Tourism, Marine Base expansion, and traffic lights were the main topics at the Twentynine Palms Council meeting Tuesday night. Dan Stork has details…
Promotion of tourism was the dominant topic of the Twentynine Palms City Council meeting. City Manager Joe Guzetta listed ideas and topics from a recent brainstorming session attended by many of the city’s innkeepers. Several innkeepers used the public comment time to focus on specific points. Among the ideas emphasized most heavily by citizens or council members were: The relative merits of using an outside consultant for marketing versus relying on in-city expertise; having a downtown clean-up and marketing push to coincide with the opening of the Tortoise Rock Casino, which may happen before Christmas of this year; cooperative marketing of Twentynine Palms and the casino with the casino owner; taking from Caltrans responsibility for the downtown portion of Route 62, and reducing it to two lanes, to slow down traffic passing through and entice it to stay a while; enticing a coffee house to set up shop in the city; attracting Marine Base residents to come into town; loading up on Internet marketing. Council directed Guzzetta to bring back a prioritized action plan based on the inputs received to date.
In other business, the Council unanimously resolved to support Congressman Paul Cook’s bill to constrain the expansion of the Marine Base. During Council report time, Council member Jim Harris heralded Caltrans intentions to move forward on two new traffic lights, one at Encelia, and one at Lear. Caltrans wants the city to fund one-half and one-third of the costs of the signals, respectively.
