Order and. I call the meeting to order at 1641. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I
pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which
it stands. One nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. One coffee.
okay. When I call your name, please say I. Chair mesa is not here this evening. Vice chair
juarez andrade or here or. Sorry. Present. Commissioner martinez. Commissioner.
castillo. Cabrera. Commissioner. Mesa. Jay. Mesa. Can we can we have you turn on the
microphones just so. Thank you. Do we need to start over? Okay. Chair s mesa is not here. Vice
chair juarez andrade, present. Commissioner martinez. Present. Commissioner. Castillo. Cabrera
present. Commissioner. Jay. Mesa. Present. Commissioner. Cabrera gutierrez. Present.
commissioner. Morales. Hinojosa. Present. Honorable commissioner. Romero present. Honorable
commissioner flores rojas present. Commissioner rodriguez. Commissioner. Avalos. Present.
thank you. Okay. Next is the approval of agenda. At this time, the commission may
announce any items being pulled from the agenda or continued to another date, or request the
moving of an item on the agenda. At this time, we have one additional agenda item, and it
is a presentation by commissioner martinez. And so we will add that as item number
four to the agenda. Okay. Next is the approval of the minutes. We had a meeting last month. So
it was meeting minutes of december 8th, 2025 of the city of coachella youth advisory
commission. We'll need a first and a second. Commissioner martinez. Do we have a second?
commissioner? Castillo. Cabrera okay, motion passed up next, we have our presentations. We have
the first presentation from the city manager's office. Good afternoon everyone. Good
afternoon. Good afternoon. Well, what I'm going to do is kind of tell you a little bit about
what I do. First we're going to start out with some civics though. We're going to talk
about levels of government and talk about budgets and how many people are employed. Then we're
going to talk about the city of coachella and its form of government, the city council,
the department heads, and then a little bit about what I do and then not. Part of the
presentation is since your students, I will share a little bit about my story, because my
story is unique. I didn't go back to school until I was 28 years old because I decided I
wanted to do something different, but I'll fill you in with that later on. So first
level of governments, as you know, there's one us government, there's 50 states, but the big
number is local governments. And that's what you hear about. And if you look under cities
and towns, there's almost 36,000 cities and towns, meaning that there's 36,000
city managers. And not every city is run by a city manager, but they're run by some of the
bigger cities are run by the mayors. The mayors act is kind of like a city manager as well.
so the federal government, the total federal budget, $7 trillion, the population of the
united states is 348 million people. There's 3 million people that work at the
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
until next year. But the types of departments in the federal government, the irs, the
military, all branches, social security and the department of education, every government has
like a body that kind of looks over what goes on. There's not one. We don't have a king in
the united states like other places do. And so there's a watchdog, almost, where one
person doesn't make all the decisions. It has to go through steps. And just like city
government, federal is that way also. So you have the executive, the legislation, legislative
and the judicial. There's oversight so that one person doesn't make a decision for all,
even though right now you kind of scratch your head and wonder what's going on, because that's
kind of being diluted a little right now. So interesting time to be talking about this state
government. The state budget is $321 billion. There's 39.5 million people in the state.
there's 250,000 state employees. Types of government departments within the state government is
the dmv, caltrans, the department of taxes and fees, corrections and rehabilitation.
the edd unemployment department, the state courts, and then the state is also looked after by
the assembly and the senate. Things go to the assembly, they go to the senate, and then they
go to the governor for approval. The governor just doesn't make decisions on his own. We have
county, the county. There are total budgets, $10 billion. They oversee 2.5 million people
within the county. They have 24,000 employees. The type of department. And you'll notice
everything's a little different as you get down to the local level. Their span is not as
broad, and it's just within the division that we're talking about. And this is just
riverside county, but you've got the child support services, the department of social
services, the sheriff's department and the fire department, environmental
health, the registrar of voters and the district attorney. And then at the board of
supervisors. One supervisor doesn't make the decision for the county that was appointed.
five, I believe, board of supervisors that take districts within the county, and they
represent those people from the county that are not represented by a city, but ultimately, some
of the decisions made by the county also affect cities, of course. The city of coachella
is run by the city council. The city council is elected. You have the mayor, steven
hernandez, the mayor pro tem, denise delgado, and then three council members tiffany
verhagen, yadira perez and doctor frank figueroa. We also have, which is unique. Not
every city has elected treasurers or clerks, but the city of coachella does.
sometimes those are appointed as employees of the city, but in this case, based upon city
charter, the city has an elected clerk and a treasurer. Now, when it comes to running
the city, I'm responsible for what goes on. Council tells me what to do. I'm supposed to
carry it out, but I can't do everything on my own. So you have an executive department.
so within the city we have the pio. Who is seth? Laura. We have our economic development
director, selena jimenez. Andrew simmons is our public works director and our city
engineer castulo estrada runs our utilities. Kendra reif is our community development
director. Yolanda lopez is our hr manager, human resources manager. She does the hiring.
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
tovar. I did not have a picture of our lieutenant that also reports to the city. His name
is robert garcia. I just don't have a picture of him up. The interesting thing about the
chief of fire and the chief of police for the city of coachella is that they're not
actual employees of the city. We actually contract with the county for fire and police
services, so even though I do not direct them, they still come together for our meetings
and we find out what's going on with in the city from them. And then this is our organization
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
below the electeds, and then myself and the city clerk and treasurer and the city attorney,
the city attorney I did not cover, but the city attorney, just like myself, were both
hired by the council and terminated by the council. Those are the only two
positions the council is responsible for. Appointing. The city attorney is a contract
employee. He's actually not a an employee of the city. There's actually a contract
that's in place for that, just like we have for police and fire. So why is this important?
again, we get into civics. The voters have the responsibility of placing the council members
into their seats. The city is unique because the city has a mayor. Most cities do not have
an elected mayor when they're not. A strong mayor or mayor actually runs the city. In this
case, I believe it was back in 2008 or so. There was a statute that was passed by the voters
to allow a mayor to be elected individually. They have to run every two years. So the mayor's
constantly running for office. City council members are appointed for four years, and
then they appoint the city manager and also the city attorney. So the manager form
this city council manager form of government in california, it's the most common structure.
that's where the city council appoints the city manager. The city council oversees the
administration. They set policy and they set budgets. The council appoints a city manager
to carry out the day to day operations. Often the mayor in other cities, not necessarily
in our city, but the mayor would rotate on a basis where every year they would elect
somebody to be mayor and sit in office for one year where they represent the city. But in this
case, that is not the case with the city, because the mayor has a two year term. And then the
other form is the mayor council form of government. That typically happens in very big
cities like los angeles, san diego. They don't have a city manager. The mayor is actually
runs the city. The council and the mayor agreed to do things, and then the mayor carries them
out with department heads. But that's only it's typically cities over a million in
population, whether it's here or in other states. So the council manager rule, the the
rule is the form of government which the voters elect, the city council, who then hire the
manager. The city manager directs staff and programs in line with the ordinance and
regulations of the city council. I cannot do anything without the council giving me me
approval to do so. I cannot decide to do things on my own. Council directs me on what to
do, and then I am charged with leading that. And then, depending upon what it is,
suppose we need to go build a road or do something that I go to the public works director,
city engineer and have them carry out the the tasks that council has put before us in
this plan. The mayor and the council do not have administrative tasks. That's my
job to do those things. The life of a city manager daily, to make sure that the city is
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
cities hire from within because it's tough to find a city. If you go out and you're looking
for a new city manager, it's tough to have somebody come in from another area not knowing
everything that's going on within the city. So if you hire somebody from the outside, it
takes time for them to get up to speed as to where they're at on projects and what's going on.
plus, it's you need to know the community. So city managers, powers and duties I have I have
to implement policies established by council. So council will tell us from the
dyess and they'll vote, telling staff what it is that they want to see carried out. And so it's
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
of the city, subject to any civil service rules, which is we have peprah and not peprah.
I'm sorry, calpers. That kind of tells us what we can and can't do. It's our retirement
system. And then we also just have to follow laws. We also have mous with our employees
too. So they have protections. Anybody who works for the city that's not a department head is
what they call at will, meaning that you can be terminated for cause or not for cause. But
everybody else that is not has protections through their labor agreements. I have the duty to
make sure that we're administrating efficiently and all aspects of the city
business to enforce the ordinances and laws within the jurisdiction, to attend the
meetings of the city council and devote full time position to recommend measures and
ordinances for adoption, to investigate the affairs of the city or any department or any
contract of the city, to assure that proper performance is being done. That's their
obligation to prepare the annual budget and to inform the council as to financial matters,
to submit bills. Anytime we cut a check or pay somebody, we have to report that back to the
council. Council actually approves that at their council meetings and then anything else
the council wishes me to do, I'm responsible to do that as well. So talking about the city
of coachella, we were discussing state, you know, federal, state, local
governments, our budget. And this is just the general fund which pays for services, not
necessarily our utilities or anytime we build a project. Those are separate budgets. But
our general fund, which pays for administration, police and fire, takes care of the parks,
takes care of the streets, things like that. Animal control, our budget is $39.2
million. Our population is almost 45,000, and we have 92 employees. And again, the city
departments that we've already talked about, the department heads. This kind of gets into
the weeds a little bit. There are differences between cities. Some cities operate by what is
called a charter. Charter. And then we operate under general law, which the state sets those
rules for us. Some cities can make up their rules if their electorate approves them, maybe
to do a different way of bidding. Projects. Also, setting council payroll, their
actual pay and things like that. I don't necessarily know that this is important to know at
this point, but know that we are a general law city. So we don't set we don't make our own
rules. We follow what the state does. And then if you're interested, I think you all do.
you all have a copy of this presentation? I can give him a copy. Okay. Yeah. There's
there's resources so that you can see even though the city operates, you know, within
itself. There's also other districts that we are involved with, like the desert
recreation district, others. This just gives you a list of of the other inter agencies
that we interface with. At this point, though, I want to go into something else. Since your
students, I'm also going to present this to you. We have a academy that we're residents
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
2016. I worked at the city since 2010 and I retired in 2020, and then council brought
me back last year, so I'm serving again. I've been back a few times, but before I knew
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
do. Am I going to go to school? And my story is a little different than most. I worked
for family when I was young, and I didn't have it in me when I was 18. When I graduated from
high school to go to college, I went to mount san jacinto and got my associate's degree, and
I'm working for my family. That's enough. And as I grew and saw what was going on
around me, I knew that I wanted to do more than just work for my family. And so I decided to
go back to school. And I was 28 years old, and I always had this knack for accounting. When
I worked for my family business. Thank you. So when I worked for my. Now. Now. Yeah, okay. I'm
not doing it though. So anyhow, when I worked for my family business, my grandfather worked
with us also, and he was a cpa, and he got tired of doing the accounting for the business and
he handed it to me. He says, you know what? You're really good at this. You ought to go
back to school and and study accounting. And so when I was 20, I went back to school, and
I was able to finish school in a couple of years. I went and got my master's degree also.
and then I wanted to become a cpa, but to become a cpa, I had to stop the family business,
and I went to work for an accounting firm, and I loved accounting. I did not like tax
work. I still do not like doing income taxes. I don't recommend it to anybody. But auditing was
kind of special because you're kind of like a detective and you're looking at things, and I
use that a lot here. And so I was auditing at like the city of san bernardino, the city of
loma linda, the airport authority, and I got exposure to local government through my
job. And I wanted to know, hey, you keep on paying into this thing called calpers. What is
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
that. And so I applied it a few places. I ended up getting a job in temecula as a senior
accountant back in 1996. And I stayed there for a few years, and I got the opportunity to
move on to the city of hemet. And I was I they saw something in me and they made me a
finance director. That was quite a jump from being a senior accountant to a finance
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
I got there, I stayed there for about six years and went to the town of apple valley and was a
finance director there as well, and ultimately made an assistant city manager. I ended
up leaving there and coming to coachella back in 2010 as a finance director, working with
the city manager, I got exposed to a lot of what went on at the city manager's desk and it
interested me. And so when the city manager had left, council promoted me to city manager
back in 2016, and I enjoyed it. But it's a tough job. A lot of hours. You spend a lot of time
with personnel and I love accounting, and I'd always told myself I'd never get away from
the number side of things. And as you move up the ladder, you do more administrative work
than you do what I call crunching numbers. And so I miss that. But it's very
important to have somebody that knows exactly what they're doing, because budgets can get
away from you. You lose track of what's going on with the money that we have. That's
called reserves, but it's like the money that you've got in the bank. You have to keep
track of that. It's very important. And so coming back, I had to stick my nose back
into that stuff and I enjoyed that. And so now I'm back. I'm going to retire again at some
point. And I just want to share that with you, that even though you don't make up your mind
right at this minute, exactly what it is that you want to do, I certainly recommend not
skipping school, because, you know, I did get my, you know, my associate's degree at least.
but you find that as you get older, you have a family, you have a child. And getting
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,
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,
but I highly recommend it. I also working for cities. It's a great job. You get exposure to
many things, and if you look around, whether it's the city or the county, there's lots of
opportunity. The retirement system is good also, and it typically pays pretty well too,
you'll find. But I don't know if any of you have questions for me. Okay. Well I hope it
was informative. Hopefully, you know, a little bit more, you know, a little bit about what I
do. But ultimately one person can't do everything. And so when you see how the levels are
spread out and what falls below people, it's very important that you have a strong team
below you because you're only as good as the team that you're surrounded with. And we have an
excellent team here. And so thank you for listening and thank you for volunteering your
time. It's very good to see this turnout. And again, thank you. Thank you, mr. City
manager. I will be sure to provide every one of you with a copy of his presentation. So
you have it. Next, we have a presentation from lift to rise leadership training academy.
good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to come and present. My name is
joe motta. I'm director of power building with lift to rise. We are a nonprofit
organization here for the in the coachella valley that came together to look for solutions
on the lack of affordable housing here in the coachella. So before I talk to you about
our leadership academy, I want you to know a little bit about what lift to rise is, and so
that you're familiar with our work and why we're doing this leadership academy that I'll be
inviting to you, inviting you all to participate, if you'd like. At the end, when I talked
a little bit about lift to rise, but thank you for the opportunity for allowing me to
come here and and share this information about an organization that's doing great
work here in the coachella valley. So lift to rise is is guided by a north star, which
is a future where all coachella valley families are healthy, stable and thriving. That is
our our mission statement, our vision that guides the work that we do. And it's due to a
shared goal to reduce rent burden in the coachella valley by 30% through the production
of 10,000 affordable housing units by 2028. And as we get to close to 2028, and we are close
to getting to 10,000 units, we've come to find out that we should have made a goal of
15,000 units, because we're still going to be behind by the time we get to 2028. But this
is the work that we do, and this is how we do it collectively. And for lift to
rise, it's we don't do the work by ourselves. We are collective impact organization that is
driven by 70 plus cross-sector partners that come and come to the table and do the work
together. So we don't decide what we do. We don't decide how we're going to do it. It's the
participation and the partnership of cities, county, nonprofit organizations,
developers and the community to come to find solutions. So this is the problem we are solving.
riverside. We are trying in riverside counties, prosperity rests on the backs of workers
who cannot no longer afford to live here. Right? 50, 54,000 plus low income renters
countrywide lack affordable homes, right? Riverside county enters. Renters must earn $38
an hour, just 2.3 times the minimum state minimum wage to afford average rent. That's how
much folks have to earn to be able to rent a two bedroom apartment $38 an hour, right?
chronic underinvestment plus lack of density and public and public transportation
infrastructure leaves riverside county housing projects uncompetitive for state funding.
so as we try to build work with cities and developers and the county, we still have to
compete with metropolitan cities like san francisco, san diego, los angeles so that we
can be able to get funding to build housing, right, and low wages for the tourism and
agricultural workforce. These are workers who power our economy, underpaid and
increasingly destabilized by housing costs. So this is this is exactly why rice comes
together to solve these issues. Right. And this is how we're solving it. As I said earlier,
we're collective impact and private. It's done through collective impact and private
public private partnerships, where we're led by riverside county department of housing
workforce solutions. They're our partner, and we have 70 plus cross-sector partners,
which is cities, nonprofit organizations, developers, which for profit and nonprofit
and the community all organized around our shared goal of trying to build 10,000 units by
2028, implementing a multi-pronged pipeline policy, investment and movement
building agenda. And so these are all the areas of how we are able to do the work that we do,
right. We start with regional pipeline. So we see what's what's out there, what
opportunities are there. And we try to use policy, we try to use investment, and we try to
do movement building so that we can get to our goal. And this is our pipeline. We have 9300
plus units in the pipeline, meaning those are the opportunities that exist of
housing that can be built in the coachella valley. We have 90 plus projects, including
multifamily rental, single family home ownership and polanco parks. If you're not
familiar with polanco parks, these are small mobile home parks that that are currently
in the eastern coachella valley, which is thermal mecca, north shore, oasis, right. And then
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
housing going to construction, which is the most that's happened in the coachella
valley in quite some time. Right. And this is through the work of collective impact, not
us together, but all of us together. Like coachella is a partner of ours, city of indio,
the county. All these folks come together to make sure to help, to build and move more
affordable housing in our area. And we also do policy right. We can't just do it alone, just
like city manager just said. Give you shared a little bit of a civics education. We had to
also do the same way, right? We have to go on a local level. We come and meet with the city. We
have to go on a state, on a county level, on a state level, and even on a federal level.
right. We have to go out to sacramento to speak with elected officials that assembly,
the senate, to be able to see how we can get resources out here to the coachella valley
and to riverside county. We go out to the federal right, advocate for more funding for
rural development and infrastructure. When we say rural development, we want to bring units and homeownership opportunities to mecca. Thermal oasis, thousand palms, all
these unincorporated areas, because those are deemed rural areas. Right. And so this is
how we do it through policy. The lady in the picture, she's an indio resident that went in
for the first time to speak in front of the city council to get approval for an apartment
complex that got approved. Right. And we knew that we had a feeling that the project
wasn't approved. Her, along with other folks, organized about 35 residents to come and
do public speaking and to what's it called, and to get about close to a thousand
petitions signed in support of a project. Right. And that's what takes us into into what we
do is movement building. But through investment, that's how we move, folks, right? That's
how we're able to help developers. We have what's called the we live catalyst
fund, which is a financing vehicle that blends public and private capital to deploy
flexible, low income, low interest loans. Right. We saw that when developers were
trying to build, they couldn't because they were lacking million dollars or $2 million
or $5 million. Right? That and some of those cities were already tapped out. They
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
units sparked across 11 projects by loan products from the catalyst funds, totaling
$41 million. Right, $300 million in private and public leverage. You know, funds so
that we can be able to build. And you might say that's very important, right? Because it's
something that has never happened before where cities, counties and and funding, we're
working together so that we can push the production. Right. But as we were doing all this and
we were trying to get policy ready to go, we had to do it through movement building,
right? 2000 plus residents mobilized to civic action in support of affordable housing
since 2022. As you can see, we're here in front of city hall in that picture, right? 70
plus partners, including county, nine cities, community based organizations, affordable
housing developers, residents and funders and coalition right to come together to be able to
push 100 plus community trainings hosted around tenant rights, community organizing,
homeownership, financial literacy, storytelling and civic engagement, building
power among community residents. We couldn't we can't do all this without all the everything
we spoke about, right? Having all our 70 plus partners being in partnership with cities, the
county and all these other folks. Right. And this and so as we were doing movement
building, we saw the realization and the need to be able to start what's called the
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
engagement initiative, has two programs, which one is called the resident leadership table.
it's a partnership driven approach to engage community leaders in shared decision and
resident leadership. Table is more based on having community based organizations, other
nonprofits to meet regularly, to see how we can help each other right. How we can see
what, how we can hear what's happening out in the community, through the networks and
through the people they serve. We have the united, we have jewish family services of the
desert icu, the united farm workers foundation, the jfk foundation, and we meet and
many more, and we meet monthly to find out how we can move their work forward so that they
can help who they serve. But our key, key initiative is communities by cities, which is
a group of strong advocates that will push for legislations and projects in favor of
affordable housing. And we have five committees, right. We have a committee in desert hot
springs in palm springs, la quinta, indio, and we have one here in coachella. Right. And
when we were building this committees by cities, we just wanted to recruit 3 to 5
residents to meet with them on a monthly basis so that we can talk about what's going on and
see how they can help us move. We have an average of about 25 to 30 residents attend monthly
in desert hot springs and la quinta and coachella. We didn't expect we just we our goal was
3 to 5 residents. That's it. And we're that's victory for us. But the need for affordable
housing is so much that about 25 to 30 residents attend the meeting on an average, on a
monthly average, and we meet monthly. We meet across the street right and in the meeting
rooms here at the library, and we talk about different subjects financial literacy.
last june, we held what's called on national homeownership month celebration.
we held a homeownership workshop of how to educate the community on the process of
buying a home. And through that, here in the city of coachella, we had about 76 residents
attend, and we had 40. In indio, we had 52 in la quinta, 30 in palm springs, 40 in dhs. So out
of all those folks that attended, three folks have purchased a home right through
that process of finding different resources, first time home buyers down the riverside
counties, down payment assistance and and other and then 15 to 20 other families
started the process. So it's all through education. So the community, we decided we needed
to take the next step because like I said, we can't do this. I'm not a I'm not a coachella
resident. And many times I've been at this mic talking to our city council folks and they
know I'm not a coachella resident. Right. And so they'll just they'll be polite and
they'll hear me out. But if if it's not its own residents that come and advocate for
themselves, that's the only power that exists. Right? And so when those folks, when
coachella residents come here into this mic and ask and request, that's when movement
happened. And so when we were thinking about what the next step was for the committees by
cities, then we started, then we started to see, we thought of the gbc leadership training
academy. Right. And we just we're going to have our first meeting. It's going to be the
introduction. It's it's going to be the last monday of the month. Right. It's the. January
26th at 6 p.m. Here at the library. Then from there we start. These are the topics
that we'll be doing. Second session community organizing. We learn what organizing is,
how power works and how residents can create change. And then we do leadership and
power, right? We explore our leadership styles, practice relationship building, and
understand what shared leadership looks like in community. Then we go into
storytelling and public speaking. And this is where it's important, right? Because
we want folks to come in and share their story because it's two things can happen. Either
you tell your story or someone else will tell it for you, and it probably won't be the
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
was her first time going to the city council meeting, and that was the first time speaking.
and she shared her story of why it was important for the for the city to vote in and approve
that housing project. And it's already been built out there off of golf center drive. Right.
then we go into civic engagement, and I think I'm going to take some notes from
the city manager's presentation because he did, he shared. He had some good points on there.
talk about civic engagement. We learned how government works and practice advocating
directly to elected officials, including them in meetings with legislator. That's that's the
the practice that we do. And at the end, we create an action plan for your city and then a
graduation. We bring elected officials to find out to we we tell them what you guys did and
share with everyone does. And we come in together to create a real action plan for your city
and how you can move not only affordable housing, but other things that are affecting the
city. For example, in desert hot springs, our communities by city says, yeah, we want to
help bring affordable housing, but can we also do something about our neighborhood where
folks are just racing through our through our streets? Yeah. What are you have in mind? And
someone says, can we put speed bumps? Let's put a plan together and we'll go to the
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
foundation. But we want to be able to show and give folks the skills and abilities so that
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
is part of the cbc leadership training academy. So here are the dates right? We have the
introduction, which is january 26th at 6 p.m. And then we have and it's every month and we
only it's the means run about an hour hour and 15 minutes tops. Right. And you might say
we're we're high school students. Well actually I started as a high school
organizing the community. Right. Had folks, you know, invite me to things and started doing
when I went to college, started organizing myself. Right. And that's how you do it. If you
care about your community, you'll do whatever you can learn every lesson and ability
that's out there so that you can help your community in many ways. You know, like I said
earlier, if you don't tell your story, someone else is going to tell it. So I do want to invite
you guys. We do want the youth. Why? Because many folks. It might be sound cliche, but you
guys are our future. You guys are the ones that are next to care of the city and take care
of what's our communities and our and our and our counties and our state. Right. And so we
do want the youth to come in. And we'd like to invite you and, and see if you'd like to
participate in these, in these in this leadership academy once a month from here till june.
it's an hour, hour and 15 minutes tops. We are across the street and also you know of
anyone. You can invite them. You can invite them to show to attend. I do have some fliers
and I would like to share with miss jimenez so that she can share with you guys. But we'd
like to invite you guys and participate and see if this is an opportunity where you're
ready to learn some skills to be advocates for your community, right? So thank you very much,
joe. Interruption. Did you want to share there's is this the one that has a stipend or not.
yes. Yeah. So we do have a stipend. We do. One of the things is we do have a
practicality within the organization. We we love to feed folks. When it comes to I,
if I buy too many pens, I may get question for it. But if I buy too many burritos, never
question. Right? We we like to feed, we have a hospitality. And so we do provide dinner at
all our meetings, and we will provide a stipend at the end of the of the training. We're
still figuring it out, but, you know, it's it's it'll be a good stipend so that it will help
folks through the time and effort that they invested in being a participant of our
program. So you have any questions, anything you guys like to know a little bit more?
yes. So in order to graduate from the program, would you have to go to every meeting?
yes, we we because all the sessions come together and at the end we do an activity that
all those things come into play. Like I said, we do have five committees. And so for some
reason you can't go to the coachella one on your date. Well, the monday before we have
it in la quinta. And as long as you talk with ariana, who oversees this program and they
they, they keep in contact, they text the email as long as you tell them, hey, I can't
make it to that one. Is there another one I can go to? And if you're willing to travel, we
have indio, la quinta that are closest to here. So in case you can't make it right. And so we
have. So for example the first thursday of the month we have it in palm springs. Then the
the second monday and the second wednesday of the, the second monday is in la quinta.
the second wednesday of the month is in desert hot springs, and it's the third monday in in
indio and then the fourth monday here in coachella. Any other questions? Yeah. Parents
can join me as well. Yeah. If your parents if you'd like to get your parents involved or
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.
we have folks with degrees, we have folks that are farmworkers that are part of the committees
by cities and and attending monthly. So to see how they can help, we do have a parent in
one of our in the coachella one, and I know her. I know her personally. I go, hey, you know,
what are you doing here? Like, what's it called? I know you own your home and you know,
you're, you know, you know, she's an educator and stuff like that. You know why? Why
are you participating? The cbc's like, joe's, like, I know that I have a home, but I want
my kids when they graduate college or when they do what they can for them to have
opportunities, either to be able to afford their rent or to be able to become homeowners.
and I want to see how I can help, just like I was able to go through this process of
being a homeowner. So there there are folks out there that are already thinking of the
future and how they can help their children, or how they can help the community. So this is
a great opportunity, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and present.
and if there's any other questions, miss miller can miss jimenez, I apologize. Miss
jimenez can provide us our all our emails are on there and and however we can answer any other
questions you guys may have. Okay. Thank you, thank you. Next on the agenda, we have a
presentation from commissioner martinez. Okay. Hello, everybody. I'm just gonna try
to keep this as fast as possible, but hopefully this kind of sparks some more ideas.
I've just to reintroduce myself. I'm commissioner martinez, so over this past break, I kind of
took the time to brainstorm some ideas for our commission project. I kind of just added a
little starter name. I'm calling it the oh, thank you. The youth leadership and
wellness retreat. I kind of just thought it could be something to combine all of our
wants and goals for this project. So I'm just going to go over the event, break it
down some programs and community outreach, as well as how to get our volunteers and
helpers. So this would be a day for specifically, I think we were speaking about incoming
high school freshmen. So current eighth graders, where they'll be exposed to community
support and outreach programs, college and career readiness workshops, and be able to make
new relationships with other people from different schools and just kind of put themselves
out there. Okay, so the way in my head, I kind of worked out how this event would be
organized would be in breakout rooms. So different workshops like motivational speakers or
we have different community program leaders come and speak, or even high school clubs and
programs, sports or anything to come and give a little presentation or talk to the
students. I kind of thought that it'd be easier to set out send out a form for these
students to sign up for the specific workshops that they're interested in. That way, they
don't end up at a workshop. It's like, oh, I wish I went there that way. They're given
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
schedule, and that gives enough time for all the students to mingle with each other, learn
some new things, ask more questions. So the programs that would be involved in this, I
kind of thought of some motivational speakers. I don't know if any of you are familiar
with the bianca ray foundation. I've had the opportunity these past few years to volunteer for
their ray of hope foundation. Well, their event and their they kind of. It's a day for
all middle school students across the coachella valley, and they're given resources
about mental health, digital safety. It's a really uplifting event, yet ours is more focused
on entering into high school and kind of building more high school and future related
things. So I was kind of thinking, you know, mental health or even just regular
health, health in general, digital safety, because I think as social media grows, we're
always learning new things as well as just some inspirational speakers, high school readiness
school program. So we can ask clubs or sports or just any programs working with our high
schools to come and speak to the youth, or even have a booth at the event. That way they can
go and speak to them personally. Career analysis college, trade school, some early steps that
they can take. I know when I was going in as a freshman, I didn't know a lot of stuff like,
oh, scholarships and applying to college in general resumes, essay writing, things like that.
I think that's really important. As well as some extracurriculars such as
community service opportunities and support. I think I was also lost in that realm, and I
didn't really start until freshman year because I didn't have anybody guiding me and
telling me like, hey, you should go do this. So I think all of these combined are kind
of what we all want, and I hope this is something we can base off of. So some community
outreach. I was also thinking that it would be really nice to reach out to small, local,
small businesses because coachella is a big city with lots of small businesses here
and possibly, you know, look for sponsors if we. Promote their businesses or even if
they're just there, they can set up a booth. And that way students can go get more
information. Oh, also youth programs. I know we've talked about planned parenthood and
different other different programs across the valley that can work with high school
students that not a lot of us know about. Volunteers. I think the event wouldn't be able to
be as successful if it was just all of us. So I know we can definitely work with our local
schools to get any clubs or sports programs, any, any members of clubs that would
like to come and help out. I mean, they can get that can be an opportunity for them for
community service. Or I do know some programs. I'm connected with the young women leaders
program of the valley, and we're always looking for new community service opportunities.
so I think that's kind of also bringing in more resources for our youth. So that's pretty
much it. I just wanted to kind of give us a little push. And hopefully this sparked some
more ideas for project. Thank you. Pass that down. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions?
anybody have comments or suggestions. We'll be sure to send over the a copy also of
the presentation. So you guys can kind of digest it and read it at your leisure. So please
know that we will provide that to you. Thank you. Next is a new business calendar. So
there's none. And the public comments which is the public may address the. Do we have any
comments on zoom or okay no comments reports and requests. Is there any commissioner
comments? I really liked your presentation. I'm completely on board with it. Anyone else? Do
we adjourn? Yep. I adjourn this meeting at