One PS - October 2021 Meeting
Vista Las Palmas Neighborhood Organization One PS Meeting
October 12, 2021
Hello neighbors, the One PS meeting was held this Tuesday night and as always your neighborhood representatives from Vista Las Palmas were in attendance. Starting this month, we’ll be sharing with you the highlights from the meeting so that you can be as fully informed about important issues as is your neighborhood group.
Ted Janka, who runs the Events Committee, began the meeting by asking for some much needed volunteers for Village Fest, Pride, the Veterans Day Parade, and the Festival of Lights Parade. Any of us that are members of the Vista Las Palmas Neighborhood Organization can volunteer. In particular, we need people to volunteer to carry the One PS flag for gay pride, and the same thing for the Veterans Day Parade. If you’re interested, please reach out to Kevin Comer and he will pass on your information to the right people.
Kathy Cohn noted that after an 18 month hiatus, it looks like we’ll be able to begin in person meetings in November in the Pavilion. We’re all excited to be able to see our friends and co-workers again.
Lisa Middleton, Mayor Pro-Tem spoke next and had several updates:
Covid numbers appear to be improving by following the wastewater figures. She noted that of course we’ve been here before, but the information does look promising.
The City if finding it very difficult to hire qualified police officers, and we’ve begun offering a $30k lateral payment to try and recruit people from other departments. All areas of the police department are hiring so if we know of anyone either within PS or from another area interested in moving here please send that information up the chain.
There’s a bill pending that will change how speed limits are set in CA cities, but there was no in-depth discussion of how that change will be implemented. The hope is that it brings more uniformity to our city’s speed limits. It’s also somewhat interesting to note that speed limits in our towns and cities are set by statute by the state.
The access center on El Cielo is now open for the homeless and to date there haven’t been any complaints about activity at that location.
At the City Council meeting this week there will be a discussion to change fines for cannabis retailing misdeeds, also changing trash fees, and also whether Palm Canyon should be closed for the Tour de Palm Springs.
Dennis Woods followed Lisa with the update that we’ve identified a new police chief.
Justin Clifton, our new City Manager provided more detail:
The new police chief is Andy Mills, and is coming to us from his former spot as the chief of police in Santa Cruz. Before that he spent time in Eureka and San Diego. There were in total more than 50 applicants (everyone wants to live in our great city!). All of our neighborhoods were surveyed for input into what kind of chief we wanted.
He also discussed at some length our homeless situation in town, and indicated that we need to refine our approach to the homeless population. He said “Arresting people doesn’t work. Moving them from one place to another doesn’t work. The ultimate solution is a home.”
Patrick Tallerico spoke next regarding two rate adjustments coming to our residents for trash disposal: one is a normal annual increase, the other is an extraordinary adjustment for unusual costs they’re incurring, namely changes in recycling market. We should expect to see this increase in coming weeks.
Danny Deselms of our Fire Department followed and said that covid numbers are continuing to improve, albeit gradually, over the last 8 weeks. In the last 2 weeks we’ve seen a 35% reduction in cases. He also indicated that there is a hazard mitigation survey from the fire department that is online and asked that all of our residents take the very brief survey. The link is below
Local Hazard Mitigation Plan hazard survey link:
https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/16503f9e196c4d9e969fc3210ece9d42
That’s all for this month. Your representative to One PS is Kevin Comer, and your alternate is Steve Orr. Please feel free to reach out to them, or to anyone on our Board, with any questions or comments.