www.montereycountynow.com NOVEMBER 12-18, 2026 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 15 Kevin Dayton is a policy wonk, by nature and by profession. He built a career out of keeping tabs on dozens of government agencies and updating his clients on issues that may matter to them. In recent years, those local clients included the Salinas Valley Chamber of Commerce and Monterey Peninsula Chamber of Commerce and, until a few years ago, the Salinas City Center Improvement Association. (His work with the Monterey Peninsula Taxpayers Association was mostly in a volunteer capacity.) Dayton has monitored a big range of government affairs issues. Then a confluence of those issues came down on him and his family, driving them away from California after 12 years in Monterey County. Dayton lost one Sacramentobased client because they replaced his role with AI. “They said, ‘You do a great job but we think we can have a computer do it at one-tenth of the price,’” he says. (He doesn’t hold it against them: “Everyone’s got to watch the bottom line.” But, he adds, “To think a machine is going to do it all is just the wrong direction for civilization.”) Dayton has long been tracking declining enrollment in K-12 schools—a symptom, he says, of the impossibly high cost of housing that makes the region out of reach for families with children—and his wife, Nancy, found herself in the crosshairs of that trend. She worked as a principal of a school in Santa Cruz County that closed, putting her out of a job. The other factor was the impossibly high cost of health care. In October, the family— two adults and one child (their eldest is in college)—got a $4,100 monthly bill for insurance. “That was a hard hit for us,” Dayton says. “Health insurance is just out of control here.” His wife had already gotten a job at a school in Asheville, North Carolina and moved out there. Then Dayton got a call from a recruiter about an opening at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which “advances the principles of free markets and limited government.” He moved to Midland, Michigan the first week of November for his new job. On Tuesday, Nov. 17, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors is set to approve a resolution honoring Dayton’s contributions to this community. The resolution credits Dayton for “diligently reviewing public meeting agendas, participating in local government proceedings, and writing extensively on labor, water, housing and economic issues.” Ironically, it is those same issues that have driven him and his family out of the state. “There’s a lot of rich people and a lot of poor people that serve them and not a lot of people in the middle,” Dayton says. “The middle is sort of ignored.” In the realm of health insurance in particular, he understands why the federal government would act to end subsidies against middle-class families like his—they earn too much to need subsidies. They had previously benefited from Obamacare subsidies that made their health plan manageable. Then HR 1, or the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” ended those subsidies, sending their cost of insurance skyrocketing. Meanwhile, as both people who are poor and middle-class watch their health insurance slip away, the bureaucracy needed to implement it is expanding. On Nov. 17, the County Department of Social Services is asking the Board of Supervisors to approve the pass-through of $7.1 million in state funding for administrative support to increase the number of eligibility specialists by 25 (up from 240), starting Nov. 30. Annette Gallegos, assistant deputy director of the Department of Social Services, says these workers will be needed to help manage an estimated 47,000 enrollees, who in 2027 will be required to renew every six months. Another roughly 24,000 people will need their eligibility reassessed based on new requirements. It’s the worst of all worlds: Driving away middle-class families that can no longer afford health care, and driving poor people off of Medi-Cal (and making it more cumbersome for everyone). Meanwhile, the bureaucracy needed to deliver bad news about eligibility is the only place seeing new growth. The Blue Wave has arrived too late to solve this big pile of problems, even if the voters have spoken to say something we already knew is true: The costs of everything are just too damn high. Sara Rubin is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com. Cost Pressure Despite a Blue Wave election, much damage has already been done. By Sara Rubin CHECK-OUT TIME…With shrimp-flavored popcorn in tentacle, Squid watched the fight over Measure M in Carmel to raise the transient occupancy tax from 10 percent to 12 percent. It’s a tax paid by hotel guests, not residents, a no-brainer way to raise money to pay for much-needed infrastructure and services. If you listened to Carmel innkeepers, raising the TOT would mean economic doom for the tiny town. The innkeepers raised over $30,000 and bought multiple ads in the Carmel Pine Cone urging a “no” vote, including one based on a 1769 English political cartoon depicting members of Parliament about to slay the goose that laid the golden eggs, the goose representing trade with America. Under the title “Carmel Council Killing the Golden Goose,” the innkeepers’ ad showed someone wielding a sword labeled “Measure M,” with the goose labeled “Carmel’s 42 Inns & Hotels.” The measure won by a huge margin—1,149 to 506, as of the latest ballot count on Nov. 9. Squid wondered how much those 506 “no” votes cost. As of Oct. 17, Citizens Against Carmel Hotel Tax Increase reported spending $25,588. Divided by 506, that’s $50.56 per vote. As it turns out, the only ones to lay an egg on Nov. 3 were the innkeepers. MILLING AROUND…Squid prefers oozing to dancing as a modality of movement, but sometimes Squid finds the motivation to meet a dress code (“dressy nightlife attire”) and ooze over to 201 Main in downtown Salinas to let off some steam on a Friday night. Never has Squid paid much attention to the venue’s maintenance and restoration needs, calculated at a cool $1.8 million. That’s according to an application submitted by building owner Gerry Kehoe to the City of Salinas, seeking a Mills Act contract. These contracts give property owners reduced property taxes in exchange for a 10-year work plan to protect historic buildings, in this case a 1907 structure that was remodeled almost a century ago, in 1927, to resemble its look and footprint of today. The 16-percent savings to Kehoe would be roughly $3,343 per year (with the property tax bill estimated at $17,551 with Mills Act approval), a loss to the City of just $491 per year. How he’s going to pull off all of the work with those limited dollars remains a head-scratcher to Squid—there’s elevator maintenance and a fire sprinkler system, plus repairs to damaged masonry, historic windows, complete restoration of the 5,000-square-foot basement and 1898 bank vaults—but they say something is better than nothing. In September, Kehoe’s request won a 6-0 yes recommendation from the Historic Resources Board, then on Nov. 10 (after Squid’s deadline), went to the Salinas City Council for the final say. THE LOCAL SPIN SQUID FRY THE MISSION OF MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY IS TO INSPIRE INDEPENDENT THINKING AND CONSCIOUS ACTION, ETC. “The middle is sort of ignored.” SEND SQUID A TIP: squid@montereycountynow.com
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