The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved a proposal that, if given final approval when it returns to the board in September, would help ease some requirements for victims of the CZU fire trying to rebuild their homes.
Under current County code, the residents are required to mitigate geologic concerns that existed before the fire struck, in addition to those caused by the fire.
The proposed change would remove the requirements for evaluating and mitigating those pre-fire hazards.
“We all know that the CZU fire devastated parts of both my district and Supervisor Coonerty’s district,” Supervisor Bruce McPherson said. “The code has become a major obstacle in terms of time and money that our survivors have to rebuild their homes.”
Antonia Bradford says that she and her family of seven lost their Boulder Creek home in the fire on Aug. 20.
“I will never forget the moment I learned my home was gone,” she said. “I screamed in a voice I did not recognize.”
Bradford says that the past year has been challenging, and that, of all the agencies that have seemed to be fighting her efforts to rebuild, the planning department has been the worst.
This has included, she said, requiring a geologic report, which in itself necessitates hiring a private geologist at a cost of at least $6,000, not including whatever mitigation they would require.
The requirements have been especially hard on residents who are underinsured and who are facing a difficult time in making the rebuilding pencil out. Applying pre-fire standards, McPherson said, could make it impossible for some residents to rebuild their homes.
“I believe we already have a path forward, and we just need to determine what it is,” he said.
Supervisor Ryan Coonerty says that the county cannot wait to help residents.
“People have been out of their homes for a year,” he said. “They have been trying to work through the process, and right now there is no path to rebuild.”
In other action, the supervisors unanimously approved a proposal to require restaurants to allow customers to opt-out of receiving disposable cutlery, straws, napkins and other single-use items in their order.
The new rule is an effort to keep single-use waste out of landfills and from polluting the ground and ocean.
“As we all know, the Covid Pandemic has unleashed a tsunami of plastic waste, adding to an already difficult problem that our oceans face, as well as on land,” Supervisor Manu Koenig said.
He added that even dine-in meals are being treated as takeout meals.
“We can see the evidence of this in stuffed and overflowing trash bins all over the county, including right in front of the county building,” he said.
The new rule will also require ordering platforms such as DoorDash to have an opt-out button on their sites.
The rule will take effect on March 1, 2022.
Santa Cruz County in 2008 banned the use of plastic and Styrofoam containers. The county has also prohibited single-use plastic bags, required that cups and to-go cutlery are compostable and prohibited plastic stir-sticks.
