Welcome to The Daly Citizen
Five years ago I moved to Westlake. I fell in love with the neighborhood, the Doelger houses, the sleepy streets and the fog. I love the fog. The fog (for which I happily embrace the name Karl) is our cold, cozy blanket that welcomes us home whenever we are away.
But aside from the fog and the delicious Filipino food, what does anyone know about this city? It is overshadowed by both San Francisco and smaller cities down the peninsula. It is the endless boxes of ticky-tacky on the hillside. It is the city that people drive through on the way to the airport. It is close to everything, but not the center of anything.
But what is Daly City? It is my home. It is where I am raising my kids. It is my community.
Community
I grew up in the type of neighborhood where kids were always out on the street. We would close down the street for events. We would knock on our neighbors' doors to see if our friends were free to play, bikes and toys were strewn upon the lawns. The neighborhood had life.
When we moved into our Westlake house, we met our immediate next-door neighbor who was an original owner. We quickly made friends with his daughter who grew up in the neighborhood. She loves to share stories about Westlake when she was a kid. The neighborhood was full of kids, they would run out and meet on the school field and play pickup games. They had a true community.
Since we have moved to Daly City, the school yard has been locked down and now the city wants to sell off our park. What kind of a community is that?
We can do better.
Motivation
Recently, Daly City has started to consider a deal with the Olympic Club. The proposal as it stands today is that the Olympic Club is offering to renovate the park and pay $50k in yearly rent in exchange for 30% usage of the field and tennis courts.
I have too many issues with the plan to list here but the one I keep going back to is that Daly City has about 83 acres of parkland for 100,000 of us. The Olympic Club, meanwhile, sits on 365 acres in our backyard for about 11,000 members. Daly City has one of the lowest, if not the lowest, ratio of parkland to citizens of any city on the peninsula. And the city wants to give more away? And give it away to a private club that caters to the richest of the rich? And to rub salt on the wound, the Olympic Club claimed that we would all benefit by being able to watch their "Olympic level" athletes play. How out of touch can they be?
It is one of the worst deals I have ever seen. There is no upside for Daly Citizens.
Obvious Bias
This is not an impartial news site. I care deeply about making our city better and I want to make sure we are ALL doing our part to hold our representatives accountable. I am biased towards what I think will be good for our city, my neighbors, my community. I may get it wrong sometimes, possibly often. I want to be corrected, I want to be challenged. Only through open dialogue can we improve our community.
How it works
I work in data and operations for a living. Part of my job is automating tasks and building internal tools to make other people's jobs easier. In researching the Westlake project, I realized I could use these same skills to help bring light to things that are going on in and around Daly City. Back before I lived in Daly City, I was in South City for a few years and there was a wonderful newsletter, "Everything South City" that helped me stay on top of everything going on. I am drawing inspiration from that community driven newsletter but also layering on the inner workings of our city government.
I built a system that regularly ingests all the notes, documents, and recordings of city meetings and combines them with local events calendars. The end goal is a regular, semi-automated but human-curated, report on "Everything Daly City." There is an events calendar. There will be regular posts and emails covering everything from city council discussion topics to library story times.
I hope you'll all join me in this journey to better understand Daly City.
Thanks for being here. More soon.
— Andrew