Desert Hot Springs City Council, March 18

Last night's Desert Hot Springs city council meeting was such an exhibition of cooperation and bonhomie that I'm going to have start making things up to generate interest. I think I heard the video operator, who usually remains silent except when giving direction to the cameramen, mumble that if you want action you've got to go down to the Vector Control District board meetings now.

First, we kicked off with Mayor Parks honoring the Desert Hot Springs High School soccer team for coming in second place against terrific odds. Sorry I didn't get all the details on what exactly they came in second place AT, but it was good nonetheless.

Second, we got a new police officer! Woo-hoo, you read that right! If you don't think this is a sign of the big turnaround in Desert Hot Springs, then you must be blind. This is the first officer we've hired since the big layoff in 2006, and the chief says they are searching to fill TWO more officer vacancies. I'm sure he also means that there are actual funds to pay those officers, too. Mariecar Mendoza got a better photo of the pinning of new officer Nestor Olivos than I did. He came to the U.S. from Colombia, of all places, 14 years ago. He was welcomed with a standing ovation and did a round of handshakes with all city staff present and the entire city council.

On a related point, the city council approved disability retirement for police Sergeant David Henderson who has been on administrative leave for the past TWO YEARS! I assume disability retirement will be less expensive for the city and also free up another police vacancy. Let's hope that the Vector Control District deals with Don Gomsi more efficiently than this, but I suspect we might as well hope for free delivery of hot coffee and donuts to my front door every morning while we're hoping.

Louisa Casterdell (if I misspell any names here, just say so, I try to make good guesses) from the Palm Springs Unified School District (DHS high school, I imagine) got up to say that the first public mural in our new murals project will be unveiled today (Wednesday) in Tedesco Park. She and her students have been painting the last several days. When students complained that it was too windy her answer was "Hey, we all live in Desert Hot Springs, don't we?"

She also announced that Latino's Meat Market, 13175 Palm Drive, [Google map link] has kindly offered one of its walls for the first mural on Palm Drive. I think it's got two walls that would be good for murals, both north and south.

Alibaba got up to tell us that real estate developers he knew who had sworn off Desert Hot Springs years ago were now interested in checking out the city for investment opportunities, saying specifically that it was the new city council and the professionalism of City Manager Rick Daniels that changed their minds. Secondarily, I pass on those kudos to those voters who elected the new city council.

Don Solti (I'm sure I've got that spelling wrong, but it would be nice to think that a relative of Georg Solti lives in DHS) told us that this weekend's special Easter event at Cabot's Museum, which on their calendar is described simply as "Rubini/Abbott Event" [yawn, sounds like a wedding reception], is actually CHAINSAW SCULPTING! Praise Jesus, who could miss that! The only way to improve on that would be to have Don Gomsi doing the chainsaw sculpting.

By the way I have a small request for the Cabot's webmaster. Could we get the front page "Calendar" link to actually link to the calendar, rather than the old home page, which requires another click on "Calendar" to get to where we want to go. Thanks.

During councilmember reports, Mr. Betts took a good deal of his time to praise fellow Councilmember Baker (and Vector Control District Trustee) for his lonely, key role in fighting excess taxation, waste, abuse and the sick working conditions at the Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District. The irony was lost on no one that at one time Don Gomsi himself had appeared in front of the DHS City Council to accuse Karl Baker of sexual harassment. Amazingly, the Vector Control District still has a suit agains the city of DHS trying to force us to remove Karl Baker from the Board of Trustees, but I think it's fair to say that chances are getting better that the District will eventually drop that suit and pay Desert Hot Springs its huge legal expenses, as ordered by the court (twice).

Another celebratory point came when City Manager Rick Daniels in his report told us that Hotel Shilla had paid up its bed taxes IN FULL! I'd have liked to hear the dollar amount, but it was good just to hear that owner "Mr. T." must be able to listen to some sort of reason.

Also, City Manager Daniels made passing reference to "the new Palmwood owners," or at least that's how it sounded to me. Was there a major change in ownership of Palmwood that I completely missed? Did the other investors force Michael Crosby out?

CVAG has told the city that it may take as long as 18 months to amend the Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan to allow Desert Hot Springs to join. I imagine that besides having teams of bureaucrats and attornies to do the rewriting, they've got to have a ton of public hearings and then a vote from every other participating government unit. Probably the MSHCP is second only to the agreements that bind the European Union in complexity.

So, to smooth development until that glorious day when unlimited funds will pour in from somewhere else allowing us to build sidewalks and street crossings solely for the use of fringe-toed lizards (I haven't misunderstood that, have I?) the city council voted an agreement that's sort of a mini-MSHCP which will make the current process all clear and legal for developers. Jonothan Evens of the Center for Biological Diversity (the managers of the Coachella Valley Preserve), Joan Taylor of the Sierra Club and Fred Bell of the Builders Industry Association, all rose to praise the agreement and kept their remarks brief in expectation of support from the council. Which they got. The resolution passed 4-0 with Al Schmidt recusing himself because he owns property in the area that will be included within the MSHCP. It's unfortunate that the law requires him to recuse himself, effectively silencing the one dissenting voice. One of the points of his campaign for office was opposition to the MSHCP, so it would be good to hear from him on these important votes.

A resolution to extend the agreement with the Builders Industry Association for the real estate development sign "kiosks" came up. In order to prevent signage clutter, the city sells little bits of land to the BIA on which they construct their directional signs pointing to the various real estate developments in the area. Every city in the valley has a similar program. Each site costs the BIA a $140 one-time fee. The BIA maintains the signs and also patrols the city EVERY day (that's what Fred Bell said) to both assure the signs are in good shape and to pull down any illegal real estate signs that may have popped up elsewhere. Several councilmembers praised the BIA for their speedy and effective maintenance of the signs. Councilmember Al Schmidt had some kind of objection and I don't believe he ever stated clearly what that objection was. I don't know if he thought it was a free speech issue or a restraint of business to ban all other signs, or if he was simply pointing out that our code enforcement people can't stay apace with all the illegal signs. His frustration showed when other councilmembers tried to address points that each of them guessed was his objection, to no avail. The resolution passed 4-1 with an increase to $199 per sign location, giving us the most expensive sign fee in the valley. The fee increase was approved 3-2 with Councilmembers Schmidt and Baker dissenting.

A program was adopted requiring any lender who forecloses on residential property to determine if the property is occupied or not. If it is unoccupied they are required to register the property with the city (and pay a $60 fee), hire a property management company (with a 24-hour phone number), perform weekly inspections of the property and if a code violation develops, to correct the problem within 72 hours.

There was a brief discussion of yesterday's robbery of an ice cream vendor. He was one of those who has a pushcart with the jangling bells (rather than a motor vehicle with that penetrating music). Unfortunately, the discussion took a course that I didn't like. It has been my observation that police can be just as happy getting rid of victims as well a perpetrators. If you've got a crime that requires two parties (robber and victim, for example), getting rid of either party prevents the crime, lowering crime statistics. It's much easier for police to deal with victims who are often decent, working citizens rather than chase the criminals who may be violent and may be able to outrun or outdrive the police.

So an ice cream vendor was robbed at gunpoint in the bright afternoon sunshine and rather than considering how violent criminals like this could be kept off the streets (not that I have any miraculous ideas on that point) the discussion quickly moved to how to get the pushcart ice cream vendors off the streets. They may not have the proper vending licenses, they may not properly observe health department regulations (but how sick can you get from packaged frozen treats?), but aside from that they are decent working people. Councilmember Baker suggested to the police chief that if he wanted to "sweep them up" that he should simply be at Tedesco Park at 8 o'clock any morning when the pushcarts (or their contents) are unloaded. It's true that if we sweep our streets of pushcart ice cream vendors that no pushcart ice cream vendors will be robbed and maybe someone will celebrate this as a reduction in crime. But that punk wearing blue jeans, a yellow tanktop, driving a Saturn and carrying a pistol is still out there. What shall we do to keep him from robbing an ice cream vendor in a motor vehicle? Ban them as well? How about little old ladies pushing their grocieries in a cart down a street? How dare they go about with cash in their pocket inviting a robbery and raising our crime rate. Following this logic to its ultimate end, one would see that if all humans were removed from the face of the earth then the crime rate would be at a good, steady zero.

The city council meeting wrapped up with a long-winded meandering discussion of a resolution to approve a senior housing development on the east side of Palm Drive. Some member of the city council rightly observed that this turned into one of those discussions like the old city council used to have. I won't waste your time trying to describe the highways and byways we followed, because we eventually ended up right where we started and it was approved just as it was received from the Planning Commission, but we'll wait to see if anything gets built, as some RDA money will be needed to cover some losses caused by a requirement of 15% "affordable" housing. Why not call it cheap or low-cost housing, since to call it "affordable" suggests that the rest of us live in unaffordable housing like we are trust fund kids.

Anyway, the project will include the very first buildings in Desert Hot Springs to have THREE residential stories. Other taller buildings have been approved, but they have residential space on only two of their floors. Councilmember Al Schmidt objected to three residential floors just because he has a "personal objection" to three floors. Huh?! He never explained it, but he did say the word "earthquake," thereby ruling out any sort of numerology. The developer of the project assured him that since the buildings would be built with a steel frame that they would be quite safe in an earthquake, but Mr. Schmidt was not convinced. I want to assure Mr. Schmidt that building technology has recently advanced so that some steel buildings even taller than three stories are safe in even large earthquakes. Let me see if I can think of an example. Yes, here's one that, if my count is correct, does go above three stories:

Desert Local News offers more detail on the discussion of this housing development.