This polygon shapefile depicts boundaries for the Pajaro Valley Cemetery District sphere of influence (SOI) in the County of Santa Cruz, California. The coverage represents the Santa Cruz County portion of the Cemetery District SOI. An SOI is a physical boundary inside of which a local governmental agency is expected to provide services and is generally set by the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) with a 20 year time frame. SOI boundaries are designated in order to help discourage urban sprawl, limit boundary disputes between local agencies and provide indications regarding future development potential. A district or city's SOI should not to be construed as "referral" areas or as bestowing authority and control within the SOI boundaries. LAFCO can amend an SOI if there are sound reasons to do so. The Pajaro Valley Cemetery District is administered by LAFCO. LAFCO was created in 1963 to encourage orderly formation of local government agencies, preserve agricultural land resources and discourage urban sprawl. LAFCos are responsible for coordinating logical and timely changes in local governmental boundaries, conducting special studies that review ways to reorganize, simplify, and streamline governmental structure and preparing a sphere of influence for each city and special district within each county. 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.