www.montereycountyweekly.com september 7-13, 2023 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 17 In the hours and days after the Pajaro River levee breached in March, it was all hands on deck in Pajaro. Rescuers were on the ground and out in boats to get people out of the path of flooding. Politicians visited the town. National news outlets reported on the devastation. Nonprofits and ad hoc groups of residents and neighbors organized to distribute aid. Now it’s six months later, and the urgency has faded. But in many ways, the recovery for Pajaro is just getting started. Only last week, as staff writer Celia Jiménez reported, 62 people who have been unable to return to their homes in Pajaro and were living in a hotel in Watsonville received a notice from the County of Monterey to relocate to a hotel in Marina. And that represents just a fraction of the people who are still displaced, or dealing with the fallout of flooding either through overcrowding, living in unsafe (moldy) conditions or with jerry-rigged solutions, like fans under their floors. Patty Sosa, who was born and raised in Pajaro, moved away because of flood damage and says her parents are still battling insurance carve-outs. “It’s ridiculous,” she says. Irma Carrillo, a 30-year Pajaro resident, put it plainly: “I am here because there are still people suffering. They don’t have a living room yet, they don’t have furniture.” She was speaking on Aug. 30 to some 200 people gathered in Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Pajaro for the first of what will be a series of meetings in crafting a plan for Pajaro’s long-term recovery, and specifically how to use $20 million allocated for that purpose in the state budget. The meeting drew heavy hitters from county government: County Administrative Officer Sonia De La Rosa, Assistant CAO Nick Chiulos, Undersheriff Keith Boyd, County Supervisor Glenn Church, director of the county Department of Emergency Management Kelsey Scanlon, and so on. Residents from Pajaro were there to brainstorm, and also to give county officials a piece of their mind. “There is going to be some frustration in the room,” said Ramiro Medrano, who was raised in Pajaro and moved to Salinas in 2018. “The help has not been up to par. As county folks, if you hear frustrations being expressed—that’s something you have to sit with and understand.” But besides a postmortem on what went wrong, the idea of making a recovery plan is ultimately about looking forward. Daniel González of DEM ran the meeting in English and Spanish, and he encouraged people to think big as they talked through problems at their topic tables, exploring issues like public safety, infrastructure, economy and housing. What can you do with $20 million that would make Pajaro resilient? Many of the needs discussed were immediate, but many were not. Better cell coverage, a homeowners’ beautification program for improvements like painting or fencing, enforcement of illegal parking, security cameras, better streetlights and safer pedestrian street crossings all came up. These are the kinds of things that are not a response to catastrophic flooding. They are the kinds of things that are needed by a community that has for too long been neglected. It’s that pattern of neglect that led to the flooding in the first place, and residents are cautiously optimistic about using this opportunity to change that story and help Pajaro thrive. “If we utilize this in a smart manner, as a pilot program, it is exciting,” says lifelong Pajaro resident Christine Shaw (also a Monterey County planning commissioner). “We are in the middle of two economic powerhouses—why are we not bigger and better? “This is what I dreamt about. A horrible thing happened. Now this is the silver lining.” Of course, the devil is in the details. The funds cannot duplicate other benefits—for example, FEMA covers some home elevation, and Caltrans covers certain road signs, so those might not be allowable expenditures. And then there’s the pool of money. “There are amazing ideas and they’re all feasible,” Scanlon says. “But $20 million is never enough.” The brainstorming process is a chance to dream. Then comes the harder work of writing and implementing a plan—and then the harder work still of rebuilding a community that has good reason not to trust its leaders. Sara Rubin is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com. Slow Going Six months after a flood, real recovery is just beginning for Pajaro. By Sara Rubin Stay or Go…Squid spent Labor Day weekend lounging in the lair, avoiding the tourist traffic that inevitably comes to town on holidays. Maybe all these people came because they heard the clunkily named Monterey County Convention and Visitors Bureau now has a shorter, punchier name, simply See Monterey. Probably not. The new name and marketing campaign were announced on Aug. 31, after people had already made their Labor Day plans. Too bad the new tagline—“Find Your Way Here”— doesn’t emphasize all the stuff you can do after you’ve found your way here. And the whole point, per See Monterey, is to keep visitors in town for longer to spend more money. They really mean, “Please stay awhile.” Squid wonders if the message might be effective for some of Monterey County’s top government officials during this time of churn. Pacific Grove City Council forced out former city manager Ben Harvey (see more, p. 10); Salinas City Manager Steve Carrigan is a finalist for the top job in the City of San Bernardino. In the world of schools, former Carmel Unified School District superintendent Ted Knight resigned on Aug. 11, and former North Monterey County Unified superintendent Kari Yeater resigned on Aug. 24. Presumably, a bunch of new local government leaders will find their way here. Squid’s bigger question is: Will they stay? No contest…Squid hasn’t spent much time updating Squid’s resume—the constantly renewing ink supply speaks for itself. But for an influential seat on the Local Agency Formation Commission of Monterey County (LAFCO) to be occupied by a member of the public, there was a bit of a contest. First, former LAFCO member Steve Snodgrass—also a candidate for county supervisor in 2022, who lost to Glenn Church— resigned and moved out of the state. (So much for that long-term community commitment.) That left a vacant seat for a term that lasts until May 4, 2026. Seven people applied; one was past the deadline, and two came from applicants (Sanford Coplin and Chris Barrera) who serve on other district boards that they said they’d be unwilling to resign from, making them ineligible to serve on LAFCO. That left four contenders: Bob Roach, Gary Hoffman, Ronald Roland and Mike Bikle. The latter two have experience in the construction world, something that LAFCO weighs in on with determinations on annexations and the footprints of various jurisdictions. And they turned out to be the only two the board wanted to consider. Church nominated Roach but when it was time for a second, there was just a long, awkward silence. When it came down to Roland vs. Bikle, Bikle prevailed. the local spin SQUID FRY THE MISSION OF MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY IS TO INSPIRE INDEPENDENT THINKING AND CONSCIOUS ACTION, ETC. “A horrible thing happened. This is the silver lining.” Send Squid a tip: squid@mcweekly.com
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