Why Pier to Pier exists.

The beach cities deserve better than a 1970s newspaper and an algorithmic feed.

Plenty of places will tell you that the council voted, that a house sold, that the school district has a budget problem. Almost nobody connects it to the things you actually care about: what it does to your home's value, your taxes, your kids' classrooms, your morning at the beach.

That's the whole job here. Five “desks” quietly watch the two things that shape life in Manhattan Beach and Hermosa — local government and local money — plus the schools, the housing market, and the beach itself. Twice a week we surface the handful of things worth your time and explain what they mean, through one lens: looking out for the people who live here.

Who's behind this.

I'm Jamie Marsh. I live here, I'm an engineer by trade, and I started Pier to Pier because I kept finding out about the things that affect my own street a month too late — a zoning change here, a school cut there, a fee on my tax bill I never saw coming.

So I started doing the boring part myself: reading the staff reports, sitting through the council and school-board meetings, checking the numbers against the primary sources. Pier to Pier is the twice-a-week digest I wished someone would send me — the handful of things that actually matter for your home, your money, your kids, and your morning at the beach, in plain English.

It's independent, it has no agenda, and on the genuinely contested fights — development, school policy, Sacramento — you'll get both sides and the data, not a thumb on the scale. Every number is sourced; if I can't verify it, I don't run it.

It's free. Reply to any issue — it comes to me, and I read every one.

— Jamie Marsh, Pier to Pier

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