Details of Twentynine Palms' Strategic Planning Sessions Released
Community engagement on April 4th and 5th desired but schedules lack participation specifics
Update 9:23am, April 4: Per City Manager Stone James, the Friday session will be live streamed / recorded, but the Saturday session will not.
Update 5:42pm, April 2: The agenda for the Saturday session was just released with all of the workshop items in a numerical list from 1 to 10.1 We contacted Mayor Bilderain and asked “It it your intention to have public comment on each item like a regular Council meeting?” His reply was “Yes.” Reasonably, welcome messages don’t need public comment, so we anticipate comment items 4-9 and perhaps on item 3. See the list footnoted at the bottom of the email.
Mayor Bilderain also said that as far as he knows, the Friday and Saturday sessions would not be live streamed or recorded.
Additional information on the April 4 and 5 strategic planning sessions was released to media partners late Saturday afternoon by Twentynine Palms’ City Manager Stone James. As we reported in our recap of the 2023 sessions, the 2025 sessions promise to have a very different look and feel from the past, as they are being organized by the consulting firm Moore Iacofano Goltsman, Inc. (MIG).
As relayed by City Manager James in his cover email:
This process is an opportunity to reflect on who we are, who we want to become, and how we are going to maintain and increase City revenues in sustainable ways so we can provide the services to become the best version of ourselves.2
Billed as “2030 Strategic Planning,” the intent is to envision Twentynine Palms in 2045, then work backward determining the goals needed to achieve that City of the near future. This is very different from the 2023 sessions, which favored specific projects over long-term vision. Given our often reactive City Council, could explicitly framing strategic planning in terms of long-range vision create a more proactive Council?
However, one might also ask, should increasing revenue, while important, be the sole focus of strategic planning? Especially in a City whose southern border is a National Park and where housing is such a crucial issue?
The sessions are:
Friday, April 4, 2025, 5:00 p.m. in Council Chambers — an overview of all City Departments, including recent accomplishments and current projects.
Saturday, April 5, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (estimated), probably at Freedom Plaza — a five-hour workshop for visioning and strategic planning looking toward 2030.
We emailed a list of questions on public input and scheduling to City Manager James on Monday, including whether these sessions would be live streamed and recorded, and whether a location has been set, but a response hasn’t been received. Plan to attend in person. This will be your chance to give your input to help shape policy that guides the future development of the City.
Friday night: Reports from City departments
City Manager Stone James described the Friday evening session via the email:
Staff recognizes community members typically do not fully appreciate what the City is responsible for and what each City Department accomplishes (despite extremely limited resources). On Friday, the Council will hear from each City Department. Each department head will provide a brief overview of their respective department. While there is a wide variety of departments, when possible applicable departments will touch on the following areas: (i) department purpose, (ii) staffing levels, (iii) recent accomplishments, (iv) current projects, (v) future expenditures, and (vi) future opportunities or concerns.
The City has not provided a schedule for the presentations or indicated how public engagement might occur — this is a departure from the 2023 sessions, which were timed so residents knew when a topic would be addressed. An agenda for the Friday session, released late on Tuesday, read simply:
From this agenda, public comment will likely be concentrated at the front end of Friday’s session. However, this may be residents’ best opportunity to provide input prior to Saturday’s marathon sessions. An agenda for the Saturday session is due on Wednesday, per Brown Act requirements.
Saturday: Planning and envisioning
The Saturday session is broken into a series of topics, some of which consist of activities and prompts intended to assist Councilmembers in envisioning a sustainable future and how to get there. Over the course of the day, responses will be collected on wall graphics and used to prompt further discussion and reflection. As with the Friday night session, approximate timing was not provided. A “working lunch” is scheduled for after the “Accomplishments” topic.
Following a welcome and introduction to the concept of strategic planning, those topics are:
Vision and Values (led by MIG)
Councilmembers will be asked to respond to two prompts:
Who are we now and what do we want to known for in twenty years?
How do we preserve our small town feel, a diverse community with close
connections while improving our economic and social opportunities?
Their responses will be drafted individually, in writing, then collected and posted publicly for group discussion among Councilmembers toward identifying a shared vision.
Accomplishments and Assets (led by City Manager)
A presentation of initiatives, programs, and other milestones “that celebrate the city’s accomplishments over the past year.”
Needs, Opportunities, and Goals (led by City Manager)
How will the the shared vision articulated earlier in the day be achieved? Per the description provided by the City Manager, “City Council members will be asked to use a set of interactive tools and materials to address the following prompt: What do we need to realize our aspirations?” This appears to be another individual exercise, where responses will be collected and displayed for Council feedback and discussion.
Council Priority Setting (led by MIG)
In this section, abstract envisioning transforms into concrete priorities — and this is the section that mostly closely resembles the 2023 sessions. Councilmembers will “identify the topics, issues, and initiatives” to be prioritized in the next year. Led by the strategic planning consultant, they will “assess how these priorities implement the vision and are in alignment with the community values.” Top priorities will be identified.
Wrap up, Next Steps, and Reflection (led by MIG)
The day’s progress will be summed up and post-session next steps outlined.
So… Public engagement?
Readers may have noticed that public engagement is not built into the Saturday schedule. You may wonder, “Why are they bothering to do this in public?” The Brown Act requires this level of transparency whenever Council meets as a group. The Act also requires that the public be given the opportunity to comment. Indeed, the final heading on the list provided by the City Manager, “Public Comment,” reads:
This workshop is intended to create generative dialogue. Members of the public will have an opportunity to provide public comment at various points throughout the workshop.
While Mayor Steven Bilderain made it clear to this reporter that citizen engagement at these sessions is desired, wouldn’t it be helpful to have it outlined in the schedule? Expecting residents to sit for five hours without knowing when they might participate is a big ask.
Additionally, the City has done little to encourage resident attendance — as of publication, today, Wednesday, April 2, no email blast has been sent and social media consists of a single all-text post to the City Facebook account. One would think that for $36,000 MIG might provide a social media template as well?
It does appear that there are plans for engagement based on the results of the session. Per the schedule, under “next steps”:
The next steps in the process including [sic] the community and city staff engagement activities. The strategic plan consultant will emphasize that a questionnaire will be the primary tool to gather feedback to inform the vision, values, goals, and priorities that will inform the strategic plan.
However, individual questionnaires and surveys function very differently from the open exchange of ideas demonstrated in the group discussion that Desert Trumpet held on envisioning the future of Twentynine Palms last year.
We hope that the Mayor is able to ensure that his desire for public conversation is fulfilled. And we encourage all residents able to attend these sessions to hold Council to account on the promise of participation in discussing the future of Twentynine Palms.
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We corrected minor typos in the City Manager’s emailed statement for legibility—this is the original: “This process as an opportunity reflect on who we are, who we want to become, and how we are going to maintain and increase City revenues in sustainable ways so we can provide the services to become the best version of ourselves.”
$36,000 for MIG plus $25,000 to Civitas for a repeat study of to tell us what we already know about how TBID is failing? Those funds could easily fund nearly half a FTE position for an extra staff position for an entire year. One thing City of 29 Palms knows how to do is waste what little money they do plan to spend on City Services and hoard the rest in reserve funds. How much money are we losing everyday by not adequately funding key City departments? Economic Development, Civic Engagement and Transparency are clearly values that our City leadership has no interest in fostering.