​

• In response to the Santa Cruz’s eligibility for annual federal housing funding in the form of a Community Development Block Grant, Home Investment Partnership and additional funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Santa Cruz must declare a five year plan that discerns where the City will distribute these funds and what community needs must be met.
• The federal funding through the Community Development Block Grant is given under the condition that the funds must target low-income individuals and meet essential community needs. Home Investment Partnership funds on the other hand, are offered on the condition that such funding rehabilitate income-restricted housing as well as target renters and home buyers of low-income
• One of the projects targeted is the Water Street Affordable Housing Project, which is seeking to establish 41 units of affordable housing off of Water St. Santa Cruz. The City Council has already approved funding in the form of $2.6 million and will receive $671,615 in additional funding from Home Investment Partnership, as well as $11-$12 million in federal bonds from Low Income Housing Tax Credits.
• Affordable housing projects such as this are of immense importance in the face of the extremely high rent and home prices that Santa Cruz currently faces. This report on annual federal housing funding illustrates how funding for housing development and affordable housing units is one of the greatest obstacles to affordable rental and home prices. While other issues such as community resistance and environmental regulation play a role in limiting housing development and matching the extreme demand that California currently faces, finding the funding needed for affordable housing projects is arguably the greatest barrier to addressing the housing crisis that California faces.

 
The information in this write up is based in a Santa Cruz City Council Agenda Report set forth on March 14th, 2017. For details and more information please see the following City Council Agenda Report.

• http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/mtgviewer.aspx?meetid=817&doctype=AGENDA​

• Background Information: The California Energy Commission is the central energy management and energy planning organization of California, and is in charge of implementing energy efficient systems and technologies in California buildings and architectural design.
•  On February 28th, 2017, the Santa Cruz City Council adopted a resolution that authorized the Santa Cruz City Manager to apply for a grant from the California Energy Commission that would offer $400,000 to be put towards increasing energy efficiency and energy management in municipal buildings such as the Police Station, City Hall and City Hall Annex.
• This grant application is of great importance to the City’s future goals of increasing energy efficiency, and could play a key role in achieving the Santa Cruz Climate Action Milestone goal to lessen municipal building energy use by 40% in 2020.
  

The information in this write up is based in a Santa Cruz City Council Agenda Report set forth on February 28th, 2017. For details and more information please see the following City Council Agenda Report. 

• In response to severe storm induced infrastructure damage to roads and water supply lines throughout January and February of 2017, The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors initially declared a local state of emergency on February 7th, 2017.
• Due to continuous rainfall and resulting rain damage late into February, the County has responded by adopting a resolution proposing that this local state of emergency be continued.
• This is an essential procedural step necessary to recovering from the serious damage inflicted by local storms, as the approval of this resolution will enable additional State and Federal funding to be given to the county, as Santa Cruz County suffered some of the most extensive storm damage in all of California. 

The information in this write up is based in a Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors Council Agenda Item set forth on February 28th, 2017. For details and more information please see the following Board of Supervisors Agenda Item.

• As of February 14th, 2017, the Santa Cruz City Council took an essential first step towards instituting a public bike share system, as it authorized a Request for Proposal (REP) for a bike share system in the City of Santa Cruz.
• A bike share system is a network of public bicycle stations that offer bicycles to be used for short-term convenience, for purposes of work as well as errands.
• While bike share networks have traditionally been seen as far too expensive outside of major cities, the City is motivated to explore models and strategies that will reduce these costs in order to achieve the Santa Cruz General Climate Action Plan, which aims to expand bicycle use to take up to 12% of commuter transportation.
• This motion could be a key step towards establishing a system of transportation that reduces city automobile traffic and encourages short distance, non-polluting methods of transportation.

The information in this write up is based in a City Council Agenda Report set forth on February 14th, 2017. For details and more information please follow the link to the City Council Agenda.

• One of the most crucial issues that California currently faces is an extreme housing crisis, characterized by a huge demand for California housing, which has led to average home and rental prices that are some of the highest in the nation. The Santa Cruz region is no exception to this crisis and is not only one of the most expensive regions in the state, but in the country as a whole. According to a recent report in December of 2016, The Santa Cruz region is ranked as the 3rd least affordable region in the U.S., with the average Santa Cruz home price sitting at $805,000.
• In order to address this crisis, which is tied to not only to housing but issues of poverty, access to education and economic growth, as of February 28th, 2017, the Santa Cruz City Council has recommended the authorization of staff assistance, in order to engage with, and actively seek solutions to the Santa Cruz Housing Crisis.
• This motion is expected to launch in March of 2017 and requires an estimated budget of $10,000.
• This agenda will establish the staff needed to explore potential funding relief, affordable housing strategies, potential changes to the City’s zoning and development codes, and will further establish non-counsel related forums that will bring together housing experts, developers, financiers and representatives from vulnerable communities in the Santa Cruz region.

The information in this write up is based in a City Council Agenda Report set forth on February 28th, 2017. For details and more information please see the following article at the City Council Agenda site.

• As of January 24th, the City Council adopted a resolution indexing the minimum living wage upwards to 3.1%, on par with Santa Francisco’s, Oakland’s, and San Jose’s Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Workers and Clerical Workers
• This resolution will become effective on July 1st, 2017 and is based in a 2000 City Council Ordinance, No. 2000-25 which required that the City Council upward index the Consumer Price Index to levels of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose areas.
• According to the City Council
  •  “The minimum living wage to be paid to employees when they receive minimum leave and health insurance will be increased by $0.48 to $16.21 per hour.”
  • “The minimum living wage to be provided to employees where the employees do not receive the minimum leave and health insurance benefits shall be increased by $0.53 to $17.68 per hour.” 

For details and more information please see the following City Council Agenda. 

• As of January 24th, 2017 the Santa Cruz City Council has declared that the issue of water quality at Cowell Beach, one of Santa Cruz’s most iconic beaches and surf spots near the Municipal Wharf, to be a top priority of major significance.
  
• The Council has voted to re-establish the Cowell Beach Water Quality Working Group that was initially authorized in September of 2014 to continue its work studying and exploring Cowell’s water quality issues, and sources of contaminants.
• The City Council has authorized a budget adjustment of $30,000 to assist the Water Quality Working Group by providing funding necessary for infrastructure improvements, identification and repair of pollutant sources, as well as scientific research and review.

For details and more information please see the following City Council Agenda.

• In light of the recent Volkswagen scandal in which Volkswagen sold approximately 500,000 diesel vehicles implemented with devices intentionally designed to reduce emission recordings, Volkswagen has settled with the Environmental Protection Agency to invest over $800 million in a Zero Emission Vehicle Investment Program. 
• The City Council has just authorized the City Manager to apply for and accept, if awarded, a grant from Volkswagen of America’s Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Investment Program. If the application is accepted the City of Santa Cruz would obtain up to $3.3 million from California Air Resources Board who will distribute the Volkswagen of America ZEV Investment Program funding.
• This grant application is extremely relevant to local transportation issues as the successful acceptance of Santa Cruz’s application could mean $3.3 million dollars in funding to Zero Emissions Vehicle charging infrastructure and ZEV vehicles which could be a key aspect of the City's aim to reduce emissions by 30% and switch 20% of cars to low carbon fuels by 2020.
• This initiative has been proposed by the Council as the Green City initiative, and with an already a high concentration of Zero Emission Vehicles, Santa Cruz City is posed to take advantage of this grant and the greater shift towards sustainable transportation that it exemplifies.

For details and more information please see the following City Council Agenda.

• In light of recent intense storms, one of the major issues in regard to regional transportation facing Santa Cruz County has been intense road and infrastructure damage, estimated to have caused 20 million dollars worth of road damage and $1,685,000 worth of damage to local water supply lines in the last month.
• With Santa Cruz County having received some of the heaviest damage in the state and the Public Works Department running on overdrive, the City and the County have declared an emergency and are in desperate need of federal funding from the Federal Highway Administration to repair the country-wide extreme road damage sustained by intense flooding, falling trees and mudslides.
• A vast majority of the damage has occurred in District 5 of Santa Cruz County, made up of San Lorenzo Valley, the Santa Cruz mountains, and the city of Scotts valley, with some of the worst damage striking Zayante Canyon, the Narrows, Bear Creek, and Nelson Road. Dangerous mudslides, falling trees, and collapsing mountainsides in areas of the Santa Cruz mountains have prevented road access to mountain living residents, sealing residents into their homes for days at a time, and posing a major fire hazard for the future if not repaired soon. 
• While federal funding is expected within the coming weeks, it is unlikely that such funding will be utilized until the storms blow over and there is a consistent break from the rains.

For questions and more information please contact the Santa Cruz Public Works department. 

We toss around the word “economy” knowing that it defines much of our life without understanding very much about how or why.  We know that it can be good or bad, growing or shrinking, risky (although seemingly-never safe), inflationary or deflationary, global, domestic, or local.
 
Economics can be one of several dozen “–isms” operated by a similar number of “-ists.” It is described by the academic discipline of “economics” – apparently comprised in equal parts of science, sociology, psychology, impenetrable statistics, arcane mathematics, bluster, and chutzpah.
 
But put in the most basic terms, “an economy” simply describes the intersection of two things: need and trust.  Early “economies” were essentially the division of tasks anyone could do. In these simple economies one would bring water, another hunt, another start the fire. In those economies the needs were common to all, that is, everyone needed water, food, and fire. And, as individual skills were developed, each member of the community could improve the quality of their life by utilizing the skills of others. That is, their individual needs could be better satisfied by collective effort.
 
The other condition of creating “an economy” is trust. It is all fine and well to divvy up tasks. But the success of an economy, in fact, the very existence of an economy, depends upon trust – the belief that others will keep their commitments. Of course no one succeeds every time, but developing a reputation for “bringing home the bacon” and carrying their “share of the load” is a condition of sustaining a succe3ssful economy.
 
Since such distribution of labor began, even before the evolution of homo sapiens, these two conditions have described every economy. But as economies have become more complex, skills more specialized, and transaction systems entirely impersonal, identify needs and communicating trustworthiness has become much more complicated.
 
When every member of a community had the same basic needs – food, water, fire, security, shelter – and the communities were small enough for people to develop trust through one-to-one experience the process of identifying trustworthiness was relatively simple. And the creation of expectations – and, frankly, motivating people to “carry their load” – was relatively straight-forward. We created trust face-to-face and built shared community expectations in communities “of the whole.”
 
But as communities became more complex, needs more diverse, and specialization greater developing trusting relationships and, especially, creating shared community expectations became increasingly difficult. How would a community create efficient supply-chains, encourage private capital investment, prioritize its public investment, or attract quality workers if it could not be confident of a fair sharing of the collective load – that people individually invested in the community would also take responsibility for “carrying the water” of community building and maintenance and for creating a trustworthy economic environment.
 
What is a Chamber of Commerce? It is an association of people in each community who are dedicated to building these relationships, joining together to chose and develop economic resources and systems, and developing the shared expectations – the trust – necessary to sustain a vital economy.
 
My favorite example is barn-raising. In small agricultural communities in the late 1800s and early 1900s it was critical to have a ‘community of successful farms’ to sustain the infrastructure necessary for economic security. Without this the supply chain infrastructure and economic mass individual farms would literally wither. One of the ways in which communities insured success was to collectively create the core infrastructure on each of their neighbor’s farms. This was both  public spirited and the creation and reinforcement of the trust necessary for these communities to thrive.
 
Chamber’s think about their economies in the same way. First and foremost the
Chamber is an association of people who depend upon trusting relationships within an economic community. The Chamber is an opportunity for them to have experiences together, to build a shared vision, and to form the core of a community willing to work together to achieve those visions.
 
The Chamber is also a principal steward of the “economy” that that community creates, evaluating threats and opportunities, building consortia to undertake key projects, and affirming the trust upon which that community relies.
 
Stewardship of those trusting relationships isn’t all that a Chamber does, but surely it is the most important of its tasks. . ​