Mission

Local government works better when residents have access to clear, honest, well-researched information about the decisions being made on their behalf. The work of a city — its budgets, its zoning ordinances, its development agreements, its contracts, its closed-session negotiations — is mostly technical, mostly unglamorous, and mostly invisible to the people it most affects. Better Redondo exists to close some of that gap.

We are a civic project covering the city of Redondo Beach, California. We read the documents. We translate them. We show our work. We try, on every piece, to leave readers better equipped to form their own conclusions, not more aligned with ours.

Residents deserve to know what their city is actually doing. The Redondo Beach City Council meets in public and posts its agendas online. The Annual Comprehensive Financial Report is a public document. Planning Commission staff reports run hundreds of pages. The information is, in a literal sense, available. But "available" and "accessible" are not the same thing. A 452-page agenda packet, posted four days before a meeting, available only through a Legistar portal, is technically public and practically opaque. We think the gap between the two is where most of the actual loss of public trust happens, and that closing it is real civic work.

Disagreement is healthy. Confusion is not. The hardest questions facing this city — what to build, where to build it, how to spend a finite budget, how to balance the interests of homeowners, renters, businesses, and visitors — do not have obvious answers. Reasonable people disagree about them, and that disagreement is part of how a self-governing community gets to good decisions. What is not healthy is when those disagreements happen on top of a foundation of misinformation, half-information, or confusion about what is actually being proposed. We can't make the disagreements go away. We can try to make sure they're happening on top of a shared set of facts.

Local government is the most consequential government most residents will ever interact with. A city council vote on a zoning ordinance shapes a neighborhood for thirty years. A budget decision determines whether a sidewalk gets repaired. A contract amendment commits taxpayer money that could have gone to something else. These decisions are made by a small number of people, in part-time roles, mostly without coverage, mostly without sustained public attention. We think that's a problem worth taking seriously.

The city we live in is worth showing up for. This project is not adversarial. We are not against the council, the mayor, the city staff, or the people doing the difficult work of running a coastal city in California in the 2020s. We are for a city that lives up to the place it sits on. We believe that's possible. We believe getting there requires more residents paying more sustained attention to more of what is happening, and we want to help.

Research — long-form data reports built from primary sources. The City budget, real estate, the Olympics. Updated as the numbers change.

Opinions — signed takes on specific decisions, streets, businesses, and buildings. Each piece argues the case and takes the strongest disagreement seriously. Monthly.

Updates — a Preview the day after each agenda drops, a Recap the day after each meeting. Twice a month, on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday Council cycle.

We read primary sources. Court filings. Agenda packets. Budget documents. Staff reports. Coastal Commission decisions. We work from the documents themselves rather than from secondhand summaries. When we cite something, we link to it.

We show our work. When we make a calculation, we explain how we got there. When we draw a conclusion, we explain what evidence supports it. When we are uncertain, we say so. Readers should be able to follow our reasoning and disagree with it on the same evidence we used.

We name what we don't know. Every piece of civic writing includes some judgment calls and some gaps in available information. We try to be honest about both. "We do not yet know" is a sentence we use deliberately and often.

We correct mistakes openly. When we get something wrong, we fix it on the page where it appeared, with a dated note explaining what was wrong and what was changed. We do not delete and re-publish. We do not pretend we got it right the first time. We expect to make some mistakes, and the only thing we can promise about them is that we'll own them.

We treat city officials and staff with respect. Reasonable disagreement about policy is not personal animus. The mayor, the council members, the city manager, the department heads, and the staff who keep the city running are working on a set of genuinely difficult problems, and we will keep that in mind in how we write about their work.

We write for the resident, not the insider. Civic writing has a habit of becoming a conversation between people who already know the jargon, the players, and the history. We try to write so that someone who has lived in Redondo for six months can understand what we are talking about without being condescended to. If something is technical, we explain it. If something has a backstory, we tell it.

We will not endorse candidates. We will not solicit donations. We will not run advertising. We will not accept sponsorships. We will not publish anonymous attacks. We will not editorialize about state or national politics except where it directly affects Redondo Beach. We will not cover private individuals who are not public officials, candidates, or principals of entities doing business with the city.

The list of things we won't do exists because each item, done by similar projects elsewhere, has eroded the trust those projects depended on. We would rather be useful for a long time than influential for a short one.

Read along. Subscribe to the email list, which is the most reliable way to follow Better Redondo. Forward pieces to neighbors who might find them useful. Tell us when we get something wrong. Tell us when we miss something. Send tips, document leads, or context we should know about — we read every message and we keep sources confidential when asked.

Most of all: show up. Read the agendas. Watch the meetings. Talk to your council member. Write to City Hall when something matters to you. Better Redondo is a tool for making that easier. It is not a substitute for it. The actual work of being a resident — paying attention, forming a view, making your voice heard — is something only you can do, and the city is better when more of us are doing more of it.

We are glad you are here.