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Water Street Housing Project Moves Forward

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December 17, 2021

Water Street Housing Project Moves Forward

The saga over a controversial housing project that would build low-income apartments will continue, after the Santa Cruz City Council voted 4-3 to move the project forward at Tuesday’s meeting.

The development would build between 55 to 82 apartments for people who earn 80% or less of area median income ($82,234) at 831 Water St. In all, 145 apartments, the rest made up of market rate units, would be constructed.

The project was originally denied by the Santa Cruz City Council, but the elected leaders later rescinded that decision after the state found their action was illegal and organizations threatened to sue the city.

The project developer, Novin Development, submitted the application under Senate Bill 35, a bill passed in 2017 that aims to streamline affordable housing projects. SB35 applies to cities that have not met their affordable housing mandates imposed by the state, and limits local elected leaders’ ability to deny housing proposals. SB35 also forces cities to consider proposals according to their objective standards, allowing developers to bypass requirements that apply to most projects.

Many people who called into Tuesday’s meeting spoke of their struggles to find affordable housing, and a few said they, or someone they knew, were forced to move because of high rent.

“I am urging the council to approve 831 Water Street and more housing projects like it,” said Michael Bull, a third-year UCSC student. “I know personally people who dropped out of UCSC because they couldn’t get housing for fall quarter. It’s a housing crisis.”

Councilmembers agreed that there is a need for affordable housing projects, but nearly all spoke to procedural issues with Novin Development’s application. Councilmembers Sandy Brown and Justin Cummings cited contradictory and incomplete materials as part of their reasoning in voting against the project. Councilmember Martine Watkins also said the application was confusing and seemed incomplete, and that ultimately it didn’t feel like a fit for the community.

Councilmember Donna Meyers, who also had objections about the development, reminded her peers that the vote was to decide if the project met the city’s objective standards.

“I think the procedural aspect of what we’re facing is, unfortunately, probably the piece that is the hardest to swallow today,” said Meyers, who voted to move the project along. “But I am very concerned that a denial through this motion basically will land us in a lawsuit.”As the project moves toward a building permit, city staff made five recommendations to the developer. Most were related to adding traffic signals and warning signs for the bike lane and to increase bike safety, two of which the applicant included in its new proposal.

bell hooks, Pathbreaking Black Feminist, Dies at 69

The New York Times and GT Staff

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December 16, 2021

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bell hooks, Pathbreaking Black Feminist, Dies at 69

By Clay Risen, The New York Times

bell hooks, whose incisive, wide-ranging writing on gender and race helped push feminism beyond its white, middle-class worldview to include the voices of Black and working-class women, died Wednesday at her home in Berea, Kentucky. She was 69.

Her sister Gwenda Motley said the cause was end-stage renal failure.

Starting in 1981 with her book “Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism,” hooks, who insisted on using all lowercase letters in her name, argued that feminism’s claim to speak for all women had pushed the unique experiences of working-class and Black women to the margins.

“A devaluation of Black womanhood occurred as a result of the sexual exploitation of Black women during slavery that has not altered in the course of hundreds of years,” she wrote.

If that seems like conventional wisdom today, that is in large part because of the enormous impact that hooks had on both feminism and Black women, many of whom had resisted aligning with a movement they felt was designed to diminish their experiences.

“I think of bell hooks as being pivotal to an entire generation of Black feminists who saw that for the first time, they had license to call themselves Black feminists,” said Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at Columbia University. “She was utterly courageous in terms of putting on paper thoughts that many of us might have had in private.”

Womanhood, hooks said, could not be reduced to a singular experience but had to be considered within a framework encompassing race and class. She called for a new form of feminism, one that recognized differences and inequalities among women as a way of creating a new, more inclusive movement — one that, she later said, had largely been achieved.

She applied a similar, and equally trenchant, criticism to Black anti-racism, which she said was often grounded in a patriarchal worldview that excluded the experiences of Black women. But she also recognized, in books like “We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity” (2004), that such a worldview resulted from centuries of oppression and exclusion of Black men.

hooks resisted the title “public intellectual,” but by the 2000s she had achieved celebrity status. Her books, written in a flowing, jargon-free style, were required reading across a wide range of college courses. She appeared onstage with actors like Laverne Cox and activists like Janet Mock, and on the bookstand of model and actress Emily Ratajkowski, who cited hooks as inspiration while writing her recent essay collection, “My Body” (2021).

Part of hooks’ appeal was the sheer diversity of her interests. Her work, across some 30 books, encompassed literary criticism, children’s fiction, self-help, memoir and poetry, and it tackled not just subjects like education, capitalism and American history but also love and friendship.

In “Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom” (1994), she argued that the American education system had been constructed to quell dissent and shape young people into productive workers — and that it was therefore up to teachers to push against the grain by showing students how to use knowledge to resist.

She did just that in her own classes, instructing her students to see critical thinking and reading as liberating acts.

“She was a foundational influence on how I understood the possibility of my becoming a writer,” said Min Jin Lee, author of the novel “Pachinko,” who took two classes with hooks at Yale University. “She taught me how to read. But more than that, she taught me how to read as a global person.”

bell hooks was the pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins, who was born Sept. 25, 1952, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, a small city in the southwestern part of the state not far from the Tennessee border.

Although her childhood in the semirural South exposed her to vicious examples of white supremacy, her tightknit Black community in Hopkinsville showed her the possibility of resistance from the margins, of finding community among the oppressed and drawing power from those connections — a theme to which she would return frequently in her work.

Her father, Veodis Watkins, was a postal worker, and her mother, Rosa Bell (Oldham) Watkins, was a homemaker. Along with her sister Motley, hooks is survived by three other sisters, Sarah Chambers, Valeria Watkins and Angela Malone, and her brother, Kenneth.

Her early education took place in segregated schools, although she moved to white-majority schools once the state integrated its education system — an experience in navigating complex racial and gender hierarchies that she later drew on in her memoir, “Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood” (1996).

She was an avid reader, vacuuming up books and reading long past her bedtime. She dreamed of becoming an architect and of leaving small-town Kentucky behind.

“Gloria learned to read and write at an early age and even proclaimed she would be famous one day,” her sisters said in a statement released after her death. “Every night we would try to sleep, but the sounds of her writing or page turning caused us to yell down to Mom to make her turn the light off.”

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

hooks began her climb at Stanford University, from which she graduated in 1974 with a degree in English literature. While still an undergraduate, she began writing “Ain’t I a Woman,” its title borrowed from a speech by Black abolitionist Sojourner Truth.

She received a master’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin in 1976 and a doctorate in literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1983, with a dissertation on Toni Morrison.

Her first book was a collection of poems, “And There We Wept,” which was published in 1978 while she was teaching at the University of Southern California. It was the first time she used the pen name bell hooks — in homage to her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks, to whom she was often compared as a child. She insisted on rendering it in lowercase letters to emphasize, she often said, the “substance of books, not who I am.”

After teaching at a number of institutions, including Yale, Oberlin College and the City College of New York, she returned to Kentucky in 2004 to take up a teaching position at Berea College. A decade later, the college created the bell hooks Institute as a center for her writing and teaching.

By the 2010s, she had entered semiretirement and was spending her days writing, meditating and visiting with her neighbors in Berea, an intellectually vibrant town in the foothills of the Appalachians.

“I loved how open her table always was with such hard conversations, mediated by her incredible balance of encouraging patience and absolute honesty,” novelist Silas House, a friend and former Berea instructor, said in an email.

Especially in her later work, hooks emphasized the importance of community and of healing as the end goal of movements like feminism and anti-racism. Some criticized this position as papering over deep social divisions.

But hooks, who described herself as a “Buddhist Christian” and spoke often of her friendship with Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, insisted that love was the only way to overcome what she called the “imperialist white supremacy capitalist patriarchy.”

“I believe wholeheartedly that the only way out of domination is love,” she told philosopher George Yancy in an interview for The New York Times in 2015, “and the only way into really being able to connect with others, and to know how to be, is to be participating in every aspect of your life as a sacrament of love.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Lawsuit Against Harm Reduction Coalition Dismissed

Todd Guild

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December 16, 2021

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Lawsuit Against Harm Reduction Coalition Dismissed

A Sacramento Superior Court Judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the Harm Reduction Coalition of Santa Cruz County (HRC), a group that provides services for people that use drugs, many of whom are homeless.

The lawsuit was filed nearly one year ago in Sacramento Superior Court. In it, plaintiff Grant Park Neighborhood Association was trying to stop the organization’s syringe exchange program, saying that it poses a public health threat and constitutes a public nuisance.

The lawsuit alleged that HRC’s program violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because they did not perform the environmental review needed for the distribution, collection and disposal of used needles.

The lawsuit also stated that HRC’s program operates “in direct conflict” with the county’s Syringe Services Program because it allows untrained volunteers to perform its services.

In a 30-page ruling, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Laurie Earl pointed out that Assembly Bill 1344—signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October—exempts syringe exchange programs from environmental review and therefore rendered the CEQA part of the lawsuit moot.

“This is a massive victory for us,” HRC Fiscal Director Kate Garrett stated in a press release. “We have wasted so much time having our resources drained by this lawsuit and being forced to turn our attention away from the fight against HIV, Covid-19, hepatitis, overdoses, and all of the other harms our participants experience.

The lawsuit was filed at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic against two organizations already working around the clock fighting its spread, Garrett added.

“I could not be more relieved to see the core causes of action be rejected completely as we have actual work to do for our community,” she continued.

David Terrazas, who was among numerous plaintiffs, says that the decision is “bad for the people of Santa Cruz County.”

He pointed out that the judge in a preliminary decision ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, a decision that changed after Assembly Bill 1344 was passed.

Terrazas says that HRC last year distributed more than 796,000 syringes in Santa Cruz County, and only collected back about 432,000.

“The state’s actions have effectively immunized their program from any local accountability for their bio-waste in the environment and destroyed the County Health and Human Services distribution program that also focused their efforts on providing professional health care and addiction recovery support services in connection with needle distribution,” Terrazas says.

He adds that “all available options are currently under consideration” when considering future legal action.

HRC organizers say that the public nuisance piece could still move forward, but that those claims will be difficult to prove.

Denise Elerick, who started the program in 2018, says the dismissal signals a broader shift in the negative public perception of syringe exchange programs.

“This was far larger than Santa Cruz County,” she says. “This has statewide ramifications. Other programs have been shut down, and this will put an end to that. They won’t stop, but we won’t either.”

The lawsuit also alleged that California Department of Public Health only allowed a 45-day public comment period, rather than a 90-days, but Judge Earl ultimately said that this was not a factor in the lawsuit. She also rejected plaintiff’s claims that state officials only consulted with Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart and then Santa Cruz Police Chief Andy Mills, pointing out that the other law enforcement officials were allowed to write in with their comments.

HRC has long been criticized by residents who claim that they frequently find syringe litter scattered throughout the county.

But Elerick has long rejected assertions that supplemental syringe services programs result in increased litter.

“Syringe litter is simply a symptom of the public health crisis, and we have not talked about overdoses and saving lives,” she says.

Elerick says the program was never intended to replace the county’s programs, but to supplement them. She says that HRC helps numerous drug users and has removed tens of thousands of needles from public spaces. The group also refers drug users to county programs.

In addition, the organization claims to have helped during the Covid-19 pandemic by distributing more than 65,000 masks, 2,780 bottles of hand sanitizer and more than 45,000 disposable gloves, all for free through their syringe services program.

“An environmental lawsuit without merit, without any facts, without any science behind it isn’t anything more than a personal attack, and an attempt to bully and shut us down,” she says.

HRC Program Coordinator Dani Drysdale says that the lawsuit impacted the organization’s operations, as organizers missed essential training to battle it.

“It’s hard to calculate exactly how much damage this did, but despite all of the time and money we have been forced to waste on this lawsuit, the fact is that we are coming into the new year with more people, more funding, more services, and a huge weight off of our shoulders,” Drysdale says.

Report Shows Law Agencies Aligned

Todd Guild

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December 16, 2021

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All of the county’s four city police agencies—and the Sheriff’s Office—have similar policies when it comes to use of force and releasing of information to the public, according to a report released in November by the Criminal Justice Council of Santa Cruz County.

The report—thought to be the first of its kind nationwide—examined policies and procedures of Capitola, Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Scotts Valley police departments, in addition to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department.

The main takeaway, according to Sheriff Jim Hart, is that most departments’ policies are aligned with each other, which he says is a rarity among counties and a sign that the county’s law enforcement model is on the right track.

“You don’t see many or any other counties where all of the police agencies are able to come to the table and have this level of agreement on policies,” Hart says. “It’s a very unique situation that we have here, and I think it serves our people well.”

According to the report, all the law enforcement agencies prohibit controversial tactics such as chokeholds, as well as neck and carotid restraints. All are required to use de-escalation techniques before using force, and require “less-lethal” force before using deadly force. In addition, all require a warning before lethal force when it is safe to do so.

While only some departments have dedicated units with mental health workers paired with officers, all would support efforts to create such a unit.

The report also shows that only Santa Cruz Police Department reports complaints against its officers to the public or elected officials and that Capitola and Scotts Valley police departments do not publish public requests for information under the public records act.

All, however, release footage from officer-worn body cameras in officer-involved shootings.

The report also looked at which agencies have independent auditors, or any other type of independent oversight, and found that only SCPD has either.

None use facial recognition technology, and all say they require implicit bias training for their officers.

Only Scotts Valley does not have policies in place regarding the acquisition of surveillance technology. Chief Steve Walpole explained that the small department has not yet had the funds to purchase such technology, and that it would develop policies before that occurred.

“I was proud of the work everyone did,” Walpole says of the report. “It was open and honest. All of us in the law enforcement community have to work together to do their job. There is not one agency that can do everything they need to do without the help of other agencies.”

Supervisor Zach Friend—who chairs the CJC—called the report “in-depth analysis of local police agency policies and procedures—in particular around use-of-force.”

The purpose, Friend says, is to see where there is alignment, where there are gaps and where there are opportunities to improve.

He adds that the goal is not to necessarily have a standardized set of policies across jurisdictions.

“Local agencies and the communities they serve may have reasons why they have specific policies, don’t have specific policies or have policies that differ from other agencies within the county,” he says. “The CJC focuses discussions on prevention and intervention as well as reentry programs—rather than simply a suppression model.”

The council, for example, has held a conference on the role of women and girls in gangs and worked with school districts, nonprofits and others on intervention and prevention programs to reduce youth involvement in gangs in general.

The CJC is made up of local police chiefs, the county sheriff, the chief probation officer, the district attorney, leadership of two local nonprofits, two local judges, the public defender and the county superintendent of schools, among others.

Next year, the focus will be exclusively on behavioral health and the criminal justice system, Friend says.

To see the report, visit bit.ly/3GJC2BN.

More Updates to the Santa Cruz Mixed-Use Library Project

Aiyana Moya

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December 16, 2021

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More Updates to the Santa Cruz Mixed-Use Library Project

Santa Cruz’s mixed-use library project received yet another round of updates this week, and while the changes were well received by most at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, opposition to the project remains.

The city of Santa Cruz has been working on updating its decaying library since voters approved Measure S in 2016, an initiative that provided funding for library renovations across the county. The original plan for the update was to build five stories of parking above a new library.

But now, the city plans on building a two-story library with 310 parking spaces, adjacent to an 85-foot affordable apartment building. The construction would happen at the parking lot on the corner of Cedar and Lincoln streets, the site of the popular weekly downtown farmers market.

“When I was first campaigning for City Council, I’d heard that the site would have a six-story parking garage,” said Councilman Justin Cummings, who told voters he opposed the initial project while running for office in 2018. “But what’s before us today, I feel like it’s a really big improvement.”

The updates modify a few elements of the master plan that the City Council approved in June 2020. Jayson Architecture, the firm hired by the city to design the project, collected suggestions from the public to create the library’s new design during a series of workshops held in October.

The new plan, approved unanimously by the City Council at Tuesday’s meeting, increases the affordable housing units from 50 to a minimum of 100 and decreases the parking by 90 stalls. The vote also approves new design elements, like a green roof and an adjacent roof deck, and expands the library to accommodate a daycare facility.

“The city’s thoughtful and proactive approach, and incorporation of community input, in designing the library mixed-use project has entirely paid off,” said Emily Ham, the executive director of the Santa Cruz County Business Council.

Her sentiment was echoed by multiple callers, who praised the library’s new design elements and additional affordable housing units.

But some voiced concerns that have long followed the proposal: what would the construction mean for the future of the weekly farmers market, and why won’t the city simply renovate the existing library at 224 Church St.?

One group called Our Downtown, Our Future is collecting signatures to bring these issues to the voters as a ballot measure. Our Downtown hopes to make Lot 4, the lot that the mixed-use library would build affordable apartments on, the permanent location for the downtown farmers market. The group also wants the city to remodel the current library, a plan that both the Downtown Library Advisory Committee (DLAC) and Downtown Library Subcommittee found would be costly and limit the project.

But some have also questioned Our Downtown’s true intentions, wondering if the ballot initiative is simply a way to block affordable housing and dictate where it belongs. John Hall, one of the organizers of the initiative, has maintained that Lot 4 simply makes for a better location for the farmers market.

Should the ballot initiative collect enough signatures and be approved by Santa Cruz voters in the November 2022 election, the library project would have to stop, City Attorney Tony Condotti confirmed.

For now, the project will have one final round of feedback before it will begin construction. It could be completed sometime in 2025, the city says. People will have two more opportunities to give input and contribute to the library’s final design elements at meetings that will be posted at the library’s project website.

Prescribed burns

Environment

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December 15, 2021

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The atmosphere at most broadcast prescribed burn sites feels calm and professional. Crews begin arriving early in the morning to check conditions and set up. At a briefing—usually around eight o’clock—the group reviews the prescription and their individual roles.

They conduct a small test fire in the middle of the area. If the fuel burns well, the group sends a request to the regional office for permission to put fire on the ground. The burn itself begins around 10 and runs until mid-afternoon, when the crews begin shutting it down.

A couple of the engines stay behind to patrol the area overnight. The next morning, a smaller group comes back out with foresters to evaluate the area. Once everything has been cold and out for a while, the burn is officially done.

Most controlled burns end without incident. But occasionally, conditions change and things get out of hand. Such was the case at the Estrada Fire in Corralitos in late October.

Wind picked up and sent fire over the lines just as CAL FIRE was starting to shut it down. 148 acres burned before firefighters got the blaze under control.

The unit came under fire on social media for conducting a burn at all on a warm fall day. But Rich Sampson, the Vegetation Management Division Chief for the Santa Cruz County Fire Department, says the day’s conditions fit the bill when they started working.

“Conditions changed,” he says. CAL FIRE critiqued and debriefed after the Estrada fire, but they will not conduct a formal internal review.

“It happens from time to time on fires,” says Sampson. “That’s why we go heavy on the resources.”

There’s a lot of pressure to conduct burns, he says. Millions of acres of land need management to prevent catastrophic wildfires. But conditions must align in just the right way to make it possible.

A narrow window

Air quality, winds, temperature and moisture all determine whether a burn is possible. If conditions are too dry and hot, a fire becomes dangerous. But when the land is too wet, fuel won’t ignite or burn efficiently.

“There is a lot of work that goes into it ahead of time—a lot of environmental review and planning in terms of what will be required in order to implement a burn,” says Angela Bernheisel, CAL FIRE San Mateo-Santa Cruz Unit division chief.

“If anybody thinks it’s just like, we wake up in the morning and say, ‘Oh, I think I’ll just go burn today,’ that’s not how it works,” she says. “There’s a lot of planning and thought that goes into it before any fire ever hits the ground.”

CAL FIRE makes prescriptions for specific plots of land years in advance. When conditions look promising, they choose a plan and start making preparations. But the implementation has to stay flexible.

“We only have about a 25% chance of it actually happening when we plan on it,” says Sampson. Sometimes, the winds change. Other times, resources get pulled to a different fire. At the start of November, a planned week of prescribed fires in Wilder Ranch ended early after rains soaked the brush.

“We’ll make four or five attempts to try to do a burn—say in the fall or in the winter when the conditions are what we want—before it actually happens. Or we have to wait until the next year,” he says.

In recent years, climate change and large wildfires have made it harder to find good windows.

“You need to be in prescription,” says Bernheisel. “So, if climate change is creating conditions that are hotter and drier for longer periods of the year, then it might be more difficult to find that time period when you would be in prescription.”

When conditions do line up, the unit also needs enough people and equipment to manage the fire.

“Because of how bad the fires were this summer around the state, the resources that we had to conduct the fires were gone most of the year on wildland fires,” says Sampson.

“Some years, we just can’t put fire out on the ground because it’s too dry and the field conditions are outside of their prescription or our resources are all gone,” he says. “And so that just pushes more of the pressure to other years, when the conditions are better or resources are available.”

A changing landscape

New developments further complicate matters. Sampson says using fire used to be a “completely different situation.” There were hills where crews could burn a few thousand acres without worrying.

“But now, you go look at some of these areas that used to be vacant, and there’s homes out there,” he says.

“There’s power lines going through areas where it used to be just bare hillsides.”

Fire has existed both as a natural part of the landscape and for management in Santa Cruz County for millennia.

“The ancestors of the Amah Mutsun tribal band were using intentional fire as a tool for many thousands of years,” says Sara French, the director of development at the Amah Mutsun Land Trust.

The Amah Mutsun Land Trust currently works with CAL FIRE on prescribed burns at the Soquel Demonstration State Forest.

CAL FIRE mostly uses prescribed burns in Santa Cruz County to complement or enhance other management strategies, like fuel breaks.

“So we’re not just relying on prescribed burns to do the whole job,” says Bernheisel. “We’re using it as one of the tools to do the job.”

“But conditions are going to continue to get worse and worse,” says Sampson. “The question is, can we put enough on the ground to make a difference and help out? To go ahead and reduce some of the danger?”

Measure U Extension Committee Submits Signatures

Local News

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December 15, 2021

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Measure U Extension Committee Submits Signatures

WATSONVILLE—About two dozen organizers packed into the Watsonville civic offices on Monday afternoon to turn in the signatures needed to put an extension of a landmark ballot measure before Watsonville voters next year.

Measure U, approved by voters in 2002, put restrictions on where, when and how Watsonville could expand in an effort to protect the sloughs and rich farmland that surround Santa Cruz County’s southernmost city. But some of the protections are set to expire in 2022 and the rest will expire five years later.

The Committee for Planned Growth and Farmland Protection over the past six months gathered some 3,100 signatures from registered Watsonville voters to put the item on next year’s ballot.

The coalition of environmentalist and agriculture industry leaders created for the sole purpose of extending Measure U through 2040 only needed to submit roughly 2,200 signatures—or 10% of Watsonville’s voting body—to the Watsonville City Clerk’s office before Dec. 15.

The signatures must now be verified by Watsonville City Clerk Beatriz Vazquez Flores.

Former Watsonville Mayor Betty Bobeda, who brought the initial petition forward more than a year ago, said that the fact that they surpassed that mark by nearly 1,000 signatures showed there is overwhelming support for the extension.

“The people of Watsonville don’t want urban sprawl,” she said. “They want preservation of farmland.”

The renewal will be on what should be a contentious and lengthy election day ballot that will feature several Watsonville City Council races and a battle over the county supervisorial seat that oversees most of Watsonville, the 4th district.

Committee leader Sam Earnshaw says that the group will now try to build support for the extension, an effort that he expects will ramp up after the June 7, 2022 primary. While he doesn’t expect it will be difficult to win over Watsonville voters—he said they already had their say in 2013 when they overwhelmingly voted against Measure T—a bigger fight will be trying to convince the Watsonville City Council to support it.

The local elected leaders have been largely critical of the measure’s impact on the city when discussing the item during public meetings. Some City Councilmembers have gone as far as calling the committee’s claims about Measure U “propaganda” and others have said that there are racist overtones in their stance against allowing Watsonville—a community with a large Latinx population with several people who cannot vote—to expand in order to build more housing and attract more employers.

Earnshaw, however, says that Measure U has been good for Watsonville and that the city’s urban line limits should stay where they are to limit urban sprawl and encourage developers to renovate blighted areas and underused parcels within city limits. The farmer turned environmentalist also cites a citywide survey in which 95% of respondents said the city should create additional jobs and housing near already existing infrastructure to help preserve natural and agricultural land.

“It’s not like there aren’t any [vacant and underutilized parcels] in Watsonville,” Earnshaw said. “Focus on that, and then you got 2040 when you can try to go for some farmland again.”

Watsonville Leaders Cry Foul Over Proposed Congressional Redistricting

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December 15, 2021

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Watsonville Leaders Cry Foul Over Proposed Congressional Redistricting

WATSONVILLE—The Watsonville City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a resolution to send a letter to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission demanding it not split Watsonville from its fellow Santa Cruz County cities in the upcoming congressional redistricting.

The letter, penned by outgoing Mayor Jimmy Dutra, came to the City Council as an emergency item at the end of its final regularly scheduled meeting of the year.

Dutra wrote the letter in response to the proposed redistricting map released on Dec. 13 which moved Watsonville from the 20th Congressional District overseen by Jimmy Panetta to a new district that includes Gilroy, Morgan Hill, East San Jose, San Benito County, Salinas, Gonzalez, Greenfield and King City.

The coastal area to the west of Watsonville, including La Selva Beach and Pajaro Dunes, would stay in the 20th District. So, too, would Corralitos and the other communities just to the north of Watsonville.

“This is unacceptable,” Dutra said at Tuesday’s meeting. “We belong with the rest of Santa Cruz County. We belong with the rest of Monterey County. And we belong with Jimmy Panetta being our congressional leader.”

Watsonville, the letter states, has “little to no common voices or interests” with the other communities it is placed with in the proposed map.

“The Counties of Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Cruz have shared interests and characteristics that define them as a community of interest,” Dutra wrote. “All three counties have a shared economy in agriculture, media markets, culture and history.”

The California Citizens Redistricting Commission, a 14-member group made up of five Republicans, five Democrats and four people not affiliated with either of those two parties, must approve a final map by Dec. 23 and that map must be certified to the Secretary of State by Dec. 27.

The commission is holding a handful of meetings in the days leading up to Dec. 23.

If the proposed map is accepted, the Monterey Bay Area would be split among two congressional districts, a move that local elected leaders say would be “devastating” to Watsonville’s voice and sidetrack several multi-county projects in the works.

Chief among those projects, argues Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend, is the Pajaro River Flood Control Project, which this year took a major step forward after decades of stagnation thanks to federal leadership.

Friend, whose 2nd District oversees parts of Watsonville, also sent a letter to the commission in opposition to the proposed map. In the letter, Friend argues that carving out Santa Cruz County’s southernmost city from the 20th District would largely dilute its say at the federal stage.

“The unfortunate thing is that Watsonville has faced attempts to dilute its voice before—with a precedent-setting Supreme Court case ensuring that the residents of Watsonville would have a seat at the table,” he wrote. “In Gomez v. the City of Watsonville, the plaintiffs argued that the at-large elections system in Watsonville used for City Council elections was unconstitutional and violated the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. At the time, even though Latinos in Watsonville made up half of the city’s population (it’s significantly higher now)—no Latinos had been elected to the City Council since the city’s incorporation.”

He continued: “This proposal for the new Congressional district brings forth many of the same concerns—diluting Watsonville’s voice on the federal stage and, in particular, diluting the voices of Santa Cruz County farmworkers, non-native speakers and first-generation residents.”

Members of the public can also submit comments to the commission, and Dutra and the City Council implored Watsonville residents to do so.

For information on the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, visit wedrawthelinesca.org.

Things To Do in Santa Cruz: Dec. 15-21

GT Staff

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December 15, 2021

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A weekly guide to what’s happening.

ARTS AND MUSIC

CELTIC TEEN BAND PROGRAM Teenage musicians ages 12-19 play in an ensemble, developing musicianship, flexibility, and musical creativity. Participants work on music from Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, Norway, Sweden and the United States, in addition to modern and more quirky pieces. Instruments welcomed include fiddle, viola, flute, tin whistle, pipes, cello, upright bass, guitar, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer, autoharp, ukulele, Celtic harp, accordion and percussion. Students must have at least two years of experience on their instrument and must be able to read sheet music and chord symbols. The group meets twice a month Wednesday afternoons from 3:30-5pm at the London Nelson Center with fiddle teacher John Weed. Cost is free-$10 per session on a sliding scale. Potential students are welcome to come for a session and see if they like it—no obligation! More information and registration at CommunityMusicSchool.org/teenband. Wednesday, Dec. 15, 3:30pm. London Nelson Community Center, 301 Center St., Santa Cruz.

LET’S TALK ABOUT THE MOVIES Film buffs are invited to join us online every Wednesday night at 7pm to discuss a currently streaming movie. For more info, please visit our webpage: https://groups.google.com/group/LTATM.

NUTCRACKER PERFORMANCE Join us for our annual Santa Cruz Nutcracker performance! Featuring dancers from all ages and backgrounds, we’ve come together to offer you this spectacular show. Many members of our beloved staff, including Studio Director Shannon Chipman and ballet teacher Vicki Bergland, performed in the original Santa Cruz Nutcracker Production. Even more, they continue to dance and teach to this day. Invite in the holiday spirit and come enjoy Tchaikovsky’s iconic score with our talented dancers, right in Cabrillo’s Crocker Theater. Friday, Dec. 17, 10am. Saturday, Dec. 18, 10am. Sunday, Dec. 19, 10am. Cabrillo Crocker Theater, 6500 Soquel Drive, Aptos.

THE SANTA CRUZ CHORALE PRESENTS CHRISTMAS WITH THE CHORALE We are happy to let you know that, in spite of Covid-19, we are planning to have our “Christmas with the Chorale” concerts—of course with a few changes to ensure safety. The choir members are all vaccinated, we’ll be singing with masks, and the audience must also be masked and vaccinated. In addition, the concert will be shorter than usual, with no intermission, and since the size of the audience will be smaller than can fill Holy Cross, you’ll have to order your tickets early! But even with these limitations that are unpleasant for all of us, you can be sure, there will be no limitations to the beauty of the program! Beginning with what is some of the oldest known Christmas music, Gregorian chant, we will sing music from centuries past, and right up to compositions from modern times. We will again be joined by the Monterey Bay Sinfonietta, and of course we will also perform favorite carols from around the world. We are very much looking forward to finally seeing you again, and to sharing with you the joy of Christmas music. Saturday, Dec. 18, 8pm. Sunday, Dec. 19, 4pm. Holy Cross Church, 210 High St., Santa Cruz.

TOMÁSEEN FOLEY’S A CELTIC CHRISTMAS For the 26th season, Tomáseen Foley’s A Celtic Christmas brings traditional Irish musicians and dancers to enthralled audiences across the country. At its center is native Irish storyteller, Tomáseen Foley. A Celtic Christmas springs from the infinitely rich treasury of Ireland’s cultural heritage: a re-creation of a night before Christmas in the West of Ireland in the 1940s, before the advent of the motorcar, the television, and the telephone. In this recreation of age-old tradition, neighbors bring their fiddles, tin whistles, flutes, bodhráns, uilleann pipes; and, perhaps most important of all, their unshakeable sense of community, for a night of traditional music, song, dance and of course storytelling. The show’s music director is a Grammy Award-winning guitarist and Santa Cruz resident William Coulter, an internationally recognized master of the steel-string guitar. Friday, Dec. 17, 7:30pm. Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz.

WHEN WE PAINT OUR MASTERPIECE: THE ART OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD COMMUNITY Learn how the members of the Grateful Dead and the global Deadhead community took inspiration from one another in creating an image-rich, worldwide art practice that, like the band’s music, scrambled perceived standards and norms. The creative works presented in When We Paint Our Masterpiece reveal a world full of variety when it comes to design practices, international traditions, visual icons, and vernacular art forms. There has been space for all of these patterns and visions in the community of fans and fellow artists that blossomed around the band, and that community of creators continues to thrive today. This exhibit explores the mutual appreciation among fans as well as between fans and the band. Free. McHenry Library, UCSC, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz. Through December 22, 2022.

COMMUNITY

ADVANCE DIRECTIVE INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS WATSONVILLE Our individual sessions are perfect for people who are ready to complete their Advance Directives, with support. Schedule a one-on-one appointment to complete your Advance Directive. We will share copies of the necessary forms and walk you through filling them out, step by step. To make an appointment, please call 831-430-3000 and ask for Vanessa Silverstein. Wednesday, Dec. 15, 10am-1pm. Hospice of Santa Cruz County, 65 Nielson St., Watsonville.

COMMUNITY DRUMMING WITH JIM GREINER IN PERSON Percussionist/Educator Jim Greiner will conduct the next in his monthly third Friday series of community drumming sessions at the Inner Light Center in Soquel in person from 7-8:30pm. Doors open at 6:45pm. The cost is $10. Masks and social distancing requirements will be honored. Jim makes it fun and easy for people from all walks of life to play drums and hand percussion to release stress, to uplift and energize yourself, and to reinforce positive life rhythms through percussion playing. Friday, Dec. 17, 7-8:30pm. Inner Light Center, 5630 Soquel Drive, Soquel.

COMMUNITY PILATES MAT CLASS Come build strength with us. This very popular in-person community Pilates Mat Class in the big auditorium at Temple Beth El in Aptos is in session once again. Please bring your own mat, small Pilates ball and theraband if you have one. You must be vaccinated for this indoor class. Suggested donation of $10/class. Thursday, Dec. 16, 10am. Tuesday, Dec. 21, 10am. Temple Beth El, 3055 Porter Gulch Road, Aptos.

CUÉNTAME UN CUENTO Acompáñanos para una hora de cuentos, actividades y canciones en español. Este programa es para niños de 0-8 y sus familias. La hora será miércoles a las 4:30pm. Nos reuniremos en el porche exterior. Cuéntame un Cuento se llevará a cabo en Capitola durante el período de construcción de Live Oak. En caso de mal clima, se cancelará la hora de cuentos. Join us for Spanish Storytime, activities, and music! This program is best suited for kids ages 0-8 and their families. Storytime takes place on Wednesday at 4:30pm. We will meet on the outside porch. Storytime will take place at Capitola during Live Oak’s construction period. In the event of bad weather, storytime will be cancelled. Wednesday, Dec. 15, 4:30pm. Capitola Library A Santa Cruz City County Public Library Branch, 2005 Wharf Road, Capitola.

DOWNTOWN SANTA CRUZ MAKERS MARKET Come on out and support local makers and artists at the Downtown Santa Cruz Makers Market every third Sunday of the month on Pacific Ave at Lincoln St. We are now on the 1100 block of Pacific Ave. between Cathcart St. and Lincoln St. near New Leaf and alongside so many amazing downtown restaurants. Support local and shop small with over 30 Santa Cruz County artists and makers! Don’t forget to stop in and visit the downtown merchants and grab a bite to eat from the downtown restaurants. Remember to social distance as you shop and wear your mask. If you’re not feeling well, please stay home. There will be hand sanitizing stations at the market and signs to remind you about all these things! Friendly leashed pups are welcome at this free event! Sunday, Dec. 19, 10am-5pm. Downtown Santa Cruz Makers Market, Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz.

FARLEY’S CHRISTMAS WONDERLAND From Saturday, November 27 to Friday, December 31 (except when it’s raining), Farley’s Christmas Wonderland will be open. A walk-in Christmas display located in the midtown of Santa Cruz, this exhibit is very traditional: lots of Christmas trees, garlands, sleighs, an elf village, a miniature village, and a log cabin that Santa uses for his rest stops. There is also a fairy grotto with two waterfalls and fairies that can be viewed on special nights. Also, on those special nights, it even snows! Donations are welcome. 108 Seaview Ave., Santa Cruz. farleys-christmas-wonderland.com.

GREY BEARS BROWN BAG LINE Grey Bears are looking for help with their brown bag production line on Thursday and Friday mornings. Volunteers will receive breakfast and a bag of food if wanted. Be at the warehouse with a mask and gloves at 7am. Call ahead for more information: 831-479-1055, greybears.org. Thursday, Dec. 16, 7am. California Grey Bears, 2710 Chanticleer Ave., Santa Cruz.

HOLIDAY LIGHTS TRAIN A seasonal tradition returns to Santa Cruz with the Santa Cruz Holiday Lights Train. Vintage excursion cars, adorned with thousands of colorful lights, roll through city streets past homes of Santa Cruz. First-class private coach cars can also be reserved for groups up to 50 people. Availability is limited so book in advance. Roaring Camp Railroads, 5401 Graham Hill Road, Felton. Runs through Dec. 23. Schedule and tickets at roaringcamp.com.

HOLIDAY LIGHTS 2021 The Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds Foundation and the Agricultural History Project presents Holiday Lights 2021 at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds. Holiday Lights is a half-mile drive-through experience at the fairgrounds of spectacular lighted holiday displays. See giant Christmas trees twinkling with lights, Santa, reindeer, snowmen, lighted tunnels and more. New this year are two evenings of walk-through holiday lights on Friday, Dec. 3 and Saturday, Dec. 4 in conjunction with the Heritage Holiday Craft and Gift Fair. Tickets will only be available at the gate for these two evenings, and ticket gets you admission to Holiday Fair Shopping, too. For drive-through tickets (Thursday, Friday, Sunday), go eventbrite.com/e/holiday-lights-tickets.

KNITTING AT THE FELTON LIBRARY Join us every Monday afternoon at the Felton Branch for a knitting party. All you need to do is bring some yarn and knitting needles. All ages are welcome. Monday, Dec. 20, 12:30pm. Felton Branch Library, 6121 Gushee St., Felton.

TOY TRAINS 2021 Get whisked away into the whimsical world of toy trains and enjoy the 16th year of this beloved annual pop-up exhibit at the Museum of Art & History (MAH). Members of the Golden State Toy Train Operators will be on hand to once again share their amazing collection of toy trains at the MAH. First things first, we encourage you to be and stay safe. We are still living during a pandemic. Masks required when viewing the train display. 12-6pm Thursday, December 16-Sunday, Dec. 19. Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, 705 Front St., Santa Cruz.

WINTER FAMILY DAY 2021 Enjoy free admission to all our current exhibitions, plus the Toy Trains display in the Atrium all day! Drop in from 2-4pm to make a button and create seeds of growth to welcome in the new year. Sunday, Dec. 19. Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, 705 Front St., Santa Cruz.

GROUPS

ENTRE NOSOTRAS GRUPO DE APOYO Entre Nosotras support group for Spanish speaking women with a cancer diagnosis. Meets twice monthly. Registration required, please call Entre Nosotras 831-761-3973. Friday, Dec. 17, 6pm. WomenCARE, 2901 Park Ave., Suite A1, Soquel.

S+LAA MENS’ MEETING Having trouble with compulsive sexual or emotional behavior? Recovery is possible. Our small 12-step group meets Saturday evenings. Enter through the front entrance, go straight down the hallway to the last door on the right. Thursday, Dec. 16, 6pm. Sutter Maternity & Surgery Center, 2900 Chanticleer Ave., Santa Cruz.

WOMENCARE ARM-IN-ARM WomenCARE Arm-in-Arm Cancer support group for women with advanced, recurrent, or metastatic cancer. Meets every Monday, currently on Zoom. Registration is required, call WomenCARE at 831-457-2273. All services are free. For more information visit womencaresantacruz.org. Monday, Dec. 20, 12:30pm.

WOMENCARE MINDFULNESS MEDITATION Mindfulness meditation for women with a cancer diagnosis. Meets the 1st and 3rd Friday, currently on Zoom. Registration required please call WomenCARE 831-457-2273. Friday, Dec. 17, 11am-noon.

WOMENCARE TUESDAY SUPPORT GROUP WomenCARE Tuesday Cancer support group for women newly diagnosed and through their treatment. Meets every Tuesday currently on Zoom. Registration required, call WomenCARE 831-457-2273. Tuesday, Dec. 21, 12:30-2pm.

WOMENCARE: LAUGHTER YOGA Laughter yoga for women with a cancer diagnosis. Meets every Wednesday, currently via Zoom. Registration is required, please call WomenCARE at 831-457-2273. Wednesday, Dec. 15, 3:30-4:30pm.

OUTDOOR

HISTORIC RANCH GROUND TOUR Discover what life was like a century ago on this innovative dairy ranch. This hour-long tour includes the 1896 water-powered machine shop, barns and other historic buildings. The vehicle day-use fee is $10. For more information, call 831-426-0505. Spaces are limited and early pre-registration is recommended. Attendees are required to self-screen for Covid-19 symptoms when pre-registering. Masks and social distancing are also required at all programs. Saturday, Dec. 18, 1-2pm. Sunday, Dec. 19, 1-2pm. Wilder Ranch State Park, 1401 Coast Road, Santa Cruz.

Kelly Finnigan Brings Retro Soul, Coated in Mistletoe, to Moe’s Alley

Aaron Carnes

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December 15, 2021

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Kelly Finnigan Brings Retro Soul, Coated in Mistletoe, to Moe’s Alley

Soul revival singer-songwriter and Monophonics lead singer Kelly Finnigan was sitting around one day listening to the Sacred Four’s old gospel-funk song “Someone’s Watching You.” The “someone” is meant to refer to God—it’s a religious song, after all. Suddenly, a thought popped into Finnigan’s head—if he tweaked the lyrics, it could be about Christmas.

“I know who else is watching,” Finnigan recalls thinking. “I was in such a mode of Christmas, where my brain was at, a lightbulb just went on.”

Finnigan had Christmas on the brain because he was working on a Christmas album. It was something he talked about doing for years, but didn’t get the time to do it until the pandemic shut down live music. He spent the spring and summer of 2020 obsessing about Christmas, and released the album A Joyful Sound in November of 2020. “Santa’s Watching You” was one of the tracks.

He was hoping to perform the album in its entirety last year at the UC Theatre in Berkeley, but with Covid cases on the rise, the show was a no-go. This year, he debuts the Joyful Sound live show in San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and right here in Santa Cruz at Moe’s Alley on December 16. He’s hoping it will become an annual tradition.

Christmas music can be very polarizing; there are those who can’t get enough of it, and those who loathe walking into Walgreens anytime during November and December. Finnigan is hoping to appeal to both groups. Or at least he hopes the Christmas-music haters give A Joyful Sound a chance. They are all original tunes, with the few covers being old obscure soul songs transformed into Christmas songs, as is the case with “Santa’s Watching You.”

“I like Christmas music—it’s not always done the way I like it,” Finnigan says. “I wanted it to feel like Kelly Finnigan made a true record for himself that is Christmas music. I didn’t want it to make people who know my music look at me sideways and be like, ‘What’s this guy doing?’”

Indeed, the record sounds much in the vein of Finnigan’s prior solo old-school-soul-style record The Tales People Tell.

When Finnigan imagined doing a Christmas record, he wasn’t picturing Bruce Springsteen doing “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” or Mariah Carey singing “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” He thought back to the records his family would listen to when he was a child, by artists like Ray Charles, Mahalia Jackson, BeBe and CeCe Winans and Rotary Connection. He wanted to make a Christmas album in that tradition, “when it was new and exciting to make Christmas music with pop artists, jazz artists and blues artists. They were figuring out they could do this. There was an excitement to the creative process. And that comes through in the performances,” Finnigan says. “Whereas it became popularized. Sometimes those efforts sounded phoned in. Like a producer picks the songs and a singer comes in and just banged that out.”

A Joyful Sound is an emotive, feel-good soul record about Christmas that occasionally dips into the sadness of the season, while maintaining an uplifting tone. “Waiting on the Big Man” is about dreading Christmas because of past trauma attached to the holidays. It also encourages people to focus on love and not on how much they spend on presents.

“This can be a tough time for people, especially what was going on in 2020. There’s some very positive-vibey tunes. But I wanted to not be overly joyous given that this is also a tough time of year for a lot of people,” Finnigan says.

Finnigan is really looking forward to these four shows, and hopes he can hit more cities next year. It’ll be a lot like his normal show—in other words, great live soul coming from a nine-piece band—but with Christmas lyrics.

“I’m not going to dress it up too much. Just playing through the record. Just trying to bring a really good vibe,” Finnigan says. “I’m sure a lot of people that like my music don’t like Christmas music, and maybe I can convince them to come to the show and convert them. It’s just soul music, but I’m singing about Christmas.”

Kelly Finnigan will play at 8:30pm on Thursday, December 16 at Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $12/adv, $15/door. (831) 479-1854.

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