Long story –> short: Santa Cruz police used to pass along their recovered & unclaimed bikes to the Santa Cruz Bike Church, which would repair and redistribute the bikes, mostly to youth programs such as Barrios Unidos, Project Bike Trip, and Green Ways to School program. Last year, though, the police stopped distributing the bikes to the Bike Church and instead made arrangements to pass them to the Bike Dojo. After the Bike Dojo failed to do much with the bikes, the non-profits that previously participated in the bike distribution forced the issue at the July 9 city council meeting. Council decided to formalize the bike distribution program by requiring requests for proposals from qualified non-profits and more rigorous oversight.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports on the whole story here.

More Santa Cruz bike news

• La Fonda bridge opens to traffic. The La Fonda Avenue bridge was replaced as part of the $21 million Highway 1 auxiliary lane project. The new bridge features six foot wide bike lanes and six foot sidewalks on both sides. I intended to attend the ribbon cutting on Saturday morning but totally flaked on it, but somebody posted photos over at the Patch.
• Hike-Bike fundraiser brings thousands of dollars to Santa Cruz non-profit