At a regular meeting Tuesday, the Tehachapi Valley Healthcare District Board of Directors voted unanimously to renew an access license for The Village Tehachapi Community Garden, but not before some contention over the organization’s stated purpose and the state of food insecurity in the area.
The garden uses land at 116 W. E St. at a cost of one dollar per year paid to the district where it grows fruits and vegetables that it gives out for free to the people of Tehachapi and the surrounding area.
During the meeting Paige Lanteigne, one of the community garden’s organizers, said the organization just finished another growing season, providing 300 pounds of pumpkins alone to the community, along with another 300 pounds of other vegetables and fruits.
Lanteigne said the garden donates produce to The Warrior Pantry, which supplied food for students, many of whom don’t get enough to eat, and also distributes food throughout the community via the Tehachapi Humanitarian Relief Group, of which the garden is a part.
She said the garden started with one growing bed in 2022 but has since expanded to 12 beds, a greenhouse, a composting area and more.
“We’d really like to keep doing this,” she told board members.
She said the garden has been implementing new farming practices that have improved the quality of the soil, and consequently the size and quality of the produce.
“We want to educate our community on healthy food practices, on being able to grow their own food, and preserve their own food as well,” she said.
She said the district’s support of the garden is often brought up in conversations with the people they give food to and clearly reflects well on the district in the community’s eyes.
Lanteigne said the garden seeks to collaborate with more local organizations, including those that assist senior citizens.
During her presentation she talked about food insecurity, which has been on the rise across the United States for the past few years, including in Kern County, which has a noticeably higher rate than the state and U.S. average.
This problem is being compounded, she said, by the fact that data on food insecurity is becoming more difficult to come by as the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled the Household Food Security Report in September 2025. That report provided yearly data on food insecurity for the benefit of policymakers looking to combat hunger.
In an email after the meeting, Lanteigne said while some states, California included, are forming their own programs to fill in these gaps, recent cuts to non-governmental programs like Meals On Wheels and Feeding America are also hurting efforts to address the problem, and hurting the reliability of data on said problem.
Board member Lydia Chaney objected to the community garden’s depiction of itself as an organization fighting food insecurity because it doesn’t means test the people requesting food and will give out free food regardless of who shows up.
Lanteigne said it is true that they don’t means test and do give food to anyone who asks for it, but they try to focus their efforts on assisting local organizations that help those in need. She said the distributions of their food target some of the more impoverished areas of Tehachapi and the surrounding communities.
“You’re making it sound like everybody in Tehachapi is poor,” Chaney said in response to much of what Lanteigne said.
Fellow board member Carl Gehricke said the local Salvation Army has seen a noticeable spike in need in the past few months and Lanteigne said one of the major food banks she communicates with in Bakersfield has seen the number of people asking for help nearly double.
“A lot of food insecurity is invisible,” she said.
Chaney seemed unconvinced.
“There are a lot of people who just show up for free items,” she said. “… Food insecurity is invisible, but so is lying.”
She said she wants to find the root cause of why Tehachapi seems to have so much need.
Despite the contention, the board unanimously approved the renewal of the license with the community garden.
Update from Adventist Health
During the meeting Jenny Lavers, Adventist Health’s chief executive officer for Kern County, gave an update on Adventist Health Tehachapi Valley’s coming year, and a number of projects underway.
The hospital’s biggest project, she said, will be a significant upgrade to the medical records system, which she said will improve information storage and access, and will improve patient experience.
She also said the hospital is working on improving its CT scanning equipment, which is expected to lead to fewer transfers of patients to other hospitals.
Lavers also said she hopes the hospital will see construction of a covered walkway from the imaging pavilion to the main building completed this year.
The path from the building to the pavilion currently requires people to walk through the elements, including in winter.
Lavers said the hospital is also looking to make progress on constructing a new medical office building.
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