u/orangelover95003

The flyer reads “Say No to Ryan Coonerty Say No to Inherited Power”

Not yes or even maybe but NO!

Renee Golder, running for District 6, is raising a lot of money for a city council race, almost as much as Ami Chen Mills who is running for mayor. Scott Newsome (District 4) has more money than Hector Marin (District 4) and Gabriella Noak (District 6) combined, and that amount for Scott is more than three candidates for mayor: Chris Krohn, Gillian Greensite and Joy Schendeldecker.

Ryan Coonerty of course has access to half of all the money involved in the mayor's race. More charts and info here: https://fppc.dsasantacruz.org/charts

It's amazing how much money is in these local city races on the Coonerty / Golder / Newsome slate.

Who writes emails like this? Seriously not even AI would do this.

People who live in cars and RVs throughout the Bay Area are moving between cities as crackdowns on street encampments ramp up, a trend that pushed Oakland officials to adopt a new policy speeding up tows over concerns the city is becoming a “destination” for displaced residents.
Advocates for homeless people and some experts are horrified at the regional crackdown. Margot Kushel, a physician and UC San Francisco researcher who leads the largest study of homelessness in the U.S., said Bay Area cities are competing in a “race to the bottom” to pass stronger restrictions on encampments than their neighbors.
The consequences are disastrous for those priced out of the housing market, she said. When forced to move repeatedly, residents often lose shelter, critical paperwork and medications.Outreach workers can’t find their clients. And doctors lose touch with patients, driving worse health outcomes in a population already at risk.

Laura Eldridge, 61, raises her arms in exasperation while a San Jose Police officer over sees the towing of the trailer she lives in as the city continues to clear homeless encampments in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group) 

“You would hope there would be some better way to handle this than treating people as something to throw out and push away, as opposed to our neighbors,” Kushel said.

The scale of homelessness in the Bay Area is massive. The most recent estimates clocked 9,500 homeless people in Alameda County and 10,700 in Santa Clara County, most commonly living in vehicles. It’s also fluid — one city’s crackdown may push residents across borders.
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“If we don’t act, we risk becoming a destination for displacement from other cities, and that is indeed happening,” Patricia Brooks, chief of staff to council President Kevin Jenkins, said at a council meeting.

A San Jose Police officer looks inside a trailer that is prepared to be towed in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group) 

Brooks said crackdowns in San Jose and San Francisco inspired Oakland’s new policy, which will go into effect this summer. Mountain View led the region, adopting citywide restrictions on RVs in 2020; enforcement began two years later.
After months of intense debate, the Oakland City Council passed a new policy on April 14 to accelerate the removal of cars and RVs on city streets. In a major change, Oakland will no longer consider vehicles as encampments — allowing enforcers to tow vehicles with less notice to occupants, who will have weaker rights than people living in tents. Far more homeless people live in vehicles than in tents in the East Bay city.
The Supreme Court paved the way for the regional crackdown with a landmark 2024 decision allowing cities to pass camping bans even without shelters available. That decision is reshaping the rules in California, home to almost half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless people. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pressured cities and counties to clear camps faster and find solutions to homelessness, but without regular state funding.
For Newsom and a growing chorus of local officials in the Bay Area, including the Oakland City Council, efforts are long overdue to return public spaces to community uses and better manage public health and safety issues associated with some camps.
Early adopters
In San Jose, officials passed rules to cite and arrest homeless people who decline offers of shelter and directed workers to aggressively clear camps, including an ongoing operation to dismantle the last major homeless community in the city.

An RV sits parked on Asbury Street at Columbus Park on July 28, 2025, weeks before the city of San Jose is set to begin clearing the large homeless encampment. (Devan Patel/Bay Area News Group) 

Mayor Matt Mahan has also overseen efforts to break up congregations of RVs and carve no-parking zones, towing vehicles if occupants don’t move by deadlines. City data shows the vast majority of people move before enforcers seize their vehicle, said Colin Heyne, a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation.
The results? Some neighborhoods are getting a break from communities of vehicle-dwellers, but inhabitants have described “nightmare” scenarios of forced relocations with no place to go.
“We feel this approach has balanced the need to clean up locations and provide relief to neighborhoods while respecting the needs of unhoused residents,” Heyne said.
In San Francisco, officials last fall debuted a two-hour parking limit on oversized vehicles, unless residents can prove they’ve lived in the city for a year.
“We had far too many RVs on our streets,” Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a social media post this month. “Families living in really terrible conditions.”
The city has towed more than 350 RVs since November 2025, according to El Tecolote newspaper. Most of their occupants were left without housing, the newspaper reported, but some successfully moved indoors through a city program.
Oakland’s new rules
Although inspired by other cities’ crackdowns, it’s unclear how much Oakland will enforce its new, tougher policy. Cupid Alexander, the city’s new homelessness policy chief, said in an email that the Oakland Police Department and Department of Transportation are drafting procedures. Alexander took the Oakland job this month after working as San Jose’s deputy housing director.
The policy keeps some protections for people living in RVs and cars. The city must “attempt to identify” shelter space before towing away someone’s home, Alexander said.

Kelly Thompson, who has been homeless for more than seven years, talks about his experience living in his RV at a homeless encampment at 24th and Campbell streets in West Oakland of Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, April 29, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) 

“I can understand the city wanting to thin out some of the RVs,” said Kelly Thompson, 78, who has lived in a camper for years in Oakland. Many are “junkers that don’t run” and clog city streets, he said, especially in the West Oakland neighborhood where he lives now, up against an industrial lot.
“But they’re shelters for people,” Thompson said.
In that neighborhood, near Mandela Parkway and 14th Street, dilapidated RVs line whole city blocks. Where people haven’t yet set up camp, businesses block the sides of streets with tree trucks or concrete bollards to keep them away.
Around the corner from a strip of dozens of RVs, Henry, a retiree who declined to give his last name, worked in the garden of the house where he’s lived for 60 years.
“I’d like to see the city just move these folks,” he said.

A biker rides past a line of RVs parked at a homeless encampment on Poplar Street in West Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, April 29, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) 

Henry said the RVs attract drug dealing and prostitution, and when thieves steal the copper wires from the street lights in front of his home, he blames camp residents.
“No sanitation, no nothing,” he said. “They can do almost anything they want, and the cops don’t come. It’s sick that the city is putting off policing the area.”
As they wait to see what the new policy will mean for Oakland, advocates note the city has already experimented with tougher crackdowns.
Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and her predecessor, former Mayor Sheng Thao, both ramped up sweeps, temporarily clearing streets in some neighborhoods but pushing residents into others. This winter, officials admitted in an interview with this organization that two years of intensive clearings didn’t reduce the number of camps. 
Officials describe a city overwhelmed by need. More people become homeless in Oakland each year than those who find homes, and budget issues recently forced officials to close shelters — including one for 30 residents in RVs.

Gillian Greensite, Hector Marin and Gabriella Noack didn’t respond. Tony Nunez is the only candidate who responded who did not oppose rail abandonment.

https://www.railandtrail.org/2026-06-candidate-survey

“WATSONVILLE — Time has run out for the effort to keep Santa Cruz County’s first battery energy storage project within the purview of local decision makers.
The developer of the Seahawk Energy Storage project at 90 Minto Road in unincorporated Watsonville recently informed county leadership that it plans to opt in to a state-managed process for securing construction permits instead of waiting for finalization of a county ordinance.
In a May 1 letter to County Executive Office Nicole Coburn, New Leaf Energy project lead Max Christian wrote that “after evaluating the alternative permitting paths for the Seahawk BESS (battery energy storage system) project, and the need to balance our preference for the local process along with deadlines imposed by the California Independent System Operator, New Leaf Energy has elected to permit the Seahawk project through the state ‘Opt-in’ process that is managed by the California Energy Commission, per AB (Assembly Bill) 205.”
New Leaf will withdraw its project application with the county and the soonest it can submit an application with the state is Sunday.
Christian previously explained to the Sentinelthat it took New Leaf three years and significant financial investment to secure capacity in California’s energy grid from the independent operator. But to hold that energy space, the operator needs to see steady project progress and the developer fears the county’s pace and the local rules that are continuing to take shape in its ordinance could threaten its viability.
Christian wrote that New Leaf communicated its “full support” for a draft ordinance reviewed by the county Board of Supervisors at a Jan. 13 meeting and that it continues to believe that the unmodified provisions of that ordinance make up “one of the — if not the — strongest battery storage ordinances in the country.”
Before advancing the draft ordinance to environmental review at the January meeting, the county Board of Supervisors added several amendments that raised some red flags for New Leaf.
“In particular, the amendment requiring an additional discretionary approval by the Board of Supervisors for a transfer of ownership of the project is unprecedented, and would likely prevent the necessary upstream procurement commitments for construction on the timeline required to meet CAISO (California Independent System Operator) deadlines,” wrote Christian. “By contrast, the CEC’s (California Energy Commission’s) Opt-in process has clear criteria in place for the project application review, as well as set timelines that will provide NLE (New Leaf Energy) the needed process visibility to proceed with the next steps of engineering design and equipment procurement — both of which will allow Seahawk to stay on course with CAISO deadlines if the CEC approves the permit application.”
The decision marks a meaningful pivot that New Leaf directly telegraphed weeks ago and has stated was a possibility for more than year. In early April, Christian told the Sentinel that the energy developer submitted a preapplication to the energy commission, in part, so it and other stakeholders could learn more about the state’s process.
A spokesperson for the energy commission confirmed at the time that its staff consults with officials in the jurisdiction where a storage project has been proposed and takes public comment from the area’s residents. The spokesperson also noted that if a local jurisdiction has an ordinance restricting energy storage facilities, that ordinance will be factored into the agency’s analysis.
Reached for comment Monday, Santa Cruz County Community Development and Infrastructure spokesperson Tiffany Martinez said the county was not surprised by Christian’s letter.
“We are gratified that New Leaf recognized the significant work of County staff in developing a draft ordinance that both facilitates the transition to clean energy and establishes some of the strongest local safety, environmental, and land-use protections anywhere,” Martinez wrote in an email. “While the project may move forward under state jurisdiction, the County’s expectations remain unchanged. Under the state process, environmental review is required to evaluate potential impacts and identify mitigation measures. The draft ordinance was designed to reflect local priorities, including protections for agricultural land, safety setbacks, emergency response planning, and long-term site restoration. We look forward to learning more about how those protections will be incorporated into the state process, as well what a future community benefits agreement looks like.”
New Leaf submitted an application at the county for the 160-unit, 16-acre project in December 2024, just as staff was getting started on drawing up a local ordinance to set local regulations and standards for the increasingly popular technology. But those plans were thrown off course only a few months later when the Vistra battery energy storage plant in Moss Landing erupted in flames and raised ongoing questions and community concern about safety and environmental impacts. Formal review of the ordinance was delayed several times after the Moss Landing fire.
The issue has also taken on political significance in recent months, since the 4th District seat on the Board of Supervisors represents the area where the project was proposed and is also up for election in the June 2 primary. All three candidates in the race, including the incumbent, have come out against the project.
Christian reassured Coburn that New Leaf would continue to engage with the county throughout the state process and underscored future development of a “community benefits agreement” with the county.
He wrote, “New Leaf is confident that the CEC Opt-in process will yield a safe and thoroughly vetted project that will deliver grid reliability, lower energy costs and climate action benefits. In addition to the Community Benefits Agreement, the CEC process requires a full environmental review, a thorough vetting by battery safety experts, an emergency response plan that is developed in coordination with local fire agencies, and a robust community input process that will include local public meetings and CEC-managed transparency.”