Palm Springs City Councilmember Jeffrey Bernstein announced this week that he will seek a second term representing District 2 in the November 2026 municipal election.
Kicking off his campaign, Bernstein, a longtime resident, small-business owner, and civic leader first elected in 2022, points to a slate of infrastructure, economic development, and quality-of-life projects launched during his term. Those efforts include, among others, comprehensive planning to modernize the city’s airport and convention center, and to develop a new Downtown Convention Center District; he also successfully led the voter outreach effort to remove the sunset from Measure J, extending a key funding stream for city projects. He aims to continue his work, helping to bring these projects and many others to fruition.
In an interview geared for the GPS Business Insider audience, we spoke with city councilmember Bernstein about his ideas and actions regarding enhanced economic development and education/workforce development projects and initiatives that he sees as critical to the city’s economic success and quality of life.
Outlining his platform, he pledged to continue work highlighting the incredible potential for the new College of the Desert (COD) Palm Springs Campus currently under construction, stimulating AI and general tech sector opportunities for the city, enhancing to city’s creative economy, pushing forward the $125 million modernization of the convention center and ongoing airport upgrades while keeping Palm Springs focused on the challenges of a warming desert climate.
A different kind of college, built to anchor local talent and jobs
Rendering of the future College of the Desert Palm Springs Campus entrance.
Bernstein says the COD Palm Springs campus must be “a different kind of community college,” one that feeds the local workforce and keeps ambitious students here. He points to the development of a five-year bachelor’s degree pathway with Cal Poly and a planned bachelor’s in casino management – “the only one in this state” and among a handful nationwide – and adds that he’s pushing for advanced AI degrees to make COD Palm Springs “a destination college.”
COD’s impact, he argues, goes beyond youth retention. Palm Springs benefits from what he calls a regional “brain dump” — seasoned executives in tech, arts, business, and public affairs who relocate here and “want to give back.” Tying those mentors to students and working adults can accelerate careers in place.
Betting on AI and the people who power it
Bernstein frames AI as a once-in-a-generation opening that fits Palm Springs’ demographics and quality of life. “We’re in a key moment… the start of a new industry,” he said, citing an influx of experienced tech professionals continually moving to the valley, expanding local education, and “new economic development opportunities” converging at once, “a perfect storm” the city should seize so that “10, 20, 30 years from now we realize that started now.”
Bernstein led the way for the first AI & Creativity Conference in Palm Springs.
He’s begun convening that community. After hosting an extremely successful AI & Creativity Expo – with plans for regular conferences and networking events, Bernstein underscored how Palm Springs can uniquely fuse tech and the creative arts, noting the valuable insights of the keynote presentation by The Lion King director Rob Minkoff, a part-time Palm Springs resident. The city’s clean-energy profile could also unlock adjacent opportunities: as chair of Desert Community Energy, he’s exploring whether locally generated solar and wind energy – “the best wind energy in the whole country” – can power data centers to unlock a potentially enormous investment here.
Treating the creative economy like the industry it is
Bernstein argues Palm Springs should stop treating arts and culture solely as community festivals or tourism boosters and start treating them “like an industry.” Tech lowers the barriers: “You don’t need a Hollywood studio to film a movie anymore… you can do things here in the desert,” he said, adding that remote production through the pandemic proved the model. He ties this directly to COD’s creative arts pipeline, pointing to the region’s theaters, film festivals, and dance companies as real career paths.
Year-round creative and tech activity, he adds, stabilizes the local economy beyond peak-season tourism. “Any year-round business drives hotels and restaurants and retail… So, if any new tech companies here will bring in additional visitors, convene conferences and many other things,” which sustains spending through economic cycles.
Heat mitigation and shade: an economic survival plan
Bernstein is blunt that climate adaptation is not only environmental policy, “it’s critical to our economic survival.” Any time the city “loses a week of our season because of extreme weather,” the hit to the economy runs into “a massive amount of lost local spending,” he said. His agenda includes covered walkways downtown, development standards that incorporate cooling, smart spacing and plantings, and upgrades to make historic buildings less heat intensive.
One early proving ground is the Palm Springs Convention Center Connectivity Plan, which is not just a shuttle fix, Bernstein said, but a template for “what a walkable area in a hot climate can look like and what it can accomplish,” with shade, wayfinding, landscaping, seating, and art, then replicable across other commercial districts.
Bernstein has immediately come out very strong in his 2026 re-election bid with endorsements from the Palm Springs Police Officers Association, the Palm Springs Police Management Association, and the Palm Springs Firefighters Association. Many more will soon follow.
“It has been an honor of a lifetime to serve the city and the residents of District 2,” Bernstein said. “There is, as always, still much to be done.”
