By The Yucca Valley Resident Review Committee

Note: Our report is based on the meeting zoom stream. Unfortunately the camera stayed on the Councilmembers for the entire meeting so we are missing photographs of staff and public speakers.

In a marked contrast to the June 2 marathon, Yucca Valley Town Council moved through the June 19 agenda briskly — all thirteen items dispatched in well under an hour. Council comments were another matter. What had felt like a meeting on track to finish in sixty minutes stretched on as Councilmembers worked through their enthusiasm for the BMX track, the rodeo, the Fourth of July, and backyard chickens.

The agenda included no public hearings, and the consent agenda passed without a single item pulled. The night’s real substance lived in two department-report items: a lease to reopen the town BMX track and a contract formalizing the animal shelter’s relationship with a no-kill partner.

Councilmember Rick Denison was excused; the other four, Mayor Merl Abel, Mayor Pro Tem Jim Schooler, and Councilmembers Jeff Drozd and Robert Lombardo, were present. The Council came out of a closed-session evaluation of Town Attorney Thomas Jex with no reportable action.

Related documents:
Meeting agenda
Our agenda preview
Video of the meeting

A benign invocation (almost)

As mentioned in our agenda preview, the invocation was delivered by Pastor Bill Wilcox of Hosanna Hope Church, a nondenominational evangelical congregation based in Yucca Valley. However, the Pastor’s words were difficult to discern, even in person, as he was not mic’d. Since the word “murderers” popped out, we used audio enhancement software to determine the context:

We thank you for the completion of another school year. We thank you for the challenges that were overcome, the learning that took place, and for the protection we provided for each of our campuses from the evil of the murderers who might have inflicted mass casualties. Please continue to protect the children and their activities this summer.

The conclusion was less dramatic:

I would pray for our nation that with all the talk of culture wars and threats to divide, that you would teach us once again to live by the golden rule that we would treat others the way we want them to treat us.

The consent agenda, in one motion

The Council disposed of items 3 through 10 in a single 4-0-1 (absence) vote with no items pulled and no public comment. That block included the approval of the June 2 minutes, ratification of the county fire code, the aquatics-center consultant funding increases, the May AB1234 travel report, the warrant registers, the fleet-vehicle purchase confirmation, the Fire Station 41 land donation, and the second reading of Ordinance 334, which was the final adoption of the Walmart fuel station specific-plan amendment. Each of these was covered in detail in our agenda preview. Notably, the Walmart ordinance, which drew three critical public comments at its June 2 introduction, passed its final reading without discussion.

A BMX track gets a second life

The first department report was Item 11, a lease agreement to reopen the town-owned BMX track, dormant since late 2023. Recreation Supervisor Jakub “Kuba” Kusmieruk presented the staff report, describing an arrangement under which Yucca Valley BMX, operating under the fiscal sponsorship of the Basin Wide Foundation, would take over day-to-day operations, maintenance, and programming for a $1-a-year lease running July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027, with automatic annual renewals.

Heather Quintana, a Basin Wide Foundation board member and the chairperson of Yucca Valley BMX, spoke in support, asking the Council to approve the lease “so we can begin the work of restoring and reopening” the track. She described a new volunteer leadership team and pitched the track as a needed gathering place:

What makes BMX special is that it also brings families together. Parents volunteer, siblings ride together, neighbors become friends. The track becomes more than a recreational facility, it becomes a gathering place that strengthens community connections...We can't bring BMX back to Yucca Valley alone, but with your support, we can restore a community asset and give local youth and families a place to ride, grow, connect, and thrive.

The council discussion was uniformly enthusiastic and nostalgic, with members recalling the track’s heyday of regional and state championships that drew visitors to town. Schooler framed the Basin Wide partnership as a hedge against the boom-and-bust cycle that has repeatedly left the track without leadership once volunteer operators’ children age out.

Mayor Abel recused himself from the item, citing a business relationship conflict, with Mayor Pro Tem Schooler presiding. The lease passed 3-0-1-1, with Councilmember Denison absent and Abel recused.

That cycle raises a question the council didn’t take up: if the track has closed in the past due to the lack of volunteers, and the town still owns it and pays for its major upkeep, why isn’t it under the umbrella of Parks and Rec? Would’t a paid supervisor be a steadier bet than another $1-a-year volunteer deal?

The Yucca Valley Animal Shelter formalizes a partner

Item 12 drew the night’s most substantive discussion. Town Manager Curtis Yakimow presented a two-year professional services agreement with the Morongo Basin Humane Society (MBHS), the 501c3 nonprofit that runs the Joshua Tree No-kill Shelter, for animal transfer, rehabilitation, and rehoming services, running July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2028.

Yakimow said the town had already been transferring animals to the no-kill shelter on an informal, case-by-case basis; this agreement formalizes that relationship, sets a target of roughly 25 animals per fiscal year, adds a reporting function, and includes a one-time payment for work the shelter did in 2025 outside any formal agreement.

Yakimow tied the contract directly to the 2025 animal shelter operational review, which recommended the town seek operational partners, placing this item squarely in the shelter-recovery arc that has been in the news since the Doug Smith euthanasia controversy of 2025. We provided background to this story here.

The discussion turned on what the 25-animal figure means in practice. Drozd asked whether the town could exceed 25 “like we did before,” and Yakimow declined to commit to a hard cap, saying staff would “cross those bridges when we get there.” Lombardo walked through his own understanding for the record: the agreement lets the no-kill shelter take “the harder to adopt ones, ones that may need some kind of rehabilitation,” freeing kennel space for animals more easily adopted through the town’s own process. Yakimow confirmed the no-kill shelter targets animals needing “additional behavioral assessment or behavioral modification, and or medical care.”

Mayor Abel was careful to frame the arrangement as mutual rather than a dumping ground:

Obviously it’s not a place just to give them the undesirables, it’s one of trying to find them rehabilitation in homes, and we might not have that capacity, and they do… 25 is a start. We have a much bigger issue and problem than that, but it is a wonderful partnership.

He added that staff should “not abuse the privilege” by leaning on the transfer instead of advertising adoptable animals.

One resident, Cheryl Contopolus, spoke in support, praising the town for putting the relationship “in writing.” The agreement passed 4-0-1 (absence).

Road maintenance: $620,000 against a $1.7 million need

Item 13, the last action item, was a resolution approving the town’s SB 1 road-maintenance project list for fiscal year 2026-27. Public Works Director Alex Qishta presented the item, explaining that the state’s Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 funnels fuel-tax and vehicle-fee revenue to cities for local road work, conditioned on submitting an annual project list to the California Transportation Commission. The town’s estimated allocation is $619,757.

Under questioning from Lombardo, Qishta offered a number not in the staff report’s headline: the full slurry-seal and cape-seal maintenance program is estimated at $1.7 million, meaning the SB 1 money covers roughly a third of the planned work, with town funds supplementing the rest. Asked whether the town can keep pace with maintenance on all its roads, Qishta said, “We’re trying to keep it that way.”

At Abel’s prompting, Qishta also explained the two treatments shown on the project map: slurry seal, a thinner film used on newer roads at about 69 cents a square foot, and cape seal, a heavier aggregate-and-seal treatment at roughly $1.30 a square foot, chosen road-by-road based on condition. The resolution passed 4-0-1.

Public comment: a rodeo revival and a fight over backyard chickens

With the action items dispatched, the public-comment period became the liveliest part of the night, dominated by two grassroots pushes.

The Grubstake Days rodeo

Four speakers asked the Council to help revive the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) rodeo as part of Grubstake Days. Gina Pasquini said she had been selected to lead a committee to bring the rodeo back to the Memorial Day weekend event at an approximate cost of $140,000, citing experience “running million dollar rodeos up north,” and asking the town to partner on fundraising. Abby Olea, 17, gave a short history of the event:

In 1951 the Yucca Valley Chamber of Commerce officially sponsored the very first Grubstake Days… Over the decades, the event grew to include a sanctioned PRCA rodeo. This rodeo became the Grubstake Days headline attraction, drawing thousands of spectators and professional cowboys from across the country.

Vivian Ripley, 15, framed the rodeo as honoring the town’s “strong western heritage” and a draw for visitors who “support local restaurants, stores, hotels, and businesses.” Lucy Olea, 12, spoke about riding horses with her family:

My name is Lucy, and I’m 12 years old. I love to ride horses… we always go to the rodeos every year with our family. It’s become a tradition.

The pitch landed with the dais. Drozd offered his own horse-riding history and said he hoped “we can get the rodeo going again.” Lombardo said he had been talking with a constituent, Missy Buchanan, about staying involved, and floated town financial support for the rodeo’s “initiation.” Schooler, noting the wave of community interest in both the rodeo and BMX, turned the recurring question back on the room:

“You kind of look around and say, who’s the they… the people of this community are the they that make it happen. So thank you all for stepping up.”

Backyard chickens

Asia, who said she was raised in Yucca Valley as one of nine children, asked the Council to revisit a 2014 ordinance change that tied chicken-keeping to larger lot sizes. She argued that chicken-keeping taught her family responsibility and self-sufficiency and offered therapeutic benefit, noting her father is a Marine veteran and citing the value of caring for animals for those managing PTSD and stress.

We weren’t running a farm. We had a small flock that taught us lessons that I still carry with me as an adult today. Every morning we fed chickens, checked their water, changed their living area, and collected eggs. Those daily chores taught us responsibility.

She asked the Council to update the ordinance so more families could keep a small number of hens. Lombardo, who recounted his own backyard chickens being “eaten by a bobcat,” said the issue “we can look at… in the future to see what could be done about changing the permitting.”

Under Yucca Valley’s current municipal code, fowl require a minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet — just under half an acre — in single-family residential zones. On a lot that size, residents may keep up to 10 hens; each additional 10,000 square feet adds five more, to a maximum of 25. Fowl are not permitted on multi-family lots at all. Animal-keeping rules are a live question next door, too. In November 2025, the Desert Trumpet covered a Twentynine Palms Planning Commission study session on animal regulations where the city’s minimum-acreage requirements were examined partly through the lens of food access. At that time the minimum acreage for keeping fowl was one acre, but Planning Commissioners in that City recommended a change to minimum quarter-acre parcels.

Southern California Edison outages

Cheryl Contopolus returned to the podium on behalf of family living within Edison’s Campanula circuit, describing repeated unplanned outages. She documented seven in a paper she gave Mayor Abel before the meeting, with an eighth since. She recalled a presentation given to the Council on January 20 by Edison representative Shane Massoud:

On January 20, at the town council meeting, Shane Massoud gave a presentation. In that presentation, he outlined some things that could be done that would resolve the issues — that was five months ago. Things have gotten worse since that meeting… We can't be appeased by a presentation if there is no follow through and no forward motion. Your constituents need you to help make this a high priority and hold them accountable.

Edison reliability is not a Yucca Valley problem alone. The Desert Trumpet reported in February 2025 on a wave of SCE outages in Twentynine Palms — a dozen scheduled shutoffs clustered in the business district over several weeks, one of which forced the cancellation of a February Planning Commission meeting. Like the Flock cameras and the meeting-cancellation patterns the Desert Trumpet has tracked, SCE reliability is shaping up as a basin-wide story playing out separately before two Councils.

Staff reports and Council comments: pickleball, summer aquatics, Joshua Trees and hairy legs

Public Works Director Alex Qishta gave project updates: the pickleball courts beside the Community Center are built and painted, with striping and fencing to follow and completion expected by the end of July; the SR-62 beautification project is at 60 percent design; and a restored town monument sign at Community Center and SR-62 is in the consultant-agreement stage.

Recreation Supervisor Kusmieruk reported the summer aquatics program launched June 1, with more than $30,000 in program registrations already, alongside a new “Turtle Travels” exhibit at the museum and a busy senior center.

Deputy Town Manager Shane Stueckle flagged the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Plan, which goes before the California Fish and Game Commission on August 12-13. The framing was notable: Stueckle described the Conservation Act as having created "burdens" for residents, characterizing state environmental law as an imposition, and said the town encourages residents to continue making public testimony and meeting with legislative representatives.

Per CDFW, comments on the Conservation Plan or new information on the western Joshua tree may be submitted at any time via email to WJT@wildlife.ca.gov or by mail to: Habitat Conservation Planning Branch, P.O. Box 944209, Sacramento, CA 94244-2090. Once the agenda is posted, residents may participate in the August 12-13 Fish and Game Commission meeting in person, by teleconference, or via the open comment period. The agenda will be posted at fgc.ca.gov/meetings/2026.

Regarding SCE, Yakimow added that town staff continues to work with legislative advocates on potential changes, and, responding to Contopolus’s comment, said staff would continue to press Southern California Edison on reliability, “whether it’s through our franchise agreement… or any other tools at our disposal.” He also praised the recently repaved Onaga Trail.

In council comments, Drozd, Lombardo, and Schooler all returned to their enthusiasm for the BMX track and the rodeo. Lombardo ran a little over three minutes, working through backyard chickens lost to a bobcat and a fondly remembered Grubstake Days hairy-legs contest. It’s a an example of a pattern Desert Trumpet has tracked more pointedly next door in Twentynine Palms, where a single council member’s comments have run as long as seven minutes.

Drozd noted the Campanula circuit had gone out “nine times” in the past month and a half, one more than was stated in public comment. Abel thanked the town’s senior staff and legal counsel for their responsiveness and wished the community a safe Fourth of July.

Town Council will be dark on Tuesday, July 7. The next scheduled Town Council meeting is Tuesday, July 21. A Successor Agency meeting followed the adjournment.

This report is produced with AI assistance. Please see our Yucca Valley Town Hall reporting policy and our AI policy.

Run for Town Council! Districts 1 (Schooler), 3 (Abel) and 5 (Denison) are up for election. The nomination period for candidates begins July 13, 2026 and ends on August 6, 2026. Contact Town Clerk Brooke Dudra for details and check out our article on How to Run for City and Town Council for general guidelines.

Hi, new subscribers! Desert Trumpet understands you might not be interested in all of our coverage. That’s why it’s divided into separate newsletters allowing you to opt out of reporting that’s not important to you. For instance, you may want our Education news but not City Hall 29.

Here’s how to opt out: go to your Substack settings, scroll down to “subscriptions,” and select “Edit” for the Desert Trumpet. Simply uncheck the box next to the newsletters you don’t want to receive in your email inbox. You’ll still be able to access all coverage online if you change your mind.

Help us cover Yucca Valley Town Hall — Become a paid subscriber!

Not a paid subscriber yet? Did you know that paid subscribers receive discounts on our DT Social events and invites to DT Front Porch, intimate discussions featuring local officials and notable residents?

• Upgrade to a $50+ paid subscription for a 10% discount.

• Upgrade to $100+ for a 25% discount.

• Sustaining subscribers at the $250+ level and above receive complementary tickets

  Subscribe now

Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Please note that we do not allow anonymous comments. Please be sure your first and last name is on your profile prior to commenting. Anonymous comments will be deleted.

Leave a comment

This coverage is free - please share!

Share

By the Yucca Valley Resident Review Committee

Tuesday’s meeting begins before the public is admitted. At 4:15 p.m., in the Town Hall Conference Room, the Council will convene in closed session to evaluate the performance of Town Attorney Thomas Jex. The regular meeting follows at 5 p.m. in the Yucca Room of the Community Center, with a 697-page packet, a notable contrast to the 2,762-page stack residents were handed two weeks ago.

The June 16 agenda carries thirteen action items, compared to the twenty-nine that sprawled across the June 2 meeting. Most of the heavy lifting from that session, which included the two-year budget, the five-year Strategic Plan, and the Sheriff's contract, is already done. What remains here is a mix of follow-through (a second reading of the Walmart fuel station ordinance, a vehicle purchase confirmation) and several items worth a closer look: a formalized partnership for the animal shelter, ongoing consultant cost increases at the aquatics center, and a land donation to the county fire district.

Relevant documents:

• Meeting agenda

• Recap of the June 2 meeting

An invocation choice raises questions

The invocation will be delivered by Pastor Bill Wilcox of Hosanna Hope Church, a nondenominational evangelical congregation based in Yucca Valley. The choice deserves noting: the church’s published statement of faith takes explicit positions on sex and marriage that exclude LGBTQ+ residents from the guidance for the evening’s deliberations:

We believe legitimate sexual relations are exercised solely within marriage. In addition, we believe marriage has been ordained by God. Therefore, we recognize marriage as exclusively the legal union of one man and one woman in which such union is a lifetime commitment.

Concerns about inclusion have surfaced repeatedly in the Morongo Basin’s ongoing invocation debates. Resolution 13-02, which governs the Town's legislative prayer policy, bars the Council from reviewing prayer content in advance, but the selection of who delivers the invocation remains within the Town Clerk's discretion. Which raises a question: should the Town be inviting speakers from organizations whose stated beliefs appear to violate the civil rights of some of its own residents?

PUBLIC COMMENT

You can comment on agenda items and issues important to you at every Town Council meeting. Comments on agenda items take place during discussion of that item, while comments on non-agenda items take place near the end of the meeting. The Brown Act prevents Council from commenting on non-agenda items. To comment, just pick up a form at the desk to the left of the mic, fill it out, and hand it to the Clerk, who sits at a table, also to the left of the mic.

Here's the list of Council email addresses to write if you can't get to the meeting — be sure to email them prior to 2 pm on the date of the meeting so they have time to read your email prior to discussion.

Mayor Merl Abel — mabel@yucca-valley.org
Mayor Pro Tem Jim Schooler — jschooler@yucca-valley.org
Council Member Rick Denison — rdenison@yucca-valley.org
Council Member Jeff Drozd — jdrozd@yucca-valley.org
Council Member Robert Lombardo — rlombardo@yucca-valley.org

You can also copy the clerk at townclerk@yucca-valley.org and ask that your letter be made part of the public record.

The meeting offers two-way remote participation by Zoom; comment time is limited to three minutes. (Meeting ID: 994 5617 3704, Passcode: 319606)

PRESENTATIONS, INTRODUCTIONS, RECOGNITIONS

The agenda does not list any presentations, introductions, or recognitions for this meeting.

CONSENT AGENDA (CA)

The Consent Agenda consists of items usually approved with a single vote. The public is given a chance to make public comment on these items prior to the Council motion. Fill out a comment form specifying the item you wish to address and submit it in person, or send an email in advance regarding any of the items on this meeting’s Consent Agenda.

The Consent Agenda this month runs from Item 3 (approval of the June 2 minutes) through Item 10. Items 4, 7, and 8 are routine housekeeping: the Town ratifies its alignment with the updated San Bernardino County fire code (Item 4); approves May payroll registers totaling $654,433.57 and a warrant register of $3,575,720.64 (Item 7); and receives confirmation that the Ford F-150 STX 4x4 authorized at the June 2 meeting was purchased from Ken Grody Ford in Buena Park for $50,740.50, under the $60,000 cap (Item 8).

CA3. Approval of the June 2, 2026 meeting minutes
Take a look at the June 2 minutes — not for what they contain, but for what they don't. Three residents testified against the Walmart fuel station. Dean Arvidson, representing the Sky's the Limit observatory, argued the environmental review was rushed and failed to analyze lighting's impact on wildlife. Deb Douglas spoke to the cultural and community value of dark skies. Susan Wells questioned why a changed project location didn't trigger a new environmental review. The minutes record none of that. What survives in the official record is three names and three topic tags. A future resident, a researcher, or a court reviewing the proceeding would have no way of knowing that all three speakers opposed the project, or what they argued.

The Brown Act sets a minimal floor for minutes, essentially votes and actions, and Yucca Valley is meeting it. But both Robert's Rules of Order, which many California bodies adopt by reference, and best-practices guidance from the League of California Cities recommend that minutes capture the substance of public comment, not merely the fact that it occurred. The gap between what residents said and what the record shows is a choice, not a requirement.

CA5. Yucca Valley Aquatic and Recreation Center Project – Town Project 6009 Consultant Services Additional Funds

The aquatics center project has run long. Per the staff report, the construction timeline has extended from 18 months to 24 months. Three consultants, construction manager SAFEWORKCM, project manager Dahlin Architectural, and architect/engineer HMC Architects, continue to bill monthly, so the extended schedule means added cost.

The Council is asked to approve continued monthly consultant charges: $65,000/month to SAFEWORKCM, $9,000/month to Dahlin, and $40,000/month to HMC, each running until project completion or January 31, 2027, whichever comes first. The staff report's contingency table estimates a combined maximum of roughly $798,000 in additional consultant charges. Per the staff report, the contingency budget can absorb the charges without a new budget amendment, but the running balance would drop to roughly $2.02 million, down from the original $2.95 million. The facility carries a $51 million total project budget and will feature three pools, a gym, and a 37,200-square-foot building.

CA6. AB 1234 Reporting Requirements
AB 1234, passed in 2005 to increase transparency and accountability in how local elected officials spend public funds, requires council members to report at each meeting any travel, conferences, or meetings they attended at public expense the previous month. The intent was straightforward: residents should know when their elected representatives are spending public money to travel, and on what.

The May 2026 schedule shows nine trips across four council members. Abel, Denison, Drozd, and Lombardo attended the SBCTA City-County Conference in Lake Arrowhead on May 14–15; only Mayor Pro Tem Schooler did not. Mayor Abel also traveled to the ICSC Conference in Las Vegas May 18–20. Council Member Denison made three trips in May, the most of any member.

What the report doesn’t show is what any of it cost. The schedule lists dates, organizations, and locations — but no dollar amounts. AB 1234 actually requires more than this: under Government Code §53232.3, members must file expense reports documenting actual costs for meals, lodging, and travel, accompanied by receipts. Under §53232.3(e) they are public records available through a California Public Records Act request. The agenda item presents the trips; the tab remains out of public view unless someone asks for it.

Note also: the report only captures travel reimbursed by the Town. Any trip a council member paid for personally, however relevant to town business, isn’t listed.

CA9. Approval of Real Property Donation Agreement for APN 0595-171-04 – San Bernardino County Fire Station 41

The Town owns approximately 0.86 acres of vacant land at 7238 Joshua Lane. The plan is to donate it to the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District for the future site of Fire Station 41. The state’s Surplus Lands Act requires the Town to go through an exemption process before giving away public land; that process was completed in May–June 2025, with the California Department of Housing and Community Development confirming the property qualifies as exempt surplus land. The Council is now being asked to formally approve the donation agreement. There is no monetary consideration because this is a land gift in exchange for the public safety benefit of a new fire station. Separately, the Town and Fire District are working toward a facility-use agreement for the existing Station 41, which is planned for redevelopment as a training and administrative facility; that agreement is expected by end of 2026.

CA10. Ordinance 334 - Second Reading- Adopting Specific Plan 01-04, Amendment #2, To the Yucca Valley Retail Center Specific Plan. (Walmart Fuel Station)
This is the second and final vote to adopt the specific plan amendment that clears the way for the Walmart fuel station on Highway 62. The Council voted 5-0 to introduce Ordinance 334 at the June 2 meeting; under state law, ordinances require a second reading before taking effect. If adopted Tuesday, the ordinance becomes effective 30 days later — clearing a key regulatory hurdle before any building permit can issue. The Desert Trumpet covered the approval in our June 2 recap.

Any member of the public or Council can pull this item for separate discussion before the consent vote. Three residents spoke against the project at the June 2 hearing, raising concerns about the adequacy of the environmental review and the impact on dark skies. If those concerns haven’t been resolved to your satisfaction, this is the last formal opportunity to put them on the record before the ordinance takes effect.

DEPARTMENT REPORTS

11. Approval of Lease Agreement with Yucca Valley BMX for Operation of the Town BMX Facility

The Town-owned BMX track has been dormant since late 2023, when the previous operator, Keri Dillman, confirmed she had closed the track and did not intend to reopen it. The Town issued a termination notice in April 2024, secured the site, and undertook extensive cleanup — changing locks, shutting utilities, demolishing a deteriorated structure, and removing encampment debris. In fall 2025, the Town began outreach to find a new operator; ten people requested information, two completed the application process and were interviewed.

The selected applicant is Heather Quintana, a Basin Wide Foundation board member and lifelong local, applying on behalf of Yucca Valley BMX. The group operates under the fiscal sponsorship of Basin Wide Foundation and, per the staff report, includes team members with BMX and track operations experience. Under the proposed lease, Yucca Valley BMX would take over day-to-day operations, maintenance, and event programming, with a target opening date of July 1, 2026. The lease term runs July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027, renewing automatically year-to-year unless either party gives 60 days notice. The Town’s compensation: $1 per year. Yucca Valley BMX retains all revenue from events, concessions, and snack bars, and is responsible for utilities. The Town retains ownership and responsibility for major infrastructure including fencing, parking, and drainage.

Note: the draft lease document in the packet contains a drafting error, stating the lease ends March 31, 2026. The staff report makes clear the correct term is July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027. The Council will be voting to approve a document with incorrect dates, but the Town Manager is authorized to make non-substantive revisions as is likely to happen here.

12. Professional Services Agreement with Morongo Basin Humane Society
This item is for anyone following the Yucca Valley Animal Shelter recovery story. The Council is asked to approve a two-year contract with the Morongo Basin Humane Society for animal transfer, rehabilitation, and rehoming services running July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2028, formalizing and funding a relationship that, per the one-time $15,000 payment for services already rendered, has been operating informally for some time.

Under the agreement, MBHS would accept up to 25 dogs and cats annually from the Town shelter. Kittens and puppies are excluded unless they have special medical or behavioral issues. Selection prioritizes animals at risk of euthanasia due to capacity, medical needs, or behavioral issues, but the scope document makes clear MBHS also wants the harder-to-place cases: long stays, breed characteristics, or other unique situations. MBHS provides housing, veterinary care, and rehoming support at its own expense. The Town pays $25,000 annually in semi-annual installments, plus the one-time $15,000 noted above.

The staff report frames this as implementing Recommendation #3 of the 2025 Animal Shelter Operational Review. The contract requires annual reporting within 30 days of each fiscal year’s close on the number and species of animals transferred, their outcomes, the veterinary and behavioral services provided, and average length of stay. Live-release rate was the central metric throughout the shelter controversy, so that data trail will be worth watching.

One provision warrants a flag — a non-disparagement clause that binds both parties for the life of the contract:

The Town and MBHS agree that during the term of this agreement, neither party, nor their respective officers, directors, employees, or agents shall in any communication, whether oral or written, disparage, defame, or cast in a false light the other party, its management, services or business practices.1

Given how public the shelter dispute became, residents should know it’s in the contract.

13. Resolution No. 26-XX: Town of Yucca Valley, FY 2026-2027, SB 1, Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Account (RMRA): Approval of the project list; Authorization to Submit the Town’s Project List to the California Transportation Commission

To remain eligible for California's SB 1 road-repair funding, the Town must annually submit a list of projects to the California Transportation Commission. This year's allocation is estimated at $619,757. The proposed work is slurry seal and cape seal maintenance, which are surface treatments that extend pavement life and are scheduled to begin April 2027 and complete by August 2027.

FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS

Council members may request topics for future meetings here. The next regular meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, July 7, 2026.

This report is produced with AI assistance. Please see our Yucca Valley Town Hall reporting policy and our AI policy.

Run for Town Council! Districts 1 (Schooler), 3 (Abel) and 5 (Denison) are up for election. The nomination period for candidates begins July 13, 2026 and ends on August 6, 2026. Contact Town Clerk Brooke Dudra for details and check out our article on How to Run for City and Town Council for general guidelines.

Hi, new subscribers! Desert Trumpet understands you might not be interested in all of our coverage. That’s why it’s divided into separate newsletters allowing you to opt out of reporting that’s not important to you. For instance, you may want our Education news but not City Hall 29.

Here’s how to opt out: go to your Substack settings, scroll down to “subscriptions,” and select “Edit” for the Desert Trumpet. Simply uncheck the box next to the newsletters you don’t want to receive in your email inbox. You’ll still be able to access all coverage online if you change your mind.

Help us cover Yucca Valley Town Hall — Become a paid subscriber!

Not a paid subscriber yet? Did you know that paid subscribers receive discounts on our DT Social events and invites to DT Front Porch, intimate discussions featuring local officials and notable residents?

Subscribe now

• Upgrade to a $50+ paid subscription for a 10% discount.

• Upgrade to $100+ for a 25% discount.

• Sustaining subscribers at the $250+ level and above receive complementary tickets

Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Please note that we do not allow anonymous comments. Please be sure your first and last name is on your profile prior to commenting. Anonymous comments will be deleted.

Leave a comment

This coverage is free - please share!

Share

Editor’s note: Welcome to our first meeting recap for Yucca Valley Town Council. The Desert Trumpet is taking the first steps toward expanding coverage of local government by covering Yucca Valley Town Council meetings. Yucca Valley residents deserve the kind of accessible civic reporting that empowers more effective engagement with their elected representatives.

Meeting recaps are assembled and reviewed by the Yucca Valley Resident Review Committee, a volunteer group of Yucca Valley residents with knowledge of local government and community affairs. A member of the committee was present at the meeting. Committee members are known to Desert Trumpet staff and to one another, but have chosen to remain anonymous due to concerns about retaliation. We respect that decision and are grateful for their participation.

This preview was produced with AI assistance, consistent with the approach described in our AI Policy. As noted there, we are exploring how AI-assisted summaries can allow us to extend coverage to governing bodies beyond the current scope of our budget for paid staff. We treat this as a bridge toward fuller coverage, not a substitute for it, and we are disclosing it explicitly here.

The Yucca Room was nearly full when the meeting opened — but most of the crowd had come for the warm-up act. Youth commissioners packed the front rows with their families, a six-year-old led the Pledge of Allegiance, and the room laughed out loud when Mayor Merl Abel read the title of the boy’s recycled-art piece: “I have too many of these.” By the time the Council got to the night’s actual weight — a 24-hour gas station and a roughly $23 million biennial budget — the room had thinned to fewer than a dozen. The feel-good civic ceremony drew the house; the big-money decisions played to a half-empty room.

That is not unusual, and it is not entirely the public’s fault. The June 2 agenda ran to twenty-nine items packed into a 2,762-page packet released the Friday before a holiday-shortened week — the consequence, in part, of a light meeting schedule for the spring: the Council cancelled both its April 21 and May 19 meetings, and the business piled into this one. (Between January and May, Yucca Valley cancelled three council meetings; Twentynine Palms, next door, cancelled none.) All five members were present: Abel, Mayor Pro Tem Jim Schooler, and Councilmembers Rick Denison, Jeff Drozd, and Robert Lombardo. Every vote of the night was unanimous. The meeting ran about two and a half hours.

Related documents:
Meeting agenda and meeting video
Our agenda preview

A note on order: the Council moved the Youth Commission report up ahead of the public hearings so the students wouldn’t have to wait and because the Walmart hearing was noticed for “at or after 6 p.m.,” it took two later department reports first. This recap follows the meeting as it happened.

An invocation, and a fight that hasn’t gone away

The meeting opened, as town meetings do, with an invocation, this one from Anne Fernandez of the Yucca Valley Center for Spiritual Living, a pointedly non-evangelical choice, and a small story in itself. 1

The backstory: on November 4, Pastor Daniel Hanna of Crossview Bible Church gave an invocation that ranged well past the ceremonial. These are excerpts:

Now we bring before your throne and into your nurturing, shepherding care our concerns for the most innocent and most defenseless among us, the unborn children in the womb, and we pray that you would restrain the evil that would seek to destroy their lives even before they take their first breath in this world….

…and we pray for our children and teens and for their teachers. I pray that our kids in California schools shall not be captured by deceitful evil philosophies of man

we pray your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and we pray especially that evil will be restrained here this night and throughout our nation, bring back peaceful, lawful discussion to the land of the free and the home of the brave. We pray that tonight’s community dialog here will be peaceful and respectful, and that you shall be glorified this night and every night until Jesus comes back riding in on the clouds. Amen.

The First Amendment leaves the council and the clerk no room to review an invocation’s content beforehand — censoring a private speaker at the podium would violate the speaker’s free-speech rights — so the town’s 2013 resolution acknowledges this directly and can only ask, not require, that speakers not proselytize or disparage other faiths. Individual invocations aren’t the council’s legal responsibility; a pattern of exploiting the podium to proselytize or denigrate is, under the Establishment Clause — and the November 4 and March 3 invocations together raise that question. In the months since, the council has mostly sidestepped it, with no invocation at all on several nights and Mayor Abel delivering it himself on others.

The November 4 blowback prompted Yucca Valley resident Janice Taitel to launch a petition — initially calling for non-denominational invocations, then revised, after further research, to call for inclusive invocations that aren’t necessarily non-sectarian. The revised petition drew 210 signatures. Taitel presented it to the Council at the December 2, 2025 meeting during public comment and has since repeatedly asked that a policy discussion be placed on the agenda. The town reviewed the policy and found it legal. It has not held a public discussion. “Everything we do must be legal,” Taitel wrote to the Desert Trumpet on Facebook2, “but not everything that is legal must be done. YV residents should have a say in this.”

However, as recently as March, shortly after the start of the Iran war, Logan Smit of the Calvery Bible Institute prayed:

…Lord, I pray for our troops as they take on the forces of evil in this world. I pray for President Trump and his war council as he handles this situation. Be with us all in the holy and mighty name of Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Amen.

A Councilmember can be heard remarking, “Well done Logan” and the Mayor says, “Thank you Logan, we appreciate it.” Oddly, this invocation is present on the documentation posted to the videographer’s YouTube channel, but is missing from the official video posted to the Town website, which starts with the first agenda item.

Against that run, handing the June 2 invocation to the Yucca Valley Center for Spiritual Living reads less like routine scheduling than an attempt to quell the protest. However, the policy itself has not been revised.

New faces, and a shelter still climbing out of a hole

Public Works introduced Brenda Northup, a new administrative assistant who most recently served as town clerk for a small town in Nevada and is relocating to Yucca Valley with her family. Then Deputy Town Manager Shane Stueckle brought up three new animal-shelter hires — Wesley McDavid, Daren Bradstock, and Sierra Crippen, the last newly promoted to a full-time animal-control officer.

The new hires carry a backstory worth remembering, because it is the reason a routine personnel item matters. Through much of 2025, the shelter was the most contentious subject in town. Residents began turning out at meetings in January over allegations of improper euthanasia practices by Doug Smith, the shelter's longtime Animal Care and Control Manager, who retired in July3 following months of sustained public pressure. According to town staff data presented to the Council in April 2025, roughly 513 of the 969 dogs admitted to the shelter in 2024 — about 53 percent — were euthanized rather than adopted or returned to their owners4. The case of "Howdy," a severely neglected dog pulled off the euthanasia list and rushed into emergency surgery, became the emblem of the controversy.5

The town launched a 90-day operational review in March 2025; the final review was filed July 15, and a standing shelter committee was established, chaired by Councilmembers Schooler and Drozd. So when Deputy Town Manager Stueckle reported that the dog live-release rate now sits "just a hair below 90 percent," he was describing a turnaround, not a routine statistic, and the Council knew it.

The Youth Commission steals the show

If the crowd came for anything, it was this. Recreation Supervisor Clayton Rardon introduced Chair Acacia Smith, a 17-year-old Yucca Valley High senior in her fifth year on the commission, and Vice Chair George Wingerter, 17, a junior at the iLEAD Exploration charter school. The two walked through a year that included a Valentine’s dance with the senior center, a Kids Zone at the health fair, food-donation drives, and a return to the Grubstake Days parade, plus a middle-school recruitment forum whose pudding-eating contest got its own laugh from the room. Smith noted the commission has swelled from twenty a couple years ago to nearly forty members.

The Council ate it up. Councilmember Lombardo praised the students’ public-speaking poise as proof staff were doing their jobs well; Mayor Pro Tem Schooler, who was on town staff when the commission was created some three decades ago, marveled at how far it had come. The meeting paused for several minutes so council members could come down off the dais for photos. Then the families filed out, and the room got quiet.

Consent Agenda: a lot of money, one vote, no questions

Town Clerk Brooke Dudra reported no speaker cards and no member pulled anything, so Items 3 through 21 passed in a single motion. That is ordinary procedure; what rode along on it was not. The same vote ratified:

• more than $3.4 million in April warrants

• a $7.4 million one-year amendment to the county Sheriff’s contract — the town’s largest recurring expense, up more than half a million over the prior year

• a master fee-schedule update that stacks a 5.5 percent inflation bump on previously adopted increases

• the call for the November election for Council districts 1, 3 and 5

• $460,000 in community contracts

• a new $60,000 town truck paired with a $150,000 transfer out of capital reserves

None of it drew a word of discussion.

Three of those items — the Sheriff’s contract, the community contracts, and the election call — describe their cost as already “accommodated” in the “Adopted FY2026-27 Budget.” That budget was Item 28, still hours away from adoption. As our preview noted, the spending was approved before the document authorizing it was on the books.

Two public hearings, no public

The annual assessment levies (Item 22) and the solid-waste charges going onto the property tax roll (Item 23) are yearly housekeeping, and both passed without a single resident at the microphone, despite these being rare moments to question a charge before it lands on a tax bill. Worth knowing anyway: solid-waste rates are rising about 9 percent, roughly $3 a month for a typical household, driven by a Consumer Price Index (CPI) adjustment and the cost of state-mandated organic-waste diversion. (Composting runs more than twice the per-ton cost of the landfill.)

Fireworks, take two

Last Fourth of July, Yucca Valley’s fireworks fizzled. Per a report at Z107.7, the pyrotechnics vendor, PyroSpectaculars of Rialto, experienced staffing shortages and the 9 p.m. show launched late (11 p.m.) and short (7 minutes instead of 20).6 Recreation Supervisor Rardon presented a plan: PyroSpectaculars has handed over a $40,000 credit tentatively to be used at the new aquatics center’s grand opening, and this year’s July 3 show at the high school will be split fifty-fifty with the Town paying $22,500 and the Twentynine Palms Band of Mission Indians paying $22,500 and supplying an experienced pyrotechnician. A crew that usually works the stage at Pappy & Harriet’s is handling sound.

A cyclist makes the case for bikes

Item 27, the town’s renewed roughly $8.7 million Active Transportation Program grant application for sidewalks and ADA ramps near four schools and along Barron Drive, drew the evening’s first public commenter. Eric Linnert spoke for a fledgling group called the Basin Bike Path. The group formed, he said, after a cyclist was killed in town last fall, and it recently drew about thirty riders to its first community ride. He urged the town to weight future projects toward connecting destinations by bike:

I was surprised to learn that only a relatively small portion of this proposal is dedicated to bicycle infrastructure, while the majority is directed towards new sidewalk construction. However, I would encourage the town to carefully evaluate whether every proposed sidewalk segment provides the same public benefit as additional bicycle and multi-use path investments. One of the recurring themes I’ve heard at the California Bicycle Summit was that communities are increasingly looking for projects that connect destinations rather than simply adding isolated pieces of infrastructure. Bicycle and multi-use paths can often serve a broader range of users while helping achieve safety, recreation, tourism, and transportation goals simultaneously. The town identified already many of these goals in the Parks and Recreation Master Plan adopted in 2019 yet several bicycle-related recommendations remain unimplemented.

Councilmember Denison, who chairs the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, gave a long defense of the school-centered design. The point, he said, is to pull traffic off congested streets and stitch together sidewalk gaps, and he explained how local Measure I and Measure Y dollars seed the larger grant. Mayor Abel conceded the town has “missed a couple opportunities” to add bike striping during repaving and pointed Linnert toward staff. The grant application passed 5-0; the town expects to hear back on the grant in November.

The main event: a 24-hour fuel station, and the dark-sky fight

The Walmart fuel station (Item 24) is the largest single item in the packet by far, and it has history. The original Yucca Valley Retail Specific Plan was approved on a 2008 environmental review; the fuel station was studied then but dropped and never built, the store opened in 2014, and Walmart has been back before the Council for exterior and signage changes more than once since. Now it wants six pumps, twelve dispensers, a 4,950-square-foot canopy, and a convenience store on the lot’s northeast corner. The store would keep the same hours as Walmart’s and the pumps would run around the clock.

Jared Jerome, Senior Planner from the Yucca Valley Planning Department, walked through three actions: an addendum to that 2008 review rather than a fresh study, the conditional-use permit, and the specific-plan amendment. The amendment lowers the site’s required parking, a detail our preview flagged and one that no one on the dais raised.

What residents did raise was light. Every speaker came back to the night sky.

Dean Arvidson, a Yucca Valley resident and board member of the Sky’s the Limit observatory in Twentynine Palms, read a statement prepared by a fellow board member, an electrical engineer. He called the timeline hurried, said the photometric and lighting plans carried no firm due dates, and argued the 2008 review never seriously analyzed lighting’s effect on wildlife or migratory birds.

Deb Douglas, a long-time basin resident now in Joshua Tree, spoke to what dark skies mean to people who live under them:

One of the things I remembered about being here when I first moved here is that there’s a bunch of people having big telescopes, and they go out to the Joshua Tree National Park, and they are so generous with those telescopes, and I was just captivated when they showed me what was up in the sky. I saw Saturn’s rings. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve seen that, but it blew me away. So, it’s really important to me, and I think a lot of our citizens, to keep those dark skies, and I applaud that there is some regulation here. When I’ve talked to other lighting specialists, they talk not only about 2700 kelvin, but also about shielding, so it’s low.

Susan Wells of Joshua Tree asked why no new environmental review, when the station sits in a different spot than the 2008 plan and would put fumes near homes across the street? A written comment from Donald Nordine was entered into the record without comment as to its contents.

Town Manager Stueckle said the project is conditioned to meet the town’s lighting ordinance and that the applicant agreed to go beyond it at the Planning Commission’s request; that county standards don’t apply inside town; and that state law does not require a new review when an addendum will do. He noted the town is already preparing to bring revised lighting standards to the Planning Commission around August, with night-sky advocates invited, which addresses residents’ long-running complaints about light pollution. Jerome added that the final lighting plan must be approved before any building permits are issued.

Mayor Abel asked whether the pumps would snarl the shared entrances and bus stops and about glare from the elevated pad onto Highway 62; staff said there would be no permanent change to traffic flow and that light would be held to the property line. The three actions passed 5-0, 5-0, and 5-0.

The budget, and the document no one could read

Finance Manager Jordan Gumbish, joining remotely, laid out a 2027-2028 General Fund budget balanced in both years with about $22.9 million in revenue against $22.5 million in spending for the coming year, a surplus near $436,000 and reserves held around 60 percent. The budget folds in a five-year county shelter contract and a cost-of-living raise for staff.

It also rests, as it has all along, on a “council-approved strategic plan.” Gumbish told the Council the plan was approved in February and indeed the minutes from the February 3 meeting indicate that it was. The trouble, as our preview detailed, is that this very packet includes a plan draft labeled “Final Review” with areas highlighted as though under consideration.

The lone budget commenter, Pauline “Polly” Pisano, went straight at the process. Then she turned to Flock, the automated license-plate-reader cameras the town began pursuing in spring 2025. Pisano said she had gathered more than 300 signatures and listed cities that have cancelled their Flock contracts, asking the Council not to fund the system and to be transparent about it in the budget.

It is deeply urgent that Yucca Valley cancels its contract and stops funding these Flock surveillance cameras as a waste of our city’s funds, which should be put towards community towards programs of community uplift. Dr. King once said the prescription for the cure rests with the accurate diagnosis of the disease. I’m standing here today as a granddaughter of a lieutenant from the Boston Police Force, who served 30 years of his life, and he would agree that meeting basic needs—food, housing, and education—is what makes communities safe, not faulty, hackable tech. Yucca Valley is our home. Let’s make sure it continues to be a welcoming community.

Flock cameras are a basin-wide flashpoint: Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms run them through the same San Bernardino County Sheriff’s operator and the same vendor, though each town votes on their contracts separately, and Pisano has carried the same message to both councils.

The Council’s discussion that followed never touched the Flock question; it turned instead to whether reserves could cover surprises at the coming aquatics center. The budget passed 5-0.

The rest of the night

The Council adopted a state-mandated policy (Item 29) for handling internet or phone outages during hybrid meetings. It passed 5-0.

Under future agenda items, Mayor Pro Tem Schooler asked for a full shelter report to the whole Council, ideally June 16, and previewed numbers from the May subcommittee meeting he and Drozd sit on: April live-release rates of 86.9 percent for dogs and 100 percent for cats, a successful dollar-a-day May adoption promotion, and a volunteer program now running. Abel noted the night-sky standards heading back to the Planning Commission.

In general public comment, Bonnie Hawthorne called in by Zoom to return to the gas station, warning that the Walmart entrance is “a bottleneck on a good day” and that an elevated, 24-hour station would be visible for miles.

Staff and council comments closed the night on a note of remembrance. Sheriff’s Captain Steven Scovel reported that more than a hundred people had gathered the Sunday before for the five-year memorial of Sergeant Dominic Vaca, killed in the line of duty on Memorial Day weekend in 2021 and honored by the Council every May since. Mayor Abel, after wishing birthdays to Councilmember Denison and Mayor Pro Tem Schooler, who had spent theirs at the dais, closed the meeting in Vaca’s honor, asking the room to keep his widow, Valerie Vaca, in their thoughts. The next regular meeting is June 16.

Run for Town Council! Districts 1 (Schooler), 3 (Abel) and 5 (Denison) are up for election. The nomination period for candidates begins July 13, 2026 and ends on August 6, 2026. Contact Town Clerk Brooke Dudra for details and check out our article on How to Run for City and Town Council for general guidelines.

Hi, new subscribers! Desert Trumpet understands you might not be interested in all of our coverage. That’s why it’s divided into separate newsletters allowing you to opt out of reporting that’s not important to you. For instance, you may want our Education news but not City Hall 29.

Here’s how to opt out: go to your Substack settings, scroll down to “subscriptions,” and select “Edit” for the Desert Trumpet. Simply uncheck the box next to the newsletters you don’t want to receive in your email inbox. You’ll still be able to access all coverage online if you change your mind.

Help us cover Yucca Valley Town Hall — Become a paid subscriber!

Not a paid subscriber yet? Did you know that paid subscribers receive discounts on our DT Social events and invites to DT Front Porch, intimate discussions featuring local officials and notable residents?

• Upgrade to a $50+ paid subscription for a 10% discount.

• Upgrade to $100+ for a 25% discount.

• Sustaining subscribers at the $250+ level and above receive complementary tickets

  Subscribe now

Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Please note that we do not allow anonymous comments. Please be sure your first and last name is on your profile prior to commenting. Anonymous comments will be deleted.

Leave a comment

This coverage is free - please share!

Share

Editor’s note: Welcome to our first agenda preview for Yucca Valley Town Council. The Desert Trumpet is taking the first steps toward expanding coverage of local government by covering Yucca Valley Town Council meetings. Yucca Valley residents deserve the kind of accessible civic reporting that empowers more effective engagement with their elected representatives.

Agenda summaries are assembled and reviewed by the Yucca Valley Resident Review Committee, a volunteer group of Yucca Valley residents with knowledge of local government and community affairs. Committee members are known to Desert Trumpet staff and to one another, but have chosen to remain anonymous due to concerns about retaliation. We respect that decision and are grateful for their participation.

This preview was produced with AI assistance, consistent with the approach described in our AI Policy. As noted there, we are exploring how AI-assisted summaries can allow us to extend coverage to governing bodies beyond the current scope of our budget for paid staff. We treat this as a bridge toward fuller coverage, not a substitute for it, and we are disclosing it explicitly here.

The packet for the June 2 meeting runs to 2,762 pages. It was generated, according to its own metadata, in the early hours of Friday, May 29 — four days before the Tuesday meeting, and over a holiday-adjacent stretch when Town Hall is closed Friday through Sunday. That leaves residents, and arguably the Council members themselves, roughly two business days to read it.1 Download it here, if you dare.

It is also the Council's first meeting in four weeks: the regularly scheduled May 19 session was cancelled. That gap matters, because routine business that would normally have been spread across two meetings is now folded into the same night that already carries the year's heaviest recurring items such as the biennial budget, the assessment and solid-waste public hearings, and the call for the November election.

It is, in our opinion, not physically possible for an average citizen, or a part-time, $950-a-month council member with a day job, to meaningfully digest a packet of this size in that window. The Walmart fuel station item alone accounts for well over 1,700 of those pages. The biennial budget book adds nearly 200 more. Making matters worse, the staff reports and supporting documents are not hyperlinked from the agenda — unlike neighboring Twentynine Palms, whose agendas let a reader click an item and jump straight to its backup. To find anything in Yucca Valley's packet, you have to scroll through the full 2,762-page PDF.

When a body releases a document no one can reasonably read before they’re asked to vote on it, the practical effect, whatever the intent, is to narrow the window for public review to the vanishing point. We think that effect is worth naming directly: agendas assembled at this scale and on this timeline function, in practice, to mute citizen scrutiny rather than invite it.

Compounding the problem, several of the evening’s largest financial commitments are justified by pointing to a budget that doesn’t exist yet. The $7.4 million sheriff’s contract (Item 18), the $460,000 in community contracts (Item 19), and the November election costs (Item 21) all describe their fiscal impact as already “accommodated” in the “Adopted FY2026-27 Budget” — but that budget isn’t adopted until Item 28, later the same night. The spending is being approved before the document authorizing it is on the books.2 And the budget itself rests on the same kind of paper foundation: it repeatedly invokes the Town's "adopted Strategic Plan," yet the most recent minutes in this packet show that plan was still an unadopted draft, and the meeting that might have adopted it was cancelled (see Item 28). That sequencing deserves a public explanation.

Yucca Valley Draft Fy 2026 2028 Strategic Plan Sm

1.05MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

A note on what we could not verify in the time available: at 2,762 pages, this preview covers the items the packet itself flags as most consequential. It is not a line-by-line audit, and it cannot be. That limitation is itself part of the story.

A Note on Public Comment

You can comment on agenda items and issues important to you at every Town Council meeting. Comments on agenda items take place during discussion of that item, while comments on non-agenda items take place near the end of the meeting. The Brown Act prevents Council from commenting on non-agenda items. To comment, just pick up a form at the desk to the left of the mic, fill it out, and hand it to the Clerk, who sits at a table, also to the left of the mic.

Here’s the list of Council email addresses to write if you can’t get to the meeting3 — be sure to email them prior to 2 pm on the date of the meeting so they have time to read your email prior to discussion. You can also copy the clerk at townclerk@yucca-valley.org and ask that your letter be made part of the public record.

The meeting also offers two-way remote participation by Zoom, comment time is limited to three minutes. (Zoom Link, Meeting ID: 995 7960 6104, Passcode: 093185).

Presentations, Introductions, Recognitions

The meeting opens with the introduction of new employees and an invocation led by Anne Fernandez of the Yucca Valley Center for Spiritual Living. The agenda’s only scheduled presentation is the new-hire introduction; the substantive presentations this cycle are folded into the Department Reports section at the back of the agenda (Items 25–29), which is where the budget adoption itself lives.

Consent Agenda

The Consent Agenda consists of items usually approved with a single vote. The public is given a chance to make public comment on these items prior to the Council motion. Fill out a comment form specifying the item you wish to address and submit it in person, or send an email in advance regarding any of the items on this meeting’s Consent Agenda.

The Consent Agenda this month runs from Item 3 (approval of the May 5 minutes) through Item 21, and it is doing a great deal of heavy lifting. The April warrant registers total $3,404,664.94, alongside payroll registers of $334,197.69 and $305,831.27 (Item 8).

Usually consent items are routine. Several here are not, and two warrant a closer look:

11. Authorization to Purchase a Fleet Vehicle. Staff asks the Council to waive competitive bidding under Municipal Code §3.12.060(G) — the "inefficient, impractical, and unnecessary" exception — and authorize purchase of a 2026 Ford truck for the new Community Engagement and Homelessness Coordinator. The bid waiver itself is unremarkable: vehicle waivers are common in small cities, where procurement timelines and dealer inventory don't line up, and by the time a formal bid closes the truck is sold.

The Council approved an identical §3.12.060(G) waiver for a GMC Sierra ($62,776) at its May 5 meeting, and Item 16 tonight waives formal bidding again for the museum re-plumbing. What earns a closer look is the money. The staff report's own quote table lists four prices, the highest being $57,865 — yet the requested authorization is "not to exceed $60,000," above every quote on the page.4 And the report asks the Council to move $150,000 from capital project reserves for a roughly $50,000 truck, explaining that the balance will "backfill" earlier vehicle and equipment purchases. The report also states there has been "no prior review of this matter." An authorization ceiling above the quoted prices and a six-figure reserve transfer bundled into a single vehicle purchase are the kind of thing that belongs in open discussion, not a single omnibus vote.

17. Master Fee Schedule Update / Phase II Adjustments. This item asks the Council to do two things at once: implement the previously adopted “Phase II” fee increases and layer a 5.5% Consumer Price Index (CPI) adjustment on top. The combined effect on some fees is steep. By the schedule’s own table, an administrative hearing fee rises from $244 to $430 (about 76%),5 a public-nuisance investigation goes from $162 to $199, and a notice-of-admin-hearing fee jumps from $35 to $58. Stacking a phased increase and an inflation adjustment in the same resolution makes it hard for a resident to see how much any single fee is actually going up. A fee package of this breadth is a policy decision, not a housekeeping item.

The remaining consent items are mostly routine, but not trivial:

• Item 4 — a second amendment to the vector-control contract with the County of San Bernardino Department of Public Health, primarily focused on mosquito management, bringing the total to $288,475.50 through 2028.

• Item 5 — a first amendment to the Southwest Networks IT contract, raising the not-to-exceed to $180,500 and $190,500 over two years.

• Item 6 — an audit contract extension to RAMS LLP, not to exceed $176,575.

• Item 7 — the AB 1234 reporting schedule. AB 1234 mandates that that local agency officials receive at least two hours of public service ethics training every two years.

• Item 9 — Waste Disposal Agreement Amendment #9 with the County.

• Item 10 — the FY2026-27 spending (Gann) limit resolution.6

• Item 12 — the CFD No. 11-1 special-tax levy across eight improvement areas.

• Items 13 & 14 — a Notice of Completion for the Senior Center roof, and a $90,000 extension of the Valley Pipeline emergency debris-cleanup contract.

• Item 15 — release of an RFP for on-call concrete repair.

• Item 16 — a $60,000 budget amendment from Measure Y for the Hi-Desert Nature Museum re-plumbing, with formal bidding waived.

• Item 20 — the Q3 budget report.

Three more consent items deserve to be set apart, because each commits real money against a budget the Council hasn't adopted yet — that adoption is Item 28, later the same night. Two of them—Item 19, $460,000 in community contracts for the Chamber of Commerce and the Desert Regional Tourism Agency, and Item 21, the calling of the November 3 election for Districts 1, 3, and 5 — each call their cost already "accommodated" in the "Adopted FY2026-27 Budget" that won't be adopted until later that night. The third is the sheriff's contract, big enough to take on its own:

18. FY 2026-27 Public Safety Contract Amendment. The Council is asked to approve a one-year amendment to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department contract for $7,435,821 — an increase of $526,605 over the current year. Staff attributes the jump primarily to personnel costs and to rising liability and insurance expenses tied to “recent Department litigation jury awards and/or settlements.” The report candidly notes that Schedule A costs have risen roughly 6% annually over the past decade, outpacing the Town’s revenue growth and consuming a larger share of the General Fund each year. This is the single largest recurring expenditure the Town makes, and the staff report’s own framing, that without state tort reform “these cost drivers will continue to challenge local municipal budgets,” is worth public attention.

Public Hearings

22 & 23. Assessment Districts and Solid-Waste Charges (Public Hearings). Item 22 confirms the Engineer’s Reports and authorizes the FY2026-27 levy of Street & Drainage and Landscape & Lighting assessments; Item 23 places FY2026-27 solid-waste handling charges on the property tax roll. Both are annual but both are public hearings and are the moment for residents to question the amounts before they land on a tax bill.

24. Walmart Fuel Station — EA 02-25, Specific Plan 01-04 Amendment #2, CUP 01-25. This is the largest item in the packet by far. The applicant (Kimley-Horn, on behalf of Walmart Stores Inc.) seeks to build a fuel station with six pumps and twelve dispensers, a 4,950-square-foot canopy, underground fuel storage, and a 1,556-square-foot convenience store in the northeast corner of the existing Walmart lot at 58501 Twentynine Palms Highway. The gas station would operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week; the convenience store would sell alcohol and mirror Walmart’s 6 a.m.–11 p.m. hours. Several features deserve scrutiny:

• The environmental review relies on a 2008 EIR. Rather than a new environmental impact report, staff recommends an “Addendum #1” to the EIR adopted by the Council on October 14, 2008, for a retail-specific plan now 18 years old. The findings repeatedly acknowledge that the original EIR identified “significant and unavoidable impacts” requiring a statement of overriding considerations, and lean on CEQA §15164 to avoid further analysis.7 Whether an 18-year-old EIR adequately captures a 24-hour fuel station with underground storage tanks is a fair question for the public hearing.

• “Fiscal Impact: None.” The staff report lists no fiscal impact, which is plausible for a privately funded project but tells residents nothing about sales-tax or fuel-tax revenue, fire/hazmat response implications, or long-term costs.

• A parking-standard reduction is buried in the amendment. The Specific Plan amendment quietly lowers the anchor tenant’s required parking ratio from 1 space per 200 square feet (920 spaces) to 1 per 250 (737 spaces). It’s framed as a technical adjustment but is a real loosening of the standard.

• 22 existing trees would be removed, replaced with desert-appropriate landscaping. The site sits within the Yucca Valley Airport influence area and a Part 77 safety review area.

• The Planning Commission recommended approval on April 14, 2026, adding lighting conditions in a nod to residents’ repeated dark-sky concerns, but the potential light pollution posed by a 4,950-square-foot canopy running 24 hours a day warrants consideration beyond capping lighting temperature at 3000 Kelvin.

Department Reports

25 & 26. The Youth Commission end-of-term report (Item 25) and a report on the 2026 Summer Music Festival and Independence Day fireworks (Item 26) round out the back of the agenda.

27. Active Transportation Program Cycle 8 Applications. The Council is asked to authorize grant applications for curb, gutter, sidewalk, and ADA-ramp improvements near Yucca Elementary, Yucca Valley High, Onaga Elementary, La Contenta Middle School, and along Barron Drive, a rare item squarely about pedestrian safety around schools.

28. FY2026-28 Proposed Budget Adoption. Staff projects a $22.93 million General Fund with roughly $22.65 million in expenditures for FY2026-27, an operating surplus near $286,000, and ending reserves around $20.2 million (about 60% of operating expenditures). The Town Manager’s transmittal letter is dated June 2, 2026, the day of the meeting. The Council “reviewed” the proposed budget in May, but the document residents would need to evaluate the final figures is part of this 2,762-page packet released four days out. As noted above, multiple earlier items on tonight’s agenda already treat this budget as adopted.

A note on language: staff reports routinely describe a budget as "adopted" before the Council votes, which is technically premature, but common shorthand across California municipalities when the vote is expected later that night. We flag it here not to nitpick, but because it sets up a more serious problem: the budget applies the same word — "adopted" — to the Strategic Plan, where it cannot be explained the same way. There is no vote scheduled tonight to adopt the plan, no resolution number on record, and the most recent public minutes show it was still an unfinished draft. With the May 19 meeting cancelled, there was no opportunity to adopt it between then and now. Calling the budget "adopted" before a vote is a shortcut. Calling the Strategic Plan "adopted" when the public record shows no adoption ever occurred is something else.

The transmittal letter and General Fund summary repeatedly ground two years of spending in the Town's "adopted Strategic Plan priorities." But unlike every other adopted instrument cited in the packet, each carrying a resolution number and a date (Resolution No. 25-19 on August 19, 2025; Resolution No. 05-60 on October 27, 2005; Specific Plan 01-04 on October 14, 2008, and so on), the Strategic Plan is invoked with no adoption date and no resolution number attached. The most recent minutes in this same packet, from the May 5 meeting, show the plan was still a draft: Town Manager Yakimow "presented the staff report for the draft 2026-28 strategic plan review and requested input and comments to prepare the final draft," after which no motion was made.

With the May 19 meeting cancelled, there was no public meeting between the May 5 draft and the June 2 budget. That leaves no public meeting at which the strategic plan could have been adopted — yet the budget calls it adopted. The copy of the plan circulating in the packet is itself labeled "Final Review," not "Adopted." Either the adoption happened somewhere not reflected in the public record, or the Town has built a $22.9 million biennial budget on a plan the Council never formally voted to adopt. The Town should be able to produce the resolution and date; the budget doesn't.8

29. SB 707 Disruption Policy. A state-mandated housekeeping item: the Council must adopt, by July 1, 2026, a policy for how it handles internet or telephone disruptions that cut off remote public access during hybrid meetings. The proposed policy explicitly “implements, and does not expand upon” the minimum state requirement: a one-hour recess and good-faith restoration efforts, after which the Council may proceed without remote access on a roll-call finding. Worth knowing for anyone who relies on the Zoom option to participate.

FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS

The agenda reserves time for Future Agenda Items but lists none in advance. At the May 5 meeting, no future items were requested. Residents who want an issue calendared should note that this is the mechanism and that, at present, nothing is queued.

From May 5, public comment worth tracking: a medical-cannabis business owner (Christian Garcia) asked the Town to update its cannabis regulations to permit adult-use sales; a resident (Alexandria Brener) pressed again on unresolved lighting at Machris Park, saying the Town acknowledged the problem but gave no timeline, a thread directly relevant to the lighting conditions attached to the Walmart item tonight. Neither has yet produced a future agenda item.

The meeting concludes with Public Comments, Staff Reports and Comments, Mayor and Council Member Reports and Comments and Announcements.

The Yucca Valley Town Council meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 2 at 5 p.m. at the Yucca Valley Community Center, Yucca Room, 57090 Twentynine Palms Hwy, Yucca Valley, CA 92284

Hi, new subscribers! Desert Trumpet understands you might not be interested in all of our coverage. That’s why it’s divided into separate newsletters allowing you to opt out of reporting that’s not important to you. For instance, you may want our Education news but not City Hall 29.

Here’s how to opt out: go to your Substack settings, scroll down to “subscriptions,” and select “Edit” for the Desert Trumpet. Simply uncheck the box next to the newsletters you don’t want to receive in your email inbox. You’ll still be able to access all coverage online if you change your mind.

Help us cover Yucca Valley Town Hall — Become a paid subscriber!

Subscribe now

Not a paid subscriber yet? Did you know that paid subscribers receive discounts on our DT Social events and invites to DT Front Porch, intimate discussions featuring local officials and notable residents?

• Upgrade to a $50+ paid subscription for a 10% discount.

• Upgrade to $100+ for a 25% discount.

• Sustaining subscribers at the $250+ level and above receive complementary tickets

Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Please note that we do not allow anonymous comments. Please be sure your first and last name is on your profile prior to commenting. Anonymous comments will be deleted.

Leave a comment

This coverage is free - please share!

Share