Santa Cruz County Grand Jury
• 2023-2024
Honoring Commitments to the Public County Agency Actions in Response to
⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Note: Missing finding numbers detected: F10, F11, F13, F14, F15, F16, F17, F18, F19, F20
Findings 11 findings
F1
Page 9
County and City website information is sometimes missing, out-of-date, and inaccurate; links may be broken. Thus, many city and county departments aren't updating their websites often enough to keep citizens informed.
F2
Page 9
County and City administrations lack a process to review content accuracy and currency and thereby assure timely correction and revision of content. Honoring 2019-2020 Commitments published June 7, 2023
F3
Page 6
While an emergency generator has been procured, adequate testing of methods of connection and operation has not been done yet.
F4
Page 4
The City of Santa Cruz’s failure to conduct thorough, regular on-site inspections of the DeLaveaga Golf Course’s restaurant/lodge resulted in excessive renovation costs to the City of Santa Cruz. This contributed to more than doubling the original estimates to bring the building up to code.
F5
Page 4
The new draft Operations Plan lacks the necessary robustness to communicate how major golf course operations will be managed at DeLaveaga Golf Course, including but not limited to facility inspections, water use policies, variable pricing policies, charitable policies, operations review, and basic roles, responsibilities, and authority. Key 2020 Recommendations:
F6
Page 16
Although the Cities of Capitola, Scotts Valley, and Watsonville agreed that there appear to be unused or underutilized parcels of land that could possibly be used for homeless services, it is not clear how this could be done.
F7
Page 16
ThemasterplanforCoralStreetbeingworkedbytheCityofSantaCruzincludes considerationoflimitingvehicleaccesstoCoralStreet,butthegrantsreceivedby theCityandtheplantobuild120unitsofsupportivehousingpreemptthe originalGrandJuryrecommendationtoconsiderclosingit.
F8
Page 16
Staffing shortages made automating the process for updating the website of the City of Santa Cruz and redesigning the website of the City of Scotts Valley more difficult.
F9
Page 17
Data security is an important issue, including the security of voter registration data and it is unknown if measures have been taken in this area.
F12
Page 7
There are parcels of land throughout the county that appear to be unused or underutilized, and could possibly be used to build housing for the homeless.
F21
Page 7
If underutilized parcels of land throughout Santa Cruz County were identified, such as the area near Coral Street in Santa Cruz and the parcel adjacent to the County Mental Health Building in Watsonville, these parcels could potentially be used to increase the number of beds and services to support the homeless. Key 2020 Recommendations:
Recommendations 2
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R4Page 13The County Elections Department should incorporate amendments to ELEC 2188 (1994), as specified in AB 1678 and AB 1044, in the county application and website information, namely that county recipients must inform the Secretary of State of a data breach, and that County Applicants may be subject to data security training.
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R9Page 7By December 31, 2020, the City of Santa Cruz should evaluate whether closing Coral Street permanently to thru traffic, to make more space available for additional housing and services for the homeless, would be a viable option. (F13 was cited in the 2019-2020 Grand Jury report, but this probably should have been F12 and/or F21) Requested 2020 Responses:[13]
Conclusions 1
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CL1 Page 14The 2022-2023 Grand Jury reviewed responses to five of the 2019-2020 reports and found that, in general, commitments were kept. In some cases, the agencies are implementing recommendations but it’s not clear if the actions are in response to the Grand Jury or whether they were instigated by the agencies. The Grand Jury also reviewed Ready? Aim? Fire!, however we did not evaluate whether commitments were kept. Over the past three years there have been a major wildfire and three other fire-related investigations;[30] [31] therefore, it would be difficult to gauge whether or not the studied entities fulfilled any of the recommendations specifically from the 2019-2020 Grand Jury report. The Grand Jury continues to recommend that all organizations create and regularly update formal records of the actions they take to address Grand Jury recommendations, and to share those records with the public, in accordance with CA Penal Code Section 933(c).[32] Honoring 2019-2020 Commitments published June 7, 2023 Page 14 of 21 Findings and Recommendations General