UPDATED Monday, Dec. 5 at 1:45pm: The post-storm closure of Highway 1 in Big Sur has been shortened, Caltrans announced on Monday afternoon. Currently, the highway is closed for just 2 miles between Dolan Point (mile marker 29.2) and Big Creek Vista Point (mile marker 27.3).

The parched landscape across the Central Coast got a welcome drink from the storm that moved over the region Dec. 1, and some places in Big Sur saw over 2 inches of rain, the highest being Three Peaks in Big Sur, which saw 2.76 inches from 11am Dec. 1 to 11am Dec. 2, according to the Nationa…

Results for the 2022 California midterm election began to trickle in throughout the evening on Election Day, Nov. 8, with early voting and vote-by-mail totals first announced around 8pm. Further counts were provided in the following days.

Significant levels of influenza combined with an early surge of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and an expected increase in Covid-19 cases post-Thanksgiving week have prompted the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula to bring back a symbol of the early pandemic: a respiratory triage tent.

More than 300 people gathered in the Carmel Middle School gym on Tuesday, Nov. 29, but not to cheer for a team. They were there to watch the Carmel Unified School Board deliberate about a stadium improvement project at Carmel High School.

After an overwhelming victory on Election Day, Sheriff-elect Tina Nieto was ready to get started on her transition plans from Marina police chief to Monterey County sheriff immediately. She'd already heard from outgoing Sheriff Steve Bernal on election night to congratulate her, and say he'd…

Monterey County will get $3.38 million in funds for homeless programs and will not have to reapply for another round of Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Funds, thanks to being one of the counties with the best records for tackling the issue. This news came out of a meeting between …

Monterey County Elections officials announced late Friday that they are planning to "escalate" manual tallies in two Pacific Grove races—City Council between Debby Beck and Tina Rau plus a measure to shrink the council size—and the race for Washington Union School District. 

After more than a decade in the trying, a major desalination plant to serve the Monterey Peninsula has cleared a significant hurdle—in theory, at least.

If a child here in Monterey County get so sick with a respiratory illness that they need advanced care, they need to leave the county—there are no pediatric intensive care beds in Monterey County. They have to be sent up to the Bay Area to Stanford or UC San Francisco. Due to sharp increases…

Yet another inmate has died under uncertain circumstances at the Monterey County Jail, this time a 29-year-old Carmel Valley man named David John Sand who had suffered from severe schizophrenia for the past 10 years, according to his father, Eric Sand. David died on Saturday, Nov. 12. The ca…

A child under the age of 5 has died in California due to a combination of the flu and Respiratory Syncytial Virus, referred to as RSV, the California Department of Public Health reported on Monday, Nov. 14.

A third-party investigation into a ransomware attack in the early morning hours of Oct. 2 against Hartnell College has turned up evidence that some personal information of students was accessed during the attack, college officials announced Nov. 12.

Death row in California is in a sort of purgatory. The last time an inmate was executed in the state was sixteen-and-a-half years ago, on Jan. 17, 2006, when 76-year-old Clarence Ray Allen was put to death after 23 years on death row. 

The Federal Student Aid Office of the U.S. Department of Education has stopped taking applications for President Joe Biden's student loan debt relief program after a district court judge in Texas ruled it was unlawful.

In the only contested City Council race in Marina, Liesbeth Visscher, chair of the group Citizens for Just Water, has an 8-percent lead against Les Martin, a Navy retiree, to represent District 4. As of the ballot count at 5 on Friday, Nov. 11, Visscher leads with 461 votes over Martin's 376.

Robert Rivas, who was elected on Tuesday to his third term in the California Assembly, will become California's next Speaker of the Assembly. It is a critical and powerful role in Sacramento, and one that Rivas' Democratic colleagues unanimously voted him into yesterday, Nov. 10, just two da…

Two hospital boards—including a brand new board representing North County—saw upsets of incumbents by voters on Nov. 8.

Political newcomer Fernando Cabrera is leading in a three-way race for two open seats on Soledad City Council, while Mayor Anna Velazquez has a strong lead over challenger Maria Corralejo, who is a member of City Council.  

There’s no respite in the schedule of a sitting member of Congress. The day after celebrating his reelection for a fourth term on Tuesday, Nov. 8, Rep. Jimmy Panetta had a full schedule of events taking him all over Monterey County and beyond—starting with a Veterans Transition Center rally,…

Despite having strong support from the largest industries in the county— agriculture and hospitality—along with city and county leaders and grassroots organizations, Measure Q fell far short of passing on Election Day, Nov. 8.

Dawn Addis, a member of Morro Bay City Council, will be Monterey County's newest Assembly member in District 30, a newly drawn district. 

Just as he did four years ago, Carmel Councilmember Jeff Baron took to the streets of the village and knocked on a lot of doors in the lead up to the Nov. 8 election. Combined with listening to what was on voters' minds, it's a strategy that has served him well. On Tuesday he won a second te…

Tina Nieto made history on Tuesday, Nov. 8. She is poised to become the first woman, first person of color and first openly gay person to be elected as Monterey County sheriff, and along with two other Latinas who were elected in the June primary, will join a three-person cohort of the first…

Dozens of campaign signs in the front yard announced Andrew Sandoval’s North Salinas home as the gathering place for friends and family (including his four kids and two dogs, Xena and Lola) on election night to await results. Inside, family and friends sat on a large, L-shaped sofa in the li…

North County native Glenn Church seems poised to win as Monterey County supervisor for District 2 in his race against Regina Gage. As of 10pm on election night, Tuesday, Nov. 8, Church led with 58 percent of the vote, compared to Gage's 41 percent. 

In the minutes before the first county election results come in at around 8:20pm on Tuesday, Nov. 8, the mood is buoyant in John Uy’s house on Portola Drive.

As rain poured off and on in Pacific Grove on Election Day, council candidate Tina Rau made a decision to move the party from the yard of her small home to the shelter of a neighbor's duplex parking garage across the street. A propane fire pit was set up, hot chocolate made, and folding tabl…

A raucous cheer went up in a corner of Oscar’s Playground on Cannery Row as the first results in the Monterey mayoral race were posted on Tuesday night.

It's not uncommon to feel nervous or confused at the five-way intersection of Sunset Drive, Congress Avenue and Cedar Street in Pacific Grove. Sometimes it's not clear which driver has the right of way. Is it the folks headed east or west on Sunset? Those crossing over Congress? The lone car…

A Pacific Grove man who was well-known at the town's middle and high schools as an instructional aide or tutor and as a volunteer at athletic events pleaded no contest on Nov. 4 to a single felony count of oral copulation of a minor, the Monterey County District Attorney's Office announced today.

The race for the Pacific Grove City Council is a crowded one with six candidates for council and two for mayor. One of those candidates has soared ahead of all the rest in both spending and loans, according to campaign finance documents.

Ruth Andresen, who as an environmental activist led an organizing effort that changed the course of Monterey County history, died on Oct. 31 at age 101. She was surrounded by family and was just six weeks shy of her 102nd birthday. She celebrated her 100th birthday in 2020 on the front lawn …

A second woman has sued Monterey County and recently retired undersheriff John Mineau over alleged sexual harassment, and an ongoing failure to stop the behavior. 

Lifelong surfer Jim Affinito is convinced a shark wanted to eat him for Halloween dinner. 

A team from the Monterey County Sheriff's Office is searching the county administrative building at 168 W. Alisal Street in Salinas after a possible bomb threat Tuesday morning, Nov. 1. 

Nearly three weeks after CSU Monterey Bay students received a notice of rent upticks, many are still left without answers.

It was a day of celebration Oct. 25 at Seaside City Hall, as scores of local dignitaries, police officers and residents gathered on the lawn by Canyon Del Rey for the official swearing-in ceremony of Seaside Police Chief Nick Borges. 

If you were already registered to vote before October, then you likely received a ballot in the mail. Now what? Once you've sorted through the candidates and measures and made your marks, it's easy and free to drop the ballot in the mail by Election Day, Nov. 8.

For a month, a group of 20 teenagers and young adults from different parts of Monterey County have been learning new skills meant to prepare them for the workforce. 

The Housing Authority of the County of Monterey has a new executive director, Zulieka Boykin, from Alabama. The HACM Board of Commissioners voted 5-0 (with one commissioner absent) on Monday, Oct. 24, in favor of offering Boykin a four-year contract with a starting annual salary of $250,000.…

Four cities in southern Monterey County, plus the county itself, are one step closer to a stated goal of universal high-speed internet access in South County after the California Public Utilities Commission announced a grant of $2.5 million in broadband technical assistance funding. 

Four years ago, Pacific Grove’s actions to curtail short-term vacation rentals came under attack through two lawsuits, one brought by a group of vacation rental owners who asked for an injunction to stop a lottery held by the city in May 2018 to distribute STR permits that resulted in a cap …

Two separate juries spent two weeks deliberating in a 1996 murder case that has haunted the family of Kristin Smart, a Cal Poly student who disappeared after a party on campus and was never located. 

Ferrini Ranch is the project that just won't die.

Like many private citizens who felt angry and upset over the recent upending of nearly 50 years of abortion rights in the U.S., Tina Rau took to social media over the summer to vent her feelings of anger and sadness. Only she's not just any citizen, she's chair of the Pacific Grove Diversity…

On Sunday, Oct. 2, the IT team at Hartnell College noticed abnormal activity on the college's network. In response they manually shut down the network, and Hartnell officials say the activity "is related to a sophisticated ransomware attack." 

About three-and-a-half months after the Monterey County Civil Rights Office concluded an investigation into alleged sexual harassment at the Monterey County Sheriff's Office, one woman involved has filed a lawsuit against Monterey County and now-retired undersheriff John Mineau. 

For years, for Monterey Peninsula parents who did not want their children vaccinated as required by state law to attend school, Monterey pediatrician Douglas Hulstedt was the go-to doctor for written exemptions.