Santa Cruz Public Safety Task Force To Present Recommendations

After a group of community members met for many months to tackle some of the biggest issues plaguing the city of Santa Cruz, it’s now ready to present its recommendations to city council.

On Tuesday at 7 p.m., the Public Safety Citizen Task Force will present the more than 50 recommendations before the city.

“I’m very proud of the work the task force accomplished. We’re 14 regular folks who love Santa Cruz and want to do our part to make it better,” said Kris Reyes, chair of the Public Safety Citizen Task Force.

It took six months of meeting and now the group is at the finish line. It will now be up to the Santa Cruz City Council to decide what it wants to do with some of the hot-button issues affecting the safety of the city, including the county’s needle exchange program.

“There was strong sentiment around the efficacy of the program and a lot of concern about discarded needles in our public places, and so the recommendation came from many weeks of deliberations,” said Susie O’Hara, city task force staff coordinator. “Santa Cruz City Council is optimistic about all of the task force’s recommendations and I think they spent a lot of time on the needle exchange.”

The program used to be based out of a van on street and operated by volunteers. This April, the county took over and set up two needle kiosk locations. The county collects about 20 pounds of syringes every month in just one kiosk, and said it takes in more syringes than it gives out.

But the task force has issues with the location.

“We think having needle exchange in a residential neighborhood doesn’t lend itself to the best practices in terms of mitigating unintended consequences, so we think that if they move it to a location that’s not in the neighborhood, some of those impacts would be mitigated,” Reyes said.

“We have been getting concerns from the community in terms of worry about the exchange site. We have informed the participants about the need to seek the services and then move off site and we haven’t had any problems at all,” said Lisa Hernandez, health officer for the county.

Hernandez said she appreciates the task force’s work and is interested in seeing the data it used to come up with its recommendations.

At the end of the day, it’s all about getting to the bottom of the dirty problem plaguing the city.

“Based on the outcome of tonight, I’m really quite positive there’s going to be a successful way to move forward with this,” O’Hara said.

The task force came up with more than 50 recommendations, including: making sure there are good after school programs for at-risk youth; reinvigorating public spaces, so everyone feels safe and welcomed; and pushing for high-risk alcohol reform.

It is also asking the city to report back to the public in six and 12 months about what it has done to move its recommendations forward to make Santa Cruz a safe place.