Desert Magazine: Tell us a little bit with your background.
Mayor Matas: I'm born and raised in Desert Hot Springs. My grandmother and grandfather came here in '63. My grandfather was one of the first police officers in Desert Hot Springs when they incorporated. Then not long after that they divorced, but my grandmother stayed here with my mom and her three sisters and brother. They grew up here, and then my brother and I came along. It was different because you didn't have friends on every other door. It was a senior community, a lot of Canadians and northern seasonal people. We were the only kids on our block. It was kind of a secret place back in the seventies.
Desert: How did you become involved in local politics?
Mayor Matas: I went off to school for a while, came back, and then started as a volunteer fireman. I was working for UPS, started a family when I was young, so I stuck with UPS. Still had the fun time of driving a fire engine and having a crew on the weekends. I volunteered with the fire department for 20 years. Then in 2004 I bought a UPS store. That got me involved in the Chamber of Commerce. In 2006, a council member passed away and I was asked to run for his seat. There was five of us. I won that special election in March of 2007 and have been on the city council since. I was elected mayor in 2016.
Desert: The mayor is an elected position in Desert Hot Springs?
Mayor Matas: In 2018 we put it on the ballot to either have a rotating mayor or a four-year mayor with a two-term limit. The full-time mayor [with a] two-term limit passed overwhelmingly with 70% of the vote. I finished two, two-year terms. Then I was elected to my first four-year term [in 2020]. Then I announced that I'll be running for another seat here in November, which would be my last four-year term if I win that seat. This March 7th will be 17 years on the city council.
Desert: What were some of the challenges you faced when you first decided to get on city council?
Mayor Matas: We as a city put a lot of efforts toward having our own police department in 1999. The county fire here in Desert Hot Springs is the busiest fire station in Riverside County. It ran over 3,000 calls in the early nineties, and now it's running over 5,100 calls a year. We built a new fire station on the west end of the city, but it's so far out in the west end of the city that it didn't really relieve a lot of the call volume. I was able to help push a bond measure about four years ago [and now] we’ll be breaking ground on a new fire station on the east end of the city this year. Our plans are to have one more fire station within the next 10 years built in the south end of the city.
Desert: How has the cannabis industry affected Desert Hot Springs? Your city was a pioneer in granting licenses to the medical marijuana industry.
Mayor Matas: We were very fortunate to have a city attorney at the time who was really in tune to what the state was looking at and what the industry was looking at. People didn't think because I had more of a conservative background that I would even be open to it. I thought it was a great opportunity for jobs and to bring tax revenue. Beginning of '16 we opened our first cultivation site, which we found was to be the first licensed operating cultivator in the state of California. It just kind of exploded from there. We saw the tax revenues kind of fluctuate over the last five years, but it's really helped.
Desert: There were a lot of stories about how Desert Hot Springs was being overwhelmed by developers, overwhelmed by cultivators. It was like a gold rush.
Mayor Matas: You remember the name Michael Avenatti (Stormy Daniels’s former attorney; convicted felon)? He showed up in my office…representing a firm. They actually had a really nice project. I had him driving up in a big giant black Escalade that was driven by somebody, and then I had the guy driving up in a beater car that was getting out and looked like Cheech and Chong. Everybody had an idea and everybody knew how they were going to save our city.
Desert: But it’s turned out to be an important revenue generator for the city?
Mayor Matas: We've had to go back to the table a couple of times and bring our tax down a little bit. We wanted to make sure that everybody was treated fair. We're working with [the cultivators] to make sure they can stay current with their tax revenues. We're looking at our dispensaries and looking at how we can help them survive. As mayor, I just don't want to see the jobs go away. Tax revenue is important, but more importantly is the 2,600 jobs.
Desert: Obviously, in the early days of the city, the spas were the lifeblood of the city. How important are they now?
Mayor Matas: Ever since I've been mayor, we've at least climbed two to 3% each year on tax revenue. Even during the COVID era there, when other cities were crashing with their tourism, we still had an increase. In the early two thousands, we had a lot of people retiring early, coming out, buying spas, renovating them, and it really built up our industry again. It kind of died down in about 2015, but again, closer to 2020, it seemed to rev up again. We have some new ownership…and new energy. We had a long-time owner here who had a smaller spa of I think 10 rooms. She always wanted to buy a bigger location, so she bought an older hotel and renovated it. Now it's one of the top locations in the valley, if not the world, for what she does.
Desert: What is that one?
Mayor Matas: It's called The Azure Palm Hot Springs. It rivals Two Bunch Palms Resort. [Maria Lease’s] well is 150 degrees. She has to cool the water that comes out. Twenty two of the rooms have their own spas in them, so she's really changed the image of that area up there. We're in the process of renovating the road and making a more walkable district up in the spa zones. We have some new ownership up there. I'm really excited for what they're doing.
Desert: It seem like almost overnight Morongo Valley and Yucca Valley have become hip destinations, with cool new restaurants and hipsters moving in. Is that happening to Desert Hot Springs?
Mayor Matas: We're really trying to bring that type of crowd here. We know there's three million visitors to Joshua every year. Most of them pass us on Highway 62. How do we get them to turn right onto Pearson Boulevard and come into our city? A lot of people don't realize that we have a south entrance to Joshua Tree here in Desert Hot Springs at Long Canyon. You can drive up five minutes into Long Canyon and you can actually hike right into Joshua Tree. If you hiked for five miles, you'd be in Black Rock. A lot of people also don't realize that we have all these really cool trails. Then we have Mission Creek. We're working with our congressmen on making that a Sand to Snow Monument southern entrance location.
Desert: I'm glad you brought up the Mission Creek. I've read for years that the Mission Creek Aquifer produces the best tasting water in the Coachella Valley. Is that still true?
Mayor Matas: Actually, in the country. Our water district, Mission Springs Water District, has pulled out water from Mission Creek Aquifer, the hot water and the cold water, and they've taken it back to the Berkeley Water tasting competition. They've won everything from platinum down to silver and bronze, gold, everything in between. I grew up just drinking water out of the tap.
Desert: Cities like Palm Springs have significant issues with homelessness and affordable housing. How have those issues impacted Desert Hot Springs?
Mayor Matas: It obviously became a really focused paralyzing issue during COVID. You had so many people living out of RVs and camping. It took over our deserts out here. It was sad to see. We focused two years ago on some solutions. We bought an assisted living building and renovated it. It's an access navigational center for our homeless. It has 26 beds for overnight stays, has showers and programming. The biggest challenge is getting the mental health and the addiction individuals off the street. On average, it takes 15 to 16 times for our outreach teams to talk to somebody before they build enough trust for them to even come in and take a shower. We saw such a dramatic change on our streets with individuals walking up and down. Now we have a police officer assigned with a team just to go out and talk to these individuals and try to build trust with them and try to help them understand that they don't need to live like this; there are programs out there.
Desert: What would you like to see as your legacy for the city?
Mayor Matas: The biggest thing I think that I'm going to focus on is our downtown. We had a huge plan for our whole downtown. At one point, it just wasn't viable. There really wasn't a way to fund it. Over the last couple of years, we reorganized that and taken a smaller block of Pearson Boulevard from West to Cactus, and we're really focusing on making that a walkable district, some small businesses that are popping up right now. You said something about Yucca Valley. I always drive down there. Even though it's the main highway, you've got those cool little places right there. That's kind of what I want Pearson Boulevard to be, that cool little place where those people will come out and have a place to go for coffee and drinks and food, and then be able to go back and soak in the spa.
Desert: Do you believe Desert Hot Springs has a stigma that thwarts development?
Mayor Matas: In 2020, the Department of Justice did a study and showed that Desert Hot Springs has the lowest crime in the Coachella Valley in three of the major top categories of crime. People still don't think it's safe. We're not blind to the fact that we have problems. I still challenge people every day when they bring that up to me, that Desert Hot Springs isn't a safe place, and I say, "Prove it. Department of Justice has proven it with their reporting." It's a challenge all the time, but I'll just keep messaging it and hopefully sooner or later people are going to really believe it.
