New Road Rules with Countywide Impact: 36 Days to Comment, By

FEATURED COLUMNIST New Road Rules with Countywide Impact: 36 Days to Comment

By Bruce McPherson, Supervisor, Fifth District

As our community continues its neighborhoods is shaped by topography. recovery from last summer’s CZU Our ability to make wider roads or make Lightning Complex fire, a new new through-connections between dead-end concern has emerged. Proposed changes to roads is limited, and therefore a one-size-fitsfire safe regulations by all approach does not the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection could directly impact Proposed changes to fire safe regulations by the make any allowances for that. Santa Cruz numerous properties Board of Forestry and County supports throughout Santa Fire Protection could the current process Cruz County, not just directly impact numerous that allows local fire in the burn zone. properties throughout departments, together On March 22, even after my office Santa Cruz County, not with local government, to identify and other County just in the burn zone. alternative means and Supervisors and resi- methods for meeting dents from around California expressed safety standards when site-specific condiour concerns to the Forestry Board, a tions require it. Retaining our ability to do majority of its members voted to publish that is essential. And rebuilding after the the proposed rulemaking, which until then fire will not be possible for many families had been less formally under discussion unless disaster rebuilds are exempt from for months. The vote officially began a the minimum standards. 45-day window to receive public In our formal comments to the Forcomment, which many who spoke estry Board, we will stress the importance to the Forestry Board that day had of applying the proposed exemption for sought to delay in order to provide primary residences and accessory dwelling more time for shaping the units to all portions of the code, as well regulations. as the importance of maintaining

The changes, which our ability to address site-specific include new road, access issues through local agencies. and turnaround restric- I appreciate all of the tions, could make it much constituents who have conmore difficult to build or rebuild tacted my office about this in our rural and mountainous issue, and we will continue areas. We recognize that we have a to monitor it closely. critical need to improve safety and We are seeing a lot of reduce risk for our residents and our progress in the initial stages first responders. However, we also of our rebuilding process with need to support our community’s ability Four Leaf, the highly experito rebuild and recover after the fire while enced firm hired by the County maintaining some local control over how to operate its Rebuilding Permit we address safety concerns through alter- Center. As more properties native means. complete the debris removal

This is not a challenge that began processes, rebuilding permits are coming overnight. Our mountainous areas in. And along with Supervisor Ryan began developing in the 1800s, and the Coonerty, whose district was also impacted road network that supports our rural by the fire, my office received approval by the Board to request a temporary suspension of local rules to allow timber operations on the weekend in an effort to speed up the clearing of dead and damaged trees on timberland.

Meanwhile, the economy is opening up more as our COVID-19 indicators continue to improve, with our County expected to move into the Orange Tier (moderate spread) this week and then the Yellow Tier (minimal spread) several weeks later. As of March 29, more than 149,000 County residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and of the more than 70,000 doses of vaccine received by the County, all but about 8 percent has been distributed with the rest allocated for future use.

All residents over the age of 50 will be eligible April 1 and then anyone over 16 will be eligible April 15. We know it has been difficult for many residents to schedule an appointment with their healthcare provider or other vaccine distributors, but we anticipate more vaccine will be available in coming weeks.

For more information on how to schedule an appointment, visit the County’s COVID-19 website at santacruzhealth.org/coronavirus and click on the Vaccine section.

Lastly, I’d like to close with some great news. We were fortunate in 2019 to reopen the California Redemption Value center at the Ben Lomond Transfer Station with a new partner, Grey Bears. The most recent participation numbers tell the story. For the 12-month period ending in February, the operation yielded more than $306,000 in redemption value paid to customers. More than 3,600 unduplicated customers were served across nearly 7,100 transactions, and the weight of redeemed materials exceeded 419,000 pounds.

Many thanks go to Grey Bears and the Department of Public Works for their collaboration on making this a successful venture. n

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As always, if District 5 residents have any comments or questions, please contact me at bruce.mcpherson@santacruzcounty.us or 831-454-2200.

Editor’s note: Public comments regarding Board of Forestry and Fire Protection matters or actions should be submitted to publiccomments@bof.ca.gov.