City officials are prepared to rethink the Pogonip master plan in order to combat the drug dealers and homeless camps that call the park home. Over the past few years, the park’s reputation has caused many joggers and nature lovers to avoid it, and budgetary constraints make the cost of maintaining more park rangers there prohibitive. The new plan is based on the assumption that increasing usage by the general public would force the undesirable elements out. “You gotta bring the public in,” says Chief Ranger John Wallace.
News
Enough With The Kvetching
Nowadays, there seems to be an inordinate amount of kvetching—outrageous complaining—about most everything, and it emanates from all directions and political stripes. Complaining is an inalienable right, and while some of it is legitimate in a world with so many inequities and accompanying narishkeit (nonsense), some people make excessive griping their forte. They waste their time, energy and alienate others by kvetching instead of trying to make positive changes in their own lives and to the condition of the world.
Some Residents Unhappy about ICE
Just about everyone in Santa Cruz agrees that something has to be done to counter rising gang violence. They even agree that the SCPD needs help. What they disagree on is who should be helping. Four federal agencies are now partnering with the police to fight the gangs. No one is bothered by the Drug Enforcement Administration, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, or the FBI. What does concern many residents is the active role being played by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Santa Cruz Mixed-Use Project on Hold
Remember 2120 Delaware? You know, the sprawling 20-acre, 530,000-square-foot live-work building project on Delaware Avenue that, when it was approved by the Santa Cruz City Council back in July 2008, was going to usher in a new progressive multi-use community to the Westside? That was, of course, until the economy tanked and Redtree Properties, the project developer, couldn’t sell any of the lots to customers. Well, today the property looks much as it has for the last decade: a fenced-off empty field.
NextSpace Expanding to San Francisco, San Jose
Forget about MySpace. The next big thing is NextSpace. The company, which was founded in Santa Cruz, offers office space and services to a variety of companies on a per month or day-pass basis. Need a conference room for the start-up you started in your garage, and your living room just won’t do? You can get that at NextSpace, with all the advantages of a fully operational office. Or else you can move your entire office out of your bedroom and into a more business-like setting where you can mingle with other entrepreneurs.
Unofficial: Coonerty, Gallagher, Connolly—And District 4 Runoff
What a relief. The elections are over and the public has decided. People with a lot of money have a better chance of winning a Republican primary. So it’s Meg Whitman ($81 million spent so far) against Jerry Brown and Carly Fiorina ($5.5 million of her own money) against Barbara Boxer. That’s the news everywhere in America, where the California race was the showstopper on the nightly punditcasts.
Tourism Tax Vote Looms in Santa Cruz County
As another summer dawns in Santa Cruz and the boardwalk begins to swell with tourists, the hotel industry is hoping this year will be better than last. It may soon get a leg up from local politicians. On Tuesday, June 15, the Board of Supervisors will make its final vote on the proposed Tourism Marketing District—a separate lodging fee that would be used exclusively by and for the tourism industry to promote tourism in Santa Cruz County. The proposed fee would add an additional $1-1.50 to hotel stays and provide an estimated $1.1 million to the Convention and Visitor’s Council. The idea has already received the thumbs-up from city councils in Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley, Capitola and Watsonville. The supes’ approval would make it official countywide.
County Investigating Safety Procedures after Watsonville Accident
County officials are investigating safety procedures in Santa Cruz after a horrifying accident in Watsonville. A 61-year-old man who had worked for the county for over forty years was pulled into a woodchipper right in front of his coworkers. The victim, who has yet to be named, was part of a crew clearing brush on Paulson Road. The county’s Mental Health Crisis Team was dispatched to the scene to comfort and provide counseling to the crew and other eyewitnesses of the incident.
Santa Cruz Parks and Rec to Bear the Brunt of Budget Cuts
Like most cities in California, Santa Cruz is struggling to cover its deficit, the result of rising costs and lower revenues. Though every department is taking a hit, one department, more than any other, is learning what it is like to survive through a recession. The Parks and Recreation Department has seen its budget cut by 60 percent and its staff cut by 50 percent since 2002.
Santa Cruzs Party Palaces
At first glance Kasey Peck has it made. An undeclared freshman, he lives a block from UCSC with five other guys in a big ranch-style house on the upper Westside. Five young ladies in an almost identical situation live right next door. The only problem: he and the girls next door live in homes that have been flagged by the Santa Cruz Police Department as “loud and unruly” party houses. The designation stems from at least one wild night apiece that most likely involved lots of people, lots of ruckus and eventually lots of police, one of whom it is certain wrote a doozey of a ticket, not just for breaking the city’s noise ordinance but for throwing a legally defined “loud and unruly gathering.
