News

WATSONVILLE—The Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees on Wednesday unanimously approved nine new courses at five high schools that will bolster the district’s newly retooled Career Technical Education program. The new courses were created as extensions of the existing ones, with the penultimate...

Anyone driving at night in parts of  Pajaro Valley may occasionally notice an unsettling purple glow illuminating the sky. This comes from LED lights used by cannabis greenhouses to create longer light cycles young marijuana plants need to grow.  And while the burgeoning cannabis industry has...

WATSONVILLE—Dr. Sepi Taghvaei clearly remembers one of her favorite patients at Dientes Community Dental Care. The woman had all her upper teeth removed while serving time in prison. Since the facility hadn’t offered dental care, her teeth had slowly decayed. Dientes set the patient up with...

WATSONVILLE—Two local organizations are hoping to shine a brilliant holiday light during troubling times. The Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds Foundation and the Agricultural History Project are in the midst of crafting the first-ever Holiday Lights Drive-Thru event as an alternative celebration for the holiday season...

Growing strain on the health care system has triggered a stricter stay-at-home order for Santa Cruz County and the rest of the Bay Area region identified in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recently issued regional order. Intensive care unit (ICU) capacity in the Bay Area region, which...

The eighth annual Monterey Bay Youth Outdoor Day, a free family-oriented outdoor activity day, will take place at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds Oct. 5. and 6.

WATSONVILLE—While some will be celebrating the birthday of activist and labor leader Cesar Chavez on March 31, a major raspberry grower in Watsonville will close its doors, and hundreds of employees will be laid off. A representative at Premiere Raspberries, LLC confirmed the closure Thursday...

WATSONVILLE—Watsonville City Manager Matt Huffaker announced last week that he appointed Alicia Martinez as the new director of the Watsonville Public Library. She succeeds longtime director Carol Heitzig, who retired in July 2020. Martinez worked her way up the ranks at the library. She started...

WATSONVILLE—A $6 million loan from the State of California will allow Watsonville to build a new landfill, a move that will save money and give the City a place to haul its waste for as long as three decades. The loan from the California Infrastructure...

Every year, local arts organization Pajaro Valley Arts (PVA) hosts an annual Members Exhibit, where its members have the chance to showcase their artwork to the community. This year’s show, dubbed “New Beginnings,” opens on Jan. 18 and will include the work of 95 local...