Rispin Rap

Since 1984 our community has been talking about the dilapidated old Rispin Mansion on Wharf Road and trying to come up with some financially feasible way to resurrect its historical heritage for the public good. The City purchased the property in 1985, studied its problems and possibilities for 19 years and in 2004 approved a plan to convert the property into a four star, 25-room, boutique hotel in partnership with a local developer. You can find a detailed review of this process, the resultant plan and its economics here on the City website homepage. It’s an exciting prospect and on the verge of fruition. In the days ahead, the City will conduct public hearings to fine tune the plan, and review its financial viability with the hope of at long last commencing construction in May. If you have thoughts on this project, I’d love to hear them, and this blog site is for you.

Mayor Kirby Nicol

Capitola Watch

One of the benefits of living in a small community is that everyone knows everyone, and if someone is misbehaving, you can talk to them about it, neighbor to neighbor across the back fence or at the coffee shop, and hopefully they’ll be sensitive enough to hear the concern, respect the value of good neighbor relations and respond in a positive way. If that doesn’t work, supplemental peer pressure often helps, and if that doesn’t solve the problem, well, we probably have laws to address the issue and, as a last resort, you can  turn to the  Police Department and/or City Hall for help. We also have an anonymous tip line (475-2791) that you can call and report bad behavior without fedar of recrimination.This blog site presents an opportunity for you to air your concerns about how the City and those in it are behaving. By its very nature, it invites peer review, exposure and is open to all 24-7-365. Properly used, it has the potential to bring to light citizen concerns about anything and everything. It’s your tool to use in contributing to the health and welfare of your neighborhood and your City. We’re all in this together. Let’s do whatever we can to make Capitola the best that it can be!

Mayor Kirby Nicol

Global Warming

For those of you who missed it, Capitola’s Commission on the Environment recently hosted a very informative symposium on the subject of climate change. Concerned citizens from around the County packed City Hall February 8 to learn from internationally renowned UCSC environmental scientists Dr. Lisa Sloan, Dr. Andy Fisher and Dr. Brent Haddad about what’s really going on with this global warming issue that has become so prominent in the popular conscience.

They were great, but their news was not good. In a nutshell, they told us that climate change is not a new thing; that it’s been going on since the dawn of time, cyclically hot and cold many times over the millennia, prior to the emergence of humanity, continues to this day, and will likely continue long after our species has left the scene. We learned that this cycling is probably caused by a wide array of very powerful natural phenomena, that we currently seem to be in the middle of a warming cycle, and this warming trend appears to be accelerating under the influence of human activity, primarily our penchant for carbon emissions. We were informed that we are part of the problem. We were advised that if things continue to go the way they have in the past, sea levels can be expected to rise as much as 250 feet again world wide sometime in this millennium, and there’s not really much we can do about it because even if mankind were informed, committed, willing and able to completely stop all human carbon emitting today, there is no known way to stop, much less reverse, the inertia of our past transgressions in this area; that those consequences are back-stacked against us for at least 200 years. And, at that, we are still only part of the problem. The other natural forces at work are pretty much beyond our control.

So, what to do? Not much. As good stewards of the environment it makes sense and will feel good if we change our dirty habits, address our carbon addictions, clean up our part of the problem. We may even be able to buy a little time, but in the end, the climate is going to change, just as it always has. Climate change is here to stay, and absent some new revolutionary natural phenomena, scientific or technological breakthrough we’ll just have to adjust to it; do the best we can, as we always have.

You can help, individually, by changing your personal carbon habits, sharing your knowledge of these issues with friends and neighbors, and lobbying your local leaders to adopt sensible, practical and responsible environmental policies. We’re all in this together. Let’s work together to make our time here as good as it can be for as long as possible!

Mayor Kirby Nicol

Capitola Traffic

You’ve probably noticed an increase in village traffic in recent years. This is not a function of our growing population. In fact, Capitola’s resident population has declined from a high of 10,200 in 1988 to just 9,657 today. Census takers tell us we’re becoming fewer, older and driving less. So, what’s with all the traffic?

Simply put, it’s not us, it’s them……all those folks who work, play and go to school in this corner of the Monterey Bay but can’t afford to live here because local housing costs are so high. So, they live somewhere else and drive their cars from there to work, play and study here. Their commute route of choice is Highway 1, our county’s primary transit arterial. When it jams up, they look for quicker, alternate routes, like Soquel Drive and Capitola village because that’s where the only other bridges are across Soquel Creek. This strategy worked pretty well in the early days, but over the years, more and more people have been forced to travel more and more often to get to where their life is, to the extent that now these alternate routes are also filling up. It’s only a matter of time until we reach gridlock. Clearly, something needs to be done.

Highway 1 was designed and built in 1948. In the sixty years since, things have changed, but it hasn’t. Its design and utility are out of date. The obvious solution is to upgrade it, make it work better, so that people return to it as their best commute route option thereby relieving transit traffic impacts on Soquel Drive and Capitola Village.

There are some who resist this reality, blinded by idyllic dreams of a bright, green world where there are no automobiles and everyone walks, bikes or zips around on sleek, clean cyber systems. They cite Japanese and European bullet trains, light rail systems in places like Portland and Seattle, forgetting that such transportation solutions are only viable in high density, urban environments. Portland and Seattle, for example, have populations of 2 and 3 million respectively. And, closer to home, the heavily subsidized Bay Area Rapid Transit system serves a concentrated metropolitan population approaching 5 million. In Santa Cruz County, with our disparate population of 267,000 sprinkled over rugged mountain terrain from Watsonville to Boulder Creek, super-sized mass transit is not an option. Our best bet is to upgrade and speed up our existing mass transit, the METRO bus system by adding HOV lanes to Highway 1.

This is not a new idea. The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) came to this conclusion at the turn of the century, steered a course in that direction and placed a proposition on the 2004 ballot (Measure J) to fund this upgrade together with an array of other multi-modal alternative transportation solutions. This omnibus ballot measure, which proposed a ½ cent sales tax over 30 years to raise $577 million dollars needed 67% voter approval to pass, received only 43% and so, failed, perhaps because its timing was bad, or because it was too broad in scope, offering everyone something to vote against as well as to vote for and prompting a dissenting, passionate few to campaign vigorously against it.

So, in 2005 the RTC, in an effort to determine what went wrong at the polls, assembled a Transportation Funding Task Force (TFTF) comprised of 100+ delegates, representative of every conceivable stakeholder constituency within our eclectic community to review in depth our county transportation issues and come up with a 2/3 supermajority consensus on what to do. After hundreds of hours of study groups, workshops, meetings and focus groups, convened over 27 months, this TFTF painstakingly produced a multi-modal plan on a 72% vote that looks very much like the 2004 Measure J ballot proposal; the major difference being that it allocates only 50% of its funding to Highway 1 improvements down from 63% in the 2004 ballot initiative, with the balance being earmarked for alternative transportation solutions.

So, the questions now become: Should the RTC try again to take another omnibus transportation measure to the voters seeking a ½ cent sales tax over 35 years to raise 600 million dollars or will it fail again? Is the timing right? Have traffic conditions sufficiently worsened and public awareness of the issues matured to a tipping point that will yield a 2/3 supermajority voter endorsement of such a tax measure? And, what about the dissenting few? Will these political activists again campaign against any solution that is not exclusively their own?

Most feel that the TFTF’s omnibus proposal is the right one. It is a sensible, multi-modal, plan that truly has something in it for everyone. It is the consensus product of a tediously thorough community process honoring our highest democratic traditions. In a perfect world, we should all, respect that process and embrace its product, even those who dissent. It is the American way, but this is not a perfect world.

Accordingly, some feel that it would be better to split the omnibus ½ cent tax ballot measure into two ¼ cent propositions, one focused on Highway 1/HOV improvements and the other on alternative transit solutions, letting the voters vote for one, both or neither. They argue that such a split ticket proposition would also honor the hard work of the TFTF, and pass or fail, the ballot booth results would reveal exactly who wants what. What do you think?

The irony of all this is that in the grand scheme of things, 600 million dollars over 35 years is not a lot of money. Try this: add up everything you’ve purchased that was subject to Santa Cruz County sales tax during the past year and multiply that number by ½ cent on the dollar. You’ll probably find that your annual tax would have been about $100………or about 25 cents per day………parking meter change. Think about that the next time you’re stuck in traffic on Highway 1.

Kirby Nicol.

Pacific Cove Mobile Home Park

Do you live in the park? do you just have an opinion about it? Would you just like to weigh in on the numerous issues surrounding Pacific Cove? this is the spot!