Guest Columnist

The word "whisky" comes from Scottish and Irish Gaelic, "uisge beatha," or "usquebaugh," meaning "water of life." Many other countries give the same name to their distilled spirits including "eau de vie" in France, "acquavite" in Italy, and "akvavit" in Scandinavia. Why would anyone want to take away something as essential as the "water of life"?

Over the last four years the Board of Supervisors has been working on policies around the dispensing and cultivation of medical cannabis. While work around cannabis in general will be evolving for quite some time, the Board is poised to adopt a commercial cultivation ordinance in early May. Creating a framework for medicinal sales (through local dispensaries) was the first thing addressed by the ordinance a few years ago. While there have been updates to that ordinance, overall the framework for medicinal sales has been established. Creating a framework for commercial cultivation — both on the medicinal side and now, through state law change, the recreational side, has proved more difficult.

2017 was a boring year for the financial markets. It seemed like every day last year the S&P 500 and NASDAQ creeped higher and higher. In fact, 2017 was one of the calmest year for the markets in decades. 2018 has started off a different story. After blasting off in January with the S&P 500 rising almost 6 percent, February and March have been met with large swings up and down, ending down 0.8 percent on a total return basis at the end of March. With this recent volatility, now is a good time to understand what is going on and how you might be affected.

Where did the word "museum" come from? The word is from ancient Greece and describes a building or temple dedicated to the Muses. OK, who were the Muses? In mythology, they were the daughters of Zeus, the king of the many gods and goddesses, and Mnemosyne (nee-moss-ih-nee), the goddess of memory. The nine Muses were goddesses of the literary arts, music, visual arts, culture and science. The Muse, Clio, was the goddess of history. The Muses spark creativity in mortal people. Museums collect, preserve, interpret and display items of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance for the education of the public and for future generations. Above all, museums are storehouses of knowledge.

My parents are ready to buy a home, but my mother wants to buy the land and build their home. Are there programs that can help buy her land to build her home? Is there a possibility for a first time home buyer to buy land to build or is it easier just to buy a home that is already built? 

One of the largest issues in the greater Aptos Village area is traffic flow and improving flow in that area has been a focus of your county’s traffic engineers. County traffic engineers made signalization (along with new turn lanes and bike, bus and pedestrian improvements) as the model for improving flow in that area. With the new lights (and most of the other main improvements) completed at Trout Gulch and Soquel, we have been working to make refinements based on community feedback.

As you may well have heard, at the end of 2017 Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. While corporations might be celebrating the cut of the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, many might be wondering how the new tax law affects them personally.

Spring is in the air and inventory is picking up. Since Jan. 1, 203 homes have come on the market across the county and 41 homes have been listed in Aptos. The highest new listing is 383 Beach Drive at $5,200,000. The lowest new listing is 1260 Trout Gulch Road at $599,000. The market snapshot as of March 9 shows 39 Active Listings in Aptos (34 SFR, 3 TH, 2 Condo).

The next workshop will take place at the Rio Sands Hotel Conference Room at 116 Aptos Beach Drive in Aptos (Rio Del Mar). It will be held March 24 from 1-2 p.m. (English) and 2:30-3:30 p.m. (Spanish).

So this “ask a broker” thing has gotten off to a good start, thank you! The winner was able to see the Warriors beat the Spurs and watched in horror as our superstar and savior Steph Curry got hurt, we need Durant to step up!