Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Call It What You Will Salinas

Welcome to Call It What You Will.  This is a show that focuses on politics and social issues here in Salinas and our neighboring communities.  We aim to provide interviews that give listeners a more in-depth perspective on local leaders in government and the community.  We are not limited by the word count of a newspaper article or the time constraints of a tv news report.  We are simply some people sitting at a table having a conversation that we hope you find interesting and most of all, informative.  

Our show usually has two formats.  When we have a guest, our show focuses on having those conversations that we hope bring you a better understanding of the politics and social issues of our community.  When we don't have a guest, we tend to just sit around the table and have those random conversations about politics that happen when one sits at a bar sharing a few drinks with friends.  

 

  1. All Episodes
  2. Part 2, District 1 City Council Candidates Discussion

Part 2, District 1 City Council Candidates Discussion

Oct 25, 2016

This was our most difficult episode to date, as we gave ourselves the task of attempting to interview two guests at once, that are in competition for office.  We probably shouldn't have tried to host a discussion in only our second month, but this race is important and we hope that our attempt to have a serious discussion on this race helps to inform you.  Furthermore, we tried to ensure the discussion was accurate and so we asked to verify points that we thought needed to be checked.  This added to the time it took to publish both parts of this episode, but we hope you enjoy the finished product.  We definitely found areas we need to improve on if we ever attempt to do an episode like this again.  Our thanks to our guests, Jose Castaneda, and Brian Contreras, for providing information when asked to clarify statements.  We hope this clears up any confusion you might have from listening to the discussion.  

Points of clarification in this episode:

It was said by Mr. Castaneda that the City manages the money of the Second Chance Youth Program.  We did find that there was a check paid to Second Chance on the claims check report, 398885-399308, that is available publicly on the Salinas City website from 1/7/16.  Also, in the proposed budget for 2016-17 listed on the City of Salinas website there was financial assistance proposed for Second Chance on pg. 452, but no amount was listed.  

We asked Mr. Contreras to clarify what this meant and he stated:

The city of Salinas used to be our fiscal agent, meaning that they only processed our funds via paying our accounts and receiving out grants. They kept the interest generated on any funds we deposited in city accounts. This is what is meant by the "city being our fiscal agent".  With that said, we have had a good working relationship tie the city until city finance director Matt Pressey took over. Since his hiring, he has been working on removing all non-profits from city coffers. We were the first one to leave. In 2012, we became a stand alone agency with our own bank accounts opened up at Rabobank. We did still get grants from the city of Salinas, the PSN grant which was from the US Attorneys office, but was granted to the city of Salinas for us. We also until 2015 received 8,000.00 from CDBG funds to support violent prevention efforts.

In regards to our agency still be listed on the city budget sheets. From my understanding, unless there is someone who specifically requests this line item be removed, or the city finance director feels it needs to be removed, it will continue to show up, but there will be 0 funds in the line item unless the city refunds the agency.  Just because there is a claim, does not mean the city is our fiscal agent. This may have been a payable from the last of the CDBG grant from 2015.

 

Another point we wanted to verify was Mr. Castaneda brought up suspension notices of the Second Chance Program.  He did provide 2 notices, one from June '09 for a delinquent filing and January '10 for a $50.00 balance.

In response, Mr. Contreras clarified that:

The 50.00 fee was because of the delinquent filing for SSBP...that is over 6 years ago and if it was still the case today, we would not have our 501 C 3 status. It would have been suspended. 

 

Again, our thanks to both candidates for helping us to better understand the matters of this discussion.