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Watsonville
December 19, 2025

From the editor's desk | The end of the ride

After 1,059 issues, seven years and five months, today I leave the Register-Pajaronian.

Local water agency works toward long-term drought solutions

  In 1983, a group of local farmers looking for ways to manage the Pajaro Valley’s groundwater basin formed the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency (PVWMA). A year later, the agency was officially recognized by the state legislature, who tasked them to stop groundwater overdraft...

The story behind the Washington bust

letters to the editor
To some, George Washington represents patriarchy and oppression. To Lloyd Alaga, the person who commissioned the bust of George Washington for Watsonville’s Plaza, Washington represented the opportunity in America for immigrants who have come, and continue to come, to this country. Lloyd Alaga’s uncle was...

Letter: Watsonville Elks Lodge lands metal elk

watsonville elks lodge sculpture
Thank you Cesar Paz for having this beautiful elk made and installing it at the Watsonville Elks Lodge! Steve Nelms is working on keeping the lawn trimmed. Rodger Silva and Jim O repaired the lawn mower. Ashley Valdivia made a delicious beef stroganoff last week. Randy and...

Navigating Watsonville’s skeptics

Navigator schools
By John Flaherty, vice-chair of Navigator Schools’ Board of Directors Sharon Waller, the co-founder of Navigator public, nonprofit charter schools, grew up in Watsonville. Her grandmother worked at Ford’s Department store. She took Sharon to lunch next door at the Woolworths.  Sharon Waller is a third-generation...

Vital questions about the rail project

The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission’s (RTC) $9 million Zero Emission Passenger Rail and Trail project study (ZEPRT) has generated heated debate and confusion.  While the project promises to combine passenger rail and active transit in one sweeping vision, fundamental questions about its feasibility,...

How you find daily peace

Memo from Pastor Rene Schlaepfer
Memo from Pastor Rene In my last column I wrote about how a constant focus on grim news actually changes the way your brain works, because you’re in constant threat analysis mode. Higher reasoning is diminished. You’re more prone to emotional instability.  Yet there is a...

Auction raises $2.1M at Salinas Valley Fair

With the theme “Cowboy Up and Wind Down,” the 2017 Salinas Valley Fair brought thousands of visitors to South County and featured the annual Junior Livestock Auction, which raked in $2.1 million from the sale of 950 animals.

Salvation Army shutters its shelter

On Saturday morning, 48-year-old Gerardo Gutierrez was one of about a dozen men sitting in the day room at Salvation Army’s Watsonville location, quietly watching an old Vicente Fernández film playing silently on a television mounted to the ceiling. The men—most of them homeless—had stayed...

Preserving our library

I read my first novel at the age of 10. The novel was the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I checked the book out from a satellite library that was across the street from where I lived. That book is relevant today in the...
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Photo story: La Rama celebration set for today

Musicians, dancers and the public take part in a Mexican holiday tradition called La Rama in 2023 in Watsonville Plaza. The first-ever such event...