Blanca Morales, Candidate for Calexico City Council, Hosted a Meet & Greet. The Questions Were Direct. She Answered Them.

Blanca Morales Candidate for Calexico City Council answers residents question on her podium at her first Meet & Greet September 21, 2026 at the Womens Improvement Club.

Blanca Morales, Candidate for Calexico City Council, Hosted a Meet & Greet. The Questions Were Direct. She Answered Them.

This was not a rally built around a script. It was a meet-and-greet in Calexico. Residents sat with water bottles and campaign flyers and asked the questions people live with: What will happen to the parks? If you win, will you still do what you promised—speak to me as if I were family? Why are students and older adults stranded at the line? Will you work with the rest of the Council, or split the dais again?

Blanca Morales is running for Calexico City Council under the banner Por la Gente de Calexico / For the People of Calexico. She spoke in Spanish and English. The narrative below is edited for Standard English. Her quoted remarks are lightly punctuated so they can be read; they are not rewritten to sound safer than they were in the room.

First, her opening remarks. Then each question, named, with her answer beneath it.

Opening remarks

She thanked Patricia, whom she met as a young woman on a women’s baseball team, and her aunt Yolanda. Athletics with Mr. Rowdy and Mr. Alvarado in Amboy kept her occupied when she married young. She still supports parades. Children, she said, are the city’s future.

Calexico had about twelve thousand residents then. It has nearly forty thousand now. Too many children live on iPads and phones. She wants them on soccer fields, baseball diamonds, tennis courts, and football fields.

Her platform begins with streets, streetlights, and water. The city must work with the federal government and with the Imperial Irrigation District. She put the hard question on the table: How does Calexico do what it needs to do without enough money?

Downtown businesses are struggling. Amazon and the outlets that opened around 2013 pulled customers away. Business licenses should be easier to obtain—online, not through an outdated system. Vacant buildings need a plan. Downtown must be cleaned more often.

There is no hospital. It closed in 1998. Urgent care exists now. Firefighters need equipment and annual training. She described filling sandbags at five in the morning with Kiki, Patricia, Solano, and Calderón so the bags would be ready.

Older residents are living into their eighties and nineties and still dancing on Saturday nights. Parks should remain open and maintained. Seniors need programs as well as children. The city has outgrown its buildings.

She meets people at the market who need a ride and gives them one. Many families coming from Mexicali do not know how to use a telephone to reach services.

She said Calexico has not built enough housing since about 2013. Farmworkers come from Mexicali because there are not enough houses or jobs on this side of the line. That traffic is not an accident. The Mexicali metropolitan area holds more than a million people; Imperial Valley holds about one hundred eighty thousand. Ask the county and the state for funds. Attend the meetings. Knock. You will not know whether the door opens unless you try.

Then the room began to ask.

Question 1 — Parks

A Calexico Resident by the name of Ernie Medina asked a question to Blanca Morales Candidate for Calexico City Council at the 1st Meet & Greet in September 21, 2026 at the Womens Improvement Club.

Asked by Ernie Medina
(the gentleman seated with the woman in the red dress)

He asked about the parks: whether they will stay open, whether they will be maintained, and whether programs for children and older adults will finally move from talk to work.

Her reply
Parks must stay open and be kept up. Older adults need programs, not only children. She pointed to the Parks and Recreation Commission and to a park project that has been “in the works” for too long. She also spoke of using park and community space as part of emergency readiness. A county grant was prepared and submitted; it was denied. She wants the city to pursue state funding rather than leave the matter at the county.

Mrs. Yolanda Grijalva asking questions to Candidate for Calexico City Council at the 1st Meet & Greet in September 21, 2026 at the Womens Improvement Club.

Question 2 — “Once you are in office, will you still do what you campaigned on?”

Asked by Yolanda Grijalva

She asked the candidate to treat the promise as if the person in front of her were family.

Her reply
She refused to invent a calendar from outside City Hall. In the first six months she would learn how staffing and the departments actually work, then place a timeline on streets and the rest of the work. Residents come first—not the slogan after the oath. She tied that answer to showing up, listening, working long hours, and the commission service she has already given.

Pull quote
“Pretend I am your relative.” — Yolanda Grijalva

Jesus Iñiguez asking a question to Candidate for Calexico City Council at the 1st Meet & Greet in September 21, 2026 at the Womens Improvement Club.

Question 3 — Will you work with the rest of the City Council?

Asked by Jesús Iñiguez

If she wins, does the dais divide again, or does she work with the members already seated?

Her reply
Personalities differ. Backgrounds differ. The duty does not. The work is still the residents.

“We have to agree to disagree and respect one another.”

She said she intends to work with everyone now on the Council, including Adriana, Lorenzo, and Mayor Legaspi. Forty-one years as a business owner taught her that you work with people—or those who will not follow the mission step aside.

“Todos tenemos ideas, diferentes maneras, pero tenemos que seguir adelante con todo respeto.”

Esmeralda Meza is asking a questiontio to Blanca Morales Candidate for Calexico City Council at the 1st Meet & Greet in September 21, 2026 at the Womens Improvement Club.

Question 4 — Long waits at the border

Asked by Esmeralda Meza

The exclusive student lines are gone. At seven in the morning, students stand packed together. Older adults are told their line “counts” only at eight. Arrive earlier and they wait on their feet. Construction continues. There is no place to throw trash and no place to buy water. What can a member of the City Council actually do?

Her reply
She did not pretend that City Hall operates the port of entry.

The crossing is federal: officers on this side and officers on the Mexicali side. The city needs political weight—the mayor, the Council, and the county in one meeting. Construction falls hardest on older people. She wants a crossing-information group, because residents begin lining up at two and four in the morning for school, work, and medical appointments.

Work before the next crisis, she said—not after it.

Question 5 — A citywide plan, and why ambulances leave town

A resident argued that Calexico needs a plan the public can see—five, ten, twenty, thirty years. Priorities compete. Firefighters and paramedics drive patients to El Centro and Brawley. Urgent care should operate Monday through Sunday. City staff is small and short of tools. Municipal government is slow. What is the plan?

Her reply
Yes. The city needs a long-term strategic plan. Schools, churches, and businesses belong at the table. Division inside Calexico has to be repaired.

Examine Human Resources: vacant positions, training for employees who already know City Hall, and a reason for them to stay. Recognition matters. Build volunteer programs so children leave their phones.

A park project has sat unfinished. She wants an emergency facility. After the county denied the grant, the next step is state money sought by the city itself.

A retired nurse asked a question to Blanca Morales Candidate for Calexico City Council at the 1st Meet & Greet in September 21, 2026 at the Womens Improvement Club.

Question 6 — Can Calexico obtain its own hospital?

A retired nurse asked whether there is a lawful way for Calexico to stand apart from the health district and keep serious patients in town.

Her reply
She wants a hospital. “Absolutamente, cien por ciento.” She also said the work is large. She knows how the former hospital closed.

Urgent care is open. She has already told firefighters and a physician that not every call is an emergency-room call. A headache or a wave of anxiety is not always an ambulance ride. She named Contreras and Orozco. At her clinic they still call an ambulance four or five times because patients arrive very ill and have not seen a doctor.

Her ten-year aim is a hospital. She pointed to a lot on Plaza Street near the high school. Begin with the city and with local physicians. The cost is real.

Question 7 — Downtown is failing. How do you bring business back?

Buildings are old. Many owners do not live in Calexico. What is the plan that is not a slogan?

Her reply
She served as a commissioner for the downtown Business Improvement District. Properties are aging and rented cheaply. Speak with those owners. Show them the city’s plan. Other cities have used state funds to rebuild a downtown; Calexico can attempt the same. Keep a steady conversation with Mexicali, the county, and the state. “We have a lot of potential.” She said she has already met most of those owners.

One practical idea: a bright pink or yellow insert in the water bill—street maps, park opening dates, council notices—so residents who never attend a meeting still know what is underway.

A Screenshot of Calexico Now Facebook page of one of the Calexico Residents with the facebook name of Angel Munk asking a question to Blanca Morales, Candidate for Calexico City Council.

Question 8 — Why you?

Asked aloud from a question that had already circulated on social media.

Her reply
“Number one, I love my city. I was raised in Mexicali. I have a vision. I’m a hard worker, and I care about the people. The people come first to me.”

Residents, businesses, and police officers. Long hours. The stipend is not the point; the seat is closer to volunteer service. She served about six years on a commission.

“That’s why I believe I’m the best candidate: to listen, be a good listener, and then just take action and get along with everybody in our respect.”

What the evening made plain

The questions were not ornamental. Parks. A promise kept after the vote. A crossing that leaves students and older adults on their feet. A Council that either works together or does not. Ambulances leaving town. A hospital closed since 1998. Downtown owners who live elsewhere.

She did not answer every item with a date and a dollar figure. She said, in public, when she would not invent one. That is the difference between a meet-and-greet and an advertisement.

If you want the next date rather than the slogan, subscribe. If you have the next difficult question, write it in the comments.

What should City Hall confront first: parks, kept promises, urgent care, or the crossing?

Subscribe for event dates and for what was actually said. English or Spanish. You may leave the list at any time.

Follow @Blancamorales4calexico

Paid for by the campaign of Blanca Morales for Calexico City Council. Public meet-and-greet remarks, lightly edited for readability. This is not an official publication of the City of Calexico.

Calexico Wellness Center is having their Anual Breast Cancer Fashion Show this October 17, 2026, go to www.cwchealth.org to learn more about Calexico Wellness Center or more information about the envent sent them an email or call them.