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On April 16, SLVWD voted to raise the rates on bulk (surplus) water. The SLVWD agenda stated that there are “approximately 20 active surplus water users, of which, about 35-percent are higher usage and 8 have addresses on file that are out of our District.” The proposal was made to increase the rate from $31 to $103; in addition to ‘consumption’ charge of $10 for each unit of water (748 gallons) delivered. It was stated that “the intent of the change in Bulk Water rates is to discourage usage outside District Boundaries, encourage conservation and balance Bulk Water Rates more equitably with fixed meter rates and charges.”After much discussion by the Board of Directors, Director Baughman suggested going ahead with the increase and revisiting the issue later. Director Brown agreed. Director Hammer recommended that they “monitor who is buying and using SLVWD water.” President Bruce suggested that “staff bring this back to the Board with a quarterly report in three months comparing current information to information from one year ago.”In July, the next time that Boulder Creek resident, Daniel Burke, purchased bulk water; he discovered that his bill had increased “from $49 every two months to $172 for approximately the same amount of time from one time till to the next.” Burke is retired and has lived off of Harmon Gulch Road for over ten years. He said “I am not a commercial water user. I am not a water seller. I am not a water deliverer. I am not an agricultural grower by any means. We simply use water for drinking and for household use. And, we want to pay our fair share.”Burke is hoping that when SLVWD revisits the surplus water issue again that it will be “perhaps from a more human-impact angle and not strictly from a financial angle.” No one wants the kind of surprise that Burke received the last time he bought water, even when they “want to pay their fair share.”For more information see:http://www.slvwd.com/agendas/Full/2015/4-16-2015/4-16-2015.htmhttp://www.slvwd.com/agendas/minutes/2015/Minutes%20BoD4.16.15-%20approved.pdf

It was summer, 1891. The new town of Ben Lomond rose up several levels—physically and socially. The low ground along the river belonged to commerce. Enterprises of all sorts—store and post office, several salons and, allegedly, houses of prostitution lined the street across from the Pacific Mill. Although Pierce and other promoters hoped to call the road “Ben Lomond Avenue, the name “Mill Street” stuck. Uphill, across the railroad tracks, a sub-division of summer cottages took shape. Prospective residents were lured with the promise of “a perfect system of water works,” and were reminded that the continued presence of the saw mill would provide cheap and accessible building material. Somewhat higher still was the Hotel Ben Lomond, overlooking the river at the north end of town. Pierce had offered to give the site to “any proper and competent party” willing to finish the project, but eventually financed it himself. His assistant, Thomas Bell, architect of the saw mill, supervised the construction. According to W. S. Rogers, the local supervisor at the time, the timber baron was a demanding employer. “We encountered a barley sack lying on the ground, “he recalled. “Mr. Pierce picked it up on the end of his cane and mildly reproved Mr. Bell for permitting such a state of things to exist.” When the new summer resort opened in June, 1889, the San Francisco and Oakland papers touted the convenient railroad station, the local trees and, especially, “good fishing, etc.” The two-story main building was a work in progress. Another twelve rooms were added after the first year and also a children’s dining room. The feature of 1890 was an elegant clubhouse, complete with dance floor, billiard tables, “a lavatory, baths, etc.” The flood of January 1890 rushed harmlessly past the hotel grounds. As the San Lorenzo began to overflow, employees of the store moved its goods across the street to the mill, then they watched as the river knocked a few buildings off their foundations. Hotel Ben Lomond proved popular with society people from the cities that summer. The rooms and cottages were fully occupied, but the profits proved elusive when the landlady left suddenly with the proceeds at the end of the season. Pierce continued to sponsor community amenities. An estimated 3,000 trees were distributed throughout the village —“elm, walnut, ash, locust, red gum and others.” The Land and Lumber Company also constructed a small church and offered it as a free gift to any denomination that promised to initiate regular preaching. The Presbyterians spoke first and claimed the prize. New management was recruited from Santa Cruz and, in the spring of 1891, the resort prepared to accommodate over 100 guests. Water sports — fishing and swimming — were heavily advertised. The Surf liked the combination of cool mountain air and “the pleasure of the piscatorial art.” The Sentinel spoke of “speckled beauties biting at everything bite-able.” Bathhouses, including swimming tanks were erected along Love Creek and the San Lorenzo. Members of Pierce’s large extended family — seven children, including two teenage girls — were frequent guests at his home and the hotel. It is likely that, in addition to business matters, Mr. Pierce discussed his personal plans with his sons and daughters. His wife had passed away several years earlier and the entrepreneur, now in his mid-sixties, intended to marry again. His choice — a widow half his age, who had once worked in his household — did not please his prospective heirs. To keep the peace, Pierce’s lawyers arranged to distribute his corporate holdings before the wedding. In August, a letter from hotel guest Winifred Bowen, Pierce’s 7-year old great-niece, to her sister in England somehow made it into the columns of the Surf. After mentioning the garden and croquet court, she observed that: “There is a nice creek and one day we went down there. There is a pond which I have seen and the men go in swimming. There is a mill pond, which logs used to be pushed into, then taken out and sawed.” Her use of the past tense was correct. The profits from the lumber business had steadily declined, due to competition from mills in Boulder Creek and Santa Cruz, resulting in over-production and price wars. For some time, Pierce had quietly sold off his timber lands and, during the summer of 1891, shut down the Pacific Mill. To Be Continued. Randall C. Brown is a local historian and is a member of the SLVWD Board of Directors     

With so many people replacing their thirsty lawns with low water-use plants, I’m getting lots of requests for ideas about what to do with all that empty space. The sky’s the limit when you have a blank slate. Let me get you started.If your old lawn was in the front you might consider putting in a sitting area for a couple of chairs and a bistro table. Use simple crushed gravel or more formal flagstone underfoot and surround the space with a low seat wall to add a bit of privacy.Adding a dry river bed is another good solution. A dry river bed can slow runoff, spread it out and sink it back into the soil. Connected to a downspout they keep even more rainfall on your own property. If we get the El Nino storms that are predicted this will be a welcome addition to your landscape.A dry river bed is a rock-lined swale that uses rounded river rock in addition to vegetation to allow runoff to soak into the ground. Make sure there is a 2-percent slope from beginning to end to ensure that water is conveyed away from your house to the desired location. Non-woven geotextile fabric is often used underneath the rock.You can create a depression or rain garden at the end of your dry river bed and plant it with plants that tolerate wet feet in the winter. Both a dry river bed and a rain garden allow water to sink back into the ground. The plants remove pollutants from the runoff from roofs or other impervious surfaces.A rain garden might be a simple, shallow depression filled with plants that can flourish in both moist and dry conditions. The size and depth will depend on your how much water you need to capture in a winter runoffSometimes a dry river bed will receive so much runoff that a dry well or dispersal pit is installed at the end. If you have a high water table or clay soil the water may not always soak in fast enough and an overflow device like this is needed. The goal is to keep water on your own property and not in the street or the neighbors’ yard.There are good looking dry river beds as well as bad looking ones. A quick Google image search will show you what I mean. Your goal is to create something that looks like it belongs right where it is. The plants, the accent rocks, the cobble, the location – all need to work together.If your property has a natural slope, follow the natural terrain if possible. You can install a dry river bed on flat land also by creating a channel for the river bed to follow. Keep in mind that even a dry river bed is more interesting if it is not all visible at once. Soft, flowing curves and bends create a natural look.Start with the rocks and cobble. Rounded river cobble looks most natural for the creek bed. In nature, water flowing down a river would round off sharp rock edges to produce cobble of different sizes. A river never has just one size of rocks and yours shouldn’t either.Accent rocks can be any type that you like as long as you get a variety of rock sizes and shapes. Use the larger stones to direct and channel water. Placing rocks on the outside of a curve creates a more natural look.As in all gardens there is always a bit of maintenance to keep things looking and working great. Weeding in the first couple of months while plants become established is important. Replenish mulch as needed until the plants grow in.Periodically remove leaves that have landed in your river bed and reposition rocks moved by runoff to keep your dry creek bed working for you when you need it. Also don’t start your dry creek bed too close to the foundation of your home if that area is flat. You can direct the water through a drain pipe connected to a downspout to a lower starting spot in your garden.So whether you are adding a dry river bed to add interest to your lawn-free landscape or to double as catchment for winter storm runoff, make yours look like it’s always been there. -Jan Nelson, a landscape designer and California certified nursery professional, will answer questions about gardening in the Santa Cruz Mountains. E-mail her [email protected], or visitwww.jannelsonlandscapedesign.comto view past columns and pictures.

When Scotts Valley Market lowers the price of ice cream, shoppers will buy more ice cream. When the price is raised, shoppers buy less.That’s how it works in most parts of the economy, but not in the stock market – especially nowadays, as passively managed index funds have become overwhelmingly popular.An index fund is a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) that aims to replicate the movements of an index, like the Standard & Poor’s 500, which is composed of the 500 largest U.S. companies. Index funds now account for 31-percent of fund assets, up from 14-percent in 2004.Two factors have caused this popularity:  Low cost: Essentially, an index fund is managed by a computer. This is much less expensive than paying a professional manager to research companies and seek out growth and value, as actively managed funds do. Fees for passively managed funds are just 0.2-percent per year compared with 0.79-percent for actively managed funds, according to Morningstar.   Better performance: Index funds have provided better investment results recently. Over five years up to the end of last year, 88.7-percent of fund managers investing in large companies underperformed the S&P 500.So, what’s the problem?My goal has always been to buy low and sell high. But that’s exactly the opposite of what index funds do.Index funds are “market capitalization weighted.” Market capitalization is the total value of the shares outstanding. If a company has 1 million shares outstanding and its shares sell for $10 each, then its market cap is $10 million.The bigger a company’s market cap, the more weighting that company has in an index. The more a company’s stock price goes up, the more shares of that stock an index fund has to buy. Stocks that go down in price see their market cap drop, so index funds have to reduce their weighting.In other words, index funds are required to buy high and sell low.The strategy has been working as more investors and advisors accept the idea that index investing is superior to actively managed funds or individual stock picking. The stampede of money into index funds drives them higher as they bid up the prices of a narrow group of richly valued companies.Instead of tried-and-true method of investing in companies with stock prices that are low relative to their current or expected profits, index funds invest in stocks simply because they have been going up.“When you buy index funds, you’re looking to the future through a rearview mirror,” said legendary investor Leon Cooperman last month on the TV show “Wall Street Week.”I’m not opposed to index funds, and many of my clients own them. They offer diversification for low fees. But low fees do not necessarily equal low cost. If a fund is buying stocks at inflated prices, then it’s not really a low-cost investment, even if the management fees are low.Maybe index funds will continue to outperform other investment strategies. But my experience has been that when a trend continues for years and gets too popular, and everyone accepts that what is happening now is the way it will always be, it’s time to think about alternate strategies.Mark Rosenberg is a financial adviser with Financial West Group in Scotts Valley, a member of FINRA and SIPC. He can be reached at 831-439-9910 or [email protected].

Enjoy the food, wine and brews at the gala to be held on Sunday, August 9, 1-5 p.m. at Roaring Camp’s Bret Harte Hall in Felton. The event sponsor is Valley Churches United Mission.  There will be 25 restaurants, 10 wineries and 4 breweries represented.  

The official torch for the Special Olympics World Games Los Angels 2015 is called the Flame of Hope. On July 16, 2015, it was carried through the city of Scotts Valley. A ceremony was held at Canepa Designs, 4900 Scotts Valley Drive. Mayor Dene Bustichi, Chief John Weiss, and Special Olympic athlete and Final Leg runner Jazmine Slama from Utah were speakers. Law Enforcement officers and Special Olympic athletes are selected to be one of the 126 Final Leg Team members based on their commitment and dedication to the Special Olympic movement. During the Final Leg of the Torch Run, Law Enforcement officers from around the world will be spreading the message of inclusion and acceptance for those with intellectual disabilities. On July 25, 2015 the Flame of Hope will complete its journey when it is carried into the Opening Ceremony of the 2015 World Games. The Torch will be used to ignite the flame in the cauldron at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. For more information about the 2015 Special Olympics Word Games, visit www.LA2015.org.