The Twentynine Palms City Council on July 28 failed to reach a consensus on pursuing a grant to work with the Sanctuary Church to establish a comprehensive emergency services/disaster response center, resulting in the city now being unable to meet the filing deadline for the grant.
Since 2011, the Sanctuary Church, has run the Hope Center out of an Adobe Road building, receiving food from the FIND Food Bank in Indio and the US Department of Agriculture in San Bernardino and providing it free Twentynine Palms residents in need weekly through the Feed the Need program. It has traditionally held giveaways at 5 p.m. every Tuesday. At least since 2025, the City of Twentynine Palms has participated in that program by augmenting its operations with $10,000 per year. Those heavily involved in the Hope Center include Bishop Perry Ford of the Sanctuary Church, the Hope Center’s community outreach director, Shanese Risper and Sylvester Cullum, the business administrator at The Hope Center.
In recent years, the Red Cross has had a presence in Twentynine Palms as a consequence of summer monsoons and resultant flooding that left residents in low-lying areas homeless, at least temporarily. Dialogues between the community volunteers led to a suggestion that the shuttered Rite Aid building acquired by the city could be converted into a so-called community resilience center.
A community resilience center is a local hub that supports everyday community needs and transforms into a resource center during emergencies to enhance what is termed “neighborhood resilience.” Such centers normally involve indoor space intended as a forum for to give local residents daily or weekly access to available social services and the serve as a shelter during disasters such as fires, extreme heat, earthquakes, or floods.
In normal or typical circumstances, a community resource center functions as a neighborhood gathering point offering services such as job training and workforce development, food and clean water distribution, public health programs, the hosting of community meetings and civic engagement activities and serving as a base for local nonprofits and grassroots organizations.
The centers also serve as a base from which emergency operations can be run.
The discussion evolved into how the city might obtain some order of funding to make the desired conversion of the Rite Aid building.
Councilwoman April Ramirez suggest the city look into obtaining a Community Resilience Center Grant offered by the California Strategic Growth Council.
In March 2025, then-Twentynine Palms City Manager Stone James executed an as needed agreement with California Consulting to assist the city in identifying and pursuing grant funding opportunities. City officials proposed that the community resilience center would serve as a staffed heating and cooling center during periods of extreme weather, providing residents with a safe and accessible location during hazardous temperature conditions and that it could also function as an emergency shelter and resource hub during disasters or other emergency events, such as flooding.
In order to meet the criteria to obtain the California Strategic Growth Council, the shelter operator would need to ensure that the facility would be active year-round to be utilized and accessible to the public.
The California Strategic Growth Council Community Resilience Center Grant provides funding ranging from $1 million to $10 million for the development of a resilience center. The grant does not require a local funding match, making it a highly competitive funding opportunity. Grant funds may only be used for the construction of a new facility or the renovation of an existing building. The contemplated proposal application was to have the Hope Center partner with the city and utilize the former Rite Aid building as the proposed Resilience Center. The California Strategic Growth Council looks favorably upon local governmental partnerships with nonprofit organizations, and it was believed that this would likely augur well for the city’s application The deadline for the submittal of the application is September 25, 2026. California Consulting’s grant writer, Sharri Edgehill, earlier this summer told the city that the recent suggestion of the Hope Center/City plan created a rush situation in which to meet the application deadline the city would be responsible for completing a substantial amount of preparatory work, including conducting community outreach and stakeholder engagement, evaluating site and land use considerations, completing the necessary environmental review, and negotiation of a long-term agreement with the Hope Center. This would entail, Edgehill said, having to pay California Consulting an estimated $15,000 and $18,000 for its grant-writing assistance due to the size and complexity of the proposed grant. There would be no assurance the city would get the California Strategic Growth Council grant and the city would also need to accrue some pre-award costs in making the application, such as up to $30,000 in legal services.
While Councilwoman Ramirez, Councilman McArthur Wright and Councilman Steven Bilderain were enthusiastic about the proposal, the costs of the application and the potential that it would not succeed were off-putting to Mayor Dan Mintz and Mayor Pro Tem Octavious Scott. At the July 28 council meeting where the council took up moving forward with committing to making the application by the September deadline, which would entail signing off on a commitment to pay California Consulting at least $15,000 and City Attorney Anthony Patrick Munoz and his law firm Rutan & Tucker at least $25,000, Mintz and Scott balked. Because he is a congregant at the Sanctuary Church, Wright felt he could not participate in the vote. Thus, the 2-to-2 deadlock on proceeding with the application failed.
-Mark Gutglueck