About Town

Observations from around the Pajaro Valley.

Tarmo Hannula: Santa Cruz has a new mayor: Justin Cummings, 36, a Beach Flats resident was sworn in Tuesday. A biologist, he told the council that he wants to keep Santa Cruz abreast with the latest environmentally sustainable topics. Homelessness is also...

Work continues on the new Rail Trail system, a network of bike and pedestrian paths along the old train rail that will eventually connect Watsonville to Davenport. • Today is Veteran’s Day. Due to the...

Charles Lafferty, the suspect in the bizarre projectile case in Prunedale that since February has left dozens of vehicles with shattered windows and damaged paint, was back in court Monday. The 52-year-old, who was arrested Jan. 22, is...

TARMO HANNULA I saw another large temporary chalk art drawing in front of the Main Branch of the Watsonville Public Library last week. The point of the artwork is to draw attention to the ongoing 2020 Census. Several such...

The surfer statue on West Cliff Drive on the west side of Santa Cruz is an ever-changing sounding board for current affairs. Most recently, residents went with a Halloween theme by decorating it with a pumpkin head. During the CZU Complex Fires,...

Sweeping measures are unfolding across the globe in dealing with the coronavirus, which has sickened more than 187,000 and killed 7,400 people, including 111 in the U.S. The White House is now pushing for a huge stimulus package of $1 trillion to...

A construction crew continues was at work on a lengthy underground sewer project along Freedom Boulevard Friday in Watsonville. • Rain fell most of the night and into Monday morning around the Central Coast. Early...

I rode my bike through the Santa Cruz Harbor today and saw a man and a woman heading out into the waters on stand-up paddleboards after renting them at the long-standing Kayak Connection, which is located in the harbor. Stand-up paddleboards are...

The number of COVID-19 cases has now passed 1,018,000 in the U.S. Now, 58,671 have died in the U.S. roughly equalling the number of people that died in the Vietnam War. The U.S. has four times more cases than any other country....