Regarding benefit caps
The local teacher’s union, PVFT, has been loudly crying during negotiations with the school district, PVUSD, to not put a cap on their benefits. It is a great slogan but flies in the face of reality. From 2010 to today, benefits have risen 235% from $43 M to $119 M. This rise is because the teacher’s retirement fund, CALPERS, has been mismanaged for decades and they have had to raise their rates by almost 2.5 times, and health insurance has risen to around 10% from 3%.
These increased costs have been absorbed by PVUSD, squeezing what is left for raises and running the district. It is estimated that the CALPERS rate will continue to increase another 50% over the next 5 years and that health care costs will double in the next 7 years. This will bankrupt the district, bring in the State to run to district, and cancel all union contracts. Everybody loses.
Nothing can be done about CALSTRS. However, the District health plan is a Platinum Plan that only 3% of Californians can afford. Our plan is much better than the surrounding school districts. The Insurance Company is making a lot of money from our district. There are many changes that can be made to the present plan but PVFT and PVUSD cannot agree to move forward. To prevent the financial ruin of the district and the jobs, we need to find common ground.
A novel approach is to agree what percent of the budget should be allocated to wages and to benefits. It will take an arbitrator to find a middle path.
Bill Beecher
Aptos
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School closures a good option
As a concerned county resident, I believe closing some underutilized schools must be seriously considered amid the district’s severe budget crisis.
PVSD faces steep declining enrollment—projected to drop nearly 20% over the next seven years—plus rising costs and the end of pandemic funding. Keeping half-empty campuses open drains resources that could support teachers, classrooms, and student programs.
The district has already cut nearly 160 positions. Other solutions like deeper administrative efficiencies, grant-seeking, parcel taxes, or selling surplus property, should all be pursued aggressively. Yet these steps alone may not solve the long-term structural deficit.
Santa Cruz City Schools faced similar challenges years ago through consolidations. The district endured and emerged stronger by focusing resources on students.
School closures are painful and should not be the only option. However, funding empty buildings at the expense of educational quality is unsustainable. Consolidating into fewer, better-resourced schools could improve outcomes for all students.
I urge the PVUSD Board and Superintendent to lead an honest, transparent discussion of all options—including closures—to protect our children’s education long-term.
Mike Lelieur
Santa Cruz
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No Lithium BESS at 90 Minto Road
In attempting to push the Draft Ordinance and BESS developer New Leaf Energy’s desired siting at 90 Minto Road with a combined supplemental EIR, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors is now participating in a grave conflict of interests in allowing New Leaf Energy to pay for and submit soil reports from Rush and Duttle Consulting.
These reports provide necessary information that would be added to the Draft Ordinance that would govern the developers’ own project! Rush and Duttle have vetted New Leaf’s proposed projects in the past in other counties. The Board of Supervisors, and especially District 4 Supervisor Felipe Hernandez, who ushered this upon us, are letting the fox guard the henhouse.
In the assertion by Rush and Duttle firm that Option 2, concerning 12 acres of the land proposed for the BESS is actually not prime farmland, they note that the land is too saturated and full of hydric soils to be considered viable farmland. Of course it is saturated, this is a wetland! Which makes it the most crazy place in the world to place a concrete structure the size of ten football fields, hosting a potentially flammable battery container system, in an active earthquake zone.
There need to be separate, comprehensive EIRs for the public to gain trust in the impartiality of the County to this developer. Independent consultants MUST be secured by the County, they should NOT be using information from the developer for expediency and to save money.
Comprehensive—not supplemental—EIRS would include important items that have been omitted, such as the economic and ethnic demographic of people who will be affected, large
scale fire studies, earthquake and liquefaction analysis, archaeological findings. These are perhaps the most important factors in equitabiliy and fairness to the people of Watsonville, who bear the burden of toxic pesticides and plastics everywhere. The comprehensive EIR will more completely note the impacts on human health, property values, and protecting the natural features and archaeological history of the land. This is not a time to cut corners on such an important, precedent-making matter that will define how the County is allowed to place BESS in the future.
At least, if control over BESS goes to the State due to AB 205, there will be consideration of whether this project is exploiting a low-income community of people of color. And would more thoroughly review the placement next to two natural lakes, one of which is a wetland.
Phoenix Artemisia
Watsonville
