I agree with Susie Harvey's Valley Voice published in The Desert Sun 2/6/21. https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/2021/02/06/rancho-mirage-city-council-trying-suppress-citizen-participation/4397598001/

There is concern about lack of civic involvement amongst the residents of Rancho Mirage, California. The demographics of our city are changing with an increase in young families and working couples moving in.

Current city council meetings take place at 1 p.m. — a time when most people are at work and unable to participate — suppressing and disenfranchising voters. It is well past time to change the time of day that our council meetings are held. Changing from 1 p.m. to after general business hours is a vital step to engage our citizenry in this important process. Most surrounding cities have times that are more convenient and conducive to participation.

What is also a disservice to our democratic process is having a special election that is not aligned with the federal or state elections. This is costly and confusing to voters, leading to lower turnout and voter participation. Why would Rancho Mirage do this? It appears again to suppress the voices of many.

The Rancho Mirage City Council should change its general meeting time to 5 p.m. or later and align our election date with federal and state election cycles in the hopes of being more inclusive and giving our citizens as much of an opportunity to participate as possible. (It's also cheaper to not run one election one month after a federal election.) There is no good reason for not making these changes, unless the city council wishes to have minimum citizen participation and only hear from those that have the luxury of attending a meeting in the middle of a workday and remembering to vote in an easy-to-miss special election.