Читатели Санты-Круз критикуют рост тарифов на воду и отсутствие освещения женского футбола

How ParaCruz makes a difference in people’s lives You might notice ParaCruz vans around Santa Cruz throughout the day. It’s easy to see them as simply another part of the transportation system, but this service makes a tremendous difference in people’s lives. ParaCruz is the ADA complementary paratransit service operated by Santa Cruz Metro, providing accessible, door-to-door transportation for individuals unable to use fixed-route buses because of a disability. My 24-year-old daughter has used ParaCruz for several years. We live in the San Lorenzo Valley, so getting anywhere can be challenging. The door-to-door service gives my daughter something incredibly important: independence. Being able to get where she needs to go without depending on family for transportation gives her a sense of freedom and control over her life. The drivers and schedulers have consistently been friendly, patient, and genuinely caring. That kindness matters. ParaCruz is a wonderful example of a public service that is doing exactly what it is supposed to do: helping people participate more fully in their community and giving them greater independence and quality of life. – Alan Luckow, Ben Lomond Coonerty trying to capitalize on opposition to project You have to hand it to Ryan Coonerty. He sure knows how to capitalize on a situation. No sooner had Workbench announced plans to build a six-story, high-density, mixed-use project on the corner of Seabright and Soquel did he express his disapproval, organizing a community meeting about the wildly unpopular proposal and following that up with a Guest Commentary (Sentinel,Aug. 21). In that commentary he also criticized two similar projects under construction on Water Street that are massively out of scale in a neighborhood of predominately single-story structures. I don’t recall Mr. Coonerty raising objection to either of those projects during their planning phases, but he was not pandering for votes at that time. Should he get elected it will be interesting to see if this mayoral candidate who enjoys generous support from developers and real-estate interests maintains the same opinions and acts accordingly. – Michael Funari, Santa Cruz SC Water Department’s ‘painful’ future rate plan Have you noticed all the pro-water department press events lately? It’s softening you up for the painful next five-year rate plan. The water debt increases 106% from $227 million with an additional $216 million new debt. The banks never lose and over the next five years for small users overall residential base rates will go up 59% including a 250% increase in ready-to-serve charges (whether you use any water or not, just in case you thought about conservation to reduce these charges). They “sell” the higher fix charges by saying per ccf (centum cubic feet, or100 cubic feet of water) charges will drop, yes, by a whole 11 cents/ccf in 2027, then up and up they go, up 48% by 2031. The kicker is they will consolidate per ccf charges you so you can’t tell the astronomical amounts you are paying for debt service, not water. Can you dig a well in Santa Cruz? – Garrett Philipp, Santa Cruz Sentinel covered the jamboree but not flag football I think it’s an embarrassment that the Sentinel would cover the football jamboree and not have even one picture of the young women playing flag football in our community. Some of your readers have daughters and we are proud of their football skills and would like to see some coverage of them as well. In this day and age it’s a bit shocking your news agency wouldn’t be aware of this. – Masao Drexel, Santa Cruz Happy to see safety first in weekly fish photo I look forward to the fish photo that accompanies Allen Bushnell’s fascinating fishing column. The latest, of Tony and Maverick Molfino was great. Especially because they are wearing life jackets, PFDs. Good job, Molfinos. Safety first. Please get prepared for El Niño. Hopefully you won’t need a personal flotation device. – Bill Stoesen, Santa Cruz Open primaries would bring moderate candidates Real election reform would be if every state had open primaries where we could vote for (or against) anyone on the ballot and where independents who make up over a third of the voters were not disenfranchised from primary elections. Elections are won in the middle and if the primaries were open we would have pragmatic, moderate candidates instead of the bitterly extreme ones we are being served up by the extremists in both parties. – Cliff Bixler, Bonny Doon