Dreamtown: The Story of Adelanto · Dreamtown: The Story of Adelanto

Chapter 1: Bug’s Plan

June 7, 2023·34 min·3 clips

At a high school debate, Bug drops a bombshell: 'I think it's time to talk about marijuana,' igniting a political firestorm.

All this was underwater. The chapter starts before the budgets and council meetings, with Adelanto as land left behind after the water pulled away. Then people show up, and the story gets more practical, and more uncomfortable. Adelanto has spent its life short of the money a city needs. There are not many levers to pull. Jermaine Wright, a retired pastor and city council member, calls the problem what he thinks it is: no real vision, not enough planning. The portrait has some bite. He has a shaved head, a mustache, three-piece suits, and a habit of giving the local paper good lines. Wright is not from Adelanto. He was born and raised in LA County, spent years in Michigan, and ended up in town after his wife found a place there. Once he arrived, he moved fast. He ran for the school board and city council, won both, and stepped straight into public service. The budget problem did not let up. Wright says Adelanto incorporated without the tax base it needed, then never built one strong enough to carry it. That is the chapter's load-bearing idea. This is not one bad call wrecking a town. It is a city hunting for money because the normal routes never really worked. Prisons become part of that hunt. Wright gets some traction with the prison industry, including a renegotiated city contract with GeoGroup. The narration does not overplay it. It leaves Wright, the budget, and the prison economy sitting in the same room. That is plenty uneasy.

As heard by us

A desert city's budget strain becomes a grounded story about local politics, prison revenue, and survival.

The episode treats Adelanto as a city defined by scarcity, where desert geography, a thin tax base, and a long trail from water to conquest all press on the same problem.

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Why you'd press play

You want the origin story of a desert city that never had enough.

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