The Green Desert

The city of Desert Hot Springs is a familiar town to mineral hot springs and spa enthusiasts, to locals in the Coachella Valley and to world travelers seeking the “magic waters” of this desert oasis. Sadly, for years the town has also been known to have major deficit problems, controversial mayors and corrupt business owners.

The winds of change have stormed this small desert community in the guise of a wafting green cannabis aroma. Taking a cue from other cities in the state, Desert Hot Springs is now attempting to do what no city in the state is doing to such great extent: Letting major grow operations set up camp with help from the local government. We met with Mayor Scott Matas one-on-one to discuss not only what’s transpiring in the desert town, but also what this may mean for the rest of California.

What’s going on in Desert Hot Springs regarding cannabis?

Mayor Scott Matas: About four years ago, the city council started to look at finances and we saw that we would be coming up against some steep cliffs in the near future. At one point, we were looking at only $400 in the city’s bank account. The city council had a session to figure out what to do and we looked at medical cannabis dispensaries. We saw what the city of Palm Springs was doing. They had been figuring out how to tax dispensaries since 2007 and we took a good look at that. In November of 2014, we put two measures on the ballot, one tax to sell medical cannabis and the other is a 10 percent tax if cannabis becomes recreationally legal eventually.

We now have four dispensaries that are open, another 10 that are in the process of opening. There’s 1.7 million square feet of land in some stage of development for cultivation and four grow operations are going through tentative phases and should be operational sometime this summer.

How would you entice tourists who’ve never been to Desert Hot Springs?

One, we want to build an attraction around the use and cultivation of cannabis. People might make a joke about “Desert Pot Springs” but it’s going to be as stable as it is in Colorado in four or five years. We’re the first city in California that’s miles ahead of other cities in regard to taxation and legalization of cannabis. Second, I want everyone to know about our natural hot springs, hotels and beautiful, unique hiking.

Do you anticipate this bringing in jobs for residents of Desert Hot Springs?

Other industries will build up around us here, so there will be equipment that the cultivators need, laboratories that’ll need to do extracting. We have a company visiting from Colorado that does green waste recycling from the grows, all of this will bring work to those who apply and seek employment. DHS’s unemployment level is from seven percent to nine percent per year. People who will be growing here will be living here and eating at our restaurants and spending money on our businesses.

Do you use cannabis yourself for medical or recreational use?

I don’t, I’m a conservative who was against any cannabis here and voted against it in 2007. When I was in the minority a few years ago I realized that I needed to educate myself. I was so ignorant, I thought you grabbed a leaf off a plant and just rolled it up.

What really changed my mind on this was a close friend of mine who I’ve known since I was 10 years old. His mother became sick with cancer. She tried everything to fight it except cannabis. In the last year she was talked into using cannabis and she did. For that last year of her life she was comfortable and it really opened my eyes. So I started looking at the medical part of it and it really enlightened me to things I didn’t know.

Where do you think Desert Hot Springs will be in 10 years?

I see our city as a leader in California. Like we’ve seen other cities go through this and we can sort of mirror what they’ve done. We can be the first city in the state and people will be coming to us for help. With these are revenues we’ll be able to take control and fix our city on our own.