Susie O'Hara_Santa Cruz City Councilmember_2025-10-31_interview on KZSC's Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club
Release Date: 10/31/2025
KZSC Santa Cruz
Walnut Ave Family & Women's Center is celebrating 90 years in Santa Cruz!!! Started in 1933 as the local chapter of the YWCA; focus is on children, youth, women, family support, advocacy & prevention - children & youth = focus on the next generation, particularly life skills, including how to be in a relationship; added more focus on domestic violence in the 1990s, adding certified training to be an advocate for survivors of domestic violence (they have 2 hotlines, plus walk-in hours in downtown Santa Cruz); new program = "A Place for Change" - an alternative to the legal system...
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Today's luncheon will honor the 14 Women of the Year in Assemblymember Pellerin's District; this is the 3rd annual, & will be held in Santa Cruz at the Seymour Center (the 1st was in San Jose, and the 2nd was in Morgan Hill); discuss each of the 14 women in alphabetical order; one successfully worked on Measure A, a temporary tax in San Jose to fill the gap in health care due to cuts; AAUW is the American Association of University Women; Monte Sereno, population 3500, is the smallest city in the Assemblymember's district - & has no businesses!; the Briggs Initiative was a California...
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Brenda is a UCSC professor, filmmaker, and board member of the Watsonville Film Festival (WFF); the WFF is in its 14th year, having been founded by Consuela Alva when she found there wasn't an outlet for her films in the area; the WFF grew organically over time, & focuses on Latino & Indigenous Stories, with screenings now in Watsonville, Salinas, and Santa Cruz; one of the WFF's short films won an award at DocNYC in New York City!; Brenda's film got an extended standing ovation, and will screen next at the Philadelphia Film Festival; Brenda teaches social documentation &...
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Senator Laird is the chair of the budget committee, with a lot going on, but first a look at his legislative package for this year's session; a lot more resolutions, but bills include helping out local wineries (who are sufferring) by letting them sell at Farmer's Markets...Pajaro Valley...Restore PG&E tax regarding Diablo Canyon...allow swimming in the lake that's at the headwaters of the Salinas River...and a new law prohibiting watering of artificial lawns (!!!! Yes, requires a law to give water districts the authority to prohibit this - a violation would be a misdemeanor with a...
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Ronnie has been in area for 45 years, coming here out of high school because she loved the mountains...and buying a house for $122k (!!!); she is giving a series of 3 presentations on Ben Lomond history - next Thursday is talk , "Mountain Outpost to Thriving Town", which will cover ~1910 or 1915 to 1950; the 1st talk covered 1820 to 1887, the "Formation of Ben Lomond" - logging was part of it, but it was the railroad which allowed wealthy tourists to come to big hotels that were instrumental in the development of the town; Part 2 is all about resorts & vacation homes, with the big...
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Bill Raney, Zach's dad, passed away exactly 1 month ago; Zach was adopted in 1968 from the Monterey Bay Children's Home Society, and lived with Bill & Joanne Walker Raney in the house attached to the Nickelodeon Theater ("Nick 1"); that house was later jacked up & moved down the street so that the Nick could expand ("Nick 2, 3, & 4"; "Great Question "); What possessed Bill & Joanne Walker Raney to start an arthouse cinema in Santa Cruz? ("Great Question ): they had met in North Beach, where Bill was a self-described beatnik (and the subject of his first book) &...
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Chris & Jon started playing music together when they wree 11; Jon went to UCSC, & Chris would visit, as they were best friends; the Jett part of their name came from Chris honoring a grandfather, Rawlin Jett, that he never knew - Curtis Jett gained infamy by murdering a lawyer on the courthouse steps - the Wolf part of their name came from Chris' mom, who told him to stop wolfing down his food; Chris grew up in Georgia, and wrote the song "Straight Back Home to You" as a Road Trip song; album / CD release party a week from tomorrow in Felton; Jon's house, with their studio, burned down...
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Bobby came to Santa Cruz in 1964, when he was still in high school, following a musician he played with in a band; he started the iconic Santa Cruz band, "Snail", in 1968, & Ken Kraft Joined later that year; Snail toured all over...Southern California, Santa Barbara, Bakersfield; Snail landed a record deal in 1978 with Cream Records (David Crook), who had moved down to Hollywood; Snail got air play, & got big in places like Idaho's college towns; they recorded their 2nd album in Bayshore, Florida, where they recorded by day, and the Eagles would record evenings / nights their album,...
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Kim has now been a supervisor for just over a year, having previously learned governance being on the Pajara Valley Unified School Board; a previous interview on Bushwhacker's in late 2024 / early 2025 got derailed when she attended "Supervisor Boot Camp" in Palm Springs - they had booked it for both Kim & her opponent, Kristin Brown, before the election; District 2 includes 30% of all the roads in the county, some 526 miles of roads - & roads are one of the top 3 issues she & her staff deal with, the other 2 being connectivity & PG&E, and the Planning Department; Prop. 1,...
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Zoë is coming to town tonight with 3 people in her Transylvania String Band - they played San Francisco last night; Zoë discovered Klezmer music in high school, and when she moved to New York, she started hanging out with her Klezmer Peeps; a Klezmer pal exposed her to Transylvanian string music, & her reaction was "Huh?!?! What's THAT??!!?", so in 2018, after having won a Fulbright, she traveled to Transylvania, where she met her bandmates; the Fulbright was very, very helpful; discussion of bandmates and the instruments they play, which probably are unfamiliar to everyone; discussion...
info_outlineElected in March, 2024, installed in December, 2024 - City Council Member for District 5, which includes most of U.C. Santa Cruz; background is Civil Engineering - Water Resources - on Water Supply Advisory Committee, and Public Safety Task Force; if you divide the salary ($20k) by the # of hours per week put in to the job, do you make at least the Santa Cruz County Minimum Wage ($16.50/hour)? "Not a chance!!"; review of Councilmember O'Hara's week, from Housing Matters (elimination of day services) to Public Safety to Radius Gallery to FLOC cameras! She arrived in Santa Cruz in 2006 (her husband is an academic), and has worked for the City Manager and the Water Resources Department; deep dive into "Affordable Housing", and what "local preference" is; Pure Water Soquel project, transfering tertiary treated water from the Regional Wastewater Treatment plan to Soquel Ave Treatment plant for injection into an aquifer to combat salt water intrusion (we're all "One Water"); Murray Street Bridge challenges, and reaching out to businesses; Councilmember O'Hara called "Super Freshman" by Mayor Fred Keeley because she knows how the city runs, what you should step in, and what you shouldn't step in!
An interview on "The Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club" with "Dangerous Dan", "DJ Spark Plug" & "DJ Wrangle", airing Friday mornings on KZSC 88.1 FM Santa Cruz, California.