Local News

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY—The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors took the first step in updating the county’s climate action strategy, a response to global warming and its effects on infrastructure and the people who live here. Updating the County’s Climate Action Plan—first adopted in 2013—is...

A 76-year-old Davenport pedestrian was killed Dec. 16 after she was struck by a fellow community member’s vehicle at Swanton Road, just east of Pacific Coast Highway. The incident occurred around 3pm as a 77-year-old male driver, also from Davenport, was reversing a 2002 Ford...

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...

A 5-year-old boy died Wednesday after his twin brother reportedly stabbed him in the back with a kitchen knife. Ashley Keehn, public information officer for the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, said deputies were dispatched to a report of a stabbing at a home on...

In a sleepy town like Scotts Valley, it’s par for the course that year-to-year crime percentages swing wildly. If no robberies happen one year, and then four go down the next (as was the case between 2023 and 2024), you don’t want to read too...

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...

In her first Scotts Valley City Council meeting since announcing she was moving on to a job in Coronado, city manager Tina Friend on Aug. 4 brought good news about a couple of local projects. “First, if you’ve been coming into town on Mt. Hermon...

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...

In line with state and local efforts to develop a statewide Master Plan for Aging, the County of Santa Cruz has announced it has been designated an “Age-Friendly Community” by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). The County’s Human Services Department sought the designation...

Around the bend of the San Lorenzo River from a section recently rehabilitated with long grasses, buzzing insects and wildflowers, bicycle carcasses lay strewn outside a tent. An intricate woodcarving adorned the entrance to another. A dog carried a skateboard in its mouth, tugging...