Desert Magazine: Tell me a little bit about your background.

Mayor Oscar Ortiz: I'm originally from Mexicali [in] Baja, California. My family moved to Indio when I was about three years old. My dad worked in the fields. My mom worked in housekeeping. Growing up, I was a little nerd, just going to school studying and trying to get my grades up. By the time I got to high school, I was doing pretty good; [I] had a 4.9 GPA there. I was able to get into 10 good universities out here.

Desert: You applied to Stanford, right?

Ortiz: One of my teachers was telling me to apply. And I told him, “I can't really afford that.” And my mom [was] a single mom with three boys. She was making like under $30,000 a year. An admissions officer called the counselor's office to let me know that there was actually a new financial aid program where they didn't look at any of your financial statements before they read the application. They just strictly looked at your grades and your extracurricular activity, and all that. And once you're accepted, then they look at your financials. And at that time, if you made under $60,000, you were able to attend for free.  

Desert: Why did you pick chemistry as your major?

Ortiz: I just felt like it really explained everything for me. It explained cooking, it explained medicine, it explained physics. I thought, “If I'm able to get this degree, then people will know that I'm hardworking, that I'm very committed to what I'm doing, and that I'll be able to get a job done, whatever the job is, even if it's not chemistry.” 

Desert: Did other classes at Stanford contribute to your political education?

Ortiz: I was in a screenprinting class, and the teacher there was an activist – focused on feminism and also on immigration. She helped us study some issues. And the one that I found most appealing was the immigration issue. I didn't know that we had kids being separated from their families, being locked in cages. It made me realize that I needed to start paying attention more to politics, because people were able to mistreat our people [and] mistreat our community … and not really give us the same rights that other people have. For me, it was important to keep up with what was going on at the national level and state level, and making sure that we're studying the issues that are impacting human rights within our community.

Desert: What kind of work did you do after graduating from Stanford?

Ortiz: At first, I was working at a biopharmaceuticals place. I was mixing the media that they were using to grow cells and the cells that create the medicine. But, I found it to be a really wasteful process. We were just polluting so much to produce very small amounts of medicine. It didn't sit right with me.

I found my way into the cannabis industry. I [worked] for one of the first companies to do quality control on cannabis products. For us, it was kind of a goal to get consistent product to people who needed it medically. We worked with organizations that help kids with epilepsy, with seizures [and] organizations for HIV [and] AIDS patients. I helped a lot of people through hospice, through their last days. So, it was very fulfilling. I thought it was a great opportunity to learn and to help expand that industry into what it is today in terms of the quality control of it and the dependability of those products.

Desert: Your advocacy eventually led you to your first encounters with the Indio City Council, correct?

Ortiz: When I came back to Indio, I was advocating for cannabis patients. One was a cancer patient, stage IV lung cancer, who was in hospice. And there was no real legal way for me to do that, right? If I wanted to treat the patient, I literally had to risk going to jail to help these people. I started going to City Council meetings and started speaking about these issues. There were issues that we were seeing in our community that needed to be addressed, and they just weren't a focus for our City Council. We realized there was an opportunity there where we wouldn't need large amounts of money to run a campaign. And we'd be able to do a grassroots campaign and hopefully be able to take one of those seats.

Desert: What are your proudest accomplishments in your first term as a councilperson?

Ortiz: In the first term, I think [it was] really changing the conversations we were having. We were actually able to guide those conversations and get them further along to the point where now we're having 5-0 votes on affordable housing projects. And we've provided translation for all of our meetings. According to our 2010 census, we have 50% of our families who speak Spanish in the home [and] 25% who don't speak English very well, yet we never had any translation for our agendas and for our meetings. I think I probably got four agendas to be translated for a whole year … and then another year just to get the live translation through Zoom. I was the one translating for them, because they didn't have anybody there who could translate when they were calling in.  

Desert: Is affordable housing one of the big parts of your agenda?

Ortiz: We have one that's under construction already on Jefferson and 111. That's going to be about 400 units. And our planning commission recently approved another project that's going to be Golf Center and 44. So, that one's going to be about another 180 units. We do have some other projects in the pipeline that are going through. They're still under design.

Desert: Another big part of your agenda is electrical infrastructure. Could you talk about that a little bit?

Ortiz: We had a new city manager come in a little over a year ago, and then a few months into his positioning, he pulled me aside and he said, “You know what? Our number-one issue is electrical infrastructure.” We're having issues with getting people connected, new developments, new businesses that are looking to come in, that we've been fighting for so long to bring new economic development to the city. And now we're getting held back by electrical infrastructure issues.

There's a lot of money coming down from the state, a lot of money coming down from the federal government. If we were to use that money and combine it with some of these grants that are coming in from the state or the federal government, what could be possible in renewable energy? If we were to invest in solar energy, how much power would we be able to take off of the grid? And would that be equal to the four substations or would it be more or would it be less? And just starting to get a gauge and starting to do our study and see when does it make more sense to go to renewables?

If we get our studies together and we get our numbers together, we might have some opportunities there to make something happen, possibly on a bigger scale than we would if we were just reinvesting as we normally do. 

Desert: What are some of your goals? You're only 32; you're just getting started in the world of politics. What are some of your future ambitions?  

Ortiz: I always try to take my own ego out of those conversations. I've always told my representatives, if there's ever somebody who can do my job better than me, I'll always support them. Where's my best place to serve? I'm working in a nonprofit right now, doing environmental education, using that experience I have as a chemist to raise awareness about some of the environmental issues within our community. Where does it make sense for my community for me to go? And where am I going to be able to make a good impact?