NEWS

Councilman Greg Pettis ends term as SCAG president

Barrett Newkirk
TDS

INDIAN WELLS – The Southern California Association of Governments, a cohort of counties and cities typically associated with regional transportation planning, is working to expand its mission to tackle other big issues, including poverty.

How to improve the lives of the region’s low-income residents is among the topics up for discussion at SCAG’s annual conference that began Thursday and continues Friday at the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort and Spa in Indian Wells.

Greg Pettis, the Cathedral City councilman who ended his one-year term as SCAG president Thursday, said in a speech to the gathered local government officials that high poverty rates continue to plague parts of Southern California. He mentioned high rents and immigration policy as factors that make it difficult for many families to live more comfortably.

“There’s something wrong here that we need to fix,” Pettis said.

Some people who spoke during the public comments portion of SCAG’s business meeting urged that more attention be given to the poor communities in the eastern Coachella Valley.

“I encourage everyone to take a 20-minute drive to this other universe east of this resort,” said Joshua Tree resident Frank Kopcinski.

SCAG represents six counties and 191 cities in a region of more than 18 million people. SCAG recently released a study that found 25 percent of the children in its six-county region live in poverty.

Pettis said that over the past year, he visited every county in Southern California multiple times and worked with SCAG to expand relationships with universities, labor groups and other government agencies.

Pettis noted that he was the first openly gay SCAG president and that he worked alongside officials from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

“This is not the SCAG of our fathers,” he said, “This is Southern California, and it’s because all of us are making it, together.”

At a panel discussion looking at ways education can help fight poverty, workforce development and education experts spoke about how communities can work to get people into new types of industries that are heavily focused on technology.

“The new manufacturing jobs are definitely high skills,” said Dion Jackson, associate director at the University of Southern California Center for Economic Development. “The good news is you can get those skills at a community college. You don’t need a four-year degree.”

Tom Freeman of the Riverside County Economic Development Agency moderated the panel.

Andrew Muñoz, executive director at the Orange County Workforce Investment Board, said the best thing cities can do to fight poverty is to make sure they’re using public money as efficiently as possible and focusing their efforts.

“If you want to see manufacturing grow in your community, you should be asking the question ‘What’s being done to attract manufacturing?’”

Later, Muñoz said what it means to be poor varies by cities and their costs of living, so leaders need to assess what poverty means in their community.

“If you want to fight poverty and end that cycle,” he said. “Then you’re going to have to figure out what it’s going to take.”

SCAG on Thursday also announced its news president: Ventura Councilman Carl Morehouse.