ARTICLE
Last week on Wednesday morning a group of local Chamber members, businesses and public sector leaders boarded a motor coach from Cabrillo College Parking Lot L for the Chamber’s 2022 Community Leadership Visit (CLV). After a two year pause, the CLV was rebooted. In the past visits were to various locations around the western US. The concept was initiated by the Chamber’s former CEO in 2012, Visits by community leaders to learn about the experiences of other cities and counties with similar issues. This provides an opportunity to see and discuss time-tested processes that pay real dividends to the participants and their communities. The Santa Cruz County Chamber has organized these visits for Santa Cruz County community decision makers. During these visits, local leaders travel to a different community, meet with leaders there, and explore how they have addressed some of the same problems our area faces. The 2022 CLV was another shining example of how invaluable this trip to neighboring Monterey County has opened the eyes and ears of our local leaders. In a word, the CLV was amazing. Foremost, let's give a huge shout out to our CLV sponsors: Kaiser Permanente, Poly, City of Santa Cruz Economic Development Dept., Bay Federal Credit Union, Cabrillo College, The Dream Inn, Swenson Builders, Santa Cruz County Bank, National Development Council, 1st Capital Bank, 90.3 KAZU, Comcast and Santa Cruz-Monterey Signs. Putting on the CLV takes a huge lift in coordinating our travel logistics, hotel accommodations, restaurants and the various site visits in Monterey County. We stayed at the Monterey Plaza Hotel as our one night home base and enjoyed meals provided by the Farm in Aptos, 831 Cheese Shop, Tarpy’s Roadhouse in Monterey, Woody’s at the Airport and a special lunch by the student staff at Rancho Cielo. Without a doubt, the 2022 CLV set a high bar for future CLVs. We started the first day with a visit to Joby Aviation in Marina, California. You may have seen several stories about Joby in local press articles and through the lens of local supporters, but the in-person visit to Joby’s manufacturing operation and seeing first-hand the Joby aircraft was mind-boggling. As one CLV participant described the Joby visit “a fantastic tour of Joby Aviation with a great group of people from Santa Cruz County, visiting Joby was like jumping into the future. And now it is just around the corner.” We listened to our tour guides, Cody Cleverly and Dan Coughlin, provide a historic perspective on Joby’s early beginnings to where they are today — a year or so away from launching their commercial air taxi service. The Joby engineers and the entire Joby crew have taken unprecedented steps to build a 21st Century, state-of-art airplane (air taxi) that will be the “Uber” in the sky. The CLV participants marveled at the innovative design and unbelievable precision in the manufacturing process. While there was a minor delay in getting the Joby aircraft onto the tarmac to watch the aircraft take off when we were there, about an hour after touring the facility — we looked in the sky above the Monterey One Pure Water Treatment facility to see the Joby aircraft circling the area. We were in awe of the future transportation option. We continued our tour with a visit to Monterey One Water Treatment facility taking brackish water and turning it into drinking water — and yes we tasted and drank the water. Our tour continued with a stop at Shea Homes in Marina and a final stop of the day at CSUMB where we provided a tour of the large campus from the motor coach. Our Wednesday evening ended with a reception/dinner at Tarpy’s Roadhouse where we were joined by Monterey County community leaders. The informal dinner was a networking opportunity with no prepared speeches or program — just networking with good food (and beverages) and good people. The ride back to the Hotel was at a fever-pitched buzz of high energy. On Thursday morning we jumped on the motor coach with a trip to the Monterey Regional Airport and enjoyed breakfast from Woody’s at the Airport. We received an overview of the airport’s history and a snapshot view of the future of the airport. The airport is expanding its service in the next few years to capture new flights to other western cities with an eye to being a regional airport hub for the central coast. We asked if the Monterey Regional Airport might consider Joby Aviation as a local service provider for customers in the region: the short answer, they are in early discussion about that possibility. The next stop was at Central Coast Community Energy (3CE) to listen and learn about the 3CE early beginnings. This was the brainchild of former chamber board member Ginny Johnson as Supervisor Bruce McPherson’s policy aide, seven years ago. Now, 3CE has services from Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterey, San Luis Obispo and reaching Santa Barbara County. A regional agency focusing on delivering renewable energy to the Central Coast. The CLV tour continued with a visit to Rancho Cielo — the workforce development site in northern Salinas on a 100 acre site where the focus is on developing career skills for our youth. A high school education and vocational training facility with an ag technology mecantoinic, auto/diesel repair, construction academy, culinary academy, welding and fabrication and youth corps for kids 16-24, moves disadvantaged kids on a different career path. The culinary academy students helped cook, prepare, and serve our delicious lunch. On Thursday afternoon we headed to downtown Salinas with a quick stop at the Salinas Train Station and a visit with the Transportation Agency of Monterey County (TAMC). Todd Muck the executive director of TAMC (an agency similar to our Santa Cruz Regional Transportation Agency (RTC)) provided an overview of the various transit programs and projects in the works for Monterey County. Like the 2016 Santa Cruz Measure D 1/2 cent sales tax measure, Monterey County voters supported a 3/8th cent sales tax which is providing the local funding source to match state and federal funds. While a majority of the local funds are targeted to city streets, county roads, and highway improvements, two specific projects are high priority for TAMC. They will operationalize a bus service from Marina to Seaside/Monterey City limits using a separate trail that parallels Highway One to elevate traffic congestion on the highway during south (morning) and north (evening) traffic times. The second project is to operationalize a Monterey County Rail Extension from Salinas to San Jose connecting the central coast to the Bay Area and beyond. This rail service would have a junction stop at the Pajaro Station in Monterey County close to the City of Watsonville. That connection could be the nexus for the Santa Cruz rail/trail line. Our last site stop was a visit to a bank building that was converted into a mixed use six story apartment project where the top five floors are studio and one bedroom apartments. The ground floor is the Alvarado Brewery Company’s newest location in the downtown Salinas center. The 2022 (two-day) CLV ended with a return motor coach ride to Cabrillo College. In a word, the CLV delivers robust content, high level site visits and unparalleled opportunity to network. We will soon hold a debrief meeting with our CLV travelers and begin the discussion where we will travel to in 2023. Check our CLV page for future information.
Last week on Wednesday morning a group of local Chamber members, businesses and public sector leaders boarded a motor coach from Cabrillo College Parking Lot L for the Chamber’s 2022 Community Leadership Visit (CLV). After a two year pause, the CLV was rebooted. In the past visits were to various locations around the western US. The concept was initiated by the Chamber’s former CEO in 2012, Visits by community leaders to learn about the experiences of other cities and counties with similar issues. This provides an opportunity to see and discuss time-tested processes that pay real dividends to the participants and their communities. The Santa Cruz County Chamber has organized these visits for Santa Cruz County community decision makers. During these visits, local leaders travel to a different community, meet with leaders there, and explore how they have addressed some of the same problems our area faces. The 2022 CLV was another shining example of how invaluable this trip to neighboring Monterey County has opened the eyes and ears of our local leaders. In a word, the CLV was amazing.
Foremost, let's give a huge shout out to our CLV sponsors: Kaiser Permanente, Poly, City of Santa Cruz Economic Development Dept., Bay Federal Credit Union, Cabrillo College, The Dream Inn, Swenson Builders, Santa Cruz County Bank, National Development Council, 1st Capital Bank, 90.3 KAZU, Comcast and Santa Cruz-Monterey Signs. Putting on the CLV takes a huge lift in coordinating our travel logistics, hotel accommodations, restaurants and the various site visits in Monterey County. We stayed at the Monterey Plaza Hotel as our one night home base and enjoyed meals provided by the Farm in Aptos, 831 Cheese Shop, Tarpy’s Roadhouse in Monterey, Woody’s at the Airport and a special lunch by the student staff at Rancho Cielo. Without a doubt, the 2022 CLV set a high bar for future CLVs.
We started the first day with a visit to Joby Aviation in Marina, California. You may have seen several stories about Joby in local press articles and through the lens of local supporters, but the in-person visit to Joby’s manufacturing operation and seeing first-hand the Joby aircraft was mind-boggling. As one CLV participant described the Joby visit “a fantastic tour of Joby Aviation with a great group of people from Santa Cruz County, visiting Joby was like jumping into the future. And now it is just around the corner.”
We listened to our tour guides, Cody Cleverly and Dan Coughlin, provide a historic perspective on Joby’s early beginnings to where they are today — a year or so away from launching their commercial air taxi service. The Joby engineers and the entire Joby crew have taken unprecedented steps to build a 21st Century, state-of-art airplane (air taxi) that will be the “Uber” in the sky. The CLV participants marveled at the innovative design and unbelievable precision in the manufacturing process.
While there was a minor delay in getting the Joby aircraft onto the tarmac to watch the aircraft take off when we were there, about an hour after touring the facility — we looked in the sky above the Monterey One Pure Water Treatment facility to see the Joby aircraft circling the area. We were in awe of the future transportation option.
We continued our tour with a visit to Monterey One Water Treatment facility taking brackish water and turning it into drinking water — and yes we tasted and drank the water. Our tour continued with a stop at Shea Homes in Marina and a final stop of the day at CSUMB where we provided a tour of the large campus from the motor coach.
Our Wednesday evening ended with a reception/dinner at Tarpy’s Roadhouse where we were joined by Monterey County community leaders. The informal dinner was a networking opportunity with no prepared speeches or program — just networking with good food (and beverages) and good people. The ride back to the Hotel was at a fever-pitched buzz of high energy.
On Thursday morning we jumped on the motor coach with a trip to the Monterey Regional Airport and enjoyed breakfast from Woody’s at the Airport. We received an overview of the airport’s history and a snapshot view of the future of the airport. The airport is expanding its service in the next few years to capture new flights to other western cities with an eye to being a regional airport hub for the central coast. We asked if the Monterey Regional Airport might consider Joby Aviation as a local service provider for customers in the region: the short answer, they are in early discussion about that possibility.
The next stop was at Central Coast Community Energy (3CE) to listen and learn about the 3CE early beginnings. This was the brainchild of former chamber board member Ginny Johnson as Supervisor Bruce McPherson’s policy aide, seven years ago. Now, 3CE has services from Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterey, San Luis Obispo and reaching Santa Barbara County. A regional agency focusing on delivering renewable energy to the Central Coast.
The CLV tour continued with a visit to Rancho Cielo — the workforce development site in northern Salinas on a 100 acre site where the focus is on developing career skills for our youth. A high school education and vocational training facility with an ag technology mecantoinic, auto/diesel repair, construction academy, culinary academy, welding and fabrication and youth corps for kids 16-24, moves disadvantaged kids on a different career path. The culinary academy students helped cook, prepare, and serve our delicious lunch.
On Thursday afternoon we headed to downtown Salinas with a quick stop at the Salinas Train Station and a visit with the Transportation Agency of Monterey County (TAMC). Todd Muck the executive director of TAMC (an agency similar to our Santa Cruz Regional Transportation Agency (RTC)) provided an overview of the various transit programs and projects in the works for Monterey County. Like the 2016 Santa Cruz Measure D 1/2 cent sales tax measure, Monterey County voters supported a 3/8th cent sales tax which is providing the local funding source to match state and federal funds. While a majority of the local funds are targeted to city streets, county roads, and highway improvements, two specific projects are high priority for TAMC. They will operationalize a bus service from Marina to Seaside/Monterey City limits using a separate trail that parallels Highway One to elevate traffic congestion on the highway during south (morning) and north (evening) traffic times. The second project is to operationalize a Monterey County Rail Extension from Salinas to San Jose connecting the central coast to the Bay Area and beyond. This rail service would have a junction stop at the Pajaro Station in Monterey County close to the City of Watsonville. That connection could be the nexus for the Santa Cruz rail/trail line.
Our last site stop was a visit to a bank building that was converted into a mixed use six story apartment project where the top five floors are studio and one bedroom apartments. The ground floor is the Alvarado Brewery Company’s newest location in the downtown Salinas center.
The 2022 (two-day) CLV ended with a return motor coach ride to Cabrillo College. In a word, the CLV delivers robust content, high level site visits and unparalleled opportunity to network. We will soon hold a debrief meeting with our CLV travelers and begin the discussion where we will travel to in 2023. Check our CLV page for future information.