Santa Cruz County News

Although the unemployment rate is hovering around the 10 percent mark in Santa Cruz County, the county's employment development department said there are still jobs out there.

A Central Fire crew wrecked a wildland engine while training in an off-road park Wednesday and it's unclear if the firefighting apparatus can be salvaged, officials reported Thursday.

The How To Guides on entering the many and varied divisions at the Santa Cruz County Fair are now available.

Amid tense negotiations that threatened to derail Scotts Valley's plan to buy the Scotts Valley Sports Center and turn it into a new library, city and Santa Cruz County leaders clashed late last month over the release of $2.2 million held by the county and needed to complete the $4.5 million deal.

A year after California banned the practice, talking on a hand-held cell phone while driving appears to be a hard habit to break for many motorists, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

The cycle of gang violence, which too often leaves a trail of ruined lives in its wake, starts early.

Requests to spare the state from mass budget cuts have been so numerous they jammed Assemblyman Bill Monning's fax machine.

The last time Janie Oliver sang in front of a crowd in Santa Cruz County, a crown was on the line.

A year ago, the Trabing Fire turned dozens of lives upside down. "I saw the devastation and it was heartbreaking," fire victim John Harrington said.

This house on Hubbard Gulch Road in Ben Lomond is the subject of an ownership dispute for which a Los Gatos man was arrested.

As county leaders cut health and human services, furlough employees and reduce office hours to close a record budget shortfall, one more expense is weighing on the bottom line: hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to retirees for unused vacation and sick time.

Local bankers said they are surprised San Jose-based Heritage Bank of Commerce backed out of a deal to buy a downtown Wachovia branch.

Supervisors in Santa Cruz County decided to cut funding to nonprofit organizations in their first step to closing a $5 million budget deficit.

"Here's an analogy: imagine you're Jeff Gordon and you get a speeding ticket." This, is how Judy Malone begins her passionate case against California Senate Bill 250, the mandatory spay and neuter legislation now making its way through the California Legislature.

This month, the Santa Cruz County library oversight board continues to grapple with making $1.3 million in cuts, resulting in the layoff of 25 employees.

The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors is poised to approve a controversial plan to allow more high-density housing in Seacliff, in spite of protest by some neighbor groups.

When Larry Jacobs and his wife Sandra Belin bought a small Pescadero farm in 1980 with the intention of growing produce without pesticides, the farmers in the area laughed at them.

The clouds and fog of this June may not fit the picture of the sunny summer weather vacationers might desire, but it's just fine with firefighters.

A Los Gatos landscape contractor pleaded not guilty Thursday to one felony count of unlawfully causing a fire for allegedly failing to fully extinguish piles of burning debris that sparked the weeklong Summit Fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 2008.

Monterey County District Attorney Dean D. Flippo announced today that Oscar Daniel Pimental Campos, age 21 and a resident of Las Lomas, entered guilty pleas to murder and lewd acts upon a child.