Page 257 | Good Times

Paddling for Liberation

Breaking News

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June 19, 2023

About 150 people hit the waves Saturday at Cowell’s Beach in the third annual Liberation Paddle Out celebration of Juneteenth.

With the aid of around two dozen skilled surfers and other supporters, the crowd fitted themselves with wetsuits and took a brief surf lesson in the sand. They then scrambled into the Pacific for an afternoon of surfing under sunny skies with one-to-two foot waves.

Laura Owen, director at Santa Cruz Credit Union, said it was her first time to go surfing.

“It’s very empowering,” she said. I’m always scared to go into the water, but today I’m very excited to be a part of this and to see so many people out doing activities like this,” she said. Owen added that she was proud to be a part of the sponsorship team from Santa Cruz Credit Union.

The event was hosted by Black Surf Santa Cruz whose single goal is to to promote physical and spiritual wellness through surf in the Santa Cruz community.

Brittany Williams and her daughter, Powell, haul a surfboard out to sea at Cowell’s Beach Sunday during the third annual Liberation Paddle Out in celebration of Juneteenth. PHOTO: Tarmo Hannula

“We are driven by the need and urgency for inclusivity, diversity, and equality,” a statement reads on their website.

Juneteenth, declared a federal holiday in the United States by President Joe Biden in 2022, commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.

Rachel Kippen, board member of Black Surf Santa Cruz, said she was delighted with the turnout.

“People were carrying flowers out into the surf as it got under way,” she said. “It’s a great celebration.”

Watsonville Hospital Nurses Decry Scheduling Changes

Breaking News

Todd Guild

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June 16, 2023

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Watsonville Hospital Nurses Decry Scheduling Changes

Roughly 100 nurses who work at Watsonville Community Hospital gathered at the intersection of Airport Boulevard and Nielsen Street Wednesday to call attention to a recent scheduling change they say affects the way they do their job.

The nurses were speaking out against a decision by hospital administration—which was approved in 2022 by the Pajaro Valley Healthcare District Board of Directors—that requires all nurses to work full-time, eliminating most part-time positions.

“We are asking the employer to reconsider,” says Annabelle Covington, who has been a nurse in the labor and delivery department for 21 years. “We need to retain and recruit nurses, and in order to do that we need more part-time positions.”

As a result of the decision, Covington says, 42 nurses resigned, leaving the hospital short-staffed and requiring the use of traveling nurses.

“They live here, they wanted to work here, but because they couldn’t have a good work-life balance they decided they couldn’t stay here,” she says.

WCH Interim CEO Matko Vranjes says those numbers are not entirely accurate.

“We actually had 29 benefitted nurses that have left since August 31,” he says. “Of those, 21 were full-time nurses. So only three that were part-time that potentially left for that reason.”

Vranjes also says that the 183 nurses—amounting to 164 full-time equivalent employers—is a larger number than before last year’s transition to being a community-owned hospital.

The reason for the change, he says, was the unsustainable amount of overtime pay the part-time employees were making.

“The previous model wasn’t sustainable,” he says. “You can’t continue to pay higher-than-normal rates for staffing and be successful.”

Still, emergency room nurse Quiché Rubalcava says the “arbitrary, unilateral change” to the schedule occurred without bargaining from the union.

The staffing loss that followed, Rubalcava says, was a “tragedy.”

“Those nurses were committed to the hospital,” he says. “They were on the front lines of Covid, they fought through the bankruptcy, and then they were told that their schedules had to change without any say and without the union,” he says.

Rubalcava says the hospital’s claim of making the change to save money backfired. He says the existing nurses are working more to fill the shifts left by the part-timers and required bringing in traveling nurses.

ICU nurse Tiyana Shields says the nurses warned the administration of the potential consequences of the scheduling change, which they did not heed.

“We were ignored, and now here we are and it’s getting worse,” she says. “We’re still losing nurses.”

As the California Nurses Association prepares to go to contract negotiations with the hospital in July, the nurses are hoping administrators will restore part-time positions, which Vranjes says is a possibility.

“We’re very hopeful of this being a new day as we’ve entered community ownership, and that we’ll get to a good resolution and make sure the facility is sustainable and stable for a long time to come. and we’ll keep working toward that goal,” he says.

Cabrillo College Releases Potential New Names

Breaking News

John Koenig

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June 16, 2023

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Cabrillo College Releases Potential New Names

The plan to rename Cabrillo College took a big step toward completion during a community forum at the Cabrillo campus on June 14.

An audience of over 70 eager participants, mostly seniors, members of the public and Cabrillo faculty, came to hear the result of several years of research and community suggestions.

Cabrillo president Matt Wetstein revealed the final five potential names chosen by a board-appointed Name Selection Task Force. The task force is comprised of students, alumni, and community members of all ages and ethnic backgrounds.

The announced potential names are:

Costa Vista, Spanish for “coast view,” a name that reflects the panoramic view from Cabrillo’s upper campus.
Seacliff, the name of a nearby unincorporated community.
Aptos, an Ohlone Indian word meaning “the people.” The Aptos people were one of the larger Awaswas tribes.
Santa Cruz Coast. “Santa Cruz” is Spanish for “Holy Cross” a name that originated with the Spanish missionaries.
Cajastaca, the name of a village of the larger Aptos tribe, meaning “the place of the jack rabbit.”

Wetstein described in detail the criteria for name consideration. Potential name candidates were to be rooted in Cabrillo’s values or rooted in a geographic touchstone and could not be the name of an individual person. In addition, names needed to meet practical criteria that included exclusivity, availability, and the necessity to have a non-offensive translation into Spanish.

Wetstein also renewed a pledge by the Trustees to cover the expense of changing the name through grants and donations, with no Cabrillo funds to be used to replace signage, legal fees or other costs outside of the normal school budget.

Christina Cuevas, a Cabrillo governing board trustee and chair of the board’s Name Selection Task Force, opened the forum by explaining the years-long process that brought the college to this turning point.

In 2020 an alliance of faculty and students petitioned the Cabrillo Board of Trustees to rename the college, citing Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo’s participation the violent subjugation of the Aztec Indians, exploitation of indigenous people’s labor, and role in the colonization of California. Later that year the Board created a subcommittee to research Juan Cabrillo and make a recommendation regarding the name change.

A 60-page report delivered in the fall of 2022 recommended a change. The Trustees ultimately voted their agreement by a vote of 6-1, with the dissenting vote cast in a disagreement over process, not an endorsement of retaining the name Cabrillo.

The subcommittee will hold several more community meetings to hear feedback and discuss the new names with the public. The college’s board of trustees will make the final decision on the new name sometime this summer.

Two more public community forums will be held in coming weeks:

6 p.m. June 28 at the Watsonville Center, Room A-130, 318 Union St., Watsonville.

6 p.m. July 12 at the Felton Library, 6121 Gushee St., Felton

Links to two additional forums, online via Zoom, can be found at: cabrillo.edu/governing-board/name-exploration-subcommittee/ in addition to an online form in which to register thoughts and opinions about the offered new names.

Supervisors Approve Budget

Breaking News

Todd Guild

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June 14, 2023

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The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved the $1.1 billion proposed budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year, including a $731 million General Fund.

While the county’s financial outlook takes into account slowing revenue growth, it funds community priorities such as the South County Government Center on Westridge Drive, a new Children’s Crisis Stabilization Center, design of the Freedom Campus Health Care Center, completion of the Live Oak Library Annex and Aptos Library and the creation of a Master Plan on Aging, says county spokesman Jason Hoppin.

The budget talks this year were underscored by the financial consequences of recent natural disasters. The CZU fires and the storm and the flood damage from the atmospheric river storms in January, February and March have have put the county in what budget manager Marcus Pimentel described as “testing, trying times.”

“When we were in the middle of it in January and February, it was hard to see an end that looked smooth,” Pimentel says. “And yet it got there and I think it’s due to the dedication of people that are putting in 70, 80, 90 hours in a week to make sure they were doing all their dual or triple duties.”

The county is still waiting on $100 million in federal and state reimbursement–$67 million from the former and roughly $50 million from the latter, Pimentel says.

“We all know that this particular budget cycle has been incredibly challenging,” he says.

Budget managers nationwide are also girding for an impending recession that financial experts say is all but a certainty. Pimentel predicts a growing deficit that could reach $24.5 million by 2027/28.

Also included in this year’s budget is funding for inmate medical and behavioral health care, and completion of a new DNA laboratory.

Part of the county’s financial troubles stem from the way it collects its taxes.

With a 9% sales tax rate, the unincorporated county collects less revenue than Watsonville and Scotts Valley, which collect 9.75%, and the city of Santa Cruz, which collects 9.25%.

In addition, the County collects just 13 cents out of every property tax dollar, which is lower than most counties. This despite half of County residents living in unincorporated areas, which is a much larger share than other counties.

The county is also facing increasing costs due to inflation, employee retention and retirement costs and increased costs for disaster response due to climate change. All of these are problems that county administrative officer Carlos Palacios says are likely to worsen.

“As we know we live in the second most unaffordable county in the whole country, when you combine bouncing prices to median wages,” he says.

The approval was the conclusion of a multiple-day hearing beginning in late May that included presentations from every department.

Summoning Spirits

Cover Stories

Mark C. Anderson

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June 14, 2023

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Call it a spiritual breakthrough, though not the type that you’d expect at, say, Santa Cruz Zen Center.

Suddenly Surf City, a place famed for its waves, mountain bikes and redwoods—but also craft beer and Santa Cruz Mountain wines—is witnessing a distillery surge.

Collectively Venus Spirits, UBlendIt Inc. and Santa Cruz Spirits are winning shiny international awards, opening new restaurant-bars and developing new products, making right now the most compelling time for local spirits in a long, long while.

Meanwhile a different sort of spiritual awakening is happening with the area’s most time-honored distillery.

Osocalis can stake a claim to being one of the most carefully crafted and outright uncommon liquors on the planet, and it happens to be distilled in Soquel. Now Osocalis—named for Soquel’s original Native American title—has embarked on a reinvention that will make its unique brandies that much rarer.

Over the course of the pandemic, owner-operators Dan Farber and Jeff Emery decided, in short: Less is more. Rather than pursue any sort of growth model, they pivoted to releasing fewer bottles of bright California brandies to rival Europe’s best Cognacs and Calvados.

Their exacting attention to detail includes hand planting, growing and tending their own grapes—something no other brandy company in the country can claim—to handpicking and personally aging the oak to mature their spirits, sometimes for decades.

“There’s art in growing, art in winemaking, art in distillation, art in maturation, art in blending, art in packaging,” co-creator Dan Farber says. “Every step of the way you can be artful and careful.”

When their brand-new label and look debuts later this year, it will appear on only 300 bottles, for the entire country.

So good luck getting your hands on any, if you do have the cash for it, which is worth noting, as one bottle could easily fetch $1,000. (Price is TBD.) On top of that, all the bottles are pretty much spoken for by elite bars, select restaurants and individual collectors.

The good news there: While Osocalis will prove hard to get, the dynamic liquors from Santa Cruz Spirits, Ublendit and Venus Spirits are a lot easier to acquire.

Here they are, in order from youngest to oldest:

Santa Cruz Spirits

A funny thing happens when Good Times gets to talking liquor with one of Santa Cruz Spirits’ four partners, Paul Locatelli. There’s a lot more discussion of everything but liquor—modeling, sports and sex included.

But eventually the origin story emerges. He describes four friends who enjoy vodka and reasoned, “Why not brand some under the Santa Cruz name?”

“Everyone loves Santa Cruz,” Locatelli says. “We figured if it sells, great. If it doesn’t, we’ll drink it and pass it out. Then it really took.”

Two of those friends are brother Brian and Kevin Dueck, proprietors at Pointside Meat Shop, who carried it first. Flash forward a couple of years and it now appears at 20 local venues listed on its website, including El Palomar, Pleasure Point Liquors and Santa Cruz Warriors Stadium.

Last month it also appeared in a somewhat stunning place: on stage at the 2023 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, arguably the most prestigious liquor tasting showdown in the world, and the oldest and largest of its kind. SCS’s original flagship vodka—they also do grapefruit, lemon, cucumber and mandarin—earned double gold, which means every single judge gave it top grades.

Santa Cruz native Kaia Myall designed the label. “I started by throwing in recognizable icons like the harbor lighthouse, the beach, the fishing boat, the pelican, the shark fin,” she says. “I wanted to make it very Santa Cruz looking.”

The non-liquor talk emerges with mention of “The Real Estate, Sex & Gossip” podcast, which Locatelli—a one-time Versace model—hosts with fourth spirits partner and fellow real estate pro Brian DeDeigo.

“The podcast is [DeDeigo’s] last attempt to force Paul to divulge all the dirty secrets that he is convinced are being hidden,” the Apple Podcasts Preview reads. “GOSSIP Rule #1: Speak the truth. Rule #2: EVERYTHING is on the table, simply apply Rule #1 before detonation.”

Locatelli’s description of the show seems to work for their approach to vodka too.

“We don’t give a s***, we want to have fun,” he says. “I know you can’t print that, but you can quote me on that.”

santacruzspiritsco.com

UBlendIt

Another Santa Cruz meteor just landed atop the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

Hideout Vodka beat out the likes of industry heavies with reputations—and price points—far heftier than their own, including Ciroc, Absolut, Chopin and Stolichnaya.

Hideout retails for as little as $10, compared to twice that for the runners up.

That marks a double win for its parent company UBlendIt of Scotts Valley, because that’s the contract distiller who makes Santa Cruz Spirits vodka too, working with their principals to develop a profile they like. (In Santa Cruz Spirits case, that was filtering and aerating for peak smoothness.)

The two victories speak to UBlendIt’s double-barreled business plan. They do custom brands for a boatload of Santa Cruz area businesses including the Redroom, Britannia Arms and wharf stars Riva’s Fish House and FireFish Grill (reopening this month). That often involves working with their bartenders on unique expressions that work well in what they feature, like Hula’s Silver, Hula’s Gold and Hula’s Dark Rum in Hula’s tiki drinks.

They also do a bunch of their own products. That ranges from Tres Paraguas 100-agave spirits to Westside Water whiskey, an homage to Santa Cruz. Hideout seltzers represent a more recent addition. Canned cocktails are on the docket down the road.

“We build brands,” co-owner and operator John Spagnola says. “We bring people together around great products at a great price.”

They’re able to keep their prices reasonable by outsourcing the base spirit distilling to established producers like Midwest Grain Products, then they tweak it, proofing it down with the best distilled water they can find, applying their own house recipes and occasional barrel aging at their own facility in Skypark.

That, in turn, has helped land Hideout somewhere perhaps more meaningful than the S.F. International Competition podium, when it comes to profits: the heart of the Las Vegas strip, where it’s now the featured vodka at a phalanx of MGM Properties—a dozen all told, Aria, Bellagio, The Cosmopolitan and Mandalay Bay included.

The star vodka isn’t one of the gargantuan and borderline monopolistic distributors’ brands like Skyy or Absolut, but humble little Hideout.

“It’s an impossible feat,” Spagnola says. “OK, not impossible, because we did it. But to do that out of the gate is incredible.”

ublendit.com

Venus Spirits

There’s a motto that circulates around Venus Spirits: “distillery first.”

With how much else they’ve got going on, attentive souls could be forgiven for calling B.S.

And they’d have a case to make. Note the new Venus Pie Trap which opened in fall with pizza pies, hand pies, sweet pies, bagels and coffee. Right next door sits one of last year’s most anticipated new restaurants, Venus Beachside, which will reopen next month after an extensive remodel. This week Venus even hosted its own job fair to prepare for full operation.

Then there is the original restaurant, Venus Spirits Cocktails & Kitchen, which does bustling business by way of cod croquettes, fried chicken, market salads and craft cocktails next to the distillery space. And the tasting room on the opposite side, where everything from a flight of mini cocktails to restaurant pop-ups make for a lively social scene all its own.

But a closer look reveals the spirits-centric strategy is real, and applies across multiple dimensions.

The distillery sits literally at the center of the brand’s headquarters on High Road. Venus’ wholesale gins, aquavits, whiskeys and agave spirits account for a massive chunk of overall revenue, and are poured from Craft & Commerce in San Diego to Humboldt Bay Social Club in Eureka. Dishes like lobster rolls and baked oysters—coming soon to Beachside in Aptos—merit appreciation, but they are designed to complement the adult beverages, not the other way around.

Like General Manager Tulsi Schneider told me when Venus Kitchen reopened fully in 2021, “Everything we have here is to help accentuate the distillery.”

One tasty update there: tours returned recently, happening 2pm Saturdays and Sundays.

Tasting room manager Tory Leslie leads them, and observes a difference in how it shapes the tasting experience for guests. (Pro tip: Ask her about one of her off-menu drinks, like the Nordic Summer.)

“Sitting in front of someone going through tasting notes and the way it’s made, I see people retain that and want to learn more,” she says. “That’s one of my favorite parts of the job.”

Another indicator that the liquor is the ultimate kicker is how pioneering Venus proves. Venus earned awards for its botanical gins—namely the lavender-laced #01 and herbal orange-tinted #02—before gins hit a major reawakening nationwide. The “California mezcal” made with hyper drought tolerant agave grown near Davis is among the first of its kind, and is but one of a handful of Golden State distillers doing it.

Head Distiller Kayla McIntyre encounters a balance in her craft that Farber of Osocalis would appreciate.

“It is the perfect blend of art and science,” she says. “With just a science background, you might not have the palate or flavor-building skills to make something unique and approachable. You’re crafting something people consume and hopefully makes them happy.

“There is an artistic touch to that.”

venusspirits.com

Lani Faulkner Launches Supervisor Campaign

Todd Guild

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June 14, 2023

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Lani Faulkner Launches Supervisor Campaign

A longtime biotechnology researcher and public transportation advocate is challenging Santa Cruz County Supervisor Manu Koenig when his District 1 seat goes up for reelection early next year.

Lani Faulkner kicked off her campaign on Sunday afternoon in a small, redwood-studded picnic area in Delaveaga Park. More than one hundred people were in attendance, including elected official and nonprofit leaders that make up the dozens who have signed on with endorsements.

Faulkner, 55, says she made the decision to run after several community members approached her saying they felt that their concerns were not being addressed by the board.

If elected, Faulkner’s view on the county’s public transit system would be a stark contrast to that of Koenig, whose vocal opposition to the future passenger rail project has become a centerpiece of his time in public office.

Faulkner is founder of Equity Transit, a Santa Cruz-based nonprofit that advocates for “a robust and affordable public transportation system.”

She points out that more than 70% of voters in Santa Cruz County opposed Measure D, which was supported by trail-only advocates and would have all but scuttled plans for a passenger rail.

Equity Transit actively opposed the measure.

“Supervisor Koenig doesn’t represent the majority and that’s part of the problem,” she says.

Supporting public transportation systems such as passenger rail ties into environmental protection, which she says is another of her key priorities.

“Transportation is really critical, because it is one of our top contributors to greenhouse gasses,” she says. “So we really have to manage our transportation system and support robust public transportation, our bussing, future passenger rail and anything else that can help address these environmental issues.”

She adds that the state of California has signaled its support for such plans with its financial investment in the statewide rail network.

Faulkner has spent 15 years in the biotechnology industry and is currently the senior clinical research associate at Stryker Neurovascular, a Fremont-based company that develops technology to help stroke victims.

She says her experience in that industry—requiring her to work collaboratively with state, national and international institutions—has helped prepare her for the role as supervisor.

She also lists housing, homelessness, disaster preparedness and water and resource management among her priorities, as well as supporting and improving services for children and seniors.

She would also look to improve the county’s responses to disaster victims, such as those affected by the CZU fires.

“When I think of disaster preparedness, I’m thinking of this larger umbrella about how we can be better prepared for our future to manage all these things that might come,” she says.

Faulkner serves on multiple local boards, including the local chapter of the NAACP.

She teaches systemic and cellular physiology at U.C. Davis, where she holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in physiology.

Bike On

Aiyana Moya

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June 14, 2023

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Three years ago, red electric bikes zoomed across the city and were left in piles at Santa Cruz city limits.

In less than a week, the city will once again try out a new electric bike sharing. This time, local officials promise the issues that were prevalent with the ubiquitous red bikes have been solved.

On June 20, city officials will unveil the new electric bike sharing program, inviting the public to come and take a test ride and listen to guest speakers.

But what’s going to be different and why are the bikes coming back now?

A Different Approach

The color of the bikes—sleek black and white instead of the fire engine red—isn’t the only thing that will be different this time around.

While the red bikes were owned by JUMP, an Uber-run bike share system, the new ones are owned by BCycle, a company owned by Trek Bikes, of Wisconsin.

The bikes run $7 for half an hour, but there are monthly passes available for $30 and yearly passes for $150, in an effort to offer financially accessible options for regular riders and commuters.

Importantly, the BCycle model is dock based, which means that all bikes must be checked out and returned to a dock—or riders run the risk of racking up a $2,000 fine. This is different from the former JUMP system where bikes could be left anywhere—a big complaint from local residents, who were left to navigate around the discarded bikes.

But according to Claire Gallogly, transportation planner for the city, local residents have been anticipating the return of the bike sharing system.

“My favorite reaction is why has it taken so long for them to come back,” Gallogly says.

It’s a sentiment echoed by fourth year graduating UC Santa Cruz student Michael Wool.

“The bikes are spectacular because it really helps address that critical last mile of transit transportation,” Wool says. “That last mile is a make or break for public transportation. If the last mile is difficult, or the last mile involves getting in a car, that is a barrier to entry and that’s usually what makes people who have the means to choose to drive instead. I just wish it had happened sooner.”

Gallogly says that with the pandemic restrictions ending and summer right around the corner, now is the perfect time to launch the program the city has been planning for over a year.

“Bike share offers one more easy way for people to choose to make some trips on bike,” Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley says. “This complements the overall goals of the city of reducing car trips within town and making biking, walking and public transit a convenient first choice.”

Keeley says he expects the primary bikers to be local, regular users, although there’s virtually no way to know whether bikers will be tourists, students or local commuters.

With JUMP, each bike saw almost five trips per day, and the average trip distance was 1.9 miles. On average, the bike share program saw over 25,000 trips per month.

“While we love for students and tourists to use bike share, the primary users will likely be locals,” Keely says.

The BCycle has a top speed of 17 mph and can provide power for about 25 miles per charge, according to the company.

Encouraging Equity

Looking at how many and where bikes are being allocated throughout each city in the county, it’s clear that the bikes are located in areas with high concentrations of students and tourists.

Santa Cruz will receive 300 bikes. UC Santa Cruz will receive around 100 bikes and Cabrillo College will get 50. Meanwhile, Capitola (with a population of around 9,000) will receive 50 bikes, while Watsonville (a population of 55,000) will receive 25.

Alex Yasbek, environmental projects manager for Watsonville, says that this isn’t coming as a surprise—all cities in the county were heavily involved in the process of divvying up the bikes and choosing the bike share company. In fact, he’s happy bikes are coming to Watsonville at all.

“Watsonville is a bit of an unknown for the bike share company, because we don’t have a college or a very large tourist industry,” Yasbek says. “There’s just not a whole lot of examples of cities like Watsonville that have bikeshare already. We’re really excited that the company is trying Watsonville and we’re hoping to show that it can be successful, because that then allows bikeshare to start happening in all these other cities that have, up to this point, been excluded from bikeshare programs.”

Watsonville—along with other jurisdictions besides the city of Santa Cruz—won’t be launching the bikeshare program until sometime in 2024.

When it does launch, Yasbek hopes to have a plan in place that allows for discounts or fee-waivers for low income riders or students. Right now, the bikes are limited to people 18 years old and up, but Yasbek wants Watsonville to spearhead a program for students using the bikes to get to and from home.

Riding Out

The bike launch on Tuesday will offer refreshments, have officials answering questions and going out on a ride when the bikes go live.

Keely, who plans on being at the launch, says that coupled with the investments the city is making to improve bike infrastructure, the new bike share system should help more people choose biking.

“In the past few years, we’ve expanded our network of enhanced bike lanes, added protected bike lanes on Water Street, completed Arana Gulch, built the first section of rail trail and made safety improvements at dozens of intersections to enhance biking and walking,” Gallogly says. She adds that this summer, the city will be constructing protected bike lanes on Bay between Escalona and Nobel, and adding protected bike lanes on Laurel. Early next year, the city will have the next section of rail trail complete.

If you go:

Where: Santa Cruz City Hall Courtyard

When: Tuesday June 20, 2PM

Our Shot to Let it Rot

Emily Coletta

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June 14, 2023

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Inside the Dimeo Lane Resource Recovery Center, on the ramp of the Food Scrap Pre-Processor, a team of three works to back up a trash truck. It’s a tight fit.

The truck deposits its load into the processor: giant corkscrew-shaped augers shepherd banana peels, avocado skins, and unidentifiable, wet slop to an opening at the end of the tank. The material then moves into a series of chutes and emerges, through a loom-like screen, as a brown mash.

“When you mix all the colors of the rainbow, you get brown. It’s like a brown applesauce,” Leslie O’Malley says, pointing at a window behind which the slurry churns. O’Malley is the City of Santa Cruz’s waste reduction program manager. She is part of the city-wide effort to comply with SB1383, the state bill which works to reduce methane and other short-lived climate pollutants across California.

The Food Scraps Recovery Program, now just shy of a year in operation, responds to the SB1383 mandate that each jurisdiction reduce organic waste by 75% relative to 2014 levels by 2025. This is key in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Methane emissions from landfill and food scraps in a landfill are the third leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions,” O’Malley explains.

The Gritty Details

As many as 33 to 40 tons of raw food scraps arrive at the facility each week from commercial and residential units of Santa Cruz. After pre-processing, the material continues its journey—in tanks aboard another truck—to Sustainable Organic Solutions in Santa Clara. The material then gets processed into animal feed.

“We are working to dispel this idea that it goes directly from collection to pig slop,” O’Malley says. “It is made into pellets for animal feed—that part gets lost. It goes through further processing. Once it is dehydrated, it becomes additive for parts of pig feed. Other parts of it go to biodiesel and fertilizer.”

While the City of Watsonville mixes food scraps with yard waste in their green bins and trucks the organic material to an industrial composter in Marina, Santa Cruz decided to go for the food-scrap processor. This allows the city to limit the carbon costs of transporting the material.

“If we had [commingled yard waste and food scraps], we would have had to send seven trucks a day to Marina, just to do that part, and then they’d have to come back and collect the recycling and the garbage,” O’Malley explains. With the current system, “Sustainable Organic Solutions comes and gets it about every ten to fourteen days.”

The food scraps processor also allows for an eventual transition to a more local solution—digesting the food scraps in the city’s Wastewater Treatment Facility.

“The Wastewater Treatment Facility is within six to ten miles of this facility. It’s in our own ‘waste-shed’, if you will,” O’Malley says.

The Wastewater Treatment Facility is not ready for the volume of deposits from commercial and residential collections. Consultants are beginning to study what is needed for digesters to handle deposits of the highly acidic food waste and how best to capture energy from the decomposition process.

Challenges

John Lippi, former sanitation supervisor back from retirement to oversee operations at the Resource Recovery Center, has another 51 days—and counting—before his second retirement. Over the 40 years of his career, he has seen many sides of waste management. One big challenge looms.

“We get enough plastic bags with the commercial, so that’s why we insist that the residential people don’t use them,” Lippi says. Plastic bags and compostable bags foul the machinery, getting twisted in the augers and further along in the processing.

While looking at the deposits from the truck, O’Malley points out a compostable bag and an aerosol spray can.

“You know, most people have in their mindset composting, that it’s a composting program, and so they don’t understand, ‘Why can’t I use a compostable bag?’” O’Malley says

The other factor that Lippi manages, beyond contamination, is the upkeep of the motors, cleaning the units, and managing the water content in the mash.

“The system needs some moisture to keep it all moving. [Lippi and his team] have really worked hard to figure out the balance. Sometimes it’s too wet and they have to add drier material,” O’Malley says.

This material is agricultural in origin to maintain the quality of the mash as an eventual animal feed. All inputs into the system must be food-based. That’s why the program can’t accept items like paper towels, coffee filters, or compostable to-go items.

“The good thing about Santa Cruz being vertically integrated is that we are our own public works department. We run the facility. We collect the stuff. We get the opportunity to be more closely connected to it. It is great to be able to come and look at a load and say, ‘John, what are people still confused about? How many bags are you seeing? What do we need to do outreach on?’” O’Malley says.

Every single-family home within the city limits of Santa Cruz received a postcard explaining the system, along with a curbside, six-gallon brown pail for food scraps collection last August. For multi-family residences, the steps are more complicated.

Currently, those living in multi-family residences that number five or more units must contact their property manager who then contacts the city to arrange for counter-top pail collectors and a central food scrap collection can or dumpster. O’Malley has hired additional staff to facilitate enrollment of the more than 400 multi-family residences within Santa Cruz.

“Not everyone is cookie-cutter. Not every multi-family has the same set up of carts. Maybe they’re gonna have a dumpster, maybe they’re gonna have a cart. But the biggest thing for multi-families often and business is the space constraints and the enclosures. We’re working with planning on all these new building projects going up as they’re thinking about their trash rooms.”

Looking Ahead

O’Malley says we won’t know if we are hitting our 75% reduction goal until the next Waste Characterization Study, during which third-party contractors categorize and measure waste in representative trash truck loads. Meeting the goals of SB1383, according to O’Malley, is a big lift. She makes mention of a report on state-wide progress which suggested that we won’t make our targets and the need for re-assessment.

“It’s great legislation and well intentioned. I think it’s just hard. How could they have possibly thought of everything and what it was gonna take to implement it? And back to that report coming out saying, ‘I don’t think we’re gonna make it. We should pause.’ Are you kidding me? We have put in so much energy and we’ve got that momentum going.”

While the Food Scraps Recovery Program is a step in the right direction, O’Malley is very clear on the biggest thing people can do to fight food-waste-related greenhouse gas emissions.

“Prevent it,” O’Malley says.

“I think it’s great that we’re getting organics out of the landfill,” she continues. “But let’s really look at how much food we’re purchasing. Or restaurants are serving, or grocery stores, which are buying to make sure that we have this cornucopia of color at our disposal when we go grocery shopping. People can reframe their relationship to food and not rely on, ‘It’s okay, I put it into the brown pail. Or, ‘I put it into the compost, I didn’t waste it.’ These steps are valuable, but they have to work together, just like those three Rs of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It’s gotta be: Reduce, Reuse, and Rot.”

Public Tours Resource Recovery Center, Fridays, June 16-August 25, at 10am and 1pm. Free. 605 Dimeo Lane, Santa Cruz. Pre-registration required.

County Supes Appoint New Agricultural Commissioner

Breaking News

The Pajaronian Staff

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June 14, 2023

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The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved David Sanford as the County’s next Agricultural Commissioner.

Sanford has served as the Deputy Agricultural Commissioner since 2016.

He will lead a department responsible for a range of activities including pest management, weights and measures, pesticide enforcement and oversight of agricultural programs such as farmer’s markets and the annual Crop Report.

“I’m very happy to see David assume this new role,” County Administrative Officer Carlos Palacios said. “He brings a wealth of local experience working with the agricultural community and has served admirably since stepping in as interim Agricultural Commissioner in February.”

Sanford has a bachelor’s degree in agricultural science from UC Davis.

He previously served as Deputy Agricultural Commissioner in Monterey County before coming to Santa Cruz County in 2016, where he oversaw the Pesticide Use Enforcement Program and the Crop Statistics and Organic Registration program, while also helping supervise the Direct Marketing Program, among many other duties.

“I’m grateful to the Board of Supervisors for their vote and look forward to leading this department on a permanent basis,” Sanford said in a prepared statement. “I look forward to working with all sectors of the community to cultivate partnerships, nurture growth, protect the environment and safeguard the bounty of our agricultural heritage.”

Letters & Online Comments

Jeanette Prather

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June 14, 2023

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Letters to the Editor

TIRE NOT

Thanks for the story on 6PPD-Quinone in the 7-13 June issue.

If you take a ride on AMTRAK you’ll see hundreds of tires standing sentinel-like out of the mud in Suisun Bay. Removing those might be a good first step.

When I worked for the County of Santa Cruz I rolled many a-tire out of the mighty San Lorenzo River. I suggested several times that we marshall the volunteer clean-up crews to attach lines to the many tires you can find in the river channel and haul them up via winch from the bridges along the river.

They always ignored me. They also ignored my suggestion to put solar panels on the roofs and parking lots of County properties. That’s finally happened so maybe they’ll start hauling the tires out, too.

Abrasion from sand/silt in the runoff exposing fresh tire surfaces could account for higher 6PPD numbers after rains when dilution is otherwise expected.

Coho salmon sensitivity to part per *trillion* levels of 6-PPD is astonishing.

— Pureheart Steinbruner

FATHER JACOB

I thought it might be important to let you know that a very humble man will be retiring, and he has certainly done a lot for Santa Cruz and the surrounding areas. He is a member of the AFC Santa Cruz and his name is Father Joseph Jacob. He has done so much good in this community with so many successes and I just thought it should be noted in your paper, if possible. It would be a wonderful thing because he’s touched a lot of people’s lives for the better and made a big difference with the homeless. He runs the safe spaces program and has put it on the highest caliber of integrity. He is a very interesting man and he’s climbed a lot of hills and fought a good fight in his humble and meek ways. Thank you for your time.

— Sandra Miller

LONG LIST

I saw your Editor’s Note yesterday where you ask the community to tell you, Good Times’ new editor, what we think is important for GT to cover. That’s probably an enormous list since this county, while small, has so many different regions and neighborhoods, each with their own sets of stories. Thanks for asking this and for not assuming that “the community” or “Santa Cruz” just means the city itself.

Some of us here in North County notice that GT has started to pay more well-deserved attention to South County. I think the coverage you guys gave to the horrible Pajaro floods was thorough, accurate and nuanced. I hope you will also start paying more attention, at least occasionally, to North County, especially its northern end in the San Lorenzo Valley (SLV). That’s what most of Santa Cruz seems to think is the Far Outer Reaches of the known world, the part including Ben Lomond, Brookdale, and Boulder Creek, where I live.

Many people in the city think things are “getting back to normal,” at least after Covid. But we here are not back to normal after anything else—not even close. Not after the August 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire, not after the horrific storms earlier this year, not after ongoing problems with a local tiny water company. Lots of people have given up in despair and moved away over one or more of these disasters.

But we’re not just about problems. The people who remain are survivors and more—we’re problem solvers. I noticed this when I moved here 23 years ago: when problems happen that affect the community, groups spring up like mushrooms, sui generis, to tackle whatever it is. When individuals need help, other individuals offer it. A lot of that has happened here since the fire, which many, many people, especially in Boulder Creek, are still suffering the effects of. Much of it has to do with rebuilding efforts, and some of it has to do with water.

If you search “Boulder Creek” on the GT site, you won’t come up with much. Most recently, your writer Josué Monroy did a story on the crazy-complex situation involving a local water company. Because of a history of problems it keeps not solving, Big Basin Water Company, which has “only” about 500 customers, is now under the scrutiny of the State Water Resources Control Board and the California Public Utilities Commission. Several of us BBWC customers talked with Josué, trying to explain and help clarify this ridiculously complicated mess. We were pleasantly surprised at how carefully he listened, the relevant questions he asked, and the fact that he got everything right in the article.

Anyway, that was a great start. I hope you guys do more. Talk to us. We’re ready for you.

Thanks for listening,

— Ann Thryft

Online Comments

So, Wow! Looks like things blew up at Good Times. What happened to all the Marijuana ads? I was beginning to think it was the MJ Weekly. I can actually breathe fresh air as I read real articles which harken back to the Old Times. However, I sympathize that your bottom line may be a little smoky at this point. J-Students at Cabrillo could do some investigative reporting (or not). The backstory would be extremely interesting! Please tell all.

— Mary Comfort

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Santa Cruz Spirits

UBlendIt

Venus Spirits

A Different Approach

Encouraging Equity

Riding Out

The Gritty Details

Challenges

Looking Ahead

Letters to the Editor

Online Comments