Who's Who in Elk Grove: Radio Head

For many of us, unemployment can be a challenge. Denny Gomez took it as an opportunity to start a labor of love: a weekly internet radio program focusing on Elk Grove. The former public radio reporter is funding Radio Elk Grove himself, with a few small donations from friends. The program will air Friday mornings and emphasize news and public affairs.

What inspired you to start Radio Elk Grove?

What really triggered it for me was turned the corner from Cosumnes Oaks High School to Big Horn Blvd and Civic Center Drive and I saw this building [under construction]. I thought it was going to be warehouses or medical offices, and it turns out they're low-income housing. I said to myself, 'How did this happen, and why don’t I know about it?'

How will Radio Elk Grove compare to Elk Grove Patch and other media outlets in town?

Radio Elk Grove will not be doing as much spot news. It’s not to keep the people abreast of what just happened, but to go in-depth to figure out what’s behind those stories, the people that make the news and what’s on their mind. We want to go deeper into fewer stories.

What's your background?

I was a freelance writer for the Reno Gazette Journal and a news anchor for KUNR, the National Public Radio affiliate in Nevada. I also produced a radio theater program there, and did an oral history project.

[Afterwards] I worked for a high-tech startup and went into real estate. I've lived in Elk Grove for eight years. My wife works for the Cosumnes Community Services District.

What's your favorite story that you've reported in your career?

It's actually not a story but a project we did. We went into the medium-security prison in Carson City, Nevada, working with a community college. We actually helped prisoners write their own plays, act in them and then we broadcast them on public radio. It was a little scary because we had one of the guys who was kinda negative on day one and the next week he had committed suicide. These were all life internees and their take on the world was a little different.

In your premier broadcast, you said you were looking into how easy it was to get budget information from public agencies in Elk Grove. Give us a little preview. How accessible are they?

The city and the CSD both have published budgets. You can’t find them easily, but they’re online. The school district is a little trickier. The upshot is that they have a budget they have to readjust, that’s based on the ADA, or the average daily attendance. Every time there’s an attendance report in some miniscule way the budget changes. What they said to me was it’s all here, we’re completely open about it, but it’s too much information [for the average person] to understand. It does more harm than good. They were, like, looking stressed but they were going to give them to me.

How can listeners find you?

The program will be available at www.RadioElkGrove.com, on iTunes, and by RSS feed in the Google and Yahoo reader services.