Perez heads State of the 4th District

State of the County addresses were annual events in Riverside until
COVID. Supervisor V. Manuel Perez decided to create a State of the 4th
District event this year to bring together people he calls partners.
Idyllwild was joined to the 4th District, and Perez, in 2021. Every 10
years, the county adjusts these boundaries.

The event, Monday, March 18, occupied a large hall at Fantasy Springs
Event Center in Indio. Tables were set for over 500 people and were
mostly full. The title of Perez’s address was “Place Matters,” meaning
“where you live determines how well you live.”

In introductory remarks, Perez recounted briefly his public service
career: He served on the Coachella Valley school board, and in the state
Assembly before becoming the first Latino on the Riverside County Board
of Supervisors, a county that is now majority Hispanic/Latino (52%.) He
said he had brought more money into the district in his seven years than
had come in the 12 before. Throughout the fast-paced morning,
the emphasis was on partnerships between governments at all levels,
businesses, nonprofits, faith organizations and labor. “Government
cannot do it alone” is one of his mottos; also, “The county can do
anything, but it cannot do everything.”

The 4th District covers 75% of the county by area, 5,406 square miles,
and includes both very wealthy areas like Palm Springs and Palm Desert,
and a vast desert, stretching to the Colorado River, spotted with
unincorporated communities that often lack access to basics like clean
water. Perez name-checked Idyllwild several times, first as among its
scenic and creative attractions, and later when speaking of roads. 

County Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen touted the county’s balanced
$8.6 billion budget and growing General Fund reserves. Growth, and the
challenges and opportunities it brings, were the recurring theme of the
day. Van Wagenen called the county’s growth “truly staggering,” saying
that between 1990 and 2020, Riverside County has doubled in population.
“Between 2010 and 2020, more people moved to Riverside County than any
other county in the state of California, and during 2021-22, the county
was behind only Maricopa in Arizona in new residents. This growth is our
greatest opportunity; it also becomes our biggest challenge … With
customers, with employees, with dollars, comes 20 to 30,000 people a
year who need services.”

Van Wagenen said the county has been “blessed” by over $480 million from
the American Rescue Act, and that the supervisors have made different
decisions than those of many counties, opting to “invest the bulk, over
$400 million, back into our community” on things like infrastructure,
housing and homelessness, workforce development, economic development,
and childcare. Part of that investment is the county’s Unincorporated
Communities Initiative, $5 million annually. “We recognize a significant
portion of our residents live in the unincorporated areas.”

Perez pointed out that those small communities each have their own
culture and values and affirmed that they deserve solutions based on
collaborations with local organizations. “Not my way, our way.”

Dr. Jeffrey Leung, Riverside County health officer, spoke to “highlight
how Riverside University Health System is working to make a healthier
Riverside County.” Perez and Leung were classmates at Harvard from 2000
to 2002. Perez earned a master of education degree in Administration,
Planning and Social Policy there. Before COVID, Leung said, the health
of a community was seen “primarily driven by medical conditions, by
healthcare workforce, by access to care. Now we see that those
communities that did best though different crises were those with tight
human connections, good transportation, good jobs, resilience.” These
factors are what informs the “Healthy Places Index.”

The Public Health Alliance of Southern California, whose website
describes it as a “coalition of 10 health departments … representing 60%
of the state’s population,” produces the index.  The index put Riverside
County at 39 on a scale from 0 to 100. (A look at the map shows that the
only part of the 4th above the 50th percentile is the west end. The rest
is below 25%, although Idyllwild seems to be an area excluded from the
data.)  The map uses data to rank communities’ conditions in eight
categories: economic, education, social, transportation, neighborhoods,
housing, clean environment and healthcare access.

Leung said he finds hope in that Riverside County outperforms in terms
of life expectancy what would be expected from its economic conditions.
He believes this may be because the county does a better job of
connecting the services it can provide. Instead of a “fragmented”
approach to areas like education, community services, housing and
economic development, “we have a countywide integrated service delivery
effort. Our goal is to take away the silos between different departments
and think about how we can support… families and communities
holistically.”

The county has developed its own Whole Person Health Score using six
categories: physical health, emotional health, resource utilization,
socioeconomics, ownership and activation, and nutrition and lifestyle,
with the initials spelling PERSON. He presented this as one example of
how the county is thinking differently about health, not just about
disease. It also is asking if residents have meaning and purpose, stable
housing, healthy neighborhoods, social connections; all these “drive how
long, and how well, people live.”

Perez segued from health to parks, calling the investment in parks an
investment in the health of residents, and part of the mission he
developed fresh out of college when he first thought of running for
office, alongside his friend “Eddie,” now Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia.
Perez has a long list of parks newly open, under construction or soon to
break ground.

Desert Recreation District General Manager Kevin Kalman said Perez’s
zeal for parks was there when he took over from Supervisor John Benoit,
and the projects now completed “were not born yesterday… We were going
to build parks where parks didn’t exist.” Beyond the supervisors, the
recreation district also works with county Transportation and Land
Management, Economic Development, and Emergency Services.  He said the
recreation district also provides community emergency shelter with
electric generators during outages and distributes food during other
emergencies. He said parks and rec played a big part during the pandemic
when schools were closed, opening up Learning Hubs at community centers,
with teachers and librarians.

Kalman noted that 12,400 students were enrolled in afterschool programs
last year in the district. Kalman listed other park projects, all of
which were in the desert.

Tanya Torno, deputy director of Housing and Workforce Solutions,
described housing as the basis for stability and security, saying that
last year the board adopted a homelessness action plan, its goal to make
homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring. People struggle to pay for
housing, she said, and 46,000 in the valley “do not have access to an
affordable home.” Of these, “80% pay more than 50% of their income for
housing.” To bring this to a manageable level, she said, would mean a
$33 hourly wage, more than twice the present minimum. 

The Housing and Workforce Taskforce, a 2020 initiative, counts over
1,100 homeless in the valley, seeking refuge in emergency shelters,
their cars or the streets. The vision is to build a “housing continuum
of care.” This starts with access to immediate shelter, where victims
fleeing domestic abuse can have access to supportive housing, and those
struggling with mental health issues or suffering from substance abuse
can get treatment. The taskforce’s plans include market-rate housing as
well, and so is partnering with developers to build all types of
housing. “All housing is good,” Torno said. “In 2018, we had less than
38 housing units in production. Today… we have over 1,600 units in
production here in the Coachella Valley.” 

Perez told more of his own story; his mother picked grapes for 20 years,
working for the KK Larson family. Those with long memories may remember
KK’s wife, the late Patricia “Corky” Larson, who was the 4th District
supervisor from 1982 to 94. Growing up in Coachella, Perez saw people
tired and sweaty at the end of the day, and then sleeping in their cars,
or under palm trees. He would frequently come home from school to find
folk he had never met before in the family house; his mother and father
would open up what they had to fellow workers who had no place. Perez
choked up recounting this, the longest silence of the event. “We are
going to continue to help all our folks, no matter who they are or where
they come from. Especially our farm workers.” (Another long pause…
applause.)

Other community improvement projects Perez listed included new
firehouses: House 41 in North Shore, and House 49, in Lake Tamarisk, the
first new fire houses in unincorporated areas in over 10 years, both
replacing older stations. Desert Hot Springs is also working on a new
fire house.

Cástulo Estrada, vice president of Coachella Valley Water District,
spoke of the county and state working to push water and sewer lines into
the East Valley with a task force and master plan. Estrada is another
Coachella native. He remembered being raised in a trailer park, and as
youngster noticed, on trips to the city, the difference between east and
west. This left an early impression of the importance of infrastructure;
the benefits for those who have it, the challenges for those who do not.
He said he studied civil engineering to play a part in the development
of the valley.

The project to bring safe drinking water to the east valley began with
county data locating mobile home parks, usually served by wells, and
overlaid this with a map showing existing water distribution and sewer
systems. The task force came up with projects for extending pipelines.
Estrada showed a map of the eastern Coachella Valley with red dots for
these small water systems, over 70 of them.

They are mostly old and are often pulling water from a part of the
aquifer with arsenic, chromium and other contaminants. The push is to
consolidate these with existing, better systems. The master plan is the
roadmap for water and sewer projects. They have created about 40
projects on the water side, and 20 other projects on the sewer side,
costing an estimated $200 million to complete. They then set out to
secure funding. Over the years they formed strong relationships with the
state water board and Legislature. 

California state policy is that water is a human right. All Californians
having a right to “clean, safe and affordable drinking water.” The state
has been making funds available. Last year, it “bundled up about $100
million” to start executing these projects. “That’s huge… we are going
to start using the money, making a dent.” This also helps with
affordable housing projects. It just broke ground on a $30 million,
5-mile long, 30-inch-diameter pipeline project cutting through the east
valley; Oasis, Torres Martinez Reservation, the Mecca region. Estrada
believes it will “start transforming that whole region.” 

This type of regional master plan is unusual in the state and is
attracting attention; the state water board is looking to replicate the
master plan.

Perez briefly touched on economic development and energy infrastructure,
SCE and Integrated Distributed Energy Resources (IDE). This is a program
to make the grid a “plug-and-play platform” that integrates small energy
sources into the regional system. 

In parting, Perez offered two more longterm goals: a four-year
university and daily passenger rail service.