07/26/2025
Interview with the Mayor!
Upcoming Junior at Scotts Valley High School, Nick Acton, is one of three students from the high school that joined me this summer in an intern program.
One of the tasks that each intern has/had was interviewing two local business owners or people in the community. Nick chose Mayor Derek Timm who was gracious with his time and he met with Nick in person for the interview. The following are the questions that Nick chose to ask Mayor Timm, along with his full responses.
⢠Nick: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing our town right now?
Mayor Timm: âWe have a very low return on the property taxes we receive in Scotts Valley, we only get 6.5% of the dollars that get paid in property taxes (to the county). Most cities receive a significantly larger share of their property tax revenue, and rely on those property taxes to fund their local government. We have to rely more on sales tax, revenue coming from hotels, and sources other than property tax, but those tax dollars fluctuate. You donât know how well businesses are going to do⌠which makes it hard for us to have a predictable budget.â
⢠Nick: What is something that most people don't know about being mayor?
Mayor Timm: âCounsel members only get paid about $400 a month after tax, so it is almost like a volunteer role which is great, you do it because you want to give back to the community. You also probably donât know that all the council members sit on a lot of regional boards, so we do things throughout the county, for instance; I am the president of the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments in addition to being (Scotts Valley) Mayor.â
⢠Nick: I feel very fortunate to be going to Scotts Valley High School because it's a great school there with great teachers and athletics, but I want to know how we can get our enrollment up so that the financial health of the school is maintained?
Mayor Timm: âI have been a big supporter of the schools for many years, and we've had our schools suffer from a similar funding dilemma as the City. Their share of taxes are also some of the lowest dollars per student in the state. They are at the bottom 3% in terms of what Scotts Valley Schools receive back for our teachers. The high school is challenging because it is a smaller district, so we have to attract students from other districts to come here for it to be financially viable. I think that improving our Districtâs enrollment starts with the administration. The administrationâs priority should be competitively paying our teachers.
It is unfortunate that our talented teachers are some of the lowest paid in the region, yet our superintendent is the highest paid. She makes almost $100,000 more than our county superintendent and I believe more than all other superintendents in our county. She is making, I think, $326,000 per year (exact salary not yet confirmed).
I think that should be balanced with the pay our teachers receive. If the teachers' pay is lower than average, then the administration's salaries should be set at the same scale. I also think that marketing our schools is important; people have to know how great they are. My eldest daughter went all the way through Scotts Valley schools, she just graduated from college in May and has a job and is working full-time in LA (Los Angeles) and I couldn't be prouder. She is a product of Scotts Valley schools. We need to be marketing the great outcomes our students are achieving.â
⢠Nick: You have been involved in Scotts Valley government since 2018. What do you think is your biggest accomplishment since then?
Mayor Timm: âSome of my biggest accomplishments happened before I was in city government, for instance; we passed a couple of parcel tax measures for our teachers to be able to keep great teachers in our school district. We also passed a bond measure to rebuild the middle school which changed our city in a big way.
I think as Mayor, some of the most challenging work I did was during the covid pandemic, where I worked hard to save local businesses. It was a very tough time for our local business leaders, and I am proud of the work we did as a City along with the Chamber of Commerce to keep our businesses open. Also, you couple that with the CZU fires that happened in August of that year, we lost 950 homes throughout our county, and we had impacts on so many of our local business and families, and it was getting people through that very difficult time. I am proud of the work we did during that difficult time. There is a lot to be proud of today and so much happening in our City, but I look back at those times and I am proud of what we achieved.â
⢠Nick: You were a big helper in bringing Target to Scotts Valley. Can you talk about how that has been benefiting our town?
Mayor Timm: "Kmart announced that they were leaving just before COVID hit, and we were going to be left with a missing tooth in the center of our Mount Hermon Road corridor. If the main anchor in a shopping center goes vacant, the center can go very bad very quickly. During that time we wrote letters to Target asking them to come to Scotts Valley and their executive team flew here (when pretty much no one was flying on airlines because of Covid) to check out Scotts Valley. Seeing Target open in Scotts Valley was a huge success and it really helped support the businesses around them.
Target is one of our top sales tax generators and the sales tax dollars help fund the cost to run our police department, the cost of public works, maintaining our roads and more. It was a big win for our City.â
