State's financial condition worsens.
The state’s money situation is kind of a good-news, bad-news deal according to Controller John Chiang’s latest report on California’s finances. Beginning with the bad news: The state’s revenues were down $827 million (or 13.5 ...
State's financial condition worsens.
The state’s money situation is kind of a good-news, bad-news deal according to Controller John Chiang’s latest report on California’s finances. Beginning with the bad news: The state’s revenues were down $827 million (or 13.5 ...
More Cuts to Come
Monterey County balances its budget, and waits for news from the state.
Monterey County’s 2009-10 budget is balanced – for now. But this is likely to change as the state struggles to fill its own nearly $24 billion deficit, according to county finance officials. Earlier this week, ...
Bodies and Souls
The queer community in Monterey County finds common cause – and new common meeting grounds.
Nickolas J. McDaniel was born with a birth defect: “My physical sex was female,” he says. It was 1972 in Salinas, and McDaniel’s family had strong, Southern Baptist faith and conservative family values. His mother, ...
Group says state gathering is needed to fix budget mess.
Staring down the $24.3 billion budget hole, the state’s facing cataclysmic cuts – slashing school funding, the wholesale elimination of welfare payments and medical coverage to kids, closing 80 percent of state parks and laying ...
Bucks for Books
Monterey scales back library hours, among other proposed cuts, as city leaders try to plug a $7.6 million budget gap.
John Steinbeck would not have wanted to see any city cut its library hours. But for storytelling purposes, he likely would have appreciated the irony: In 2004, Salinas, Steinbeck’s birthplace, considered shuttering its libraries because ...
Voters soundly reject budget-related measures.
It didn’t sound like a tweet of defeat: “A big thank you to the pollworkers who are still finishing a long day in service of democracy! (I was a pollworker before I ran for office.)” ...
Surf Report
A beginner’s guide to riding the waves in a boat – not on a board.
Buck Johnson promised thrills and spills. The sea delivers both. Spills come first, as I’m paddling through the white water, out past the breakers, which seems a bit like throwing uppercuts at a wall while ...
Big Sur camping and hiking open for business.
Big Sur has risen from the ashes—in time for summer camping and hiking. Pfeiffer Big Sur state park will reopen Friday, May 21. “This is great news because we know how important this particular campground ...
Monterey City Council considers layoffs.
The ax drops on Tuesday. Monterey's City Council will likely initiate employee layoffs at its May 19 meeting. If the action is approved by councilmembers, 20 positions will be eliminated or reduced (13 full-time and ...
Obama taps former NPS associate provost for assistant secretary of defense.
First chief spook Leon Panetta, and now President Obama has tapped Naval Postgraduate School professor Paul Stockton to be an assistant secretary of defense. Stockton, currently on leave as a Senior Research Scholar at the ...
What California can look forward to after the budget-related measures fail on May 19.
The most recent polls show Propositions 1A-1E – the budget fix Sacramento lawmakers came up with in late February, when they approved a plan to balance the $42 billion deficit – failing at the ballot ...
New World
Rare Shakespeare in Moss Landing.
Terry Taylor says it’s fate, but perhaps it’s the Bard’s ghost working in mysterious ways. Either way, his nonlinear story of how the Shakespeare Society of America came to be relocated in Moss Landing begins ...
Fighting Words
Simply agreeing to agree on a regional water supply proves controversial in Monterey County.
“It seems simple to me, that all we’re trying to do is work together and – god forbid – get along,” said Supervisor Dave Potter at the Tuesday meeting. But when it comes to water ...
Invisible Children
Homeless youth look for – and find – a Safe Place in Monterey.
“I kinda have a thing for running away,” says Street, a homeless 19-year-old who says he’s run away from every family he’s lived with since he was 15. Street, as he calls himself to a ...
Biting the Ballot
Left and right both oppose state budget measures, but neither offer firm solutions.
Taxes are like dog food, said Gov. Schwarzenegger, urging voters to support the budget-related ballot measures in the May 19 special election. The propositions, 1A to 1F, would allow the state to borrow and transfer ...
EPA moves to regulate global warming
Finding says greenhouse gases endanger public health.
The Environmental Protection Agency has taken the first steps to limit greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Late last week, the EPA submitted an “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gases to the Office of ...
State budget still $8 billion short.
Despite lawmakers’ efforts to close a $42 billion deficit, the state is still $8 billion in the hole, according to budget analyst Mac Taylor. In his March 13 report, Taylor calls the spending plan—a complex ...
Monterey City Council and public get first look at 2009-10 budget.
Cuts – in library hours, recreation programs, police positions and every other city department – are coming to Monterey. The city needs to trim nearly $6 million from its budget, and on Thursday, March 12, ...
Into the Fire
Fitz leaves LandWatch to help start new progressive nonprofit.
A fter nearly four years on the front lines of Monterey County’s land-use battles, Chris Fitz, LandWatch Monterey County’s executive director, says he’ll step down at the end of the month. But he’ll continue to ...
Belt, Tightened
Monterey County struggles to fill a multi-million budget gap.
Long gone are the days of (expensive) wine and roses in Monterey County. Instead, county employees can look ahead to furlough days and putting money into their own retirement plan – and, likely, layoffs. At ...
Monterey city leaders plug a $3.1 million shortfall.
Monterey officials have asked city employees to take furlough days as part of a plan to close a $3.1 million budget gap. City Manager Fred Meurer has agreed to take six furlough days before the ...
Monterey County looks at layoffs.
Monterey County’s financial woes will get worse unless it slashes millions from its budget. And the savings will likely come from cutting employee salaries and benefits—or jobs. The county’s facing an $11 million shortfall by ...
California gets a budget, Maldonado gets an open primary.
California lawmakers approved a plan to close the state’s $42 billion deficit early Thursday morning. Following a five-day impasse, state senators approved the budget – a combination of taxes, cuts and borrowing – after Democrats ...
Schwarzenegger: “You can’t erase a $42 billion problem without revenue increases.”
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told reporters he will not reopen budget negotiations—despite calls from the new Republican leadership to fix California’s $42 billion gap without any new taxes. “We will not sit down and have big ...
Lawmakers reach state budget deal.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders have reportedly reached a deal to close California’s $42 million budget hole. In short: billions in spending cuts and billions in new taxes that will likely be voted on ...
Monterey County joins other local governments in multi-billion lawsuit against the state.
Monterey County will sue the state, supervisors announced on Feb. 10, joining a host of other California counties that will go to court to fight missed payments from the state. The state requires counties to ...
Supes Fight Back
Monterey County joins multi-billion lawsuit against the state.
Monterey County will sue the state, supervisors announced on Feb. 10, joining a host of other California counties that will go to court to fight missed payments from the state. The state requires counties to ...
$42 billion and counting
State budget impasse continues.
California ran out of money this weekend. The state stopped paying its bills, which means contract workers aren’t getting paid, residents won’t receive tax refund checks anytime soon and schools, counties and cities face delayed ...
Wet & Wild
CPUC says North Marina desal plant would be best for the environment.
It’s a slippery read. But despite its watered-down working, the long-awaited report analyzing the potential environmental impacts of a new water supply project for the Monterey Peninsula says the North Marina desalination alternative—using seawater vertical ...
Wet&Wild
CPUC says North Marina desal plant would be best for the environment.
It’s a slippery read. But despite its watered-down working, the long-awaited report analyzing the potential environmental impacts of a new water supply project for the Monterey Peninsula says the North Marina desalination alternative—using seawater vertical ...
Tipping Point
Water for Monterey County Coalition wants to stop studying, start acting.
W ater continued to be something to fight over, not drink, at a recent Water for Monterey County Coalition meeting. (Unfortunately, no whiskey was offered.) The group has met monthly for the past two years. ...
Health and Fitness 2009 - Rare Air
CHOMP’s hyperbaric oxygen chambers provide futuristic-feeling healing.
“You’re breathing oxygen right now,” says Alain Claudel, “and you kinda like it, right?” Yes. I do kinda like it. Claudel, the director of Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula’s rehabilitation services, isn’t being facetious, ...
Monterey sinks deeper into deficit
Monterey city officials project a $2.7 million budget gap this year, and say the 2010 deficit will likely reach $5.8 million. The new budget projections—previous estimates put the deficits at $1.6 million for the current ...
Town supporters say pro-development interests behind legal challenge.
A local attorney with questionable past ties to a southern California campaign contribution scandal has filed a lawsuit intended to stop Carmel Valley incorporation. Franklin J. Lunding and Planning 2020 Inc., a group he founded, ...
CSUMB cuts costs as state's budget crisis worsens.
As the state budget crisis continues, CSU Monterey Bay (along with the entire CSU system) today announced a hiring freeze and other cost-saving measures. The 23-campus system has also cancelled non-critical equipment and supply purchases, ...
Jane Parker Takes Office
Re-balancing the county budget on Jan. 13 agenda.
Jane Parker ran on a campaign of keeping neighborhoods safe and healthcare affordable, and solving Monterey County’s budget crisis. District 4 voters elected her to serve on the board of supervisors in June 2008– and ...
Monterey County infrastructure projects halted.
Affordable housing, school repairs and road construction projects in Monterey County may be delayed or stopped altogether as the state sinks deeper into debt by the second. Last week, state officials froze financing on 2,000 ...
No Budget Solution in Sight
State faces a $41.8 billion budget gap.
Liquor and shot glasses were the most popular gift-exchange presents at the California Assembly budget staff’s holiday party. “Last year one person brought Jack Daniels and two shot glasses,” says John Laird, former assemblyman and ...
Obama picks former Aquarium trustee to head NOAA
Greenhouse gases beware: former Monterey Bay Aquarium trustee, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a vocal scientist in the fight against global warming, will lead the nation’s principal ocean agency. President-elect Barack Obama named Lubchenco as National Oceanic ...
Yes, there is a Santa Claus
Peninsula art and framing shops back in business.
Local businessman John Wiseman isn’t participating in the recession. A little over a year ago, he and his wife sold their businesses– ArtMax and Frames on Broadway in Seaside, Searle Art Supplies and Searle Picture ...
Stretching a Buck
Monterey and Pacific Grove consider sharing services to save money.
Sharing– it’s not just for the playground anymore. As Monterey (and just about every other city in the state) struggles to fix its financial woes, leaders consider sharing a police chief, top building official, and ...
Monterey County feels crunch from budget crisis.
Monterey County has a nearly $25 million gap to fill in order to close the massive hole in the fiscal year 2008-09 budget. And next year’s financial situation could be even worse– a shortfall reaching ...
Declining property values mean fewer tax dollars.
The housing market decline has hit Monterey County hard, sending property values– and property tax revenue– plummeting. Officials expected property taxes to generate $115.8 million for the 2008-09 fiscal year, a growth rate of 5 ...
C.V. residents to vote on incorporation.
Carmel Valley residents will get to vote on creating their own township, separate from the county's jurisdiction. The Local Agency Formation Commission of Monterey County unanimously approved the incorporation proposal. Now the issue goes to ...
LAFCO pushes Carmel Valley incorporation decision to Monday.
After nine years of waiting, what’s another week? Carmel Valley residents who want to incorporate their town—and those who don’t—had hoped the Local Agency Formation Commission of Monterey County would made a decision about the ...
State lawmakers consider tax hikes, deep cuts – local school officials concerned.
Between the projected two-year, $27.8 billion budget deficit, planned cuts to state-funded programs and services, possible tax increases and endless bickering between Democrats and Republicans, there’s not a whole lot to feel thankful for in ...
Assemblyman appointed to Integrated Waste Management Board.
Central Coast Assemblyman John Laird, who will be termed out of office on Nov. 30, has been appointed to the California Integrated Waste Management Board. But Laird won’t be lounging on a private beach between ...
Winners and losers in Seaside, P.G. and Monterey.
The Seaside City Council race was a game of musical chairs, with three candidates circling for two seats. Incumbent Steve Bloomer and establishment challenger Ian Oglesby won the posts with 35 percent and 41 percent ...
No Love For McCain and Palin
Monterey County GOP watches Obama win.
Standing in the midst of the not-so-victorious victory party at the Hyatt in Monterey, a glass of Lockwood Partner’s Reserve in hand, Monterey County Republican Party Political Director Brandon Gesicki didn’t look overly distressed at ...
