Santa Cruz City Redevelopment Agency rises above budget nightmares and other cultural anomalies
The Santa Cruz City Redevelopment Agency probably won’t wash your car. It’s highly unlikely that they’ll make you dinner or mow your lawn or clean out your rain gutters. But you may have to forgive them that, because they’re seriously busy doing everything else.

On the surface, the agency’s mission is pretty simple. Like other redevelopment agencies throughout California, it exists as a government entity to create and support economic development programs and good urban planning, to eliminate blight, and to create affordable low-income housing. But in practice, that explanation of its impact on the economic and cultural life of Santa Cruz is about as appropriate as saying that water is kind of wet, or that the Super Bowl is somewhat important to football fans. It approaches the truth, but the scale is all wrong.

One-of-a-kind green school in Seaside opens its doors to students from Santa Cruz County

“This is, like, my ninth school,” says 16-year-old Izzy Dure-Biondi, standing between the two small buildings that comprise her latest educational venture, The New High School Project (TNHSP) in Seaside. “I’m making jokes with my friends that I will hit all the high schools before I graduate.”

Local volleyball players worry out-of-towners are pushing them off Main Beach

Main Beach in Santa Cruz is a hotbed of activity for locals and visitors alike. Sandwiched between the iconic wharf and the Boardwalk, the large stretch of shore is a magnet for beachgoers and the setting is ideal for free Friday night concerts and many a Santa Cruz child’s birthday party.

Just days before leaving on his first volunteer trip to Honduras, UC Santa Cruz senior Daniel Truong was “scared to death, but very excited.” As one of two founders of the UCSC branch of Global Medical Brigades (GMB), Truong had spent the better part of his school year recruiting students, fundraising, collecting donated medicines and cutting through red tape in preparation to lead 20 student volunteers to the Latin American country.

UCSC students ready to offer free health-care in Honduras

Daniel Truong meets me over a cup of coffee during UC Santa Cruz’s finals week, yet, unlike most of his peers, he isn’t fretting over studying or upcoming exams. Truong, a third-year neuroscience major, had a biology final in the morning; his physics test is in a day. He says he simply has bigger things to think about.

Foster children to benefit from the local non-profit’s new Watonsville home

Through large, automatic doors, down a long, sterile hallway, and up an old, musty elevator, a child finally reaches the familiar console of the CASA headquarters.

CASA, or Court Appointed Special Advocates, is a private non-profit that matches trained adult volunteer mentors with a foster child. Founded in 1992, the organization currently operates out of offices on the third floor of the old Watsonville hospital. The locale is also where advocates can bring their foster child to play; although the children’s play room is a 10 by 10 room with no windows.

GT’s Guide to the Special Election Initiatives

It’s fair to say that, in the current economic climate, we’ve got our minds on our money and our money on our minds. From the daily Dow Jones ticker and a sinking economy to furloughs and pervasive budget cuts, no one entity—person, business, city, county or state—has escaped the effects, including the Golden State. Earlier this year, after 90 tiring days of impasse, the California Legislature finally

Local students join thousands to demand environmental action in D.C.

Energy, drive, time and technology— these are all things that youth have on their side, and none more so than the students leading the nation’s burgeoning environmental movement. Twelve thousand of these young leaders turned out for Powershift 2009, a climate change summit in Washington D.C. from Feb. 27 through March 2, to pound the Capitol with demands to change climate policy. Twenty-five environmentally proactive UC Santa Cruz students were among them.

AFSCME service workers settle their contract with the UC after a year and a half of negotiations

They picketed. They rallied. They took over the intersection of Mission and Bay streets last April and went on strike for five days in July. And when none of that worked, they visited the homes and offices of the people in power.

A two-day event will explore the necessity and challenges of creating a local food supply

Resilient. The word brings to mind the ability to bounce back after a break-up or the elasticity of a rubber band. But now, thanks to “go-local” groups like Transition Santa Cruz (TSC), the word is gaining leverage as a key green term – think of it as the next ‘sustainable.’