How have the community workshops on crime and prison realignment gone, and how will they play into the county’s Community Corrections Partnership (CCP) plan?

A year ago, Smart on Crime Santa Cruz County initiated a community dialogue about the impending state prison realignment to prepare our county for the changes that were being planned. As a member of Smart on Crime, I have been working with justice practitioners, other elected officials, attorneys, local academics and community-based organizations to ensure that community members have a chance to weigh in on the biggest change to our criminal justice system in California history.

Last summer, the legislature passed AB 109 and designated Oct. 1 as the start date for having non-violent, non-sexual, non-serious offenders serve their sentence in local jails instead of state prisons. The legislation created Community Corrections Partnerships (CCP) in each county, led by the director of Probation and including the Sheriff, a police chief, a representative from the county, the district attorney, a member of the judiciary, the public defender and the director of Health Services. Our local CCP has worked to be inclusive and has encouraged the participation of many other interested community members and organizations.

Family and police hope a $50,000 reward will help solve Carl Reimer’s murder

The 2010 death of 19-year-old Carl Reimer has changed his mother’s life in countless ways—from the daily reminder of his inescapable absence, to smaller things, like the new meanings she hears in old songs.

“Songs have a completely different meaning since my son was killed, especially love songs,” JoAnn, Reimer’s mother, says. “It’s that Fleetwood Mac song that really gets to me.”

How creative grassroots efforts may keep local state parks open

“How do you close a forest?”

A man in his mid-twenties, dressed in baggy jeans and sneakers, asks his friend this question as they pass a group of climbing students on a trail in Castle Rock State Park. The park—preserved since 1968—is slated for closure July 1, along with 69 others statewide.

What happens now that the maker of methyl iodide has removed its product from markets in California and the United States?

ArystaLifeScience Inc.’s confirmation on March 20 that it had suspended the sale of the fumigant methyl iodide in the United States due to lack of  “economic viability” represents a victory for the health and safety of the public, workers, and the environment. Scientists, environmental and worker advocates, elected officials, agriculturists, and members of the public at large successfully placed pressure on Arysta to remove methyl iodide from the marketplace. In the end, only six California growers applied methyl iodide in the state.   

Montessori families look to build school within existing district

Supporters of bringing a charter Montessori school to Santa Cruz slowed their roll on Tuesday, April 3, when the group of about 90 families voted to give working with Santa Cruz City Schools (SCCS) officials a shot.

District officials had recommended building the school into the existing alternatives offered in the city and resisted signing a charter. Months of negotiations—which began in July 2011 after the group Maria Montessori Charter School Families (MMCSF) formed—had created a tense working relationship. The most buzzed about moment came in the fall, when MMCSF released a video that intended to promote the advantages of the schools. Public school supporters saw it as a hit piece aimed at discrediting traditional public schools.

Residents concerned over future of UCSC’s Family Student Housing

Brynda Zeller is a single mother and full-time student at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC). She says living at Family Student Housing (FSH), an on-campus housing unit that offers lowered rent and assistance to families with children, is the sole reason she is able to juggle parenting and her education.

“I can walk to classes and my daughter goes to the childcare center here,” she says. “Aside from convenience, the sense of community is really great here. … If [FSH] hadn’t been available, or had been any more expensive, I wouldn’t have come here. I would have just stuck with my associate degree and gotten a job or looked into other places.”

“Obamacare,” as conservatives have dubbed it, is currently under question at the Supreme Court. What do you expect to come from this case?

The Supreme Court will not announce its decision on the Affordable Care Act until June, but nevertheless that has not stopped the multitude of speculation.

Depending on where you get your news, the results may vary and the predictions cover the spectrum of positive to negative. But despite the uncertainty, one thing is clear—the Supreme Court’s decision will mark a historic point in our nation’s efforts to reform our healthcare system.   

Volunteers help locals maximize tax discounts

Waiting a couple of hours for free help with filing taxes feels like getting paid $400 for a half day's work, says Shadowbrook restaurant server Glen Wunderling, 55.

“This is a great service because it's always good to have a second eye look over the forms,” Wunderling says. “It can get really confusing with all the legal and tax code changes.”

Wunderling is one of 3,700 Santa Cruz County taxpayers who, according to the IRS, collectively overpay between $6 and $8 million in taxes every year because they don't claim deductions and rebates they are eligible for. Wunderling says he failed to claim his Making Work Pay tax rebate in 2009—part of President Barack Obama's stimulus plan. That is why he was waiting for a volunteer tax preparer from Project Senior Citizen Outreach (Project Scout)’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program at the Aptos Public Library on March 22.

Proposed California law would allow for the sale of non-perishable homemade foods

When Kathryn Lukas started her artisan organic sauerkraut business, Farmhouse Culture, the local worked out of a friend’s cellar. She couldn’t afford rent on the commercial kitchen required under California's food safety regulatory laws, but because she had previously owned a restaurant she knew enough to craft her own commercial kitchen.

However, she soon realized that it would be at least a year before the permitting process for her kitchen was complete. As soon as she could, Lukas purchased an existing 2,500-square-foot commercial kitchen. She couldn’t quite afford the kitchen, so she rented it out hourly to other small-scale food producers in Santa Cruz.

Cabrillo journalism department avoids possible elimination

Room 407 may look like an ordinary classroom at first glance, but a wooden sign swinging above the glass door sets it apart from any other room on the Cabrillo College campus. “The Cabrillo Voice,” the sign reads, signifying the room as the home of the school’s student-run newspaper.

Inside, students bustle about, craning at computer screens and making suggestions as they periodically stop to pet Riley, the standard poodle that is just as much a fixture of the room as the newspapers strewn about.