Who can end this
Five people. They meet twice a month, in a room you can walk into, and any resident may speak for three minutes. That is the whole mechanism.
Write to all five at once
Opens your email app with every council address filled in, and the short letter already written. Change it to sound like you — that matters more than the wording.
- Mayor
Merl R. Abel
District 3 - Mayor Pro Tem
Jim Schooler
District 1 - Council Member
Jeff Drozd
District 2 - Council Member
Robert Lombardo
District 4 - Council Member
Rick Denison
District 5
Source: the Town's own Town Council page, checked 7 August 2026. If you find this out of date, tell us.
How they voted, 16 September 2025
Taken word for word from the Town's adopted minutes[31].
- Merl AbelMoved itAye
- Jim SchoolerSeconded itAye
- Jeff DrozdChaired the meeting as MayorAye
- Rick DenisonAsked whether it would help with illegal OHV useAye
- Robert LombardoAbsent, excused — cast no voteAbsent
Read this fairly
Merl Abel was Mayor Pro Tem that night, not Mayor. Jeff Drozd chaired the meeting. Abel became Mayor later, and the Town rotates the office each year. Anyone saying "the Mayor pushed this through" has the facts wrong.
Robert Lombardo did not vote. He was absent and excused. He should not be described as having supported it.
And the vote itself was not unreasonable on its face. The Council attached a condition — a privacy policy, back for approval before the cameras went live. Four people voted for a safeguarded program. What they got was the program without the safeguard[33]. That is the thing to raise with them, and it is a good deal easier for a council member to fix than a vote they have to defend.
When and where
- When
- 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month, at 5:00 p.m.
- Where
- The Yucca Room, Yucca Valley Community Center
57090 Twentynine Palms Highway (SR 62), Yucca Valley, CA 92284 - Can't attend?
- The Town streams Council meetings, and posts video to watch later. Check the meeting calendar for the link.
Source: Town of Yucca Valley. Meetings are sometimes cancelled — check themeeting calendar before you drive over.
If it turns out to be a County matter
The contract names the Town of Yucca Valley as the customer, so this Council can end it. But the Sheriff's Department operates the system, is the billing contact on the order form, and filed the environmental notice for the installation as lead agency[38] — so expect to hear that it is not entirely the Town's to decide.
Do not let that end the conversation. The Town Council can do all of this on its own:
- Pass a resolution formally opposing the deployment and asking the County to terminate.
- Direct staff to obtain the usage policy, the audit, and the search logs, and bring them back in public.
- Adopt an ordinance requiring a public hearing before any surveillance system operates inside Town limits.
It also moves the other way. In Santa Clara County a board decision cascaded into Cupertino, Saratoga, Los Altos Hills, and Mountain View at once[25].
The other lever
Three of these seats are on the ballot on 3 November 2026 —District 1, District 3, District 5, held by Jim Schooler, Merl Abel, Rick Denison[41].
We note that as a fact, not a threat. An election is simply the other thing a resident controls, and a council member who fixes this before November gets to run on having fixed it.
Before you drive over
Meetings here get cancelled often — seven of the last ten months had one. Check the agenda portal the day before, or you may drive to a locked room. The next scheduled meeting isTuesday 18 August 2026.
To speak: fill in a "Request to Speak" form near the Town Clerk's desk and hand it over before the Council reaches your item — one form per item, three minutes each. To comment in writing instead, email townclerk@yucca-valley.org. The Town publishes no cutoff, so send it early.