Elia Salinas underscored her standing as a business consultant and resident of the county for 24 years as reasons she has the background for the District 3 Hollister City Council seat.
“I’ve been attending city council meetings — the majority, I would say 80 percent of the council meetings, and obviously more than my opponents,” Salinas said. “I am involved not just in a specific issue but all issues that I find that are important to my community.”
Salinas is most known as a consultant and her advocacy for the cannabis industry. She is running against Honor Spencer and Raul Escareno.
She decided to run for the seat when Councilman Karson Klauer declined to run again.
“Unfortunately Karson Klauer didn’t run,” she said. “I think he did a great job. I thought since he wasn’t going to run, I thought I would be a good candidate to come in and take a position and be the logic, one of the logical voices on the board.”
As for issues, she said there’s a misconception on the growth rate.
“I believe there’s a misconception, misinformation that’s being placed out there in the community that there’s too many houses being built,” she said. I think that once the citizens of Hollister find out why it is we’re having growth right now, they can understand more why we have this issue.”
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She said traffic congestion is another big issue.
“What can we do so we can try to lower the commute time for these people?” she said.
She want on, regarding the cannabis industry: “I’m instrumental in bringing in a new economy to the city, hiring local people. Right now, I believe we are currently at 70 local people that have been hired since March, which is a great number. There are more companies coming on board that are going to be hiring more local people from manual labor all the way to CEOs and CFOs and administrators within this industry.”
Among her goals: Bring new businesses to the airport.
“I think we can take advantage of the airport,” she said.
She said the local airport’s designation allowing “through the fence” taxiways makes it stand out, and she wants to attract more technology and aeronautic companies here.
“I think it would be really beneficial to the city of Hollister, and I think we should take advantage of that,” she said.
