A look at where Santa Cruz County is ‘post’ recession

The recession is over … or is it? There are so many facets to the economy that it’s hard to tell if Santa Cruz County is on the road to recovery in the wake of the economic recession of the past couple years.

For someone like Mina Feuerhaken (pictured here), the owner of Nut Kreations with her husband Brody Feuerhaken, a small business in Downtown Santa Cruz that opened late this April, Santa Cruz County is in stages of recovery.

Her optimism about her business is largely based in the confidence she has in her product. “I feel that a lot of creative ideas and businesses come out of recessions because you have to find something that drives people and makes them want to spend their money with you,” Feuerhaken says. “But even just opening our business was a helpful drive for the economy; the vendors we buy from, the people that helped set up the place—we’re giving them our business and helping give them jobs.”

A conversation with Ingrid Newkirk, president and co-founder of PETA

Governments and organizations around the world will receive startling packages from Ingrid Newkirk after she dies.

Newkirk, 62, is still alive and well, and busy as ever as the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which she co-founded in 1980 with her then boyfriend, Alex Pacheco. But she’s designed her legal will to ensure that, once her days are indeed done, every last bit of her body will be used to make a statement about the injustices carried out against animals globally.

The Canadian Parliament will collect one of her ears to symbolize the screams of seals whose pelts are used for fur; her liver will go to France to protest the force-feeding of ducks and geese for foie gras; one of her pointer fingers will end up with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a posthumous accusation, pressuring the agency to ban animal testing; and the list goes on.

‘Gay textbook bill’ faces public veto as communities react to looming history curriculm

Less than two weeks after Governor Jerry Brown signed California’s “gay textbook bill” into law, opponents of the FAIR Education Act (SB 48) proposed a veto referendum.

Approved by Secretary of State Debra Bowen at the end of July, the referendum must now receive 505,000 supporting signatures before it can be placed on the June 2012 ballot. If approved by voters, the referendum will overturn the first law in the nation requiring teachers to discuss the role of gay citizens in history.

The controversy has left people on all sides of the debate wondering what curriculum changes the law might spur.

After the cancellation of Cabrillo’s wine education classes, instructor Sue Slater makes the case for learning more about what’s in the bottle
Local wine expert Sue Slater believes wine will improve your life.

As she energetically articulates her case for the importance of wine—tasting it, knowing about it, sharing it—she evokes an attorney passionately defending a client who has been wrongly accused.

“Wine is a food group in most European countries,” Slater says. “But here it’s viewed as a vice instead of something that will enhance your life and your experience.”

It is understandable that Slater is feeling the need to defend her passion. Recent budget difficulties at Cabrillo College have led administrators to cut Slater’s wine education classes from the culinary arts program as part of a broader attempt to close an anticipated $5 million budget gap.

Tech giant honors past, looks forward to future
When we recount the milestones in our county’s history, one event in particular truly stands out. It was July 21, 1969 and Neil Armstrong’s famous words, “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind,” were transmitted from the moon—via a Pacific Plantronics SPENCOM headset.

Today, the largest private employer in Santa Cruz County is celebrating its 50th anniversary—a half century of communication innovation, beginning with headsets and expanding into Bluetooth. Since taking several trips to the moon, Plantronics products have become internationally recognized—they were named the official headset of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and they continue to lead the pack in mobile communication technology.

To show Plantronics’ appreciation of Santa Cruz for its decades of loyalty and support, the company hosted an anniversary event on May 26.

AFSCME workers wonder how UC budget cuts will further impact their jobs
Budget cuts have meant cutbacks for nearly every area of the UC Santa Cruz campus, impacting students, faculty and staff alike. For some workers the reality of just how deep the past several years of cuts have been has never been more obvious or unnerving than now. Along with furloughs and increased costs for everything from healthcare to retirement, some UCSC workers are also facing the dual pressure of an increased workload and the fear of losing their job in the next round of layoffs.

One UCSC employee of more than 20 years, who wishes to remain nameless, says she has watched her work as a custodian become increasingly more difficult over the past few years. She is now required to clean twice the number of areas she would have cleaned two years ago in the same amount of time.

What would happen to public radio without federal funding?
A poke around the Seabright headquarters of KUSP reveals vestiges of vintage radio: a floor-to-ceiling collection of vinyl records, pledge drive volunteers waiting patiently by landline telephones, and the afternoon host bent over the San Francisco Chronicle as he waits to go on air during a break in NPR’s “The Story.” But the office also impresses something timeless: that hard work is being done, and that the staff are passionate about doing it. 

Is Big Beverage acting like Big Tobacco when it comes to helping with healthcare costs?

In today’s “No Smoking” world, it may be hard to remember the time, not too long ago, when cigarette commercials ran regularly on TV and people were allowed to smoke practically anywhere they wanted to. Eventually, after decades of effort by public health advocates, the stranglehold of the tobacco industry’s lobbying efforts was broken, and soon the tobacco companies themselves were funding public health, anti-smoking campaigns through increased “sin taxes” levied on their product.

The Seaside Company gears up for their summer season, hiring more locals than usual
For more than two decades, the Santa Cruz Seaside Company, which owns the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, has been rounding out its summer staff of high school students and seniors by hiring foreign students with the right skills—English fluency and, for some, basic math. But this summer, says the Seaside Company, the foreign Work & Travel program will be running at a minimum in anticipation of increased local interest in jobs at the Boardwalk.

“Because of the economy, we can hire a lot more locals,” says Carol Siegel, the employment manager at the Seaside Company. “To have local people working is a really positive thing for our community.”

Two years later, a look at how the stimulus bill has impacted Santa Cruz
It’s been almost two years since President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) on Feb. 17, 2009, pumping $787 billion of federal funds into the economy. But where has that money gone and what was the impact?

In Santa Cruz County—where there were 198 grants and seven contracts awarded for a total of $120 million—the consensus seems to be that the stimulus was a double-edged sword. On one hand, jobs were saved, programs were created, and start-up businesses had better chances of securing loans. But, at the same time, new levels of bureaucracy, limited funds and a distorted public image of ARRA had a crippling effect on some local agencies.

“It was meant to stimulate growth, not to sustain it,” says Rep. Sam Farr (D-17th District). “But public financing is very difficult and with cuts coming down [from the government] people don’t necessarily know where the money is coming from.”