Did PG&E Deliver? A Look at the March 2 District 5 Town Hall in Boulder Creek
On Monday, March 2, Boulder Creek residents packed the Rec Center gym for Supervisor Monica Martinez’ town hall with PG&E. “For those of us who live in the mountains, power is truly the backbone of our everyday life,” Martinez told the crowd. “I’ve heard from many of you, particularly during the extended outages during the holiday season. And I know that the frustration is real. And I also know that the stakes are high.”
Martinez designed the evening as a working session – with PG&E subject matter experts stationed around the room, follow-up cards for residents to document specific issues, and a stated goal of closing the loop on accountability.
PG&E Regional Manager Jeremy Howard, a 26-year PG&E veteran who oversees the Central Coast region from Santa Cruz to Santa Barbara, opened with a detailed walkthrough of the December outages that had prompted the meeting.
Howard presented stark numbers: 193 damage locations in Santa Cruz County from the Christmas storm, winds hitting 91 mph, and both major transmission lines into the region knocked out simultaneously. He defended the restoration timeline and pledged that contractor notification failures, including crews arriving without warning and cutting the wrong trees, would be addressed at internal safety meetings.
Not everyone left satisfied. One resident watching online called the evening “an advertising opp.” It’s a fair structural critique: PG&E controlled its own presentation, the most pointed questions got redirected to after-meeting side conversations, and no binding commitments were confirmed.
But the meeting had its value. The Lompico Neighborhood Association’s findings of unpermitted creek-zone tree cutting and denied damage claims are now on the public record. The 13-year gap on promises of community resource centers during power outages was acknowledged. Residents enrolled in assistance programs they may not have known existed. And PG&E’s position on undergrounding, and that Santa Cruz County ranks behind Sierra foothill counties, is now a public statement that can be formally addressed.
Attendees who did not have an opportunity to present an issue during the Q&A were urged to complete the follow-up cards with contact information and details of their concerns. Howard said, “We would love to follow up with you on those issues specifically.”
Martinez promised, “You will get your question answered. Whether it’s in this public forum or afterwards I’m committed to getting you the answer you are looking for.”
The real verdict will come from whether the follow-up cards lead to solutions and whether the contractor accountability pledge to landowners was real.
We’ll be following up. Let us know when PG&E or Supervisor Martinez’ office has contacted you since the March 2 meeting and how your situation is being resolved.
View the PG&E presentation and Q&A portions of the town hall on Martinez’ facebook page.
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