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Health & Fitness

Happy Anniversary DailyCoronado.com!

We recently celebrated the first year anniversary of my website www.DailyCoronado.com.

It’s been an exciting year. We earned a loyal following of several thousand readers because of DailyCoronado.com content.

It’s also been a lot of fun. I like to research and write. Plus, I enjoy learning about the technical aspects of website design and maintenance since this is my first website.

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In general, what’s it about?

DailyCoronado.com is one more way I communicate with Coronado residents about our beautiful town. It allows residents to plug in at their convenience once per day and learn something new about our city.

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In addition to city issues, I also highlight resident volunteers, community groups and city employees. There is so much to love about Coronado, it’s difficult to fit it all into one website.

Why create a website?

I created DailyCoronado.com because I’m deeply concerned about the self-interest and entitlement I see every day in Coronado city government. Self-interest and entitlement have corrupted Coronado city hall.

From my first-hand experience over the last few years, I know for a fact that our city government doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to work — for the greater good of ALL of Coronado.

It’s my goal to restore civility, ethics, integrity, transparency and financial reason to our local government so that it begins to work for the greater good of all of Coronado, not just for those who have purchased access to decision-makers in various ways.

DailyCoronado.com seeks to change the pay-to-play culture of Coronado’s city government by leveling the playing field while focusing on the facts and the law of city governance.

What are the specific city issues?

I write about important Public Safety matters such as Crime Prevention, Disaster Preparedness, Tsunami-Readiness & Storm-Readiness, the Earthquake Activity all around us, Coronado Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), Coronado Emergency Radio Operators (CERO), our Animal Care Facility, and more.

I also write about Land Use issues such as Over-Development, Historic Preservation, Traffic, the Ferry, other forms of Public Transportation, the Beach, and more.

In addition I write about City Finances. Some of the financial topics are Coronado’s Off-Balance-Sheet-Debts such as our Redevelopment Debt and Pension Debt, Coronado’s Abuse of Special Funds in the Bridge Toll Revenue Fund, the limitations of the state-mandated annual Budget Document Planning process, and the limitations of the state-mandated annual Financial Audit process.

In short, I make it easier for Coronado taxpayers to do this — Follow the Money.

The buzz

Journalists at major news publications from Sacramento to Manhattan who cover city financial issues like Off-Balance-Sheet Debt, Redevelopment Debt, Pension Debt, Bond Debt, the Budgeting Process, Auditing the City Books, and more continue to contact me with their encouragement and support of my research and writing about important and serious city financial matters.

To date, I’ve declined all of their requests for interviews because I think the story is Coronado’s financial situation, not me.

How in the world did a city like ours with a strong property tax base get so deeply in debt? What financial decisions are driving this city off the road? What decisions should we make to get Coronado out of this deep financial ditch?

I’d rather focus on answers to those questions in order to help Coronado. However, I do appreciate that it’s newsworthy for one elected official to communicate through her website honestly and openly about true financial facts in one small town in this great country.

Why write about city financial issues?

I’m as fed up with the same old city spin about our finances as are most taxpayers in Coronado, as well as taxpayers in every other city in America.

I research and write about financial facts like a concerned, analytical attorney with a background in finance because that’s who I am. I’m pleased to inform residents about where their money is going in reality.

Someone has to provide financial transparency because financial transparency is crucial for taxpayer oversight of Coronado city government’s taxing and spending activities. The way to avoid human error with your tax dollars, as well as fraud, waste and abuse of your tax dollars, is through financial transparency.

In reality, our city doesn’t provide financial transparency. If it were doing so, then residents would understand the many ways they are taxed and exactly how the city spends their tax dollars.

In truth, there’s a race to the bottom and the result is the very biased manner in which cities, including Coronado, present information to residents a couple of times a year as the bare minimum state requirement. As one example of our city’s bias, Coronado hides enormous debts off-balance-sheet because it can.

As a rule, cities have been getting away with misleading the public about city finances because they can . . . but not for long. Coronado is no exception to this rule.

Our city purchases “awards” with taxpayer dollars from self-serving organizations. Then our city sends out one-sided press releases praising itself for “winning” these fake awards. Sometimes the city’s press releases make it into some of the local media as “news.” As a result, Coronado residents become a captive audience to the dramatic display of self-congratulatory backslapping within the city’s echo chamber as the city proclaims itself to be a “well managed” city. But it’s all misleading spin at the expense of Coronado taxpayers.

Residents who are paying attention realize that this is merely part of Coronado’s smoke and mirrors. DailyCoronado.com removes the smoke and mirrors from city finances so you get the straight facts — both the overall big picture and the nitty-gritty details.

What else?

I created four features that are helpful to DailyCoronado.com readers . . .

Continue reading this article by clicking here.

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