ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS
The club has changed the schedule for our community grants awards this year. We are currently planning to post the on line application in mid -July.
The debunking of the president has been postponed. It will be rescheduled as an evening event later in the summer.
We will be having our fundraiser at Aptos Park on the 4th of July beginning after the parade. See Al to sign up to help in the booth, with set up or clean up or by taking cash and checking ID’s.
Dagmar gave us an update on our participation in Save our Shores. We will again participate in the beach clean-up this year and our kick-off clean up will probably be in July or August.
Saturday June 29th will be Rotary Day at Derby Girls. if you buy your tickets online, still sign up and let us know you will be attending. Tickets and information at Santacruzderbygirls.org
June 27th is the RYLA barbecue at Mission Springs. All are welcome.
Our speaker today was Zach Friend, our 2nd district supervisor and an honorary member of the club. His talk emphasized housing, traffic and income gaps in our county.
He said it was a unique time to be an elected official in terms of big changes that need to be made soon. He began by outlining the problem of income/housing disparities in our county. You have to earn $70,000 a year to afford a two-bedroom apt.. Most people he meets with don’t work in the county (30,000 people commute over the hill.) and in the south county incomes are less than $17,000 per person. An increase in the number of unsheltered homeless, and longer commutes which ruin the traffic are the result
Emphasizing housing issues, he said it took 41 years to build 69 units in the new Aptos Village of which 12 are affordable and that something has to change if we want something to hand on to our children. He spoke about the rail trail and other efforts that may not solve our problem. We are really at a point where decisions must be made, or there will be disasters, especially by not building affordable housing. He reported that we have built 40 dwelling additional units by eliminating the ADUs (accessory dwelling unit) fees.
There followed a lively question and answer session covering issues such as rent control, income inequality, agricultural water usage, the unaffordable nature (gap between wages and housing costs) of life in Santa Cruz County, the affordable housing trust fund, the broad band infrastructure and the new digital economy.