Solid Foundation
Nonprofit scandal nears resolution with a proposed new fund for AIDS patient housing.
It seemed almost unspeakable at the time. A Seaside-based nonprofit serving people with HIV/AIDS stood accused by the state Attorney General’s office of misspending $2.8 million from its general fund and an endowment for housing ...
The Invisible Michelangelo
Dong Sun Kim’s murals quietly capture the beauty of his adopted country.
Dong Sun Kim is a stealth artist. As he guides his brush around a pencil outline of a woman posing against a spectacular, wall-spanning Monterey Bay vista, he reveals that he’s making this work of ...
Empty Lots
Supreme Court decision dooms redevelopment agencies, leaves cities reeling.
Marina’s share of the former Fort Ord offers unparalleled views of long-delayed development. There’s Marina Heights, the 248-acre swath slated for over 1,000 homes, which was approved in March 2004 but remains undeveloped. There’s the ...
Gimme Shelter
Occupy Monterey looks forward to an uncertain future.
The 20 or so tents clustered in Monterey’s Veteran’s Park look worse for wear Dec. 29 after nearly two months of continuous use. Their occupants, a mix of the older homeless population and younger (but ...
Furthering FORA
A legislative debate over the agency’s future is just around the corner.
By this time next week, Bill Monning will be back in Sacramento, attempting to convince non-Central Coast legislators that the Fort Ord Reuse Authority deserves to stay alive past June 30, 2014. It’ll be a ...
Test For Success
MPC, Hartnell leaders question state task force recs for community colleges.
It’s hard to find an area of California’s infrastructure that’s not facing a bleak future these days. But even as public safety and parks and rec departments take big budget hits, it’s arguably the state’s ...
Throwdowntown
Monterey debates future of Alvarado, starting with Mucky Duck.
The sizzling sounds of Jake Nielsen’s blues guitar give Monterey’s Alvarado Street an electric charge on a recent Friday night. The Watsonville musician is a fixture of the outdoor live music scene at the newly ...
Going For Gold
Peninsula police see spikes in drug use, with gold theft for quick cash rising.
Residential break-ins and burglaries are up on the Peninsula, and Monterey Police Department Detective Michael Bruno says brown powder and gold jewelry are to blame. Since Jan. 1, MPD has made 43 arrests for possession ...
Acting Against AIDS
Central Coast HIV/AIDS Services educates to help stop disease’s spread.
It’s been 30 years since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the first U.S. cases of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The dark cloud of a death sentence that hung over those who ...
Neighbors Get Fresh
Del Monte residents raise ruckus about proposed grocery store.
The website for supermarket chain Fresh & Easy is all sunshine and smiles, with photos of cheerful employees and phrases like “a good neighbor.” But some Monterey residents who live on quiet Helvic Avenue just ...
News Hawks
Chinatown center creates homeless newspaper, hopes city lowers vendor fees.
Clad in a Franciscan monk’s robe and sporting a large wooden cross around his neck, Brother Robert Mills could pass for patron saint of Salinas. In addition to serving the city’s neediest residents at Dorothy’s ...
County cites Henry Miller Library for a bathroom shortage.
All it took was one woman getting pissy last June about the dearth of bathrooms at Big Sur’s Henry Miller Memorial Library for the county Health Department to lay down the literal law on the ...
Signs of the Times
Monterey cracks down on Fisherman’s Wharf signs; businesses cry foul.
Several veteran property owners on Fisherman’s Wharf are locking horns with the city over what they see as a scheme to squeeze money out of merchants. “It’s out of control,” says Cafe Fina owner Dominic ...
Under Fire
Officials suggest sprinklers could have stopped Marina blaze.
As hundreds bowed their heads for five developmentally disabled adults killed in a fire at their home-care facility, Marina Mayor Bruce Delgado addressed the mourners with a mix of sadness and second-guessing. “So many of ...
Learning Curves
No major upsets in school board races; Pacific Grove parcel tax fails.
Incumbents and newcomers alike emerged victorious from the Nov. 8 school board elections, while tax-hiking ballot measures had mixed results. Measure V, a $60 annual parcel tax designed to bring in roughly $450,000 per year ...
The Clickster Party
Americans Elect is mounting a high-tech, online challenge to the two-party system, but they’re doing it with big bucks from traditional conservatives.
With hyperpartisanship in Washington at a fever pitch and Occupy protesters demanding accountability and transparency from some of the biggest donors in politics, the widespread discontent with the U.S. status quo is jolting citizens out ...
In the Pines
Occupy Monterey camp at Veterans Park struggles to integrate homeless.
Were it not for a few handmade signs posted around the picnic area, you’d never know the half-dozen tents spread amongst the trees in Veteran’s Park Nov. 6 are part of an organized occupation. It’s ...
Civil Union
A major military branch checks out the Peninsula as a potential new home.
Monterey’s military might could soon grow. The U.S. Army may relocate its Civil Affairs school, which trains soldiers to act as liaisons between military commanders and civilians in war zones and disaster areas, from the ...
Scrubbing the Clubs
Monterey’s Hippodrome faces ABC suspension and possible sale; The Mucky Duck cleans up.
The thumping bass and laser lights at the Hippodrome may soon cease, and the future of the Peninsula’s largest nightclub is up in the air. The 12,000-square-foot, multi-floor space on Monterey’s Alvarado Street, which has ...
Otter Confidential
Sea Studios banks on sea otter story to spark action on ocean conservation.
[Open scene.] Dark skies loom as waves crash against the Big Sur coastline. The wind swirls the sand on the beach, and the ocean roars. As the clouds part the next day to reveal thin ...
Separate and Unequal
State funding creates wide disparities at Peninsula schools.
Justine Hochstaedter has only been teaching in the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District for five years, but she has 90 more students than when she started. The largest of her seventh-grade science classes at Monterey’s ...
Cypress Cut Down
Marina starts from scratch on long-delayed senior community.
The Marina City Council voted 3-2 Oct. 11 to scrap plans for the Cypress Knolls senior community and seek new proposals for a project on less than half the initial footprint. “In today’s economic condition, ...
Help With Health
County clinics, health department team up to address Latino disparities.
Jaime Gomez hadn’t seen a doctor in over a year when he showed up at Clinica de Salud’s Circle Clinic in Salinas on Aug. 30 with coccidioidomycosis, or “valley fever,” from breathing in fungal particles ...
Plaza Patrol
City, police try smoking ban to banish Monterey’s “dirty folks.”
Mackenzie Friday’s been hanging out at downtown Monterey’s Griffin Plaza for a decade, and has witnessed firsthand the explosion in the homeless and transient populations that flocks to the plaza’s patio furniture, shade trees and ...
Emission Omissions
County demands answers on proposed garbage-zapping plant.
John Ramirez is talking trash about Plasco Energy Group’s communication – or lack thereof – for a proposed garbage gasification facility at the Johnson Canyon Landfill in Gonzales. The plant converts garbage to fuel by ...
A Deeper Look at MPUSD Board Candidates
Two newcomers to school board politics promising to shake up the status quo are challenging incumbents on the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District Board of Directors. The races, coming on the heels of a tumultuous ...
Two newcomers challenge MPUSD incumbents.
Two challengers in the Monterey Peninsula School District Board of Education election promise to shake up the status quo. Jon Hill, who moved to Monterey in January, says he has decades of experience as a ...
Preston Pickle
Marina, FORA quarrel over future of Preston Park, past Army agreements.
Paula Pelot considers herself an unofficial historian of Preston Park. Given that she’s lived in one of its 352 residential units on the former Fort Ord since the affordable housing community’s inception in 1997, she’s ...
Mixed Greens
A search for a standout Peninsula salad yields up-and-down outcomes.
Ah, Monterey County: replete with greens, so-called salad bowl of the world, seemingly the perfect place to feast on a heaping helping of arugula with fresh toppings and a from-scratch dressing. Right? Alas, it’s not ...
Battle Scars
Monterey Peninsula College works with feds to help vets on the edge.
Jeanne OBrien remembers the whirring of the helicopter taking off beside her, then the plank of plywood hitting the back of her head and slamming her forehead into an ammo can. That’s when her memory ...
Local projects stall as court considers cities’ case against the state.
A court battle over state legislation to eliminate local redevelopment agencies has brought major projects to a halt countywide. “Essentially, everything’s on hold,” says Daphne Hodgson, Seaside’s deputy city manager. That includes redevelopment projects officials ...
The Great Uncrowding
More than 30,000 state prisoners will shift from state to county control starting Oct. 1 – including 300-plus headed to Monterey County.
In Monterey County’s “situation room” at the county probation department, local law enforcement and public health’s top brass – Sheriff Scott Miller, Probation Chief Manuel Real, District Attorney Dean Flippo, Chief Judge Timothy Roberts and ...
Pixel Porn
How an IP address led to an international child-porn investigation.
Monterey County Sheriff’s Office Investigative Sgt. Terry Keiser remembers when child pornography investigations relied on eight-track tapes and paper trails. “We were working through the Postal Service to hand-deliver evidence,” the 42-year veteran investigator recalls. ...
Local docs receive big bucks from leading pharmaceutical companies.
Nearly 70 Monterey County medical professionals are on Big Pharma’s payroll, according to new data compiled by independent investigative news organization ProPublica. That’s a huge jump from the last list, which only had 17 names ...
Tongues of Terror
The Defense Language Institute shifts focus for a post-9/11 world
O n a recent Friday morning at the Defense Language Institute’s Franklin Street gate, a security guard is checking for bombs beneath a Monterey-Salinas Transit bus headed to the Presidio of Monterey. There’s no reason ...
Staying Afloat
Museum of Monterey hires director; money woes persist
I t’s tempting to call new Museum of Monterey Director Lisa Coscino “captain”: She’s just taken the wheel of the former History and Maritime Museum anchoring Monterey’s Custom House Plaza. “We use ship metaphors all ...
Billboard Battle
Woman leading Greenfield recall alleges the city is blocking justice for her murdered son.
A cross the street from Greenfield’s new city hall on El Camino Real towers a billboard offering $50,000 for information on the 2004 murder of Ricky Torres. The reward money is from a state grant; ...
Crazy for Life
For Pebble Beach’s Primo Waldsmith, scribbling his strange stories of pro boxing, murder and Moscow is mandatory.
What would your life look like if you put it on paper? How would you tell the stories that haunt, tickle and heal you? If you’re Robert “Primo” Waldsmith, you pour the contents of your ...
Happy Trailers
Marina council mulls rent control for mobile home parks; property managers resist.
A multi-year saga pitting Marina mobile home residents against their property managers may finally be approaching resolution, as the City Council prepares for a September vote to finalize an ordinance keeping rents flat at all ...
Fast Learners
CSUMB focuses on cross-school collaboration to boost student success.
It takes an energetic presence to keep a classroom crammed with 90 remedial math students engaged. Fortunately Hongde Hu, chair of CSU-Monterey Bay’s Department of Math and Statistics, has the energy of 10 teenagers. On ...
Street of Dreams
A local firm wants to make downtown Monterey the next great shopping district.
Big arrows and bright icons on Del Monte Avenue’s signs direct visitors to Cannery Row, Fisherman’s Wharf, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium – all top-notch destinations, none in downtown Monterey. “Why is Alvarado Street not ...
Bleeding Budgets
County social services tense up as budget axes swing.
Kathleen Adamson says a perfect storm is brewing. The executive director of the YWCA of Monterey County speaks anxiously about cuts to the funding sources that keep local social service agencies afloat, even as they ...
Shot in the Arm
Schools hurry to meet state orders on whooping cough vaccines.
The Seaside Family Health Center was swarming Aug. 8 as parents scrambled to get the state-required pertussis (or whooping cough) vaccines for their kids before the Aug. 10 start of school at Monterey Peninsula Unified ...
Marina Coast’s Missing Money
Former Fort Ord Developers owe the district big bucks. So why aren’t they paying up?
Buried deep in the files of the Marina Coast Water District is a curious and unresolved story involving project developers on the former Fort Ord who defaulted on payments to the district to the tune ...
Independent bookstore to fill Borders void, build community in Salinas.
The city of Salinas will finally get a bookstore, when a new branch of Morgan Hill-based BookSmart moves into the National Steinbeck Center. Colleen Finegan Bailey, the center’s executive director, says selecting the independent bookstore ...
Tricks of the Trade
Undocumented women servicing field workers, streetwalkers in seedy motels, high-end flesh sold at high-end events: Sex sells in Monterey County.
an intricate dance takes place weekend nights on the streets of East Salinas. As the bars and clubs close and people seep onto the streets, the women come out of the shadows and into plain ...
No Warren-tee
Sheriff Scott Miller transfers detective who sued him after meth bust of Miller’s son.
What a difference a year makes. Monterey County Sheriff Scott Miller spent most of 2010 distinguishing himself from then-Sheriff Mike Kanalakis in his successful campaign to unseat the two-term incumbent. In doing so, Miller presented ...
Cut to Death
State budget decisions complicate the county picture on gangs, drugs.
The only thing county officials agree on, regarding how the state budget will hit their coffers, is that nobody knows what their departments will look like next month. “Everything’s so nebulous at the moment, it’s ...
Golden State of Frustration
Redevelopment on its Deathbed
The towns of Monterey County have no shortage of development projects in the works. There’s just one problem: One of their key funding sources could be sucked dry by the state in the very near ...
Mediocrity in Monterey
Downtown Monterey: Ripe for Reinvention
Time and again, Monterey’s elected officials describe their fair city as “internationally renowned” and “a world-class destination.” But when comes to describing their downtown, these selfsame praise-singers aren’t exactly effusive. They sigh when discussing Alvarado ...
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