Where every dollar goes.

Roughly 90¢ of every budget dollar funds operating costs: salaries, programs, services. The other 10¢ funds the Capital Improvement Program — streets, buildings, parks, equipment.

Sales tax is the single largest source of general-funds revenue — Measures E and G together account for about 28 cents of every general-funds dollar (General Fund, Measure E and Measure G combined).

Police and fire combined consume more than half of every general-fund dollar. The rest funds public works, library and community services, parks, and the small departments that keep the city running.

Salinas voters layered two sales-tax measures on top of the state base rate: Measure E (0.5%, approved 2005) and Measure G (1.0%, approved 2014). Together they bring in about $52M a year. Measure G’s extension is on the November 2026 ballot — see the cheat sheet. We also traced every Measure G dollar since 2014, year by year: full year-by-year Measure G breakdown →

The city was authorized to employ 660.5 full-time-equivalent staff in FY 2025–26 — up 10.5 from the year before. Public-safety roles (police, fire, dispatch) account for roughly half.

The $29.35M Capital Improvement Program funds streets, facilities, parks, water, and equipment. The six-year projection adds up to $129.59M — most of it from county and state transportation money (Measure X, SB1 and the gas tax), plus grants and impact fees, not the general fund.

The FY 2025–26 adopted budget showed the General Fund starting that year in the red (−$9.1M) and projected it to end the year at −$5.0M — an improvement. In that budget, the Measure G fund balance was projected to grow and the Measure E fund balance to shrink. Outstanding bond debt is also part of the picture.

Salinas’ population is 161,039. Divide each big number by the population and the budget starts to look human-scaled.

Every figure on this page traces back to a specific page in the City of Salinas’s adopted budget documents.