Tom Wright

1 month ago | santacruzsentinel.com | Tom Wright

Last week, the Sentinel Editorial Board met with representatives of the Santa Cruz County Association of Realtors and then with Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley about the deepening divide over two proposed Nov. 4 affordable housing ballot measures currently in the signature gathering process. Keeley’s measure, the “Workforce Housing Affordability Act,” proposes a real estate transfer tax (levied when a property is sold) starting at 0.5%, and applied to home sales over $1.8 million.

2 months ago | santacruzsentinel.com | Tom Wright

Amid the everyday chaos coming out of Washington, D.C., the policies of the current administration are being felt locally, and the impacts, much like the Trump tariffs, are bringing uncertainty and fear. Start with health care. The budgets for Santa Cruz County and for local health providers are uncertain, at best, as the administration and DOGE consider reducing funding for Medicaid and other programs.

2 months ago | santacruzsentinel.com | Tom Wright

"This high-end number was put out there during a March 12 online information session held by the county Regional Transportation Commission," writes the Editorial Board. "Engineering officials used that number (actually $980 million) as an estimate that could be revised later. Replacing or rebuilding the bridges (there’s 33 along the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line) would be one of the many costs of establishing passenger rail."

2 months ago | santacruzsentinel.com | Tom Wright

"Open AI and Google, having long trained their ravenous bots on the work of newsrooms like this one, now want to throw out long established copyright law by arguing, we kid you not, that the only way for the United States to defeat the Chinese Communist Party is for those tech giants to steal the content created with the sweat equity of America's human journalists," writes the Editorial Board. Subscribe to continue reading this article.

2 months ago | santacruzsentinel.com | Tom Wright

Schools in our exorbitantly expensive region, and county, are seeing dropping enrollments, which, in turn, is wreaking havoc on their budgets. A report this week from our Bay Area News Group noted that regionally the enrollment drop is leading to school closures, widespread layoffs or both in an effort to plug multimillion-dollar budget holes. Total enrollment in California public schools has dropped by about 360,000 students — about 6% — in the past five years.