Voted in the Best of Coachella Valley Yet?; Kids Dropped From Medicaid Due to a Glitch–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Aug. 31, 2023

Indy Digest: Aug. 31, 2023

Hello! Today, we have a couple of Independent-related bits of housekeeping:

• The end of voting in our Best of Coachella Valley readers’ poll is drawing near. At 11:59 p.m. next Tuesday, Sept. 5, balloting will close.

If you have already voted, thank you! If you haven’t yet voted, please do so if you have a few moments.

We really try to make our readers’ poll as good as it can be. We only ask people to vote once per round, not once per day (or even more often) like other polls; we would rather have a good slate of finalists and winners than a little bit of extra website traffic. 

We also require a name and a working email address, and we ask that everyone vote in at least 15 categories, too.

The ballot can be found at vote.cvIndependent.com. Thanks!

• Many of you received a fundraising email from me earlier this morning; as regular readers know, we’re trying to raise the $10,000 we will need to pay our share of the salary for Haleemon Anderson, our soon-to-start California Local News Fellow, over the next two years. 

Aaand many of you pointed out that the email had a mistake in it. 

Here’s what happened: The email was written and scheduled in advance; I was supposed to go in and update the amounts we’ve raised go far before it got sent. Well, I had a brain fart and failed to do so, so it went out saying we’d raised “$TKTK.”

For the record, as of the start of the day, we’d raised about $4,600 of the $10,000 (about $2,100 from you amazing readers, and $2,500 due to the generosity of the Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation). I have not yet tallied the support we received today thanks to that imperfect email, but I know it pushed us over the halfway mark.

Thank you, everyone, for your support—and if you’d like to help us out, click the button below.

Have a great and safe Labor Day weekend, everyone. The next Indy Digest will arrive in your inbox on Monday, per usual. 

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Palm Springs’ Rio Azul Mexican Bar and Grill is making a comeback, and has reopened as of today. Here’s a social-media post from Dani Saenz, the former and apparently current co-owner: “We’re thrilled to announce that the wait is finally over! Rio Azul Mexican Bar and Grill is back and better than ever after months of anticipation. Join us as we reopen our doors to serve you the flavors you’ve been missing.” The restaurant was forced to shutter after a building-wide electrical issue in early February wound up taking more than three in-season months to fix. Rio Azul was reportedly sold, but that fell through, and it’s now back in the hands of Dani and her father, Ernesto Gastelum. We’re getting the details and will report back to you.

• The decidedly meager food and drink options at the Palm Springs International Airport are in the midst of a major upgrade, as is much of the rest of the airport. The Palm Springs Post says: “(A) project, set to begin next month, will double the number of dining options at the airport and renovate the three existing restaurants. Local Palm Springs favorites, Trio and El Mirasol, will join the airport along with Coachella Valley Coffee and Joshua Tree Coffee Co. A new circular bar named Cactus to Clouds will replace the fountain area in the concourse. There will also be two new pre-security food and retail options. The first restaurant to start renovation will be the Buzz by Bar Fly, located near Gate 20.”

• A major computer glitch has led to a lot of children getting dropped from Medicaid. The Associated Press reports: “Children in many states are being wrongly cut off from Medicaid because of a ‘glitch’ in the automated systems being used in a massive eligibility review for the government-run health care program, a top Medicaid official said Wednesday. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is asking all states to review their computer-automated processes to make sure that children are evaluated separately from their parents—and aren’t losing coverage merely because of their parents’ ineligibility or inaction. Though federal officials remained vague about the scope of the problem, it likely involves at least half the states and potentially affects millions of children, said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.”

• Southern California got a whole lot of water dumped on it by Tropical Storm Hilary. Turns out we’re terrible at keeping that water so we can put it to good use. The Los Angeles Times says: “State and local officials have been actively working to improve methods to capture stormwater, but it’s simply not been fast enough to keep up with growing water demands in a more extreme climate—while balancing flood control. Los Angeles County recently shared its latest water plan, which includes lofty goals to greatly increase yearly groundwater recharge. But when fast, strong storms like Hilary currently hit, the local infrastructure isn’t able to capture a majority of the deluge. … When the basins are full, the water will just ‘bypass the system,’ (Art Castro, a watershed manager for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power), said, running off into the Pacific.”

• If you don’t think something major needs to be done about gun control after seeing Wednesday’s front page of the The Daily Tar Heel, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill … I am not sure I have anything else to say. NBC News reports: “When deadly gun violence gripped the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Monday, Emmy Martin received a flurry of text messages from loved ones asking if she was safe. As she replied while in lockdown in the journalism school’s library, she realized that this terrifying event, which shattered the students’ sense of security and claimed the life of Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the applied sciences department, was deserving of an equally powerful response. After the terror subsided, Martin, who was in her second week as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel, came up with the idea of displaying on the cover a string of real text messages exchanged by students to show the agonizing hours on lockdown.” Seriously: Click the link, and check it out, if you have not seen it yet already.

• And finally … have you ever noticed that your fast-food burger doesn’t look nearly as good as the burgers in the ads? Well, that matter is headed to court. The BBC, for some reason, reports: “Burger King must face a lawsuit that alleges it makes its Whopper burger appear larger on its menus than it is in reality, a US judge has ruled. The lawsuit accuses the fast food giant of misleading customers by showing the burger with a meatier patty and ingredients that ‘overflow over the bun.’ ‘The plaintiffs’ claims are false,’ Burger King told the BBC. Rivals McDonald’s and Wendy’s are facing a similar lawsuit in the U.S.”

Read this Indy Digest at CVIndependent.com!