Salinas calls on residents to help set budget priorities

A day after Salinas’ most recent homicide city leaders ask the public to weigh in on where the city’s budget money should go. Some residents said they’d like to see more money go toward stopping the violence.

“Children, our little children are not even crying I don’t see them crying, that’s what bothers me at the scene they’re all traumatized,” said community outreach activist, Debbie Aguilar.

Wednesday marked Salinas 10 homicide, putting the city a quarter of the way to reaching last year’s record number. Thursday busloads of Salinas’s residents made their way to the State Capitol for the victims march, and called on the state for help.

“Ask them please help us with resources to bring back to Salinas, California, we need it. We need it, we need money, and we need money because the police need money. Us as a community we need to be part of this police force as well,” said Aguilar.

The city said it already designates 60 percent of the general fund toward police and fire and that they are working on violence prevention programs to alleviate the crime. Salinas Mayor, Joe Gunter said the most help can come from the people.

“I don’t believe putting a policeman on every corner is the total answer. I’m still convinced that there are people in the community that know who committed crimes. Why they’re committing them. And they need to call us,” said Mayor Gunter

So far Salinas is at 10 homicides and we’re only in the month of April. And city officials said they’re hoping that number doesn’t reach the record high of 40 from last year, but it’s not looking good.

“There’s resources, I think what’s really important is we need to align our resource allocation with our values. Plain and simple we need to look at how we’re spending our money versus what we want,” said Community Safety Administrator, Jose Arreola.

If you would like to help Salinas set its budget priorities, Thursday night’s meeting will go from 6:30 to 8 p.m. and is taking place at Los Padres Elementary school. If you can’t make that the city will hold one other meeting on April 28, same time, at Sherwood Hall. You can also go to the city’s website and take the online survey.

“The communities angry. They’re getting desperate. They want to know what to do. What can we do?” said Aguilar.