The Weekly Dump 10.11.19

Santa Cruz is a National Story For All the Wrong Reasons Again

What makes a “national” news story? Having a story about Santa Cruz make the news in San Diego? Or West Palm Beach, Florida? Or Baltimore (file under NEWS – NATIONAL)? Or Denver? Or Milwaukee? Or Detroit? Or Nashville just to name a few. Arizona? Yeah, they covered it too. Great Falls, Montana? Yup.

Yeah, i’d call that a NATIONAL story. Shine a light on our ugly, self made drug crisis. Thanks to my friends Sharon and Damon for doing a great job in the video. The truth is hard to see and hear, but I’m gonna keep shining a vibrantly honest light on the truth.

PGE Shuts Down Power Around Santa Cruz

Wednesday afternoon, PGE began turning off power to a number of Santa Cruz communities. UCSC cancelled all classes on Wednesday in anticipation of the blackout. The downtown area was spared but nearly 37,000 people in Santa Cruz County lost their power. Mostly folks living in the hills like Bonny Doon, Felton, Ben Lomond, Boulder Creek, Scotts Valley, and Aptos. The high wind fire hazard event that precipitated this blackout never really materialized, and by Thursday evening many places had power restored.

Junkies With Guns are a Recipe For Trouble

Monday around noon, Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s department deputies responded to reports of shots fired in the area around East Cliff Drive and 25th Avenue. Deputies detained residents of a house on 25th Avenue, where they found a loaded firearm in a bedroom of the home along with spent shell casings outside the home. Deputies said the shots were fired into the dirt outside the home. One man was taken into custody for a variety of charges including being an addict in possession of a firearm, negligent discharge of a firearm, being under the influence of a controlled substance, possession of methamphetamine, and possession of paraphernalia. No one was hurt in the shooting. This time!

Tased and Confused

Monday night around 9PM, SCPD  was tracking and chasing a male suspect with a confirmed felony warrant along Front Street. The suspect was tased near Woodstock Pizza but it wasn’t effective and he ran through the parking lot to the levee where he was finally stopped in the ravine along the side of the levee and arrested.

Urine Luck!

Santa Cruz police are looking for a man suspected of spraying people with an unknown liquid that might have been pee. In one incident, the victim was jogging on Water Street near Reed Way. The other reported incident happened on the 500 block of Ocean View Avenue. Both incidents happened almost a month ago so I’m not sure why we’re just hearing about this now for the first time. Oh I know why. It’s SCPD! If the Chief isn’t tweeting about, good luck getting any information.

The Dumpster Fire is Far From Out

This past Tuesday, the motion to censure Drew Glover and Chris Krohn was back on the agenda. One of the perks of being the mayor! You get to set the agenda. And Martine Watkins, as anyone who has witnessed her maternal approach to dealing with the progressive toddlers that make her life miserable each week can attest, does not suffer fools gladly (or lightly). Sandy Brown’s little protocol override wasn’t going to sit well with Watkins, Meyers, or Mathews. And she’s just not smart enough to have pulled that off on the fly. That was planned in advance, most likely in violation of the Brown Act. So after many hours of the usual dysfunctional arguing, we finally got the vote we’ve been waiting for, and the only surprise for me was how much of a political boot licker Justin Cummings is. Bring on the recall. At least we know the next mayor is fine with women being abused at city hall. The vote means more than any pandering bullshit that will inevitably come out of his mouth. That applies to all 4 of them. The women of city hall have spoken. And I for one believe everything I heard from them.

Midnight at the Oasis

Monday night around midnight, SCPD arrested a 29 year old male near the corner of Pacific and Elm streets and charged him with domestic violence, resisting arrest, and a probation violation. He’s been in and out of jail 8 times since 2013.

Sunny Side Up

Sunday night around 6:30PM, SCPD responded to the 100 block of Sunny Cove Drive for a report of an intoxicated woman on Sunny Cove beach. She was arrested for being drunk in public, resisting arrest arrest, and assaulting a police officer. She was booked into county jail.

It Was The Needle and the Spoon

Early Wednesday night, Santa Cruz Sheriff’s deputies noticed a pickup truck parked in a turnout on lower Highway 9 just north of the Santa Cruz city limits with what appeared to be a male asleep in the driver’s seat. After further investigating, they determined the driver was passed out as a result of using heroin and was subsequently arrested. A search of the vehicle found drug paraphernalia and what appeared to be two handguns but were later determined to be air soft pistols with the safety tips removed. He was taken to county jail.

Buen Trabajo

Around noon on Wednesday, a Santa Cruz Sheriff’s deputy noticed a stolen vehicle off of Buena Vista Drive in Watsonville and observed a man walking away from the car. After making contact with the man, who was on parole, they found 15 and a half grams of methamphetamine in his possession. He was arrested for a parole violation and being in possession of illegal narcotics. Uh, what about the fact he was driving a stolen car?

Open Streets on West Cliff This Weekend

Open Streets Santa Cruz returns to West Cliff Drive this Sunday, offering a day of walking, biking and playing in a traffic and car free West Cliff Drive. More than 60 local organizations, businesses and performers will be hosting activities during the event, which runs from 9AM until to 2PM. Driving (and parking) is always impacted and will be a nightmare so leave the cars at home. That’s kind of the purpose.

Four Women and the Truth

Hit the Road Jack – Ray Charles

So I heard there was a meeting of the Commission for the Prevention of Violence Against Women the day after the contentious dumpster fire city council meeting this week, and that meeting was arguably worse. More angry progressives in the crowd, badgering and harassing people they don’t agree with. SCPD was called in to deal with the assholes.

Seriously. We’ve officially jumped the shark on compassion here. I’m really looking forward to the announcement about the successful recall effort.

Please sign the recall petition by October 20th! More info here.

Weekly Shoutouts and Thanks!

I just want to thank Surf City Barber Shop, Stockwell Cellars, Central Coast Welding and Fabrication, Java Junction Coffee Roasting, KSCO, Bone-A-Fide Dog Care, Brooks Properties, Carolyn Livingston Campaign Services, Damon Bruder Construction, Biomarcommunications, Jane Becker, and all the other local businesses and business owners who are actively supporting the recall efforts. Please support these brave local businesses, who are being stalked and harassed by recall critics for simply exercising their first amendment freedom of speech rights. They deserve our ongoing support and our business.

Also thanks and kudos to David Plumlee, Terry Spodick, Don Reimann, Robert Stone, David Quesada, Scott Richards, Elizabeth Clifton, Carol Polhamus, and everyone else who has donated their time and money to the recall campaign. Your contributions are very much appreciated!

(originally I thanked Brent for the cover before realizing I switched covers at the last minute and didn’t use his photo). Thanks to SCU for the cover!

The Santa Mierda Podcast Network

Be sure to check out the Santa Mierda Podcast Network! We’ve got the latest “Unfiltered” by yours truly, as well as a new podcast, “Untreated” from Sharona. You can find the Santa Mierda Podcast Network on SoundCloud. And Apple Music. And Spotify. It’s free so check it out and give it a listen! Next new podcast should be coming this Sunday night!

Check Out Our Twitter Feed for More Mierda!

Be sure to check out and follow our Twitter feed for even more mierda! Even though the Dump only comes your way once a week, I try to post breaking news and updates on other days as well. So check us out and follow us on Twitter for even more updates about real time news in Santa Cruz you might not otherwise hear about.

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28 Comments

  1. I appreciate your support of women who’ve been treated badly at City Hall. You’re one of the good ones, Ben.

  2. Thank you to Sharon and Damon !! Chloe and Drew did an amazing job , and I will say they are amazing people ! It was great meeting and talking with them.
    Our city is in desperate need of council members that will take care of our cities needs.
    Sign the recall!! I have had enough of the shenanigans !
    Thank you Santa Mierda for telling it like it is.
    #RECALL # ENOUGH

  3. There is no room for socialism in this country. Support the recall.

    • So we can cancel your Social Security check and deny your Medicare. Also, we will charge you to drive on our roads, charge you for the police and fire to show up to your house and the military won’t be protecting you. This country is already full of socialism as any civilized country should be.

      • What’s your definition of socialism and civilized? You assume Gracchus likes/liked paying into Social Security and Medicare rather than saving money for themselves. You also assume they enjoy and are happy with the state of our infrastructure that we are forced to pay for. Is Caltrans efficient, just look at the Bay Bridge costs. The police, by law, have no duty to protect you. Why am I paying into pensions for that?

      • Why don’t you list one or two socialist countries that have been successful Joe and then we’ll have something to talk about.

        • Stay on point. I really don’t want to have to moderate a discussion of the merits and faults of socialism vs. capitalism. Let’s stick to the local stuff. Thanks.

  4. erin brockovich for president! look what she did to pg&e back when she was just a secretary! we paid these guys to fix the wires 20 years ago. there is an interview of erin with butte county survivors on youtube where she explains how they always cry bankruptcy. she said a partner company showed her how pg&e is completely solvent- they are negligent. they are also convicted felons for blowing up san bruno in 2010. they did the same thing then- charge everyone for the repairs and maintenance and never actually complete them!

    shutting down so much of norcal! total garbage. i dont know any of her other political views but i didnt say make her queen, just president lol. would also send a nice message to all the misogynists currently pounding their angry chests at both ends of the political spectrum. ok end rant.

  5. Thanks to Ben for keeping us informed and providing a forum for many different points of view. Where is Dave the security gaurd these days? Miss his input. I sure hope the recall succeeds.

    • Still around. It’s just that the stuff I was mentioning keeps happening so I feel it’s not really worth mentioning anymore unless I put the most intercut details like the guy had a needle in his arm passed out VS foil lighter and a straw in the mouth passed out. Did I see the same guy on 2or 4 different bikes in one shift. I just now walk into the restaurants and stores I usually see some “person “ not acting right and get them to leave these places may not be my posts but if these scum bags “ sorry to offend” are going to do as they please well so will I at least the general public would rather see a security Gaurd instead of a addict, junky criminal. If Ben asks I could chime in more often.

      I do talk to these “ people “ and I ran into the guy who got stabbed while sleeping by another homeless “person “ he showed me his scars and said he’s only been here in SC bout 2 months. The guy who stabbed him is in his 60-70’s from what I remember and shouted be going down for attempted murder but this guy doesn’t even know if he’s to go to court for anything else. I didn’t ask the guy to much but by liking at him and his face tattoos and typical drug user behavior I can only assume this young guy is also an addict. SCPD does not handle people camping issues so why all the signs in all the parking lots in SC it’s seems the only folks who get tickets or towed are tourists or regular folk. All the places I check hac these signs but no way to enforce unless there’s a tow company phone number on a no parking tow away zone the owner of the property is the only authority besides police that can get a car towed more “ homeless “ are finding this out and it makes my job near impossible at times.

      Honestly 5 days a week 8 hours a night I live in Groundhogs day. No joke

  6. Sherman Oakes

    Two questions:

    1. We have Comcast for phone service, that service, including 911, went down at the same time as PG&E shut off the power. I have heard that the FCC no longer requires battery backup in Comcast and similar gear in people’s homes. That, if true, would make a mockery of the notion of “lifeline” service (and isn’t there a fee for that on our phone bills?) I’m wondering whether our experience was a one-off or whether other’s discovered that Comcast’s phone option does not have the same survivability as old fashioned, central-office wired phones? If our experience is not unique then we have a serious problem with our emergency system.

    (By-the-way, we found the power shutoff to be utterly unwarranted in the Santa Cruz area. We lost business and a refrigerator’s worth of food, not to mention a lot of stress. PG&E is not going to get any sympathy from us in the future. And PG&E notifications via text messages were devoid of content and required one to decode the code via a website, usually not working, and dependent on a 3rd party capcha – whoever put that together should get a “you be seriously stupid” award.)

    2. Is there a decent write up of what is going on at the City Council? We don’t have time to attend and follow all the names and events, but it seems like chaos. (We have signed the petition.) And what’s happening with the district election lawsuit?

    • 1) According to AT&T , if you are in a qualifying low-income household, you may be able to reduce your bill by getting a Lifeline discount on your home phone, wireless phone, or Internet service. Lifeline is a federal program that lowers the monthly cost of phone and Internet for qualifying customers.” So the Lifeline line item on your Comcast bill is a discount not a charge. Having said that you are correct about losing 911 if you are using the phone option you get through your Comcast Gateway as your main house phone. This is because the Comcast phone option is VoIP or voice over Internet Protocol and requires the gateway to be operating in order for your analog house phone to work. To protect your Comcast Gateway, you need to purchase a separate battery backup unit. This will allow your Comcast VoIP based 911 call to be transmitted over the Comcast co-ax line that runs from your house to the telephone pole where it is sent over Internet Protocol to a specialized Comcast box (called a head end) that converts the Internet Protocol packet back into an analog voice signal that can be recognized by a landline analog phone on the other end.

      Before Comcast and it’s VoIP phone option, old Central switched twisted pair phone lines ran from the AT&T central office across the phone poles and down to a box on your house where it was sent inside to an old analog phone with twisted pair. This old twisted pair worked during power outages because along with the analog phone message, a very low source of power was sent making battery bacmup (of the old analog phone) unnecessary (because it already had constant power from a separate source which were the battery backup units at the AT&T central office which kicked in when the power went out.

      2) Ben is probably the best source of information on the city council but he doesn’t always have time to write about it in detail.

      3) On your additional comments about the PG&E shut off not being necessary, last year’s fire hit them with about 30 billion dollars in tort claims and there is a bankruptcy proceeding in San Jose, where claims from new fires counter-intuitively) get a higher priority for payment than the tort claims from the old fires of last year. PG&E stock plummeted and there is a possibility that the shareholders may be completely wiped out and there are separate firms making offers to buy the entire company and to have bankruptcy court eliminate the common stock value (or almost all of it) for PG&E. PG&E is trying to get rate payers to pick up some of this 30 billion dollar tab so they are being extra conservatuve even though the National Weather Service erroneously forecasted winds that we’re almost twice what actually happened. None the less the NWS did have a red alert for high winds.

      If you Google the term “PG&E substations in Santa Cruz County” you’ll get a list (it’s pretty descriptive) where the stations are located. Comparing this to a map of where the power went out you can see that they turned off the substations that bordered the Santa Cruz mountains like Soquel, Freedom, and Rio Delmar which served some of Apfos. When you again look at the map of where the power went out, you can see the they left the power on at the Seacliff power substation which is near the Aptos La Selva fire station on Soquel. This also happen to be near Twin Lakes Church where the church and PG&E had an emergency center where people could go and charge their phones Etc.

      There are a couple of articles that have been written about what a fiasco the PG&E planning was and I suggest you Google PG&E power outage problems if you want to read about what a mess that was. What essentially happened is that the PG&E management was trying to protect shareholder value and was overly conservative about turning off power in advance as opposed to their prior behavior of being very lax in terms of fire prevention and gas line explosions etc etc

      There was a new CEO who was brought in and he’s trying to save the shareholders from getting completely wiped out at this point but it’s all up in the air because the bankruptcy judge and bankruptcy court rules will make the decisions about who pays. I’m sure you probably intuitively knew it was “all about money” and I hope this helps put those motives in better perspective.

      • Sherman Oakes

        Thanks for the long response.

        1. I tend to use “lifeline” in the more European sense as a critical infrastructure upon which human safety depends. I had forgotten that here in the US there is another definition more closely tied to income levels. I’ll have to change my usage.

        2. I could not raise that map of PG&E substations – your Google search must be better than my own. If you happen to have a link that could be useful, thanks.

        I am not sure from whence our power is being fed – we tend to fail at the same time as does the Pasatiempo area. We have heard that we are tied to the oldest substation in the area.

        We were less than amused to see Scotts Valley bright and lit, knowing that the main power-lines to that area pass right through woods between Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley that were dark.

        3. I’ve lived through more than enough fires to make me more than aware of how fast they move. (For instance, my sister and I spent one night sitting on the roof of a house at Pt. Dume, surrounded by Santa Ana wind driven flames that were burning almost everything. We learned what Hell looks like.) My father more than once stood on his roof using a house to douse falling embers. And we are among those who recently had insurance cancelled due to fire risks. (We are in one of the few wooded parts of Santa Cruz city.)

        We know people who live in Santa Rosa. (Their place survived.) I knew that fires could leap wide roads (such as Pacific Coast Highway), but that fire hopscotched right over the 101 freeway in areas that were not even densely wooded!

        However, the weather here in the wooded part of Santa Cruz city last week was far from what I would consider “fire weather”. Instead it was calm here; cool and even a bit foggy along the creeks. The US Weather Service maps of our area were not indicating any big change from that; there were certainly no red flag warnings on the local forecasts. (I did hear an second hand report that there was some morning wind in Scotts Valley and may be higher up towards the summit.)

        4. As for the VoIP aspect – Yes, many of us have dropped good old POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) with power provided over the copper loops from the central office. The CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) that we use does require locally (home) provided power not only in the CPE (and phones themselves) but also in all of the switches, repeaters, routers, and other gear forming the backhaul to the interconnect to the larger world. In our case we use Comcast that has an Arris unit at the house.

        When we first switched to Comcast from PacTel/ATT that Arris box had a battery. But that box died and we got a replacement from Comcast – we pay their monthly equipment rental. (The same gear is available on Amazon, but we did not want to bother with the configuration and finger-pointing issues.)

        The original unit definitely had a battery – but only enough for a few hours. We never checked the replacement whether it had a battery because we have all of our house comm gear on various UPSs. We did assume that the replacement, like the original, had a viable battery good enough for at least a couple of hours.

        When PG&E went dark I knew it would be a long outage, so I started to prune load off of the UPS system. During this process I accidentally dropped UPS power to the Comcast/Arris unit. Before it would have stayed lit. This time it instantly dropped and quit.

        The Arris unit is DOCSIS certified, which means that it has lots of measurement points that Comcast can use to monitor its status. I don’t know whether the DOCSIS MIBs give feedback indicating whether the battery is present and viable but it would be surprising if it did not.

        Now, the FCC does *require* that providers such as Comcast offer 24 hour battery support for customer CPE. Comcast *never* made such an offer to us. Never. Nor is there a battery option for the Comcast provide Arris that will meet the FCC’s requirement that the battery support be for 24 hours – https://www.fcc.gov/document/24-hour-home-backup-power-requirement

        (And last time I looked, even 24 hour backup is shorter than PG&E’s announced five days. 😉

        I have heard from several network operators that some VoIP providers, perhaps including Comcast, do not have sufficient reserve/battery power on their backhaul or central office systems to operate for more than a few hours, which is much less than the five days PG&E warned of. But it does appear that the nearest Comcast CO, in Scotts Valley, did not lose power, or did so for only a short period.

        My wife and I also noticed a significant drop in Verizon cell signal. We tend to notice this even at normal times: although the nearest tower (at the Pasatiempo offramp from 17) is a short walk from our house we still need a Verizon femtocell (a small, local tower surrogate) in the house. (It’s ironic that our Verizon calls are carried over Comcast’s internet system.) That femptocell died with the power turning our cell phones into mere flashlights.

        5. Yes, we noticed when PG&E was chaired by a former Goldman Sachs guy who “increased shareholder value” by doing minimal (or less) maintenance. And we noticed after the San Bruno explosion how tightly PG&E circled the wagons to hide information about gas lines through Santa Cruz so that even officials of our local government couldn’t find out where the pipelines were and went.

        So I’d conclude:

        – PG&E does not have sufficient detail in its power-off switching arrangement to do “surgical” power shutdowns in our area. So we got clobbered with a blunt hammer.

        – However, the weather conditions in our area were such that the shutdown was not warranted.

        – Comcast and other non-central-office powered voice phone systems, including 911 service, are not meeting the FCC mandated 24 hour offer requirement. And even if they did that 24 hours is inadequate in an era of five day long shutdowns.

        The loss of effective 911 service to many customers during a power shutdown should be of great concern.

        – Cell phone service in our area is more vulnerable to disruption than elsewhere due to power outages. (This could get far worse with 5G.)

        • When, attery backup units are installed (like in your Arris box), the frequency distribution of the duration of power outages is a big consideration. So this is why BBUs only initially are configured to last a couple of hours cuz the vast majority of power outages are 5 minutes or less. What you need to do for the 5-day problem that you’re faced with your Comcast Gateway (which is a combined router and modem) is get a generator and run your gateway off of the generator which is gasoline powered.

          As far as your Verizon femtocell goes, that’s the same thing as an AT&T MicroCell which sends out a cell phone radio signal for 60 to 80 feet from where it’s located which is usually right next to the Gateway from Comcast. So what the femto cell does as you probably know is converts the radio cellular signal to Internet Protocol and sends it out over the Comcast wire through the phone poles to the Head end where it’s decoded back into analog voice. Femtocells in micro cells are very common in areas of the mountains where you apparently live near Pasatiempo. When you’re on your Verizon store next you can ask the technician to show you the map of where the femtocells are located in your area. They don’t like to do this because it shows that the Verizon signal is weak which is counterproductive to them trying to sell you Verizon service.

          Try Googling this search term “PG&E list of santa cruz power substations 2018 XLS” the list I mentioned is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and that search term should get you to it. I tried to get the file from my phone into this WordPress blog but failed. Good luck to you!

      • what one friend of a friend had to say about pg&e:

        The “Threat” was very unjustified. There are no high winds predicted.. No excessive heat..

        It’s PG&E bucking for political backing, with threats..

        What’s interesting is TINY Colorado, has 5-6? Different Power companies. I’ve never seen so many “Power” issues as California (who seems to be ALL PG&E)..

        California gave PG&E a ton of money to replace these remote (spark throwing) relays 20 years ago!!

        Why are they still in use? Why are we still paying for their spark throwing trouble?

        Because a HUGE corporation owns California’s power system virtually outright!

        “PG&E are being blamed for Paradise.. Those spark throwing relays caused that fire, and the state paid PG&E to replace them many years ago.. They are about to be “officially” blamed for that fire.. This “announcement” is an attempt to sway the public on that court decision… —— My parents bought power from a Co-OP called United Power (still in operation).. I’d guess 50k homes?? You could attend meetings with maybe 30 active concerns.. NEVER was the “engineering” an issue.. 90% of troubles were faulty meters!”

  7. Sherman Oakes

    Oh, and one more thing…

    Has anyone ever considered turning West Cliff drive into a one lane, one way road, like parts of East Cliff?

    West Cliff is far too congested with walkers, boarders, bikes, scooters, motorcycles, and cars. Forcing the motor vehicles into a one-way, one-lane pattern, and giving the then available 2nd lane to bicycles could make things much better.

  8. I should wait for the official announcement (but I’m a blabbermouth), but my info is the recall signature count is right at the minimum required with 9 days to go for Glover, and just a little behind on Krohn. Signatures are 3x harder to get than ever with so many already signed, so the very few hardcore recallers will power all out into the final 9 days to get a cushion that even picky city vote counters can’t deny us. It is likely going to happen. I notice lots of irregularities with the official walking lists that indicate no signature on file vs people saying they already signed, so some signatures seem to be missing, or we would be even further ahead. I heard a credible story (from a credible person) of a snatch/grab and run of a female petitioner’s petitions (a considerable amount) yesterday down town and she was shaken up by it. I personally have been verbally assaulted in the worst ways (racist, fascist, doors slammed, “get away you…” etc) many times. There is an element of the new woke politic that isn’t that far from violence and I wonder how this is going to play out when the real news hits. This reflects a national emergence of political violence. The Cato Institute did a national survey that said (2019) “47% of Strong Socialist Sympathizers, 17% of Americans, Say Violence against the Rich Is Sometimes Justified.” Hummm.. You may think the censure vote was the low point , but at the end when one health failing individual 90 days past due on rent complained of getting evicted Glover motioned to bring back all the tenant protection garbaaage previously tabled just because of that (never mind non-payment IS a just cause). Even Krohn rethought going along with that which he at first did. Well, as usual, lots of low points including the progressive fan club never missing a chance to bash the Mayor and female complainants they think to gain political points for their do no wrong wonderful representatives. I know, a long one.

    • There are no official announcements yet, and your speculations are unhelpful. We have quite a ways to go, and every signature is needed. Please, those that haven’t signed yet, your signature is still important, if not vital.

      • Of course all are vital and we never know how picky the signature counters are going to be about registered names etc. We need them all, that’s why I’m going out to get more after I just went out earlier. It’s not much speculation that the count is close, that’s what I hear. It’s not speculation that we are not thousands ahead either, because no one says that. You are correct every single one counts as much as the others to make dang sure there are enough on OCT 21.

    • i really hope the recall happens. the bullying needs to stop on both sides. i am the type of person who has books by ron paul AND michael moore – john perkins AND edward griffin. there are good points in all of those books AND bad points. and just like my personal views sometimes i am right, sometimes left, and sometimes wrong.

      people need an open dialogue thats why freedom of speech is is so important. many times people become afraid of speaking out, even in the age of social media, because they can be fired, bullied or worse. but people have to keep communicating to find a way forward and a middle ground.

      im really grateful for this blog and for everyone who posts here, even when i disagree with them. thanks to everyone who has the guts to speak out against the extremism in the current local politics.

  9. I wish I could write this as well as Ben but I’ll give it a try.

    Take back SantaCruz [bikes?] like I said I’m not Ben 🙂 I heard a commotion last night and saw a guy running from a group of people. What had happened is someone got there bike stolen and a group of friends were out looking for the stolen bike. The group spotted the bike with your typical SC bike thief as they approached the guy the guy yelled out “ somebody gave me this bike “ and ran off. I stopped the group from chasing that’s where I came in. BUT!! It was the same bike Frame and color but wasn’t the same bike. So what where they to do…. I stayed out of it from there but I figure with how many bikes these scum bags steal A NIGHT we workn folks could snag one back

    • The bike theft in this town is as bad as the drug problem (being that sold stolen bike parts feed the drug habit). What about a (real) bait bike program? I think the stats on the number of bike thefts warrants the operation. Maybe once police bikes and city hall employee bikes are stolen…?

  10. The bike theft in this town is as bad as the drug problem (being that sold stolen bike parts feed the drug habit). What about a (real) bait bike program? I think the stats on the number of bike thefts warrants the operation. Maybe once police bikes and city hall employee bikes are stolen…?

  11. Thanks for the link to the video, it was very well done. I am hoping we can get this recall going, and thank you to all collecting signatures, I was doing that for a while, but had a lot of work come in with immediate deadlines. I want to shout out to Garret for all of his efforts and to Ben for keeping us on track!

  12. I just talked to the guy who got robbed behind Denny’s last night he’s shook up but ok. Supposedly he knew the guy who beat him up and took 600$. Another night shift minus the F 🙂

  13. nancy h maynard

    I was just recently reading about the left knows how to organize..really well…
    The right has up to this point has been too quiet… and not because they are cowards…. or because of fear.
    Something to think about

  14. Good to see so many concerned and knowledgeable comments. We must speak out against all extremes coming from both right and left. Ben, your forum is such a good place for people to have their say without being abused or name-called. Please all city-dwellers, sign the petitions!!!!

  15. Just The Facts

    If anyone has recall petitions turn them in ASAP! The deadline is this weekend to gather them together and get them counted. You can turn them in no matter how many signatures are on them. Let”s show how much we really do care about our town and good government and support the recall! The Surfer Statue and Whole Foods tables will be up this weekend. Get those signatures in!

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