Our April 6 meeting was at the Seascape Golf Clubhouse
 

 We  had 23 attendees in person and 2 on zoom- Becky and Sue

Co-President Kendra presided

Dr Art gave the thought for the day:  It talking was more important than listening we would have 2 mouths and 1 ear

Visiting Rotarians were
Dave Culver and Tom McCullough from Sunrise

We also had a neophyte potential Rotarian- recently retired Jack Hunt 

Al led us in the Welcome song
And made references to his Portuguese heritage

Pam and Mardi managed to be the only women sitting at tables with 6 men
Where are our women members????

Becky celebrated her 40th wedding anniversary- of course she looks like she must have been a teenage bride- her husband has lived a charmed life
Rich is going on a months- long road trip circling the US with his dog- we expect many Rotary flags

 
Pam is going on a boat and bike trip to Croatia with several other women....when asked if there were any men going the response was essentially, "Why ruin it?"

Kendra and Laura updated us on the Pajaro flood relief.

Kelly has self-appointed as time-keeper- at 12:39 he began ringing his glass impatiently to start the meeting....must have been threatening to intrude on tee time?  Maybe we need an adjunct to Sgt at Arms- Bell ringer?
But then he couldn’t hear the official bell when Kendra rang it, how ironic!


Thursday's meeting (April 13) is at Fairfield Inn.  The board meeting will precede it at 1045.

Membership Monday is April 17 at the Hideout at 530

Derby Day tickets are $100- this promises to be great fun and a great fund raiser so bring yourself, friends, family, Rotary recruits.
 
We are also looking for Sponsors of the event. $500 gets your business/foundation promotional consideration at the event, posts across all our social channels (IG, Fb, TikTok, Twitter) and your logo will be used in the promotional materials surrounding the event. Contact Kendra at kcleary.rotary@gmail.com to sign up today as the earlier you commit the more promo time you get! 

Our guest speaker was Matt Machado, Director of Santa Cruz County Community Development and Infrastructure, which has combined planning and public works
 
 

An engineer by training, Matt has been here 5 years.

He gave a power point/photo presentation on the history of the storms that hit our County starting on New Year’s Eve. 
7 creeks and rivers overflowed.  Several of those streams had multiple 10-year flood levels in 3 months.
Corralitos creek flooded 4 times.
All the County's lakes flooded.
 
 


The Pajaro River had 3 near flood events  then broke out of the levee on the Monterey side
Work has been going on for the Pajaro levee system for 60 years- ostensibly to prevent what just happened.

The Pajaro River watershed is 1300 square miles-twice the size of Santa Cruz County and stretching as far East as the Pinnacles.

Matt had many photos of mudslides, road washouts and damage to homes.

County wide 187 homes had yellow tags- no structural damage, 14 have red tags, but he estimates that only ten per cent are reported because of homeowners fears of the costs and time to rebuild.

The biggest slide is the "Holiday" slide on 9 just West of Highland Park.
There were 150 road failures county wide.

In answer to Kelly's questions about channel maintenance, Matt noted that the creeks are on private land and there are environmental issues with clearing them.

Matt showed photos of waves washing into Rio Del Mar, damage at Capitola and the inundation of Soquel Village.  The beachfront damage was so severe because swells were twenty feet at high tide.
He also showed several photos of the flooding in Pajaro and the efforts of the County to save the wastewater treatment plant by placing 1300 feet of 1-2,000 lb. boulders on the levee edge.

So far the County has removed 200 dumpsters of junk from the flooding from private property, about 100,000 cubic yards.

In a rare (unprecedented?) site, because of the 12 inches of very dense snow at the summit the County had to borrow a snow cat to access higher facilities,

Matt explained that Santa Cruz County' gets only 13% of its money back from the state because of Proposition 13.  As a result we are vastly under-funded for road maintenance and repairs.  He noted that we have 6,000 culverts in the County, many of them are in failure mode- that will cost $400 million to fix.  There isn't anywhere close to that in the budget nor any ready way to solve that problem.


Remember- Thursday's meeting is at Fairfield. We will be having sandwiches from Garden Deli so get your sandwich order into Kendra by Tuesday lunchtime! 
See everyone there!