Around 3pm last week, Grant Leonard, an affordable housing analyst for the city of Monterey and a candidate to become County Supervisor for District 2, called Eric Tynan, general manager of the Castroville Community Services District, and shared some bad news: the "Welcome to Castroville" sign on Highway 156 just west of Castroville Blvd. was no longer there.
Tynan says the signposts were sawed through and the upper part of the sign was taken.
"It took some people to move that thing," Tynan says. "We’ve picked it up before—it took two strong guys to move it, at least."
He says the sign was cut down sometime last week—he's not sure when, but he drove by it still intact on April 3.
Tynan says another welcome sign was cut down around Thanksgiving 2020, as well as a Pezzini Farms and a Caltrans sign. But in those cases, he says, the signs weren't taken.
Tynan says the sign, which was put in about a decade ago, cost about $17,000 at the time. While he reported it to the Monterey County Sheriff's Office April 8, he's also considering putting up reward money to get the sign back, in part because he wants to catch whoever did it.
"We'll probably get the sign back in pieces," he says, "but I wouldn’t mind catching the people so they don’t do it again."
He adds that Castroville's downtown has recently been revitalized, and that the town is "looking good" right now.
"We have the best looking signs around here—the community has a lot of pride," he says. "We do all this stuff, and then this happens.