Chip, the executive director of the Downtown Association of Santa Cruz, has accepted a new job, and the career will take him far from the Monterey Bay.
The outgoing leader of the Downtown Association (DTA) is taking a job as CEO of the Downtown Boulder Partnership, which is Boulder Colorado’s equivalent of the Santa Cruz DTA. As he gets ready to start the new gig, however, Chip is not focused on the fact that he is leaving. Instead, he thinks more about why he’s leaving.
It’s really nothing personal.
“It’s an incredible opportunity,” Chip says. “Ninety percent of it isn’t that I’m leaving Santa Cruz. I’m being pulled toward Boulder.”
In his new job, he’ll have a bigger staff in a city with a 60% more residents than Santa Cruz has. Boulder, Chip says, has one of a few downtowns that he’s kept an eye on over the years as a source of inspiration and to see what they’re up to. This position is an exciting next step for him professionally, he says, with the added benefit of being in a beautiful city that he happens to love.
Chip’s upcoming move is part of a larger trend of leadership changes locally.
For starters, it happens at the same time that his wife Abra Allan has been transitioning out of her post as director of the Motion Pacific Dance studio, which she’s led since 2009. Allan will stay in Santa Cruz for another year, until their daughter finishes up high school, and then will move to Boulder as well.
Michelle Williams, the executive director of the Arts Council of Santa Cruz County,is also moving away in the coming weeks, now that her husband has landed a lucrative marketing job in Florida, where the couple has now purchased a home. Earlier this spring, Williams told GT that her family’s “financial lives will change overnight,” expressing frustration that the she, Vaden and their kids have gotten priced out of Santa Cruz.
Chip says he has heard heart-wrenching stories time and again of locals leaving for money reasons. But he stresses that he isn’t getting priced out himself. “That’s a story I totally understand, but I have been lucky to have so many amazing opportunities here,” he says.
Among other local leadership changes, the Santa Cruz city manager’s office will be bidding farewell to Deputy City Manager Tina Shull, who has accepted a city manager job in Scotts Valley, where she’ll start June 3. Shull is the second deputy city manager to leave Santa Cruz over the last 18 months.
And up at UCSC, Chancellor George Blumenthal is retiring, and UC Riverside Campus ProvostCindy Larive has been tapped to replace him. Also at UCSC, Campus Provost Marlene Tromp is leavingfor a post as president at Boise State in Idaho.
BOULDER VISION
Chip says Boulder bears a lot of similarities to Santa Cruz—it’s a moderately affluent university town with similar demographics and an engaged citizenry, and its residents are interested in being healthy, enjoying the outdoors and having a high quality of life. The Colorado city has a growing tech community, too, and its relationship to the city of Denver parallels the one Santa Cruz has with Silicon Valley, he says.
In addition, Chip compares Boulder’s current woes around housing affordability to the ones Santa Cruz was struggling with 10 years ago—back when Surf City was only a very expensive place to live, and not the incredibly unaffordable community that it is now. He’s quick to add that he doesn’t know of a simple way to fix housing affordability problems—and certainly not by himself, adding that Boulder’s doing a lot of things right.
“In some ways they’re ahead of us, and in some ways they’re a little behind us. It’s a very thoughtful community,” Chip says.
He stresses that he’s been impressed with the cohesive vision that the town’s cultural and city leaders share for downtown Boulder, as well as their collaborative efforts to implement it.
There are other parallels between Santa Cruz and Boulder. Boulder, for instance, might be theonly city in the country that has higher rates of commuters who bike and walk to work than Santa Cruz has. Some transportation activists have recently encouraged Santa Cruz city leaders toembrace some of the same initiatives that Boulder has. Those calls have only grown stronger amid discussions around building a controversial new parking structure on Cedar Street.
The most iconic feature of downtown Boulder is the Pearl Street Mall, a pedestrian-only shopping area that’s blocked off from car traffic. For years, many Santa Cruzans have pushed downtown Santa Cruz to build something similar on Pacific Avenue.
But Chip says that a full pedestrian mall would never work on Pacific. One of the defining features of the Pearl Street Mall, he says, is that all of its cross streets—13th Street, 14th Street and Broadway—all line up, allowing cars to drive through the shopping area, which is 0.3 miles long. In Santa Cruz, by comparison, Pacific Avenue only has one through street connecting Cedar Street Street and Front Street across a stretch of road that’s three times longer.
“There are a lot of opportunities in Santa Cruz to create new pedestrian-friendly experiences downtown,” Chip says. “I do not think it makes structural or economic sense to do it for all of Pacific Avenue.”
A pedestrian mall would also eliminate some street parking.
Floating one possible alternative, Chip believes that if Santa Cruz builds a new parking garage, it would open up options, allowing the city to consolidate its parking and build pedestrian-friendly spaces elsewhere.
WHEN YOU’RE DOWNTOWN
As the DTA’s Executive Director, Chip led the development of an information kiosk downtown, facilitated a rebrand of the association and helped launch many events, including Santa Cruz Dance Week, with wife Abra Allan. Over the years, he also co-founded the First Friday Santa Cruz art tour and led thepush to establish a Santa Cruz chapter of the Downtown Streets Team.
The change at the DTA could allow a leader on Santa Cruz’s economic issues to step forward. Chip stresses that his own departure is as much an opportunity for the community as it is for himself.
“It’s a great opportunity for me, but I genuinely feel like it’s a great opportunity for Santa Cruz. I know I’m leaving a little bit of a vacuum, but another person, or lots of people, will step up to fill it. I look forward to watching from Boulder what happens in Santa Cruz,” explains Chip, who legally changed his name to his one-word moniker 20 years ago.
Chip’s one-word name has been the source of some bemusement in Santa Cruz over the years. He says that he first started going by one name in his twenties when he was a young stagehand; he was trying to find a way to stand out in the arts community and establish a brand for himself. But now, in 2019, while preparing to pivot into a higher-profile position, he says that he briefly wondered if it was time to make a change and considered taking Allan’s last name. He decided against it.
Chip may have picked his name in an effort to be unique decades ago, but the one-name moniker might ironically end up causing a little unintended confusion out in Colorado. That’s because, in Boulder, the University of Colorado’s mascot—a cartoonish buffalo—is also named Chip, and also has no last name.
On the morning of Wednesday, May 22, the Downtown Boulder Partnership sentout a press release headlined “There’s a New Chip in Town,” announcing Chip as its new CEO.
The partnership, in the release, jokingly mentioned that the Colorado school’s mascot “could not be reached for comment.”
One of my favorite wineries to visit is Loma Prieta. Situated high on a hill 2,600 feet up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, not only do you get a breathtaking view of the Monterey Bay, but a taste of some outstanding wines as well.
On a recent trip to the tasting room, I was completely won over by a marvelous bubbly: a 2015 Sparkling Pinotage Blanc de Noirs ($55). Loma Prieta is famous for its Pinotage (they’re the largest producer of Pinotage in North America), so it stands to reason that they would also make a fine sparkling wine from this beautiful rare grape.
Champagne, or sparkling wine, is often cracked open on special occasions, and Pinotage Blanc de Noirs would be the perfect libation to celebrate an important event.
“Old legends called sparkling creations ‘the Devil’s Wine,’” say the folks at Loma Prieta, “but this one tastes like it was sent from heaven.” Opening with aromas of toasted almonds and a wisp of magnolia, this smooth and delicious sparkler has notes of apricot, baked pear and ruby-red grapefruit. “Like drinking a glass of sunshine.”
The winery is open noon-5p.m. on weekends year round, and noon-5 p.m. on Fridays from June-August. They will be open on Memorial Day (May 27), Father’s Day weekend (June 15-16; take your dad wine tasting and buy him a bottle of his choice!) and for the next Passport event on July 20. Visit scmwa.com for more info on Passport.
Loma Prieta Winery, 26985 Loma Prieta Way, Los Gatos. 408-353-2950, lomaprietawinery.com.
Farm-to-Table Wine Dinners at Chaminade
The first in the summer series of farm-to-table dinners at Chaminade in Santa Cruz will be held on Friday, May 31. The evening starts at 6 p.m. with passed hors d’oeuvres, then enjoy five courses from the region’s abundant sources, paired with Clos la Chance wines. Food is prepared by Executive Chef Pete Page and his culinary team.
Tickets $90 per person/$115.76 with tax and gratuity. chaminade.com.
Drop the “o” and it’s crytherapy. That’s kind of what it felt like the last few seconds of my recent three-minute cryotherapy session. To be clear, I do not like the cold, and it was somewhat masochistic of me to try cryotherapy to begin with. I’ve waited all year for it to be summer, so why would I pay to be freezing? Here’s why: because I’ll feel fantastic afterwards.
Cryotherapy, literally cold therapy, is a procedure that exposes the body to temperatures colder than -100 degrees Celsius (148 degrees Fahrenheit) for a few minutes at a time. While it’s been used to treat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis in Japan for more than 40 years, the idea is still relatively new to Western countries.
Most often in Santa Cruz and the rest of the U.S., cryotherapy is used for injury treatment and prevention, to alleviate muscle soreness, weight loss, clearer skin, a better mood, and more energy. While the FDA has not cleared or approved cryotherapy for medical treatment, and there are relatively few studies on potential benefits, testimonials suggest there might be something to this cold therapy thing after all.
“I find that I heal twice as fast when I get an injury if I do cryo,” says Austin Twohig, a co-owner of Seabright cryotherapy business Chill. “I’ll come after jiu jitsu if I know I hurt myself, and I’ll be healed in two days instead of four.”
Chill is the only cryotherapy place in Santa Cruz, and they’ve been open just over a year as part of Equilibrium Float Spa and Torkc gym next door. The owners, Pascual Del Real, Kristie Lynn and Twohig, all got into cryo to help augment their fitness and overall well being.
It’s $50 for a single session but gets cheaper the more sessions you book. Some cryo connoisseurs pay a flat monthly rate of $299 for unlimited sessions, which pencils out to about $15 a session if you go every day. “For people who have serious injuries or are in a lot of pain, they get so much relief from cryo,” Twohig says.
When it’s my turn, I strip down to my skivvies and put on a huge pair of slippers, socks and gloves, since your digits are first to go when it’s -130 degrees Celsius (-202 Fahrenheit). I step into a metal cylinder that covers everything but my head, and as the machine turns on the swirls of nitrogen begins to seep into the chamber, overflowing at the top. Clutching my elbows, I’m glad I have mittens on.
Rest assured—though a lot of newcomers are really concerned about the cold—it’s not like jumping into a freezing Alaskan lake. The shock isn’t as sudden, and it’s a dry, smokey cold that you’ll barely feel for a minute or two. It’s the kind of gradual cold akin to running outside in a swimsuit in the snow because someone dared you.
Chill gets about 15 cryo-ers a day, and that number is increasing as more people find out about and try cryotherapy, Del Real says. Equilibrium attracts more people to cryo because of their float tank and infrared sauna, plus the gym often refers clients with injuries. “We actually get a lot of people from out of town, too,” Lynn says.
Along with the out of towners, Chill has a contingent of locals who come almost everyday. From bodybuilders to surfers and people with chronic pain or illness, customers from all walks of life have different reasons for walking through the door.
Once about two minutes of my sub-zero experiment have passed, I’m starting to feel it to the bone. It’s unsettling being able to feel the ice on my body, but it’s not debilitating. I couldn’t tell you how cold it was at the time, but at a cool 100-below, do the specifics even matter? Most cryo sessions hover around -130 degrees Celsius but can get down to -165 degrees (-265 Fahrenheit).
There’s less than a minute left, and I’m becoming a human popsicle. You burn around 100 calories during your first session, the specialist tells me, and that goes up the more you do—there’s the incentive to stay in.
“The endorphin dump people get afterwards always surprises them,” Twohig says. “People come out and they just have a big smile on their face.”
I wasn’t smiling—at least immediately. Stepping out of the tank, I was just focused on getting back to warmer temperatures. The time did fly, and while I was relieved to get out, I soon found myself ready to go back.
“Enjoy the rest of your day, you’ll feel great,” the receptionist says as I walk out. She wasn’t wrong. Three hours later, I’m still on cloud nine.
Chill Santa Cruz Cryotherapy, 543 Seabright Ave., Santa Cruz. 295-7312, chillsantacruzcryo.com.
It’s hard not to be immediately captivated by the wall of colorful pastries inside El Rosal Bakery, tucked away in East Cliff Shopping Plaza, off of East Cliff Drive. The waist-to-ceiling display of pan dulce beams at customers, lights illuminating enormous treats bigger than an open hand that brim with custard and are covered in bright pink sugar or dyed a yolky yellow.
I stood there for a while, mesmerized, while other customers added their selections to metal trays to bring to the cashier. The thought of trying them all floated briefly through my mind, but I quickly shot that idea down—there were probably 50 different sweet breads, cookies and cakes on display. The huge piñatas hanging over the cases smiled down at me, and I felt the pressure mounting.
In the end, I decided to resist temptation. After all, I was here for a savory treat, not a sweet one. El Rosal Bakery is the self-acclaimed home of “The Best Tamales in Town!” Locals in the know and hundreds of online reviews have backed up this title, so I came to see for myself.
Luckily, with only five options, this choice is easier to make. I decide to take one of each. At $2.50-2.99 a piece, that includes chicken with red sauce, chicken with green sauce, a vegetarian tamale with cheese and green chili, a pork tamale with red sauce, and a sweet corn tamale.
Back at home, the tamales were still piping hot, and hefty. I actually weighed one, and it was over half a pound. The masa-to-filing ratio was generous, with plenty of chicken, pork or cheese and sauce wrapped in soft, aromatic masa. They were tender and cohesive, not at all like other disappointing dry, crumbly tamales I’ve had. Four tamales was a satisfying meal for two people. The chicken in green sauce, with its extra spicy kick, was my favorite, while my fiancé liked the chili and cheese the best. The sweet corn tamale was tasty but very sweet, definitely a dessert. All were delicious, satisfying and worthy of El Rosal’s slogan.
Join the geology gents, Gavin and Graham, for an informal science chat about rocks. This pop up will focus on ocean circulation in particular. The Pacific Ocean is circulating, or flowing in a circular path, all the time. At the surface, winds push water around, creating currents that run hundreds of feet deep and make for some one-of-a-kind geology. Bring any questions you have or rocks you want identified.
INFO: 10 a.m.-noon, Saturday, May 25. Santa Cruz Museum Of Natural History, 1305 E Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz. 420-6115, santacruzmuseum.org. Free.
Art Seen
The Venardos Circus
The Venardos Circus started at the Los Angeles County Fair in 2014. Created by former Ringling Bros. Ringmaster Kevin Venardos, the show featured a cast of six artists in a kind of Broadway-circus-musical. In the years since, Venardos Circus has reinvented the American Circus tradition for a new generation without the use of animals—good news for lions and elephants everywhere.
INFO: 1, 4 and 7 p.m. shows, Friday, May 24-Sunday, June 9. San Lorenzo Park, 137 Dakota Ave., Santa Cruz. venardoscircus.com. $25.
Saturday 5/25
Imagining and Making A University Campus
It’s no secret that the relationship between the city and UCSC have been strained at times. The ongoing tug of war over housing and resources has etched its way into Santa Cruz history, and as the university looks to expand, tensions over the already thin resources have again swelled. They say history repeats itself, but you have to know history to know where it all came from, right? Join Frank Zwart in a behind-the-scenes tour of the early days of UCSC to illuminate the creative and political forces behind the campus. Zwart is a UCSC alumnus and was UCSC’s campus architect from 1988 until his retirement in 2010.
INFO: 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Downtown Santa Cruz Public Library, 224 Church St., Santa Cruz. Free.
Friday 5/24
20th Annual Soupstock
Food Not Bombs will be celebrating 39 years of feeding social movements and the hungry at the Soupstock Festival. This year’s festival includes local comedian DNA and musician Gina Rene, plus appearances by Danny Paul Nelson, Robert Perala, the Raging Grannies, Lyrical I, and more. With Fugazi and Sleater-Kinney headlining, Soupstock in 2000 drew 20,000 people to Mission Dolores Park in San Francisco. Food Not Bombs is a volunteer-based movement that recovers and shares free vegan or vegetarian food with the public in over 1,000 cities in 65 countries around the world.
INFO: 6 p.m. Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St., Santa Cruz. 800-884-1136, foodnotbombs.net. $5-$20 suggested donation at the door; no one turned away for lack of funds.
I think if we did a count of how many of the biggest players in Santa Cruz politics over the last four decades got their start in the fight for Lighthouse Field in the 1970s, it would be a startling number. It comes up again and again—including this week, since it’s also where our cover story subject Cathy Calfo got her start in activism.
I think we all assume that Santa Cruz must have played a big part in the ascension of the organic movement, but I for one had no idea how pivotal this city was to both the state and national movement for organic certification until I read Liza Monroy’s piece. It’s surprising and regrettable that the history isn’t more widely known, but Monroy’s story corrects that. Tracking the work of Calfo, who is stepping down as head of California Certified Organic Farmers, ties into not only that story, but also the question of what is next for organic farming now that it has become a mainstream phenomenon. Both the possibilities and the challenges—the tiny percentage of ag land actually being used for organic growing will shock you—are important to consider for anyone who believes in transforming how we feed ourselves as a society.
Regarding your “Access Denied” article (May 8), access for some has denied access for others by their activities at Rio del Mar Beach. The beach area has become dangerous from deafeningly loud and toxic chemically laden air polluting “aerial firebombs,” aka fireworks and beach fires. These year-round events (not only on July 4) prohibit beach access to others.
Why is this happening? The Coastal Commission established a policy of beach accessibility for all at any time, anywhere. The commission objects to banning beach fires, but people throw anything in the fires, adding to the already unhealthy smoke.
Fires have been started on nearby properties by illegal fireworks (all are illegal in Santa Cruz County and in the state). Possession can lead to up to $50,000 in fines and a one-year prison sentence.
For full-time residents and other life forms and their habitats, the issue—in addition to accessibility—is livability. Cleaning up the mess afterwards can’t clean up contaminated air, land, and water.
Assemblymember Mark Stone wrote me, “fireworks and fire rings are fun, but we all need to take a hard and honest look at the public health and safety consequences that stem from these products and activities. Both are bad for the environment, human health, and public safety.”
Ramona Eris Andre | APTOS
Campers and Grampers
This young grampa remembers a time when folks were not camping in downtown streets, when we had public housing and treatment facilities large enough to meet the need. When anyone could get a job that wanted one. This is a national emergency, and the federal government is clearly not interested. With our state most impacted and much more resourceful than our little town, we must demand that the state act.
When I came to work this morning, there were folks sleeping on the concrete entrances to two businesses in the two blocks I surveyed. This is inhumane, as is allowing folks to set up campsites on downtown lots. Soviet-style housing blocks would be more humane, FEMA trailers, migrant housing that Homeland Security seems to be able to put up in 10 minutes would be better. A bus to Henry Cowell, campsites in the Pogonip (folks are camping there anyway), a bus to Camp Roberts (lots of idle hands and housing down there).
We need to get Gavin Newsom to worry less about his hair, and get every tax-free church in the state to open their doors.
Paul Cocking | Santa Cruz
I’ve been a dedicated GT reader since I moved here 26 years ago. As I’ve gotten older, inching toward 70, I find that I don’t go to the movies much anymore, so I’ve also more or less stopped reading the movie reviews. Today, though, I took a few minutes and started reading a few, and then all of them. Ha! Made me laugh out loud. I wanted to let you know how thoroughly entertaining I found them to be. Of course we all love Lisa Jensen, but SP (the editor Steve P?) has an entirely different perspective, which I find very funny—it almost makes me want to start going to movies again. Or not, depending on his take on the film. Keep up the good work, Steve (if in fact you are SP).
And thanks for many good years of Santa Cruz events and news, always with a twist, If only our other local paper, The Senile (which I subscribe to) could be half as good.
Christine Clayworth
Santa Cruz
Steve Palopoli responds: I am indeed the (SP) of those film capsule write-ups, for better or—as a lot of readers would argue—for worse. They’re a little controversial! I appreciate this and any other feedback, good or bad, on them.
PHOTO CONTEST WINNER
Submit to ph****@go*******.sc. Include information (location, etc.) and your name. Photos may be cropped. Preferably, photos should be 4 inches by 4 inches and minimum 250dpi.
GOOD IDEA
Co-Op SC is having another event to raise awareness about worker-owned cooperatives. The latest informational session will be Thursday, May 30, from 7-9 p.m. at the Resource Center for Nonviolence. “Worker cooperatives not only generate greater wealth for everyone in the company,” reads the coalition’s flier, “but also for the community at large.”
GOOD WORK
The Venardos Circus, a unique Broadway-style circus, has been touring the U.S. since 2014 and reinventing the American Circus tradition for a new generation. Now, it’s coming to the San Lorenzo Park, where it will run from May 24-June 9. General admission tickets are $25 for adults and $15 for kids under 12.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health.”
All around the Santa Cruz farmers markets, signs hang on stands bearing the seal of CCOF, or California Certified Organic Farmers. Closer inspection of my pantry reveals CCOF certification on items ranging from purple sweet potatoes to nori-wrapped energy sticks.
Yet it’s easy to forget, in an era when “organic” is a common label on products even in mainstream mega-grocers, that it wasn’t until 1990 that the “certified organic” claim really meant anything. The mission to define and create the code for what constitutes organic was nearly two decades in the making, and Santa Cruz-based CCOF had been on the forefront since the concept was fringe, mostly sold out of health-food stores with names like Bread of Life and Nature’s Heartland (both of which, along with others, eventually merged into Whole Foods).
“California is the heartbeat of organic farming, and Santa Cruz County is the center of that heart,” says Nesh Dhillon, executive director of Santa Cruz County Community Farmers’ Markets.
Over the last 30-40 years, says Dhillon, the organic industry has grown from small, niche farms into separate tiers of small, medium and large-scale farmers.
But long before organics went mainstream, a Live Oak-based farmer named Barney Bricmont founded CCOF. Bricmont, who grew organic salad greens for the actress Carol Channing, started the organization around his dining room table in the early 1970s. Back then, the market for organic produce was only a “few health food stores and Carol Channing,” says Cathy Calfo, the recently retired CEO of CCOF.
Calfo is seated at the dining room table in her sun-filled house, a stone’s throw from Pacific Avenue, reflecting on the history of the organic movement and her own long, multifaceted career. She’s carried forth her philosophy of engaging with the public sector in a positive way, not only as CEO of CCOF but as a founding member of the City of Santa Cruz Commission for the Prevention of Violence Against Women, Deputy State Treasurer of California (1999-2004) and Executive Director of the Apollo Alliance, a national nonprofit that promotes clean energy and creation of “green-collar” jobs that ensure worker health and environmental protection.
Sipping chai from 11th Hour Coffee, Calfo—a radiant, energetic 61-year-old—is simultaneously soft spoken and dynamic, driven yet calm, and she exudes the enthusiasm for which former colleagues unanimously praise her.
“The thing that struck me most about Cathy is how positive she was, no matter the situation,” says Pete Petri, the COO of CCOF. “Cathy left the organization in a far better state than when she came, which is inspirational.”
Scott Roseman, who founded New Leaf, says, “Cathy did a great job. [CCOF] grew tremendously under her leadership. I credit her for that and for upholding the integrity of CCOF.”
THE LIGHTHOUSE FIELD FIGHT
Calfo’s entrepreneurial mission—the intersection between environmental sustainability and economic success—first emerged during her college years at UCSC in the late 1970s. “Saving Lighthouse Field got me involved in the political side,” she says of Santa Cruz citizens uniting to stop a 1972 project for a hotel, convention center and shopping mall on the site of Lighthouse Field.
Then, while working under Phil Angelides as Deputy State Treasurer, “I saw how you could move hundreds of billions of dollars to do social good,” she says. “That was a core principle at the time I was there. As a staff person who was really privileged to make that vision happen, it stays with you.”
She credits those years as transformative to her long career as a sustainability changemaker, which compelled CCOF to tap Calfo as a natural to lead the organization and further its mission in 2011, after Briemont passed away at the age of 73.
THE CCOF STORY
When the organization was founded, “no one had a definition for organic,” Calfo says, and therefore no standards existed. Bricmont recalled in UCSC’s Regional History Project oral history that farmers at the time, “couldn’t go off their land and sell their products directly to the consumer. They had to go to wholesalers through the big markets.” He believed these problems could be solved with legislation, working with State Assemblymember Sam Farr on the California Organic Foods Act of 1979—and state-certified farmers’ markets were born.
Bricmont started Santa Cruz County’s first market at Live Oak Elementary in 1975, the same year that Phil LaRocca, organic winemaker at LaRocca vineyards and current board chair of CCOF, was starting out as an organic apple grower in the Chico area. “Phil took some apples in a box marked ‘organic’ to a local grocery store,” Calfo recounts, “and they didn’t want it.” LaRocca was told the organic products would, “contaminate our other stuff.”
But farm workers, innovators and a new generation were becoming more aware of environmental concerns and effects of toxic pesticides. CCOF and other organic supporters mounted a grassroots effort, with members meeting in locations around California to create organic standards. The farmers themselves wrote the code.
“They didn’t disparage conventional agriculture, and didn’t put down conventional farming,” Calfo says.
CCOF hired its first staff member in downtown Santa Cruz right before the 1989 earthquake and the Alar apple scare. Alar was the trade name for daminozide, a growth regulator that was sprayed on apple trees to keep the fruit from falling before it got ripe. It was the subject of a peer-reviewed study conducted by nonprofit environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council, which found the chemical to be carcinogenic, posing an especially significant risk to children. Public outcry ensued. Actress Meryl Streep appeared on talk shows saying she only bought organic food for her family, and “the phones went crazy,” Calfo says. Suddenly everyone wanted to know where to get organic produce.
It took a decade to form a consensus about what was and wasn’t organic. CCOFsponsored a bill to establish the California Organic Foods Act of 1990, which added an enforcement element to the existing state law. The Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 was completed as part of the U.S. Farm Bill, and called for the establishment of the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) and National Organic Standards Board, finally backing the “certified organic’ claim with federal legislation.” Codifying what “organic” meant ensured it wouldn’t be “a group of farmers just inspecting each other,” says Calfo.
Ken Kimes, a longtime organic microgreens farmer who co-owns Corralitos-based New Natives Organic Sprouts, was one of those farmers. As the 11th farm certified in California, he says he joined “for camaraderie, because of med fly spraying and a generally hostile attitude from conventional farmers, which was common in those days. We knew we needed some friends, read about the organic group in the paper, and we went in and joined up. We began certifying. I was the chapter dude for a while. We certified each other.”
Today, CCOF is a top USDA National Organic Program certifier—it has been the largest, in fact, for several years—and its history parallels movements in other parts of the country, such as Oregon Tilth in the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest Organic Services Association.
“To understand my tenure at CCOF,” says Calfo, “is to know that all of our energy from 1990 to 2003 was focused on putting the law into place.” The organization had fewer than 1,000 members at that time and jumped to 2,300 members after the label was created.
“With that wind at our backs—not because of me or any group of people, but the forces of the marketplace—consumer confidence was high,” Calfo says. “As I leave, there are 4,000 members of CCOF.”
New Leaf founder Roseman says that while there are other good certifiers, “CCOF continued to set the bar. If [a product] had that CCOF label, it really meant something. Even after the national organic standards were developed—especially after—CCOF was, ‘This is really organic.’”
Calfo is most proud of helping to build a team and organization that could accommodate such growth and continue maintaining consumer confidence. And that team is quick to reciprocate her gratitude.
“Cathy ushered in CCOF’s greatest era of success and change thus far,” current CEO Kelly Damewood says. “When [Calfo] started at CCOF in 2011, CCOF certified about 2,000 producers and employed about 50 staff. When she stepped down just eight years later, CCOF had nearly doubled in size—4,000 certified producers and over 100 employees.”
GOAL ORIENTED
On a sunny, bustling Wednesday at the downtown farmers’ market, Benjamin Amago of Blue Heron Farms says organic certification is of the utmost importance as consumers become increasingly savvy. “CCOF is such a reputable organization, people in other states try to get California certified,” he says. “The integrity of the produce is so high.”
A few aisles down, Robert Serna of Twin Girls Farms refills a bin of the season’s first peaches. Serna has worked for the farm—which is certified organic by Quality Assurance International (QAI)—for over 25 years, and has witnessed the importance of certification, along with the spike in consumer demand. “There’s a lot of fraud out there, when people can say it’s organic when it’s not,” he says. He stresses that certification is a rigorous process that starts with “cleaning up the soil” and having it tested after a mandatory three-year waiting period.
“Legally you can’t call yourself organic unless you’re certified,” says Dhillon, executive director of the markets. “It eliminates cheaters. There’s no gray area anymore—that’s the current environment. If we don’t have consistent definitions of terms, fraud is inevitable.”
Though organic has grown to an almost $50 billion sector of the ag economy, just under 4% of land in California is organically farmed. For a state that is home to 19% of the country’s organic farms and 36% of its organic sales, “We’re thinking, [organic is] everywhere, but it’s so little land,” Calfo says.
GROWTH CYCLE Cathy Calfo’s tenure at CCOF included a focus on expanding the amount of California farmland certified to grow organic produce. PHOTO: KIM DELANEY
Calfo worked on four key goals during her time at CCOF: transitioning land that’s been conventionally farmed to organic; creating a new generation of farmers, as more than 60% are over 60 years old; making organic food more broadly accessible; and modernizing government regulation of organic farmers. Take water. “It might not make sense to go through all the pesticide and water quality work conventional farmers do, since they don’t use those methods,” Calfo says.
CCOF is currently researching, analyzing and vetting a series of policy recommendations to increase organic acreage to 10% of California’s agricultural land by 2030.Calfo calls this a modest goal, pointing to the clean energy sector in which she used to work as a model. “It would be great to beat our goal,” she says. “With clean energy, a goal we thought was ambitious ended up being very modest. I think the same thing will happen here.”
One of the crowning achievements of Calfo’s CCOF leadership, the Roadmap to an Organic California report, breaks down the economic, environmental and social benefits of organic agriculture. It also provides a collection of current peer-reviewed data on the dietary and health benefits.
“There are more details in this report than when I started at CCOF in 2011,” Calfo says. “The health benefits are strongly supported in this report.” The climate figures in the report suggest that hitting the 10% organic goal would be equivalent to taking 601,500 cars off the road.
SHADES OF ORGANIC
Lest one think organics is a field of happy farmers holding hands, Dhillon paints a more complicated picture. While organic going mainstream over the last 30-plus years is good “because people are getting more access,” he adds that, “When the growth of the industry reached a certain level of accessibility and delivery to the consumer, the federal government started to take notice. This was a fairly robust market share. Big industry didn’t take it seriously for a long time, and realized this is where the growth is coming from. They got involved.”
That led to major conflict when the government decided to put together the original language for the USDA National Organic Program.
“It was hotly debated because there were two camps, Big Ag and the fringy, organic small growers,” he says. “They’re sitting at the table saying, ‘This is how we think it should be.’ It was divisive and contentious. Unfortunately, the language that was put together was watered down, because the industry wanted more flexibility, pushing for procedures and uses that would not be considered acceptable by the vast majority of pioneering organic farmers. The growers were like, ‘This sucks, it’s not what we started.’ There are some that refuse to be certified because of it.”
Kimes, the microgreens farmer, says the issue wasn’t “between big and small farmers, but what’s right and wrong.” Genetically modified (GMO) food, irradiation and sewage sludge were all proposed in the first bill. “There was such an outcry, more so from consumers than farmers. There were 250,000 letters. That was back when the government actually used to respond to people’s concerns,” he says.
While Kimes explains that the bill was ultimately rewritten “pretty much to everyone’s satisfaction,” he believes GMO was involved in its composition so that it would be made to work for that industry.
Dhillon emphasizes the lack of simple answers. “The term ‘certified organic’ is so common now. The take-home message is ‘Know your farmer, know your food,’” he says. “CCOF is the gold standard, the first, and they’re here in Santa Cruz. But there are certification agencies all over the place, and their level of scrutiny varies depending on who you’re dealing with. There’s pros and cons to all of it. The markets have become less important over the last 20 years because people think, ‘I can get organic at Costco now,’ though it’s packaged in plastic and comes from who knows where. ‘It’s all good.’ Well, is it?”
LIFE AFTER CCOF
As CCOF hit its big transition from defining organic standards and making laws enforceable to helping to shape the next generation of organic farmers, Calfo saw it as time to recruit a young staff with fresh energy.
“It’s time to put [the organization] in the hands of the next generation of really visionary people who want to do this,” she says.
She’s spending time with her first grandchild in Petaluma and helping her 18-year-old transition to work and higher education—and enjoying weekly organic dinners with him at Café Mare, one of her favorite local restaurants. (Calfo’s family has roots in Calabria, Italy, where Mare’s proprietors are from.) She’s also spending time with her own mother. This isn’t new to retirement; family has always been a priority.
“Cathy supported working parents under her leadership,” Jody BiergielColclough, CCOF’s interim chief certification officer, tells GT via email. “She supported flexible schedules and contributions to childcare costs. She modeled how to be an ambitious working mother.”
Though Calfo is “taking six months to just breathe and think,” she isn’t entirely the retiring type. For Calfo, part of this breathing-and-thinking period entails serving as board chair of the Homeless Garden Project. Calfo’s track record continues: Roseman, who knows Calfo primarily through their mutual work with HGP, says, “She brings tremendous passion and vigor, and because of that we’ve been successful.” They are about to reach an important monetary goal for their permanent project at the Pogonip.
And naturally, Calfo remains an organic farming advocate. Her advice to burgeoning leaders and changemakers reflects a principle that’s carried through her career, and into something as close to retirement as it seems she’s going to get: “Set a big goal and move toward it, and don’t get caught up in all the reasons why it won’t work.”
Sometimes when residents talk vaguely about ideas for a Town Center near the intersection of Mt. Hermon Road and Skypark Drive, you might think they’re describing Camelot, some utopian summit that everyone will be able to enjoy.
But once you get to the details—like how to make the finances work and how much housing to actually build—the whole concept quickly starts to seem more like a house of cards. And so maybe it shouldn’t come as a shock that the cornerstone of Scotts Valley’s Town Center, a much-discussed housing and commercial development plan 20 years in the making, is getting put on hold again.
That cornerstone is the 14-acre Scotts Valley Town Green proposal, where developers hoped to build new storefronts with housing and shared community spaces. The overarching vision was to build the kind of cultural hub that city leaders had been dreaming up for decades. But now, a coalition of developers handling the heavy lifting says it’s no longer in contract with the cities of Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz—each of which owns a portion of the underlying land.
And just like that, it’s back to the drawing board for a project that seemed like it was finally gaining momentum.
Doug Ross, one of the project principals along with Owen Lawlor and Chris Foley, says that one of the tipping points in the decision was a major cost increase associated with cleaning up environmental hazards on the site, such as benzene and arsenic. That increase caused the price of the overall project to climb.
The latest Town Center news comes after the developers spent months organizing community meetings to gather input on their proposal and make adjustments to their original design. One topic that kept coming up was how much housing should be part of the mix, highlighting tensions around growth in the city of 11,600 residents.
“The project that evolved for us, which reduced the housing component and maintained the original retail, did not have enough revenue to offset the costs,” Ross says.
GROWING PAIN
Before the project fell through, Scotts Valley Mayor Jack Dilles already knew that new housing development might come across as jarring to some longtime residents.
“Part of the issue here is we’ve had very little growth for 10 years,” he says. “We’ve built almost nothing. So, when the community starts seeing homes being built—and they are being built right now—it’s a change, especially for people who moved here in the last 10 years. They’re not used to seeing that.”
The slow pace of building in Scotts Valley, and other communities like it, has added to tension as rents and home prices climb increasingly out of reach. To counteract anemic building rates, Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed for the state to build 3.5 million homes by 2025.
Scotts Valley, for its part, has started to become more transparent about how much housing it’s permitting. Dilles is right to say that the town is now building. Most of the new homes, however, are on the pricier end.
For the first time in years, Scotts Valley released a public report in April on its progress toward housing goals set by the state and the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments.
The target number of housing units for Scotts Valley to add from 2014-2023 is 140, which state guidelines also say should be spread across income levels. Scotts Valley has permitted 125 units to date, 115 of which have been for above-moderate income housing. Scotts Valley has not permitted any housing in the very-low income level, according to city data, and it has permitted only three at the low-income level.
One of the most vocal groups to raise concerns about the Town Center plan was Citizens for Orderly Growth, or CFOG, a reincarnation of a Scotts Valley group from the 1980s.
Although CFOG representatives did not reply with a comment, the group states on its website that, “For years, we have consistently stated the importance of maintaining our unique small-town feel while creating a place where locals and others would come to hang out or meet up with a friend for coffee or a meal.”
The site says that CFOG isn’t against the project, but rather that its members believe the development should have less housing.
Local housing advocates contend that the Town Center is exactly the kind of spot where new construction makes sense, says Evan Siroky, founder of Santa Cruz YIMBY, which stands for “Yes in My Backyard” and is one of a growing number of pro-housing YIMBY groups nationwide. The spot is close to transit, retail and community spots like Skypark.
“I get where they are coming from,” he says of those concerned about preserving the community character, “but there is such a huge need for housing and people are really struggling. Why is it so important for a town to keep a small-town feel if this is causing a lack of opportunity and the housing crisis to go up?”
Siroky adds that, “It’s a total misplacement of priorities in the greater scheme of things.”
COMMERCIAL SPACE OUT
For developments like the Town Center, Dilles prefers an emphasis on building commercial space, rather than building housing.
“One of the challenges with housing for me is that—I don’t have a nice number—but I know that housing, in my opinion, costs more in services than we receive in taxes,” says Dilles, who comes from a background in government finance.
Proposition 13, approved by voters 40 years ago, capped the amount of property taxes that homeowners pay, even if home values increase. Then in 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown raided some local property tax dollars when he axed redevelopment agencies. On top of that, Dilles says Scotts Valley sees an especially low cut of its own property tax, getting just 6.5%, because it’s historically been a more rural community. Particularly in Scotts Valley, the set-up encourages leaders to focus on building commercial properties, which offer more tax dollars, Dilles says.
Decisions about how to portion out growth in Scotts Valley come as the city faces a $1 million structural deficit. The city has a sales tax that is set to expire in March 2022 as well. If that tax is not renewed, the deficit will rise to $2 million annually, Dilles says.
Scotts Valley is also in the process of updating its general plan, which it hasn’t done since 1994. Having that completed would help inform decisions about Town Center and every other project being proposed in Scotts Valley, Dilles says.
TOWN GREEN DREAM
The city adopted a specific plan for the Town Center in December 2008, envisioning it as a “mixed-use node that will become the heart of the city.” That was shortly before the bottom fell out of the economy. Some development has progressed along portions of Town Center, like a recently opened drive-thru Starbucks along Mt. Hermon Road.
Before being put on hold, the total amount of housing proposed for the Town Green had already been whittled down from around 310 to 220 units. It would have included 50 affordable units.
The changes developers made in response to concerns expressed by the community may not have made everybody in Scotts Valley happy, Ross says, “but I think the objective people would agree that we have modified our plan in response to those community meetings.”
Further cutting the housing component of the proposal, which included around 25,000 square feet of retail space, would have made the project difficult financially, according to the developers. The only way to justify the improvement costs on the land would have been to have housing to support the retail, Ross says.
What happens next with the land, Ross says, is ultimately up to the cities of Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz.
“In our community outreach, we made some decent progress,” Ross says. “My sincere hope at the end of the day is this project goes forward in one way, shape or form, because I think it would be a very important element to Scotts Valley.”
A plan to open up drilling in California will result in 75 new oil wells over the next 20 years, many of them along the Central Coast, according to a new proposal unveiled by the Bureau of Land Management.
On May 10, the federal agency announced the plan to open approximately 800,000 acres of public lands and underground federal mineral rights across California’s Central Coast to new oil and gas drilling, with specific targets in San Benito County, including areas surrounding Pinnacles National Park. The news comes less than a month after it announced a plan to allow drilling on more than 1 million acres of federal land near Bakersfield.
The announcement drew a chorus of objections from regional electeds, including Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-Carmel Valley), State Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel) and Assemblymember Robert Rivas (D-Hollister).
California is the sixth-largest oil-producing state, providing more than 8% of U.S. crude oil production from thousands of private wells, most of them in the San Joaquin Valley. The California Department of Conservation reported that as of April 2018, there were 31 active oil or gas wells in San Benito County, and 15 active oil or gas wells in Santa Clara County. The wells are operated by six companies on private land.
The new Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plan would greatly expand the opportunity to obtain oil and gas leases on federal land—much of it in fragile, remote settings on the Central Coast.
The resulting land-use management decisions would affect underground federal mineral rights primarily located in Fresno, Monterey and San Benito counties. The change is not expected toaffect Santa Cruz County, which was the first the first county toban fracking and oil drilling in 2014. Santa Cruz County does not have any BLM land, other than the protected Cotoni-Coast Dairies National Monument, where themineral rights are ownedby the Trust for Public Land.
On May 13, Rivas asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to contest the unprecedented increase of oil exploration on public land, officially asking the governor to file a protest, saying that the Donald Trump administration’s plans are inconsistent with state and local laws.
BLM regulations provide a 60-day window for Newsom to review the plan for any inconsistencies with state and local plans and policies, and to provide recommendations. The general public has a 30-day protest period.
Panetta encouraged all residents to participate in the public comment period and share their opinions on opening more federal land to oil and gas leases.
“It is critical that we share our opinion of the proposal directly with this administration,” the congressman said in a statement.
WELL WORRIES
The area considered by BLM to contain the “highest potential” for oil and gas resources generally covers the southern Salinas Valley of Monterey County, southeastern San Benito County and the western flank of the San Joaquin Valley, including portions of western Fresno, Merced and Stanislaus counties.
There are 41 active or abandoned oil and gas fields in this area; of these, only 13 contain underground mineral rights managed by the BLM, known as “federal mineral estate.” All but one of 13 of these fields are located within a portion of one or more groundwater basins.Environmentalists worry about the potential impact of oil and gas well drilling on groundwater resources.
The BLM manages nearly 600 oil and gas leases in California, covering more than 200,000 acres. Between 80-90% of the agency’s oil and gas wells are in the San Joaquin Valley. More than 95% of all federal drilling in the state occurs in established fields in Kern County.
The latest action by the Trump administration follows by one year the announcement of a plan to revise the 50-year-old offshore drilling moratorium also opposed by state agencies and environmental groups.
Since 1969, concern about potential environmental damage after a massive Santa Barbara oil spill resulted in a statewide moratorium on new coastal or offshore oil and gas leases, which continues.
The state Lands Commission reported that in 2017, 23 offshore rigs were still producing more than 7,000 barrels of oil per day, about one 10th of the production at the time of the moratorium 50 years ago.
The Lands Commission, chaired at the time by then-Lt. Gov. Newsom, said it would not approve new pipelines or allow use of existing pipelines to transport oil from new offshore leases.
“The polluting fossil fuel industry has perpetuated inequality by burdening disadvantaged communities with toxic air pollution from refineries,” Newsom said in a letter to the Trump administration at the time, “and it would be unethical to intensify these impacts by expanding oil production.”
Sea otter populations are exploding off the coast of California, and they show no signs of slowing down.
Well … no signs other than the great white shark bites that a bunch of these fuzzy marine mammals have been dying from. According toa new study from a team of Monterey Bay Aquarium researchers, the sharks aren’t actually trying to eat otters. It’s more incidental. As a headlinefor New Scientist put it, “Sea otters are bouncing back—and into the jaws of great white sharks.” Thankfully, great whites don’t typically swallow the otters, but the sharks don’t have to gobble them down in order to fatally wound the little guys. “Kelp! I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” the otters can be heard yelling from the shore.
Believe it or not, the shark news isn’t the only local finding on sea otter deaths lately. Just last week, veterinarians at the Monterey Bay Aquarium identified thecause of death for famous otter Gidget. The 10-year-old died of a parasite that she may have gotten from the poop of a bird flying overhead, or from something she ate.
One otter that’s alive and well, and just beginning her sure-to-be equally prestigious aquarium career, is 5-year-old Juno, who was rescued from the Monterey Bay area once upon a time and now lives at Portland’s Oregon Zoo. There, Juno’s grabbing headlines because she knows how to dunk a basketball. The trick, which took Juno two months to learn, could prevent her from developing elbow arthritis as she ages. Also, she looks so very cute when she dunks the ball into her plastic hoop, which has a Trail Blazers logo stuck to the backboard.
The Blazers logo is good news in and of itself. After all, those poor Portland basketball fans needsomeone to root for right now.
MOVING THE NEEDLE
Two weekends ago, Santa Cruz Councilmember Drew Glover posted an update on Facebook against a purple background: “Happy Mother’s Day! I just got notified that my landlord is selling the property. Anyone have a room for rent in Santa Cruz?” The Santa Cruz City Council has historically been dominated by homeowners, but right now, at least three of its members are renters.
CASH REGISTER
When the Santa Cruz City Council isn’t arguing about how much time to give public commenters or having its meetings shut down byHitler-heiling activists, it does try to actually get things done.
And getting stuff done has mostly been the vibe during the city’s budget discussions. However, the council has so far found it easier to look for stuff to put back into the budget than to actually cut things, which would normally be the point when you’re facing a $3.2 million deficit like one the city has on its plate right now. The deficits are only projected to grow over the next few years, if they go unaddressed.
Of course, any cuts to services would feel deep and painful at this point. But if the city waits for the next recession to start slashing, the cuts will likely feel a heck of a lot worse.
