First up – the planning commission recommended a development code amendment pertaining to historic preservation and hillside grading.
Food trucks and food carts were a hot topic. Application requirements were removed from the development code, which will be handled administratively. Food trucks will need permits from environmental health to operate – and two streets will be strictly off-limits to street-parked food trucks. Adobe Rd. and Hwy 62 both have speed limits over 35 MPH, and were deemed a safety issue for good trucks to operate on.
Rolling food carts or other sidewalk merchants such as rolling food carts or other sidewalk merchants, are exempt from this.
A planned business referred to as the “Oasis Carwash” was seeking a deferment to the costs of “undergrounding” the utilities required to run it. Southern California Edison quoted the business about 130 thousand dollars for the work, which the planning commission agreed was a large cost for a nascent business to immediately absorb. A 5-year deferment was recommended and discussed, and is being sent to the Town Council.
The 29! Sculpture took up most of the rest of the meeting. Sitting on Donnel hill as you approach twentynine palms, , the large metal 2 9 and exclamation point greet visitors to the city. However, if you get up close to the sculpture, it’s in major need of repair according to the chair of the public art advisory committee Anna Stump.
Stump and new committee member Paul Razzo presented a plan with two options for restoring the sculpture, created by Chuck Caplinger. Stump showed up-close photos of the sculpture which over the years has lost its protective coating and shows extreme signs of wear.
The first option would be to restore the sculpture where it is, and create ADA compliant walkways and a parking lot to encourage more visitation to the public art.
A second option – which was well-received – was to move the art to a more public locations such as freedom plaza. Paul Razzo showed mockups of what that could look like.
The commission agreed on restoring the art – which stump estimated to be 3 to 4 thousand dollars. As far as exactly where the public art would relocate to is being deferred for now.
Tuesday night’s meeting agenda and a video of the meeting are viewable here.
