It’s early Sunday evening and musicians are trickling in to the Civic—musicians in flip flops, musicians in blue jeans, musicians in stylish haircuts. Slowly the orchestra comes awake in a chaos of indelicate morning noises: bleeps and sour yawns and fragments of melody abandoned before they’ve started make sense. Tuning up, the two harpists strain to hear the bell-like tones of their instruments, then fall to chatting.
New Funds to Boost UC-Santa Cruz Infrastructure
State Treasurer Bill Lockyer announced a move Aug. 4 to improve University of California infrastructure across eight campuses by setting up $200 million in bond funds. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports that UC-Santa Cruz will receive $64 million, which will go toward the new Biomedical Sciences & Engineering Facility.
New Hotel for Santa Cruz?
When the city’s Planning Commission meets this Thursday, it will decide whether to approve construction of a new hotel off Mission Street on the far west side of town, beyond Western Drive.
30 Santa Cruz County Workers Laid Off This Week
With the county’s budget in a bind, 30 employees affiliated with the Service Employees Union International will be laid off this week, and the union now suspects that 12 more could face that same fate next week.
Homelessness Down Across Santa Cruz County
Unemployment may be high and charitable donations may be low, but homelessness has dropped 17 percent from two years ago, according to the Applied Survey Research group of Watsonville.
Two Suspects to Face Murder Charges in Sorokin Disappearance
Assistant District Attorney Robert Wade announced that Stewart Skuba, 29, of Santa Cruz and Adam Hunt, 29, of Watsonville will be arraigned on charges of murder, robbery and kidnapping to commit robbery this morning.
What’s the Bottom Line for Santa Cruz County?
Number crunchers calculate what it will take from local government to re-patch the state budget.
Great Pacific Garbage Patch Target of Researchers
Scientists are setting sail for garbage island.
Homeless Man, Six Teens, Arrested in Murder
Police round up suspects after months-long investigation of another homeless man’s stabbing.
Santa Cruz Abuzz with Bees
Researchers have identified as many as 80 native species of bees in Santa Cruz as part of a University of California study of the state’s bee population. There are approximately 4,000 native bee species in the United States, with 1,600—well over a third—in California alone. The study investigated bee species prevalent in seven urban areas statewide, with the focus in Santa Cruz on the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum and the Soquel garden of Kimberly Carter Gamble.
