The new budget year for the Scotts Valley Unified School District began July 1, with the district continuing to dip into reserves to make ends meet.

The iconic Felton restaurant, Don Quixote’s International Music Hall, has been sold to local businessman Bradd Barkan for $2.2 million.

A For Sale sign appeared this week on the boarded-up front of the former Boulder Creek Brewery, an empty shell after being destroyed by fire in April 2015.Russell Gross, of Russell E. Gross Real Estate, said the sale price is $295,000.He said that while the building is just a shell, the property has an upgraded septic system, and has approved building permits to rebuild the restaurant.He said that any personal property, equipment, inventory, trademarks or licenses, including the liquor license, are not part of the sale offer.Steve Wyman, owner of the site, also owns Surfrider Cafe in Santa Cruz, and the Boulder Creek Brewery Outpost, a tavern, on the other side of Highway 9, one block north of the former brew pub.The brewery and restaurant had been a popular Boulder Creek venue, including life entertainment, and at one point had employed 45 to 50 workers.

The company that owns the Felton site where the Trout Farm Inn burned to the ground said this week it will seek building permits to rebuild the restaurant this year.

It is the job of working journalists to ask questions – especially from public officials – and what we call “follow-up” questions, and more questions.

Thousands of residents of Santa Cruz Mountain communities, plus equally as many visitors, ate pancakes, watched parades, played in the sun, and watched fireworks on Independence Day.

There was no dramatic explosion, no spectacular wrecking ball. The old gym at the Scotts Valley Middle School came down in slow, scraping, gnawing chunks, grabbed and pulled apart by three different-sized excavators with steel jaws.

A team of 30 students from all grade levels in Scotts Valley school are spending portions of their summer break working on a bright new mural at Siltanen Park.