Submitted by The Sarber Family
Mary Sikes is one of the smartest, toughest, best prepared and most experienced persons ever to run for this job. She has proven history of strong financial acumen honed over many decades managing a $2.5 billion-dollar subsidiary at one of the world’s largest banks.
Mary’s math skills mean that she will guard our city’s financial health while continuing to build reserves for a rainy day. She will become a strong ally to further strengthen oversight of the city’s budget based on her proven experience managing hundreds of employees and bank budgets magnitudes larger than the City of Coronado. Delivering superior services while treating tax payers as customers is another goal she supports.
Mary Sikes has demonstrated strong civic collaboration by co-founding with Doug St. Denis our own successful Coronado Island Film Festival. She believes that Coronado should continue to invest in partnerships in a transparent manner with our schools, non-profits and community-based organizations who consistently deliver high caliber experiences, events and safe havens to strengthen home ties and to bolster community connection.
Most important is that Mary will represent the residents when faced with regional conflicts related to traffic and housing forced on our city. She will support collaborative approaches with our regional stakeholders like SANDAG, Caltrans and the Port of San Diego only if they recognize Coronado residents’ desire to retain our small-town character that makes us unique.
Most of you know that the Sarber family has proudly called Coronado our home since the 1950s. Most of you also know that this has been a challenging year for my brother Brant who owned Costa Azul. It hits home when we ask how can the city better balance the preservation of the hometown character of the village and our mom and pop (and brother) storefronts, yet still support a private enterprise business climate driven by profit? One thing I know is that it will require a partnership and shared responsibility between business owners and our residents that the city must address, and Mary has the experience to navigate this tough issue balancing private property rights with protecting our hometown charm.
Mary is sensitive to how the fabric that holds our community together can get torn. She understands that our quality of life, perceived or real, seems to be deteriorating with commercialization of our main street and generic cookie cutters replacing one of a kind homes. Combine this with the hundreds of thousands of cars traversing on an island originally planned for horses and the influx of millions of people that create environmental and social impacts that are hard to address including sewage spills, suicides and state meddling. I want Mary to be that person representing me, in that chair making decisions that represent the residents, since we are the ones primarily paying the bills and living here every day.
In this election, whatever local issue you care about, it should be easy to vote for Mary Sikes —she is kind, considerate and classy—a few character traits sorely missing today in politics, and she will hit the ground running on financial and governance issues. If you like this letter, please call (619) 917-2052 to get a yard sign, host a get-to-know Mary meeting or to volunteer to help us.
If you are still wondering who to vote for, I encourage you to get to know first-hand what I know — that Mary is overqualified for the job and she really wants it! Boy, are we lucky.
The Sarber Family
