New Senior Center Among Council Priorities Noted at Workshop Meeting

A film festival. South beach restrooms. An outdoor smoking initative. Boathouse rowing program. A library e-books project.

Those were among the ideas mentioned Tuesday night at an informal brainstorming session by the Coronado City Council.

With 70 projects now under way, the council used a special meeting to help the city manager prioritize his to-do list.

We would like “some direction, some insight from the council” and a “chance to review our workload and direct areas of focus,” said City Manager Blair King.

The meeting was informal. Instead of a suit and tie, Mayor Casey Tanaka wore an Aloha shirt. Councilman Al Ovrom wore jeans. No votes were taken. 

To help the council sort though and consider the various proects, King devised a sticker exercise. Lists of the current projects were posted on paper panels around the chamber.

Council members were given four stickers and asked to place them on the projects more important to them.

Basic services such as police patrols, emergency medical response and library services were excluded from the exercise. 

Redevelopment dissolution received the most stickers, pension cost management was a strong second and construction of a new senior center was third.

Making Coronado a bicycle friendly city, the Navy’s AICUZ proposal and street preventative maintenance also received stickers.

While these were deemed the most important, the council and city manager stressed that none of the projects would be abandoned and ones that were near completion would be also receive high priority. 

“If something has a big head of steam, doesn’t get a dot [doesn’t mean it will be dropped],” said Councilman Mike Woiwode. “If it’s close to finish line, it important that we finish.”

Tanaka noted that council had approved funding to complete the Pomona round about and that the bicycle corrals were already close to completion.

The council was also given a list of new initiatives and projects to consider.

Among these were proactive code enforcement, an emergency notification system, a citizen’s satisfaction survey and a school resources officer.

There was wide support for proactive enforcement. The current system is complaint-based. Someone has to complain before the city remedies the violation.

Again no formal vote was taken and this and the other new initatives will not doubt make there way on to future council agendas.