It might be April Fools’ Day, but foolishness has continued to be the order of the day for two Santa Cruz County government agencies.

We’re repeating a refrain we’ve sounded several times, but the continuing decisions by the Board of Supervisors to allow cannabis lounges along with the economic blinders worn by Regional Transportation Commission members to the ultimate cost of a coastal passenger train do not inspire confidence local leaders are plotting the future wisely.

With passenger rail far off, most immediate is the specter of retail cannabis lounges in the unincorporated areas of the county, along with similar on-site cannabis consumption at local pot farms.

A week ago, by a 3-2 vote, supervisors, as expected, accepted a second read of a new ordinance that gives 11 cannabis retailers permission to establish an area within their business where customers can consume marijuana. The board majority of supervisors Justin Cummings, Manu Koenig and Felipe Hernandez also set up the process for a three-year pilot program allowing sales and consumption at local farms as a way to encourage agritourism.

The two no votes on the board came from the two newest supervisors, both with extensive backgrounds in health care: Monica Martinez and Kim De Serpa.

De Serpa told members of the Sentinel Editorial Board last week consumption lounges and farms are “a bad idea.”

She noted that three dispensaries that ostensibly will allow consumption are along Highway 9 in the San Lorenzo Valley (in Martinez’s district).

“Can you imagine,” she asked, someone getting high at a lounge then turning onto the often perilous highway?

Regarding the argument that bars can send patrons drunk onto local roads, De Serpa said, “Yes, people get drunk and cause heartache – why add more?”

De Serpa’s father was killed by a drunken driver when she was 3 years old and the event thrust her family into a life of poverty, she told the board last week.

De Serpa said her office has been flooded with notes expressing opposition to the lounges, while Martinez , in her comments to the board, pointed to testimony from local law enforcement officials who also are concerned about the new policy because there’s no easy way to measure cannabis intoxication levels.

Then there’s the seemingly never-ending saga of the rail and the trail, a journey that has been built on dreams of an electrified passenger train along the county owned 22-mile coastal tracks, along with a recreational trail to be built mostly along the same corridor.

But the issue continues to be the ultimate price tag, which De Serpa estimated to eventually reach at least $4 billion for both rail and trail (including the recent estimate of a billion-dollar price tag to repair or rebuild dilapidated bridges and trestles).

“Who will use (a train)”? she asked, adding that most people in Santa Cruz County, “like their cars.”

De Serpa fears that if the trail is bogged down in funding issues, it will never become a reality in her lifetime. Costs for completing the trail (about 3 miles had been finished by 2024) now are in the $500 million range, far above estimates from a decade ago when plans were formulated for both rail and trail. And constructing the path in the most challenging terrain through Mid-County to Watsonville remains far off.

At a time when federal and state funding is uncertain, to put it mildly, the train costs as noted will incorporate building stations and parking lots, laying new tracks, installing crossing zones, operation and maintenance, much less figuring how to operate a passenger rail system without further burdening county taxpayers, who almost certainly would be on the hook to cover the ballooning price tag of a train.

Still, the RTC last month reaffirmed its support (with member De Serpa dissenting) to passenger rail.

Mike Rotkin, a longtime RTC member who is a staunch proponent of train plans, said at the last board meeting, “Transportation projects are expensive; they’re not cheap. We shouldn’t wilt at the notion that it’s going to be expensive to build some kind of a system.”

Expensive, indeed.