A Bag Too Far – Can California Reform its Initiative Process?
The American Progressive Bag Alliance (APBA), the plastic bag industry lobbying group, has just qualified a referendum on the historic California state wide ban on plastic bags that was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown just last year. As a result, implementation of the ban has been delayed from July 2015 […]
Vote the News: Why the Future of Voting Must Be Habit Forming
A video of Civinomics CEO Manu Koenig at the recent Voting and Elections Summit in Washington DC explaining how we can make democracy a part of everyday life by voting while reading,watching or listening to the news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FfwJczeyc4&list=PLtRB8fQ0zBR8B3UyEp-JupsZVsXJC2BW1&index=10
How Much Do YOU Care About Election Reform?
Our election system is broken: 85% of US House Representatives come from “Safe Districts” where they are unlikely to have a significant challenger. 82% of House Representatives and Senators are male. The result? Only 10% of eligible voters aged 18-24 in CA voted in the last election. That’s right, 90% of young CA voters didn’t vote […]
Presentation from Voting and Elections Summit 2015
Here is a link to full presentation given February 5th, 2015 at the 9th annual Voting and Elections Summit in Washington DC: http://www.slideshare.net/ManuKoenig/vote-the-news-why-the-future-of-voting-will-be-habit-forming Here are two examples of voting units embedded directly into this blog: Make Voting Compulsory in the United States In this year’s midterm elections, just 36.3 percent of the electorate turned out to […]
Leash or Let Loose?
This December the Santa Cruz County Parks and Rec Commission recommended that the Board of Supervisors explore a pilot program for off-leash access on Live Oak Beaches. Right now, taking a dog off-leash could result in a $300+ ticket. Since no one cares about politics so much as when it effects their daily life, or the […]
9 Water Proposals Worth Your Rating
Still haven’t rated the proposals for the future of Santa Cruz’s water supply? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. “Water for Santa Cruz County” is a 19min video overview by Water Aware Founder and Santa Cruz local Scott McGilvray. (Note: this video in no way represents Civinomics opinions or those of its staff). It covers 9 of […]
Santa Cruz Water: Easier Browsing, Deadline Extended to Nov 11th
We’ve been working around the clock to make sure viewing and evaluating all of the great proposals for Santa Cruz’s water future is as easy as possible. This week, we added a more condensed listing of the proposals along with search and categorization features. For example, you can now filter the proposals by search terms […]
Watsonville Update: Main St Improvements Approved, McDonalds next?
Things are growing in Watsonville. At the last Meeting on September 23rd, City Council approved the first stage of its Main St improvement project. The plan includes more sidewalk space, public art and parklets, as well as reducing the number of lanes between River and Beach St from 4 lanes down to 2 lanes. Lane reduction […]
Santa Cruz Water Supply Convention: Our Water, Our Future
The deadline to submit your idea(s) for how to solve Santa Cruz’s water shortage is this Thursday, Sep. 18th at 5pm. Make your submissions to the Santa Cruz Water Supply Advisory Committee here: http://www.santacruzwatersupply.com/event/deadline-expanded-proposal-submission You can also take a sneak peak at the 80+ ideas received so far from 50 different respondents. We’ve posted them on […]
What can Santa Cruz learn from Santa Barbara?
Last weekend (September 4-6) a collection of Santa Cruzans visited Santa Barbara with the intent of learning from the sister City/County/UC how they’re tackling public policy challenges very similar to our own. The trip was the latest in an annual series called the Community Leadership Visit put together by the Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce. […]
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