News

WATSONVILLE—The second annual Holiday Lights drive-thru light show at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds is now fully lit up and open to visitors. Holiday Lights will be open Friday, Saturday and Sunday through November, and Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday in December through Dec. 26. Presented...

Last February, the Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees approved bringing the Emeril Lagasse Culinary Garden and Teaching Kitchen project to Starlight Elementary School, aiming to teach local students how to grow, prepare and cook their own food.  The project, founded by the...

WATSONVILLE—The Watsonville City Council met for nearly five hours Monday night, but made no final decision on who will take over in the interim when City Manager Matt Huffaker moves on next month. Huffaker’s last day as the city’s chief executive is Dec. 14. The...

MONTEREY COUNTY—A federal magistrate on Monday extended a temporary restraining order stopping Monterey County from removing a group of homeless people from an encampment along the Pajaro River levee. The decision by Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen allows dozens of people to remain along the...

WATSONVILLE—As Santa Claus waved to the crowd of kids and parents running through the Watsonville City Plaza to meet him at Sunday’s tree lighting ceremony, the early day fire engine that carried him down Main Street and to the front of the city’s downtown...

WATSONVILLE—Sisters-in-law Araceli Gonzalez and Laura Espindola first had the idea to open their own business more than two years ago.  Both mothers with a passion for shopping, they wanted to open a shop full of products for young children and new (and expecting) mothers.  “We had...

SANTA CRUZ—Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District (METRO) CEO Alex Clifford on Friday announced that he is leaving the agency effective Jan. 21. Clifford will be CEO of the San Joaquin Regional Transit District (RTD), he announced. The announcement came six months after the METRO Board of...

WATSONVILLE—Watsonville police on Nov. 19 arrested a couple from Stockton after they were caught in the act of stealing the catalytic converter from a vehicle parked on the 500 block of Manzana Street. According to the Watsonville Police Department, a resident saw Jasmine Sahota and...

WATSONVILLE—The Watsonville Community Redistricting Advisory Committee is closing in on its final recommendations to the Watsonville City Council for how the city’s district lines should be redrawn. Every decade following the release of census data, jurisdictions must adjust their district lines to account for possible...

WATSONVILLE—A 20-year-old Salinas man died in a head-on crash on the Riverside Drive Highway 1 overcrossing in Watsonville on Nov. 20. Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Ashley Keehn identified the victim as Cesar Romero. Sam Courtney of the California Highway Patrol said Romero was driving...