Local Elections 2026

I am a 43-year veteran of the restaurant business. I started in Chicago when I was 19 years old. My mother bought a building that had a little bar in it, and she put me there to run it. By 21, I had my own place, and I just kept going from there. 

Gary: You were running a bar at 19?

Mom got tired of the parties at the house, and she’s like, you know, take your friends over here. Make money off of them there. And I just, I was a natural for hospitality. Every year I’d be building something new. I got to the point where I was doing four to five venues a year.

I’ve probably done over 65 at this point. All over the country, I’ve had bars in Aspen, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, L.A., Malibu, and now here in Yucca. 

Gary: And what brought you to Yucca?

Well, I was doing a TV show for Food Network, and one of the producers was friends with Linus, who owns Giant Rock Meeting Room. And he asked, hey, my friend is opening up this coffee shop up in Flamingo Heights, and he needs someone to help him. So I met with Linus, and I went, and I consulted, and I actually came up with the name Giant Rock Meeting Room and helped him get that open. And I walked out on 247, and there was this stunning sunset.

I took a picture, and I posted it. And a couple friends chimed in that they’re now living in Joshua Tree… “come over.”

And one thing led to another. I ended up buying some property here during COVID, put some campers on it. I just, I fell in love with the community.

And I was driving home one day, and I saw a for sale sign where Snakebite (Tavern) is now and the rest is history.

I came to Yucca Valley after growing up in Orange County. I was born in Westminster and later moved to Anaheim.

So after getting out of high school, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for a career, and I had family out here in Yucca Valley, and I came out to visit, and I kind of fell in love with Yucca Valley. 

I love Yucca Valley. It’s magical, especially after growing up in a place like Orange County. Hustle and bustle, constant buzz in the air.

So there’s always something going on here, and out here you can hear people breathing, sitting next to you. I mean, it’s just so peaceful and calm. So I started to meet a lot of friends, and it was great, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, so I went back to school.

So at that time, College of the Desert was your only option here in Yucca Valley, and they taught classes out of the high school and the Marine Corps base and those places, got to network with no more people, continue with education, and then I had an opportunity to join as a volunteer firefighter. I was kind of frustrated with the working environment, and I found out this is perfect for my personality. I’m a very hyper person.

I love active things, and it was a good fit for me. And so what I did is I went back down to San Diego to finish college, and then I decided I found out I could join the Miramar Fire Academy down there, and that’s what I did. So I came out on top thinking I’m going to get a house down on the beach in San Diego, get a job as a firefighter, and get a catamaran.

And that was like a crazy young person’s dream. I already had the catamaran, but it was in the desert.

So I ended up being very successful, got offered a position in five different departments and chose the city of Coronado, and I thought it was going to be great. But then I went to look for a place to live. I can’t afford to live there.

So I turned down the job, and I remember it well. I was supposed to start on Christmas Eve of that year. I came back to Yucca Valley, and they had an opportunity in the Marine Corps base, so I went there, and then I continued my education.

Gary: As a federal firefighter? 

Yes, exactly, on combat center fire. And I found out I wanted to be back here with my friends and, you know, family.

So I ended up applying for the Yucca Valley Fire Department at the time, and I was successful in that too. So I got picked up as a firefighter. That turned out to be my career.

I had the career for 35 years, retired out as a battalion chief, came back to the Yucca Valley area, and covered all the way from the Riverside County line to the Colorado River. And, you know, that was kind of my journey. But during that time in the middle, I met my wife Kathy.

We got married in 1991, had two beautiful daughters, raised them up here in Yucca Valley, and we’re fortunate one of our daughters still lives here, and the other one’s successful in San Antonio. We left for a while too. We moved out to Idaho, built a house, and decided we want to come back to Yucca Valley, and here I am.

But I’m retired now. I have the time and the bandwidth to do it, and I enjoy helping the community. There’s a lot of mentors before me that kind of got me in the part of helping out the community.

Well, I never thought I was going to do anything after I retired. But what happened is I was at a social event, a fundraiser, and someone asked me, “hey, I heard you’re retiring.” I said, yeah.

They go “well we need you to run for Yucca Valley Town Council.” And it turned out that as I researched it before I made that decision, being in a highly-structured business of public safety, it fit in well with government. That’s what it is.

It’s really just a span of control. You kind of look at it as a structural organization and how you manage things. And for me, that black and white order of managing something as important as the town and how it has to be done right and when you bring on new services, it has to be done where you can manage it.

And so it’s been a good fit for me. And I really like doing the council work. And I’ve also learned about relationships all the way to the federal level.

Well, in my opinion, being a member of a Town Council is basically a problem fixer. You’ve got all these problems that happen in the community that need attention. And with 40-some years of hospitality, all that job is is fixing problems and putting out fires and finding solutions that work, that make a lot of sense for everybody involved.
As much as I know about how the Town Council works, they’re addressing the issues of the constituents of this community. And there are some issues that haven’t been addressed and that some areas of town that could really use new eyes for it.

I was just having this conversation this morning with somebody about fallen Joshua trees and he was telling me how easy it is to actually get a permit to remove them. As far as getting permits to move Joshua trees, I’ve heard it’s a nightmare. I’ve heard it ranged everywhere from $5,000 down to $500 to move it.

The process needs to be simplified. Like most of the planning department issues that we’re having, those processes need to be simplified and need to be explained to the constituents how to do it. Small business owners are running into all kinds of hurdles in trying to do businesses here.

And what are the restrictions? There’s things like that special district for Old Town that has a lot of stuff that’s hampering small businesses from growing. And it’s also hampering people that live in that area, how we can change it.

I think the planning department needs to educate homeowners and people who come looking for those answers. We can’t get the answers we want. And simply, I don’t know enough about what the real rules are around moving a Joshua tree.

I just know that it’s become… I’ve heard it from a lot of developers and a lot of people who moved up here with high hopes and dreams to be part of this community. And then they’re getting stopped in their tracks because there’s a couple Joshua trees on their property. Now whether they’re hyperbolic about it or not, whether they are misinformed, (I’m) not completely sure.

There are challenges in development with the Western Joshua Tree in our area. And I think most of us that came out here, certainly myself, what an iconic tree that it is or plant that it is.

And that was brought on abruptly or quickly by the Center for Biological Diversity and enforced through the Department of Fish and Wildlife after legislative action to protect those trees. So it did slow down people that wanted to develop their properties. What the town is doing is that this is a legislative action that has to be modeled differently in order to meet some of the needs of our community.

Some of the things that I based it on was the need to maintain fire prevention abilities of property owners and businesses. As Dion said, dead trees are difficult to move. They weren’t allowed to be touched under the ordinance.

And so with that, we’re looking for some of the simplest solutions to help public safety through fire prevention. We’re looking for some relief with infrastructure going in. Say if someone loses a water line or an underground line is damaged, we can’t touch it anymore because of the trees.

That right now – legislatively – is being addressed. But that was from the work of the town, community leaders, residents of this community, writing many letters to those organizations I spoke of first. To their legislators.

I’ve been to the state level, talked to our assembly member, our senator personally, and also anyone else that was involved in decision making at the state level. So right now, some of the things that we’ve done is just make sure that we are following the state guidance at this time. That’s important for us because it is a policy that we have to follow in our area.

But also tell them that we’re having difficulties mitigating this, especially with the collection system, the sewer system. We have state money and state organizations that are contradicting each other on how they should be managed. We have state fire department telling us we need to have this clearance, but we can’t have the clearance because of the protection of the trees.

It’s very difficult to navigate now, but I think we’re getting closer. We will know what the governor does this month.

So once again, low-cost housing has been quite the conversation in California. And through my time on the council, I’m also involved in other agencies. So I’m on the Commission for LAFCO, which is our Local Area Formation Commission.

Also on SBCTA. And we have another function called the COG or the Council of Governments. And in addition to that was SCAG, which is a state level.

So state level talks about RHNA or regional housing needs. We look at that. And we also look through our COG locally.

We just recently formed a housing trust at the county level under the San Diego County COG. And I’m on that board. But also we have our mayor, Mayor Merle Abel is also the vice chair of that board too.

And what that does is we work with the state. And we lobby for our area to get funding and environmental clearance concessions to help with local low-cost affordable housing. So that’s one of the things that we’re challenged with.

We’re challenged also because of some of the obstacles on the last item we spoke about, which is the Western Joshua Tree. So we’re hoping for some relief, as I said earlier, with the governor signing. But what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to find space for it.

One thing about housing is while we can get the funding, sometimes we may not have a developer that wants to develop it in our area. So we’ve been working down that road to try and acquire more low-income and denser housing for one solution. We do have smaller homes in the area that we use for special projects.

But that’s not really going to fit the needs that we have out here.

Well, I want to go back to something Rick said about developers and having developers come here and build low-cost housing. There are a lot of developers that want to build in the Yucca Valley area. And they’re running into all these hurdles with the planning department.

I think what we need to do in Yucca is create a concierge program for the planning department. Instead of these developers hitting walls, they have somebody there who is guiding them through the process and making it easier to get permits to build. If we can’t get the permits in the first place, how are we supposed to build anything here?

And that is a problem that’s running across all different businesses and developers and homeowners. The process is really difficult here. I come from Chicago, which is a huge city.

And our planning and permit process there, you get a concierge. You get somebody you talk to. You have one person.

You provide plans. They walk you through the process. Here, it’s a “no, a no, a no” every time you go in to do anything.

Even getting something as simple as just a repair permit for a plumbing project is difficult here. So how are we supposed to have developers that are eager to build in this community if they’re just going to have two years of red tape and fight a battle?

I think they’re an invasion of privacy. They do have a purpose. I understand that.

They have helped law enforcement. They’re also ripe for misuse and abuse by certain people. And they’re easily hacked, from what I understand.

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts about Flock lately. We shouldn’t be surveilled like that. This is America.

We’re supposed to be free here. And driving around shouldn’t be a reason that somebody should just be able to grab our license plates. Maybe there is a limited time period that they hold the data, but Flock controls all that data.

They control the cameras. So I’m all for “deflocking” it. I think we have enough cameras watching what we do.

We don’t need them following every car that goes down the street.

Well, as you said at first, law enforcement does use the tools of vehicle license plate readers. And they are prevalent. They’ve been prevalent in our area for about 12 years.

We’ve had them for quite some time. They’re used all over the place. They’re used when you look at traffic lanes like the express lanes.

Those were originally vehicle license plate readers. In other areas, we’ve had three high-profile crimes solved recently. One of them including murder in our area because of the vehicle license plate reader systems.

They do interact well. So I think (from) a public safety perspective and especially in our vast area where things are very expansive and we do have a lot of crime coming into the area because they feel that they can kind of disappear into the desert in some cases. What I will say is that one of the biggest fears is kind of the mosaic theory that they talk about.

And that’s the aggregated data that comes in and being used. Now, aggregated data is used in a lot of different ways to create profiles. Our area is managed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department which we contract with for public safety.

And they’re the ones that operate the Flock system. And we are constantly in contact with them (about) how it’s used and what’s happening. And there are controls in place to prevent the misuse of data that doesn’t.

It’s not prevented in every location I’m assuming because of the stories that I hear. But currently Flock cameras – as the name is but they’re license plate readers – are here. And it’s all up. Like any new technology, we need to ensure that there are controls in place so the data cannot be misused and that it’s secure.

We’ve had some visitors at the last few council meetings talking about these exact comments that you said. One, historically Yucca Valley is a migratory area from Big Bear down into Yucca Valley for cattle. And that was for grazing, summer / winter kind of operation.

And right around the golf course that was one of the major areas and around Warren’s Well. But so there is a history of horsemanship and, you know, horses used as tools and also the sports that revolve around that which we call rodeo. We’ve had rodeos here for many years.

The Honeycutt Rodeo used to come out here and they were very professionally managed. I never witnessed any of the cruelty that is being presented to me at the council meetings today. I need a lot more information on that end to make a decision.

But currently I think it’s always been a wonderful event in our community to talk about our history, how we got here and not forget that. Everything isn’t just Tesla’s on the highway now and, you know, (air) conditioned everything. It is a challenging area.

There’s hardy people here. And I do love the history of rodeo right now. I haven’t made a decision. 

The town doesn’t do rodeos. These are other people that do it and they promote these events. So if it’s something that the town wants… the residents would like to see and participate in, then it’s something that I would definitely consider.

We need them. I mean, we need events like that. We need to be putting Yucca Valley back on the map as a place, as a destination location for, you know, amazing events like Grubstake Days and the rest of that that goes on up here. My daughter is a horse girl. She was part of Joey’s Home Animal Rescue.

She rescued her horse from there. We’ve had horses our whole lives. I, you know, I think rodeos are really professionally run.

I’ve been to a few in the last couple of months. They’re just amazing and they’re part of the Americana culture.

And part of Yucca Valley is the history with the rodeos and the horse culture that’s up here. The new restaurant’s called The Stallion. So I’m all about it.

Bring it… we need more events like that. We need more things in Yucca Valley that remind us of what made this town this town and remind us of this part of the country.

This is Southern California. This is horse country. And we need to be bringing that back.

I’m not sure what the town’s response was. But as far as the animal shelters, they should be working harder at getting more adoptions and killing less of them. I’ve adopted many. I’m all for saving the animals.

So we did respond properly. We did get residents, some in town, some out of town… but they all had the same concern.

So it’s a county / town partnership at the shelter. So we engage with everyone in the area that could possibly use that shelter and also would adopt there in the future. After discussions and investigating the claims of the people that attended our meetings and made comments, we did find our euthanasia rates were high.

Since then, from the top down, we’ve made some changes to staffing. We have brought our euthanasia rate down to almost what would be considered a no-kill shelter. So we’ve done some amazing things at the shelter.

We’ve invested a lot of capital into it that will remain stable through the years to come. And I go to the shelter regularly and check out what’s going on there now. The one thing that I challenged with is that I always say that protest is usually your last form of negotiations.

And I always wanted to let the public know that the town and the team there at the town staff, does not make policy decisions. It’s up to the council to make policy decisions, and that’s how changes are made. 

I even reached out at the meetings to say, I want to hear more. I don’t want to be limited by a three-minute public comment timer. I want you to get a hold of me. I want to talk in detail. Let’s have a cup of coffee. And that’s important in a town. That’s how it works.

You should talk to your council representative or any council member, as a matter of fact. But when you go below the town council, those are staff people, and they follow council direction. It won’t be the tail wagging the dog.

But eventually, I sat down, had coffee with people, got some nuts and bolts information, which was fantastic. We used that as a cornerstone of what we needed to do as a council as a whole. And we’ve made vast changes to our animal shelter and the animals in it.

You know, I get that asked kind of regularly. And we are committed to being open for business.

And we do that, as you said, on the schedule, Monday through Thursday. Friday is a staff day. We run a very small crew, very efficient.

Huge goals from the council to staff. And so they do their business every weekday, Monday through Thursday. And then Friday is completely, as you said, a staff day.

But I will say on Fridays, it’s not closed to those that have important matters that they want to make an appointment (for). We will make an appointment. We usually do that.

Businesses interested in construction projects going on, infrastructure projects where they need all the staff together, that’s the day they do it on Fridays. They are at the office on Fridays. So they’re working Monday through Friday, but Friday is parsed out for that special day to do internal deep dive projects.

I think we should be able to reach those people every day of the week. They should be there. I was supposed to get a tour of how the back of the house works in the Town of Yucca Valley once my nomination got accepted.

I’m still waiting to go do that tour, so I’m not 100% about the hours and everything. But of what I understand, and I hate harping back on the planning department, but of what I understand, that’s a contracted, outsourced group of people that work there. I think maybe if we were to hire within Yucca, we have a lot of talent up here and people that are willing to work.

If we were to hire within town and keep those people here and open our doors five days a week and we can help the people that live here, I think we need to do that. There needs to be some changes with that.

I don’t know what the town of Yucca Valley is providing to the homeless right now. I am seeing it as a problem. I will say that the San Bernardino Sheriff has been doing a great job with controlling it.

I had some property off of Sunburst right here that was becoming a big camp, and I noticed that’s been going away a lot more. Ever since I’ve moved up here, I’ve noticed the homeless issue has slowly been dealt with and eradicated. I am not sure exactly how much Yucca is doing with that, whether it’s San Bernardino County Sheriff doing it or the Town’s programs.

Once again, I haven’t been given that tour or been told about what they’re doing yet.

We’re seeing improvements. Most people in our community will see little encampments along the highway or off the highway.

What we’re doing right now is we’ve always depended heavily on the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which we contract for our police services in the town of Yucca Valley. One of the programs that they have is called Hope Team. The Hope Team will go out there and assess what’s going on and what kind of needs for services are of that group or that person.

We recently also invested some of our Measure Y funding –  thank you to the community – we have a homeless outreach coordinator now and Faith Nicholson is that person.

She’s come in and she’s developing a plan to interact with these folks that are unhoused at the time, find out what their needs are. Some of the time they’re paired with Deputy Camacho, which is in charge of that end of it for the Sheriff’s Department, our police department. And they will even go off-roading into the fringe areas.

What’s happened is a lot of the people that are unhoused have been pushed away from the highway or where they’re visually present, and they’re into areas that are a little more remote now. So we’re trying to continue our fight to work with these people to let them know that we are trying to get them services that they need. And so that’s where we’re at today.

We actually have a full-time staff at the town. We work with our full-time Deputy committed to the project, and that now is resulting in improved homelessness to reduce that number in our community. We’ll see a little more proof coming up here in a few months with the point-in-time count, see how that works out.

But I’m very optimistic that services will start to be delivered. That whole conversation wraps back around where you were talking about housing. So there’s a lot of moving pieces here for mental health services, which we’re fortunate to have the facility in Joshua Tree.

But to transport everyone down the hill into the San Bernardino Valley area for services isn’t a real good solution for us.

That’s a very interesting question. Two sides to that.

I think the short-term rentals were great during the COVID era. I think it gave a boom to this community. It opened up opportunities for a lot of people that wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles and the nightmare that Los Angeles is.

I’m one of them, and I was just in Los Angeles yesterday, and it’s nowhere I’d want to be, the space and the stuff that we have here. I have noticed that the more mid-century, modern, smaller STRs that people were renting prior are now becoming single-family and first-time-buyer homes, which is fantastic for us. Having all these new families move to the community and buy those properties that just weren’t as income-generating as they were in the past for short-term rentals, there has been a big dip in those Airbnb numbers, with everything.

Once there’s a boom, there’s a correction. I think we’re getting to an area plateau where we’ve got enough balance of Airbnb and we’ve got enough balance of now new families that are coming. Yucca Valley is still affordable.

You could buy a home here for between $300,000 and $400,000. You can buy a home here for that range, and for single families, that’s really important because those are untouchable numbers in the bigger cities.

It’s a correction. It’ll resolve itself over time based on the market demand.

Short-term vacation rentals were certainly popular in Yucca Valley during COVID, post-COVID, for quite some time. It had a lot of momentum. It had a lot of disruption in our community.

To those that have lived here for many years and never seen anything like that before. After that, we implemented a short-term vacation rental strategy. That policy direction just got recently revisited, and we’ve tightened it up even more.

We have very few complaints in our community about short-term vacation rentals. It seems to have navigated itself well, but we did have a few, and we addressed them. One of them, Night Sky, lighting, trespass, trash, noise.

Those kinds of things have all been put into policy with enforcement. I think it’s in a comfortable spot right now. The town does very well.

We’ve always said that good managers of good short-term vacation rentals will succeed. The ones that are not good players, they’ve slowly fallen off.

The top three outside of public safety or law enforcement… that’s a big piece for me. We did talk about infrastructure. Infrastructure is one of the things that I really enjoy.

That’s why I’m on the Transportation Authority, past president of it, and also at SCAG with our Environmental Committee. Infrastructure is one of the things that allows us to get around and do the things that we want to do to go to places that we need. And when you look at infrastructure, you’re looking at the roadways, the congestion, the backups and the pockets for turning.

We have vehicle accidents, and your team reports on them regularly. Those are things we need to be aware of. Also within that is just safe spaces.

So making sure that our businesses, our homes that are being built are built to standard, that businesses are following the regulations set forth in the Development Code, State Code, the California Building Code, the Uniform Fire Code. All of these things are important. So when we have people coming to our area, they should…

Gary: So the top three priorities are infrastructure… 

Infrastructure, which I would consider. In that piece, I was just talking about roadways.

Safe roadways and alternate roads. And the next part is our facilities in the town. Our facilities and businesses should be treated the same way that someone that either lives here, works here, or visitors that come to our area have the expectation that when they come into a building, that it is a safe environment for them to be in and whatever their purpose is.

I guess I would throw “quality of life” in there that we deal with. Yeah, I know there’s a lot of pieces, I’m sorry.. But roadways, structures in general, and then our quality of life services and activities.

Well, first and foremost, we should be doing an Old Town Arts District. Our community is loaded with musicians and artists and sculptors and all this. And we need to embrace that art community that’s here in this town. I mean, there are some amazing talents here.

And they don’t have a centralized area in town that they can call their true arts district. I think having an arts district and revitalizing the Old Town area is key to Yucca’s survival. And building a brand for Yucca Valley around that.

We have a lot of visitors to the area that drive right through Yucca to go to Joshua Tree, to go to Twentynine Palms, which has very much supported the artist community, and just to come back to their Airbnbs in Yucca. So we need to create reasons for people to stop, which also helps with the speed on 62 and all that. 

If you’re giving reasons for people to stop, take photos, do shopping, support the community, all the other little problems that go along with it, like the speeding and all the rest of it, kind of diminish a little bit.

We had the same problem in Malibu. 

Number two, we need a creative arts program for children. We need to give the kids here something to do, other than gaming.

I know the BMX track, that’s coming back online. Having some arts programs for the children in this community is a big thing.

And create more and more jobs for Yucca. That should be a big priority. We need to be embracing small business that’s here, because we are job creators.

Simple as that.

At a rocket’s pace. We need to keep supporting the artists here. This community… I’ve never had, other than Wicker Park in Chicago that was real big in the 90’s, I had multiple, multiple restaurants and bars. That was a huge artist community for the city of Chicago. And we have that similar thing here.

This art community is fantastic. I support them with the local bands. I use only local artists to do any kind of decorating in my places.

I’ve always been a supporter of the arts. I’ve had galleries, all of it. Yucca, we’re lucky to have this much talent, and we need to embrace it. We need to be supportive of them. We need to give places where they can perform live.

We need to minimize the mural restrictions and start allowing more street art. I had come up with an idea of doing a street, an art fair in the area at Kickapoo and 62, in that parking lot there that’s never utilized. And about doing an annual art fair there prior to (Hwy 62 Studio) Art Tours for the people that don’t want people coming to their homes to see their work.

And create about 100 booths, charge a fee for that. That money would go towards buying 6 to 8 foot fiberglass Yucca trees that would be painted by local artists and then placed throughout the town and eventually auctioned, and the money would go towards art programs for kids. And it would be a sustainable event.

So every year we’d keep recycling those trees and new artists would be painting them. And those people would be able to buy those and put them at their homes and take a little piece of yucca to those Airbnbs that they have on the Mesa, they have in Joshua Tree, they have everywhere.

Huge investment in arts recently. We always have been, we’re a very artsy-craftsy community, musically, visually, performing, everything.

So we have the Yucca Valley Film Festival that we’ve encouraged over the years. It’s exponentially grown. And great work to the team that does that, but they chose Yucca Valley.

And we’re very excited. When we did outreach for, when we redid the Yucca Valley Library, the new library on the corner of the highway there at 62 and 247, we deliberately built a public display art center for it. And so we reach out every year for an artist to compete or to make some art, put it there centered.

Same thing, entrance to the town, Yucca Valley, the sign there is old and beaten down. We’ve all seen it on the right-hand side as you come in. We’re getting, it’s all gone all the way through the planning stages and is now ready to be deployed, which is a new entry level sign done by a local artist also.

So we use artists. We did the same thing with our utility boxes. Our program is now on utility boxes throughout the town.

We’re trying to show a presence. We did address the mural directive and the policy to encourage that, but also make it to where it’s a correct theme for the town. And so that canvas is correct.

Some of the new development, we continue. We have a very robust commercial development. The Dutch Brothers Coffee is still on track. It’s in planning right now. Starbucks West is in development. Jersey Mike’s, Domino’s. I know these are all corporate places, but they’re things that obviously the business community wants and does. 

The biggest thing that we’ve got going for this is our 40,000-square-foot aquatics recreation center, which will be done by the end of this year. So that project has an natatorium. It’s got a full gymnasium, wood floor. It has an event space inside of it. 

But it’s something that’s been needed (for) a long time. You know, the high school pool wasn’t good for competition for the children.

So we’ve got those. Dion mentioned the BMX track. Right now, the Basin White Foundation is helping out with the organization of that so it can become more sustainable and back to where it was in days past.

We have a lot of programs that are going on. We just finished up the pickleball courts… that’s done.

We had a ribbon cutting on the first of the month. That’s set for expansion too. And many other projects like the senior center that’s been updated.

These are all engagement areas that we need for the community where people can socialize and have events.

You know, I just think I want to continue to build things that make the community more engaged with each other. One of the things I always hear we haven’t had is a public space, an event space, that’s not a government building or something like that or using a church or something. We don’t have an event area.

I think we missed a long time ago when we used to have the Grubstake Days over behind on what they called Ray White’s property. It was huge. Everything was in one place.

And it was a very big event for the community. And that’s one thing that we’re missing. We would have to do some very challenging things to make a central area for the entire community and basin.

Our visitors’ first impressions. When you roll into Yucca Valley, you’re looking at a dilapidated Yucca Valley sign. You’re looking at a car park that is not being used other than by a few homeless people.

You’ve got these medians that run up the road. If I had a wand, I would be popping in Yucca trees all up and down 62. I would make this town so inviting and so beautiful to look at that you’d have no choice but to stop here and enjoy it.

Because Yucca needs a little bit of a change. It needs some fresh eyes. It needs business owners on that council.

And I’m so passionate about the arts and the music scene here. And as Rick just said, we need event spaces. We need outlets for people.

And we need to create amazing, amazing spots that are synonymous with Yucca Valley.

Well, one, I have the bandwidth for it. I’m a retired. This is what I enjoy doing all the way up to the federal level on different boards.

I’ll say that some of the things that we do around here are for the entire basin. And I always recognize that. Yucca Valley is where I live and where I represent.

But everything that we do here affects the entire basin. I always look at it holistically like that.

Thanks, Gary. So I’m originally from Palm Springs, California, born and raised an eight-year Navy veteran and recently moved to Twentynine Palms back in 2019 after living in the Bay Area for six years. And the reason why I moved to Twentynine Palms is because it’s an affordable city and I like the openness in the desert, and it’s right down the street from where I grew up at.

Thank you, Gary and the folks at Twentynine Palms in the Morongo Basin. Like I said, my name is Carlos Blandon. Born and raised in Coachella Valley.

Grew up there all my life. Started working for hospitality and restaurants and hospitals and everything you can think of down in Coachella Valley. And then went for the College of Desert, got my geographer’s degree, went to Sac State, and then came back.

And hopefully I can do some change and working for the government, what I’m doing now. And then came up here because I love the desert. That’s why I’m sticking around.

I love that sense of place or the vastness of place, how we like to call it. So I’m here and I enjoy it.

I grew up in South Carolina and joined the Marine Corps pretty much right out of high school. And I would like to tell people I was “voluntold” to come to Twentynine Palms.

This is my last duty station. But when we got here, my wife and I, we fell in love with the desert. We got to working and doing the things that God called us to do.

And because of that, we ended up liking this area. And when I retired from the Marine Corps, we stayed in the area. And we’ve been working ever since in the community, just doing the things that God has called us to do because we love this desert.

We love this place. And so that’s why we’re here.

I grew up in San Bernardino, California, and graduated high school in Merino Valley, California.

I got stationed here in Twentynine Palms in 1998 as a young PFC and spent the majority of my Marine Corps career right here in the desert. I only left for three years for recruiting duty in Indianapolis, Indiana, and I actually asked to come back to Twentynine Palms. So I’m one of the few rare Marines that requested to come back to this desert by choice.

Now, I did not know that the Marine Corps was going to keep me here for the remainder of my career until I retired. But once I retired, I decided to stay here because I have a son that was born in the Naval Hospital. We’re really active in the community, and I just grew to love this desert.

So that is why I’m here, and I love being here.

I am running because I believe that if you’re going to be a part of a community, you should desire to leave an impact. You should desire to make a difference.

And that is exactly what I feel like I’ve done the past almost three decades being here. I’ve been very active in this community, starting out, again, with serving our country for nearly 18 years until I retired from the Marine Corps, took an early retirement. Also, you know, I feel like I would bring to the city council my experience of not just leadership, but I’ve obtained a master’s degree in business, a master’s in human resource management.

I’m a Red Cross-certified volunteer, so I’ve been doing disaster preparedness training, shelter training, served over 10 years as a Soroptimist, which is a women’s organization, international women’s organization, serving as president for six years in Twentynine Palms for our local chapter, raising money for women and girls in our community to further their education, also raising money for the House of Hope down in Desert Hot Springs, which is a women’s recovery home. 

I also have served over 10 years as the community outreach director for my church and have been over our Feed the Need program, which serves over 1,300 residents who face food insecurities every month. That has been a total privilege and honor. And before the pandemic, I was out every single week serving our unhoused population with hygiene gear and just really getting to know and see what the needs are for that population.

So when I originally ran for city council, I ran because I wanted to bring a different perspective to the council. And since then, I think that I was able to bring that different perspective to the council.

I’m running for reelection to continue doing the work that we have been working on over these past three and a half years. There’s a lot of projects that are coming down the pipeline that I’d like to help bring to fruition. What do I think I bring different to the council?

I think I bring, you know, different experiences in, you know, working in the nonprofit sector. So understanding government from that angle. I did that for six years while living in the Bay Area.

And having a bachelor’s degree in business management, a master’s degree in leadership, and a graduate certificate in public administration, I think are really key to the role of a city council member and has helped me in my role.

Like I mentioned earlier, I was born and raised here in these desert sands. I’ve seen the Coachella Valley grow from that urban sprawl from the 80s to what it is today, and I’ve seen a lot of sprawl and water consumption that seems like, you know, that’s what I went to school for, to learn about regional planning geography, see how the organism of a city grows and expands.

I volunteer for the AmeriCorps program, going and helping within our American borders, making sure communities are better, our public spaces are cleaned up and accessible. I also was certified for the International Code Council, so I’m able to understand what these directors are trying to tell the council members of what their job is supposed to be, but really what should be being done. Another one would be I grew up going to Cuba, and she would have been my godmother, but she was a doctor, and they have a program now that you have to go door to door and help people and serve them at their house.

And she taught me, walking me around, showing all the different people in need and showing that it takes time and effort in walking around town.

Well, so I’m running or seeking re-election because, like Octavious said, there’s still work that needs to be done. When I first got on the council, one of the things that I ran on was the fact that I wanted to see Twentynine Palms grow but still keep that small city atmosphere that we have. And I think that we’ve been doing that.

We’ve been very successful in a lot of the things that we’ve taken on and have done for the city, but there’s still work that needs to be done. And so being able to be a part of that is really important. I had to—some people would say it’s a privilege, but it was really tasking when we had the hurricane.

I was actually serving as mayor. And, you know, just being there supervising and running and making sure that everything was in place and we did all the things that we needed to do to keep the citizens safe and secure was vitally important. And I contribute a lot of the success of that to me being in the Marine Corps and learning leadership and things like that.

I could sit and list all of my accolades. You know, people don’t know that I have three master’s degrees and all those things like that. I just like to do what I feel like it’s important to the city and for the city.

Right now I’m really big into sports, youth sports, and helping because my son plays football. So the Warhawks program, you know, we’re really big in that and pushing that forward because it’s not just about playing football but about developing these kids.

So we went for the grant. And one of the biggest reasons we went for the grant was because of the amount of money that it started out being. We felt like it was enough money to where, because eventually we feel like the city may need a sewer, and the reason is because of businesses.

You know, most of the citizens, they’re always talking to us about wanting more businesses. And to get those businesses, we’re going to need a sewer system or a treatment plant, those types of things like that. And so a sewer system would have helped us.

But as we were going through the process, the money kept shrinking, and so then it was not beneficial to us to do it. And so I think I like the direction that we’re going now because we’re doing the study, the geological study, to see, you know, what our groundwater is like and to see if there is actually problems with our groundwater because it’ll tell us, you know, maybe we won’t have to worry about a sewer system for 50 years, and that will be great. Or maybe it’ll say you’re in trouble and you need a sewer system yesterday, and then that’ll be a new situation for the city to deal with.

But so as far as actually thinking that we need one, we would need one because it would draw businesses, but at the same time, I think it’s important that we check our groundwater first to see how bad we need one.

I always do believe in collaborating with our local stakeholders and state or other water agencies in collaboration and seeing what study is the information to provide us. That water study would be great to show us what our need is, but why should we wait until something becomes bad? Why would we fix a dam until it bursts?

That’s my concept. And also people want to live in the city and walk, so that’s where I’m pitching my first policy was transit-oriented development. So we just focus on hot nodes, we call it.

Those areas can fix and focus on that area of sewage instead of going through the whole city at once. Just focus where it is needed and focus the urban development in those areas. Because each foot of pipe costs money, so if we can have more access to that one foot of pipe, it’s worth the value.

and growth of our city, but not at the expense of a financial burden and hardship for our residents and businesses. So if we’re able to obtain grants and financial assistance that are not coming out of our pockets, I’m all for the sewer system.

But until then, I would say, as Councilmember McArthur Wright said, let’s study, let’s see what the needs are, and take it from there.

The city of Twentynine Palms could potentially need a sewer system based on what the results of the USGS study say. Working with the Council, just like McAuthorite, I was able to look at this firsthand and really go through this entire process. And just like Councilmember Wright said, there just wasn’t enough money to where it wasn’t going to be a financial burden to our community.

And then when we started looking at the assessment fees, which were going to impact the Four Corners area of our city, we were looking at assessment fees of $400, $500 per household. And for an area that’s already low income, you’re going to see rising cost in rent and probably displacement of people at the expense of the sewer plan. Where I’m at now is I like the idea of a decentralized sewer plan.

Like we right now have a package treatment plant at Freedom Plaza, and we’re looking at how can we connect houses to that package treatment plant. Now, if we can do it in that area, we can do that in other areas of the city as well. We could start doing package treatment plants throughout the city so we can inch our way to ultimately getting off of septic.

The main goal for putting this on sewer, I wouldn’t say it’s to really attract businesses. While it would, we want to protect our groundwater. That’s number one, I think.

I think it’s very important that we distinguish between Flock cameras and license plate readers, right? Flock is a company, and I recently held a roundtable event where a representative of Flock attended to answer questions and concerns that many people in our community had.

What I found was that many of the questions and concerns that we had, they just weren’t answered by the Flock representatives. At this point, I’m just not comfortable renewing the Flock contract. That doesn’t mean that I’m not for public safety.

It doesn’t mean that I’m not looking at other avenues to replace that system. Maybe it’s another license plate reader. I don’t know.

But at this point, I just don’t simply trust the company of Flock.

I really appreciate Councilmember Octavius explaining the difference because I really think that the cameras are useful, too, because they’ve already helped the city. But we have to look at the company and make sure that the company is doing what they’re supposed to be doing. So it’s vitally important that we pay attention to that.

And, you know, it was pointed out to me that when we talk about invasion of privacy, a camera is just reading a license plate and it’s not moving, but your phone follows you everywhere. And you could say, you know, I like big pots, and then all of a sudden you’re going to get 50 million ads with big pots in it. And so, you know, that’s where you can talk about invasion of privacy.

So as far as the camera is concerned, I think it’s needed for the safety of the citizens, but we do have to take a closer look at the company because I have been reading some things that are not pleasant as far as the company is concerned.

I’m against them only if it goes into private hands because if they’re in public hands, we can create what we call CSI, a controlled network, and we can do FOIA, and the public can have, how you say, public ordinances over them. So if any regulation happens, we have control over that, not like these private entities do.

All right, thanks, Gary. Well, I am actually supportive of Flock cameras as a public safety tool while also respecting the data security concerns that many members of our community have raised. I don’t believe that public safety and individual privacy have to be either or choice.

We can still use this technology. If we can still use this technology, there should definitely be safeguards in transparency, accountability, if there’s any misuse, on who is able to access the data, how it’s used. I support giving law enforcement the tools that they need in order to keep this community safe.

Like it’s been said, it has solved murders here in our community. It has definitely helped our law enforcement. So if there is another agency that is available to work those cameras, I definitely would like to hear about it.

But if Flock, that company, is the only one that’s able to use the cameras, then I say let’s continue to use them until we find a better company.

I definitely feel that the city should support low-cost housing.

There is definitely a need for it in our community. With the prices of renting out here, I do know that it’s needed. How would I implement it?

Hopefully, when there’s developers who want to come in and invest money in this community, not voting against it, but making it easier as long as they have done their due diligence to make sure they’ve followed all the rules and regulations we have in place, then let’s support developers coming in here to invest in building in this community.

Yeah, the city should always, any city should always implement all types of housing, especially focus on never forgetting about low-income housing. Policy one, like I said, transit-oriented development, focuses on bringing mixed variety of housing, but also my other second policy is working with the tribal relationships. Those partners can work with the federal government, with the city and the federal tribe working together, they can bring grants and other resources to the city that’s valuable and needed.

Millions of dollars are sitting there waiting to be worked if we can partner up with each other. And the tribal leaders have worked so well in helping their own community to be brought back up from where they are now. So I think it would be a great partnership.

So there’s this thing called RHNA, the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, and we’re actually, we have a goal of creating 1,000 homes by 2029. That is what the state says that we need to do, and I absolutely think we should be doing that. It doesn’t just specify low-income homes, though.

It talks about housing at every income bracket. And so I think that we should be focusing on attracting housing at every income bracket. But most importantly, I think that we should be trying to find pathways for people to become homeowners.

We have a very low homeownership rate in this city. And, you know, I believe when people own homes, they become more vested in their community, and they’re going to be able to have some more disposable income and things like that that will be reinvested back into our economy. So, yes, housing at every level, but homeownership is paramount.

Well, yes, definitely we need more housing, not just because the state says we have to build 1,000 houses or anything like that, but I think that we need housing. And one of the ways that people will become homeowners is if we can make them affordable housing. You know, we have to look at the economy level of our residents and understand and know that, you know, this is a low-income area.

And so to make housing affordable would, you know, I think generate more homeowners, owners. And the city, the way we implement that is by making the codes understandable. I always tell people when I first got on the council, I read the codes and I had no idea what they were talking about.

And that was one of the first things I told the planning department was that the codes need to be where me, with my South Carolina education, can understand it. And so we’ve been working on that, you know, making the codes to where a person can come in off the street and understand what they need to do because that’s a deterrent. If you don’t understand what the city is asking you for, you’re not going to want to build.

Or if you think you have to jump through hoops, you’re not going to want to build.

So that’s a very good one. And people may or may not know, but we actually discussed that, I think it was last year or the year before, talking about the possibility of opening on Fridays. And actually, you know, we left it up to the citizens and the majority of the citizens said that they would rather it stay the way it was.

There was a few that wanted that Friday, but I think that they can get most things done in those four days because you just plan accordingly. And if you plan accordingly, you know, you can do what you need to do to get it done. So keeping it four days, working the hours that they work because they work, you know, past when most people get off from work.

So there’s still time for you to go in and do what you need to do. So I think it’s good the way it is.

Yeah, as Council Member Wright said, that we left it up to the residents and they chose to leave it as is. You know, one thing to know is that because we have those four days instead of five days, the city hall is able to stay open later throughout the day. And so there are people, you know, that might be getting off work at five o’clock, but still might be able to make it to city hall to take care of business because we’re able to extend those hours daily.

I did not do any polls myself, but I like the fact that the city is open later because, you know, people who get off work at 4:30 still need to conduct business, it being open till 6 p.m. definitely helps. So if that’s the reason why it’s open that late, then I’m definitely for keeping it the same schedule.

It’s really highlight being open later because a lot of people, especially contractors, are still working on site and they go pick up the plans afterwards at those hours or really early in the morning because that mid hour is their shift hour. Also, the people voted and they decided, so that’s the word that we should follow. But also, the city clerk can always do an analysis statistical and see what is the high needs and the volumes during the hour.

And I guess if we ever see that report, we can change our mind.

Like I said earlier, the tribal leaders are a great partnership to bring in millions of dollars that are needed to bring resources to their city. Like housing, for one, we can place in the housing.

Also, medical attention needs because one of the other problems is either stuff them in a box or ship them out. That’s kind of been always a big argument in this country, I think. And we should focus and keep them and bring them back to society, I think.

Why, I would love if it was possible for us to alleviate homelessness. I believe, I don’t know exactly what the city of Beaumont did, but they had built those tiny homes like on the side of the freeway that you see.

So if we were able to, you know, receive grant money to purchase, you know, tiny homes and have someone manage that, we have so much land out here that I just don’t see why we’re not able to do something like that. And partnership with landowners and people who have the property, that would be the first thing to see if we can get grant money or some type of partnership with people who have land to build tiny homes. That would be amazing.

As far as the resources go, I mean, there are tons of resources. I believe that San Bernardino County has. It’s just unfortunate that it’s so far away.

So like the nearest homeless shelter is in Indio or Victorville. And so maybe even setting up some type of transportation, if someone is willing to go to a shelter, you know, sometimes people are unhoused because of disasters or things like that. So maybe the city can help partner with like getting them to those resources or getting them to San Bernardino to get assessments, things like that.

So I agree with Shanice. I don’t think we’re ever going to alleviate homelessness, but we definitely got to continue to work at it and work on it. We have been looking at the tiny homes is just getting the right partner to do it is where the issue comes in at, because there’s a lot more to it than just finding a piece of land and then putting something there.

There are a couple of organizations that have been talking about doing some different things. We have one organization that’s talking about building a facility, but it’s for veterans. And then we have Set Free that has the ranch out there.

And right now we have Arch that has some of our homeless in one of our local hotels. But the thing about all of these programs is that you have to have a plan to where you’re working to get them to not be homeless, meaning finding out what their issue is. You know, it could be medical or finding out the reason they became homeless and then addressing that issue the best way that we can.

And one of the issues that we have is the fact that a lot of our resources are so far away. But at the same time, if we can address those issues, you know, like maybe it’s drugs or maybe it’s, you know, they lost their job and so they need another chance or maybe they committed a crime and, you know, now they’re being looked at differently. So if we can address those issues, then I think that we can put a real dent into the homeless population or the homeless situation.

But again, I don’t think we’re ever going to alleviate it because there’s a saying that if you build it, they will come, meaning if we did do tiny homes or we did do something, more homeless people are going to come. I mean, not saying that we don’t want to help them, but that’s just the nature of the beast. That’s what’s going to happen.

So they’re always going to be there. They’re always going to need help. So we just got to address the issue why they became homeless, and I think that will help.

That’s actually my experience. In the Bay Area, I worked for nonprofit organizations that addressed homelessness, first with youth and transitional-aged youth, and then second with the veteran population.

As everyone has kind of said, one of the biggest problems is the lack of resources that are actually here in Twentynine Palms. They have to go down the hill to San Bernardino or even the navigation center down in Palm Springs. And I do like some of the ideas about transportation, but I would reverse it, and I would say, well, how can we get some of those resources to come here even if it’s for once a month or once a quarter or whatever that is?

How do we partner with these organizations that are in San Bernardino and Palm Springs to have them come do outreach here so that we can actually have full wraparound services? So we need to have those full wraparound services so that we can make sure that we’re not having them go back and fall back into homelessness. But the last thing I want to talk about is, most people, when they think about homelessness, they’re thinking about people that are out there living in the encampments and things like that.

We have a huge population of homeless people who are living in vehicles. We have a huge population of homeless people who are couch surfing and don’t have, maybe they don’t have water or electricity in their houses. That qualifies as homelessness.

So we have to look at this as a broader discussion and not just, oh, there’s some encampments out there. That’s a problem. We should address that, but look at the whole thing holistically.

The top three priorities for the City of Twentynine Palms, I would have to say, are roads. I would have to say our youth, having activities for our youth, and the lack of retail and pharmacies. We recently just lost a pharmacy in the city, and I know that’s on a lot of our community’s mind.

For me, I believe one of the priorities for the City of Twentynine Palms is a redevelopment of the code enforcement department. We’re more attention to it. There’s a lot of blighted, missed opportunities there to bring more hazy life or third places to people who have more of a sense of place.

It’s kind of like what I call the broken mirror theory. A lot of people are like, why am I going to enhance my property or my life if something like this is happening? Another one would be, like I said, more retail or third places where people can go without obligation and just enjoy their neighborhood.

Little small corner parks, you can call them. And then third one will probably be housing. We need more people.

We need more community. We need people who actually live in this town and we interact with each other and know each other’s names and be able to take care of one another.

First, I guess not any particular order, but disaster preparedness, making sure we’re strengthening our readiness for flooding, earthquakes, fires, any type of emergencies. Also economic growth and development, seeing job creation, supporting local businesses and just seeing investments in this community that will strengthen our local economy.

And then thirdly, youth programs, investing in our children and youth through like mentorship programs, teaching entrepreneurship, financial literacy, just expanding upon our youth council, which good job guys for that. But yeah, those are my three priorities.

So I think the top three would be economic development. We definitely got to figure out a way for the city to make more money because eventually if we don’t, we’re going to be in a situation or in a bind. So economic development is vitally important.

And you know, the council does some things that kind of help. Like for example, when we have conferences, instead of all of us going, we send representatives, you know, because that helps. Every little bit helps.

And then youth, really big on the youth and their growth because they are the future. If we can get them to continue to grow and to stay or to be willing to come back to Twentynine Palms, then we can secure our future, you know, because one day I do plan on going fishing and hopefully there’ll be someone there that could take my place and carry on, you know, doing the things that we’re doing. And then the other one would be housing, you know, making sure that we have enough housing for the people, affordable housing, I want to put it that way because we need affordable housing, not just housing.

It’s okay if you want to build houses, but they need to be affordable because what good is it to have empty houses?

Well, I think one of the biggest reasons you should vote for me is because I’ve been doing the job. I’ve been doing it for 11 years now. I absolutely love this city.

And I know that there’s still work that needs to be done. We have good continuity with the council right now. And so I think that, you know, based on my past performance and the things that I’ve been doing, that I’m the best candidate to continue this mission.

You know, they put us in districts. And so I have to say that I represent District Five, but in all actuality, I represent the city of Twentynine pounds because I don’t limit my outreach. I don’t limit my things or help.

When I help people to District Five, I help whoever needs help. And I listen to whoever needs to be listened to.

Well, because I want to say, first of all, thank you, MacArthur.

Right. For the 11 years he served this community, it’s time for someone else to help, you know, serve. And I feel like everything I’ve done up until this time has brought me for such a time as this where I have, you know, fresh ideas.

I know all the pillars that I have, and I’m sure people can read the flyer and everything, but I do have backing and ideas to go along with those pillars. And I just feel like I can build an even stronger Twentynine Palms than we already have. So I’m looking forward to the opportunity to serve if I’m granted.

And again, thank you, MacArthur for the 11 years, but it’s time for somebody (new).

Well, I think the community should vote for me because, you know, the last three and a half years, I’ve really learned the job of being a council member. I don’t think anybody truly steps into the seat and really understands what their role is. And you’re, you’re not really going to get everything that you want accomplished in your first term.

And I think that there was some growing pains. I think that there was, you know, some, a learning curve there. And I’ve, I’ve, and over the last couple of years, I’ve, I’ve gotten better at this job and I want to continue to serve the people of Twentynine Palms.

Thank you, Gary, for giving me the opportunity to come here and talk and to voice my concerns to the city of Twentynine Palms. Like I said, I’m a desert native. I know the sound of the desert winds when they blow.

So I’m always paying attention to the needs of the community. My work history proves that I have the capacity and the willing that I have fought to get where I am. It was not just given.

And if, if you actually been following me, you will know that I will actually fight to the very end for your voice. And we want you to come and present anything you have to city council. Thank you.

The biggest challenge I believe is getting people to show up to the city council meetings.

The biggest challenge for the city of Twentynine Palms is growth and sustainability at the same time.

Economic growth and working with our subject matter experts and stakeholders efficiently to bring that opportunity to their city.

The biggest challenge is housing. We need more houses and we need people to live in them.