In today's newscast:
Santa Cruz removes call boxes
The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission is currently removing all county emergency call boxes.
RTC spokesperson Shannon Munz says the 65 call boxes were no longer cost-effective for the county, since more people are relying on cell phones.
"The RTC spends approximately $60,000 to $70,000 a year on maintaining these call boxes," she said. "In 2025, there were only 38 service calls."
The county decommissioned the phones within the last few months and is now removing them. Munz says other counties like Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura have made similar moves.
She adds that even in areas of the county with spotty cell service, the number of calls was minor. There is no plan to replace them.
Help for Altadena?
In 2025, the Eaton Fire ravaged the community of Altadena, destroying more than 9,000 structures.
Now, Southern California state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, who represents Altadena, has put forward a bill to protect the town from real estate speculators while residents rebuild.
The bill would exempt Altadena from two prominent state housing laws that make it easier for developers to build small houses on land reserved for single-family homes, and to split land into smaller parcels.
But some see a flipside to Pérez’s bill.
"Pro-development advocates and even some Altadenans I talked to, they say these state housing laws that the bill would put on pause could help homeowners who are struggling to pay for reconstruction," said reporter Ben Christopher, who wrote about the bill for our partner CalMatters. "So, for example, a lot of fire survivors were under-insured. They're facing rising construction costs, and allowing them to sell off a piece of their property could help them to close that financial gap."
SB 1090 sailed through Assembly committees last week.
Read Christopher's full story here.
