts, flashbacks, photography, and not-tight directing by Kenneth Branagh who does the Poirot role just dull the trip. Remember the old one with Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot and Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Richard Widmark, Jacqueline Bisset, Sean Connery, Wendy Hiller, John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, and Ingrid Bergman? That film just roared along the tracks and took us with it. Bergman won her third Oscar with her role in that version.

All that said, go see it! It’s fun and only a little dull in parts.

WONDER. This highly touted sob story starring Julia Roberts got an 87 on RT and about a 5 from me. Owen Wilson with his misshapen nose and jerk smile and Julia play the little Jacob Tremblay’s parents. Jacob was born with a misshapen face as in the “Mask” movie (which was better even though Cher played the kid’s mother. Wonder is a genuine Hollywood production in every way. Cheap heart-tugging emotions, shallow acting except for Mandy Patinkin. Patinkin has been the co-star of the Homeland series on iTunes and I just finished near bingeing all six seasons. Mandy has become one of my all time favorite stars. Anyway, Wonder is commercial, shallow and don’t go.

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer, (live only or archived for two weeks… (See next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. . December 19 Wilma Marcus Chandler, Mar Nae Taylor and Bonnie Ronzio tell us about the annual “Eight 10’s at Eight” play festival playing Jan. 5-Feb. 4th at the Center Stage. Then Ross Gibson returns to talk about his book, “An Architectural Tour of Historic Santa Cruz County”. I’ll be in Victorville and Mar Vista on Dec. 26. City Councilman Chris Krohn opens the new year on Jan. 2 He’s followed by Attorney/activist Bob Taren, looking ahead to the new political year. January 9th has Otolaryngologist, Dr. Douglas Hetzler discussing surfers ear, dear wax and dangers of candling and many other health issues. UC San Diego Professor Emeritus Roddey Reid comes from Berkeley to talk about his book, “Confronting Political Intimidation and Public Bullying” on Jan. 16. AND ALSO…if you just happen to miss either of the last two weeks of Universal Grapevine broadcasts go here… http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/dj/bruce-bratton You have to listen to about 4 minutes of that week’s KPFA news first, then Grapevine happens. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening. Email me always and only at.bratton@cruzio.com

QUOTES. “FIRES”

“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire”, Charles Bukowski
“Get excited and enthusiastic about your own dream. This excitement is like a forest fire – you can smell it, taste it, and see it from a mile away”, Denis Waitley
“Desire is a bonfire that burns with greater fury, asking for more fuel”, Sri Sathya Sai Baba
“Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back”, Samuel Beckett
“One afternoon, when I was four years old, my father came home, and he found me in the living room in front of a roaring fire, which made him very angry. Because we didn’t have a fireplace”, Victor Borge

Snail Mail: Bratton Online
82 Blackburn Street, Suite 216
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Direct email: Bratton@Cruzio.com
Direct phone: 831 423-2468
All Technical & Web details: Gunilla Leavitt @ godmoma@gmail.com

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

Posted in Weekly Articles | Leave a comment

December 13 – 19, 2017

Posted on December 14, 2017 by Bruce

Highlights this week:
Garage and Library scam and meeting happening Wednesday, Dec. 13…Greensite on the city’s Budget Shortfall…Krohn and the new mayor, Housing and developer issues, useless forums, tours and still ignoring the citizens, Gavin Newsom for Governor?… Steinbruner and Aptos Cinema and Food Court gone, RTC helping developers at Aptos Village, out-of-county truckers get woodwaste contract, Homeless Center to Harvey West Park….Patton about Democracy and getting involved…DeCinzo and our local Scrooge..Eagan and Sex and show business…Jensen and Scrooge play at Jewel Theatre and The Disaster Artist…I didn’t see any new movies last week! Quotes about “Holidays”.

TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS PACIFIC AVENUE HOLIDAY SNOW PHOTO. This was taken at 7:45 am in 1957. The Palomar Hotel is still there. You can see the original Town Clock site, atop the Odd Fellows building — now known as the Neary Business Center, and containing Artisans, The Hat Company, and Bunny Shoes. Leasks Department store on the right is now Urban Outfitters…and so it goes.

photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection.

Additional information always welcome: email bratton@cruzio.com

FOR FANS OF “THE CROWN” ON NETFLIX

10 MOST EXPENSIVE FLOWERS IN THE WORLD.

CONTACT JUGGLING. NOT QUITE THE SAME..

DATELINE December 11, 2017

PARK N’ READ GROUND LEVEL LIBRARY MEETING WEDNESDAY. The level of response to increasing pressure from city powers to build a new library on the ground floor of a new parking garage is right up there with that provoked by the issues of housing, widening Highway 1, and UCSC growth. The concept of encouraging more cars to drive downtown, the destruction of the perfectly successful Downtown Farmer’s Market, the real possibility of renovating the present library and on and on. Here are excerpts from some of the “letters to the editor” I’ve received.

Judi Grunstra a Reference Librarian at the Watsonville Public Library wrote..

“On Dec. 3, slightly better advertising resulted in a larger crowd than previous meetings of the Downtown Library Advisory Committee. Participants were seated around tables in groups, where they had a chance to review the costs of the 4 options provided by the architectural firm Noll & Tam, only two of which are close to the $23 million allocated by Measure S. A completely new library building is millions over budget, so the affordable choices come down to either a partial renovation of the current 2-story library building, or moving the library into the ground floor of a multi-story “mixed use” (garage) on the parking lot behind the former Logos. The great majority of participants rejected the library-in-a-garage concept, preferring the renovation option, keeping the current site. Most also questioned the need for another garage downtown. The goal is to have an upgraded, safe, functional and attractive library that would serve the community well into the future. Although participants had questions to ask and ideas to share, this meeting was not set up to provide any answers. Gathering this type of community input should have occurred much earlier in the process and with the architects present. That is how other communities engage interested citizens. That did not happen here. The committee makes their recommendations at their final meeting, on Dec. 13 at 6 pm at the Santa Cruz Main library meeting room”. Judi adds the link to “Don’t Bury The Library”… www.dontburythelibrary.weebly.com .

LAST LIBRARY MEETING WEDNESDAY, Dec.13!!! Carol Long emailed…”
Last meeting on the parking garage/library branch:
Final Meeting, Downtown Library Advisory Committee
Wed, Dec 13, 6pm @ Downtown Library’s Upstairs meeting Room
Please go to the meeting or send an email like the one below to this address:

sumanovargasi@santacruzpl.org

“I strongly urge the Library Advisory Committee to follow the advice they requested from the consultants from three different urban planning agencies; implement Transportation Demand Management before, and in fact, instead of expanding parking capacity. The Committee must think not only of the advantages the library will derive from various choices, but of the disadvantages — greater traffic and increased global warming emissions — which will accrue to the broader community and the world at large if we keep increasing automobile traffic. Traffic congestion will aggravated by the non-solution of enabling increased auto trips with more parking.

As Rick Longinotti and The Campaign for Sensible Transportation recommend, we need to decrease both traffic and global warming if our cities are to be livable. Some cities like London are on the way to eliminating individual vehicles altogether, and a study in Australia showed that this would be necessary for most urban centers in the near future. Again, I urge you to be forward-thinking and not to do business as usual. That’s not what we voted for when we voted in the funds for the library”.

Rick Longinotti from The Campaign for Sensible Transportation added… “Many urban planners are questioning whether any city would be wise to invest in more parking capacity at a time when autonomous vehicles are on the horizon, with their anticipated reduced parking demand.
Our group sends its best wishes to the Library decision-makers to figure out how to spend Measure S funds on the Downtown Library. We understand that becoming a tenant in a City garage would be a sweet financial deal for the Library. However, we ask you to consider that investing limited City resources on expanding auto capacity instead of the available alternatives would saddle future generations with debt for a white elephant “asset”. Moreover it would enable an increase in traffic, increasing greenhouse gases and making our streets less hospitable to walking and bicycling”. We all need to watch and remember how Santa Cruz as a city handles this huge and involving issue…especially on Wednesday!!

CUTS TO THE QUICK
With tourism booming, brand new expensive hotels open for business, property taxes secure despite Prop. 13, and with the median home price around $850,000, it came as a surprise when the city budget director forecast a $2.7 million General Fund deficit for 2018. Surprise turned to disdain when staff recommended filling the deficit by cutting First Alarm patrols at Harvey West Park, the River levees and the Wharf along with cuts to Youth and Teen programs, trail camp clean-ups and Parks and Recreation programs. To pick on such small, vital services seemed mean-spirited at best. And if, as staff claimed, such cuts would make no difference and be unnoticed by the public, then why have such services in the first place? To their credit, five council members, all but Mathews and Watkins, voted against such draconian ways to fill the deficit.

According to the budget director, the basis for the 2018 shortfall with more to come ($15 million by Fiscal Year 2021) is due to steep increases in pension and health care costs, and the “need to retain and develop city staff” (emphasis added). Most institutions don’t “develop” staff during budget shortfalls. They enact a hiring freeze. Yet hiring at the city, especially at the upper levels, chugs merrily along as though there were no shortfall in sight. Do we really need “spokespersons” for the SCPD and other departments? Aren’t the handsomely-paid department heads capable of speaking to the press and the community? And what about the plethora of consultants hired to develop unpopular projects such as the Corridors and the Wharf Master Plans? To be fair, the $1.1 million Wharf Master Plan was largely paid for by funds obtained under false pretenses from the federal government’s Department of Commerce, by the city’s claim that the wharf was “severely damaged” by the 2011 tsunami — when in fact the wharf was not damaged by the tsunami. In order to secure the federal grant, the city’s Parks and Recreation department had to cough up $175,000 in contributions, roughly the amount of the suggested budget cuts to fill the 2018 shortfall.

A meaningful debate on such questions would show respect for the community. A set of options that includes cutting resources such as security on the levees is akin to telling us to go play in the sand box.

~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.

By: Chris Krohn    Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Last council meeting of the year brings home little bacon, and no tofu. But a subcommittee to study the Santa Cruz housing crisis some more? That got done.

This would be the year of housing, housing, and housing according to Mayor Cynthia Chase. That was back in December of 2016 when the mayoral world was new and immigration (ICE) raids and a homeless benchlands camps were yet to come. December of 2017 might’ve been thought about in terms of the next comet sighting, a happening event but still far off. Hope, along with Santa Cruz dope, were still wafting freely through borrowed gas-tax repaving projects and declarations that Surf City might be the fourth most expensive planetary housing destination. That was then. Chase again reiterated the pledge in a Good Times interview on Jan. 23rd, “Housing is a big focus this year.”

Even when faced with a Homeland Security-immigration crisis on Feb. 15th–seems like the Department of Homeland Security had a desk inside the SCPD, and no one knew about it…except the SCPD–she didn’t change direction and make “sanctuary” her main issue. Nope, she doubled-down proclaiming at her “state of the city” address in May, “Our community is struggling with a full-blown crisis that requires rethinking of approach, emphasizing innovation, capitalizing on the growing level of compassion and expertise in our community and we need to come together to define our collective housing condition.”

Of course, that statement was made in front of a developer-real estate heavy crowd. A very different crowd than the one that would show up the next month, 400-strong, at the SC Civic Auditorium. The June 24th council meeting was all about housing, housing, housing questions…and the crowd got back the council majority’s collective answer: study, study, study. But alas, it wasn’t until August that the mayor began her “listening tour” and the vaunted “Year of Housing” became a full-throated, the-British-are-coming cry, culminating in a five-month sprint all the way to the end of her mayoral run. That mad dash ended this past week in a few council motions she suggested others make because as mayor she cannot introduce legislation. Her words were spoken forcefully, trying to overcome laryngitis and possibly, sheer exhaustion. The finish line was nigh, but the gold (silver? bronze?) simply out of reach. Her main suggestion was to allow a committee of three councilmembers to go off and deliberate on the reams of material collected during her “listening tour” and then come back to the council in March with recommendations. During her marathon listening sprint she met with over 30 different groups to discuss “the crisis,” our brand of Northern Ireland’s “The Troubles,” I guess; five city council study sessions were held; and the mayor seemed to expend every ounce of her being in order to get something going and move the city toward real housing solutions for all. But therein lies the conundrum.

“WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?”
It goes back to the old union song, “Which Side Are You On?” It was written by Florence Reece at the age of twelve, when her father, a coal miner, was out on strike during the great “Harlan County War.” It was often performed by Pete Seeger (see right). The real estate interests in Santa Cruz have enough housing. The developer class gots their homes too. Mayor probably should’ve crossed them off the list early. No? The Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Association, and University Admin-types all have interests in continuing the failed state of a market-driven housing system in this part of the world. It’s not what Santa Cruz needs. Supply and demand can be thrown out in this arena. Mayor Chase’s margin of victory some three years ago came about because “The Progressives,” threw their support behind Bruce Van Allen, Leonie Sherman, and ‘da mayor. She simply forgot (?) who brung her as the political saying goes. She found some new friends at the big dance, I guess.

Our father was a union man someday I’ll be one too.
The bosses fired daddy what’s our family gonna do?
Come all you good workers good news to you
I’ll tell of how the good old union has come in here to dwell.

Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

The folks who showed up at the civic auditorium last June pretty much covered the gamut of our Santa Cruz lack of affordable housing troubles. I doubt the “listening tour” produced much in the way of new ideas before the council went on their customary July vacation. If a subcommittee of the city council and a group of impaneled residents, would’ve rolled up its collective sleeves immediately following June 24th meeting, and started then, we might actually now have a plan. Oh, but staff got in the way, and I guess suggested a “listening tour,” lengthy report backs, more study sessions, and reasons not to risk too much at this time, given the city manager’s $2.7 million current budget deficit. The plan put forward at last week’s city council meeting may well culminate in some really good suggestions by next June of 2018, right before the city manager (CM) puts the kaibosh on the whole thing ‘cause we now a $3 million hole in the budget’ as a result of past police and fire pension agreements. We just can’t take on any more stuff that costs money right now, will be the CM’s mantra. But folks, the real harm in forming this council subcommittee is that it’s leaving out the public. I suggested expanding the committee. Give each councilmember two appointments, and unleash the intelligence and creativity that overflows in this town. So many smart people here have a singular passion: real affordable housing. And they know a lot more, and have a lot more time, than any current member of the city council. I can honestly say there isn’t any member of the current council given his or her other committee assignments, council meeting dates, and outside jobs who can offer but a modicum of time, and that’s just not good enough given what’s at stake. So, look for certain city staff to try and lead the subcommittee towards a kind of bureaucratic Promised Land when final recommendations come back to council.

NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN.

Santa Cruz Mayor, David Terrazas being sworn in by Superior Court Judge, Paul Marigonda in the Santa Cruz City Council Chambers at 809 Center Street.

Santa Cruz Has a New Mayor
David Terrazas was sworn in as the 94th mayor of the city of Santa Cruz last week. He began his mayoral reign on the evening of December 6th. Formerly, vice-mayor Terrazas literally changed hats all in one motion as Mayor Cynthia Chase was absent due to a nasty cold. During his new mayor remarks, he spoke of “a deep love of Santa Cruz”, proudly stated he is the grandson of immigrants, and that his wife Monica is also an immigrant from El Salvador. David’s remarks were as circumspect as they were emotionally charged. There is “a crisis in mental health…there is crime on our streets…public misery and disorder…” Terrazas itemized his public safety concerns first. He wants to “improve the Riverwalk,” and “keep open spaces healthy and family-friendly.” I think I supported him when he said, “we need to find out who the homeless are, and what they need to get off the street.” Amen brother. He said he had three priorities: 1) community safety, 2) support for city core services including support for youth programs, and 3) “cleanliness of downtown.” He also said, “I support getting back to basics.” There was not much in the way of specifics, but it was offered up before the more than 80 David-supporters present with gobs of passion, multiple smiles, all the while exuding a sense of determination and forthrightness. I think too he wanted to be candid, but he held himself back, perhaps for another day and time.

Gavin Newsom, Candidate for Governor, Comes to the Cruz Looking for Support
In my lifetime, no elected governor has ever run a campaign on universal healthcare, support for sanctuary cities (and state!), or addressing the needs of our state’s most vulnerable population, the homeless. Gavin Newsom says he is running on all these issues, and even seems to be proud to run on these intractable matters, arguably the state’s most pressing and persistent ones. Newsom was in town this past Saturday bringing his upbeat, unabashed, some might say oil slick brand of liberalism to Surf City. In his hour-long presentation before a crowd of well over 100 — mostly Dem party loyalists at the Police Community room on Center Street — Newsom offered his stump speech, and he even acknowledged it at one point, thanking the audience for asking tough questions on homelessness, creating a state bank, releasing Prop. 51 funds, housing more UC students on campus, and the one he received the most applause on, universal-single payer-medicare for all healthcare. I came away impressed and wondering if, as the front runner — LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, California State Treasurer John Chiang, and former California Public Schools Superintendent Delaine Easton are also running — he will tack towards the center, as he visits the rest of a state that is not Santa Cruz or San Francisco. He appeared quite comfortable here in the city of the Holy Cross. Villaraigosa will be in Santa Cruz on Wed. Dec. 13th at Fred Keeley’s house.

Bernie Tweet of the Week
“The Democratic Party will not become a vibrant and successful 50 state party until it opens its doors widely to the working people and young people of our country. I am extremely pleased that the Unity Reform Commission has begun that process.” (Dec. 9)

~Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, former Santa Cruz City Councilmember (1998-2002) and Mayor (2001-2002). He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 12 years. He was elected last November to another 4-year term on the Santa Cruz City Council.

By: Becky Steinbruner    Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com

HOLD THE SANTA CRUZ COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS ACCOUNTABLE..SIGN THE REFERENDUM PETITION

Please help me hold the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors accountable to the people, by signing and helping to circulate the Referendum Petition to repeal Ordinance 5256 amending County Code to grant an AUTOMATIC pay increase to the Board for the next four years, with two increases in 2018.

Supervisors took this action via the Consent Agenda, without public discussion that day other than Supervisor Caput voting NO on the issue. This came after the Supervisors passed Resolution 279-75 on October 24 to increase their own salaries by the highest amount (5.18%) of any middle management salary increase approved. Look at the larger-than-cost-of-living increases granted here in Item #32

Please help me circulate Referendum Petitions countywide. Call me: 831-685-2915 or e-mail ki6tkb@yahoo.com

REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION (RTC) VOTED TO FUND $1.9 MILLION MORE TO HELP SWENSON & APTOS VILLAGE DEVELOPERS DESPITE OVER 200 VOTES OF PROTEST BY THE PUBLIC.

“We’ll try to squeeze them in if we can,” said Assistant Public Works Director Steve Wiesner, when asked by Commissioner Sandy Brown if there were any bike racks included in the County’s Aptos Village area road projects. Including bike racks had been a contingency for the County to receive the $650,000 grant last year, but none got included in the bus stop relocation area or anywhere in the Phase I Trout Gulch/Soquel Drive area project. There were none included in the Aptos Creek Road Traffic Light project application before the RTC either.

When quizzed further by Commissioner Brown, Mr. Wiesner said there will plenty of bike parking within the Aptos Village Project. That does not serve the public taking public transportation to the Village area or to the many festivals held at the County’s Aptos Village Park, where there is NO BIKE PARKING currently available.

Commissioner Bertrand asked why the public had been denied access to view the County’s Aptos Creek Road $3 Million Traffic Light Project. Mr. Wiesner replied it was because the plans have not been finalized. So, it is okay to spend public taxpayer money but not allow the taxpayers to see what is to be built???

The Commissioners seemed to think this was all okay, even though 127 people signed the online protest petition and 73 had signed protest petitions at the Cabrillo Farmer’s Market. The RTC approved yet another gift of $1.9 Million to help Swenson and the other Aptos Village Project developers mitigate the anticipated 8,000 new vehicle trips/day thanks to the disgustingly-dense three-story development in an area already in traffic gridlock.

Supposedly, the RTC Committees that had reviewed the applications before will have one more look at the Board’s approval…what changes do you think those groups will make???

DID THE BOARD VIOLATE PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE DURING HOSTED RENTAL PUBLIC HEARING?
The December 5 Board of Supervisor meeting was an incredible display of charade. The controversial Hosted Rental Ordinance proposed largely by Supervisors Zach Friend and Ryan Coonerty was scheduled for discussion at 1:30 pm, and filled the room with people who did not want unfair limitations placed on their ability to occasionally rent a room to travelers, and thereby financially enable them to pay mortgages and property taxes on their home. These homeowners had been advised earlier by Zach Friend that the issue would not come before the Board for a few months, but it had suddenly been scheduled for public hearing (not advertised in local papers?) last Tuesday. The word got out, and so did the people.

I could not stay for the entire hearing, but returned at about 4 pm to hear the Board still debating the issue. I had to stand and listen along with about 50 other people outside in the hallway because the Chambers were at capacity. Supervisor McPherson had made a motion, seconded by Supervisor Greg Caput, to not limit the number of nights to be rented, allow two rooms per household to be rented, and to dedicate a certain percentage of the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) that the homeowner would have to pay via AirBnB to affordable housing solutions within Santa Cruz County.

Just as it seemed things had been rehearsed in advance…Zach Friend INTRODUCED A SECOND MOTION while the first motion was still on the table and being considered. That has never been allowed before at any Board meeting I have attended, but Chairman John Leopold looked at CAO Carlos Palacios (the Parliamentarian for the Board) and, without consulting him, announced that the Board would consider Zach Friend’s motion, and asked that it be put up on the screen for discussion. After great length, Chairman Leopold announced that the Board would first vote on Zach Friend’s motion, and if it passed, Supervisor Bruce McPherson’s motion would die. That is just what happened….was that legal parliamentary procedure? Not according to Robert’s Rules of Order, but I think the Board uses another set of rules…maybe their own? Hmmmm…….

BOARD OF SUPERVISORS APPROVE TRUCKING ALL COUNTY WOODWASTE TO MONTEREY COUNTY, IGNORING LOWER BID TO KEEP IT LOCAL.
After the Board finished the dog-and-pony show for the hosted rental ordinance, at around 4:15 pm, the issue regarding Public Works recommendation to approve granting a new contract with Keith Day Trucking in Monterey County to truck all woodwaste and yard waste to Monterey County effective January 1, 2018, even though the cost will be higher to the County taxpayers by $211,000 — and it means significantly increasing the greenhouse gas emissions and truck traffic on Highway One. Assistant Director of County Public Works Colt Essenwein grinned as he listened to the appeals of the public, which included Scotts Valley Mayor Mr. Randy Johnson, a Watsonville City Councilmember Ms. Trina Coffman-Gomez, and a Man authorized to represent Watsonville Mayor Mr. Lowell Hurst, all of whom spoke in support of the County maintaining the current relationship with Vision Recycling.

Because the Board had allowed the Hosted Rental Ordinance discussion to take all afternoon before taking their pre-determined action, and because Chairman Leopold announced that two Board members had to leave at 5:30pm, PUBLIC COMMENT WAS REDUCED TO ONE MINUTE. It was a disgusting display of the Board going through the motions to pretend there could be any change to the County Public Works long-sought goal of awarding the contract to Monterey County’s Keith Day Trucking. The Board’s actions disregarded the public, disregarded the fact that Vision Recycling’s bid was the LOW bid, and shoved through something that, even though the Board recommended Keith Day Trucking hire the 21 Vision Recycling local residents who will stand to lose their jobs, was a callous disregard for the environmental and economic impacts of what, in my opinion, smells of a personal favor or deal.

I gathered in the hallway outside afterward with the Vision Recycling employees. The worried looks on their faces has haunted me for days, along with the question of the way the County seems to be doing business these days…

THE APTOS CINEMA BUILDING IS ALL BUT GONE AT RANCHO DEL MAR CENTER
Last week the claw of demolition chewed down the last of the Aptos Cinema and much of the former food court building at the Rancho del Mar Center. One wall standing, braced to prevent collapse, remains. Dust control was spotty, but runoff from the site’s water use was uncontrolled and ran directly into the storm drains and nearby Aptos/Valencia Creeks. I am glad to see now that there are at least some sediment screens over those grates. Is anyone from the County watching? I hope that you are, because the County probably won’t be.

By the way, what IS going on at the nearby 1928 Aptos Creek Bridge these days, with a construction company digging adjacent to the historic Bridge? Call County Public Works and ask: 454-2160.

COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS WILL CONSIDER DECLARING A LOCAL STATE OF EMERGENCY OR SHELTER CRISES TO EXPEDITE BUILDING A HOMELESS DROP-IN DAY CENTER NEAR HARVEY WEST PARK
County staff has determined that the best place to open a Drop-in Day Center for the area’s growing homeless population would be in the Harvey West Park area. This will probably not be discussed at the December 12 Board meeting, because it is in the Consent Agenda as Item #11. What worries me is that the Board will consider declaring a Local State of Emergency or Shelter Crisis “to expedite siting of the Day Center and allow for amendment to zoning, building and other building codes/regulatory codes, reduce land use barriers (aka public hearings) and expedite contracting processes.”

Currently, staff is looking for vacant commercial or industrial sites to lease. Preferred sites are 155 DuBois, 195 Harvey West Blvd (former Encompass Community Services building), 320-330 Encinal Street, and 350 Encinal (former Goodwill building).

Why lease property, increasing the burden on County taxpayers? Why not set up the Day Center in the basement of the County Building at 701 Ocean Street, in the now-vacant cafeteria? That would be close to the downtown homeless population, the existing Benchlands Homeless Camp adjacent to the County Building, and would provide logical and convenient access to public services for the homeless. The County already employs two full-time security guards for the County Building and parking areas.

I want to help the homeless, but shouldn’t the Board also act fiscally-responsible with precious taxpayer money? Would declaring a Local State of Emergency require that the County INCREASE the number of required affordable units to be built inclusionary in new developments and hold developers to the requirement? Call your Supervisor and ask: 454-2200.

BOARD OF SUPES WILL HEAR PRELIMINARY COUNTY BUDGET REPORT PROJECTING $4 -$9 MILLION BUDGET GAP IN 5-YEAR FORECAST
The County Board of Supervisors will hear the County Administrative Officer (CAO) Carlos Palacios report the Preliminary Budget Protection Report for 2018-19 and may take action as recommended by the CAO. That part is a bit murky, but read this report and ask why County employee retirement costs are projected to INCREASE $9-$13 MILLION in the next five years. Wow.

Take a look at the report (Item #64) here

Help me with the Referendum Petition….make the Board accountable.

Cheers,

Becky Steinbruner, 831-685-2915

~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.

By: Gary Patton    Email Gary at gapatton@mac.com

http://www.gapatton.net (Brattonote: now it’s much easier to subscribe)
#342 / Democracy Reviewed

I am known to rely on book reviews as a place to uncover various ideas that strike me as important or useful (and yet I never read the books themselves). This is not the best practice, I know, but it works for me.

Most recently, I found some helpful observations in Barton Swaim’s review of a couple of books about democracy. Swaim’s review was published in the November 25-26 edition of The Wall Street Journal under the title, “Trusting the People to Make Mistakes.” That is the hard copy version of the title. When you click the link, you’ll see something else at the top, but the text is just the same as the version delivered to my doorstep. Swain focuses his review on the relationship between “liberalism” and “democracy,” and suggests, citing to Josiah Ober’s book, Demopolis: Democracy Before liberalism in Theory and Practice, that we disassociate these two terms. I am all for that!

Ober says that democratic government depends on “civic dignity,” which “requires citizens to be engaged in the effort of fashioning a shared existence.” That is what I call creating the “human world,” the world we most immediately inhabit. I am with Ober in saying that this requires civic engagement. My phrasing is generally along these lines: “We can’t have self-government unless we get involved with government ourselves.” Among other things, Ober says that civic dignity implies that the people, as they work to govern themselves, must be free to make mistakes. The fact that they do make mistakes is not a reason to invalidate our commitment to democracy, or to suggest (along with Plato and other philosophers of perfection) that only the “elites” are fit to rule.

What is the timely message in Ober’s scholarly analysis?

The people made a mistake, in our last presidential election. A BIG mistake. However, democracy will survive. Let’s not be suckered into the idea that all Trump supporters are “deplorable,” an idea based on elitist liberalism. We’re all in this together. That’s another one of my favorite observations!

Gary 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 his blog at www.gapatton.net

CLASSICAL DeCINZO. A December traditional DeCinzo with our own local Scrooge…scroll downwards, just a bit more.

EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s “If The Shoe Fits” 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 with his take on you-know-who titled “Just Go”.

LISA JENSEN LINKS. Lisa writes: “Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol continues to haunt our holidays with the impressive, one-man show, Scrooge, at Jewel Theatre Company, reviewed this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com/). Also, find out how an obscure guy with no talent became a cult idol by making the worst movie in Hollywood history in The Disaster Artist.” Lisa has been writing film reviews and columns for Good Times since 1975.

For the very first time in years I didn’t attend any films last week. Nothing looked that exciting. I did see National Theatre Lives’ production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” at the Del Mar at 11am. last Sunday morning. It was great. Not as good as his later musicals, Company, Sweeney Todd, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Assassins… but very good all the same.

LADY BIRD. This film restored my faith in great films! RT gives it 100%, and it’s the highest-rated film in RT’s history!!! Greta Gerwig directed Saorise Ronan and others in this sincere, well-thought-out movie. A teenaged daughter and her mom have a terrible, never-ending battle over clothes, religion, dating, sex, college and everything. It all happens in Sacramento around 2003 , which is somehow appropriate. It’s sensitive, subtle, and surprising. Gerwig breaks many directing rules, and creates new plot possibilities. Go see this film.

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI. First, please note the 95 RT rating. When you have Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell working in a film directed by an Oscar-winning director you almost can’t miss. It is definitely a dark comedy. The plot contains murder, rape, loyalty, cancer, and some absolutely brilliant acting. Go see it, and force all your friends to see it too.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. Most mystery nuts claim this is Agatha Christie’s best mystery, but this isn’t the best movie version — the 1974 was better. Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer are fine actors (especially Michelle) and they do their jobs in this new “Express”. However the cuts, flashbacks, photography, and not-tight directing by Kenneth Branagh — who also fills the Poirot role — just dull the trip. Remember the old one with Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot and Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Richard Widmark, Jacqueline Bisset, Sean Connery, Wendy Hiller, John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, and Ingrid Bergman? That film roared along the tracks and took us with it. Bergman won her third Oscar with her role in it, too.

All that said, go see this! It’s fun, and only a little dull in parts.

THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS. This simple minded Hallmark card movie is drivel. Christopher Plummer does a good job (as usual) and the rest of the cast swims through this rip off of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”. It’s supposed to be funny or sentimental, but it lacks any cleverness or sophistication. I’m not sure why they made this cloying mess. Closes Dec.14.

WONDER. This highly touted sob story starring Julia Roberts got an 87 on RT, and about a 5 from me. Owen Wilson with his misshapen nose and jerk smile and Julia plays the little Jacob Tremblay’s parents. Jacob was born with a misshapen face as in the “Mask” movie (which was better, even though Cher played the kid’s mother). Wonder is a genuine Hollywood production in every way. Cheap heart-tugging emotions, and shallow acting with the exception of Mandy Patinkin. Patinkin has been the co-star of the Homeland series on iTunes, and I just finished near bingeing all six seasons. Mandy has become one of my all-time favorite stars. Anyway, Wonder is commercial, shallow and… don’t go.

DAISY WINTERS. Just when you think you’ve seen the worst movie of your life, along comes something like Daisy Winters. Oddly enough, the plot is similar to Lady Bird. A mother and daughter fight to the finish. Poor acting, lackluster photography, saccharine plot and there’s only one reason you might stay awake… Brooke Shields is in it. Brooke is now 52 years old and looks a lot like Bruce Jenner in full drag. If I remember correctly, Brooke was in Santa Cruz with director Louis Malle, and they shot a scene on Cooper Street by the side entrance to the Cooper House. Anyone remember that? Do not see this movie.

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer, (live only or archived for two weeks… (See next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. Dec.12 has Chayla Fisher and Brandon Truong from UCSC’s Student Environmental Center discussing some serious campus issues, such as the LRDP. December 19 Wilma Marcus Chandler and Bonnie Ronzio tell us about the annual “Eight 10’s at Eight” play festival playing Jan. 5-Feb. 4th at the Center Stage. Then Ross Gibson returns to talk about his book, “An Architectural Tour of Historic Santa Cruz County”. I’ll be in Victorville and Mar Vista on Dec. 26. City Councilman Chris Krohn opens the new year on Jan. 2 He’s followed by Attorney/activist Bob Taren, looking ahead to the new political year. January 9th has Otolaryngologist, Dr. Douglas Hetzler discussing surfers ear, dear wax and dangers of candling and many other health issues. …AND ALSO…if you just happen to miss either of the last two weeks of Universal Grapevine broadcasts go here… http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/dj/bruce-bratton You have to listen to about 4 minutes of that week’s KPFA news first, then Grapevine happens. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening. Email me always and only at.bratton@cruzio.com

Pet Peeve Alert!! 🙂

QUOTES. HOLIDAYS

“Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice”. Dave Barry

“I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up—- they have no holidays”, Henny Youngman

“I love out-of-the-way, rugged places. For me, holidays are about the experiences, and the people, and the memories, rather than sitting on a nice beach getting tanned. I try to plant myself where I am and embrace what is there in front of me”, Evelyn Glennie

Snail Mail: Bratton Online
82 Blackburn Street, Suite 216
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Direct email: Bratton@Cruzio.com
Direct phone: 831 423-2468
All Technical & Web details: Gunilla Leavitt @ godmoma@gmail.com

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

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BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

CHAPTER 4.2. Implementation of the Sustainable Communities Strategy [21155 – 21155.4]

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.

Deep Cover by Tim Eagan.

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