Monterey County residents give opinions on old jail plans

National Park Service explores the idea of honoring Cesar Chavez with a historic landmark

Tuesday night, Monterey County residents sounded off on the old jail — a place deemed historic because of its importance to the farm labor movement and an eye sore by others.

The National Park Service is eyeing the building, and several other locations through the West, for its links to labor leader Cesar E. Chavez, who was jailed there for two weeks in 1970 during a boycott of lettuce growers.

Opinions were mixed, ranging from concerns over the cost of maintaining the old jail as a historic site to the need to link Chavez with the history of the Salinas Valley.

site to the need to link Chavez with the history of the Salinas Valley.

"Salinas is known as an agricultural place and Chavez played a huge role in helping Salinas become what it is now," said Salinas resident Santos Quintero. "Having a historical site in Salinas will help recognize Chavez’s hard work and also all the farmworkers in the valley."

But Bill Carrothers, also a Salinas resident, said paying for the upkeep of the jail during a bad economy doesn’t make sense.

"The idea is stupid," he said. "Chavez represented a union with 5,000 to 6,000 members. We have a dying community. We have trouble keeping Steinbeck open and now we are supposed to pay for this jail?"

One member of the public, which numbered about 40, suggested commemorating a different site altogether. Craig Pakish, who lives on Capitol Street in Salinas, near the old jail, said he doesn’t understand why it is considered when Chavez only spent three days there.

He suggested taking things out of the jail and moving them someplace else.

And Jerry Kay has just the place.

Kay, who headed up the local United Farm Workers office in Salinas in 1972, suggested making the building at 14 South Wood St. the historical site, since it was the location of the old union hiring hall.

The project cataloging sites important to the founder of the farm labor movement was sparked by a 2008 congressional request to consider what role, if any, the parks service should have in maintaining and protecting those places.

The list of potential places was collected by oral history students at California State University, Fullerton. It includes the United Farm Workers headquarters and other places stretching from Arizona to San Jose.

The park service is holding meeting like the one Tuesday in areas near the sites to find out what people want to see happen to the place and how the parks service can help.

The group conducting the study will make its recommendations — based in part on those hearings — to Congress by the end of the year.

The old jail, like the labor movement itself, has often divided agricultural Monterey County.

In 1999, the county Board of Supervisors voted to have the building demolished, but was stymied by a 2004 lawsuit brought by the Architectural Heritage Association of Monterey County. That same year, the park service added the old jail to the National Register of Historic Places.

By 2010, the county board turned 180 degrees and recognized the fundraising and preservation planning work of the architectural association that had sued the county just six years before.

However, plans for the building’s future are still in the works.