Dear County of Monterey Supervisors:
Many of us local county residents are at our wits-end for tolerating this increasingly painful multi-10 day annual event.
It is urgently past time to reinvent how this 50 event week unfolds and is coordinated between Monterey County staff and the event holders.
Please note that having donation $$ and some additional layer of sales/TOT tax influx has become moot. We are trying to survive our own daily needs and pay our own essential monthly expenses, yet somehow we are expected to donate ‘earning hours’ of our $$ to happily benefit the ‘welfare’ needs for our tourism industries or County of Monterey costs - ridiculous - !
Many of us have appreciated the Pebble Beach Company and its decades of the Concours event. They have gracefully coordinated maintaining relief on Highway One for all of us locals and have supported their guests with ample shuttling services.
As we understand, there may now be 50 other additional events scheduled throughout the week.
County of Monterey staff has NOT coordinated smoother Car Week event planning on behalf of us locals that avoids beginning and ending times for our typical commuting and school traffic weekday needs.
Of frightening, and additional urgent need, is a much more significant increase of CHP presence to curtail what has become overwhelming speeding and rude behavior on our very few county highways (almost at all hours) including even into our neighborhoods as many of us have reported.
This year Highway One between Rio Road and the hard closure in Big Sur - who (or which agency) was it that had the authority to remove the road block that had been put in place so that only residents would be using that area as the Timber Fire began its first week of days? Many of us have had huge consternation that the local Big Sur residents and firefighting efforts were so overwhelmed with Monterey Car Week speeding, car displays along the highway, and adding to fire personnel delays at the bridge signal area areas.
To end, all of you Supervisors have it within your power to start discussing the 2027 experience right now and coordinate how it might unfold to mesh with our local existing resident world.
Signed,
County of Monterey resident locals