Santa Cruz Co. hopes Panetta will expedite funding for storm damage

Congressmen Jimmy Panetta toured parts of Aptos hit hard by recent storms Saturday.

“Being in Washington is fine but this is what the job is about,” said Panetta. “Having boots on the ground so that you can make sure that you help the community here that you represent.”

The congressman looked at slip outs on Valencia Road which forced closure of the road and elementary school. Another slip out on Soquel Drive caused the road to drop more than eight feet.

“We have three declared natural disasters through here,” said Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend. “One for the December storm events, the January storm events and February storm events. Given the events that we’ve had over the last few days, it’s possible the Board of Supervisors will consider another disaster declaration request of funds.”

County officials hope Panetta can expedite the process for the county to receive state and federal funding to fix damages as quickly as possible.

“These visits allow me to get a full understanding of the damage, so that I can relay that information to the necessary agencies that will provide funding, that will provide remedies for the damage that we’re seeing here,” said Panetta.

The slip outs on Valencia Road and Soquel Drive are just two of more than 130 damage sites in Santa Cruz County, which public works said so far has a $30 million price tag to fix.

“Right now we have $2 plus million dollars just in clean-up costs that we hope to get reimbursed at some point,” said John Preseleigh, director of Santa Cruz County Public Works.

“I think it’s really time for the county to look at how they maintain roads here,” said Aptos resident Nick Macy. “I do have to wonder if some of this damage might not have been so bad if the maintenance would have been there over the last decade or so.”

Some residents also said all of the destruction from the storms to their infrastructure has made them feel insecure.

“We had a tree go over in our road and neighbors got together and took out the trees because the county is so busy with so many other problems that here we do feel isolated,” said Dawn Wells of Aptos.

Officials said they are still accessing damages and fleshing out how to fix them.