Candidates to replace Santa Cruz City Councilmembers Drew Glover and Chris Krohn have been slow to trickle in for the recall race on the March ballot. It was starting to look like hardly anyone wanted to run!
Former mayor turned straight-talk-blogger Don Lane has officially announced his campaign. So has school teacher Renee Golder, who’s since gotten criticism on indybay.org for dressing up as a Native American one time. Former Mayor Tim Fitzmaurice tweeted over the weekend that he is throwing his hat into the ring. Former Mayor Katherine Beiers—the oldest woman ever to run the Boston Marathon—filed a statement of intent to run. But as of Nuz’s deadline, she hasn’t made any pronouncements about whether she’s really jumping in. The last day to file nomination papers is this Thursday.
It’s no secret, by the way, that Glover and Krohn sympathizers shopped around for months for possible super-lefty candidates—both Fitzmaurice and Beiers generally fit that bill—to run in case one of the two men does get removed from office.
According to the city’s website, Fitzmaurice is running against Golder for the possible opening of Glover’s seat, while Beiers has shown interest in running against Lane for Krohn’s.
NOT-SO-PRETTY PICTURE
Last week, a post on Take Back Santa Cruz’s Facebook page got a lot of attention when Lenz Arts owner Andrew Lenz uploaded a grainy, black-and-white video of a man talking to himself while taking a dump in the store parking lot.
Nuz can attest to the fact that finding human poop in your driveway is lame. Lenz wrote in the post, “This is why we need mandatory mental health services whether they want it or not.”
Considering the post had garnered 126 comments and 185 reactions as of Sunday afternoon, there appears to be some buy-in around these ideas. So this stuff is worth unpacking a little bit.
The problem, as Nuz sees it, is not that homeless people are talking to themselves while they poop in our driveways and parking lots. The issue is that they’re pooping in our driveways and parking lots in the first place.
Call us crazy … but maybe what we really need is 24-hour bathrooms.
SUPERMARKET SWEEP
It did not seem like the end of the world when New Leaf Community Market first stopped being a local Santa Cruz operation.
Yeah, owner Scott Roseman sold in 2015, and the market went from being a local shop to a Portland-based one. Whatever. The new owner, New Seasons, was basically a Pacific Northwest rip-off of New Leaf, anyway. And Santa Cruz is like a mini-Portlandia! The store’s no longer truly local, Nuz often thought to Nuz’s self while stockpiling nutritional yeast in the bulk section, but it’s local-ish.
Or rather, it was. New Seasons sold to a Korean-based company last week. So nevermind.
Luckily there are still local grocery stores in the county. According to its website, Staff of Life hopes to open its Watsonville location on East Lake Avenue next year.
ALL THE PAGE
Due to a combination of being misinformed and confused, Nuz erroneously reported the time of last week’s library meeting about plans for a remodeled downtown facility, as well as the scheduled meeting’s content. The meeting focused on providing more clarity in terms of how much of a library remodel Santa Cruz can get for $27 million. “Nuz, please be more careful with facts,” Jean Brocklebank wrote in the comments. GT corrected the information online and clarified on social media. Thanks, guys. Nuz regrets the errors.
Thanks for bringing the mental health/pooper issue to folks’ attention. While I agree about the need for 24-hour public bathrooms, our particular “pooper” incident took place when a public bathroom was still open a mere 3 blocks away. Readily accessible bathrooms don’t always solve the problem—there was a video circulating about a year ago of an unfortunate soul dropping her/her pants in broad daylight immediately -outside- of a portable bathroom downtown. Also, when our security video service (Deep Sentinel) verbally interacted with the pooper he started ranting about “bombs” and “3 million dollars”. That sounds like a mental health issue to me. We have a real need for effective mental health services in Santa Cruz County. One could also argue that it was the effect of drugs, and there is significant drug problem in our city that needs to be addressed as well.
Maybe the need was so urgent wait three blocks. Have you ever really had to go but needed to walk three long blocks to stand in line? Probably with a physical disability to boot. Please hold judgement until you are walking in these people shoes.
This why I have emailed you in the past about business and politics not mixing. I will never shop at your place ever again. I will encourage my friends to do the same.
mentally handicapped people who are homeless do not belong in the USA!!!
Yet Jesus, food not bombs, homeless activist, left leaning city councils across the country keep helping the poor, homeless….. USA#1
Local electeds like Ryan Coonerty are more concerned with bathrooms in North Carolina than in Santa Cruz as anyone can see here:
https://santacruzcountyca.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=30&ID=4741&MeetingID=1021
Our county and local cities have raised sales taxes lately to pay for unfunded pension liabilities. Local governments are increasingly unable to perform the functions they were created to do, like maintaining streets and caring for incompetent and indigent persons, because they provide lifetime salaries to more and more bureaucrats who aren’t even on the job anymore.
It’ll take state legislation or a few major bankruptcies to put a dent in that problem, but our state legislature can’t even figure out how to refund 5-cent bottle deposits to poor people. (And now I’m going to start ranting about $3M and food not bombs.)
Sometimes while at home, all of a sudden I have to go the bathroom and I almost don’t make it from my kitchen to my bathroom, and my place is small. There is no way I could make it to a bathroom 3 blocks away.
And the poor diet that most people eat who are unhoused would definitely cause intestinal problems, sometimes causing immediate need to poop. There are so many possibilities of what this person may be going through.
Many people talk to themselves and it may or may not mean they are mentally ill. It is so easy to assume someone else’s story. The only way to find out is to speak to them in a kind manner. Sometimes when someone is speaking to themselves and interrupt them to ask them a question and they shift gears and can sometimes have a very coherent conversation. It’s so easy to assume someone else’s story.
That’s your answer, Pat?!? Andrew is calling attention to the fact that we are doing a huge disservice to our fellow human by not having the mental facilities to help those who desperately need it (let alone facilities of any kind to help) and you respond with “maybe he couldn’t walk 3 blocks… I’ll never shop at your business again”. Apparently it’s to much to ask to be able to feel frustrated that someone has just pooped in front of your business entrance? I’m sorry… If you couldn’t make it to the bathroom 3 blocks away wouldn’t you at least have the decency and respect for others to clean up after yourself?!? But if you do not have the faculties to do so, wouldn’t you be grateful that someone is trying to make sure that we are focused on solutions to get you help? You know, so you don’t HAVE to poop in front of a small business owners door our in public?