San Bernardino City Bankruptcy is happy to bring you this online interview with City Council Candidate Casey Dailey.
Casey Dailey is one of two candidates challenging incumbent City Councilwoman Virginia Marquez who currently represents the 1st Ward on the San Bernardino City Council.
What do you believe the top priorities of the City of San Bernardino should be?
1. Getting the City through the bankruptcy process through a Plan of Adjustment that balances the annual expenditures, repays unpaid liabilities (that resulted from the bankruptcy), and creates a financial reserve to allow for unexpected costs.
2. Creation of a Community and Economic Vision for San Bernardino that focuses on safe communities, sustainable job creation and economic development.
3. Reforming City Hall so the City is more professionally run with clear lines of authority and accountability. Specifically, the City Manager needs to be in charge of the day to day operations of the City with clear policy direction provided by the City Council.
The City Attorney should report directly to the City Council instead of being an elected official and the Mayor’s Office should be reorganized to allow the City Manager to utilize his professional staff that will implement the policies of the City Council.
If you are elected to the City Council, the City of San Bernardino will exit bankruptcy during your term in office. What policies need to be changed or implemented to ensure that a financial crisis like this does not happen to our City again?
There needs to be greater levels of transparency in the budgeting process so the Council (and public) can clearly see how much money is being brought in, how much money is being spent and where the money is going.
There needs to be an increased level of trust in staff to provide the Council with the best professional recommendation.
One specific policy I would implement is the formation of a financial reserve policy that would require the City to have approximately 50% of the annual operating expenses in a reserve account that can only be used in extreme circumstances.
In addition to the City’s financial problems, San Bernardino has an extremely high number of jobless residents. What do you believe the City should be doing to help residents find employment and bring jobs to San Bernardino?