Local News

Santa Cruz County will move to the orange tier of the state’s reopening plan tomorrow, the county confirmed in a press release today.  The orange-tier status that takes effect at midnight tonight will mean retail can operate at full capacity. Restaurants, places of worship, movie theaters and...

During the regularly scheduled March 15 council meeting, Scotts Valley began the challenging journey toward deciding how to plan for 1,220 new housing units in the upcoming Regional Housing Needs Allocation cycle. Taylor Bateman, Scotts Valley’s community development director, introduced the item, noting Kimley-Horn and...

Even though no fireworks displays were held in Santa Cruz County this Independence Day (well, not legal ones at least), a pair of North County events successfully rallied patriots. The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office estimated 4,000 people attended the Boulder Creek parade, which started...

SANTA CRUZ—Santa Cruz County’s new Public Defender office began operations on July 1, and the department’s roughly 60 employees celebrated the occasion with a barbecue in the backyard of its May Avenue headquarters.  The new office includes an increased number of attorneys, in addition to...

After a long day at the Valley Churches United storefront in downtown Ben Lomond, 70-year-old volunteer Mary Koehring is tallying up the receipts. It’s the fifth year the Boulder Creek residents assisted with the nonprofit’s Valley Christmas Project, which raises money for families in...

Santa Cruz resident Daniel Lamothe, a 38-year-old firefighting trainee, has died after a mishap during a firefighter training program in the San Lorenzo Valley over the weekend, according to authorities. At a session on Sunday at the Ben Lomond Training Center, the volunteer became "medically...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday issued long-awaited guidance to Americans fully vaccinated against Covid-19, freeing them to take some liberties that the unvaccinated should not, including gathering indoors with others who are fully vaccinated without precautions while still adhering to...

After having supported setting aside funding for local nonprofits, during the Scotts Valley budget process earlier this year, Councilmember Randy Johnson joined Vice Mayor Jim Reed in opposing the move during a test run for regular in-person City Council meetings, Oct. 19. In a 3-2...

Felton resident Melissa Harrell, 42, knows there’s a price to pay to live in paradise. And this weekend—with a chance of debris flows in the forecast—that meant scooping up the family and escaping a potential natural disaster, once more. “For me, it’s a bummer to...

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY—The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved an ordinance that prohibits so-called “discriminatory reports” to law enforcement, and allows victims to seek financial compensation when it happens to them. Discriminatory reporting was brought to public light in 2020, when...