Five candidates vie for two Monterey City Council district seats, all elevating the budget to priority number-one.

A varied group of candidates has thrown their hats in the ring for two Monterey City Council districts this November – from a retired city engineer and financial professional to an ordained minister.

One issue rises above the rest for all five candidates: the city’s ongoing structural budget deficit.

In District 1, incumbent Councilmember Kim Barber faces retired engineer Tom Reeves, who worked for the City of Monterey for about 26 years and is a strong supporter of keeping funds in the city’s Neighborhood and Community Improvement Program (NCIP), which experienced one-time cuts to balance the most recent city budget.

“I know the budget like many people don’t know it,” Reeves says. “I put budgets together for the city and I know how the budgeting process works. I know what the community wants and needs and I think I have a unique perspective on the values of the city.”

Barber says she is seeking a second term because “My work is not finished yet.” Alongside studying ways to make the city more affordable for the working class, she says she would continue to work to remedy the city’s structural budget woes rather than relying on one-time fixes, such as taking funds from the NCIP.

“Having a new city manager coming in and leading and guiding us with his new Roadmap to Resilience, the key is making a deeper dive and looking at all of the different pieces,” says Barber. “We’re looking at everything.”

With Councilmember Ed Smith stepping away from representing District 2, three candidates have stepped up to replace him.

Jeff Whitmoyer, a retired fiduciary asset manager, said in his candidate statement that if he wins the Council seat, he will champion strict fiscal responsibility, common-sense spending and absolute transparency. He says he would right the budget by looking at “outsourcing and freezing salaries that have obviously been rising faster than the rate of inflation as we do in the private sector.”

Candidate Vicki Nohrden is author of Breaking the Shield of Minerva: A Closer Look at California’s Destiny and founder of Wind and Fire Ministries. She has run unsuccessfully as a Republican for state office.

Nohrden calls the structural deficit “a big mess… We’re most likely going to make some cuts. Maybe there will be some early retirements. Maybe there are some staff that can be moved around to other departments.”

Candidate Alec Manas, a project manager for CHISPA Housing, said in his statement that he would approach the city budget “with the same discipline I bring to multi-million dollar housing developments.”

“Something I deal with daily is overseeing large rehab projects in my job as project manager,” says Manas. “Large developments require us to be a fiscal steward of the state’s money. This is not something new to me. I would start by looking at the budget line by line, and make sure we are protecting core services.”