On Friday’s Z107.7 Up Close Show, Gary Daigneault Spoke with the recently appointed San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors Chair Dawn Rowe, who also represents the hi desert as the County Supervisor of the 3rd District.
Rowe was joined by her Morongo Basin field representative, Steve Reyes. During the interview, a caller asked Rowe to comment on the status of the Morongo Basin Municipal Advisory Council, also known as the MAC, which has faded from prominence in the last few years.
Rowe said:
“When we redistricted in 2020 for the census that is required under state and federal law every ten years, all municipal advisory councils have to be dissolved because the jurisdictional boundaries change due to the redistricting. So we dissolved the MAC and the we reinstituted the MAC. I regularly attend our Homestead Community Council meetings every month. We really wanted to focus on areas that don’t have regular community centers and meetings, specifically Pioneertown, Joshua Tree and Wonder Valley. So we advertised for MAC representatives to come and apply for those positions so that we could stand the MAC back up, and I did not receive enough applications for that to happen.”
Rowe explained that the logistics of running the MAC meeting in compliance with state law required one entire part-time staffer, and that she and her staff are trying a new style of meeting to fill the gap left by the missing MAC, saying:
“So we’ve pivoted to what we have now is an open house, we’re doing that monthly, the other thing to consider too is that when we agendize MAC meetings, it has to go through the full Brown Act Compliance, and I grew to 10,000 square acres in the 3rd district, but I did not grow in staff. So I have a lot more dirt to cover and represent, and my internal team out of the Joshua Tree office. It became pretty cumbersome and onerous, so when we pivoted to an open house format, it serves the same purpose of hearing the constituent concerns on a monthly basis.”
To hear the entire conversation between Daigneault, Rowe, and Reyes, you can listen to the entire Up Close Show right here:
