This polygon shapefile depicts the boundary for County Service Area 38 in the County of Santa Cruz, California representing an extended police protection area. This coverage displays the entire County except for incorporated areas. In unincorporated areas, basic services like water, sewer, police and fire protection are provided by the county. Because counties often consist of large and diverse geographical areas, providing a consistent and adequate service level across all areas can be difficult. Residents of urban communities may want more services than those residing in rural areas. The County Service Area Law (Government Code §25210.1 et seq.) was created in the 1950’s to provide a means of providing expanded tailored service levels in areas where residents are willing to pay for the extra service. When a County Service Area exists, property owners will pay taxes and fees to the County Service Area instead of the county for the services provided. This layer is part of a collection of GIS data created for Santa Cruz County, California. The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Unit falls under the purview of the County of Santa Cruz Information Services Department. The GIS Unit serves all County departments and external customers and provides data on land, features and people of Santa Cruz County. Santa Cruz County encompasses 4 cities and approximately 265,000 people. This coverage can be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analyses of geospatial data. These data were compiled from many different sources; therefore, the accuracy of the individual layers varies significantly, and some layers do not align exactly with others. In the urban areas, data are generally accurate within five to ten feet of their true geographic coordinates, but in the rural areas, data may be accurate to only within three hundred feet. With these limitations, the County of Santa Cruz disclaims any responsibility for the accuracy or correctness of this data. This disclaimer is exclusive and in lieu of any warranties, fitness for particular purpose, and/or any other type of warranty, whether expressed or implied. This layer is presented in the WGS84 coordinate system for web display purposes. Downloadable data are provided in native coordinate system or projection.