Modesto can't afford to annex Salida

Our mayor stated in his State of the City address that Modesto residents will have to pay for what they want.

There are too few dollars to provide the public safety protection we all want. Our streets leave much to be desired. Our parks face maintenance issues. The Centre Plaza problem is not going away; even if we hire a new manager, we will still be losing money there.

We are paying $30,000 to find out that annexing Salida will put us more than $2 million further in the hole for the foreseeable future, but the mayor still sees this as the only way out of our plight. Salida residents disagree, as do many of us in Modesto. One council member would let Salida develop business parks and would then annex the park and not Salida, cutting them out altogether. The mayor thinks that his vision will somehow permeate the minds of Salidans when they see us as their only way forward.

In the short term, we (Modesto) cannot afford Salida on top of what we pay the county to do for them. We know that the county supervisors would find other uses for the money they did not need to spend on Salida elsewhere in their budget.

RON JESKE

Modesto