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Order and. I call the meeting to order at 1641. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I

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pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which

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it stands. One nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. One coffee.

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okay. When I call your name, please say I. Chair mesa is not here this evening. Vice chair

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juarez andrade or here or. Sorry. Present. Commissioner martinez. Commissioner.

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castillo. Cabrera. Commissioner. Mesa. Jay. Mesa. Can we can we have you turn on the

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microphones just so. Thank you. Do we need to start over? Okay. Chair s mesa is not here. Vice

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chair juarez andrade, present. Commissioner martinez. Present. Commissioner. Castillo. Cabrera

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present. Commissioner. Jay. Mesa. Present. Commissioner. Cabrera gutierrez. Present.

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commissioner. Morales. Hinojosa. Present. Honorable commissioner. Romero present. Honorable

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commissioner flores rojas present. Commissioner rodriguez. Commissioner. Avalos. Present.

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thank you. Okay. Next is the approval of agenda. At this time, the commission may

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announce any items being pulled from the agenda or continued to another date, or request the

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moving of an item on the agenda. At this time, we have one additional agenda item, and it

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is a presentation by commissioner martinez. And so we will add that as item number

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four to the agenda. Okay. Next is the approval of the minutes. We had a meeting last month. So

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it was meeting minutes of december 8th, 2025 of the city of coachella youth advisory

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commission. We'll need a first and a second. Commissioner martinez. Do we have a second?

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commissioner? Castillo. Cabrera okay, motion passed up next, we have our presentations. We have

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the first presentation from the city manager's office. Good afternoon everyone. Good

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afternoon. Good afternoon. Well, what I'm going to do is kind of tell you a little bit about

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what I do. First we're going to start out with some civics though. We're going to talk

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about levels of government and talk about budgets and how many people are employed. Then we're

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going to talk about the city of coachella and its form of government, the city council,

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the department heads, and then a little bit about what I do and then not. Part of the

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presentation is since your students, I will share a little bit about my story, because my

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story is unique. I didn't go back to school until I was 28 years old because I decided I

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wanted to do something different, but I'll fill you in with that later on. So first

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level of governments, as you know, there's one us government, there's 50 states, but the big

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number is local governments. And that's what you hear about. And if you look under cities

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and towns, there's almost 36,000 cities and towns, meaning that there's 36,000

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city managers. And not every city is run by a city manager, but they're run by some of the

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bigger cities are run by the mayors. The mayors act is kind of like a city manager as well.

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so the federal government, the total federal budget, $7 trillion, the population of the

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united states is 348 million people. There's 3 million people that work at the

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government. And that hasn't been updated because the government's in a cutting mode. And so those numbers have adjusted. But we don't have those numbers and we won't

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until next year. But the types of departments in the federal government, the irs, the

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military, all branches, social security and the department of education, every government has

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like a body that kind of looks over what goes on. There's not one. We don't have a king in

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the united states like other places do. And so there's a watchdog, almost, where one

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person doesn't make all the decisions. It has to go through steps. And just like city

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government, federal is that way also. So you have the executive, the legislation, legislative

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and the judicial. There's oversight so that one person doesn't make a decision for all,

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even though right now you kind of scratch your head and wonder what's going on, because that's

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kind of being diluted a little right now. So interesting time to be talking about this state

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government. The state budget is $321 billion. There's 39.5 million people in the state.

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there's 250,000 state employees. Types of government departments within the state government is

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the dmv, caltrans, the department of taxes and fees, corrections and rehabilitation.

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the edd unemployment department, the state courts, and then the state is also looked after by

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the assembly and the senate. Things go to the assembly, they go to the senate, and then they

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go to the governor for approval. The governor just doesn't make decisions on his own. We have

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county, the county. There are total budgets, $10 billion. They oversee 2.5 million people

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within the county. They have 24,000 employees. The type of department. And you'll notice

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everything's a little different as you get down to the local level. Their span is not as

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broad, and it's just within the division that we're talking about. And this is just

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riverside county, but you've got the child support services, the department of social

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services, the sheriff's department and the fire department, environmental

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health, the registrar of voters and the district attorney. And then at the board of

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supervisors. One supervisor doesn't make the decision for the county that was appointed.

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five, I believe, board of supervisors that take districts within the county, and they

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represent those people from the county that are not represented by a city, but ultimately, some

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of the decisions made by the county also affect cities, of course. The city of coachella

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is run by the city council. The city council is elected. You have the mayor, steven

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hernandez, the mayor pro tem, denise delgado, and then three council members tiffany

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verhagen, yadira perez and doctor frank figueroa. We also have, which is unique. Not

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every city has elected treasurers or clerks, but the city of coachella does.

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sometimes those are appointed as employees of the city, but in this case, based upon city

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charter, the city has an elected clerk and a treasurer. Now, when it comes to running

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the city, I'm responsible for what goes on. Council tells me what to do. I'm supposed to

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carry it out, but I can't do everything on my own. So you have an executive department.

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so within the city we have the pio. Who is seth? Laura. We have our economic development

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director, selena jimenez. Andrew simmons is our public works director and our city

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engineer castulo estrada runs our utilities. Kendra reif is our community development

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director. Yolanda lopez is our hr manager, human resources manager. She does the hiring.

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I'm sorry, I don't want to use acronyms because you're going to wonder what I'm talking about. Lincoln bogart is our finance director and then listed is our fire chief, chief

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tovar. I did not have a picture of our lieutenant that also reports to the city. His name

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is robert garcia. I just don't have a picture of him up. The interesting thing about the

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chief of fire and the chief of police for the city of coachella is that they're not

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actual employees of the city. We actually contract with the county for fire and police

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services, so even though I do not direct them, they still come together for our meetings

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and we find out what's going on with in the city from them. And then this is our organization

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chart. And as you can see, there's a lot of different things that go on throughout the city. But what you will notice is that each one of those department heads is down

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below the electeds, and then myself and the city clerk and treasurer and the city attorney,

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the city attorney I did not cover, but the city attorney, just like myself, were both

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hired by the council and terminated by the council. Those are the only two

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positions the council is responsible for. Appointing. The city attorney is a contract

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employee. He's actually not a an employee of the city. There's actually a contract

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that's in place for that, just like we have for police and fire. So why is this important?

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again, we get into civics. The voters have the responsibility of placing the council members

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into their seats. The city is unique because the city has a mayor. Most cities do not have

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an elected mayor when they're not. A strong mayor or mayor actually runs the city. In this

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case, I believe it was back in 2008 or so. There was a statute that was passed by the voters

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to allow a mayor to be elected individually. They have to run every two years. So the mayor's

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constantly running for office. City council members are appointed for four years, and

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then they appoint the city manager and also the city attorney. So the manager form

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this city council manager form of government in california, it's the most common structure.

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that's where the city council appoints the city manager. The city council oversees the

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administration. They set policy and they set budgets. The council appoints a city manager

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to carry out the day to day operations. Often the mayor in other cities, not necessarily

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in our city, but the mayor would rotate on a basis where every year they would elect

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somebody to be mayor and sit in office for one year where they represent the city. But in this

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case, that is not the case with the city, because the mayor has a two year term. And then the

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other form is the mayor council form of government. That typically happens in very big

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cities like los angeles, san diego. They don't have a city manager. The mayor is actually

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runs the city. The council and the mayor agreed to do things, and then the mayor carries them

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out with department heads. But that's only it's typically cities over a million in

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population, whether it's here or in other states. So the council manager rule, the the

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rule is the form of government which the voters elect, the city council, who then hire the

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manager. The city manager directs staff and programs in line with the ordinance and

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regulations of the city council. I cannot do anything without the council giving me me

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approval to do so. I cannot decide to do things on my own. Council directs me on what to

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do, and then I am charged with leading that. And then, depending upon what it is,

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suppose we need to go build a road or do something that I go to the public works director,

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city engineer and have them carry out the the tasks that council has put before us in

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this plan. The mayor and the council do not have administrative tasks. That's my

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job to do those things. The life of a city manager daily, to make sure that the city is

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running smoothly and efficiently. Report back to the city council. They give. We give them updates, constantly, oversee multiple projects and tasks, and then typically

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cities hire from within because it's tough to find a city. If you go out and you're looking

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for a new city manager, it's tough to have somebody come in from another area not knowing

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everything that's going on within the city. So if you hire somebody from the outside, it

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takes time for them to get up to speed as to where they're at on projects and what's going on.

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plus, it's you need to know the community. So city managers, powers and duties I have I have

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to implement policies established by council. So council will tell us from the

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dyess and they'll vote, telling staff what it is that they want to see carried out. And so it's

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my responsibility to make sure that those things are done through department heads, or I take care of some things myself. I have the power to appoint discipline and remove officers

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of the city, subject to any civil service rules, which is we have peprah and not peprah.

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I'm sorry, calpers. That kind of tells us what we can and can't do. It's our retirement

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system. And then we also just have to follow laws. We also have mous with our employees

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too. So they have protections. Anybody who works for the city that's not a department head is

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what they call at will, meaning that you can be terminated for cause or not for cause. But

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everybody else that is not has protections through their labor agreements. I have the duty to

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make sure that we're administrating efficiently and all aspects of the city

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business to enforce the ordinances and laws within the jurisdiction, to attend the

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meetings of the city council and devote full time position to recommend measures and

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ordinances for adoption, to investigate the affairs of the city or any department or any

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contract of the city, to assure that proper performance is being done. That's their

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obligation to prepare the annual budget and to inform the council as to financial matters,

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to submit bills. Anytime we cut a check or pay somebody, we have to report that back to the

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council. Council actually approves that at their council meetings and then anything else

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the council wishes me to do, I'm responsible to do that as well. So talking about the city

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of coachella, we were discussing state, you know, federal, state, local

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governments, our budget. And this is just the general fund which pays for services, not

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necessarily our utilities or anytime we build a project. Those are separate budgets. But

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our general fund, which pays for administration, police and fire, takes care of the parks,

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takes care of the streets, things like that. Animal control, our budget is $39.2

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million. Our population is almost 45,000, and we have 92 employees. And again, the city

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departments that we've already talked about, the department heads. This kind of gets into

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the weeds a little bit. There are differences between cities. Some cities operate by what is

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called a charter. Charter. And then we operate under general law, which the state sets those

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rules for us. Some cities can make up their rules if their electorate approves them, maybe

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to do a different way of bidding. Projects. Also, setting council payroll, their

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actual pay and things like that. I don't necessarily know that this is important to know at

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this point, but know that we are a general law city. So we don't set we don't make our own

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rules. We follow what the state does. And then if you're interested, I think you all do.

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you all have a copy of this presentation? I can give him a copy. Okay. Yeah. There's

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there's resources so that you can see even though the city operates, you know, within

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itself. There's also other districts that we are involved with, like the desert

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recreation district, others. This just gives you a list of of the other inter agencies

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that we interface with. At this point, though, I want to go into something else. Since your

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students, I'm also going to present this to you. We have a academy that we're residents

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come in and they learn about the city. And so I'll presenting the same thing to them as well. But and to go into my background a little bit, I've been a city manager since

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2016. I worked at the city since 2010 and I retired in 2020, and then council brought

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me back last year, so I'm serving again. I've been back a few times, but before I knew

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about working for local government, and that's why I think it's important to talk about this now because you're in your formative years, you're still deciding what you want to

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do. Am I going to go to school? And my story is a little different than most. I worked

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for family when I was young, and I didn't have it in me when I was 18. When I graduated from

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high school to go to college, I went to mount san jacinto and got my associate's degree, and

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I'm working for my family. That's enough. And as I grew and saw what was going on

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around me, I knew that I wanted to do more than just work for my family. And so I decided to

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go back to school. And I was 28 years old, and I always had this knack for accounting. When

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I worked for my family business. Thank you. So when I worked for my. Now. Now. Yeah, okay. I'm

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not doing it though. So anyhow, when I worked for my family business, my grandfather worked

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with us also, and he was a cpa, and he got tired of doing the accounting for the business and

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he handed it to me. He says, you know what? You're really good at this. You ought to go

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back to school and and study accounting. And so when I was 20, I went back to school, and

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I was able to finish school in a couple of years. I went and got my master's degree also.

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and then I wanted to become a cpa, but to become a cpa, I had to stop the family business,

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and I went to work for an accounting firm, and I loved accounting. I did not like tax

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work. I still do not like doing income taxes. I don't recommend it to anybody. But auditing was

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kind of special because you're kind of like a detective and you're looking at things, and I

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use that a lot here. And so I was auditing at like the city of san bernardino, the city of

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loma linda, the airport authority, and I got exposure to local government through my

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job. And I wanted to know, hey, you keep on paying into this thing called calpers. What is

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calpers? And it's our retirement system. We don't have social security. We have another retirement system. And I thought, wow, you know what? I, I think I need to look into

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that. And so I applied it a few places. I ended up getting a job in temecula as a senior

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accountant back in 1996. And I stayed there for a few years, and I got the opportunity to

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move on to the city of hemet. And I was I they saw something in me and they made me a

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finance director. That was quite a jump from being a senior accountant to a finance

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director, because I'm running a department I didn't know about local government and meetings and agendas. And so I had a crash course immediately in figuring all of that out. When

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I got there, I stayed there for about six years and went to the town of apple valley and was a

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finance director there as well, and ultimately made an assistant city manager. I ended

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up leaving there and coming to coachella back in 2010 as a finance director, working with

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the city manager, I got exposed to a lot of what went on at the city manager's desk and it

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interested me. And so when the city manager had left, council promoted me to city manager

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back in 2016, and I enjoyed it. But it's a tough job. A lot of hours. You spend a lot of time

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with personnel and I love accounting, and I'd always told myself I'd never get away from

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the number side of things. And as you move up the ladder, you do more administrative work

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than you do what I call crunching numbers. And so I miss that. But it's very

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important to have somebody that knows exactly what they're doing, because budgets can get

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away from you. You lose track of what's going on with the money that we have. That's

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called reserves, but it's like the money that you've got in the bank. You have to keep

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track of that. It's very important. And so coming back, I had to stick my nose back

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into that stuff and I enjoyed that. And so now I'm back. I'm going to retire again at some

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point. And I just want to share that with you, that even though you don't make up your mind

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right at this minute, exactly what it is that you want to do, I certainly recommend not

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skipping school, because, you know, I did get my, you know, my associate's degree at least.

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but you find that as you get older, you have a family, you have a child. And getting

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through school and figuring out what you want to do as far easier, even though it may not seem like it right now, when you have other things on top of you which, you know,

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obligations. Whether you have a house payment, where you have a spouse, whether you have a child. So I'm happy to hear that you're applying and thinking about going to school,

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but I highly recommend it. I also working for cities. It's a great job. You get exposure to

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many things, and if you look around, whether it's the city or the county, there's lots of

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opportunity. The retirement system is good also, and it typically pays pretty well too,

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you'll find. But I don't know if any of you have questions for me. Okay. Well I hope it

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was informative. Hopefully, you know, a little bit more, you know, a little bit about what I

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do. But ultimately one person can't do everything. And so when you see how the levels are

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spread out and what falls below people, it's very important that you have a strong team

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below you because you're only as good as the team that you're surrounded with. And we have an

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excellent team here. And so thank you for listening and thank you for volunteering your

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time. It's very good to see this turnout. And again, thank you. Thank you, mr. City

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manager. I will be sure to provide every one of you with a copy of his presentation. So

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you have it. Next, we have a presentation from lift to rise leadership training academy.

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good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to come and present. My name is

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joe motta. I'm director of power building with lift to rise. We are a nonprofit

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organization here for the in the coachella valley that came together to look for solutions

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on the lack of affordable housing here in the coachella. So before I talk to you about

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our leadership academy, I want you to know a little bit about what lift to rise is, and so

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that you're familiar with our work and why we're doing this leadership academy that I'll be

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inviting to you, inviting you all to participate, if you'd like. At the end, when I talked

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a little bit about lift to rise, but thank you for the opportunity for allowing me to

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come here and and share this information about an organization that's doing great

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work here in the coachella valley. So lift to rise is is guided by a north star, which

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is a future where all coachella valley families are healthy, stable and thriving. That is

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our our mission statement, our vision that guides the work that we do. And it's due to a

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shared goal to reduce rent burden in the coachella valley by 30% through the production

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of 10,000 affordable housing units by 2028. And as we get to close to 2028, and we are close

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to getting to 10,000 units, we've come to find out that we should have made a goal of

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15,000 units, because we're still going to be behind by the time we get to 2028. But this

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is the work that we do, and this is how we do it collectively. And for lift to

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rise, it's we don't do the work by ourselves. We are collective impact organization that is

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driven by 70 plus cross-sector partners that come and come to the table and do the work

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together. So we don't decide what we do. We don't decide how we're going to do it. It's the

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participation and the partnership of cities, county, nonprofit organizations,

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developers and the community to come to find solutions. So this is the problem we are solving.

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riverside. We are trying in riverside counties, prosperity rests on the backs of workers

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who cannot no longer afford to live here. Right? 50, 54,000 plus low income renters

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countrywide lack affordable homes, right? Riverside county enters. Renters must earn $38

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an hour, just 2.3 times the minimum state minimum wage to afford average rent. That's how

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much folks have to earn to be able to rent a two bedroom apartment $38 an hour, right?

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chronic underinvestment plus lack of density and public and public transportation

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infrastructure leaves riverside county housing projects uncompetitive for state funding.

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so as we try to build work with cities and developers and the county, we still have to

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compete with metropolitan cities like san francisco, san diego, los angeles so that we

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can be able to get funding to build housing, right, and low wages for the tourism and

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agricultural workforce. These are workers who power our economy, underpaid and

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increasingly destabilized by housing costs. So this is this is exactly why rice comes

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together to solve these issues. Right. And this is how we're solving it. As I said earlier,

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we're collective impact and private. It's done through collective impact and private

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public private partnerships, where we're led by riverside county department of housing

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workforce solutions. They're our partner, and we have 70 plus cross-sector partners,

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which is cities, nonprofit organizations, developers, which for profit and nonprofit

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and the community all organized around our shared goal of trying to build 10,000 units by

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2028, implementing a multi-pronged pipeline policy, investment and movement

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building agenda. And so these are all the areas of how we are able to do the work that we do,

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right. We start with regional pipeline. So we see what's what's out there, what

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opportunities are there. And we try to use policy, we try to use investment, and we try to

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do movement building so that we can get to our goal. And this is our pipeline. We have 9300

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plus units in the pipeline, meaning those are the opportunities that exist of

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housing that can be built in the coachella valley. We have 90 plus projects, including

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multifamily rental, single family home ownership and polanco parks. If you're not

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familiar with polanco parks, these are small mobile home parks that that are currently

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in the eastern coachella valley, which is thermal mecca, north shore, oasis, right. And then

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2000 plus units under construction are breaking ground by the end of the year. So we we're we're on track. This past december 31st, we had over 952 units of affordable

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housing going to construction, which is the most that's happened in the coachella

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valley in quite some time. Right. And this is through the work of collective impact, not

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us together, but all of us together. Like coachella is a partner of ours, city of indio,

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the county. All these folks come together to make sure to help, to build and move more

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affordable housing in our area. And we also do policy right. We can't just do it alone, just

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like city manager just said. Give you shared a little bit of a civics education. We had to

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also do the same way, right? We have to go on a local level. We come and meet with the city. We

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have to go on a state, on a county level, on a state level, and even on a federal level.

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right. We have to go out to sacramento to speak with elected officials that assembly,

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the senate, to be able to see how we can get resources out here to the coachella valley

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and to riverside county. We go out to the federal right, advocate for more funding for

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rural development and infrastructure. When we say rural development, we want to bring units and homeownership opportunities to mecca. Thermal oasis, thousand palms, all

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these unincorporated areas, because those are deemed rural areas. Right. And so this is

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how we do it through policy. The lady in the picture, she's an indio resident that went in

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for the first time to speak in front of the city council to get approval for an apartment

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complex that got approved. Right. And we knew that we had a feeling that the project

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wasn't approved. Her, along with other folks, organized about 35 residents to come and

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do public speaking and to what's it called, and to get about close to a thousand

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petitions signed in support of a project. Right. And that's what takes us into into what we

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do is movement building. But through investment, that's how we move, folks, right? That's

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how we're able to help developers. We have what's called the we live catalyst

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fund, which is a financing vehicle that blends public and private capital to deploy

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flexible, low income, low interest loans. Right. We saw that when developers were

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trying to build, they couldn't because they were lacking million dollars or $2 million

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or $5 million. Right? That and some of those cities were already tapped out. They

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already gave out as much, as much as they could, and counties gave out as much as they could. So we came in, raised funds. So we can do catalyst fund. We have 1100

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units sparked across 11 projects by loan products from the catalyst funds, totaling

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$41 million. Right, $300 million in private and public leverage. You know, funds so

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that we can be able to build. And you might say that's very important, right? Because it's

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something that has never happened before where cities, counties and and funding, we're

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working together so that we can push the production. Right. But as we were doing all this and

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we were trying to get policy ready to go, we had to do it through movement building,

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right? 2000 plus residents mobilized to civic action in support of affordable housing

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since 2022. As you can see, we're here in front of city hall in that picture, right? 70

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plus partners, including county, nine cities, community based organizations, affordable

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housing developers, residents and funders and coalition right to come together to be able to

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push 100 plus community trainings hosted around tenant rights, community organizing,

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homeownership, financial literacy, storytelling and civic engagement, building

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power among community residents. We couldn't we can't do all this without all the everything

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we spoke about, right? Having all our 70 plus partners being in partnership with cities, the

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county and all these other folks. Right. And this and so as we were doing movement

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building, we saw the realization and the need to be able to start what's called the

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communities by cities leadership academy. And that's what we want to talk about and invite you guys to see if you'd like to participate. So lift to rise. Part of the resident

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engagement initiative, has two programs, which one is called the resident leadership table.

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it's a partnership driven approach to engage community leaders in shared decision and

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resident leadership. Table is more based on having community based organizations, other

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nonprofits to meet regularly, to see how we can help each other right. How we can see

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what, how we can hear what's happening out in the community, through the networks and

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through the people they serve. We have the united, we have jewish family services of the

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desert icu, the united farm workers foundation, the jfk foundation, and we meet and

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many more, and we meet monthly to find out how we can move their work forward so that they

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can help who they serve. But our key, key initiative is communities by cities, which is

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a group of strong advocates that will push for legislations and projects in favor of

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affordable housing. And we have five committees, right. We have a committee in desert hot

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springs in palm springs, la quinta, indio, and we have one here in coachella. Right. And

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when we were building this committees by cities, we just wanted to recruit 3 to 5

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residents to meet with them on a monthly basis so that we can talk about what's going on and

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see how they can help us move. We have an average of about 25 to 30 residents attend monthly

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in desert hot springs and la quinta and coachella. We didn't expect we just we our goal was

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3 to 5 residents. That's it. And we're that's victory for us. But the need for affordable

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housing is so much that about 25 to 30 residents attend the meeting on an average, on a

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monthly average, and we meet monthly. We meet across the street right and in the meeting

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rooms here at the library, and we talk about different subjects financial literacy.

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last june, we held what's called on national homeownership month celebration.

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we held a homeownership workshop of how to educate the community on the process of

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buying a home. And through that, here in the city of coachella, we had about 76 residents

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attend, and we had 40. In indio, we had 52 in la quinta, 30 in palm springs, 40 in dhs. So out

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of all those folks that attended, three folks have purchased a home right through

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that process of finding different resources, first time home buyers down the riverside

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counties, down payment assistance and and other and then 15 to 20 other families

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started the process. So it's all through education. So the community, we decided we needed

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to take the next step because like I said, we can't do this. I'm not a I'm not a coachella

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resident. And many times I've been at this mic talking to our city council folks and they

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know I'm not a coachella resident. Right. And so they'll just they'll be polite and

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they'll hear me out. But if if it's not its own residents that come and advocate for

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themselves, that's the only power that exists. Right? And so when those folks, when

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coachella residents come here into this mic and ask and request, that's when movement

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happened. And so when we were thinking about what the next step was for the committees by

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cities, then we started, then we started to see, we thought of the gbc leadership training

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academy. Right. And we just we're going to have our first meeting. It's going to be the

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introduction. It's it's going to be the last monday of the month. Right. It's the. January

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26th at 6 p.m. Here at the library. Then from there we start. These are the topics

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that we'll be doing. Second session community organizing. We learn what organizing is,

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how power works and how residents can create change. And then we do leadership and

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power, right? We explore our leadership styles, practice relationship building, and

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understand what shared leadership looks like in community. Then we go into

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storytelling and public speaking. And this is where it's important, right? Because

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we want folks to come in and share their story because it's two things can happen. Either

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you tell your story or someone else will tell it for you, and it probably won't be the

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correct one. So that's why that's important about storytelling and public speaking. And like I mentioned earlier, that that individual, that indio resident went that

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was her first time going to the city council meeting, and that was the first time speaking.

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and she shared her story of why it was important for the for the city to vote in and approve

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that housing project. And it's already been built out there off of golf center drive. Right.

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then we go into civic engagement, and I think I'm going to take some notes from

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the city manager's presentation because he did, he shared. He had some good points on there.

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talk about civic engagement. We learned how government works and practice advocating

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directly to elected officials, including them in meetings with legislator. That's that's the

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the practice that we do. And at the end, we create an action plan for your city and then a

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graduation. We bring elected officials to find out to we we tell them what you guys did and

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share with everyone does. And we come in together to create a real action plan for your city

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and how you can move not only affordable housing, but other things that are affecting the

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city. For example, in desert hot springs, our communities by city says, yeah, we want to

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help bring affordable housing, but can we also do something about our neighborhood where

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folks are just racing through our through our streets? Yeah. What are you have in mind? And

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someone says, can we put speed bumps? Let's put a plan together and we'll go to the

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city council and request that and see what what those opportunities exist. So we're not we just don't want to tackle affordable housing. That's our that's our

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foundation. But we want to be able to show and give folks the skills and abilities so that

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they can advocate for themselves and better their community. Maybe they need streetlights. Maybe they need more parks. It's all these opportunities are there. This

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is part of the cbc leadership training academy. So here are the dates right? We have the

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introduction, which is january 26th at 6 p.m. And then we have and it's every month and we

383
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only it's the means run about an hour hour and 15 minutes tops. Right. And you might say

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00:41:33,300 --> 00:41:33,300
we're we're high school students. Well actually I started as a high school

385
00:41:37,900 --> 00:41:37,900
organizing the community. Right. Had folks, you know, invite me to things and started doing

386
00:41:44,466 --> 00:41:44,466
when I went to college, started organizing myself. Right. And that's how you do it. If you

387
00:41:50,466 --> 00:41:50,466
care about your community, you'll do whatever you can learn every lesson and ability

388
00:41:56,366 --> 00:41:56,366
that's out there so that you can help your community in many ways. You know, like I said

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00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:01,400
earlier, if you don't tell your story, someone else is going to tell it. So I do want to invite

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00:42:06,700 --> 00:42:06,700
you guys. We do want the youth. Why? Because many folks. It might be sound cliche, but you

391
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:14,000
guys are our future. You guys are the ones that are next to care of the city and take care

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00:42:19,233 --> 00:42:19,233
of what's our communities and our and our and our counties and our state. Right. And so we

393
00:42:24,733 --> 00:42:24,733
do want the youth to come in. And we'd like to invite you and, and see if you'd like to

394
00:42:30,933 --> 00:42:30,933
participate in these, in these in this leadership academy once a month from here till june.

395
00:42:38,100 --> 00:42:38,100
it's an hour, hour and 15 minutes tops. We are across the street and also you know of

396
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:42,800
anyone. You can invite them. You can invite them to show to attend. I do have some fliers

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00:42:47,466 --> 00:42:47,466
and I would like to share with miss jimenez so that she can share with you guys. But we'd

398
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like to invite you guys and participate and see if this is an opportunity where you're

399
00:42:56,966 --> 00:42:56,966
ready to learn some skills to be advocates for your community, right? So thank you very much,

400
00:43:04,100 --> 00:43:04,100
joe. Interruption. Did you want to share there's is this the one that has a stipend or not.

401
00:43:08,933 --> 00:43:08,933
yes. Yeah. So we do have a stipend. We do. One of the things is we do have a

402
00:43:16,933 --> 00:43:16,933
practicality within the organization. We we love to feed folks. When it comes to I,

403
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:22,400
if I buy too many pens, I may get question for it. But if I buy too many burritos, never

404
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:28,800
question. Right? We we like to feed, we have a hospitality. And so we do provide dinner at

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00:43:33,933 --> 00:43:33,933
all our meetings, and we will provide a stipend at the end of the of the training. We're

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00:43:38,966 --> 00:43:38,966
still figuring it out, but, you know, it's it's it'll be a good stipend so that it will help

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00:43:44,033 --> 00:43:44,033
folks through the time and effort that they invested in being a participant of our

408
00:43:48,966 --> 00:43:48,966
program. So you have any questions, anything you guys like to know a little bit more?

409
00:43:54,066 --> 00:43:54,066
yes. So in order to graduate from the program, would you have to go to every meeting?

410
00:43:58,633 --> 00:43:58,633
yes, we we because all the sessions come together and at the end we do an activity that

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all those things come into play. Like I said, we do have five committees. And so for some

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00:44:08,133 --> 00:44:08,133
reason you can't go to the coachella one on your date. Well, the monday before we have

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00:44:13,233 --> 00:44:13,233
it in la quinta. And as long as you talk with ariana, who oversees this program and they

414
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they, they keep in contact, they text the email as long as you tell them, hey, I can't

415
00:44:26,466 --> 00:44:26,466
make it to that one. Is there another one I can go to? And if you're willing to travel, we

416
00:44:31,533 --> 00:44:31,533
have indio, la quinta that are closest to here. So in case you can't make it right. And so we

417
00:44:36,466 --> 00:44:36,466
have. So for example the first thursday of the month we have it in palm springs. Then the

418
00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:42,200
the second monday and the second wednesday of the, the second monday is in la quinta.

419
00:44:47,666 --> 00:44:47,666
the second wednesday of the month is in desert hot springs, and it's the third monday in in

420
00:44:53,900 --> 00:44:53,900
indio and then the fourth monday here in coachella. Any other questions? Yeah. Parents

421
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:00,800
can join me as well. Yeah. If your parents if you'd like to get your parents involved or

422
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:09,200
something, if they want to get involved but they don't know how to get involved, trust me, this is an opportunity to for for our coachella one, we have folks from all different areas.

423
00:45:17,266 --> 00:45:17,266
we have folks with degrees, we have folks that are farmworkers that are part of the committees

424
00:45:22,866 --> 00:45:22,866
by cities and and attending monthly. So to see how they can help, we do have a parent in

425
00:45:30,200 --> 00:45:30,200
one of our in the coachella one, and I know her. I know her personally. I go, hey, you know,

426
00:45:35,833 --> 00:45:35,833
what are you doing here? Like, what's it called? I know you own your home and you know,

427
00:45:40,600 --> 00:45:40,600
you're, you know, you know, she's an educator and stuff like that. You know why? Why

428
00:45:47,633 --> 00:45:47,633
are you participating? The cbc's like, joe's, like, I know that I have a home, but I want

429
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:54,000
my kids when they graduate college or when they do what they can for them to have

430
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:00,400
opportunities, either to be able to afford their rent or to be able to become homeowners.

431
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:05,800
and I want to see how I can help, just like I was able to go through this process of

432
00:46:11,166 --> 00:46:11,166
being a homeowner. So there there are folks out there that are already thinking of the

433
00:46:16,100 --> 00:46:16,100
future and how they can help their children, or how they can help the community. So this is

434
00:46:20,733 --> 00:46:20,733
a great opportunity, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and present.

435
00:46:26,366 --> 00:46:26,366
and if there's any other questions, miss miller can miss jimenez, I apologize. Miss

436
00:46:34,600 --> 00:46:34,600
jimenez can provide us our all our emails are on there and and however we can answer any other

437
00:46:43,633 --> 00:46:43,633
questions you guys may have. Okay. Thank you, thank you. Next on the agenda, we have a

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00:46:55,466 --> 00:46:55,466
presentation from commissioner martinez. Okay. Hello, everybody. I'm just gonna try

439
00:47:08,633 --> 00:47:08,633
to keep this as fast as possible, but hopefully this kind of sparks some more ideas.

440
00:47:16,766 --> 00:47:16,766
I've just to reintroduce myself. I'm commissioner martinez, so over this past break, I kind of

441
00:47:24,966 --> 00:47:24,966
took the time to brainstorm some ideas for our commission project. I kind of just added a

442
00:47:33,333 --> 00:47:33,333
little starter name. I'm calling it the oh, thank you. The youth leadership and

443
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:40,200
wellness retreat. I kind of just thought it could be something to combine all of our

444
00:47:46,633 --> 00:47:46,633
wants and goals for this project. So I'm just going to go over the event, break it

445
00:47:55,233 --> 00:47:55,233
down some programs and community outreach, as well as how to get our volunteers and

446
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:02,800
helpers. So this would be a day for specifically, I think we were speaking about incoming

447
00:48:10,200 --> 00:48:10,200
high school freshmen. So current eighth graders, where they'll be exposed to community

448
00:48:16,100 --> 00:48:16,100
support and outreach programs, college and career readiness workshops, and be able to make

449
00:48:22,666 --> 00:48:22,666
new relationships with other people from different schools and just kind of put themselves

450
00:48:27,200 --> 00:48:27,200
out there. Okay, so the way in my head, I kind of worked out how this event would be

451
00:48:38,133 --> 00:48:38,133
organized would be in breakout rooms. So different workshops like motivational speakers or

452
00:48:45,300 --> 00:48:45,300
we have different community program leaders come and speak, or even high school clubs and

453
00:48:53,500 --> 00:48:53,500
programs, sports or anything to come and give a little presentation or talk to the

454
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students. I kind of thought that it'd be easier to set out send out a form for these

455
00:49:10,166 --> 00:49:10,166
students to sign up for the specific workshops that they're interested in. That way, they

456
00:49:16,700 --> 00:49:16,700
don't end up at a workshop. It's like, oh, I wish I went there that way. They're given

457
00:49:20,933 --> 00:49:24,866
the opportunity to sign up somewhere. But of course, if they don't sign up, we can always fill them in somewhere else. That's has an open spot, as well as just creating a

458
00:49:31,733 --> 00:49:31,733
schedule, and that gives enough time for all the students to mingle with each other, learn

459
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:37,200
some new things, ask more questions. So the programs that would be involved in this, I

460
00:49:46,133 --> 00:49:46,133
kind of thought of some motivational speakers. I don't know if any of you are familiar

461
00:49:51,500 --> 00:49:51,500
with the bianca ray foundation. I've had the opportunity these past few years to volunteer for

462
00:50:00,533 --> 00:50:00,533
their ray of hope foundation. Well, their event and their they kind of. It's a day for

463
00:50:07,700 --> 00:50:07,700
all middle school students across the coachella valley, and they're given resources

464
00:50:14,300 --> 00:50:14,300
about mental health, digital safety. It's a really uplifting event, yet ours is more focused

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on entering into high school and kind of building more high school and future related

466
00:50:29,633 --> 00:50:29,633
things. So I was kind of thinking, you know, mental health or even just regular

467
00:50:36,466 --> 00:50:36,466
health, health in general, digital safety, because I think as social media grows, we're

468
00:50:43,766 --> 00:50:43,766
always learning new things as well as just some inspirational speakers, high school readiness

469
00:50:51,333 --> 00:50:51,333
school program. So we can ask clubs or sports or just any programs working with our high

470
00:50:58,533 --> 00:50:58,533
schools to come and speak to the youth, or even have a booth at the event. That way they can

471
00:51:04,966 --> 00:51:04,966
go and speak to them personally. Career analysis college, trade school, some early steps that

472
00:51:12,900 --> 00:51:12,900
they can take. I know when I was going in as a freshman, I didn't know a lot of stuff like,

473
00:51:20,166 --> 00:51:20,166
oh, scholarships and applying to college in general resumes, essay writing, things like that.

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I think that's really important. As well as some extracurriculars such as

475
00:51:31,733 --> 00:51:31,733
community service opportunities and support. I think I was also lost in that realm, and I

476
00:51:37,733 --> 00:51:37,733
didn't really start until freshman year because I didn't have anybody guiding me and

477
00:51:42,400 --> 00:51:42,400
telling me like, hey, you should go do this. So I think all of these combined are kind

478
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:49,200
of what we all want, and I hope this is something we can base off of. So some community

479
00:52:00,766 --> 00:52:00,766
outreach. I was also thinking that it would be really nice to reach out to small, local,

480
00:52:06,333 --> 00:52:06,333
small businesses because coachella is a big city with lots of small businesses here

481
00:52:11,900 --> 00:52:11,900
and possibly, you know, look for sponsors if we. Promote their businesses or even if

482
00:52:21,600 --> 00:52:21,600
they're just there, they can set up a booth. And that way students can go get more

483
00:52:28,533 --> 00:52:28,533
information. Oh, also youth programs. I know we've talked about planned parenthood and

484
00:52:33,866 --> 00:52:33,866
different other different programs across the valley that can work with high school

485
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:39,600
students that not a lot of us know about. Volunteers. I think the event wouldn't be able to

486
00:52:49,333 --> 00:52:49,333
be as successful if it was just all of us. So I know we can definitely work with our local

487
00:52:58,000 --> 00:52:58,000
schools to get any clubs or sports programs, any, any members of clubs that would

488
00:53:06,666 --> 00:53:06,666
like to come and help out. I mean, they can get that can be an opportunity for them for

489
00:53:11,500 --> 00:53:11,500
community service. Or I do know some programs. I'm connected with the young women leaders

490
00:53:17,033 --> 00:53:17,033
program of the valley, and we're always looking for new community service opportunities.

491
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:22,000
so I think that's kind of also bringing in more resources for our youth. So that's pretty

492
00:53:32,166 --> 00:53:32,166
much it. I just wanted to kind of give us a little push. And hopefully this sparked some

493
00:53:39,300 --> 00:53:39,300
more ideas for project. Thank you. Pass that down. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions?

494
00:53:55,166 --> 00:53:55,166
anybody have comments or suggestions. We'll be sure to send over the a copy also of

495
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:06,000
the presentation. So you guys can kind of digest it and read it at your leisure. So please

496
00:54:11,900 --> 00:54:11,900
know that we will provide that to you. Thank you. Next is a new business calendar. So

497
00:54:18,966 --> 00:54:18,966
there's none. And the public comments which is the public may address the. Do we have any

498
00:54:29,400 --> 00:54:29,400
comments on zoom or okay no comments reports and requests. Is there any commissioner

499
00:54:37,966 --> 00:54:37,966
comments? I really liked your presentation. I'm completely on board with it. Anyone else? Do

500
00:54:59,033 --> 00:54:59,033
we adjourn? Yep. I adjourn this meeting at