Plastic Bags Removed From Agenda

Everything on the agenda at tonight's Desert Hot Springs city council meeting was approved unanimously. How do they do it? Other political bodies in southern California must be jealous.

Even worse than unanimity, the two most interesting items on the agenda were delayed. The Chamber of Commerce quarterly report was delayed because the CEO was not present. Recently the C of C has generated some news by removing the CEO and then reinstating her. Me, I just wanted to hear her mangle her numbers again.

The other item was the plastic bag item. As anti-libertarian was it would be, it would have been very interesting for Desert Hot Springs to require local retailers to charge for those nasty plastic bags that float around us everywhere. It would not only have distinguished DHS from the other cities in Coachella Valley, but almost all other California cities. But the city councilmembers decided (unanimously, of course) to delay it for a study session. Very fair and democratic, but boring to those of us who were looking for a little excitement tonight.

In public comments Father Ted Pantels of St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Palm Desert spoke about his desire to create a non-profit urgent care center in DHS. He didn't give any specifics as to whether any of the groundwork had been done yet, and I think he was looking to the city council for guidance, which they can't give during public comments, of course, but later Councilmember Baker expressed his strong support for the idea, so I expect a connection will be made and the idea will move along. I think it's an exciting idea, and I look forward to the day when I can entrust my urgent medical needs to a Greek Orthodox sponsored clinic.

Ted Mayerhofen got up and made a weak and offensive joke suggesting that in DHS a runner is a mugger, but in Palm Desert they're running for their health. I try to fend off remarks like from ignorant people in the rest of the valley. When it's somebody local and supposedly informed I can only express my disgust and disdain.

A Randy Buxbomb (I welcome spelling corrections) got up to plug a device called the "Cool N Save" which had something to do with improving air conditoning efficiency and costs $99. He rattled off a phone number, but who had time to grab it? As soon as he started speaking my internal spam alert was triggered, and I could see that it had done the same for attorney Rubin Duran. As soon as he could get a word in Attorney Duran pointed out that public comments were not a place to do commercial promotions. Mayor Parks agreed and Mr. Buxbomb sat down (and left shortly after) mumbling something about how no other city had problems with his presentation. Anyway, Cool N Save has a website and it seems to be a misting system for central air conditioning units.

Many other positive, constructive public comments were heard.

During city councilmember reports Russell Betts promoted his Shop Local campaign.

And here's the text on the back of that image:

Contest Rules

Save Your Receipts for all your retail purchases within the City of Desert Hot Springs from May 1 to May 31, 2008. The highest combined sales total wins $100.00. Prizes for second and third place to be announced. Qualifying purchases must be from a merchant or retailer with Desert Hot Springs city limits. Wholesale purchases and institutional supply purchases do not count. All receipts must show the retailer name, date of purchase and purchase total. Date of receipt must be for purchases 5-1-08 through 5-31-08. Qualifying receipts must be turned in before June 10, 2008 at midnight. For location on where to turn in receipts and more information, call (760) 288-1613.

It's time to get started. We can fix our city.™ Keep our retail dollars at home creating jobs and supporting our local economy!

My first thought was that I had already lost 6 days of receipts, although I could probably find a few from today in my recycling bin. How do I get on the Russell Betts mailing list so I can find out immediately when these things happen?

The deal is better than it appears. There are actually going to be TWO $100 prizes, plus another $100 prize for groups. Currently the Boys and Girls Club is competing with the city government of Desert Hot Springs in the groups category. The smart winner will be someone who buys a car in DHS, I think...unless buying a house counts.

In his comments Councilmember Al Schmidt said that the Skyborne development out on western Pierson is set to start building its next phase! In one of its categories of homes (and he didn't say if that was high, low or mid-priced) the development has sold all but two homes. So it wants more. Apparently that view is selling!

Councilmember Scott Matas made a presentation on city parks which was utterly destroyed by the evil forces of Redmond. It seems that when a Powerpoint presentation is created in Vista it will not run on an XP machine. Our city has been wise enough to stick with XP, but Microsoft has seen fit in its greater wisdom to cripple the reports of Councilmember Matas. I think we should sue for no less than a billion. I believe City Manager Daniels said that he would see that the report was put up on the city's website so that we could all see it.

The final show of the evening was a presentation on a proposed development to be called "Desert Rose" on Verbena Drive near Two Bunch Palms. This is a really forward, cutting edge design, being very creative and green. It was approved, but before that there were public comments from Tom Hydrick (spelling corrections invited). He wasn't able to get to his point in his three minutes, but on his way there he made it clear that he thought no residential construction should be permitted until every previously approved development is fully built out, completely sold, and nearly fully occupied. I think that's how the Soviets used to do residential development, but it doesn't work very well in the real world.