- Welcome to Inland Edition, where we have community conversations with people who make decisions that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Joe Richardson.

I'm an attorney, a community member, and your host.

And today, we're gonna chat with the recent former mayor and current council member of the fabulous getaway of Palm Springs, California.

[background music] A mother, a businesswoman, and a civil rights attorney, Christy Holstege is the first woman to serve as mayor of Palm Springs and the first openly bisexual mayor in the country.

She began her career by starting a legal aid clinic in a Coachella Valley domestic violence shelter.

She's intelligent, logical, and undeniably fearless, and it's time to meet her now.

[gentle upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ - [Joe] I am thrilled to be here with Palm Springs city council person, Christy Holstege.

How are you?

- I'm great.

I'm so happy to be here.

- Thank you for being here.

We got a lot to talk about.

So, tell us first about, maybe your aha moment or moments that really got you on the road to what became this public service.

- Absolutely.

I think back to being a kid and seeing the discrimination and violence that a lot of girls faced, myself included, in my middle school and high school.

And, I decided then that I wanted to go to law school to fight for gender equality, fight for women's rights, and serve my community.

And so, I went through-- I went to Stanford Law School.

I practiced civil rights law and poverty law.

And then, I saw that we need women serving our communities.

Women at the time were only a third of local city council seats in California.

We have so much more work to do.

And, I saw my voice was needed.

And so, I ran for city council and won.

And, I was the first millennial ever elected to city council.

And then, I got to become the first ever female mayor for the city of Palm Springs.

- Talk a little bit about this legal legacy.

You're a third generation lawyer, right?

- I am, yeah.

- And so, we would say about that, around my house, "she comes by it" or "they come by it, honestly".

Right?

Because, these previous generations and these other folks have done it as well.

Has it manifested itself with you like it did with-- Was it mom, dad?

Who was it?

- It's actually my husband's grandfather.

- Okay, gotcha.

- Started a law firm in the Inland Empire.

- Right.

- In Palm Springs.

- Right.

- And so, his grandfather, his uncles.

And then, he and I have all worked at that firm.

- Oh, my word.

- At a small practice.

- Not on my side.

I'm the first to go to law school in my whole family's history.

- Right.

Right.

- But, I got to join their legacy of fighting for working people and fighting for regular people throughout the Coachella Valley and Inland Empire.

- So, I imagine people would have opinions about Palm Springs one way or the other, particularly people in the Inland Empire, people in Southern California.

It's a place we go for a vacation.

It's really hot.

In the past, Frank Sinatra used to be there.

What would you want people to know about Palm Springs that they don't?

- That's such a good question.

Palm Springs is a really unique place.

We like to say, we're like no place else.

We have been the playground for celebrities, and the Rat Pack.

There's Marilyn Monroe was discovered in Palm Springs.

So, we have that history and we have a world-class brand.

So, we have world-class amenities.

We have events like Coachella, and Stagecoach coming to the Coachella Valley, and we're reliant on that tourism.

I think what people don't understand is that Palm Springs is a diverse community.

30% of our community are immigrants; 30% are Latino.

We have a lot of working people making a living in Palm Springs and often that is hidden.

And, sometimes we say it's a "tale of two cities," because you have the people who are living the high life in Palm Springs, and then often the people who are working to make that possible.

And so, that's some of the work we're doing in Palm Springs to reckon with the city's history, people of color built Palm Springs.

People of color allowed people like Walt Disney to have homes in Palm Springs and these communities.

And so, it's really important for me to talk about that tale of two cities and the working people that make that happen.

And, the diversity of our community.

We have a beautiful community.

It's a small town, kind of close-knit community, which is really nice.

People know each other.

They have long-term relationships.

People care about each other, which is hard to find now in some of the bigger cities across California.

- Tell me about the structure of the city council.

I don't want to assume that we all know that, as well as what kind of system it is.

And, my understanding is you've already- well, I knew!

You have already had a turn as mayor, but that system actually changed recently, as well.

- That's right.

So, we have a city manager form of government.

So, the city manager is the CEO of our city.

And then, we have five people serving on the city council who oversee the city manager.

And then, the city manager oversees the police chief and the fire chief, and all the departments of the city: Parks and Rec, Public Works, the thing that people are familiar with.

And so, we set overall policy for the city and we also approve the budget and decide on allocations and where to spend our money.

And, we also help with constituent services.

So, I work for the people; they elect me.

I'm in a district, District Four.

And so, I represent those folks and businesses and help support my district.

So, yeah.

So, we had a separately elected mayor and we're at-large.

So, when I first ran for city council in 2017 and was elected, I was elected at-large for the entire city.

Then, we got a demand letter under the California Voting Rights Act.

Essentially cities, especially with high Latino populations or communities of color, really should be in districts to cover and comply with the California Voting Rights Act.

And so, we moved to districts and we districted our mayor, which was a controversial decision at the time.

A lot of people like to vote for their mayor separately, but that had resulted in never having a female mayor; in 83 years it took.

We've had one Black mayor in 83 years, never had a Latino on city council or a Latina.

And so, 83 years, decades and decades of really exclusion.

And so, we wanted to comply best with the California Voting Rights Act and district the mayor and have it be fair and equitable and have each resident have a turn in their district to have a mayor for their district.

I was also one of the first mayors who lived in south Palm Springs and not one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in town, which nearly all of our mayors had come from before that.

So, I'm really proud of our work moving to districts.

I was able to be the first female mayor of Palm Springs; 83 years.

- Wow.

- We've elected-- we've had the first transgender mayor in California.

And now, we have the first Latina mayor of Palm Springs because of sharing equally and fairly the mayor position and having it rotate, which is what most cities our size do anyway.

- Right.

So, how big is Palm Springs anyway?

- It's only 45,000 full-time residents.

It probably-- - Who would think so?

It's above its weight, you know what I mean?

Like, you would think-- everybody knows Palm Springs.

You said it's a world-class brand, but that is a relatively small city for as famous and as notable and as unique and as recognizable as it is.

- Absolutely.

We have about half the residents of Redlands, for example.

So, people are always surprised to hear that.

We probably double in population for full-time residents.

And then, we have 5 million annual visitors a year just through our airport.

So, yes, incredible levels of tourism.

And, that's one of the struggles for the city, is we have a very small population.

We have a small budget.

People want us to solve major policy issues, like homelessness and funding police, and fire and safety appropriately.

And, that's hard to do when you have a budget for 45,000 people.

But, you have 5 million visitors a year and you're trying to provide services to those 5 million people.

- Tell me about the things that you're most proud of since getting to the city council, as well as the things that are the biggest challenges, that you see as the biggest challenges that you face.

- Sure.

I'll start with the challenges first, 'cause that's often what most people are focused on!

And, people want us to solve problems in government, and that is our role.

We have a lot of folks who are coming for rehab or mental health opportunities, and then often people end up on the street.

So, we're facing that influx and we're really trying to house people as quickly as possible on a small city budget.

We're working with the state to advocate for our fair share of tax dollars so that we can address those problems appropriately.

We don't always have the funding that a county would have to provide social services and housing and those sorts of programs for folks who are homeless.

The climate crisis is facing us.

We're seeing more and more days over 120 degrees, almost to the level of it being uninhabitable, especially folks who don't have AC or work outside.

So, we're dealing with extreme heat and the protections we need to keep people safe during that time.

You know, we've done a lot of work to invest in the community, which I'm incredibly proud of.

So, I came to city council.

We hadn't invested in our parks and playgrounds in 20 years, so a lot of that was just aging.

And so, as a mom of a young kid, I use the playground and our infrastructure like the library, every day.

And so, really advocating for shade structures and new playground equipment and programs for families and young kids.

But, every day on city council feels like a year, because we do so much.

And, I never thought I would run for city council, but we touch the lives of every resident.

If you're Parks and Rec, library, city hall, Building and Development, Public Works, keeping our streets clean.

You name an issue and we address it, and we work on it.

So, we've done incredible work on the housing crisis.

We've got 200 units of homelessness housing coming online.

We worked to get $10 million from the state to build a navigation center, which is gonna be the first in the western Coachella Valley; one-stop shop for people who are homeless.

So, it's almost hard to pinpoint wins- - Right.

- because there are so many of them.

And, we just do that every day.

And, that's just government working for the people.

- [Joe] City government, in your case, how it interfaces with state and national government.

'Cause I'm sure you have occasions where someone may ask a question and it's something that's in the purview of the county, or something that may be in the purview of the state.

But, that being said, I'm sure that there's-- we all know that there or there should be, coordination, et cetera.

So, if you're giving someone a one-on-one on that and how they intersect, what would you tell them?

- Coachella Valley and Palm Springs and the Inland Empire in general feel like we've often been left behind, that we're not getting our fair share of resources.

We don't have the amenities that some of the coastal communities have.

Even if you look at homelessness funding, for example, or COVID funding, LA and San Francisco and some of those bigger cities are getting direct dollars every year from the state budget.

They give it to the top 14 largest cities, like Riverside.

But, small cities aren't getting any of that funding.

And, we have to go find it.

And, we're working with our legislators and we're working with our congressmen to try to find those dollars and bring 'em home.

So, I'd say with city council, we're the closest to the people.

People know us.

They stop me in the grocery store every time I'm there.

I get letters dropped off at my home about constituent problems, so people know us.

So, when there are state and federal issues, people don't know the difference or who to go to and they often go to us.

And so, for unemployment, which is a state issue, people come to me.

With business issues, it might be state issues, they come to us, and so we help them with that.

And so, I'd say we're sometimes working the hardest because we're doing so much constituent services and really trying to connect people to the right place and still do that work so that people get an answer.

- You've been on the council six or seven years now?

- [Christy] Mm hm.

Six years.

- So, you're going along and I have a sense of, knowing folks that are on various city councils, including my own, of how it's hard work.

It's thankless.

It's never-ending.

It's all "fill-in-the-blank."

So, at a normal time, you're still super crazed, super busy.

You have more stuff to do probably than there's more time.

So, take us back a few years ago, when you are dealing with those regular hard days and times, because that's the work.

And, if you wanna do it right, it's not easy.

And you, out of a sudden, all of a sudden outta nowhere, like a bolt of lightning, here comes COVID.

So, tell me the reality of it as you saw it, as a citizen, as a city council member, and what are the things that the city had to do to survive?

- Yeah.

COVID was incredibly devastating for our community.

Riverside County was the first county actually in California.

They had flown some people with COVID, who were from a cruise ship, into Riverside.

And so, we were first impacted.

And then, because of tourism in the first few days of COVID, Palm Springs actually had a third of the statewide deaths when there were only about 15 deaths.

But, they were happening in our community.

We were a hotspot.

And, our community was incredibly sensitive to that.

We have an older population who was extremely at risk.

We have a lot of people living with disabilities or chronic conditions like HIV.

And so, they didn't-- they were afraid for their lives.

And so, yes.

In addition to all the daily stuff we do to keep Parks and Rec and our facilities open and city hall open and keep our workers safe, we had to pivot to taking care of our community.

We don't have a public health department.

We're reliant on the county to do that.

But, we were at odds with the county, because the county had rescinded a mask mandate and didn't want to mandate masks.

And so, we had to step in and we issued the first shelter-in-place order in Southern California because we were so impacted.

We issued our own mask mandate.

We worked with small businesses to keep them open.

We did a million dollars in small business relief.

We did tenant assistance and rental assistance.

So, we really stepped in.

And I said, when I ran for city council, I never thought I would be issuing shelter-in-place orders or trying to take care of the health of the community.

I was mayor in 2020 and 2021.

So, I worked to open our convention center, which was closed for tourism, as a vaccine site.

And, we got- - That's right.

- a hundred thousand shots in arms there.

And so, we really took care of the community.

We worked with the armed guard-- National Guard to do a diaper and food distribution on site at our convention center.

So, our community just really rolled up our sleeves and did the work.

That's our job, no matter what come.

Didn't quite expect a global-wide pandemic in my term, (Joe chuckles) but we were ready to do the work and we did.

And, I'm really proud that our work saved lives.

- Right.

You have a community that is largely of color, and so you have a lot of people of modest means.

People may be disabled, may be a bit older.

So that speaks, of course, to the importance of equity issues and the related resources.

Tell me about some of those battles and how you deal with that.

A community that's less diverse doesn't necessarily see that at all times, but you actually do.

So, tell me about the difficulties that you have related to that, and the things and the advantages with having such diversity and having the opportunity to have all kinds of different people in the same space.

Tell me about just how you see that.

- The diversity in Palm Springs makes us stronger.

It makes us a better democracy.

We hear from many different experiences.

We have a very large LGBTQ population.

We often say we're one of the gayest cities in the country.

Over 50% of our population is LGBTQ.

So, those folks are bringing that history, often of discrimination and harassment, exclusion, to our government and making their voices heard, which is incredibly powerful.

We have a large population of people of color who have built Palm Springs.

We actually have a long history of the Filipino community involved with César Chávez and the farmworker movement.

And so, Palm Springs has this long history of leadership in the community.

And so, we've been doing a lot of work to bring folks in.

City Hall doesn't always look like our residents.

And so, we have a lot of work to do.

Make sure we're hiring from the community, that folks who are in our community are serving in our police department and fire department and getting those opportunities, 'cause those are good paying jobs and careers with city government.

- You know, everybody has, again, an opinion of Palm Springs.

A lot of us have been there.

Tell me about some of the local events that make Palm Springs, "Palm Springs", that maybe people don't so much know about.

- There are so many events in Palm Springs!

We have a fun community and a lot of people from the IE come to Palm Springs for brunch or lunch or dinner, or some of our events.

So, Palm Springs Pride in November is one of our largest events.

We're really proud of it.

We shut down Palm Canyon for pedestrians and we have street fairs and we have a lot of concerts on multiple stages.

So, that's a big event.

We have Splash House, which is through Golden Voice who does Coachella.

But, they do pool parties throughout Palm Springs in the summer.

So, August, they're doing that again.

We have White Party.

We have Dinah Shore.

a lot of LGBTQ events.

And then, we have the everyday tourism that's happening with our hotels and our restaurants.

Man, we have so many events it's really hard to pinpoint just a few.

But, most weekends in Palm Springs we have things going on for the community.

- Your school offerings, your school districts, and are there any community colleges there?

- Yeah.

So, we have three school districts for the Coachella Valley.

We have Palm Springs Unified, Desert Sands Unified, and Coachella Valley Unified on the eastern Coachella Valley, like, Coachella and Thermal in that region.

We have one community college in the Coachella Valley, which is C.O.D., College of the Desert; working really hard to expand their offerings and expand their campuses.

So, we're fighting for a full-time campus in Palm Springs that would benefit people in Banning, Beaumont, - Makes sense.

- The high desert, all around, to be able to come to Palm Springs.

Also, a lot of students work in Palm Springs and so they wanna go to school there.

We are distant from a four-year university.

And so, the closest one being UC-Riverside or San Bernardino.

People really have to drive.

So, we have CSU-Palm Desert that we're trying to get support and state funding for, so that our students can live in the Coachella Valley, and then go to school and get a four-year degree in the Coachella Valley.

Because, right now, there are significant barriers.

- Tell me about, related to that, from a business standpoint, from a technology standpoint, from a standpoint of types of jobs and types of technology.

What's on the horizon that you see coming to Palm Springs in particular, but even the Coachella Valley in general?

- Yeah.

Right now, a majority of our jobs are in health care and tourism.

And then, for the eastern Coachella Valley, fields and farm work.

- Mm hm.

- That's sort of expanded with cannabis and jobs in cannabis, because- - That's right.

- cannabis has opened in Palm Springs and throughout the Coachella Valley.

One thing we're really excited about is wind energy and clean energy opportunities.

And so, obviously we're famous around the world for our windmills!

And so, the city actually purchased local power and created our own system to buy and sell power, and power our businesses and residents.

And so, we got local jobs on local windmills, which is really nice.

And we're excited about solar, as well.

We think we could lead the way for the nation on those green energy, clean energy opportunities that we've been doing in Palm Springs for 50, 40 years.

- Right.

So connected to that, look in the crystal ball a little bit and tell us, if you had your druthers, "if I had my druthers," 10 years from now, Palm Springs will be doing X, Palm Springs will be at this level, Palm Springs will be at this size.

What's your wish list about what you want Palm Springs to achieve?

- Yeah.

It's such a good question and it's not up to me.

It's up to their residents and I always make it about them because I work for them.

And, I think people want Palm Springs to keep its village feel.

So, we have to grow and we have to provide affordable housing, and we have to work on affordability of Palm Springs.

Since if you are working full time in tourism and making minimum wage, you cannot afford to buy a home in Palm Springs.

So, we have to remedy that.

I very much would like to see real affordable and moderate-income housing come to Palm Springs.

Would love to say-- see more careers come to Palm Springs.

So, it's not minimum-wage work, that it becomes very difficult as you get older.

But, are those jobs of the future?

Remote learning and remote careers have opened up the whole world for places like us, that were before geographically isolated from the rest of the state.

And so, I'd love to see our residents getting the education locally, so that they can do those jobs remotely.

You know?

And, I think Palm Springs will always keep the beauty of the desert and conserving our mountains and some of our environmental land for hiking and tourism, and conservation.

So, I'd like to see that continue and-- Yeah.

When I first ran for city council in 2017, I said, "let's build a Palm Springs for all of us."

I think there's still work to do, to make sure that everyone can thrive in Palm Springs.

And then, last thing you said, "10 years".

We are concerned about climate and heat, and making sure that we're protecting everyone through that.

And, it can remain a habitable place for families to live and be able to play outside and all of those things we want for our residents.

- Give us some homework, for those of us that we're inspired.

People that are watching and really enjoy what they've seen.

How do they follow up on what's going on with the city of Palm Springs, with the city council, et cetera?

How do they connect the dots?

- Yeah.

People can get involved.

PalmSpringsCA.gov is our website.

You can follow us on social media.

We're on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter.

People can find me individually and I try to update my followers with what's happening in Palm Springs.

So, there's a lot of ways to get involved.

But I would just say the homework is, get involved in your city, in your community.

You'd be surprised sometimes at what's happening at your city hall or city council meetings.

If you're not following along or your council members aren't hearing from you, they often don't know what problems you need them to solve.

And so, I would just suggest, get involved how you can and make your voice heard.

And, that's really meaningful for those of us who are trying to do the people's business.

- Fantastic.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you for being on Inland Edition with us.

Thank you for joining us on Inland Edition, and we will continue going down the road to making a better world, one conversation at a time.

See ya next time.

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