It's 2011

Happy New Year!

The past year has taught me a few fine lessons that I will share, sorry to be boring but it's important to share the good & not so.

Lesson one, don't share a desk or even use a corner as a pile coaster for your coffee cup if this desk happens to be shared with the fastidious 8 year old who sees anything not pertaining to his world as recycling or better yet guinea pig bed liner. Same goes with important items around the house or within the car glovebox (i.e. phone chargers, ipod connectors, or aux cables) as these will be absconded along with any gum or breathmints you may have squirrelled away. Instead of recycling, these items go straight into local service never to be seen again.

Lesson two: this final lesson was learned as the other 2-99 were pretty lame and not worth putting you to sleep with includes the life lesson of honesty is the best policy. Except, perhaps when dealing with the DMV

I would be remiss to not share my personal favorite of the lessons 2010 hit parade, number 43: don' t be disillusioned with smog testing as it applies to that '78 VW Bus that you just had to bring down from Seattle. Her color is a bright shiny green apple, with the original groovy plaid seat covers. Shagaliciousness. Tinkerbell is her name, pollutin' is her game.

Washington State may be green, but Washington State plated vehicles can be stinky-er that the smoking tent of the governator past. Sacramento may allow gross polluters, but only if tied to big-oil-politically well-heeled lobbyist groups. Washington State is catalytic converter scarce, as is the model of converter needed to make Tinkerbell legal.

The search continues for the thirty-three year old parts.

Local Government Day is this Friday, January 7th. I look forward to seeing you all then and hearing about life lessons of the last year and New Year's Resolutions!

Remember resolution breakers misery loves company.

In the mean time, forward that hoard of pictures you are dying to share with the class..we want to see them too.

All the best to you,
Christine

May I Have A Deep-Fried Twinkie With That?

How can I resist?  When 4th generation food service patron and acting VP of General Services Ted Whitting III shared a nostalgic tale of working a food concession booth at The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk when he was the tender age of seven-
All I could do was wonder what sort of "service" my own household might squeeze outta our own resident eight year old.

Whitting gave such a flowery reminiscence of an era gone by... The pool aptly coined The Plunge was described as a beautiful dance and swim center. The marketing slogan "Santa Cruz- it's cheaper than staying home" described the magical time when The Boardwalk was under the direction of 'Skip' Littlefield circa1927.

Enjoying The Plunge with it's Aeriel acrobatics and seaside culture of fun and fashion. It all sounded so magical. And now, our little amusement park by the ocean is celebrating 103 years of fun in the sun.
The Looff Carousel installed in 1911. Same location as it sits sentry to the entrance of the Boardwalk today and keeps another generation in the saddle as it circles 'round and 'round celebrates a century of service.

Learning of the changes and additions to the boardwalk made me nostalgic for another time. Although the Plunge was filled with sand in 1962, the mini golf course that graces the space can't hold a candle to the sheer glamour and excitement of imagining an evening pool side at the Plunge.

A special thanks to past class member Maggie Ivy '95. Her presentation of Tourism and the industry of promoting our sweet little seaside community kicked off the day. She shared the current strategies behind raking in close to $650M a year. Hint: it's not just a big rake.  Marketing R.O.I was pegged at $10 for every $1 spent. Tourism is key to our community, and the day was as informative as it was fun.

Many Thanks to all of the staff at The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk who  made our class experience such a memorable one.

The Dominican Hospital 411

Before our behind the scenes tour of Dominican Hospital. Did you ever wonder who comes to scoop you up after a heart attack, or a slip in the tub? Those awesome Dominican hospital folks. Greys' Anatomy has got nothin' on our local health professional health care staff ala rock stars.

The same ones who offer great community services and wellness programs that rival any spa or retreat. Gee, lucky us. Really we all got an earful of medicine, or was it a spoonful of sugar to make the details of administration duties at a hospital go down a bit more smoothly. Whatever IT was, I think I can speak for the class: the experience was nothing short of eye-opening and informatively amazing.
Germs, ICU, wash your hands with foamy anti -germmy, repeat over and over until you play with the Cyber-surgery arm that cost a million bucks. Those Italians make amazing coffee AND our robot friend Michelangelo. (See sidebar for video short.)

The burning question for me of course: how many of you were a little scared of the robot'o arm that we all got a chance to "drive." Robotic surgery and the scary B-movie quality of the pixelated microscope video vision left me with a few residual bad dreams. You too? Please share below...

But seriously, the staff, technology, and of course proximity to such a world class medical faculty really made me want to eat another piece of fried chicken steak and biscuit covered in gravy- am I right?
It's a short spin to the ICU specialized Heart Unit. So civilized. These are the folks who teach the folks at other leading hospitals.

Sniglet of the day: Ice those cardiac arrest patients...... stat.

Totally LOVED the description of how to save heart attack victims (ice.)

MY idea ?     Keep lots of ice on hand for a fresh batch while in transit to ICU (simply as a safety net) and enjoy many iced beverages as a benefit.

The healthy lunch was a Thai- salad with iced tea and carrot cake and coffee- Thank you Dominican Hospital catering staff. After looking in the vending machines on campus, I thought my only option might be hydrogenated snack food. Did the operations folks miss the healthy memo from up stairs?

The second half of our session was to see the behind the scenes at a handful of local 401c3's.
Thanks to all that allowed us to enjoy a facilities visit: The Grey Bears, Beach Flats Community Center,  Green space on Soquel Avenue and last but certainly NOT least the ever important Second Harvest Food Bank.

Nice job everyone- pitching into the food bank fund was a classy touch from class 26. Bravo.

Class 26 Kick Starts

The first session of our class met at the Santa Cruz Association of Realtors in Soquel. The sun came out as our first speaker came to the podium, Fred Keeley, Treasurer-Tax Collector for the County, Our keeper of all things spread sheet worthy. Fred was a gracious and funny presenter- not easy when you think about what he has to work with. You've got to enjoy a presentation that begins with a short quip about Satan. Fred shared the Satan story as an example of how our illustrious leader Dave Vincent can find the a positive spin no matter what he's given to present:" Satan is always so stylishly dressed in his matching red and he works so well in his hot environ."

Fun facts to know and yell- courtesy of Fred: 12 percent of the collected property tax dollar is kept locally. 100 percent of sales tax is kept locally.

Our second speaker Dave Bailey of Bailey Properties discussed the challenges of  the real estate and investment subsets. A few rhetorical dark clouds, as he shared the image of people losing homes due to 40% of the homes currently on the market as foreclosures. As the economic melt down continues he forecast this number growing and leveling the real estate playing field from a speculative stand point. "You gotta look at the decisions you make and how they affect everyone as it's going to change the community as we know it." Wise words Dave.

Moving on from the historical perspectives of finance and investments we got a birds eye view of the upcoming changes in travel infrastructure from George Donero, Executive director and Karena Pushnik, Senior planner from the Santa Cruz Regional Transportation Commission.


Details of the nearly finished SCCRTC acquisition of 132 miles of track from union pacific for an alternative commuter route, a carpool-rideshare project that is promoted this week and the allocation of federal stimulus funds currently serving the community with 12.1 M for "shovel-ready" ready projects to understanding how the two-counties share budgets for HIGHWAY 17 were topics of discussion.


The umbrella of services funded by SCCRTC include: freeway service patrol having served over 10,000 people over the last ten years. 511 system with transit information for trip planning.GIS maps to show neighborhood bike routes. See Community solutions.org to learn more.


The current HOV lane project on Hwy1. is in preliminary planning stages with eight miles of planned lane and nine interchanges.  Not your everyday challenge. Pdf files on all of these projects can be found on the website for SCCRT.

A huge thank you to our gracious host.  Kathy Hartman Santa Cruz Association of Realtors in Soquel. The coffee was caffinated, the temperature of the room just right, and the sun shone brightly. 

Thank you for orchestrating such a perfect day.

More Content, More Pics

We have a spot set on youtube for uploading should the spirit move you:
http://www.youtube.com/user/LeadershipSC

For Google apps users, email any pics, posts or pertinent info and I can do the rest..
leadershipsantacruz@gmail.com

More is better...

How Can U Not Contribute?

Hey Class 26- Brains, Brawn, Beauty- Does that remind you of your LSCC class?

Note taking is a bit of a nervous tic for me. I thought it might be fun to have a forum for us to chime in, add content and generally enjoy the idea that should you momentarily check out and lose a thread from the theme of the day, you can point your browser here and find that sniglet of wisdom or civic nugget of information that would make that next conversation over a beer priceless. Why else would you need the kind of walking around knowledge that you can only find on the first Friday of each and every month (at least until we graduate.)

Fear not, the devil is in the details. It's safe to say that if it's worthy of mention someone will remind us, prod, poke and generally post.

At least that IS the hope and inspiration behind the static words residing at this URL.