The healthcare contribution issue at Laguna Beach Unified deserves a clear explanation because the amount of noise surrounding it has obscured the underlying facts.
For several years, some employee healthcare deductions were calculated incorrectly. The District continued paying insurance premiums, but certain employees were not charged the amounts required under the established contribution formulas.
At the November 13, 2025 Board meeting, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Manoj Roychowdhury explained that the problem resulted from weak internal controls, communication gaps between Human Resources and Business Services, conflicting fiscal and insurance-plan calendars, the absence of an annual reconciliation process and incorrect contribution rates published in the Employee Benefits Guide.
This was an administrative failure, but it was not created by employees.
They did not establish contribution formulas, publish benefits guides, administer payroll, or determine the deductions on their paychecks.
Board President Dee Perry made that distinction clearly: “Our employees should not have to pay for these errors, and I’m certain we can find a way to handle this without burdening our wonderful staff.”
As someone who has worked in HR for 20 years, I agree.
Benefits administration is complex. Insurance rates change annually. Employees add dependents, change plans, marry, divorce and experience other life events that affect payroll deductions. Those changes must be coordinated across insurance records, payroll systems, contracts, contribution tables and employee communications.
Mistakes can occur without malicious intent. Accountability means identifying the problem, correcting it and strengthening the process.
The District did exactly that.
Roychowdhury outlined annual reconciliations, improved coordination between departments, specialized staff training, outside consulting support and efforts to simplify the benefits structure.
“We have recognized the error and now we should move forward, close the error to make us whole and move ahead with improved processes.”
At the December 16, 2025 special meeting, he presented four corrective-action options.
The Board unanimously chose to absorb the approximately $1.04 million cumulative cost rather than seek repayment from employees.
The error was investigated. The procedures were corrected. The financial decision was made.
Yet public discussion continues to focus on inflated figures and repeated suggestions that employees received something improper. That does not improve accountability—it distracts from the more important conversation about the future of employee healthcare.
Over roughly six years, healthcare premiums increased nearly 30 percent while the District’s contribution caps barely changed. As insurance costs rise without corresponding employer contributions, employees bear a growing share of the expense.
That is the issue Laguna should be debating.
Healthcare benefits are compensation. Every employer must decide how much to invest in them to recruit and retain talented employees. Laguna Beach should make that decision intentionally through collective bargaining using accurate information—not misinformation about a resolved accounting error.
Our teachers and staff educate the future doctors, artists, engineers, business owners and public servants who will shape our community.
The District should remain accountable for what went wrong.
But accountability should lead to better policy, not become an endless political distraction. The question now is whether Laguna Beach will support sustainable healthcare benefits for the people who educate our children.
August 7th has come and gone. That was the final day for someone wanting to run for City Council and/or a school board seat to file the requisite paperwork to qualify for the November ballot.
When the dust settled, here’s the final City Council lineup for Laguna Beach: Nick Aronoff Edward Bayuk Joy Berry Ashley Cintas Sue Kempf* Karen Martin Mark Orgill* Laura Parisi Alex Rounaghi*
(* denotes incumbent)
The following Voter Initiative will also be on the ballot for residents to decide – Implement Term Limits for City Councilmembers.
It asks: Shall an ordinance to amend the Laguna Beach Municipal Code by enacting a limit on consecutive years of service by members of the City Council to a combined total of two four-year consecutive terms, with the ability to again serve as a Councilmember after a lapse of service of at least two years, be adopted? Simply: Yes or No?
• • •
Obviously, one great way to decide who to cast your vote for is to attend an upcoming candidate forum. Here’s what’s scheduled so far:
August 31 – Village Laguna Council Candidate Forum, 6-8 p.m. at the City Council Chambers.
September 26 – LBAA Candidate Forum, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. in the Forum Theater on the Festival of Arts grounds.
• • •
Equally as important, perhaps even more so to parents, is the race for the Laguna Beach Unified School District Board of Education. Here’s how that shook out at closing time: Five candidates, vote for three.
The incumbents are Joan Malczewski and Dee Perry; others challenging include Elizabeth Bates, Shaheen Sheik-Sadhal and Kimberly Smith.
This will be a race where you either support the present direction of the board/district, or you don’t. And it has been controversial. It will take one candidate aligned with the current direction to keep the majority with current board members Sheri Morgan and Howard Hills; it will take three candidates to create a new majority and potentially take the board in a different direction.
In the meantime, board member James Kelly, Ph.D., who has served on the board since 2018, has decided to hang it up, completely opening up his seat.
We join with many to thank him for his service and commitment.
Candidates asking for our votes should not be shutting community members out of the conversation.
Courtesy of Briana Heathcott on Nextdoor
I recently learned that community members who have disagreed with or challenged the Laguna beach school board candidates are being blocked from their pages on social media. Their comments are also being deleted.
That is incredibly disappointing.
School board members represent the entire community — not just the people who support them. Elections should be an opportunity for candidates to hear different perspectives, answer difficult questions, and demonstrate how they will engage with people who disagree with them.
Blocking community members may make a campaign page more comfortable, but it doesn’t build trust. And it raises a fair question: If disagreement is shut out during the campaign, what should residents expect after the election?
We don’t all have to agree. In fact, we shouldn’t. Healthy communities need respectful disagreement, transparency, and leaders who are willing to engage with criticism rather than simply make it disappear.
Whatever candidates you support, I hope we can agree on that standard.
A clear guide on LBUSD board candidates, the proposed school bond, statewide education races, and the choices affecting Laguna Beach schools. Courtesy of A Public Record for Laguna Schools
Three seats on the Laguna Beach Unified School District Board of Education are up for election on November 3, 2026.
Laguna Beach voters may also be asked to decide whether to approve a school facilities bond. At the state level, voters will select California’s next Superintendent of Public Instruction and weigh other candidates and measures that could shape public education.
This page will be updated as the ballot is finalized.
Last updated: June 26, 2026
On the Ballot
LBUSD Board of Education
Three seats are up for election. The terms currently held by Dee Perry, Jim Kelly, and Joan Malczewski expire in December 2026.
Candidate filing takes place from July 13 through August 7.
LBUSD is considering placing a general-obligation facilities bond before voters in November. The measure has not yet been formally placed on the ballot.
Once the final measure is approved, this section will include:
What the bond would fund
The amount requested
Estimated property-tax impact
Project priorities and timelines
Oversight and accountability requirements
Arguments supporting and opposing the measure
Links to district documents and independent coverage
The State Superintendent is California’s elected public-schools chief and leads the California Department of Education.
This section will include a guide to the general-election candidates, their backgrounds, education priorities, public records, and positions on issues affecting California schools.
One of the most important things I have learned from studying school board governance is that poor governance rarely announces itself and will usually show up under a much nicer name: responsiveness, urgency, efficiency, transparency, and community input.
I have spent the last couple of years watching Laguna Beach Unified board meetings, reading agendas, and trying to understand how an idea becomes a district decision. Somewhere along the way, the California Education Code and board bylaws became recreational reading. This has done very little for my social life (thank you to my friends and family for listening to my newfound knowledge), but it does satisfy the part of me that wants to know how public systems are supposed to work, where authority ends, and why certain procedures were put in place before someone decides they are inconvenient.
As summer break begins, LBUSD is heading into another superintendent transition, a new budget cycle, and a board election in November. We do not yet know the full field of candidates, but before the mailers arrive and everyone discovers a passionate commitment to transparency, it seems worth deciding what the job actually requires.
What kind of school board would serve this district well?
We do not have to answer that question on instinct, since California law provides a solid framework. The California School Boards Association offers guidance, and LBUSD already has policies and bylaws that define responsibilities. Other districts have built governance systems that Laguna Beach can learn from.
The harder part is finding trustees who believe those rules still matter when they slow down something the board wants to do.
The California Education Code gives school boards broad authority. Section 35010 places school districts under the control of a governing board. Section 35160 gives boards wide latitude, provided their actions are consistent with the law and the purposes of public education. Section 35161 allows boards to delegate responsibilities while still holding ultimate accountability.
That authority belongs to the board collectively, but it does not make board members district administrators.
The board governs through policy, budgets, contracts, goals, superintendent hiring and evaluation, bargaining direction, accountability systems, and public votes, while the superintendent and staff run the district. Education Code Section 35035 identifies the superintendent as the board’s chief executive officer and assigns responsibilities involving implementation, budgeting, staffing, financial reporting, and carrying out district plans.
Essentially, the board sets the direction, the superintendent carries it out, and then the board monitors the work and evaluates the results.
This arrangement is not complicated, but it can quickly become messy when individual trustees act as though they have their own chain of command. Staff should not have to sort through competing instructions, and the public should not have to guess whether a decision came from the board, the superintendent, a site administrator, or one notably persistent trustee.
An engaged board should ask difficult questions, demand reliable information, examine budgets, evaluate the superintendent, and push for better results without taking over the work. The line gets crossed when trustees begin deciding which employee should handle a task, which vendor should be selected, which venue should be used, or which public complaint should be assigned to staff immediately.
For LBUSD, that distinction stopped being theoretical this year.
In January, the board introduced a change to Bylaw 9322, which controls how meeting agendas are developed. The existing language called for the board president and superintendent to work together, but the revision gave the board president final approval.
That may sound like a small procedural adjustment, but it wasn’t.
No history of repeated agenda failures had been presented to explain why such a change was necessary. At the time, Dr. Jason Glass said the existing system followed normal practice and that he had always had a productive working relationship with the board president—until a disagreement arose over one particular agenda item with the new board president, Sheri Morgan.
Staff, both employee unions, and hundreds of written and in-person public comments opposed the change. The majority moved forward anyway.
Agenda control is easy to dismiss as board policy minutiae until it determines which issues make it onto the dais and which decisions the board can take into its own hands.
The revised bylaw was passed on February 12. That same meeting included a lengthy discussion about the graduation location, and the item returned for action at the board’s very next meeting on February 26.
I am not claiming that the bylaw change caused the graduation vote, but the sequence shows why the change mattered. Almost immediately after the board president gained final agenda authority, a decision traditionally handled at the school-site level was brought to the full board for a vote.
Glass told the board that graduation locations had historically been site decisions and recommended leaving the matter there. Dee Perry also said she wanted it to remain “a site decision,” while arguing that community concerns deserved more attention.
That was a reasonable concern. Families should be heard, and students should be consulted. If the process was too narrow, unclear, or closed prematurely, the board had every right to ask questions and require something better.
It could have directed the administration to explain how the initial decision was reached, gather broader feedback, set clear criteria, and return with a recommendation.
Instead, Dee, along with Sheri Morgan and Howard Hills, voted to move graduation to the Irvine Bowl.
The board did not improve the site-level process—it replaced it.
That is the difference between oversight and management. Oversight would have required a better decision-making process, while management was the board selecting the venue itself.
Once public pressure is sufficient to bring an operational decision to the board, the same reasoning can be applied to transportation, facilities, staffing, discipline, communications, curriculum, or student services. A board does not have to make every decision itself to prove it listens; sometimes, listening should lead to a better process, not a board takeover.
The same preference for a desired outcome over a clear process has appeared in the board’s handling of superintendent appointments.
At the new majority’s first meeting in December 2024, the board voted 3–2 to direct staff to prepare a contract for a specific interim superintendent candidate. That effort fell apart when the candidate declined.
In May 2026, forty-eight hours after approving Glass’s separation, the same three-member majority voted to appoint Dr. Don Austin as the permanent superintendent without presenting a new public search process.
The circumstances were not identical, but the pattern is hard to miss. In both cases, the majority identified the person they wanted and attempted to move directly toward a contract. The December 2024 effort failed because the candidate said no. On May 14, 2026, the candidate said yes.
I have already written in detail about Austin’s appointment and the Orange County District Attorney’s request for answers, so I am not going to rebuild that full timeline here. The point I am making here is simpler: policies, bylaws, notice, consultation, and equal access to information matter most when the people with the votes already know what they want.
Howard Hills offered a very different view at the June 4 meeting, saying the board could appoint a superintendent “any way the board wants to do it and any time.” He was stressing the breadth of the board’s legal authority, and that authority is broad, but authority is only the beginning of the question.
A responsible trustee should also ask whether the process is fair, whether all board members have the same information, whether the public has been given an honest account of what is happening, and whether the decision will still look credible once the immediate excitement has passed.
Having the legal power to do something does not automatically make it wise. Moving quickly does not mean the work was carefully considered, and a policy does not lose its value because following it has become inconvenient.
A district that prides itself on excellence should be looking for the best way to govern, not treating the legal minimum as an impressive achievement. Of course, governance is about much more than the controversies that fill meeting rooms.
California’s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) requires districts to assess achievement, attendance, facilities, school climate, family engagement, course access, staffing, special education, mental health, safety, and whether different groups of students are being well served.
Good trustees should be able to ask whether a program is working without trying to redesign it from the dais. They should be able to recognize a disturbing result without turning one number into a districtwide catastrophe, and they should also be willing to look honestly at areas that need attention rather than hide behind LBUSD’s overall reputation.
Being a strong district does not mean every decision is strong or every student is getting what they need.
Labor relations require the same kind of judgment. Support for teachers and classified staff is not measured by appreciation posts or friendly comments during meetings. It shows up in bargaining priorities, workload, staffing, compensation, benefits, communication, and whether the board respects the people who actually do the work.
Trustees need to understand the district’s financial position, retention challenges, staffing needs, and long-term obligations. They should give clear and lawful direction to the bargaining team while avoiding side promises, public freelancing, or informal efforts to influence negotiations outside the established process.
A person can genuinely care about teachers and still be terrible at labor relations. Caring is important, but knowing how the process works is also important.
The board’s relationship with the public requires a similar balance.
A board meeting is not an open-ended town hall. The board has an agenda to complete, decisions to make, and legal requirements to follow, but public comment is still part of the meeting’s real work. It is not a formality everyone has to sit through before the important people begin talking.
The community does not get to direct staff or control every decision. At the same time, these are public schools, and the public has every right to question how they are being governed.
Trustees need ways to hear from people without assuming that the fullest room represents the entire community, but they also need to avoid the opposite mistake of treating criticism as an annoyance or a threat.
Public opinion is information, and it belongs in the decision alongside law, data, professional expertise, student needs, and financial realities. The board then has to explain what it decided and why, especially when the answer is not what the loudest group wanted.
None of this works well without the right temperament.
Trustees will disagree. That is normal and often healthy. The issue is whether they can disagree without making every conflict personal, ask hard questions without humiliating staff, and accept a vote without spending the next several months trying to undermine the result. They also need to resist the urge to turn every complaint they agree with into a direct assignment for the superintendent.
Winning an election also does not make someone an instant expert in finance, instruction, law, facilities, transportation, labor, special education, and every other corner of district operations. There is nothing wrong with admitting you need to learn something before deciding it.
Humility is not a side benefit of this job; it is part of being competent at it.
Other districts offer useful examples. Ohio’s Cleveland Metropolitan uses goals and guardrails to distinguish between the outcomes the board monitors and the operational boundaries staff must follow. Washington’s Issaquah uses written expectations and public monitoring reports. Virginia’s Fairfax County has invested in explanations that help the public understand complicated decisions.
None of this is revolutionary; it is simply more organized than waiting for a controversy and then deciding where the boundary should have been.
LBUSD already has some of the right pieces. The district uses public bargaining proposals, fiscal disclosures, hearings, and ratification procedures.
Those processes can feel slow and tedious when everything is moving smoothly. Their purpose becomes much easier to appreciate the moment someone wants to bypass them.
This is the foundation I plan to use when evaluating future board candidates.
Can the person explain the difference between governance and management without giving a vague answer about “leadership”? What would they do after losing a vote? When should the board defer to professional staff? How should the board respond when the loudest public demand conflicts with legal obligations, budget realities, student needs, or a staff recommendation? Do they believe adopted policies still apply when those policies slow the outcome they prefer?
Those answers will tell us far more than another campaign statement about transparency, excellence, or putting students first. Nearly every candidate will claim those values. The revealing part is what they do when those values pull in different directions.
Some warning signs are easier to spot.
A candidate talks much more about what the board is legally allowed to do than about when restraint is appropriate. Policies and bylaws suddenly become flexible whenever they interfere with a preferred outcome. The candidate promises to fix operational problems without showing any understanding of the board’s actual role. The superintendent is discussed as though each trustee personally supervises the position.
Other warning signs are quieter. A candidate uses the word transparency constantly but cannot explain confidentiality or public-meeting law. One isolated data point becomes the entire story of the district. Uncomfortable information is dismissed because LBUSD remains strong overall.
I will be listening closely to how candidates talk about staff. Praise is easy, but respect shows up in how someone discusses workload, morale, bargaining, professional expertise, and the limits of their own authority.
Poor governance has a very good publicist: role confusion becomes responsiveness, an incomplete process becomes efficiency, and meeting the legal minimum becomes transparency. The label changes, but the underlying habit remains the same: use the power first and explain it later.
My children are at the beginning of their time in this district, so I am less interested in who wins a board argument this month than in whether LBUSD remains stable, trusted, and well run for the next decade.
I am looking for trustees who understand the law and use their authority responsibly. I want people who value public input without allowing whoever fills the room to govern by volume, who provide serious oversight without directing day-to-day operations, and whose support for staff lasts through bargaining season.
I also want transparency before decisions are made, not only after the result has been announced.
Before deciding whom to support, I want to know whether candidates understand the responsibilities of the role and have the judgment to exercise them well.
Laguna Beach will be better served by a board that can work collectively, respect professional roles, follow its own processes, and keep the district’s long-term health in view.
The Laguna Beach Unified School District is facing two more inquiries into board actions, after having to recently respond to a county attorney inquiry about alleged Brown Act violations, The Orange County Register reported.
Local residents have also lodged concerns with the ACLU, which issued the school district its own letter inquiring about possible Brown Act violations regarding response to an April community protest, the report said.
According to the report, the Orange County Board of Education told the district that its Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team is doing an independent review of the district’s financial records.
The arrival of FCMAT gives Laguna Beach an opportunity to separate administrative failures, weak controls, and contractual mistakes from much larger allegations of corruption.
Laguna Beach Unified is getting another independent review, and I think that is a good thing.
As I have shared before, the employee healthcare contribution issue was serious because public funds were involved, collective bargaining agreements were not followed, and the District paid more for employee benefits than required. The District must understand how it happened, correct it, strengthen controls, and provide the public with an honest accounting of what went wrong.
Now the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE) has asked the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) to conduct another formal review in response to requests from members of the Laguna Beach community. LBUSD will be providing the records and information FCMAT requests. OCDE has made it clear that initiating the review does not indicate fraud, misappropriation, or illegal fiscal practices, and that the purpose is to conduct an independent assessment and determine whether the evidence requires reporting under Assembly Bill 139.
The questions now are what FCMAT finds, how the District responds to those findings, and whether Board members who spent months demanding this scrutiny will consistently apply that same respect for public accountability when community members raise documented concerns about the Board itself.
OCDE supports Orange County’s 28 school districts while overseeing state-mandated fiscal matters. It reviews budgets and financial reports, provides operational and legal support, assists with countywide services, and has statutory responsibilities when concerns develop about a district’s financial procedures.
FCMAT operates statewide and was created to help California school agencies identify and resolve financial, operational, and data-management problems. Most of its work is preventive management assistance intended to improve systems before a fiscal crisis develops. At the same time, a smaller portion involves assignments from county and state agencies, including extraordinary audits conducted when there is reason to examine whether fraud, misappropriation, or other illegal fiscal practices have occurred.
The name sounds alarming because it includes “fiscal crisis,” but the organization does more than respond after a district’s finances have failed. FCMAT reviews staffing, contracts, purchasing, internal controls, special education, organizational structure, data management, and other areas where an outside team may identify problems a district has missed or tolerated.
Laguna Beach Unified has worked with FCMAT before.
In September 2017, the District agreed to have FCMAT review LBUSD’s special education program. The Board approved the study unanimously, with staff describing it as voluntary, proactive, and part of continual improvement. Board members clarified that LBUSD requested the assistance and was not facing a fiscal crisis.
FCMAT conducted interviews and reviewed records in January 2018, then issued its final report that May. The study examined general education supports, special education staffing, paraeducators, related-service providers, identification rates, outside placements, organizational structure, due process, and the District’s financial contribution to special education.
The report identified areas for improvement, including student-support processes that varied across school sites; some special education and paraeducator staffing levels exceeding FCMAT standards; inconsistent procedures for assigning certain individualized supports; and an increase in the District’s unrestricted contribution to special education. FCMAT recommended stronger coordination among special education, business services, and human resources. It also suggested a closer review of outside providers and placements, as well as a formal process for resolving parent disputes.
These important findings affected some of the District’s most vulnerable students and involved substantial public resources, complicated legal requirements, and decisions likely to shape a child’s entire school experience. The report did what an outside management review is supposed to do: it examined systems, identified variances and financial pressures, and provided the District with recommendations to improve them.
Sometimes a school district asks FCMAT to help improve a program. In other cases, a county office requests an examination after employees, parents, or community members raise concerns. Sometimes the findings support serious allegations, while at other times a lengthy investigation concludes that the evidence does not establish intentional wrongdoing, even though policies and internal controls still need substantial work.
The current LBUSD review falls into a different category from the 2018 special education study.
OCDE says it initiated this process after receiving requests from members of the Laguna Beach community, and the scope includes employee health-benefit contributions, associated contracting decisions, and the use of District resources. The people who submitted those requests have not been publicly identified.
Howard Hills has spent months pressing substantially the same issues, describing the healthcare contributions in the most alarming terms available to him, questioning the conduct of former District leadership, reviewing potential action by county and state authorities, and arguing the Board should continue pursuing the issue whether the district attorney or another outside agency acts or not.
His public campaign around healthcare has included paid advertisements, communications with outside allies, repeated use of the larger $1.77 million figure, and an email titled “CONFIDENTIAL: Unofficial Communications Management,” where he discussed media coverage, op-eds, full-page advertisements, and the need for someone to coordinate press around District issues, yet somehow he’s calling people he disagrees with “political gossip columnists.”
Given that record, it is reasonable to wonder whether Howard, one or more of his colleagues, or people in his “communications circle” submitted the requests that led to OCDE’s decision. It also matches his stated strategy and the work he has done to extend the healthcare issue beyond LBUSD.
Still, OCDE has not named the requesters, and reasonable suspicion does not turn speculation into fact just because it fits neatly. Until those requests become public, I cannot say Howard submitted them.
I will say he is probably pleased.
He wanted a state or county agency to examine the healthcare issue, and one is now doing that. He has argued the District’s own review and corrective actions were insufficient. FCMAT will request records, examine the underlying processes, and decide whether the evidence supports the level of wrongdoing Howard has repeatedly suggested.
He should celebrate the review if he believes in it, and the District should not treat his satisfaction as a reason to resist the process. Public officials, employees, and community members should be able to request outside scrutiny without being accused of disloyalty merely because the eventual finding may be uncomfortable.
The same principle applies when the request comes from people Howard disagrees with.
Over the last year and a half, community members, employees, and advocacy organizations have signaled concerns about LBUSD’s closed-session practices, agenda control, public-comment procedures, trustee communications, and growing uncertainty about where Board governance ends and District operations begin. Some concerns resulted in formal Brown Act cure-and-correct demands. These allow a public agency to review an alleged open-meeting violation and correct it before the dispute proceeds to litigation. A couple of these demands have been made public, and I know of a few more that have been submitted privately.
A cure-and-correct demand does not prove a Brown Act violation any more than a community request to OCDE proves someone committed financial misconduct. Each begins with an allegation supported by whatever facts, records, and legal arguments the person submitting it believes justify further examination.
The receiving agency is then responsible for fully reviewing the complaint, responding through the appropriate process, and correcting the conduct when warranted.
I think Howard cannot reasonably support community requests that trigger an outside examination of District employees and financial procedures, then dismiss other community complaints as political theater when they ask whether the Board majority followed open-meeting law. He can disagree with the claims, challenge the evidence, and defend the Board’s conduct, but the legitimacy of the process cannot depend on whether he likes those who use it.
The Board’s response to the FCMAT review will tell us a great deal about what its members actually wanted from this process.
Will they allow FCMAT to conduct the review without changing every records request into another public accusation against staff? Will they wait for the findings before announcing what they may prove? Will they accept a conclusion identifying administrative weaknesses without validating Howard’s more extensive narrative of corruption? Will they implement recommendations even when those are technical, procedural, and less dramatic than the story Howard has been selling?
When a complaint involves closed session, trustee communications, or the Board’s use of power, will they show the same patience and respect for the process that they now expect from the employees being reviewed?
In 2024, the Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools requested an AB 139 extraordinary audit after parents, employees, and community members raised concerns about business relationships, contracts, transactions, travel, and reimbursements involving the school district’s former superintendent. FCMAT conducted a broad review of expenditures, internal controls, vendor payments, board approvals, travel, credit card purchases, and reimbursements.
The public debate surrounding that school district became intense, with disputed contracts and spending decisions presented as possible evidence of corruption. After reviewing the transactions, FCMAT concluded it had insufficient evidence to establish fraud, misappropriation, or other illegal fiscal practices. The report still led to improvements in contract procedures, written documentation, credit-card controls, travel policies, and delegated purchasing authority.
Mountain View Whisman shows how an outside review can validate stronger systems without validating every accusation behind it. Community members were entitled to raise questions, the county was entitled to examine them, and FCMAT’s conclusion depended on evidence rather than on the intensity of the public campaign.
Based on the records we have available so far, I think Laguna Beach may end in a similar place.
The healthcare issue showed that agreements were not administered correctly, the District paid more than required, and controls needed strengthening. Michael Bishop & Associates examined spending variances, collective bargaining compliance, and internal controls, while leaving legal impropriety outside its scope.
The District eventually proceeded with a corrective-action figure of about $1.04 million and decided against recovering that money from employees who did not establish the contribution rates or administer the benefit structure. Howard continued to cite the larger $1.77 million figure and framed the issue in terms of staff oversight, unions, and former District leadership.
FCMAT will likely obtain documents the public has not seen, interview people who provide important new information, or identify a contracting problem beyond the contribution calculations already discussed. An independent review has value because the conclusion must remain open until the work is finished.
Even with that possibility, the evidence currently available looks more like an administrative, contractual, and internal-control failure than an intentional scheme to steal public funds or improperly enrich employees. I expect FCMAT will confirm that the contribution process was flawed, identify weaknesses in documentation and oversight, recommend clearer delineation of responsibilities and more frequent reconciliation, and find insufficient evidence to support the larger claims of deliberate fraud or malfeasance.
Howard may say procedural failures proved him right, while others may say the absence of corruption proved him wrong. Both reactions would oversimplify what will likely be a more complicated report.
The healthcare problem required correction, but the evidence has never supported treating teachers and staff as suspects for receiving benefits calculated and administered by the District. Howard was right to ask how the error occurred and how to prevent it. His public campaign against staff, unions, former leadership, and anyone rejecting his framing also remains part of the record.
What happens next will reveal whether Howard and his “colleagues” wanted independent answers or public validation for conclusions they had already reached.
If FCMAT finds misconduct, the District needs to address it directly and publicly. If it identifies weak controls, administrative failures, or poor documentation, the District should implement the recommendations and explain the changes. If FCMAT finds insufficient evidence of fraud or malfeasance, the Board owes the public the same clarity and should not stretch procedural failures into unsupported allegations.
The Board should remember the standard it helped establish. OCDE took community financial concerns seriously, and FCMAT will examine the records before reaching a conclusion. Documented concerns about closed sessions, trustee communications, agenda control, and the Board’s use of power deserve the same review and respect for evidence, even when those under scrutiny sit on the dais rather than work in the District office.
Howard has spent months insisting that outside scrutiny is necessary when the allegations involve employees, unions, and former District leadership. He cannot reasonably celebrate that process while dismissing cure-and-correct demands and other governance complaints as meaningless simply because they involve his own Board majority.
The community should pay close attention to what FCMAT finds, but the Board’s response may tell us even more. Howard wanted someone outside LBUSD to look closely at what was happening inside the District, and now that review is here. The harder test will be whether his circle still believes in transparency when the call for accountability comes from inside the house.
The Orange County Department of Education has tapped the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) to conduct an independent review of Laguna Beach Unified School District’s financial records.
OCDE said the review was prompted by requests from members of the Laguna Beach community and will focus on employee health benefit contributions, related contracting decisions and the use of district resources.
While OCDE emphasized the review is not, by itself, a finding of fraud or other illegal fiscal practices, it should provide an independent assessment of issues that have generated considerable public discussion in recent months.
The district said it will cooperate fully with the review.
• • •
Tomorrow (Saturday, July 18) from 10-11 a.m., the city of Laguna Beach and CR&R are hosting their first virtual composting workshop to help residents transform food and yard waste into rich, organic fertilizer through traditional composting techniques. This free event is perfect for both beginners and compost experts.
News and Notes: Frank Aronoff reminds us in this week’s Breakers Sports Roundup that Chris Esperanza is “now on campus” as LBHS’s new Athletic Director. Congrats to Chris.
Separately, in a recent perusal of campaign disclosure statements on the city’s website under City Clerk Ann Marie McKay, are a couple of items of interest:
The first, was a Termination Statement, dated June 8, listing George Weiss and an account with $2,184.21. In checking with Ann Marie, the account was for a campaign committee from his 2024 campaign. The money in the account was given, or donated to, the Nimblegov PAC, which is behind the term limit proposition.
Second, Citizens for Laguna’s Future/Joy Dittberner, supporting “an ordinance to establish term limits for City Councilmembers” reported an ending balance of $10,588.81.
A parent protest over Dr. Jason Glass’s departure became the subject of a closed-session discussion. The ACLU says that LBUSD may have violated the Brown Act.
By Erika Hennon Rule
Courtesy of A Public Record for Laguna Schools
I was not at the May 14 protest, but the people there were not strangers to me.
They were my friends, neighbors, my kid’s coach, and the parents I see at school events, on
the sidelines, in parking lots, and around town. They were the people who talk when something feels wrong, show up when it matters, make signs in someone’s kitchen, buy snacks at Costco, bring the kids, and somehow turn a group chat into civic action before dinner.
In other words, they were acting the way people in Laguna Beach often act when something feels wrong: they showed up to exercise their First Amendment rights.
Of course, this is the part the Board majority now seems very keen to blur.
On July 7, the ACLU of Southern California sent a letter to LBUSD alleging the Board violated the Brown Act by discussing the May 14 protest in closed session. The letter was sent on behalf of local parent Meredith McMahon, who helped spark the protest and, from what I can tell, felt a duty to defend what that protest actually was.
To be clear, Meredith is not suing the district for personal financial damages, nor is she seeking a payout. The ACLU letter clearly asks the Board to fix the alleged Brown Act violations and commit to not repeating them. If litigation ever follows and attorney fees become an issue, that would be about legal fee recovery for the ACLU under the Brown Act, not money going to Meredith.
The ACLU letter is bigger than one parent, one protest, or one very Laguna group-chat mobilization. It asks whether the Board majority can take public criticism, reframe it as a safety threat, send it to legal counsel, and then hide the response from the public.
They had signs. They chanted. They were loud. They were angry, and definitely not subtle. There were “shame” signs, handmade posters, kids, snacks, and even pom poms, because apparently Laguna moms can turn constitutional expression into a spirit squad if given enough notice.
Was it uncomfortable for the Board? I am sure it was.
Was it embarrassing? Probably.
Was it public criticism of elected officials? Absolutely.
And that is protected speech.
The First Amendment is not a feelings-management policy for public officials. It does not protect only soft voices, flattering signs, and calm comments delivered at a podium by the dais. It protects speech, assembly, and petitioning the government, including signs, chants, criticism, and public pressure elected officials may find deeply unpleasant.
Public agencies can enforce reasonable rules about safety, access, noise, and keeping meetings functional. However, this is about the Board majority appearing to take a loud but peaceful protest and recast it as something more troubling.
After the protest, the Board majority’s storyline started to shift. Trustee Dee Perry stumbled while trying to enter the building. Available videos show Perry struggling to enter, with Ketta Brown helping her inside. These videos do not show protesters pushing her, and Perry later stated in the Laguna Beach Independent that she was not pushed.
Shouting, chanting, holding signs, or criticizing elected officials may feel intense, uncomfortable, and even overwhelming. Absent a physical act, an attempt to apply force, or a direct threat of immediate violent injury, fear alone does not turn protected speech into assault. For example, a stumble near protesters does not automatically render a threat to public services or facilities.
But Dee Perry’s fall became the Board majority’s permission slip to reframe the May 14 protest.
A parent protest over Dr. Glass’s sudden exit escalated into a “safety incident,” which then became a legal matter. Then the legal matter became a closed-session discussion the public was not allowed to hear.
By the June 4 meeting, the Board’s posture had visibly changed, with notice-restriction signs and stanchions appearing. Then came the June 8 closed session.
According to the ACLU letter, the Board discussed the May 14 protest under a closed-session item related to “threats to public services or facilities.” Afterward, Board President Sheri Morgan reportedly stated that no reportable action had occurred. She also said safety concerns had been raised after the May 14 rally and that the Board had requested legal counsel or a designee to look into the rally, including what occurred, whether safety protocols were followed, and whether Board policy or law had been violated.
That is the kind of sentence that makes normal people blink twice.
No reportable action occurred, but the Board requested legal counsel or a designee to investigate the rally?
The ACLU argues that LBUSD improperly used closed session to discuss a public protest under a narrow Brown Act exception meant for actual threats to public services or facilities. The letter also argues that the public agenda did not give people fair notice that the Board would discuss the May 14 protest or whether to investigate it.
The Brown Act exists because public agencies must conduct business in public unless a narrow exception applies. Closed session is not where elected officials process feelings about criticism, nor is it a panic room for uncomfortable public feedback.
The ACLU’s point, as I read it, is simple: the Board cannot take a public protest, call it a threat, discuss it privately, and then tell the public there was nothing to report.
Especially when the “threat” appears to be parents speaking up.
That is how public speech gets silenced — it is not always by a direct order to stop talking. Sometimes it happens through vague safety language, shifting narratives, closed-session agenda items, and lawyers looking into what parents did.
I am not a lawyer, but I work at a public institution and follow First Amendment regulations in public spaces. I know the difference between protest and disruption. I know access and safety are important. I also know public agencies cannot use “safety” as a cover for viewpoint control.
The government does not get to treat public criticism as a threat just because the criticism is loud, embarrassing, or effective.
If the Board had legitimate safety concerns, it could have addressed them openly. If protest logistics needed better management, it could have said so in public and allowed the community to respond.
Instead, the Board used closed session to discuss the protest under a “threat” exception and then reported that legal counsel or a designee had been asked to look into it.
The protest was public, so the Board’s response should have been public.
The First Amendment does not just belong to the Board majority — it belongs to us, too.
A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.
I first met Mark Orgill in the summer of 2022, when he was contemplating a run for City Council. I had heard good things about him. He had designed 7-Degrees, the event venue near the Sawdust Festival, and had served as a part-owner and manager of that property before selling it to Mo Honarkar in 2017. From that year until roughly 2017–20, Orgill worked as a consultant for Honarkar out of his North Laguna offices.
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Their partnership made strategic sense: Honarkar acquired nearly 20 commercial properties in Laguna Beach, including a 99-year lease on the Hotel Laguna, and Orgill brought a deep understanding of local land-use issues. When we discussed the city’s most pressing needs, we agreed that the Community Development Department was at the top of the list — a bureaucratic labyrinth that routinely stifled residents well-connected insiders got what they wanted.
Early Support and Growing Reservations
Mark impressed me. He pledged to overhaul the Community Development Department and reform a system he knew from the inside. I eventually contributed the maximum amount allowed by law to his campaign and helped organize neighborhood meetings in Woods Cove and at Top of the World.
As the campaign progressed, however, my confidence wavered. Orgill became surprisingly evasive about his platform, shifting positions repeatedly when pressed. At the neighborhood meetings, his unwillingness to answer questions directly was unsettling — the first sign that the reformer image might be more style than substance. I stepped back and watched as the facade began to crack.
Mark had pitched his background as his greatest asset: he knew the system’s flaws from the inside out, and we hoped he would turn that knowledge into reform measures. But as the saying goes, campaigning is poetry; governing is arithmetic. Once seated on the dais, the bold rhetoric of systemic reform quietly lost its edge.
The insider knowledge that was supposed to outmaneuver predatory developers instead manifested as a troubling level of sympathy for them. One had to ask: was Mark Orgill dismantling the developer-friendly machine, or learning how to operate its levers for a different set of interests?
Allegations at the June 23, 2026, City Council Meeting
These concerns reached a fever pitch at the June 23, 2026, City Council meeting, where Mo Honarkar’s daughters, Nikki Honarkar Bostwick and Hasty Honarkar, delivered explosive allegations about the city’s handling of their family’s long-standing property disputes.
Nikki Bostwick challenged the city’s professed “neutrality” in her family’s three-year legal ordeal. Despite a landmark ruling affirming her family’s ownership, she argued the city effectively enabled opposing parties to seize their assets. She alleged specific conflicts of interest: that Mayor Orgill’s wife was employed by the opposing party — Continuum Analytics, the MOM Group — and that Mayor Orgill himself received a settlement of over $500,000 from the MOM Group shortly after filing litigation against them to recover debts originally owed by Honarkar that the MOM Group had assumed. She further claimed that police officers on the scene at the Canyon properties in 2023 at Terra and 4 G Ventures were instructed by the City Attorney’s office to side with the opposing group and strip her father of his rights.
Note: The original settlement figure of approximately $511,000 was subsequently reduced to $312,000 after the MOM Group filed for bankruptcy.
Hasty Honarkar focused on the lack of transparency surrounding the new “Courtside Kitchen,” a commercial food operation established on the public tennis courts adjacent to Terra Laguna Beach for this year’s Festival of Arts season. She questioned how a commercial food permit was issued on public land without public disclosure — particularly given her family’s existing lease on Terra. She reminded the Council of June 30–July 1, 2023, when armed guards representing the MOM Group seized Terra Laguna Beach, and accused the city and the Festival of Arts of allowing that hostile takeover to proceed with zero accountability. The abrupt cancellation of a scheduled trial date in the lawsuit Mo Honarkar had initiated against the city and the Festival of Arts — followed immediately by the public announcement of the opening of Courtside Kitchen fueled her family’s belief that there was a coordinated effort to strip them of their rights.
Questions That Demand Answers
Taken together, the allegations raised by the Honarkar daughters form a pattern that the city has met with official silence: the Mayor’s wife’s employment by the opposing party; how Mo Honarkar was removed from Terra and replaced by the MOM Group; how the MOM Group assumed the Terra contract with the Festival of Arts; the settlement paid to Mayor Orgill and his wife by a related entity; and the armed seizure of a city owned property leased to Mo while the city looked the other way. Several of these events occurred while Orgill was already serving on the City Council.
These events may or may not be proven illegal in court. But they raise questions, a genuinely transparent mayor, who was intimately involved in the circumstances that produced them should be racing to answer.
Laguna Beach deserves elected officials whose loyalty runs to the residents who put them in office, not to the interests that provide them with benefits.
George Weiss is a former Laguna Beach City Council member and a long-time civic advocate. His investigative reporting on Laguna Beach city government appears regularly on this Substack.
One of the most important things I have learned from studying school board governance is that poor governance rarely announces itself and will usually show up under a much nicer name: responsiveness, urgency, efficiency, transparency, and community input.
I have spent the last couple of years watching Laguna Beach Unified board meetings, reading agendas, and trying to understand how an idea becomes a district decision. Somewhere along the way, the California Education Code and board bylaws became recreational reading. This has done very little for my social life (thank you to my friends and family for listening to my newfound knowledge), but it does satisfy the part of me that wants to know how public systems are supposed to work, where authority ends, and why certain procedures were put in place before someone decides they are inconvenient.
As summer break begins, LBUSD is heading into another superintendent transition, a new budget cycle, and a board election in November. We do not yet know the full field of candidates, but before the mailers arrive and everyone discovers a passionate commitment to transparency, it seems worth deciding what the job actually requires.
What kind of school board would serve this district well?
We do not have to answer that question on instinct, since California law provides a solid framework. The California School Boards Association offers guidance, and LBUSD already has policies and bylaws that define responsibilities. Other districts have built governance systems that Laguna Beach can learn from.
The harder part is finding trustees who believe those rules still matter when they slow down something the board wants to do.
The California Education Code gives school boards broad authority. Section 35010 places school districts under the control of a governing board. Section 35160 gives boards wide latitude, provided their actions are consistent with the law and the purposes of public education. Section 35161 allows boards to delegate responsibilities while still holding ultimate accountability.
That authority belongs to the board collectively, but it does not make board members district administrators.
The board governs through policy, budgets, contracts, goals, superintendent hiring and evaluation, bargaining direction, accountability systems, and public votes, while the superintendent and staff run the district. Education Code Section 35035 identifies the superintendent as the board’s chief executive officer and assigns responsibilities involving implementation, budgeting, staffing, financial reporting, and carrying out district plans.
Essentially, the board sets the direction, the superintendent carries it out, and then the board monitors the work and evaluates the results.
This arrangement is not complicated, but it can quickly become messy when individual trustees act as though they have their own chain of command. Staff should not have to sort through competing instructions, and the public should not have to guess whether a decision came from the board, the superintendent, a site administrator, or one notably persistent trustee.
An engaged board should ask difficult questions, demand reliable information, examine budgets, evaluate the superintendent, and push for better results without taking over the work. The line gets crossed when trustees begin deciding which employee should handle a task, which vendor should be selected, which venue should be used, or which public complaint should be assigned to staff immediately.
For LBUSD, that distinction stopped being theoretical this year.
In January, the board introduced a change to Bylaw 9322, which controls how meeting agendas are developed. The existing language called for the board president and superintendent to work together, but the revision gave the board president final approval.
That may sound like a small procedural adjustment, but it wasn’t.
No history of repeated agenda failures had been presented to explain why such a change was necessary. At the time, Dr. Jason Glass said the existing system followed normal practice and that he had always had a productive working relationship with the board president—until a disagreement arose over one particular agenda item with the new board president, Sheri Morgan.
Staff, both employee unions, and hundreds of written and in-person public comments opposed the change. The majority moved forward anyway.
Agenda control is easy to dismiss as board policy minutiae until it determines which issues make it onto the dais and which decisions the board can take into its own hands.
The revised bylaw was passed on February 12. That same meeting included a lengthy discussion about the graduation location, and the item returned for action at the board’s very next meeting on February 26.
I am not claiming that the bylaw change caused the graduation vote, but the sequence shows why the change mattered. Almost immediately after the board president gained final agenda authority, a decision traditionally handled at the school-site level was brought to the full board for a vote.
Glass told the board that graduation locations had historically been site decisions and recommended leaving the matter there. Dee Perry also said she wanted it to remain “a site decision,” while arguing that community concerns deserved more attention.
That was a reasonable concern. Families should be heard, and students should be consulted. If the process was too narrow, unclear, or closed prematurely, the board had every right to ask questions and require something better.
It could have directed the administration to explain how the initial decision was reached, gather broader feedback, set clear criteria, and return with a recommendation.
Instead, Dee, along with Sheri Morgan and Howard Hills, voted to move graduation to the Irvine Bowl.
The board did not improve the site-level process—it replaced it.
That is the difference between oversight and management. Oversight would have required a better decision-making process, while management was the board selecting the venue itself.
Once public pressure is sufficient to bring an operational decision to the board, the same reasoning can be applied to transportation, facilities, staffing, discipline, communications, curriculum, or student services. A board does not have to make every decision itself to prove it listens; sometimes, listening should lead to a better process, not a board takeover.
The same preference for a desired outcome over a clear process has appeared in the board’s handling of superintendent appointments.
At the new majority’s first meeting in December 2024, the board voted 3–2 to direct staff to prepare a contract for a specific interim superintendent candidate. That effort fell apart when the candidate declined.
In May 2026, forty-eight hours after approving Glass’s separation, the same three-member majority voted to appoint Dr. Don Austin as the permanent superintendent without presenting a new public search process.
The circumstances were not identical, but the pattern is hard to miss. In both cases, the majority identified the person they wanted and attempted to move directly toward a contract. The December 2024 effort failed because the candidate said no. On May 14, 2026, the candidate said yes.
I have already written in detail about Austin’s appointment and the Orange County District Attorney’s request for answers, so I am not going to rebuild that full timeline here. The point I am making here is simpler: policies, bylaws, notice, consultation, and equal access to information matter most when the people with the votes already know what they want.
Howard Hills offered a very different view at the June 4 meeting, saying the board could appoint a superintendent “any way the board wants to do it and any time.” He was stressing the breadth of the board’s legal authority, and that authority is broad, but authority is only the beginning of the question.
A responsible trustee should also ask whether the process is fair, whether all board members have the same information, whether the public has been given an honest account of what is happening, and whether the decision will still look credible once the immediate excitement has passed.
Having the legal power to do something does not automatically make it wise. Moving quickly does not mean the work was carefully considered, and a policy does not lose its value because following it has become inconvenient.
A district that prides itself on excellence should be looking for the best way to govern, not treating the legal minimum as an impressive achievement. Of course, governance is about much more than the controversies that fill meeting rooms.
California’s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) requires districts to assess achievement, attendance, facilities, school climate, family engagement, course access, staffing, special education, mental health, safety, and whether different groups of students are being well served.
Good trustees should be able to ask whether a program is working without trying to redesign it from the dais. They should be able to recognize a disturbing result without turning one number into a districtwide catastrophe, and they should also be willing to look honestly at areas that need attention rather than hide behind LBUSD’s overall reputation.
Being a strong district does not mean every decision is strong or every student is getting what they need.
Labor relations require the same kind of judgment. Support for teachers and classified staff is not measured by appreciation posts or friendly comments during meetings. It shows up in bargaining priorities, workload, staffing, compensation, benefits, communication, and whether the board respects the people who actually do the work.
Trustees need to understand the district’s financial position, retention challenges, staffing needs, and long-term obligations. They should give clear and lawful direction to the bargaining team while avoiding side promises, public freelancing, or informal efforts to influence negotiations outside the established process.
A person can genuinely care about teachers and still be terrible at labor relations. Caring is important, but knowing how the process works is also important.
The board’s relationship with the public requires a similar balance.
A board meeting is not an open-ended town hall. The board has an agenda to complete, decisions to make, and legal requirements to follow, but public comment is still part of the meeting’s real work. It is not a formality everyone has to sit through before the important people begin talking.
The community does not get to direct staff or control every decision. At the same time, these are public schools, and the public has every right to question how they are being governed.
Trustees need ways to hear from people without assuming that the fullest room represents the entire community, but they also need to avoid the opposite mistake of treating criticism as an annoyance or a threat.
Public opinion is information, and it belongs in the decision alongside law, data, professional expertise, student needs, and financial realities. The board then has to explain what it decided and why, especially when the answer is not what the loudest group wanted.
None of this works well without the right temperament.
Trustees will disagree. That is normal and often healthy. The issue is whether they can disagree without making every conflict personal, ask hard questions without humiliating staff, and accept a vote without spending the next several months trying to undermine the result. They also need to resist the urge to turn every complaint they agree with into a direct assignment for the superintendent.
Winning an election also does not make someone an instant expert in finance, instruction, law, facilities, transportation, labor, special education, and every other corner of district operations. There is nothing wrong with admitting you need to learn something before deciding it.
Humility is not a side benefit of this job; it is part of being competent at it.
Other districts offer useful examples. Ohio’s Cleveland Metropolitan uses goals and guardrails to distinguish between the outcomes the board monitors and the operational boundaries staff must follow. Washington’s Issaquah uses written expectations and public monitoring reports. Virginia’s Fairfax County has invested in explanations that help the public understand complicated decisions.
None of this is revolutionary; it is simply more organized than waiting for a controversy and then deciding where the boundary should have been.
LBUSD already has some of the right pieces. The district uses public bargaining proposals, fiscal disclosures, hearings, and ratification procedures.
Those processes can feel slow and tedious when everything is moving smoothly. Their purpose becomes much easier to appreciate the moment someone wants to bypass them.
This is the foundation I plan to use when evaluating future board candidates.
Can the person explain the difference between governance and management without giving a vague answer about “leadership”? What would they do after losing a vote? When should the board defer to professional staff? How should the board respond when the loudest public demand conflicts with legal obligations, budget realities, student needs, or a staff recommendation? Do they believe adopted policies still apply when those policies slow the outcome they prefer?
Those answers will tell us far more than another campaign statement about transparency, excellence, or putting students first. Nearly every candidate will claim those values. The revealing part is what they do when those values pull in different directions.
Some warning signs are easier to spot.
A candidate talks much more about what the board is legally allowed to do than about when restraint is appropriate. Policies and bylaws suddenly become flexible whenever they interfere with a preferred outcome. The candidate promises to fix operational problems without showing any understanding of the board’s actual role. The superintendent is discussed as though each trustee personally supervises the position.
Other warning signs are quieter. A candidate uses the word transparency constantly but cannot explain confidentiality or public-meeting law. One isolated data point becomes the entire story of the district. Uncomfortable information is dismissed because LBUSD remains strong overall.
I will be listening closely to how candidates talk about staff. Praise is easy, but respect shows up in how someone discusses workload, morale, bargaining, professional expertise, and the limits of their own authority.
Poor governance has a very good publicist: role confusion becomes responsiveness, an incomplete process becomes efficiency, and meeting the legal minimum becomes transparency. The label changes, but the underlying habit remains the same: use the power first and explain it later.
My children are at the beginning of their time in this district, so I am less interested in who wins a board argument this month than in whether LBUSD remains stable, trusted, and well run for the next decade.
I am looking for trustees who understand the law and use their authority responsibly. I want people who value public input without allowing whoever fills the room to govern by volume, who provide serious oversight without directing day-to-day operations, and whose support for staff lasts through bargaining season.
I also want transparency before decisions are made, not only after the result has been announced.
Before deciding whom to support, I want to know whether candidates understand the responsibilities of the role and have the judgment to exercise them well.
Laguna Beach will be better served by a board that can work collectively, respect professional roles, follow its own processes, and keep the district’s long-term health in view.
A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.
For nearly two years, Laguna Beach has been told that governance matters.
Our policies and bylaws matter.
Transparency and process matters.
At least, that was the pitch to help elect Sheri Morgan and Howard Hills. It justified all of their governance committees, policy reviews, legal questions, public criticism of district leadership, and hours of board meetings spent debating how LBUSD should operate.
The promise was simple enough: institutions are stronger when decisions are made through transparent, established processes instead of the preferences of a few people in power.
Then came May 14, 2026, when a new superintendent was appointed. Suddenly, the process has become negotiable.
This is not a story about whether Dr. Don Austin is qualified, and it’s not even really a story about whether the board had the legal authority to appoint him. School boards have broad authority to hire superintendents, and no one needs to pretend otherwise.
The question is not whether the board had power, but how they used it.
For Howard Hills, his governance obsession did not begin when he was sworn in. For more than a decade, he has shown up around LBUSD with questions about leadership, process, board authority, and whether the district was following the rules closely enough. Howard built a public identity around governance language.
Sheri Morgan’s record fits inside the same frame. Her political brand has been transparency, access, and community voice. She has presented herself as someone trying to pull LBUSD out of a closed-door culture and into a more responsive, public-facing one. Whether you agreed with her or not, the pitch was clear: the old way was too insulated, too controlled, too dismissive of the community.
In 2026, that governance language became formal board work. LBUSD approved an Ad Hoc Governance Committee to review the district’s governance processes, including the clarity, organization, and alignment of board bylaws and policies with CSBA models, statutes, and board-adopted norms. Howard led the charge to create this committee because he insisted that governance structure mattered.
LBUSD’s own Board Bylaw 9310 says board policies are adopted to set clear procedural expectations for district governance. It says policies are binding unless they conflict with law or collective bargaining agreements. The district’s policy manual is supposed to be the framework for how the board governs.
But then Board Policy 2120 became inconvenient.
On June 4, 2026, Sheri Morgan defended the superintendent appointment by arguing that the prior superintendent search had not expired. According to her, the district had already conducted an extensive search less than a year earlier, Dr. Austin had stated he was part of that process, and restarting the work would be unnecessary, expensive, and fiscally irresponsible.
“There is no statute of limitations,” Sheri said. “There is no expiration date on that search process from less than one year ago. Restarting that process and redoing that work is not required by law or policy.”
She also said repeating a search that cost more than $50,000 and took four months would be “fiscally irresponsible.”
That is one argument. However, Howard Hills made another.
He did not simply argue that the policy had been satisfied. He actually argued that the policy was not mandatory.
“The bylaw is not mandatory and it’s not compulsive,” Hills said. Then he went further, saying the board could appoint a superintendent “any way the board wants to do it and any time.”
After all the speeches, all the policy debates, all the governance lectures, all the concern about procedure and institutional standards, Howard suddenly announced that the superintendent-search policy was not compulsory and that the board could, essentially, however it wanted, appoint a superintendent.
Funny how flexible governance becomes when it finally applies to them.
If Howard had never spent years questioning governance, if Sheri had never built her case around transparency, if the board had not created a committee around policy alignment and board-adopted norms, this might read like an ordinary disagreement over how much process is enough.
But that is not the record.
The record is a board majority that used process as both sword and shield until the moment process pointed back at them.
Dr. Joan Malczewski put the concern plainly during the June 4, 2026 board meeting. Search processes exist so institutions can protect themselves from the weaknesses of individual decision-making. They protect against bias, generate better information, create buy-in, and, most importantly, protect the institution and the person being hired.
A superintendent search process is not only about finding a good person. It is about creating legitimacy around the choice.
Joan was not informed that Don Austin was a candidate until the May 14, 2026 closed session, when she was met with a motion to hire him. She said she had no prior information that conversations were happening, no knowledge that negotiations were underway, and no role in determining a start date.
This was not a board-led process; it was a majority-led outcome.
There is a difference.
And that brings us to Dee Perry. Most conversations about the current board majority focus on Howard and Sheri, which makes sense. They speak the most, drive the arguments, and attract the heat.
But they cannot govern alone.
The majority is three votes, and their third vote is Dee Perry.
Dee’s role is quieter, but it is not smaller. She often appears surprised, uncomfortable, or only partially informed. She can seem adjacent to the controversy rather than central to it. But when the vote matters, Dee Perry is not a spectator; she seals everyone’s fate.
Howard and Sheri can argue, posture, explain, defend, and accuse. This allows Dee to remain aloof and pretend to be just a passenger along for the ride. And when she says she was “a little bit in the dark,” that does not make the vote easier for us to swallow. It should make it more concerning. If a trustee is unsure, uninformed, or surprised by how a major decision reached the board, that is the moment to slow the process down, not hand it the final vote it needs.
Dee may not be driving the car, but she keeps handing the keys to Howard and Sheri.
The board majority can keep saying this was about stability. They can say it was about saving money and avoiding another long search. They can say Dr. Austin was already vetted, so the policy was not mandatory. They can say the law allowed it.
Maybe some of that is true, but none of it answers the larger questions.
If governance mattered enough to build a political brand around it, why did it stop mattering here?
If policies matter when Howard and Sheri are criticizing district staff, former board members, or prior decisions, why do they become advisory when Howard already has the votes?
If transparency is the standard, why was the public asked to accept the explanation after the decision rather than being included beforehand?
And if Dee really was “a little bit in the dark,” why was she still comfortable becoming the light that turned the whole thing green?
This is about whether the board majority is willing to hold itself to the same governance standard it spent the last two years demanding from everyone else.
On June 2, 2026, William Breit and Kathleen Christoff filed a civil-rights complaint against the Laguna Beach Unified School District in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Southern Division) as Case No. 8:26-cv-01418.
The complaint pleads three claims arising from the February 26, 2026 board vote that relocated the 2026 Laguna Beach High School graduation from Guyer Field to the Irvine Bowl: violation of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. §12132), violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. §794), and violation of California Government Code §11135.
The plaintiffs are described as mobility-disabled invitees of graduating students. The complaint alleges the Irvine Bowl (maximum capacity ~2,600) provides only 11 wheelchair-accessible spaces and 12 companion seats, clustered in three non-dispersed areas, with steep approach and interior circulation, and that the district relocated the ceremony without a pre-vote ADA accessibility evaluation.
It seeks declaratory relief and a temporary restraining order plus preliminary and permanent injunction barring graduation at the Irvine Bowl, and attorneys’ fees, and states a separate U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights complaint had already been filed. Counsel is Dykema Gossett LLP (James S. Azadian, Christine Mardikian, David Ter-Petrosyan).
Laguna Beach City Council Majority: Out-Of-Control & Needlessly Expensive Acquisitions
The unicumber, like 4 of our LBCC members, is spineless and has no central nervous system with a clearly visible brain either.
So too the unicumber apparently survives having only a digestive tract. In other words, our Council intakes, digests and processes money and power instead of micro-organisms, excretes the waste unnecessary for its survival—in the cases of the 133, Highway 1 & parking structures, our Council “waste discharges” our precious money into an infinite, alarming future.
These acquisitions (identified as “Projects” herein) constitute fiscal suicide. The funding and goals, the objectives expressed for the 133 and Highway 1/PCH Projects never needed to be pursued in the way they are presently, basically gambling that eventually we’d get what we want.
Investing shouldn’t carry the mark of the economic devil beast: Speculative wagers.
Michele Monda (in the LB Independent) has noted and been clarion-calling, pounding the warning drum out about this in recent columns: Between acquisition sticker prices added to specific alterations/improvements added to ongoing O&M costs, these 2 road movies involve hundreds of millions of $$$ in commitments today, into tomorrow and the next day and day after that.
Betting with house money (ours) that we can assume ownership and then it’s “X-mas Wish List City,” free presents under the tree. Ah yes, Laguna Beach City Council, where gross sum debt service is a way of life!
Bob (What, Me Worry?) Whalen going to a PUC hearing recently, kow-towing, begging for utility under-grounding in the Canyon (public safety and open space hazard issues) or Alex (Frat Boy Wonder) Rounaghi unethically cutting deals behind closed doors with politicians of questionable character and integrity aren’t the most efficient or least expensive path forward.
Rogue Council members, renowned for their myopia and invertebrate leanings, aren’t the funding ambassadors we should be using. As a regional, state and international destination, these Barney Fife’s aren’t capable of entering into high digit, underwriting procurement negotiations.
In Rounaghi’s case, as outed by Michele Monda, who asked him to do this in ex parte chats before his anointment as our representative was discussed at a public hearing? No, not at end of a LBCC meeting when everyone’s left or is half-asleep. At the beginning, and an action item: See who votes to delegate such a negotiation role broaching the transfer of ownership.
The French politician Georges Clemenceau said that “War is too important to be left to the generals.” PCH and the 133 are too important to have Whalen and Rounaghi, diplomatic rubes, grovel, ramble about on bended knee.
Hiring a very good lobbyist firm who is ensconced in Sacramento, has experience in infrastructure, socializes continuously with key committee members in DC, in our legislature and Governor’s Offices could, for a fraction of those millions, get us what we want.
That’s how and why they stay in business, by succeeding. And their competitive portfolio successes can be readily accessed and appraised. If failures, they disappear, capitalistic survival of the fittest.
They often work behind the scenes, including connections with elected aides and other staff. They get the eyes and ears of officials that our Councilmembers might not ever reach let alone even be aware of. The corridors and back alleys of power are their “native habitat” as it were.
If that disturbs anyone, then grow up: Pragmatically, this is where the political system is, and as we’re no longer a village or funky town but an increasingly urbanized city, we need to (as native Californian Joan Didion put it) “Play it as it lays.” Wake up and smell today’s reality coffee.
Co-authored grants and earmarked funds in partnership with Caltrans/DOT, plus US Department of Transportation/Commerce could provide supplemental money needed to make both arteries achieve our community’s targets, the outcomes we’d all like to see.
So spending a few million instead seems intelligent—except our Big 4, like the unicumber, appear to lack any higher cerebral organs between them: Like the Scarecrow in Oz said to Dorothy, if they only had a brain.
Under the National Highway System mandates, states are encouraged to focus federal funds on improving the efficiency and safety of this network. The 133 is on this list.
And why didn’t we get the 133 (Laguna Canyon Road) also listed as a State Scenic Route, like Highway 1 (PCH) long ago? Or is this Council poised to permit yet more blight, more fiascos like Louis Longi’s Work/Live Folly which a SSR listing could preclude?
Considering these 2 major arteries facilitate both county and state transportation, i.e., transiting critical top commerce turf needs along our So Cal coast and especially assist tourism (of which the state gets a piece of the industry action), why do we need to purchase them?
They’re assets and big ticket liabilities that we can do without. We can get the improvements, the cosmetic and infrastructural alterations we seek without buying them…..thus uncomplicated solutions.
We’ve already financially sacrificed by our open space acquisitions that benefit everyone, by our community’s protective vigilance.
We just need to hire the right lobbyists to work their “candidate funding” magic behind the Sacramento and Washington D.C. curtains. In my field (the water utility industry), this is SOP, yet here our country bumpkin, just-fell-off-the-turnip truck Council history thrives and proliferates.
The utilities I work around keep their lobbyists on retainer, and “job out” grant writing. Who writes our grants and what expertise do they really have, especially in the transportation funding area?
Hiring lobbyists for a fraction of the costs of ownership could, within a few years, get BOTH of our main arteries listed, certified in BOTH categories, hence qualify ASAP for the ducats.
CalTrans can’t very well complain if we help find the money, make it part of the decision tree equation, can they? They’ll be happy to hear us stop whining and griping.
Contemporaneously, lobbyists could petition for funds to underwrite the changes we wish to see from other “buckets” like beautification, without massive $$$ encumbrances or post-ownership acquisition O&M costs.
Certainly Les Miklosy’s mobility concept elements can be integrated, “efficiency and safety” implemented, can’t they?
Laguna can achieve its reasonable goals and objectives regarding PCH and the 133 without a veritable tsunami of red ink.
“There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: The bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.” Frederick Bastiat 1850
One can’t help but assume those parking structure Projects are like the pyramids of Egypt, meant to glorify the hubris of leadership yet fly in the face of fiscal prudence, hundreds of millions wasted on visible yet seldom used urbanization homages.
Laguna isn’t just an ideal, dream destination for over 7 million visitors each year: We bring in a lot of money, dispersed across County, State and even national coffer lines. Some here have embraced what a few internationally famous places do: Entrance fees!
We don’t need to do instigate or initiate that “tolling” tactic. And we don’t need to buy the infrastructure that assists those visitations and makes radiated commuting a more modern, pleasant and efficient endeavor (presently more like a Disney adventure ride).
Well, shouldn’t these same beneficiaries I’ve mentioned help us modernize, preserve and protect Laguna as THEIR asset, worthy of diverted, earmarked funding? Not in speculation but in the form of an investment in its viable future?
Seems to me what’s missing is any open, transparent discussion of alternatives like lobbyists, but we’re stuck like a fly in amber with archaic, old school methodologies: Sic transit gloria mundi Laguna Beach City Council.
The Rude Ambushed The Civil, Meek and Mild-Mannered
The Promenade is only the first exploitative step in the “Uber-commodification” of Laguna: It’s all about the Benjamin’s under the present CC, the dismantling and reassemblage of this quintessentially eclectic, funky surf So Cal gem formerly know as Laguna openly in the name of more affluent visitors, a CC seated and fiscally driven by “crony capitalism.”
As a veteran of numerous confrontations with city, county and water district officials back in my eco-NGOs prime (1998—2004), the “Review & File” item on the 4/28/2026 CC agenda held several “tells” for me.
Wasteland Aerial View Facing South Post-Op Terminus of Forest Upper Center; Is Only 2m Above Mean Sea Level (Jeff Gretchen OCR)
The City’s 2 main pilot fish were front and center for support—and to chastise those whom they didn’t agree with, came to neutralize after applying liberal gobs of chapstick, getting petted and stroked as lapdogs with a “Whose a good boy, huh?” from their masters.
Review & File means: It won’t have any action elements, nothing’s really gonna happen, no parts or whole voted upon. Once opened up for public comments after a brief Power Point and statement by the City Manager, it was as I thought, away we go to the City’s Wonderland reality.
It was difficult to ignore the repeated allegations of vitriolic language and unprecedented rudeness (“J’accuse”), the lies aimed at the SOTS (Save Our Trees) cabal that kept spewing from the mouths of these egotistical self-appointed community leaders. 2 in particular as obnoxious, bellicose and insulting as I’ve ever heard them. Recruited City Hall smack-asses talking smack! They reset the bar, next stop? The sludgy bottom after the worship, the ring-kissing and groveling.
The accusations they rained down were ironic: They comported themselves in the compost-like manner that they accused their perceived opponents of—You spot it? You got it! You smelt it, you dealt it, you old homers.
Wasteland Post-Op Surgery (Jeff Gritchen OCR)
I think the justified language and vehemence used by righteously outraged, gut-punched residents at the confrontation the night of the slaughter (aka Midnight Massacre) was being conflated with this CC meeting on purpose. This MM attendance was being held to the actions of others. These 2 senior citizens seemed to have confused the venues and attendees, twisting real events with their paranoia for their masters, lapdogs that these 2 are.
What others said several weeks previously at an entirely different venue and under different traumatic circumstances was, twisted, distorted, misdirected and rife with alternative facts. IOW, seemed like these septuagenarians just made crap up…..Needed their late nighty-night meddies, tucked in at an assisted care facility? Were you never young, passionate and motivated to mobilization. Boring, no wonder you’re still boring.
And the lead off tear jerker from the City Manager was hysterical. The same man who had informed many of the officials in City in the know in advance of the butchery and performed a blatant lie of omission. A lot of faith and trust with the public, if there ever was much, evaporated.
He didn’t tell them that within a hour of the MM Zoom meeting, the klieg lights, chain saws and chippers would come out down at the Promenade, the 8 trees cut off at their stumps, the trunks and branches chopped up and hauled away. One eucalyptus had already toppled at the roots a month before.
Always after the fact, the City vivisectionists eventually admitted that they anticipated the turmoil, alerted the PD, prepared for a tide of emotional community-wide response.
Obviously the CM’s “adorbs” little speech was covert emotional manipulation, meant to not only deflect some of his responsibility and the CC’s but make it more difficult to criticize a seemingly humbled man, upset on par with the community.Yeah, sure.
For newbies especially, an inherent suspicion of deceptive behavior for advantage by their own officials is foreign. So congrats on losing your virginity. You’ll remember such a peak experience, especially don’t forget the Judas-like betrayal.
Buffering is what happened that night of the CC update meeting, immediately raising an emotional barrier, a redirection or deflection, an attentuation of anger or rage worked. Just as a mother dove fakes a broken wing in the wilderness to draw a predator away from her chicks, so too the CM fell on his sword, took the blame to distract those present.
Here was a “mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” from on high. I was watching on cable tv, his face wasn’t shown but I swear I heard faint sobbing or sniveling (how adores), to emphasize that he’s suffering too (I feel you) after seeing those trees from our collective history disappear.
By the end of the topic’s discussion, everybody seemed remorseful and contritious, almost weepy, Kumbaya, Guantanamera, whatevs. So the City strategy seemed a sublimely coercive one, by the CM and CC getting the room to feel sorry for and forgive themselves, recruit organized public commenters; overly-forceful ones and punitive at that.
The activists were relatively few, pell-mell, gentle and sincere. I saw measured frustration and anger, patience that my edgy NGO CLEAN WATER NOW would have never shown. I saw/heard neither incivility or contrived disruption.
As for those responsible and supportive of the City’s blindside sneak attack on the trees, who for one minute believed their own propaganda, enobled a CC and praised them as if brave decisive heroes, you must go through a lot of chapstick.
Denigrating and demeaning people exercising their rights (many for the first time from accounts), it felt as though the most venomous were clearly rehearsed. Brownie points were being scored and archived, banked for future leveraging (political graft and influence) right there in Chambers.
And puh-leeze. Declaring this THE best CC ever is absurd. If they were, they would’ve created a path with options (off ramps) in 2024 that supported a let Laguna vote initiative and then abided by that will. They’re deep into crony capitalism and wiping the City we’ve all loved off the map. Bring in the affluent.
They even took a lot of Promenade oversight out of regulatory domain via exemptions. That the majority of residents didn’t want it, were willing to take it to the streets, intimidated them.
The dominant body of the SAVE PLANET LAGUNA tree huggers didn’t show up in great numbers, the more hard core seemed MIA–but maybe they read the tea leaves. Done deal. Perhaps a younger, not yet coalesced crowd, a new constellation with a different style will emerge “NEXT GEN 3.0?”
Watching from home, unfortunately, was painful, like watching a car wreck in slo-mo, but deja vu as well. Being reminded of how totally bogus and phony government is from my early years (late 90s), the “tells” added up, so I don’t blame the more committed, the more hard core to sit that one out in anticipation of more irresponsible acts to follow (and more WILL follow), watch their own officials wiggle their way out of further accountability fallout.
I think the tree slaughter triggered some of the same intrinsic, visceral responses I remembered from my water quality actionist history. Power doesn’t necessarily corrupt but it does attract the corruptible. I would comment that those in the room who only paid lip service (recruited by CC as suck-up shills) but didn’t experience the inner trauma in horror, you probably never have nor will.
One thing seemed unavoidable: The City had totally screwed up regarding that PR and communications aspect. The CM said the buck stopped with him? Then he needs to begin looking for another job elsewhere.
Moreover, it might have been a Brown Act violation (or multiple), the City having intentionally withheld information that the public had every legal right to be aware of along the dispositive route, plus the way that the CM and CC had communicated in irregular manners.
Gotta wonder what else has been withheld: What else don’t we know and when won’t we know it?
“The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.” Brown Act
The schism this deflective shielding created ( a Klingon type cloaking device), the division it unleashed or at least antagonized, and yes the hostility as a function of fatal lapses of human appreciation of Nature and community sensitivity, was one of the CM’d first stress tests: And he failed. We’re all advised, never start out a relationship with a lie.
You’d have to be extremely naive to believe that part of his duties isn’t to be a fall guy like Tuesday night, the scape goat when required. It’s not spelled out in a CM’s contract, but it’s a known element by those in the know. He buffers, takes the spotlight and heat off the CC.
And BTW, his job entails thespian services, act as if he serves you, he feels your distress, is empathetic to your plight when interfacing—-Pathetic posing is more like it, he doesn’t see himself as working for you, he works for who signs his hefty paycheck, a 3 member majority of the CC. So he only needs to be able to count to 3. He’s just not that into you.
For my part, I hope to not only educate in these columns, drawing upon my 30 years of what I call “actionism,” my professional portfolio, but my eco-consultant/analyst skills and experiences acquired, plus my NGOs “institutional knowledge.”
Here’s one stop shopping for all things great and small, Sea Level Rise in Laguna Cali. A heavy protein meal, might want to chew and digest it slowly: coastal.ca.gov/climate/slr/
I’ve tasked myself, as my last rodeo, my final enviro-campaign, with turning this into a “wedge issue” for the 2026 LBCC race. If only 1 candidate figures out the can of worms potential, makes it their own, it opens a Pandora’s box the CC and their friendlies will have trouble closing.
Wresting control away from these greedy wolves in sheep’s clothing (Commerce First, Resident’s Last) can be done. And at the end of the day, command and control is the bottom line. That’s what happened, what disturbed City Hall earlier this week. They lost control and that frightens, that threatens them.
“Some people will rob you with a 6-gun, some with a fountain pen.” Woody Guthrie
They’re the fountain pen type, a “Take Back Laguna” movement needs kick-starting. Eradicate the now prevalent “crony capitalism.”en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism
Flip the flipping CC as flipping fast as flipping possible, seize the next few years and begin unraveling, dismantling as much of the damage already done or in planning as possible.
Ex.: The vendor analyst who presented at the Scoping SessionWorkshop for the Downtown Phase II EIR lied. He said that his firm was told to “model” for 450-675 units, but that upper # was capped, wouldn’t be built out beyond 450.
Maybe the lower #, enough to fulfill the State minimum of394. Liar liar pants of fire, once again he does his master’s bidding, whomever signs his corporation’s check is his boss, not us. That too was like many presentations, we call them “dog ‘n pony shows” to dupe the interested parties
Once the EIR is certified and officially filed with the State, it’ll be a gold rush in the holler. Nellie bar the door, the back door and counter at Community Development and Building Dept., kept from the public negotiations to the maximum extent possible will start. Not transparent, those cronies will get the inside rail. As will FORMER CC members.
I come from the enviro-review industry, believe me via an addendum or amendment to the certified, Final EIR, it’s EZ PZ to jack it up to that upper modeling #. That’s the entire idea, that’s this CC’s goal.
Translation: Offer the incentive of building all units in one centralized area, and then Mayor Mark Orgill along with the CM declared to the room, sadly, there was no alternative. BS.
He might run for re-election 1 time, having the advantage of incumbency. That’s because he needs to complete HIS check list, what HE will need in place when he steps down and puts his developer hat back on. Turning Downtown gold into his retirement platinum, heritage wealth.
All of our mitigation bucks on one path: The over-development, the inappropriate and catastrophic Downtown nightmare. Like major cosmetic surgery, an extreme makeover, take that old familiar friend we knew and loved, make her a Kardasian, the trendoid pneumatic botox and silicon type to bring the affluent into an area so horrendously under-parked as to boggle the mind.
The vibe of Laguna most of us have enjoyed over the years (visitors too) kind of a kicked back, casual Mexico-meets-Hawaii deal will be eradicated. Those aren’t the market they seek—They’ve openly stated that it’s the affluent they’re rebuilding for.
When MO ran for CC he alleged that he was no longer a developer, a real estate entrepreneur, that puts a lie to that claim. Enter-The-Manure. All of the affected “paternal ‘tude,” like the CM’s “I feel you” is a scam, a con, while they and their developer BFFs carve up Downtown on planning boards and spreadsheets.
Sound familiar, it’s like the trees, sorry to break it to you, noalternative. Really? Notice how little choice they offer? It’s our Canyon Creek’s flood plain, the first place in town after the Promenade as a crash test dummy, the first to likely exhibit the deleterious effects, the symptoms of sea level rise.
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Heard anyone in City Hall broach the subject of a Sea Level Rising Adaptation Plan in reference to CIPs planned, yet more pimping of Laguna? So all of these Downtown development plans but no mention or acknowledgement of the calamitous sword of Damocles hovering, how will the City protect Downtown from the rising tide? Are they gonna wait until surf is rolling into The Rivian during a King High Tide, ’cause that’s ground zero?
Fact: from the foot of Forest down to Broadway, PCH is between 6-9 feet above Mean Seal Level (MSL). The ocean’s rising about 1″/year, many university study groups are recalibrating, scientists now feel it’s been rising faster these past few years, intruding further inland horizontally but also filtering into our groundwater, accelerating.
It’s going to take a lot of brain time and beaucoup $$$ to develop a cure or remedy protection plan. Yet they keep writing blank checks for frivolous, luxury CIPs in both Downtown and at Aliso, the 2 lowest, most vulnerable points.
And judging by this CC, who is rapidly painting us into a corner as every day that passes leaves us short of dealing head on with tactics or budget allowances, don’t bet on them letting us have a proactive or preemptive choice, just like The Promenade.
Barring a miracle our next 1-2 gens of taxpayers’ll be paying their dues. They’ll leave with the tab running and responsibility in your children’s laps. And a slew of new brushed concrete 2 and 3 story buildings Downtown that will convert a formerly funky So Cal coastal surf village icon into a totally boojie leggos dump.
Them? They’ll be dead or retired elsewhere, leaving their messes behind. Their crony capitalist pals fatter, richer, including MO after he leaves CC. And a city now on the precipice of BK, will be under water both literally and fiscally. “Lively up yourself.”
Once again, browse this link, look at the HUGE expenditures that’ll be needed to protect Downtown. These political hacks, every election cycle, declare that public safety is the top priority.coastal.ca.gov/climate/slr/
Shouldn’t we begin developing our Sea Level Rise Adaptation Plan now instead of securing massive development building block entitlements.
Wouldn’t it be supremely stupid to start building/rebuilding first, then plan? That’s the present CC: “Dare To Be Stupid.”
NEXTCHAPTER: What the grotty future Downtown skyline and streets might resemble, what the demanding and unique construction dynamics for urban renewal might be, plus the mass indemnification intrigue.
I’ll also reveal how the City can increase the additional 450units up to that 650 inventory (by Addendum or Amendment), pimping Laguna….Addenda without a public hearing or public review, amendment via a Revised/Subsequent EIR or or separate Mitigated Neg Declaration.
It’s Mourning In Laguna: No mas aloha. Hola, Bienvenidos Gordon “Greed Is Good” Gekko.
By George Weiss
I was shocked during last Friday’s six-hour Strategic Planning Meeting to discover an agenda item discussing the potential repurposing of the historic Laguna Beach County Water District (LBCWD) headquarters on Forest Avenue. Even more concerning, the City failed to inform Water District officials that this discussion would take place, nor did they provide notice when the topic was briefly raised at the January 27th City Council meeting. Does that bother anyone?
Historical Context & Governance For context, the LBCWD serves 80% of Laguna residents and became a city subsidiary roughly 20 years ago, with the City Council acting as its Board of Directors. The Water District is a pillar of our history, having celebrated its 100th Anniversary in 2025. It supplied water prior to the city’s 1927 incorporation—a crucial resource that allowed Laguna Beach to develop where Spanish explorers had previously avoided settling.
Why a New Compensation Study Misses the Mark City Expenses are Outpacing Revenues
Courtesy of George Weiss’ Substack, a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support George’s work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
On January 13th, the City Council held a study session with an HR consultant to review findings on staff compensation and job classifications. Although the City has not conducted such a study in twenty years, the findings were surprisingly positive. The consultant confirmed that Laguna Beach is well-positioned: midpoint salaries are at 100% of the market average, and maximums are at 104%.
As a result of increasing staff size from 2015-25 by 35% and increasing staff compensation the city budget is approaching a financial tipping point. For the second year in a row, expenses will outstrip funding, largely driven by increases in staff wages and compensation. Furthermore, our unfunded pension liabilities currently sit at over $88 million, and if current trends hold rise to $114 million by 2031 or higher if no remedial action is taken.
Given these financial realities, we must ask: Does a well-compensated workforce translate to superior service? In my humble opinion, it has not.
The Risk of “Market Adjustments”
History suggests that adopting compensation studies overwhelmingly results in significant, multi-million dollar increases to budgets. Realigning positions to market rates often necessitates an overall increase in personnel costs, even when the goal is simply “internal equity”. Since the City is already at 100% of the market average, we can only hope that further compensation hikes will not be the outcome when the recommendations return for a vote in late February or March. Attend if you can.
How Employees are Paid Now: (from the staff report)
It is important to understand that City employees already obtain higher pay and enhanced benefits through several robust processes:
● Collective Bargaining: Legally binding MOUs set specific terms for wages and benefits.
● Merit-Based & Promotional Increases: Employees typically receive annual step increases, with potential for faster advancement or a 5% raise upon promotion.
● Performance Pay: Management can award up to 5% of gross salary for exceptional performance.
● Add-ons & Stipends: Public safety roles earn extra for certifications, and employees receive stipends for cell phones ($80), internet ($50), and tuition reimbursement.
● Market Adjustments: Periodic studies ensure salaries remain competitive, such as the Council’s determination that Police officers be in the top quartile of Orange County.
The Debate at the Study Session:
During the session, at the request of Councilman Alex Rounaghi, the consultant suggested a “Hybrid Model”. Under this system, employees would advance via steps to the midpoint of their job pay scale, (market rate) based on time and competency, but any increases beyond the midpoint would be strictly performance-based.
While Rounaghi favored this model, Councilmember Sue Kempf pushed back. She warned that merit pay often devolves because “management just wants everybody to get something,” arguing instead that ambitious standards and culture drive performance more than complex pay schemes.
Councilmember Kempf is right. Research shows that without proper leadership and training, complex performance systems are risky and prone to failure. Currently, our HR Department and City management have not demonstrated the professional rigor required to manage such a system effectively.
The Unaddressed Problem is Leadership:
We have a clear example of how high pay fails to solve workplace issues. Irvine has the highest compensation plan for police officers in OC, with Laguna Beach second. Despite high compensation, LBPD has struggled to recruit from other Orange County cities for over 30 years. This recruitment challenge is not about money; it is due to a substandard workplace culture. Securing two horses for police service will not fix it.
We have not often enough attracted the “best and brightest” because the City’s work environment is substandard and suffers from poor leadership at City Council and Sr. Management at City Hall. As Councilmember Kempf argued persuasively, high standards and culture drive performance, not just compensation.
Conclusion:
“Cultural change precedes political and social change. You need a shift in thinking before you can have a shift in direction. You need a different spiritual climate, one grounded in humility, institutional wisdom and energy.” David Brooks, NY Times
If we focus on leadership and creating a healthy workplace culture, performance will improve, attrition will slow, and efficiency will rise. City Hall must become a better m place to work if it is to retain and attract talented employees that believe in public service. This must be the priority before we spend more money on consulting studies or risk adopting complex pay models, we are ill-equipped to manage.
The City’s financial situation is not healthy and action must be taken to forestall a financial crisis. New taxes were discussed at the City Council’s Strategic Planning session too. That won’t be accepted by voters considering that city’s general fund (local taxes) increased incrementally from by 36.5 million from 2015 to 2025. Every year the City Council finds ways to spend all the money and additional staffing accounts for a significant share. This is an election year and the members of the city council got us into financial difficulties need to be held accountable.
The Promenade, Term Limits, Mayors, City Managers, Needless Parking Structures: Will Council Stifle Any Opposition To Its Orwellian Vision?
Courtesy of the Laguna Beach Patch – view article here
By Roger Bütow
Tyranny Of The Majority: Laguna Beach City Council Is A Classic Case
“The tyranny of the majority (or tyranny of the masses) is an inherent weakness to majority rule in which the majority of an electorate pursues exclusively its own objectives at the expense of those of the minority factions. This results in oppression of minority groups comparable to that of a tyrant or despot.” John Stuart Mill (ON LIBERTY—1859).
Although the phrase “tyranny of the majority” is commonly attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville as he pondered the emerging democracy in America in the mid-1800s, Founding Father John Adams had expressed a similar concern nearly 75 years earlier.
In fact, many of the arguments opposing “uni-cameral sovereignty” (singular body rule) led to our 3 Branches of governance, an attempt at ensuring that type of oppression and suppression of dissenting, minority voices did not ever evolve.
Check and balances that lasted until the general election in 2000. As the OC Grand Jury has no dispositive power, barring OC DA or California AG investigations or indictments, locally we’re pretty much stuck with Laguna voter’s bad choices.
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Perhaps Edmund Burke, a contemporary of our Founding Fathers, stated it more succinctly: “The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.”
In Laguna, many angry community watchdogs are outraged because they feel themselves to be a unique resistance movement, previously inured to the centralized excesses of power and corruption rampant elsewhere. Which we weren’t, we aren’t, and we won’t ever be.
Like typical cities having only 1 body, there’s nothing to moderate or buffer council dictatorship eras and regimes. Outcomes are inevitable, so yes, tyranny has, is and will happen here.
De Tocqueville rang the alarm bell, the core of this tyranny making decisions for an entire population bases its claim to rule upon majority numbers, not upon ethical correctness or democratic, rational excellence.
One need not go far to find this form of entitled mob rule in City Council Chambers. Personified by the dominance of gavel-hoarders BobySue Whalen and SueyBob Kempf, everything from committee, board and commission citizen appointments, to temporary committees on through delegated City Council member liaisons to said entities reflects despotism.
Which creates, actually guarantees a systemically compromised future.
By themselves, both Whalen and Kempf are pretty much gruel or grits—–bland, colorless and lack any pizzazz unless dosed with a condiment. Which is why they’re not the problem in and of themselves, they’re the pimply symptoms of a festering municipal malaise.
Orgill never did get beyond his developer-friendly mindset, i.e., his real estate roots self. Severing his Mo Money Honarkar relationship was in fact only a superficial not substantial sacrifice, didn’t change or alter him genetically. Look for Orgill to launch his own branded foundation or trust.
He fooled a lot of people who now distance themselves or keep praying that he can be lobbied into being a different guy due to electoral buyer’s remorse. He can’t and won’t.
Rounaghi was a glyph or cipherous gamble, intentionally unreadable, elected on some kind of vague hope for youthful invigorating change and had little scrutiny. You know, a child shall lead them. Instead, he’s the same old bossy personality type who concealed himself, cloaked in younger skin, that got us here via older candidates.
He’s neither new or phresh. He looks more like a lost kid who should be asking if you want to supersize that Mac with fries or produce his CDL to buy booze. His Ivy League schooling plus apprenticeships taught him to be manipulative, superficially appear reasonably neutral. Which he’s not.
The Promenade ad hoc is a prime example: Having appointed the Planning Commissioners who’d preside over possibilities or variations, i.e., a foregone conclusion, a pre-disposed bias has been in place these past 4 years. Who cares if the need is not there, if our dictatorial Council says it is?
Those hundreds of millions of dollars for multi-level parking structures? Ditto, first Planning Commission stops, then bogus, flaccid deliberation masquerading as oversight, then Council majority affirmation. Keep interviewing advisors (and spending OUR money) until the subsequent messenger brings back THE pre-ordained message.
The George Weiss transition of power scuffle and flawed passing of the mayoral gavel fiasco is another. Our Mayor Whalen and Mayor Pro Tem Kempf insulted us, refused to let go of the wheel. They gathered support from the other 2 willing accomplices (Orgill and Rounaghi), both with an eye to THEIR future, not ours, and made sure that Weiss’ path was blocked.
Which not only defied traditionally benign gavel-sharing but ignored the thousands who voted him into office to begin with—he was openly viewed and socialized as a long-awaited, ethical reformer. Which meant silencing or at minimum suppressing any empowerment—–possibly burying the audacious, grass roots, barbarians-at-the-gate rebellion indefinitely.
Being in such a 4-1 minority after Toni Iseman left, he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of even becoming Pro Tem. They held the perfunctory hearing with a pre-determined endgame—but insult to injury, all used that venue, couldn’t resist denigrating Weiss as unfit/inappropriate to hold either office, thus nullifying thousands of voters support.
Piling on was pro forma that night, as if any of them was more worthy. Face it, the current council cabal of 4 are “least or lowest common denominator” career politico types and not very bright either. Cunning people get that far gone, not really smart, morally purposed people.
Also arrogant and narcissistic (apparently required traits for politicians), they seem unable to believe that we’re not more accepting and pacifistic.
It might irritate many, but Weiss DOES represent something, he got 5,665 votes…..and that threatening something unnerves and jeopardizes, is a clear and present danger. They let Peter Blake openly excoriate anyone and everyone he chose, but in Weiss’ case they chose to punish him via unworthiness, open denigration and diminishment.
The eventual consequences if Weiss decides to run in 2024? He’ll be portrayed as such a blatant malcontent, a counter-productive extremist and leader of a small vocal group of saboteurs, that he’d be lucky to get re-seated.
The agenda is clear: Regardless if Whalen finally sits down, the fiscal puppeteers behind the rest will try to rotate in more malleable candidates. Kempf, Rounaghi and Orgill will still be tyrants.
Then too, not many first term council people hit the ground running for their first year or so as they observe, orient, decide and then act up, trying to fulfill empty campaign promises they knew were only manipulative tools to get in the door. A newbie will be a marginally not majorly effective agent of change.
“No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of power is power.” ― George Orwell, 1984
That the Big 4 forced us to witness their heavy handedness barely disguised as democratic, reasonable deliberation was just a sleight-of-hand ruse, for show. Fact is, many of us already knew the outcome: SueyBob as Mayor, replacing BobySue, with waiting-in-the-wings Alex The Man Child as Pro Tem.
A forgone conclusion foolishness which only an imbecile or supremely naive local media would swallow. Which the lazy media not only ingested but promulgated by repeating inflammatory insinuations without even cursory criticism or questions.
Allowing City Hall propagandists preferred, free column space to spew the kool-aid is injury hidden as community, public square dialogue and local outlets are guilty guilty guilty.
The OC Register and Daily Pilot reporters just mail it in, so they barely count. Excepting Voice of OC, investigative journalism has been dead for quite some time in SOC.
Things like those big ticket parking structures, along with term limits, reflect high levels of serious concern by residents. Who cares about these impertinent “Inner Circle Interlopers” as long as they’re in the political will short end?
The point is that like The Promendade, for those taking the WE, THE PEOPLE position, they should be allowed the dignity of some self-determination: By refusing to place these things on City ballots, power is sustained and extended.
Keeping these kinds topics off of Council agendas in the first place is preemptively working for the same power mongers. The majority turn these things into zero sum, winner-take-all scams, disenfranchising the thousands who would resist if they understood the insidious nature of the game.
Ex.: The August 2, 2022 Resolution No. 22.066 repealed Resolution No. 68.88 (passed in 1968) is revealing. Though this too was on the late February 2024 docket to be amended, it gives little with the left hand and takes lots from the right: Two (2) LBCC members needed to get a topic on the agenda but unless a 3 member majority supports that, there’ll be no staff report.
We went 54 years and this never came up, once Shohreh Dupuis & her tyrannical masters and flunkies seized power, something that was never broken suddenly needed fixing?
Without that critical element, by refusing to fund staff or 3rd party, independent consultant research, those 2 minority members are handcuffed and hobbled, hindered right out of the gate.
It’s all being hidden behind smoke and mirrors, false allegations that topics would unjustly require funding the City can’t afford. Public stakeholders expressing frustration at microphones won’t supersede or veto the Tyranny of the Majority.
Several million $$$ in surplus each year and the present tyrants claim lack of funds for deep dives and independent peer reviews of critical projects, policies, protocols, procedures or strategies?
These same tyrants are also trying to manipulate the council meeting consent calendar dynamics. A long standing tradition at all levels of governance here in California, of only placing “non-controversial” on that portion of the hearing was important. In the report from the City Manager at the February 27th hearing he describes these as “routine items.”
16 items (WOW!) were on that consent calendar docket. And about 1/2 were pulled, lending credence to the sense that the calendar is another realm subject to mischief. SueyBob and the CM decided to stack the consent calendar deck, clear the field and limit discussion, an anomaly that obviously for once failed.
The tyranny will continue for at least 2 more years: In December Rounaghi will move into the Mayor slot, Orgill into Pro Tem (classic “positioning”) and regardless of the 2024 election, with SueyBob, a majority will remain intact as a voting bloc.
Wunderkind Rounaghi obviously feels particularly entitled, and will probably be a “one off,” i.e., move on, run for higher office. Typical entitled Laguna-bred brat, his narcissism and sense of self importance is there for all to see.
I’ve sat with him casually, he’s a legend in his own mind already, I didn’t find him especially bright, but then let’s face facts: We’re just the first, the lowest rung on his political career ladder. Writing blank checks, supporting bonds or gross expenditures doesn’t faze him because he’ll be gone.
By 2026 some other pro-acquisition, pro-development, pro-commerce candidate will take his place. By then the majority Council tyrants will have buried us in even more irreversible debt: Purchasing the 133 (Laguna Canyon Road) and Pacific Coast Highway should pretty much drown us.
OTOH, we will have our own “Red Sea” of debt, the majority won’t let those pesky operation and maintenance costs, the additional burdens on our community service departments (more personnel, more $$$), or the insurance premiums for such monolithic, greatly expanded elements hinder or deter.
Oh, and of course the inevitable expenditures for litigation: Between the 133 and PCH, we’ll have not only our city attorney’s busy busy busy but probably outsourced firms to defend against ambulance-chasing personal injury/negligent death lawsuits.
Once the “table is set,” it’s not unreasonable to see several million $$$/year spent on that front.
By December of 2026 the building blocks of our house-of-cards, Ponzi Scheme demise will be in place: Now owning everything within our city limits, our LBPD will be “encouraged” to issue more traffic violation citations, parking enforcement more tickets, and of course those greedy little bastards, our parking meter’s rates will go up.
I’m sure there’s more I’m unaware of, all to pay for the additional encumbrances many of us never wanted.
The tyrants will choose the next City Manager very soon, look for that to close any vulnerability loopholes, any challenges proactively. He/she will be made to understand in advance who holds the whip hand, after all, they only need to be able to count to 3.
With assists come liabilities like the acquisition of South Laguna’s beaches and parks, but the tyrants never consider that it’s our future signing those IOUs. They like large dramatic gestures to ensure their immortality, hold some more ribbon-cuttings featuring their faces, place a few more plaques bearing their imperious names.
The biggest surprise of all? That the reformation-minded locals believe themselves capable of literally blocking the existing regime’s agenda, that they are shocked at the past 12 years of increasing majority oppression….It’ll be 2026 before the window of that counter-insurgency can possibly open again.
Seeing oneself as a martyr, a revolutionary or righteous mutineer, effectively triggering a general population uprising to overthrow despots seems ennobling. Any game plan by locals that isn’t a 3 year commitment will stand little chance of succeeding.
Harsh, highly publicized litigation could have effected this outcome, including here, but no one seems to be able to find the gumption or money for attorneys though the city has been constantly vulnerable via OC Superior Court.
Educating through public comments portions of hearings, via columns, emails, SM or whatnot have obviously been ineffectual as nothing has changed City Council’s mindset, their goals and objectives as “big money meat puppets” dominant.
Podiums and media instruments are now the equivalent of psychotherapy, for venting but not change. The revolutionaries can’t even agree upon a common, coherent agenda among themselves, lacking keen focus hence guerrilla, asymmetrical warfare efficiency. Movements need both clearly delineated planks and strong vibrant leadership, I don’t see either in place at present.
The Tyranny of the Majority has always been here in Laguna like everywhere else, expecting benign or benevolent dictatorships always a highly unlikely scenario. Like the movie “Network,” unless the insurrectionists can overcome both ignorance and apathy, stir up widespread righteous anger with folks manning the barricades at Council, then it’s game-set-match.
If the Council isn’t flipped by November 2026’s election, including tapping the brakes on development (slow growth) and the cessation of traitorous perks plus special benefits for commerce (both highly unlikely due to inertia), then residents will have become full-fledged train wreck spectators.
A crossed-fingers, frustration-laden attitude, praying through the graveyard of broken dreams, wishing for “deus ex-machina” criminal indictments of Council and staff (present & former) over the Mo Money Honarkar dispute is unlikely to occur.
And has everyone considered that we might have to pay to defend those corrupt officials? All so that we could become our worst selves: Homogenized, just like Huntington Beach or Dana Point.
Council hearings will go on featuring the tyranny of “Let’s Pimp Laguna,” and their enabler sycophants as they glamorize upscale bar and restaurant businesses, more wealthy visitors, quickening the demise and death of a once-upon-a-time special place.
Insist on having a voice in Major Redevelopment in Laguna Beach.
Click Here to Pre-Register now for the ballot initiative
Help Save Laguna Now. Here’s How:
Join the circle of Laguna Residents to defend the livability and unique character of Laguna Beach by supporting these measures:
Retain existing commercial parking requirements instead of reducing
them
Maintain current height limits for commercial buildings
Keep congestion and parking from overflowing into neighborhoods
Prevent the combining of small storefronts into large malls and hotels
Encourage progress and improvement without relaxing standards
Redevelopment proposals can bring more visitors, increase traffic congestion, and drive parking overflow into adjacent neighborhoods.
Who benefits? Commercial property developers increase the value of their properties – leaving residents with a less functional, more congested
town. Instead of nurturing our unique local businesses, the proposed changes
will set the scene for more mall-like stores, bars, and restaurants.
Let’s work together to make sure that Laguna Residents get a meaningful say in the development of our town.
Dear City Council,
RE: City Council Agenda Item #18; March 9, 2021
VIEW VIDEO EVIDENCE; SEE ATTACHED I support Agenda Item #18 to vote in favor of the censorship of Council member Peter Blake to enforce civility policy adopted in 2019. The City Council & City Manager must enforce a reasonable Code of Conduct to restore a professional tone of respect & civility in Laguna Beach City Council chambers. The continued reprehensible conduct and vile outbursts by Council Member Peter Blake often heard interrupting speakers has become intolerable & wholly disrespectful conduct directed toward members of the public. View video below.
It is important to revisit to witness the attitude & reaction by Peter Blake after he listened to his own recorded voicemail. Note that Peter Blake begins to interrupt speaker and then smiles & laughs, appearing to take great pleasure and pride after hearing his infamous vile profanity & threats made directly by Council Member Peter Blake that was left on the voicemail of resident after he took office.
As a matter of public record, the threatening comment & vile profanity left on the voicemail recording was played to City Council during Public Comment in LB City Council chambers.
Unfortunately, Mr Blake does not appear the least bit ashamed of his conduct. Blake appears to have become emboldened over time and his conduct has become increasingly worse for the public to endure.
Mr Peter Blake has demonstrated on multiple occasions that he lacks the character and is unfit to serve in public office. Peter Blake has regularly bullied & intimidated women who speak to oppose his views. Members of the public, especially women, fear being threatened, denigrated and ridiculed by City Council member Peter Blake.
Please restore civility to City Council Chambers and censor the disrespectful language by enforcing the LB Code of Conduct during Public Meetings.
