Coronado City Council member Kelly Purvis wants the city to fix what it already owns before breaking ground on anything new.

In her Week 8 candidates' forum response published in the Coronado Eagle & Journal the week of Oct. 28, Purvis laid out a three-tier framework for capital spending. Two City Council seats are on the Tuesday, Nov. 3, ballot.

Purvis said her first priority is public safety and critical infrastructure. Fire stations, police, emergency communications, wastewater, stormwater, pumps and roads should come first, she wrote, "because failure carries consequences far beyond inconvenience."

Her second tier: protecting existing city assets. Purvis warned that putting off repairs to roofs, pumps, seawalls and electrical systems creates bigger problems. "Deferred maintenance is rarely cheaper in the long run," she wrote. "[D]elaying necessary work simply because a new project is more exciting can turn a manageable expense into an emergency."

Quality-of-life projects ranked third. Those include improvements to the Coronado Library and Winn Room, parks and recreation facilities and downtown infrastructure. Purvis, who cited nearly 11 years working in the city manager's office, said those investments matter but must be sequenced carefully.

On paying for it all, Purvis outlined five principles. Maintain conservative fiscal management. Keep adequate reserves rather than spending every available dollar. Pursue state and federal grants while acknowledging strings attached. Use long-range forecasting to account for decades of operating costs. Regularly reassess the Capital Improvement Program, or CIP.

"I want Council to regularly reassess the Capital Improvement Program rather than allowing projects to remain on a list simply because they have always been there," Purvis wrote.

Three other candidates are running for the two open seats. Rebecca King, a former Coronado Planning and Design Review commissioner and chair, and Andrew Gade, listed as a small business owner on the city's election page, are both on the ballot. So is Ricky Hoyt, who announced his candidacy in July as a Navy Reserve pilot.

Election day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.