Every summer when I interview the creative minds behind Santa Cruz Shakespeare, the conversations go to places I never expect. For instance, this year I started with some vague notion that I should find out about how Kathryn Chetkovich’s The Formula became the first work by a local playwright to be produced by the company, and ended up getting into questions like, “Are Shakespeare’s fools really fools?,” “What makes clowns funny?” and even “What is the nature of comedy?”
The best part, for me, is that everyone from Artistic Director Mike Ryan to this year’s SCS directors Ellen Maguire, Miriam Laube and Paul Mullins to actors like Patty Gallagher, Lorenzo Roberts and Dion Graham—and I’d be remiss not to mention Chetkovich herself—are all willing to go there. It’s hard to explain, but for some reason interviews with members of this company are never typical. I think you’ll understand when you read how thoughtful and insightful their answers are in my cover story this week. None of them had any practical need to go beyond, “Yeah, we’re doing The Formula and The Tempest and Twelfth Night this year, July 10-Aug. 28, everybody should check it out!” But these people love thinking and talking about their work, and about the larger questions it ties into. To me, that absolutely shows not only in my story, but also in what they put on the stage every summer.
STEVE PALOPOLI | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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GOOD IDEA
BARD TALK
This week, kick off Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s 2022 summer season with a refresher course on all things Shakespeare from UCSC Professor Michael Warren. Warren is Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s Head of Dramaturgy and Professor Emeritus of English Literature at UCSC. He’ll discuss the plays that will be presented this year, covering each in relation to Shakespeare’s career, from 5-6pm on July 7 at the Santa Cruz Public Library Downtown Branch.
GOOD WORK
BIG NEWS
Big Basin is partially reopening to the public for the first time since the CZU Lightening Complex Fire ravaged the park in August of 2020. The CZU fires burned nearly 18,000 acres of the park, but thanks to the hard work of park volunteers and specialized hazard tree removal, most of the fire-scarred old-growth redwoods have been preserved and trails have been repaired. Reservations can be made at: thatsmypark.org. Tickets are $6, and will provide access to the park for the whole day.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
When you think of the great Shakespeare scholars, the first name that comes to mind is, of course, Isaac Asimov.
What? No? Hmm, well, the iconic science fiction author did write two volumes of Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare in the ’70s. That’s okay if you don’t remember, though, because the only thing anyone remembers from those 800 pages is this one short quote: “That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool—that he is no fool at all.”
That particular sentence lives on in our collective cultural memory because it’s a succinct expression of an idea we’re all familiar with, thanks to Shakespeare: The fool is not really a fool. The clown is not really a clown. There’s a method to their madness (thanks again, Shakespeare), and their secret superpower is that they wield a wisdom that we in the audience lack.
Except, what if they don’t?
Or, more to the point, what if the occasional insight that pops out of Shakespeare’s clowns is actually the least interesting thing about them? What if the most successful fools are actually very much fools, and their best moments—the ones that make us laugh, and reveal their most genuinely human qualities—come when they don’t have a clue?
Patty Gallagher, who has a lot of experience playing clowns—and does so in two of the three plays Santa Cruz Shakespeare is producing this summer, The Tempest and Twelfth Night—is willing to go even a step further. We laugh at clowns, she says, when they’ve gotten themselves into a situation where they desperately need to have the answers—but don’t.This is why the idea that clowns should be played “wacky” is a misconception, she says. Some of the funniest clowning comes out of learning to get serious.
“One of the main things I’ve learned about comedy,” says Gallagher, “is that you can’t necessarily go out there and think, like, ‘I’m going to be funny today, yuckity yuck yuck!’ Clowns are funny because they’re ordinary people, often outsiders, who face extreme circumstances and have to find their way out of it, or think their way out of it. To them, the circumstances are very serious. So part of the risk of comedy is you have to play it urgently straight, and follow what that character needs. Let the audience see the predicament of the clown and find it funny.”
Mike Ryan, SCS’ artistic director, says that’s a theme audiences might notice across all of the company’s season this summer, which not only includes Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Twelfth Night, but also the world premiere of Santa Cruz playwright Kathryn Chetkovich’s The Formula.
“It’s true of all the plays this year, actually,” says Ryan. “The joy of the comedy comes out of the stakes and the mistakes—that’s funny to use those two words next to each other—that people make. The stakes are high, and then people are also mistaken about what they’re actually playing for—which makes it particularly funny. Patty’s correct; she knows more about clowning than anybody I know. Clowns follow a very strict logic. They passionately believe that if they do A, B will happen. And we laugh because we know that’s not going to happen.”
The lighter tone of this season’s slate is a change-up from the bruising political intrigue of last year’s two SCS productions, The Agitators and RII, and after the intensity of playing Susan B. Anthony in the former, Gallagher is happy to return to comic roles.
“It’s quite a delight to be like, ‘Well, the other people have the hard stuff to do. I’ll be back here being the clown again if anyone needs me,’” she says. But just because this season will get more laughs, she doesn’t think audiences will find it any less powerful.
“It’s going to be a very funny, funny season,” says Gallagher. “But I have to say, I’m in two plays that have comic elements, but they are deeply beautiful, human plays. The Tempest is soaring. Twelfth Night is heartbreaking. I think people are going to have really vivid and full experiences seeing both of them. And, of course, The Formula—oh my god.”
Cracking ‘The Formula’
Oh my god, indeed. Chetkovich’s play is a landmark moment for the company; it’s the first time they’ve produced the work of a local playwright. It helps, of course, that The Formula is inspired by Shakespeare’s most beloved play (or, at the very least, most performed play in the 21st century), A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Chetkovich’s romantic comedy of errors updates Puck’s love-power flower to a scientifically designed potion created by a young researcher named Suzy who is studying the neuroscience of attraction. Just as Puck mistakenly doses Lysander instead of Demetrius, Suzy lets her untested designer love drug loose at her own wedding.
But beyond echoes of the Bard, there’s also something deeper that The Formula shares with SCS, and it comes through when Ellen Maguire—who has been collaborating with Chetkovich throughout the play’s development, and is directing this premiere production—talks about it. Her explanation of why they chose Allie Pratt for the lead role of Suzy, for instance, echoes Gallagher and Ryan’s philosophy of comedy.
“She clicked with the material,” says Maguire of Pratt, “clicked with us professionally and creatively. She understood how to play this comedy for real, with high stakes. That’s one of the things Kathy and I always talk about, you know? We like comedy played with the seriousness of a drama—with really high stakes. The characters don’t know they’re being funny. So, I never ask the actor to play a line for its humor; I’m asking them to play it for real. ‘What do you want? Go after what you want. You want to educate your daughter on the perils of marriage? Let me see you do it.’ And the actor might say, ‘But it’s on the eve of her wedding!’ And I say, ‘The character doesn’t care. The character thinks she’s doing her daughter a favor. Go for it.’ And that’s how we elicit the truth of the play.”
Getting to that truth was a collaborative process, says Chetkovich.
“Ellen and I have been working on this together for a very long time,” she says. “I had a draft that I showed [her] after we met and realized we were on the same page in a bunch of ways. And that draft changed quite a bit over the course of the writing. One thing I found really helpful in working with Ellen on revising and revising is she kept pushing me to let the characters make real and big mistakes, and let them really hurt each other. I think my natural inclination is not to hurt people—and I was thinking, you know, it’s a comedy. But that was really critical to get to the point where in pursuing what they needed and wanted—the characters were going to make big mistakes. And I think it makes it both a more human story, and funnier.”
The two began working together when they both lived in New York City, after Maguire happened to pick up Chetkovich’s book of short stories, Friendly Fire, at a mutual friend’s house. She was already enthralled with it when the friend told her that they would be meeting the author at a party they were both going to the next day.
“I went to this party, and really clicked with Kathy,” says Maguire. “She asked me to direct a short play that she had written, and we really enjoyed doing that. And then she came to me and said, ‘I have this idea for Midsummer Night’s Dream; you’re very familiar with it; how would you feel about working on this with me?’ And I, being a smart person, made the right choice and said, ‘Yes, of course.’”
“There was a certain shared aesthetic,” says Chetkovich, “and I had a sense of, ‘Obviously this is a very smart director, and somebody who gets comedy the way I get comedy.’ I feel like comedy’s so ephemeral—you get it on the same wavelength, or you don’t.”
Into the Woods
They continued to work on The Formula until a staged reading in 2015 that Maguire says “really coalesced everything.” But even more important was the reading produced by SCS in 2019.
“Kathy moved from New York City to Santa Cruz,” says Maguire. “I came out to visit her, and I met Mike Ryan. I pitched him The Formula at one of those picnic tables overlooking Monterey Bay outside the Grove, and he was intrigued and read it, and then asked if we would come do the reading.”
That reading drew 400 people to the Grove, and paved the way for this season’s production.
“When we came to Santa Cruz, it was really this lovely feeling of the right setting for this play, for starters,” says Maguire. “The climax of the play takes place in the woods at night, and here we were in the woods at night, which I found so magical and moving to be able to do that. And then the actors just, you know, they got the play, they got the sense of humor. We’re in this magical setting, we’re in Kathy’s hometown, and we have this really beautiful audience ready to laugh.”
After that, it was just a matter of a few phone calls to strike a deal to bring The Formula to the SCS stage as a full-blown production. Covid got in the way of Ryan’s original plan to produce it in 2021; he wanted to wait until the company’s productions were back to full strength. But he knew the play was a natural for them—and the perfect choice for their first world premiere.
“One thing that’s really cool about it is that while it references Shakespeare, it also calls into question some of the things that Shakespeare might propose to us,” says Ryan. “Specifically, that there’s this romantic notion of ‘the one’—the person of our destiny that we’re supposed to marry or be with. So many of Shakespeare’s comedies, in particular, sort of have a pre-established marriage order. I know a director who has worked for the festival who says that Shakespeare’s comedies are really about reaffirming the social order, and about reaffirming the institution of marriage in particular. Then this play, while it explores marriage—and doesn’t necessarily have only cynical things to say about it— definitely asks questions about if there is such a thing as the one right person for us in the world.”
Ensuring there was time to get everything right on a play representing multiple firsts for SCS, an extra two weeks of rehearsal was allotted this summer for The Formula, with Maguire and Chetkovich on hand to work with the cast. For actor Dion Graham, who audiences may know from his roles on TV series like The Wire and Madam Secretary, it was a unique introduction to the world of Santa Cruz Shakespeare. In his whole stage career, he says, he’s only been in one other production that devoted as much time to rehearsals as SCS has to The Formula, and that was at London’s Royal National Theatre. Playing the role of Jack, Suzy’s father, Graham has been thrilled with the process of developing his character.
“We had two weeks before the rest of the company got here, to just focus on The Formula and what we were doing, and exploring this world,” he says. “Ellen is a terrific leader, just a really open and nurturing collaborator. And Kathryn is great, of course, and this is an incredible piece that she wrote, which is funny and warm and hilarious, and also rich with the warp and woof of life—it’s not just yucks. I was joking with someone the other day that it seems in this part of our process, our play, in our telling of it, can range within scenes and within characters from very Marx Brothers-ish to Chekovian.”
“That was a real gift,” says Lorenzo Roberts, who plays the character of Dean in The Formula, of the expanded schedule. “Because it is super rare to have this much time—essentially six weeks of rehearsal. We had two weeks alone, eight hours a day, at the Grove—at the actual space—sitting on the stage with each other, just talking about the language, workshopping the play, helping Kathy figure out what moments she needed to change, what language needed to change, how it’s going to fit with this specific ensemble of actors.”
Deeper Things
Roberts is also playing Duke Orsino in director Paul Mullins’ take on Twelfth Night. Last year, he was in a very different kind of Shakespeare production for SCS, playing the lead role in RII—which boiled the historical epic Richard II down into an intimate and fast-moving three-person play thick with political intrigue and paranoia. So has it been a challenge to shift gears for the romance and comedy of Twelfth Night?
After thrilling audiences as the doomed King Richard II in last year’s “RII,” Lorenzo Roberts shows his comic chops this summer in “The Formula” and “Twelfth Night.” PHOTO: TARMO HANNULA
“It is, because it’s a big show, too,” says Roberts. “There’s like 15 of us. And Paul Mullins, the great Paul Mullins, has so much energy. It’s such a joy, but it is like, ‘Whoa, I haven’t done that in a second.’ RII was much more intense and psychological. This is like, ‘Put your big clown hair on, and your nose, and go.’ Let’s fly, you know. Leaning into that, I think there is trust in being with one or two people, but there’s a lot of trust in building an ensemble, too. And Paul has been great about building an ensemble.”
“My approach,” says Mullins, is that I’m hoping—you know, within reason—that everybody feels they have responsibility and input. That it matters, that it’s not an autocratic society; hopefully, it’s more of a group of people working together. I hope that it feels more like a collaborative effort than, ‘That’s what he said to do.’ That’s what I’m trying to avoid as much as I can.”
Mullins says Twelfth Night is pretty much in a class of its own among Shakespeare’s plays, when it comes to comedy and clowning.
“Twelfth Night is such a great play—such the best play—for many reasons, but one of them is that there’s a lot of talk about madness and foolishness and fools,” he says. “So, I think that ‘the’ clown in Twelfth Night is actually spread out among a whole lot of people, even people that you wouldn’t think. There are some of those elements in all of them—foolishness, extremity of behavior. That’s true of so many of the characters in the play—some are, you know, silly, nutty. Some are not; some are very serious. There’s an undercurrent all the way through the play; that’s part of the beauty of it. There’s a sense of sadness, of melancholy, of loss, and there are very funny things that are put right up alongside things that are much deeper.”
Interestingly enough, Miriam Laube, who is directing The Tempest this summer, also has a special fondness for Twelfth Night—one of her favorite roles she’s ever played was Olivia in a production of it at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where she made her mark over 16 seasons in the company. But Laube thinks The Tempest has its own unique rewards.
“Paul says that he thinks [Twelfth Night] is Shakespeare’s best-written play, and there is something to that; Twelfth Night is sort of a perfect play,” says Laube. “The Tempest was one of Shakespeare’s last plays, and he was wrestling with forgiveness at the end. And I think that’s what makes this play beautiful. It’s this coming to terms with your life, with mortality, looking back on it and going, ‘What do I need to change to move on,’ and forgiveness is a huge part of that.”
One of the most intriguing elements of this production is that it gender-switches the character of Prospero, who is being played by Laura Gordon.
“It doesn’t change the story,” says Laube. “But it changes the dynamics, right? The difference between fathers and daughters is different than mothers and daughters. I think about the relationship between mothers and daughters as a very fierce love. Not always simple, but quite beautiful. In this play, when Prospero is sent off in the boat, and the queen of Naples hopes that she’s going to die, and they’re not supposed to have food and water, that’s intense, right? And we have that in the world today—immigrants setting off on boats without anything. And what does a mother do? We’ve seen it in the recent school shooting where there was one mother who said, ‘I’m going in, I don’t care what you say, my children are in there.’ So that kind of fierceness between Prospero and her daughter, and that her daughter helps keep her alive. All this is true with fathers and daughters, but it takes on a different dynamic when it’s a mother.”
These kinds of insights are part of what keeps bringing Patty Gallagher, who’s being directed by both Laube and Mullins this summer, back to SCS, whether she’s stepping into the shoes of one of history’s most trailblazing feminist orators, or just clowning around.
“The directors give us these things that are so rich and so beautiful,” says Gallagher. “You have to keep returning to the lessons that they give you; like every day after the show is over, you have to say, ‘What went right? What can I do better tomorrow? How do I need to rethink that moment? Or what do I need to take into my head and my heart?’ You just have to meet them, and always be reaching toward what your directors have given you, and try to make it better every night.”
Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s summer season—featuring ‘The Formula,’ ‘The Tempest’ and ‘Twelfth Night’—runs July 10-Aug. 28. This year also features the return of the Fringe Show, an intern production of ‘Just Deserts’ by Carol Lashof, Aug. 17 and Aug. 23. There will also be two staged readings, Aug. 2 and Aug. 9. For a full schedule, a list of all related events and to buy tickets, go to santacruzshakespeare.org.
Summer is here, and water resource managers around the state are gearing up for another dry season. In Santa Cruz County, unique geology and three distinct basins make protecting the water supply a complicated and fractured process involving multiple water agencies. From the Pajaro Valley to the Santa Cruz Mountains, here’s what they’re doing.
Pajaro Valley
The Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency received a $7.6 million grant from the California Department of Water Resources through the Sustainable Groundwater Management Program in May.
“We came home with a check that was about three-feet-by-five-feet wide,” says PV Water Management Agency general manager Brian Lockwood, with a chuckle.
The funds will support the College Lake Integrated Resources Management Project, which will increase College Lake’s capacity and make it an alternative to groundwater for agricultural irrigation, which is the largest drain on South County’s water resources.
The agency split the project into two parts.
“There’s the facilities in and around College Lake. That includes a weir structure and fish passage, water treatment and a pumping station to move water down the coast. That’s been designed for some time,” says Lockwood. “The second part of the project is a 6-mile pipeline, and that project is at the 90% design level.”
The agency is currently acquiring property rights to flood land around College Lake.
“And we’re doing that either by purchasing land outright or purchasing flood easements on private property,” Lockwood continues.
The agency is also developing appraisals for the pipeline properties.
“We’ll be sending out offer letters for those in July,” says Lockwood.
PVWMA plans to have the project operating by 2025.
After receiving the $7.6 million, the board pushed back a planned rate increase for customers from July 1 to Dec. 1.
“Changing rates in the middle of the summer is more problematic for the agricultural community than changing rates in December because they’re in the middle of their season,” says Lockwood. “It’s also better overall to have the rate change occur when usage is lower, and December is a good time for that.”
PVWMA also has several other water projects lined up. The next one will divert water from Struve Slough to a treatment plant near Harkins Slough.
“What we’re looking to do is push our diversion at the slough system further away from the influence of saltwater and rising seas and be able to divert water to the San Andreas terrace,” says Lockwood.
The agency hopes to begin working on that project by October.
In April, the board also decided to increase rebates for conservation programs.
“We have things that work for the residents like gray water rebates and rainwater harvesting rebates that were all increased,” says Lockwood. “And we have ongoing rebates for agricultural customers as well.”
Soquel
Soquel Creek Water District is working around seawater intrusion, as well. The groundwater basin, categorized as “critically overdraft” by the state, is threatened by salt water that seeps into the space where fresh water used to be.
To prevent further encroachment, the district designed the Pure Water Soquel Project. This project will treat recycled water to drinking standards before injecting it back into the basin at sites chosen by hydrologists.
The recycled water will flow from the treatment plant on the Westside of Santa Cruz to injection wells near New Brighton State Beach.
“We have eight miles of pipeline currently going into the ground, and we’re just over four miles done,” says Becca Rubin, the public outreach coordinator for the district. “So it’s a huge milestone that we just hit.”
“You’ve probably seen us going through town,” she adds. “We appreciate the patience of everybody in the community while we tear open the streets and put it back together.”
Ron Duncan, the district general manager, echoes Rubin’s thanks.
“It’s a short-term pain for long-term gain kind of thing,” he says. “We continue to navigate and adapt as appropriate to create a new water supply to help make the community resilient. If not, we’ll lose what we have due to seawater intrusion.”
SCWD’s constant project updates and outreach within the community earned them recent recognition from the California Special Districts Association.
“We’re lucky enough to get the transparency award for special districts again,” says Rubin. “We were the first in the area in 2015 to receive this award.”
Santa Cruz
The City of Santa Cruz shares the mid-county groundwater basin with Soquel and works closely with SCWD, but almost all of the city’s water comes from surface sources such as the San Lorenzo River.
Despite another dry year, the city was exempted from the new state-wide emergency water use restrictions.
“We met three criteria that they included in the emergency regulations,” says Heidi Luckenbach, the deputy director of engineering for the City of Santa Cruz Water Department.
One requirement was indoor water usage of 55 gallons per person per day or less. Santa Cruz comes in under 50.
“Not being connected to the state water system was the second component,” says Luckenbach.
For the final criterion, the city had to demonstrate it had enough water through September of 2023.
“It’s really just reinforcing the fact that customers in Santa Cruz have done an amazing job at backing off on water use,” says Luckenbach. “But the climate is changing, and we cannot predict it, so we’re carrying forward with our supply planning.”
Part of that supply planning includes an aquifer storage and recovery project, which injects treated excess storm runoff into the groundwater basin during the winter.
The city tested the injection process at two wells over the winter, and this month, the water department started extracting water.
“Our planning has shown that we can take that water out at specific rates, so we’re testing that theory now,” says Luckenbach. “But there’s still a lot of fine-tuning to be done both in terms of the volume, and also the water quality—taking the water out of the ground, treating it and putting it into our distribution system.”
The city expects to extract until sometime in August. If all goes well, the project will expand from two wells to up to 10.
“So we have a lot of planning and construction left to do,” says Luckenbach.
Inflation and materials shortages have made that challenging.
“But on the flip side, there’s a lot of money being set aside by the federal government through the infrastructure act, and we’re starting to see that,” she adds.
The city will continue exploring other options as well.
Even though the project is going well and Loch Lomond sits between 85-88% full, “we’re still really vulnerable,” says Luckenbach.
“Our demand is super low, which means we have no gravy to cut. And the weather is really variable,” she says. “We still have to move forward. We’re not done yet.”
Scotts Valley
Further north, Scotts Valley Water District is also exploring aquifer storage and recovery as an option for improving the Santa Margarita Groundwater Basin. Scotts Valley shares the basin with the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, and an emergency intertie connects the two.
Normally, SLVWD relies more on surface water, but the CZU fire made pumping necessary. So SLVWD and SVWD have both been relying on the basin.
The district declared a stage-two water shortage in May, or as some officials call it, a stage-two “water supply condition.” The word “shortage,” they say, can be misleading and make people think they’re running out.
“There is plenty of water still in the basin,” assures Piret Harmon, the SVWD general manager.
The concern is for the long term.
“It all comes from this space and underneath us. The only recharge for the basin is rainfall, and it’s the third dry, severely below-average rainfall year for us,” says Harmon. “We don’t know how long it’s going to go on. It might be the last dry year. It might be that we have many more coming.”
The district has a few options for addressing that uncertainty. Besides aquifer storage and recovery, SVWD is considering conjunctive use and indirect potable reuse. Conjunctive use involves sharing surface water with neighbors like SLVWD when there is an excess, which gives the groundwater basin a chance to recharge. Indirect potable reuse, similar to the Pure Water Soquel project, injects treated recycled water back into the ground.
“I think that is going to be the project that will ensure the resiliency of this basin,” says Piret.
She compares it to shortening the natural water cycle.
“Instead of letting it go to the ocean and then raining down, let’s catch it, let’s treat it, let’s put it back. And then we are much less dependent on the climate impacts,” she says.
In addition to large infrastructure projects, the district encourages users to consider their usage. Smart meters make that easier.
“These days, you can go and see [water use] in 15-minute increments,” says Harmon “And our customers have been surprised by it.”
SVWD wants to cut back usage by 10% and is creating incentives for residents to meet that mark. For instance, the district has a monthly raffle for customers who achieve a 15% demand reduction. Winners can use a $100 prize to lower their bill or at a local business. Customers who achieve a 15% reduction four months in a row can win $500.
The district also incentivizes turf replacement. Participants get $2 per square foot for replacing irrigated lawns with water-efficient landscapes.
To address questions, the district sets up a pop-up station every Saturday by the Skypark from 9am to 1pm.
“Eight to five office hours Monday through Friday—that’s when people work. So, if we tell them, ‘Come here and talk to us, we can help you,’ we’re not very accessible,” says Harmon.
Public opinion is still often the biggest challenge for the projects, says Harmon.
“I still see on social media, unfortunately, a lot of mistrust and attacks,” she says, adding that she sometimes hears accusations that Scotts Valley is taking other districts’ water to build new developments. Harmon shakes her head.
“Why would we take somebody’s water and use it up, and then nobody has water?” she asks. “We want this basin to be resilient for decades to come. We need that for our own customers. We need that for our neighbors.”
Santa Cruz city voters will decide whether homeowners should be charged a tax on second vacant homes on the November ballot. But differing data about how costly such a tax would be, and how much money will be generated, is a sticking point between supporters and opponents—and at the heart of the discussion about the tax at last week’s City Council meeting.
Known in Santa Cruz as the Empty Home Tax initiative, the measure is one of a growing number of taxes popping up around the state—and world—that is looking to charge a fee for those second empty vacation rentals that some say are taking up critical space in a scarce rental market. Cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles—and more locally, Capitola—have all considered a similar tax for this year and next years’ ballot, with a few California cities bringing this issue to voters in November.
The premise of the tax is a simple one: use taxes from homeowners’ empty vacation rentals to fund affordable housing, and hopefully as a consequence encourage more homeowners to find renters for their additional rentals.
At least, it’s simple in theory.
In practice, there are more logistical considerations these measures have to take into account, and it can be hard to nail down exact data to determine the costliness of such a tax, and how much money can be generated. That’s partly due to the novelty of such taxes—Oakland became the first city in California to approve a similar tax in 2018, modeled in part off Vancouver, Canada’s vacancy tax. Data on second homes and vacancies can also be hard to pinpoint, and calculated in different ways, contributing to the ambiguity.
So how much would it cost to implement this tax, how much affordable housing could it generate, and what would its implementation look like?
Battle of the Data
On June 28, city staff presented a report that estimated the start-up cost of the tax will be $607,000, and predicted it will generate $2-4 million in revenue. After start-up, staff estimates the costs to be closer to $420,000 annually.
Those hefty initial expenses include a budget of $65,000 to build a web portal for landlords to certify whether their secondary properties were occupied fewer than 120 days that year. If so, they could be subject to a tax between $3,000 to $6,000, depending on the number of units in the property.
$126,000 is budgeted to support the measure’s Oversight Committee. The Oversight Committee—made up of volunteers, and scheduled to meet a minimum of once a year—keeps tabs on the functioning of the tax program.
Staff also included $100,000 in potential legal fees.
Empty Home Tax Campaign Manager Cyndi Dawson, Councilmember Sandy Brown and other members of the public objected to these high start-up fees at last week’s council meeting.
There’s already a web portal that the City uses to receive reports and payments for the Transient Occupancy Tax and Short Term Rental Fees—in short, the infrastructure is there for the self-reporting system, Dawson tells GT. She believes the costs for the portal should be more like $5,000‐$15,000.
Then there is the expense for supporting the Oversight Committee.
“There was 1,000 hours per year of staff time allocated for one meeting a year,” says Dawson. “$126,000 for one meeting just was, like, a glaring [overestimate].”
As for the legal fees, Brown and Dawson questioned at the meeting why they were included in the first place.
“I’ve been here and voted yes and voted no on many ordinances,” Brown said. “We’ve never been told it costs $100,000 for potential legal risk.”
City staff emphasized these start-up costs were created with input from consultants who have implemented ordinances before, and that should there be litigation, it would cost the city significantly more than the $100,000. Staff also cited the tax’s novelty, making costs and revenue difficult to calculate.
As for how the city calculated the $2-4 million the tax might generate, staff looked at “data from the County of Santa Cruz’s absentee property lists, homeowner exemptions claimed and long-term and short-term rental data.”
The Empty Home Tax campaign uses Census Data to estimate the tax’s revenue. Data shows a vacancy rate of 9.5%, or 2,283 homes, in the city of Santa Cruz for 2020. The estimate includes second homes, homes under construction and ones used seasonally. Over accounting for landlords who qualify for exemptions, if only 500 property owners were to pay the tax, the city would raise about $3 million dollars annually, says Dawson. And even at that low estimate, the ordinance—which funds city costs associated with the tax up to 15%—would fund the city staff’s estimated administration expenses.
Peter Cook, a long-time Santa Cruz real estate agent and member of Santa Cruz Together, which is running an opposition campaign to the measure, says even those numbers are wildly overestimated.
Three of his clients have already come to him saying they will find a way to not pay the tax—but not necessarily by renting to students or other Santa Cruz locals.
“People will probably exaggerate and say that they live there the minimum number of days,” says Cook. “I think some people will sell their properties. And I think some people will probably rent them out oftentimes to family members, and oftentimes with big air quotes around ‘renting it out.’”
Ultimately, the council voted unanimously to bring back an updated report that compared costs to other cities with similar taxes, and re-evaluated staff expenses associated with the committee meetings.
“I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t get more information from some of the other jurisdictions that have adopted [similar measures] about their costs,” Brown said at the meeting. “I think that it would have been really helpful for you and for all of us to see an analysis that was based on, well, what’s real.”
Oakland’s Tax
In 2018, Oakland voters passed the city’s own version of a vacancy tax.
There are some key differences in Oakland’s tax compared to the Empty Home Tax, one being that Oakland’s vacancy tax applies to residential and nonresidential properties, and includes undeveloped land and commercial properties.
Since 2020, when the city began collecting money on the measure, the tax is projected to bring in just over $15 million. Most of that money has gone towards Oakland’s Public Works and Human Services departments, to establish a commission on homelessness, a mobile outreach team for homeless residents, homeless cleanup services and housing grants to local shelters.
Meanwhile, the city’s finance and administrative departments are expected to use $2.5 million of the tax’s projected revenue.
The initial start-up costs were closer to $100,000 and according to Rosanna Munoz, Oakland’s acting assistant revenue and tax administrator, those costs were pretty accurate.
Oakland is gearing up to build thousands of new units over the next several years, and this money might make a meaningful dent in construction costs for new units—especially low-income units, says Munoz.
“We continue to be faced with a large and growing homelessness crisis,” said Oakland City Council Member Rebecca Kaplan when Oakland received its most recent fiscal report on the vacancy tax. “And making sure we are doing the most we can with all that we have to remedy it is critical.”
ARIES (March 21-April 19): My readers and I have collaborated to provide insights and inspirations about the topic “How to Be an Aries.” Below is an amalgam of my thoughts and theirs—advice that will especially apply to your life in the coming days. 1. If it’s easy, it’s boring. —Beth Prouty. 2. If it isn’t challenging, do something else. —Jennifer Blackmon Guevara. 3. Be confident of your ability to gather the energy to get unstuck, to instigate, to rouse—for others as well as yourself. 4. You are a great initiator of ideas and you are also willing to let go of them in their pure and perfect forms so as to help them come to fruition. 5. When people don’t get things done fast enough for you, be ready and able to DO IT YOURSELF.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I know three people who have told me, “I don’t like needing anyone for anything.” They fancy themselves to be rugged individualists with impeccable self-sufficiency. They imagine they can live without the help or support of other humans. I don’t argue with them; it’s impossible to dissuade anyone with such a high level of delusion. The fact is, we are all needy beings who depend on a vast array of benefactors. Who built our houses, grew our food, sewed our clothes, built the roads and create the art and entertainment we love? I bring this up, Taurus, because now is an excellent time for you to celebrate your own neediness. Be wildly grateful for all the things you need and all the people who provide them. Regard your vigorous interdependence as a strength, not a weakness.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Bounce up and down when you walk. Express 11 different kinds of laughs. Be impossible to pin down or figure out. Relish the openings that your restlessness spawns. Keep changing the way you change. Be easily swayed and sway others easily. Let the words flowing out of your mouth reveal to you what you think. Live a dangerous life in your daydreams but not in real life. Don’t be everyone’s messenger, but be the messenger for as many people as is fun for you. If you have turned out to be the kind of Gemini who is both saintly and satanic, remember that God made you that way—so let God worry about it.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): As a child, Cancerian author June Jordan said, “I used to laugh all the time. I used to laugh so much and so hard in church, in school, at the kitchen table, on the subway! I used to laugh so much my nose would run and my eyes would tear and I just couldn’t stop.” That’s an ideal I invite you to aspire to in the coming days. You probably can’t match Jordan’s plenitude, but do your best. Why? The astrological omens suggest three reasons: 1. The world will seem funnier to you than it has in a long time. 2. Laughing freely and easily is the most healing action you can take right now. 3. It’s in the interests of everyone you know to have routines interrupted and disrupted by amusement, delight and hilarity.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In accordance with the astrological omens, here’s your assignment for the next three weeks: Love yourself more and more each day. Unleash your imagination to come up with new reasons to adore and revere your unique genius. Have fun doing it. Laugh about how easy and how hard it is to love yourself so well. Make it into a game that brings you an endless stream of amusement. PS: Yes, you really are a genius—by which I mean you are an intriguing blend of talents and specialties that is unprecedented in the history of the human race.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Novelist Lydia Peelle writes, “The trouble was, I knew exactly what I wasn’t. I just didn’t know who I was.” We all go through similar phases, in which we are highly aware of what we don’t want, don’t like and don’t seek to become. They are like negative grace periods that provide us with valuable knowledge. But it’s crucial for us to also enjoy periods of intensive self-revelation about what we do want, what we do like and what we do seek to become. In my astrological estimation, you Virgos are finished learning who you’re not, at least for now. You’re ready to begin an era of finding out much, much more about who you are.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You need the following experiences at least once every other day during the next 15 days: a rapturous burst of unexpected grace; a gentle eruption of your strong willpower; an encounter with inspiration that propels you to make some practical improvement in your life; a brave adjustment in your understanding of how the world works; a sacrifice of an OK thing that gives you more time and energy to cultivate a really good thing.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): This might sound like an unusual assignment, but I swear it’s based on two unimpeachable sources: research by scientists and my many years of analyzing astrological data. Here’s my recommendation, Scorpio: In the coming weeks, spend extra time watching and listening to wild birds. Place yourself in locations where many birds fly and perch. Read stories about birds and talk about birds. Use your imagination to conjure up fantasies in which you soar alongside birds. Now read this story about how birds are linked to happiness levels: tinyurl.com/BirdBliss
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In accordance with current astrological omens, I have four related suggestions for you. 1. Begin three new projects that are seemingly beyond your capacity and impossible to achieve with your current levels of intelligence, skill and experience—and then, in the coming months, accomplish them anyway. 2. Embrace optimism for both its beauty and its tactical advantages. 3. Keep uppermost in mind that you are a teacher who loves to teach and you are a student who loves to learn. 4. Be amazingly wise, be surprisingly brave, be expansively visionary—and always forgive yourself for not remembering where you left your house keys.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): If you ever wanted to use the Urdu language to advance your agendas for love and romance, here’s a list of endearments you could use: 1 jaan-e-man (heart’s beloved); 2. humraaz (secret-sharer; confidante); 3. pritam (beloved); 4. sona (golden one); 5. bulbul (nightingale); 6. yaar (friend/lover); 7. natkhat (mischievous one). Even if you’re not inclined to experiment with Urdu terms, I urge you to try innovations in the way you use language with your beloved allies. It’s a favorable time to be more imaginative in how you communicate your affections.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Author John Berger described birch trees as “pliant” and “slender.” He said that “if they promise a kind of permanence, it has nothing to do with solidity or longevity—as with an oak or a linden—but only with the fact that they seed and spread quickly. They are ephemeral and recurring—like a conversation between earth and sky.” I propose we regard the birch tree as your personal power symbol in the coming months. When you are in closest alignment with cosmic rhythms, you will express its spirit. You will be adaptable, flexible, resourceful and highly communicative. You will serve as an intermediary, a broker and a go-between.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): People who don’t know much about astrology sometimes say that Pisceans are wishy-washy. That’s a lie. The truth is, Pisceans are not habitually lukewarm about chaotic jumbles of possibilities. They are routinely in love with the world and its interwoven mysteries. On a regular basis, they feel tender fervor and poignant awe. They see and feel how all life’s apparent fragments knit together into a luminous bundle of amazement. I bring these thoughts to your attention because the coming weeks will be an excellent time to relish these superpowers of yours—and express them to the max.
Homework: Take a specific action to diminish the sadness you feel about your number one regret. Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com
One of our last stops at a recent Downtown Santa Cruz Wine Walk was at Cat’s Meow, home to stylish fashion apparel, art and home décor. As one of the businesses hosting different wineries, it’s a great way to introduce people to downtown shopping and various merchandise.
An exciting wine I tasted at the Cat’s Meow was Mia Bea Wines’ Petite Sirah Family Reserve ($30), made with organic grapes from Barra Family Vineyards in Mendocino. Family-farmed for over 100 years, the vineyards are based in Redwood Valley by the Russian River headwaters. Mia Bea wines are available online and locally at New Leaf Community Markets.
Pete Barra, the son of an Italian immigrant farmer, was married to Beatriz, whose nickname was “Bea,” and this Mendocino County Petite Sirah was named after her. The Petite Sirah is packed with dark fruit and spice, a full-throttle red, boasting big flavors and smoky aromas. It “pairs well with love,” the family says. miabeawines.com; catsmeowfashion.com.
Feast from the Fields at Live Earth Farm
Enjoy live music, a silent and live auction and an epic view of the Pajaro Valley. A fabulous dinner at Live Earth Farm with local chef Jessica Yarr will feature local artisans, vintners, brewers and distillers. 100% of proceeds will support Live Earth’s Farm Discovery programs, including farm-based nutrition, food systems and environmental education and their product distribution program.
Feast from the Fieldsis on Saturday, Sept. 24, 4-8pm. farmdisovery.org/event/mesa.
Dinner at Ser Winery
Ser Winery owner and winemaker Nicole Walsh is hosting a dinner that you won’t want to miss. Argentinian chef Diego Felix of Colectivo Felix will prepare five courses of vibrant and diverse South American-influenced cuisine, paired with five beautiful wines Walsh makes.
The Dinner at Ser Winery Tasting Room is on Saturday, July 9, 6pm. 10 Parade St., Ste. B, Aptos. $120/person. 831-612-6062; serwinery.com.
Housed in one of the oldest commercial buildings in Scotts Valley, Malone’s Grille has been a local hit since it opened in 1980. Mark Pike became the new general manager a month ago, after stumbling onto a Craigslist ad. His adoration for Santa Cruz’s beautiful beaches initially brought the Italian to America, where he learned the kitchen trade during stints working at New Leaf Market and Staff of Life—he already had some experience in restaurants. Pike says that Malone’s menu notables include “mouth-watering” burgers with unique toppings like spicy Padron Jam, Dr. Pepper candied bacon and Forbidden Fruit Marmalade. Meanwhile, the Fred Beef Dip is a longtime favorite: sliced prime rib, caramelized onions, cheddar-jack cheese and au jus. Malone’s is open Tuesday-Saturday, 4-8pm (9pm Friday and Saturday). GT picked Pike’s brain about the future of Malone’s and his industry knowledge.
What’s your vision for Malone’s moving forward?
MARK PIKE: Bringing back the family fun atmosphere and making it a place for Scotts Valley to come together with great live music and wonderful food, and bringing the personal touch back to Malone’s with guest relations and a priority on customer service. I interact with every guest that comes in, no matter how busy I am, because that’s my thing, and it’s important to me. I also look forward to expanding our hours and offering lunch soon, and I also want to add my own flair to the menu by breaking it down and increasing the quality.
What struck you about learning back-of-house?
Just how hard it is and how hard [back-of-house employees] work. All the pressure that cooks are under gave me a very high appreciation for what they do and what it takes to get it done. Back-of-house is the heart of the restaurant that pumps blood into the business, keeping it alive and healthy. After working in several kitchens, I gained a lot of respect for the people behind the scenes that don’t get enough credit. Without them, the restaurant industry would not exist.
Malone’s Grille, 4402 Scotts Valley Drive, Scotts Valley, 831-438-2244; malonesgrille.com.
Once upon a time there was a table spread out under the tree at the foot of the UCSC campus. Twice a week, it would be filled with fresh-harvested produce—flowers, herbs, fruit, vegetables—all grown on the organic acres of the campus. Those who developed a taste for the exceptional flavors of the campus organic wares will be happy to know that the summer 2022 version of that produce cart—the Farmstand—is open once again with freshly harvested items grown at the UCSC Farm and Chadwick Garden. And once again, it’s located inside the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn on Wednesdays from noon to 5pm and Fridaysfrom 11am to 3pm, through November. Just a few clicks up the road from its original home at the crossroads of High and Bay Streets, the Farmstand’s current location gives patrons an excuse to drive up a bit through impossibly scenic landscape and enjoy the big, cool, cavernous entrance to the handsomely renovated Hay Barn.
When I stopped by last week, I had no idea that I was in need of baby beet greens. But when I spied the $2 bag of the tender little leaves, I realized I was in luck. No one who doesn’t have a large growing area devoted to beets can afford the luxury of picking these delicious little greens, but once you’ve tasted them fresh in salads, or sauteed alongside a filet of steelhead (for example) you develop a craving.
More luck! The Farmstand had huge bunches of å ($2), known to sushi fans as shiso leaf. (I hope the guys at Totoro are reading this—I’ve been missing the addition of shiso leaf to their classic tekka maki.) Peppery and deliciously unlike any other green herb/leaf, perilla is a rare treat to experiment with in the kitchen. And the spring onions! And the baskets of fragrant strawberries, the infant micro-greens, small cauliflowers, plump avocados and endless array of kales, chards and lettuces in infinite shades of green. It’s still early season, and the current offerings of baby onions, leafy greens and salad mixes will soon give way to the deep summer specialties.
If, like us, you’re devoted to extremely fresh organic produce, then you’ll be looking forward to the Farmcart’s upcoming crops of sweet corn, broccoli, hot and not-hot peppers, basil and the exceptional heirloom and dry-farmed tomatoes. Tomatoes like they probably grew in the Garden of Eden. All the produce is organically grown at UCSC by Center for Agroecology staff and students. Don’t be shy. The Farmstand is open to the campus and broader community, with sales directly supporting the center’s educational programs and mission of advancing agroecology and equitable food systems. Mostly a visit here is a chance to soak up idyllic ambience just up the hill from downtown Santa Cruz. Wednesdays and Fridays. For more information on the Farmstand and other Farm & Garden produce sales options visit agroecology.ucsc.edu.
Felix Ser!
Join the well-seasoned power cuisine of Colectivo Felix at a South American-inspired five-course winemaker dinner, paired with Ser wines from the hand of Nicole Walsh. Starting with a 2020 Sparkling Rosé of Grenache with fresh corn truffled Arepa maize pastries, through a Pie Ranch blue corn tamal and braised pork paired with Ser 2016 Pinot Noir, a few more courses and then dessert of red plum and herb crumble paired with Enz Vineyard, old vine Cabernet Pfeffer. And much more! It happens at the Ser Tasting Room—10 Parade St., Ste. B in Aptos on Saturday, July 9 starting at 6pm. $120.
Starting today, anyone purchasing a beverage in the unincorporated parts of Santa Cruz County—and who didn’t bring their own reusable cup—will notice a 25-cent fee tacked onto the price.
That is due to the county’s new disposable cup fee, which was created to reduce the amount of single-use cups for hot and cold beverages going into landfills.
Approved in November 2019, the fee was delayed during the Covid-19 pandemic to avoid adverse impacts on local businesses.
“Santa Cruz County is a leader in the efforts to reduce the flow of plastics and other disposable products into the environment,” said County Supervisor Zach Friend in a press release. “This is a common-sense measure that should help reduce the 5 million disposable cups that are thrown away each year in our county while raising funds for essential environmental clean-up programs in our area.”
The profits from the fee were originally slated to go to the businesses. Measure C, approved on June 7 by more than 69% of voters, mandates that the fee will be evenly split between the businesses and the county’s general fund after Jan. 1, 2023.
The cities of Watsonville and Santa Cruz have their own fees, charging 10 cents and 25 cents, respectively.
The ordinance impacts both permanent and temporary businesses, food trucks, events and other events where beverages are served.
Sellers may not waive or absorb the cup fees.
The fees will be identified on receipts, and customers must be notified of the fee on menus.
Under the ordinance, customers may bring reusable cups, and retailers must accept them unless the container is cracked, chipped or corroded. Retailers may also reject the cups if they are too big, too dirty or damaged or are made from inappropriate material.
For information, email ze*******@*************ty.us or call 454–2160.
The Watsonville City Council at its Tuesday meeting signed off on an agreement with Pajaro Valley Arts for the sale of the historic Porter Building in downtown Watsonville.
In a deal some two years in the making, PV Arts will pay the city $1.15 million for the two-story, 15,000-square-foot building that has stood for more than 100 years at the corner of Main Street and Maple Avenue. The nonprofit plans to renovate the building into a sanctuary for local artists with gallery exhibits, art retail space and a multipurpose room for performances, meetings, events, workshops and additional special exhibits. The organization would also create several classrooms for seniors and young people and artists’ studios on the second floor.
Artist Judy Stabile, a representative for PV Arts, said the organization hopes to complete the renovations and move in by 2025, though that timeline can change depending on how quickly it can raise money for the restoration.
PV Arts Board President Trina Coffman-Gomez said the nonprofit will need around $1.3-1.5 million to follow through on its extensive reconstruction plans.
The purchase was made possible through a $1 million donation from an “angel” donor and a $540,000 grant from Community Vision Capital & Consulting, with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
PVA and the city expect to close escrow by the end of July. According to the agreement, it will then have 180 days to show the city that it has stood up a fundraising campaign and brought aboard a manager to lead those efforts. The nonprofit will also have to provide quarterly progress reports to the city.
The agreement also states that PV Arts cannot use the building for any other purpose than what was laid out in its business plan for the next 30 years, and that if they choose to sell the building within that time, the city would be the first in line to buy the property back.
“I have confidence in the Pajaro Valley Arts Council that they will be able to do what they say they’re going to do and to engage the community as much they possibly can,” Councilmember Lowell Hurst said. “This will be a bridge to schools and the artist community.”
“Art moves communities, and the community needs to continue to be moved forward,” said former Watsonville City Councilmember Aurelio Gonzalez, who before he stepped down from his seat last year for personal reasons was one of the original champions of the project. “This is going to be good for the community.”
Gonzalez was one of a handful of people who spoke in support of the deal.
Coffman-Gomez said that the move also fits into the city’s plans for the downtown area that it is currently forging through a downtown specific plan, a document that will serve as a blueprint for the future development of the corridor.
“I believe it will really encourage the foot traffic that we want downtown,” the former city council member said.
The city put the Porter Building, which was designed by famed local architect William Weeks and constructed in 1903, up for sale in 2019. It was the second time that decade the municipality had sought a buyer for the property.
The building was nearly sold in 2015 after Ceiba College Prep Academy moved out, but a deal with Walnut Creek’s Novin Development fell through and it has sat empty since.
The building served as the post office until 1913 and has also served as a dentist office and an army surplus store.
It was one of the few historic buildings in Watsonville’s downtown that survived the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake with minimal damage.
