News Briefs

SLV Museum wins grant
The San Lorenzo Valley Museum has been awarded a $4,400 grant by the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County to build an art storage and transport system. 
The storage system will be installed in July and will help the museum protect its collection of works by renowned local artists.
The transport system will be used in August to safely move artwork from the museum’s collection to the Santa Cruz County Government Offices on Ocean Street in Santa Cruz. There, they will be on exhibit for a month on the Community Wall at the county building.
Lemonade sales could help library
The citizens group Boulder Creek Save Our Library has launched a new fundraiser for the library: Selling lemonade.
The group invites those who wish to help to set up a lemonade stand this summer and donate the proceeds to the library. The group will deliver the earnings to the Library Joint Powers Board in October.
Lemonade stands can be set up in the library courtyard or in front of Jenna Sue’s Café, 13090 Highway 9, in Boulder Creek. The group is also taking donations of lemons, sugar and baked goods to sell.
For information, Elinor Slayer,
ez******@***oo.com.
Supervisor out of the office
County Supervisor Mark Stone has announced that he will not host open office hours in Scotts Valley or the San Lorenzo Valley in July. Office hours will resume in August, and an updated schedule will be released then.
Highway Patrol launches traffic app
Drivers can now look up real-time traffic conditions on the recently launched California Highway Patrol Mobile App.
The app is continuously updated around the clock and provides real-time updates on where officers are responding on California’s roads. Traffic reports include incident time, location and whether it involves a collision, traffic hazard or lane obstruction.
The CHP cautioned that the mobile app should be used only by a passenger or by a driver who is parked.
The application works on many mobile devices, including the Android, iPhone, Blackberry and others.  
For information: http://m.chp.ca.gov.
Ben Lomond Library starts summer reading for kids
Ben Lomond Library is offering a summer reading program, titled “Where your imagination will take you,” for children ages 3 through 6 years old.
The program, which began Tuesday, June 29, is led by volunteer Debbie Bernick from 10 to 11 a.m. Tuesdays at the library, 925 Mill St., in Ben Lomond. It will run five or six more weeks this summer, she said.
Census completes follow-up
The U.S. Census Bureau completed its door-to-door enumeration in Santa Cruz County on June 14.
Census workers followed up at more than 100,000 homes in the county after they failed to return the census form or questions arose from their completed forms. As a result, 72 percent of households were judged to have returned the census by mail, a 2 percent increase in response over the mail-in response rate in 2000.
The census data is required to be released by the end of 2010. The results help determine how billions in state and federal tax dollars are distributed.