I missed this news last November, but thanks to a report in today's Santa Cruz Sentinel, I can tell you voters approved a measure to tax millionaires 1 percent of their income for more mental health services in Santa Cruz County.

The new revenues could double the number of the mentally ill treated in Santa Cruz, the paper reports today.

Sticking millionaires with the cost of increased and new mental health care treatments, via a ballot proposition, strikes me as a particularly egregious form of political cowardice. Work it into the county budget or propose a more broadly distributed revenue measure? Nah, add a special income tax for the rich, that'll work.

It sets a crummy precedent. What happens next time the county board finds itself unable to muster up the courage to say no, or cut other services when faced with a perceived "need" for more social and health services? Another ballot measure to tax millionaires? I can't see any reason why not, now.

I also have questions about the mentally-ill population in Santa Cruz County. If you've ever hung out in the heart of downtown Santa Cruz, you'll know the vibe is set by armies of young vagrants, many in dreadlocks, congregating for free food and herbal companionship. I believe that after toking on several hundred fatties of BC Bud, many of them undoubtedly qualify as officially mentally ill. But it is largely their own doing.

I wonder how many of them are receiving mental health "treatment" and other forms of public assistance. The more services and handouts offered, the more they flock to town, and make life miserable for people who are pulling their own weight, like small business owners downtown.

Conditions in downtown Santa Cruz have deteriorated badly, as The Sentinel reported last month.

Urine and human feces on the porch. Broken windows. Empty beer bottles. Burglaries. Drug deals in broad daylight. Graffiti and vandalism. Tattered rose bushes. Photographer Willis Campbell has had enough. For the 28 years, his studio has been located in a quaint Victorian house on the corner of Union and Cedar streets, he says no time has been worse for crime and the nuisance of transients than now.

"The drug deals go on right here," Campbell said Tuesday, pointing to the sidewalk and public parking lot across from his business. "Police don’t do anything about it. We feel like hostages in our own town."

Next door to Campbell’s business on Union Street is the private Georgiana Bruce Kirby School, an exclusive school serving students in grades six through 12. Last winter, people camping on the roof set a fire, causing damage to the school, said Stephen Royal, dean of students. Marijuana smoke from people lighting up on the school’s sidewalk has wafted into classroom windows, he said. Also, he said, the school has been victimized by a couple burglaries during the past year. All of the incidents add up to an ongoing problem of crime and vagrancy that Royal says "makes it hard to run a school."

...Dr. William Christie, a dentist on the corner of Center and Union streets since 1973, has been the target of repeated vandalism. Twice in recent years the wooden sign in front of his office has been torn down and ripped to pieces, he said. Often, he said, he arrives to work in the morning to find syringes, needles, bongs fashioned from soda cans, and cigarette butts strewn in the bushes around his office. But, nothing he said, tops what happened in April when he discovered a sleeping bag with human feces left on the front porch and the fire the next day that started in a trash can, destroying the back side of his building.

.....Campbell, the photographer, has added lights to his porch and put a chain rope across his driveway to discourage people from camping.

"Twenty years ago it wasn’t this way," he said. "Fifteen years ago it wasn’t this way."

Hmmm. I wonder what's changed?

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at January 26, 2005 05:08 PM

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