After Sen. Maldonado failed to be confirmed as lieutenant governor two weeks ago, Laird’s plans to run for his seat are up in the air.
Articles by Jessica Lussenhop
Vanishing Fog Threatens Redwoods
Love it (on a still Saturday morning) or hate it (while racing up Highway 17 late for work), fog is a crucial part of life in Central California. Now a new study on coastal fog by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley has shown a significant decrease in the iconic Northern California weather phenomenon. That’s potentially very bad news for our friends the redwoods, which get an estimated 30-40 percent of their moisture from fog.
Watsonville’s Overtime Blues
It may be the dead of winter, but summer is already on the minds of Watsonville city employees—specifically the June budget and the potential $5 million hole in it. At the Feb. 9 city council meeting, financial director Marc Pimentel blamed declining property taxes and the state and national budget crisis, but he also pointed out that police and fire overtime were a major stress on the city coffers.
The Year of Loving Dangerously
This year, Valentine’s Day happens to fall on the same day as the Chinese Lunar New Year, so while Westerners are holed up in dim restaurants or sobbing softly into their pillows at home alone, the Chinese will be out blowing shit up and ringing in the Year of the Tiger. Naturally, we had to wonder what year 4707—according to the Chinese calendar—has in store for love.
Report: Open Primaries Offer Only Partial Fix
The Public Policy Institute of California concluded that if passed in June, Sen. Abel Maldonado’s ballot measure would do little to increase bipartisanship.
Santa Cruz County Investors Think Local
Everyone loves to hate the big banks these days. So much so that a national movement called Move Your Money, which encourages individuals to take their money out of our nation’s biggest banks and place it with community banks and credit unions, has enjoyed a groundswell of support since it came out a month ago. Even local banks have noticed.
UCSC Postpones Cage-Free Policy
After Prop. 2 passed, banning battery-cage egg production in the state, UC-Santa Cruz senior Eric Deardorff and his group Banana Slugs for Animals approached dining services about making it campus-wide policy to serve only cage-free eggs. As of this fall, it appeared that talks with Director of Dining Services Scott Berlin were going extremely well.
Survey: Californians Bummed About State of the State
According to the latest survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, the Golden State is in an awfully foul mood going into 2010 and the upcoming election season. Two out of every three of those polled said California is headed for “bad economic times” in the next 12 months, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a very low approval rating of 30 percent. The legislature is even worse off, earning a scant 18 percent approval, just shy of the all–time record low of 17 percent. Poll respondents were also very gloomy about the legislators’ ability to work together in 2010—65 percent say they will not.
County Names New Planning Director
Kathleen Molloy Previsich will replace outgoing director Tom Burns at the helm of the Santa Cruz County Planning Department on March 1.
2009 Crime Statistics for Watsonville
Watsonville’s newly minted police chief, Manny Solano, presented the Watsonville city council with a statistical synopsis of crime in 2009.
