BREAKING: Special Meeting Called for Thursday, April 9, 2026 to Evaluate City Manager
A single closed session on City Manager employment, called with the minimum notice required by law
Twentynine Palms City Council has called a Special Meeting for Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 11:30 a.m. at City Hall, 6136 Adobe Road. The entire agenda consists of a single closed session item on City Manager employment — no open session business, no consent calendar, no action items.
Public comment at closed sessions such as this are a great opportunity to catch the ear of Council on non-agenda items. This is also Twentynine Palms residents’ chance to sing the praises of City Manager Stone James or argue against contract renewal.
The notice went out Wednesday morning, April 8, at 8:30 a.m. — 27 hours before the meeting. Under California’s Ralph M. Brown Act (Government Code § 54956), special meetings require a minimum of 24 hours’ notice posted publicly and delivered to Council members and any media outlets that have requested notification in writing.
The City met that bar, but only just. For context, regular City Council meetings require agendas posted 72 hours in advance. Special meetings carry the shortened 24-hour window by design — they exist for urgent matters that can’t wait for the regular schedule. Whether the City Manager’s employment situation qualifies as that kind of urgency is a question the public has no way to evaluate.
PUBLIC COMMENT
You can comment on agenda items and issues important to you at every City 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 entry desk, fill it out, and hand it to the Clerk, who usually sits just in front of the Council bench toward the right.
Here’s the list of Council email addresses to write if you can’t get to the meeting — be sure to email any comment ASAP due to the short timeline. You can also copy the clerk at cvillescas@29palms.org and ask that your letter be made part of the public record.
CLOSED SESSION
1. Closed Session pursuant to Government Code Section 54957 — PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT: Title - City Manager.
Government Code Section 54957 permits a legislative body to meet in closed session to consider the appointment, employment, performance evaluation, discipline, or dismissal of a public employee. The agenda discloses nothing beyond the title of the position — standard for closed session personnel items, and also standard in that it tells the public nothing at all about why the meeting was called on such short notice.
City Manager H. Stone James was approved by a 4-0-1 Council vote on March 26, 2024, but didn’t begin work until April 29, 2024. He came to Twentynine Palms from Cathedral City, where he had served as Economic Development Director for seven years. His original base salary was $176,425.60.
The new City Manager’s first contract renewal was anything but routine. Beginning in March 2025, Council took up his employment agreement across a series of closed sessions that stretched through spring and into early summer — with the item pulled from the May 13, 2025, open meeting agenda before finally returning on May 27, 2025, when the amended contract was approved.
The amendment gave James a 2.5% raise retroactive to March 26, 2025 — the anniversary of the Council vote, not of his actual first day on the job — bringing his base pay to $180,836.24, with a further 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment in July raising the total to $185,357.15. The renewal also introduced a new provision allowing James to cash in unused administrative leave, a benefit his predecessor Frank Luckino explicitly did not have. At the time, the staff report justified the raise by noting James’s salary was the lowest among city managers in San Bernardino County — while omitting that he is also a first-time city manager.
What is discussed in closed session remains confidential. Any action taken, however, must be reported publicly when Council reconvenes in open session — unfortunately a rarity in Twentynine Palms.
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