This past year has been marked by the horns of dilemma.

2025 has been a year of debate with locals looking at two sides of issues that have split our community and hold no easy answers.

First, the giant buildings that have sprouted up in downtown Santa Cruz like mushrooms. If you haven’t been down there in a while, it’s shocking to see what looks like a big-city skyline along the San Lorenzo River, with apartments lit up, replacing a street of low-lying, humble structures.

There was a time when Santa Cruz kept buildings smaller because of earthquakes and small-town aesthetics, staying more like Carmel than San Jose. We were our own little Mayberry.

But we constantly heard complaints about not enough housing, particularly not enough affordable housing, and we wanted government to do something about it.

And it did.

Combined with big developers, they reshaped the city, adding thousands of apartments, not all with parking (but that’s another story). They also added housing on top of a new library and are turning our once cute small town into a not-so-small town. Mushroom buildings are cropping up around the county, also.

There are those who hate it and want to keep things how they were. There are always those people, no matter what changes are made.

They also worry that we don’t have the services to increase our county population of around 270,000: not enough water, roadways or hospitals.

Then, there are those who say this is great progress, bringing in more places to live, more people to shop downtown, making a walkable city and, presumably, adding affordable housing for teachers, police officers, firefighters, single-income families, students and retail workers.

Is that what we are getting, or are these luxury second homes for Silicon Valley workers? That remains to be seen.

Then there’s another big split about what is green and what is dangerous.

The state is on a path to shape a future of renewable energy, using solar and wind to replace burning fossil fuels. It makes sense and sounds perfect.

Until you realize that you need to store that energy somewhere, in giant batteries that keep power flowing when wind or sun isn’t.

And there’s the rub, as we learned at the beginning of this year. When those lithium-ion batteries catch fire, there’s no way to put them out. Last January’s fire at Moss Landing released 55 tons of toxic metals into the fields and waterways around the plant and ignited much debate.

Plans to build more battery plants, including one on the books for Watsonville, near homes, schools and farms, have divided the community again.

Is cutting down on burning hazardous fuels worth the risks of burning battery chemicals? That debate will reach a climax in the coming year, presumably, and tensions are high over it.

Take a look back at our year in review cover story and see how it stacks up with your thoughts on the year.

Thanks for reading.

Brad Kava/Editor

PHOTO CONTEST

SCHOOL WITH A VIEW This flying fowl looks like it owns the place up here at the UCSC fields. Photograph by Jo Koumouitzes

GOOD IDEA

U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff (both D-Calif.) pushed the Trump Administration to reverse its shortsighted staff cuts and harmful reductions to critical weather forecasting services and snowpack surveys at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). With an atmospheric river struck on California, which caused severe flooding in Redding, the senators raised the alarm that these dangerous cuts will restrict California’s preparation for dangerous storms and floods—threatening public safety, property and agriculture—while damaging the state’s water supply.

GOOD WORK

A landmark of Santa Cruz’s dance community is coming back to life. The building formerly occupied by Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre, long cherished as the training ground for generations of local dancers, is reopening this January as the new home of Agape Dance Academy and Santa Cruz Dance Theater, marking a pivotal turning point for concert dance in the area.

Starting in February, the facility is poised to once again pulse with daily training, creation and performance preparation. But this time, the vision extends far beyond restoring a familiar space at 2800 S Rodeo Gulch Rd, Suite C.

SCDT Artistic Director Conrad Useldinger hopes to make the building a launchpad for a boom in professional concert dance in Santa Cruz.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

‘How does it change us as a nation to witness countless acts of cruelty by our government?’
—Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC Berkeley School of Law