Desert Magazine: How did you get into politics?

Mayor Grace Garner: I've always been interested in politics ever since I was a little girl. There's a lot of people who I grew up with who will tell you that they remember me telling them that I would be the president one day. 

Desert: Do you still have that ambition?

Garner:  No, I don't. I always thought I'd be good at being a public official, but I think once you're in office, there's a lot of things that change, right? The higher [the] office you go, the more often you're recognized, and the less ability that you have to just walk anonymously in this world.

Desert: What precipitated the decision to run for city council?

Garner: I’m in District 1. District 1 is the area that I think I'm most familiar with. I went to daycare at the Child Development Center, which is in the Desert Highlands Gateway Estates community. My mother, for instance, grew up for a portion of her life at apartments that are located in the Veterans Tract neighborhood, Demuth Park. We have long-standing ties to that community. I got involved with their redistricting commission. I got a lot of encouragement from the people that were in that group to run for that District 1 seat.

Desert: Do you feel District 1 is under-represented?

Garner: Oh, definitely. It has been the entire time I've grown up here. Because we are a retirement community, we often forget about young people [and] kids. I think, at times, they're even kind of shunned. In reality, our young people are who keep this community thriving. They're our busboys, our waitresses, our nurses, and our health care workers. We have to support that community. Crime rates are lower if we have a community of young people who are supported, and have things to do, and aren't getting into trouble because they're bored.

Desert: What do you want to do as mayor as far as providing services for young people and giving them more opportunities to either integrate into the workforce or just have recreational possibilities?

Garner: I'm working with our unions as well to try to develop more workforce development opportunities there. It's really important that we try to get these apprenticeship positions filled by as many locals as we can. We welcome people with expertise from across the country, but … we have not developed local talent. Considering that city jobs are the most well-paid jobs in the Coachella Valley, we want to try to make sure that that happens.

Desert: What's the future of housing for local people who don't make $200,000 a year?

Garner: That's a big part of what we need to work on. We have three affordable housing developments, but they're all rentals. I think there's a lot of people who are looking to have that homeownership opportunity to create that generational wealth. We have [an] opportunity now as a city to really work on getting land through land banking so that we can then build houses for affordable rates and sell them, instead of just renting them. We have three city-owned lots in our Highland Gateway Estates neighborhood. Because of SB 9, which allows us to split lots into smaller sizes, we potentially have six lots on our hands ... we are putting this out to RFP for a developer to build affordable units there. 

Desert: Do you have ambitions to grow the program beyond that?

Garner: If we get enough, then we could work with someone like the Coachella Valley Housing Authority and actually build on a larger scale. The COD land, which is on the northern border of the Desert Highlands community, has more opportunities to do something similar. That's over 100 acres of land, which would be a more long-term project in the future. These are the types of things that I think we have to be thinking about.

Desert: What about the local homeless population?

Garner:  I think doing that Housing First model, which CVAG is doing and which we're moving toward with our Navigation Center, is really the way to go. The Navigation Center is going to be going on McCarthy Road and San Rafael. It'll be opening in mid-2023. There'll be family units as well as single units. That'll give people an actual space that is their own.  

Desert: Do you have any other goals while in office?

Garner: It's a ceremonial position, but it does mean that we have an opportunity to really elevate the issues that are important to each one of us. [For me, it’s] our parks, our library, our community centers. They really look exactly like they did 30 years ago. For a city that has brought in so much revenue in the last 10 years with tourism, it's a shame to me that we haven't upgraded any of these facilities. We've actually seen a shift, though, since pickleball exploded. Now, we get a lot more emails about our parks because there's more folks that are using the parks. We have an opportunity to make these parks spaces for everyone.

Desert: Are you a local hero in District 1?

Garner: I don’t know if I would call myself that. My preschool teachers live in the Desert Highlands neighborhood. I knocked on the door of one of them, and she said, "I don't know why you're wasting my time stopping at my door, because you know I'm going to vote for you. I remember you when you were at the Child Development Center." Mind you, that was when I was 4 years old, and this woman still remembers me. Those kinds of long-time community connections are there in a way that I think is unique and very special to me. I really like those moments.