Elect David Terrazas

School district ends bid to build bus yard on the Westside

Matt King – Sentinel staff writer

Article Launched: 05/24/2007 3:00:00 AM PDT

Leaders of Santa Cruz City Schools have killed a controversial Westside bus yard project and will instead create a plan to find the best place for its buses, a dual-language immersion program that’s outgrowing its home and potential new programs.

“We have several facilities circumstances that will come together in the next year or two,” Superintendent Alan Pagano said. “If we have tunnel vision about what’s going to happen at the site, it would be handicapping the district”

The move comes a month after the district asked the Santa Cruz City Council to delay a decision on the project, which the Planning Commission rejected because neighbors objected to the plan. The plan for the Swift Street site included a maintenance shop and parking for 27 maintenance vehicles and 18 buses, mostly short buses, on about two acres between Pacific Collegiate School and Delaware Avenue.

A group called Friends of the Westside threatened to take its complaints to the state Coastal Commission if the City Council approved the bus yard.

“It would be disingenuous of me to say that neighborhood sentiment wasn’t a consideration,” Pagano said. “We want to be good neighbors”

The district has land-use problems that date to the 1990s when it built a new headquarters on Mission Street and then sold it to the county Housing Authority in 2003.

Since then, district officials have been looking for a new bus yard, and its operations have been complicated by closing two elementary schools. One of them, Natural Bridges Elementary, now houses Pacific Collegiate, and the district leases its former Loma Prieta school to a private school.

Those leases expire in the next two years, and the Housing Authority has given the district a three-year lease to keep its buses and maintenance facilities. That gives the district a window to consider the best locations for the dual-immersion instruction, preschool programs, adult education and bus and maintenance facilities.

“It’s the perfect time to look at the overall picture of where everything can go so it all gets put together well,” said Trustee Ken Wagman, who had been the district’s most ardent supporter of the Swift Street plan.

Neighbors opposed to the bus yard project have said they would support using the Swift Street property for educational uses and back a plan to build homes there if the district could work out a plan to swap land with the Housing Authority.

“We’re thankful the district listened,” David Terrazas said. “Our first priority is to see it used for instruction, as it has been in the past. If they didn’t have an instructional use, we’re trying to find an opportunity for teacher and service worker housing”

Contact Matt King at mking@santacruzsentinel.com.