ON THE AGENDA: Twentynine Palms City Council, September 9, 2025
Council adopts final ordinances for Ofland rezoning, TBID gets performance assessment
The Twentynine Palms City Council meets at City Hall this Tuesday, September 9, at 6 pm to consider passage of an array of items and discuss two. This meeting will see the second readings of several ordinances that were first read at the August 26 meeting, including ordinances that would rezone residential land for commercial use by the Ofland Resort development in the Indian Cove neighborhood. The City is currently being sued by the Center for Biological Diversity and Indian Cove Neighbors over their approval of the Ofland Resort application.
The 98-page agenda packet is available here, and our coverage of the previous City Council meeting is linked here.
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 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 cvillescas@29palms.org and ask that your letter be made part of the public record.
AWARDS, PRESENTATIONS, APPOINTMENTS AND PROCLAMATIONS
The council will recognize September as Hispanic Heritage month by passing a proclamation.
CONSENT CALENDAR
The Consent Calendar consists of routine 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 Calendar.
Items on the Consent Calendar include approval of a Warrant Register totaling $1,178,499.89, the second readings for the ordinance establishing the open-space conservation zone, the ordinance rezoning a residential parcel in Indian Cove, the ordinance for official use of the City seal, and two change orders submitted by the City Manager for money spent on the proposed Commercial Solar Project. The Council will be waiving the reading of full ordinances in favor of approval by reading of the ordinance titles only.
Item 4 is a package of ordinances enabling the development of Ofland Resort, which the City approved of on July 22 as a part of the Ofland Resort application. The ordinances approve the development code and zoning map amendments for rezoning the parcel from residential to tourist commercial and establishes the new Open Space Conservation zoning type in the City’s General Plan. The City staff report states that “various non-substantive, formatting changes” triggered the need for Council to readopt new language for the ordinances.
Council held a first reading of these ordinances at the August 26 meeting. The second readings of the ordinances at the September 9 meeting will come with formal adoption.
Item 6 is a package of change orders related to the E-Group Solar project. The City Manager is asking City Council to approve a $16,300 increase to be paid to the environmental consultant for the project, Terra Nova. The increases are related to the project’s Environmental Impact Report (EIR) being compiled by the firm, which cites changes in work scope and delays in submission as reasons for the increased costs to the City.
DISCUSSION AND POTENTIAL ACTION ITEMS
7. Designation of Delegate for the Annual Cal Cities Conference.
The City Council will choose one delegate and one alternate delegate to attend the Cal Cities Annual Conference that will run October 8-10 in Long Beach this year. The delegates, who will represent the City in a General Assembly held at the conference, can be either an elected or appointed City body official. The conference is held by the League of California Cities, an association group of City governments in California founded in the 1890s. The City Council can choose not to send a delegate to attend the conference.
8. Tourism Business Improvement District (TBID) Reauthorization for 2025-26 Fiscal Year.
The mission of the Tourism Business Improvement District (TBID), branded as Visit 29 Palms, is to promote tourism to Twentynine Palms and drive overnight room demand through creative and targeted marketing activities and initiatives — it’s the only body of its kind in the Morongo Basin. The TBID is funded through a 1.5% pass-through Transient Occupancy Tax paid by guests of hotels, motels, short term rentals, RV Parks and other temporary overnight accommodations. It operates on a October 1–September 30 fiscal year and is reauthorized by City Council every year, usually in August / September. It has a five member board — drawn mostly from hotel and STR owners — and a full time Marketing Director, Breanne Dusastre.
This may sound straightforward but let’s recap some history, bearing in mind that the TBID has been one of the more controversial City bodies. In recent years it has faced ongoing questions about adequate staffing, marketing effectiveness, Board processes and lack of City Council oversight.
In 2023, after several members of the community expressed frustration over a TBID reserve which exceeded $500,000, City Council voted to cancel the TBID, then rescinded the vote rather than lose the 1.5% tax. They then directed TBID to spend down its reserve by supporting event programming. A public strategic planning workshop frustrated many participants when public comment was limited to just one minute per predefined topic.
Since then there have been incremental changes, and TBID sailed through its 2024 Council reauthorization with few objections. In the last two years TBID introduced a revised website, instituted a formal grant process, and added three new Board members: Ramsey29, STR and Tin Town owner Ashton Ramsey, RESET hotel partner Ben Uyeda and Liz Shickler, operations manager of the 29 Palms Inn and Campbell House. Ramsey moved into the Vice-Chair position when long time member Heidi Grunt stepped down. Meanwhile, rotation of the Board President position remains stagnant and has been held by SureStay General Manager Rakesh Mehta since 2018. Board member Maria Madrid of Holiday Inn Express & Suites was appointed in 2020.
The TBID initiated a billboard campaign and increased earned media with articles in Vogue and the Los Angeles Times. Its social media received renewed attention, and a push by TBID to lengthen their reauthorization cycle from yearly to a five year cycle was proposed, then delayed. Mayor Steven Bilderain and Councilmember April Ramirez were appointed to a TBID oversight subcommittee, but both were absent at the last TBID meeting on August 14 — and meetings aren’t recorded or videotaped. City Manager Stone James regularly attends the meetings.
Included in the Council staff report and packet on page 62 is a 2024-2025 Annual report, which summarizes accomplishments during the last fiscal year. A review of recent agendas indicates that the Annual Report is being submitted to City Council without having been presented to or approved by the TBID Board. That it was not included in the agenda for the August 14 TBID meeting is indicative of the process issues that continue to plague the Board.
Key to the reauthorization process is a yearly Marketing Plan and Budget, a draft of which was approved at the TBID meeting on August 14, 2025 and analyzed by Desert Trumpet reporter Eleanor Whitney1. Approval at the September 9 Council meeting is the final step in the process.
The 2025–2026 Plan aims to build on the work done to promote Twentynine Palms as a tourist destination in years past and aims to provide greater context for the TBID’s proposed initiatives and outline why these strategies can help achieve the TBID’s objectives of “sharpening the city’s destination identity, expanding year-round tourism offerings, and leveraging its unique assets to attract more overnight visitors.”
In our analysis, the Desert Trumpet found that 2025–2026 Marketing Plan shows breadth, but due to the lack of data presented, the sparse examples included, and lack of a consistent strategy to measure success, the overall effectiveness of the plan is unclear. Given the TBID’s success in the past year with bringing regional and national media attention to Twentynine Palms, will their budget and plan for next year will be approved? And will it spark deeper conversations about how to best promote Twentynine Palms as a premiere destination for visitors?
Additional reporting on TBID by Cindy Bernard and Eleanor Whitney.
NOTE: Desert Trumpet staff members Cindy Bernard, Kat Talley-Jones, and Heidi Heard live in the Indian Cove neighborhood, adjacent to this proposed development project, and are on the organizing committees of Indian Cove Neighbors and Say No to Ofland. Read our policy for covering Ofland here.
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Whitney’s analysis is based on the 2025-2026 TBID Marketing and Budget Report approved by the TBID Board at the August 14, 2025 meeting. The author has not reviewed the report submitted with the September 9 City Council agenda for potential additions or changes not reviewed by the TBID Board. Also Included in the September 9 Council agenda is a 2024-2025 Annual Report that was not discussed or reviewed in public by the TBID Board and therefore was not available for review for the Desert Trumpet analysis.