Briefs: VFW Post 1716 honors students, teacher; Santa Tour upcoming
VFW Post 1716 honors students, teacher
Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1716 in Freedom recently gave out scholarships and awards.
Every year, the post hands out scholarships and awards to a middle school student, a high school student and selects a teacher of the year.
This year’s...
PHOTO: 4 displaced in house fire
This home at 20 9th St. in Watsonville is boarded up early Wednesday morning after fire tore through the living room.
Watsonville appoints new homegrown library director
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...
Annual sculpture exhibit returns for 16th year
For the past 16 years, Pajaro Valley Arts (PVA) has partnered with Sierra Azul Nursery and Gardens for an annual art exhibit. Artists install sculptures throughout Sierra Azul’s two-acre demonstration garden, creating an open-air gallery surrounded by native trees and plants.
For this year’s Sculpture...
Year in Review: 2020 was a year like no other
I started working for the Pajaronian in February 1997. As a news gatherer, that translates to a lot of blank pages being filled over the years with news and photos of what’s going on. Of those 23 years as a journalist, 2020 most assuredly...
With increasing need, food banks worry about ‘food insecurity’
WATSONVILLE—One year ago, a report by UC Santa Cruz’s Blum Center on Poverty, Social Enterprise and Participatory Governance and Second Harvest Food Bank painted a grim picture of hunger in Santa Cruz County.
According to the report, some 83,000 residents were living in households earning...
Historic tree removed
One of the oldest documented living things in Watsonville met its end last week to the buzz of a handful of chainsaws.
Gray hired as Watsonville Community Hospital CEO
Stephen Gray was officially hired as CEO of Watsonville Community Hospital on Wednesday.
With a 4-1 vote, the Pajaro Valley Health Care District Board approved Gray’s contract, less than a week after the hospital corporation announced him as its selection. Board member Joe Gallagher dissented.
Hospital...
Watsonville not included in state’s vaccine equity plan
WATSONVILLE—No communities in Santa Cruz County qualify for the California Department of Public Health’s vaccine equity plan, which Gov. Gavin Newsom last week pitched as a way for the state to prioritize disadvantaged and Latinx communities that have seen a disproportionate impact from the...
