RECAP: Twentynine Palms Tourism Business Improvement District Meeting, May 21, 2026
The TBID board approved funding for Area 29 and discussed grant requirements. Kevin Cole, the new Twentynine Palms city manager, introduced himself. Board member Maria Madrid announced her departure.
On Thursday, May 21 the Twentynine Palms Tourism Improvement District (TBID) Board held their regular monthly meeting. The agenda focused on funding for the Area 29 Galactic Gathering, which was approved for $10,000, and a discussion about updating grant and sponsorship requirements. Kevin Cole, the new Twentynine Palms City Manager, introduced himself and pledged to attend TBID meetings on a regular basis. Maria Madird announced her departure from the TBID due to moving out of state next month.
Present were Vice Chair Ashton Ramsey and Board Members Maria Madrid, Ben Uyeda, and Liz Schickler. Chair Rakesh Mehta joined by teleconference.
Director of Marketing update
Marketing Manager Breanne Dusastre opened the meeting with her regular monthly update. In conjunction with celebrating California Tourism month, Dusastre shared highlights from the 2025 Economic Impact of Travel report, including:
$158.9 billion in travel-related spending statewide, which was up 1.7% from 2024.
1.2 million travel-related jobs across California, a 0.4% increase from last year.
$13.6 billion in state and local tax revenue generated by travel, which was up 3.6% from last year.
On the local level, Dusastre shared preliminary results of the second quarter of TBID revenue collection, which covers January through March, 2026:
Revenue collection for this quarter is about $130,000, which is up 19% from the same period in 2025.
The hotel and RV segment accounted for $74,000 of the revenue, which was a 33% increase from last year.
Collection for vacation rentals is up 4% from the same quarter last year.
The total collected so far year-to-date is $232,000, which reflects a 13% increase over last year.
Dusastre also reported that a three-month billboard campaign on the I-10 near Palm Springs has been launched in a location that generates about 418,000 weekly impressions based on its location, which she hopes will have an impact on destination visibility for Twentynine Palms.
Praising Twentynine Palms as a place loved by visitors and locals
The only general public comment was offered by Suzanne Lyons, a part-time resident who also lives in Humboldt County. She discovered the Best of California magazine in a hotel on her drive to Twentynine Palms and commented on a feature about Twentynine Palms,
I was interested to see that the things that they praise for tourists are many of the same things that we just love about living here. So [this] strikes me that there’s kind of a win-win going on with quality of life and our town making us all happy as residents, but also being a great experience for people when they come here and discover the town.
The Best of California is published by Visit California, the statewide tourism organization, and features sponsored destination content.
Funding for Area 29 Galactic Gathering approved
The board awarded $10,000 in funding for the Area 29 Galactic Gathering, which will be held August 13 to 16 during the Perseid Meteor Shower. Now in its third year, the event is organized by Rediscover 29, an association of local businesses. It aims to bring together alien, space, and desert-enthusiasts, including 200 out-of-town guests, for four days of events like film screenings, art shows, performances, a glow-in-the-dark dance party, citywide scavenger hunt, and an alien themed pool party.
The funding discussion and decision for Area 29 had been tabled at April’s meeting because of a lack of a quorum due required recusals for board member Shickler and Vice Chair Ramsey. Both operate businesses that are paid members of Rediscover 29 and were not able to vote on funding.
There were three public comments in support of the event. Sarah Lyons, President of Rediscover 29 and co-owner of Scorpion Lollipop, submitted a written comment. She highlighted that a space themed festival was recently announced at Pappy and Harriet’s for the same weekend, which showed that the event concept has value, but that planning must begin soon. She wrote,
We have an opportunity to build something truly special and unique in our city with this event, and it’s unfortunate that Twentynine Palms could yet again be overshadowed by another high desert community.
Jimmy Brower, Vice President of Rediscover 29 and owner of Sun of the Desert, stressed the importance of symbiotic relationships between groups like Rediscover 29, the TBID, and other local nonprofits to support tourism and economic development in Twentynine Palms. He suggested that event marketing and tracking an event’s impact must be a connected, group effort that needs ownership and buy-in from TBID stakeholders and local businesses. Practically, he suggested a QR code to track bookings from events like Area 29.
He also echoed Lyons comment, remarking it was unfortunate that Pappy and Harriet’s and the Pioneertown Motel announced a space-themed festival, which was ticketed at a price higher than what Twentynine Palms can command right now. However, he noted Twentynine Palms has an advantage,
We have something that I see distinguishes us from many of those other upper echelons of visitor caliber and deep pocket books, which is really local flavor. We bring something that is unique and something that can’t be matched because of the people doing it, the organizations funding it, and understanding where those dollars go, which is right back into our community versus out into a different thing.
Anna Stump expressed her support for Area 29 and Rediscover 29 as an organization, stating, “I totally believe in this group of people. They are amazing. They are the future of this town.” She also emphasized that Area 29 was distinct from the Pioneertown event, suggesting that the city could piggyback off of it and encourage people to stay in Twentynine Palms, where more lodging is available, and experience funky, free events.
Uyeda proposed funding for $10,000 of their $14,487 request. He praised the event’s goal to activate venues around the city, but reiterated the importance of tracking impact of overnight stays and how essential that was to the application. The funding passed 3-0-2, with recusal by Shickler and Ramsey.
The juxtaposition between the Space Craft event at Pappy and Harriet’s, which is relying on outside event producers Night Howl, while Area 29 leverages the connections, creativity, local knowledge and expertise of local businesses and creatives, raises an interesting question about the direction the TBID could choose to go in terms of event funding. Do they want to bring in outside producers that can pull in high ticket prices or better invest in and nurture local talent with the potential of creating memorable signature events that also reflect the community of Twentynine Palms?
Board discussion of grant and sponsorship guidelines
The majority of the meeting was spent on one agenda item: Discussing how grants and sponsorship guidelines could be revised to be clearer and better support the TBID’s mission and goals. Grants and sponsorships are funded by the 1.5% passthrough tax (also known as the Transit Occupancy Tax or TOT) on lodging properties within Twentynine Palms. For this fiscal year, TBID allocated $150,000 to the program. $120,000 designated for event grants, which are designed to support signature events and range from $3,000 to $20,000 in funding per event. $30,000 was designated to sponsorships, with a maximum of $3,000 of funding available per event.
Issues that have been repeatedly raised with the grants and sponsorship program by the board, applicants, and community members include:
Lack of clarity and consistency in scoring
The varying quality and completeness of applications
The lack of connection between funding and results, including the number of overnight stays booked.
The staff time it takes to prepare, follow up on, and administer grant applications.
Whether events fuel the TBID’s mission to promote Twentynine Palms as a tourism destination and if they are an effective use of TBID funds.
These issues were reiterated by board member Uyeda to help frame the discussion. The board is looking to rethink the grant process and guidelines before the application cycle for 2027 events begins.
Public comments offer suggested improvements
Vicky Waite and Jimmy Brower offered public comment about the grants and sponsorship guidelines. Waite, the past recipient of a TBID sponsorship noted the jump between $3,000 and $20,000 was large, especially for smaller events. She asked if funding could be more balanced between grants and sponsorships and if the sponsorship funding potential could be raised slightly to $5,000, which would be impactful for regular, smaller-scale events with a proven track record.
Jimmy Brower reiterated the value of engagement of local businesses and nonprofits in organizing events and adding value to Twentynine Palms outside of the National Park. He stated,
[Local business owners and nonprofits] are your movers and shakers, aka event producers ... There’s there’s value in seeding and investing in homegrown events created by Twentynine Palms residents, business owners, and nonprofit leaders. The reciprocally [between these groups] supports and fosters comfort, trust, and familiarity, something that, in my opinion, TBID really needs to work on, as it’s unfortunately eroding in the community.
Brower suggested this trust could be repaired through workshops, seeding and investing in local events, keeping event support local, and helping organizers scale sustainably towards self-sufficiency.
Board members offer their ideas for an improved grant program
In order to get clear, actionable feedback on the grant program, Uyeda took the lead on facilitating a discussion about event grant and sponsorship criteria. A member of the events subcommittee, he asked each board member to articulate their suggestion for how funding applications should be evaluated and how the program could be improved. Their responses generally echoed each other and emphasized both clarifying criteria and the types of events the TBID is looking to fund.
The discussion touched on:
The need to track impact overnight stays and marketing exposure and demonstrate return on investment.
Simplify scoring and clarify evaluating and funding criteria.
Emphasize and encourage events that activate multiple nights that are smaller and regularly scheduled, such as music series, trivia nights, or a monthly new moon festival.
Invest in public art or monuments that create a lasting impact through shared social media content.
Ensure the dollar amounts that organizations are requesting are in line with the impact they have and enable applicants to apply for a greater range of funding, potentially eliminating the split between grants and sponsorship amounts.
Simplify and streamline the application process, potentially with support from the city’s IT department, to make applications easier to submit and evaluate and to save the Director of Marketing’s time, as she currently spends more than half her time administering the program.
In closing Uyeda brought up a fundamental question about the goal of the event and grants sponsorship program, asking “What is this for? Is this to see new things? Is it to support the things that are working and keep investing in them?”
Uyeda also discussed how expectations and funding criteria could be clarified and that dollar amounts could be tied to the potential number of overnight stays. This guidance would offer event organizers,
Predictability on their planning, because otherwise we’re incentivizing people to write really fabulous proposals, see how much they get, and then just rework it with what they got. That’s not efficient project planning, so we should have some sort of financial expectation relative to the judging criteria if they make it through to that final round.
Uyeda briefly brought up the question of the TBID’s annual re-authorization and whether that presented a challenge in investing in the grants process, if the very existence of the TBID was unsure from year to year. Despite Uyeda’s comment, a future agenda item to discuss reauthorization was not proposed. Shickler and Uyeda, the current events subcommittee, will meet and put suggestions into writing for the next meeting for discussion.
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Hi there, DT, Thanks as always for great coverage.
Doing away with the smaller sponsorship grants would be unfortunate for many local events that also support tourism. The grant application and reporting would be too onerous for smaller event producers. I agree with Vicki Waite's idea that the $3000 tier could go up to 4 or 5K.
Kudos on another fine article, the Desert Trumpet’s in depth articles on local government and how it operates is invaluable. Too often I hear how organizations and local government entities are ‘secretive’ and ‘nontransparent’, when the truth is, there is usually an information gap between how an organization is run and getting the information out to the public. The solution is to either subscribe to an overwhelming number of newsletters, which often gloss over internal operations, social media pages and substacks, that often simply get deleted. The other option is publications like this that deliver timely information without having to shift through the chaff.
Regarding the city’s grants, I fail to see why overnight stays seem to be a benchmark for grant approval. It gives one the impression that the only businesses the TBID is interested in is the hotel industry. Otherwise, there are too many variables to make that a part of the criteria, especially if smaller events are going to be eligible.
The other thing I would suggest, and perhaps this is already in place, is that there be at least one person on the grant committee from out of the area, with no personal ties or invested interest in local businesses or events in the Morongo Basin