David Villano

yeah so you know coconut grove has always had this independent streak that's no that's not news we've also had this culture of grievance that has uh gone back 101 years now you mentioned that we've always wanted to be our own independent municipality we actually were prior to 1925 when the city of miami annexed us uh we wrote about that a year ago if you're interested in looking that up but

We've always had this sort of counterculture community that has sort of marched to their own drummer, so to speak.

And we felt that when there was an opportunity to create a newspaper that would shine light on some of the issues that we care about, we would see if we could do that.

So we put together a group of volunteers like myself.

to see if we could put together a project.

And we were successful in raising some funds and dragging some people in who otherwise might be retired.

And so we're really pleased with where we are right now.

And what I will say, it's not, even though Coconut Grove's in the name, we do more than just focus on Coconut Grove.

We say we cover the Grove, but also the city of Miami.

So that's why you'll see a lot of our reporting transcends really our village boundaries.

And we look at things, as you mentioned,

Billy, you know, the city budgets, the spending, the salaries, that sort of thing.

And why do we do it?

I guess the answer is because really no one else is.

The Herald once was in a position to do that kind of reporting.

Their budget's strapped right now, and they're not able to provide those kinds of deep dives into the kinds of small municipal issues that used to drive local journalism.

Here we are doing it on a shoestring budget.

And we're just pleased that we have some readers who are happy to pick up, you know, a device and look at us a couple of times a week.

You know, you mentioned D2 as being sort of the economic powerhouse of cities.

in Miami and it is, but I don't think our readers in the Cognero spotlight really see it that way.