Corona CA

City of Corona Continued: Let’s Meet the City Manager and Start the History Lesson, Where Today’s Disasters Began. First Gilbert AZ as a Lab for Corona, CA

2026 Elections, Corona CA 1 Response »

Sep 082025

This photo was taken at 6AM. That’s correct, 6AM and it takes 4-5 lights to get through downtown Corona at 6AM. And they spent millions to reduce the street from two lanes to one as well!

Jacob Ellis is the City Manager of Corona. He is reputed to be a pretty boy that loves to tell people he went to law school, but research indicates he never passed the bar. I can’t tell if he even took the bar exam. Dotted amongst the social media of the anti-establishment activists in Corona are videos of Mr. Ellis not handling anyone asking questions well.

Ellis has a compensation package well north of $400,000 and depending on how you read line items, could top $500,000. Corona’s population is something like 162,000 people. If you believe that package is $500k, then it is not bad to haul in $3.09 a person a year as the emperor of Corona.

The current ruling junta of Corona that supports his majesty will tell you that the current decisions of the City Manager were directed over 10 years ago by previous councils and they are simply bound by them. This is an easily disproven lie, we will expand on this in future posts.

Based on your intrepid blogger’s observations of his pattern, Mr. Ellis along with his rubber-stamp vassals of the ruling junta of the City of Corona have a vision to bulldoze and create a utopia in the core of the city that is a central planner’s dream. The disposition of the plan seems to change on whims.

This pattern should have been expected by anyone that did even the minimum level of research on the thinly qualified Ellis before he invaded Corona.

Ellis grew up in Canada, which is my guess as to where his proclivity towards central planning was born, but he attended BYU in Utah. He worked for a municipality in Canada before applying to an array of places in Texas and Arizona for jobs before landing in Gilbert, AZ. (a Suburb of Phoenix)

For those of you in Corona looking for answers about all of the big league dreams of Jacob Ellis, you should have looked at what happened in Gilbert Arizona when Jacob Ellis was there and since.

Under Ellis’ watch Gilbert started the “Gilbert Mega Park” in 2017 at a then cost of $100Million dollars.

Phase 1 of the four-phase project will cost $16.8 million dollars.

“The first 30 acres of the park are incorporated into a phase 1 and a phase 1B. The town has identified 40 acres of high and dry land that will be available for public and private partnerships,” said Robert Carmona, interim director, Parks and Recreation. “The remaining 200 plus acres does not currently have a funding source or timeline.”

Although a groundbreaking ceremony was held recently, major construction of Phase 1 is scheduled to begin in September of 2018. The full 272 acres does not have a completion date until a funding source has been identified.

Phase 1? Sound familiar? No completion date until a funding source has been identified?

Jacob Ellis skipped Gilbert for Corona in 2019… but his legacy in Gilbert was easy to ascertain:

LONG DELAYED GILBERT PROJECT TO BEGIN AT TWICE THE COST. (Now delayed to sometime late 2026)

NEW DESIGN DELAYS OPENING OF GILBERT WATER PARK TO 2025. (a check of the internet shows a “splash pad, but no water park open as of September 2025) Further note that the public pays for the water park and then pays to use it too! What a deal!!!

and a 2022 article highlighting how the park could cost 227 Million. ($127 Million increase in just 5 years! What a legacy for Jacob Ellis)

This is the Jacob Ellis show, brought to you by the Corona City Council via Gilbert AZ! Multiple Phases! Changes! Delays! Waiting on funding! but wait, there’s more…

Photo Credit: Rory Connell Instagram

Right on Daily 2026 Spotlight, The City of Corona. A Case Study for a Great Suburb Ruined by Cronyism, Insiders and Weak Leaders.

2026 Elections, Corona CA 1 Response »

Sep 022025

Pictured: 6th st. in Downtown Corona

Over the years, your intrepid blogger has done exposes on local governments. There are common threads amongst the worst-run local governments. Typically, the leadership is inbred, and the elected board is a rubber stamp group of people that are weaklings that refuse to question staff. Worse, sometimes, they are in on it with the bureaucrats.

The City of Corona should be one of those neat enclaves “out in the desert” of Southern California. It used to be.

Right on Daily is going to take on the City of Corona, over the next months you are going to learn about the gross mismanagement of the city, and the insider game behind the burgeoning disaster that is coming for the City of Corona.

I believe that the City of Corona is heading for a municipal bankruptcy. Even absent this, there is a compelling case for why all five incumbents on the Corona City Council need to be unseated or recalled. Please note that they range from flaming liberal democrat to conservative Republican – but when you have a crew of group-think, I like being one of the club type of people you get what you see in Corona.

There are a couple of Facebook Groups about Corona, some that have thousands of hits, so you know that my thoughts about Corona are not unique.

Let’s outline a broad view of the issues:

In 2017 there was a blow up over the budget, which led to a turnover of the city council in 2018.

Subsequently there was a sales tax measure that was passed – the story about what was done with that money will follow in future blogs

As you can see above, one of the neat things the City of Corona did was reduced a major street from two lanes to one. This is called a “Road Diet” an obsession of left-wing central planners that think spending millions of dollars to eliminate traffic lanes and replace them with planters and parking stalls is a great thing for planning a city. People that have to use 6th st. now report having to wait through 4-6 traffic lights to get through intersections in downtown Corona. $15 Million at least was spent on this disaster.

Crime is worse.

City Debt has spiraled.

City Government has exploded.

They are bulldozing buildings and building new city owned stuff that residents will have to pay to use!

They are building low income housing all over town without regard to the other consequences of such developments. (Rather than attempting to systematically plan its’ locations)

There has not been an audit of the city finances since 2017.

They have hired inexperienced people in to positions of great responsibility.

If you are part of the good ‘ol boys club in the City of Corona and you have laughed at the existing crowd of people that have attempted to speak out about your misdeeds, ask former Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff about Right on Daily. Then realize that it is your turn in 2026. You could always resign and do the right thing for the residents of the city instead…