Approximately 60 local residents came by the county government building in Joshua Tree on Tuesday to have their hands shaken by Third District Supervisor James Ramos, eat his sandwiches, and tell him their concerns. Reporter Dan Stork tells more about the meet-and-greet…
In the middle of a scheduled two-hour lunchtime event, Ramos briefly addressed the whole group of attendees standing in the lobby of the County Government Building. In apparent response to local grumbling in recent months about his perceived lack of presence in the Morongo Basin, he listed recent local appearances, and claimed effective voices for desert concerns from himself and Supervisor Lovingood. Ramos listed specific instances of county attention to local concerns, including: proactive monitoring of some known illegal dump sites; denial of a solar project in Landers, and advocacy of rooftop solar; scheduled community cleanup days in Landers and Flamingo Heights; and streamlined permitting of household projects via the Internet. He concluded with a plea for local input: “The county, and myself, we’re working hard for you, for the constituents that are here, and we’re only as good as the issues that we hear about, that we can dive into.”
Before and after Ramos’ remarks to the group, we chatted with Morongo Basin MAC members and others about assorted local issues. Here is a sampling of the variety of topics of concern.
ROADS
In a head-to-head conversation, Supervisor Ramos told us that the county has tried pro-actively to place equipment and crews in the face of incoming weather in places where they could react quickly to deteriorating road conditions. He acknowledged that people living within road systems not maintained by the County are left to their own devices.
Ramos’ field representative and Morongo Basic MAC Chair Mark Lundquist said that the county had had to find $20,000 outside the budget for the Copper Mountain Mesa road district to attend to maintenance of roads there in the wake of the summer monsoon floods. As for areas not in maintained areas, he cautioned that the process leading to establishment of road districts is lengthy and costly, and is almost certain to be a money-losing venture for the county, even with increased property tax assessments that it brings.
Mary Helen Tuttle, the MAC representative from Copper Mountain Mesa, said that the main dirt thoroughfare through her area, Winters Road, has been much improved by maintenance, but she still wouldn’t recommend it for sedans. She said that Coyote Valley Road remains pocked by “sandbox-sized” holes, and that non-maintained roads have gradually improved in recent weeks simply by being driven upon.
PUBLIC FEEDBACK
Tireless public commenter Almut Fleck complained to Ramos that the schedule format of meetings of the Board of Supervisors inhibits effective use of the interactive video conferencing feature that he regularly touts and promotes.
THE JOSHUA TREE CELL TOWER
County Planning Commissioner Paul Smith expressed surprise that opposition to the cellular tower in Joshua Tree developed mainly after the Commission approved it. He acknowledged that shortcomings in the notification procedures employed by the County might have played a role in this.
HOMELESSNESS
Homelessness in the Morongo Basin is a particular focus of Tom Ziegert, the new MAC representative for Yucca Mesa. He sketched the network of response organizations that has developed in the coastal areas of Los Angeles and San Diego Counties, where he served as a Methodist pastor for several years before returning to the Morongo Basin. He claimed inadequacies of the homeless count in this area, and of the lack of temporary shelter from extremes of both heat and cold. Ziegert emphasized that homelessness is not only about lack of shelter, but also involves a lack of access to a wide range of public and private services. He pointed to the particular needfulness of Joshua Tree, as evidenced by 86 percent of school children receiving free lunches, and of the existence of families with three generations of drug use.
WEST MOJAVE ACCESS ROUTE PLAN
Desert Heights MAC representative Pat Flanagan said that the quantity of public comment on the West Mojave Access Route Plan of the Bureau of Land Management has led to the re-opening of the plan to more public scrutiny, starting now. The picture that Flanagan painted for us gave the impression (this is our paraphrase, and not her words) of BLM technocrats using mapping databases uncritically, without knowledge of facts on the ground, to define a 10,000+ mile network of legal access roads, much of which ignores private property lines, or invites encroachment upon them. She said that online tools are available that permit a more careful analysis of the reality of desert roads, but acknowledged that those tools require some degree of learning and technical facility to use.
