LITTLE GEMS
Bell, California and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
What is the mission of local newspapers across America? That mission may be defined in many ways but maybe the easiest might be to describe it as a preventative force holding back potential disaster caused by poor and informed decisions about small-town leadership.
What happened in Bell, California, in 2009, happened only weeks after the only local newspaper closed its doors. The citizenry stopped getting reports that did anything other than support the local leaders who’d decided in totality, the Mayor, City Administrator, and all city council members, to fleece the community of all liquidity and then use the city’s great credit rating to go after supporting banks and other financial institutions lending the money. The mayor’s salary ballooned almost instantly to 1.5 million dollars a year. The city administrator’s salary went to half a million and the city council members to a hundred grand a year, each. The newspaper was gone so the city officials published information on the city website, and using local circulars. The police chief was paid about half a million a year, as well, limiting investigation from that source.
The problem with all this was that nobody knew what was going on except those who were receiving the huge salaries and benefit packages. The Geneva Shore Report is one of very few local ‘voices’ that looks into everything it can find and questions just about everything it does find. The editorial staff points out what is, what was, and what might be…and it does so with opinionated intent, and then leaves everything out there for the public to question and consider. Does that mean that the GSR is a negative voice in the community, as that candidate for office in the 3rd district mentioned (and then advised other candidates running for office not to talk to the GSR reporters)?
That conclusion on his part may well be true in so many areas, but it remains the core mission of the GSR to find out what’s going on and coming down the road and then write and publish stories about those things.
Person of the Week
Nadia Bero. Wonderful new barista at the Ridge Hotel on Highway 50.
