What’s on the Laguna Beach City Council Agenda for Tuesday, June 23, 2026

A happy Juneteenth today – which also means the precipice of summer 2026, and Festival season.

What follows is my Council agenda summary for the City Council meeting set for Tuesday, June 23^rd, 2026.  At the next meeting, July 7^th, 2026 we re-enter the Zoom world!  How much fun will that be?  I know I’m being a tad snarky.  Zoom is a great tool.  I like that it helps expand the reach of your local government to folks who are busy / still at work / at home with family / or struggle to attend in person, especially when we go late into the evening.  The flip side of that, though, is Zoombombing.  I’ll stay optimistic and hope that a Laguna spirit of neighborliness and community prevails and we see a world of Good Zoom, not Bad Zoom.

In the Agenda summary, I cover what I think are the more noteworthy items that will appear on the Council agendas.  If you want to see the entire agenda, click here.   My agenda summary doesn’t include all of the items up for consideration – just ones that I think should have additional community awareness.  Please share this with others if you represent a neighborhood association (thanks!).

Our meetings generally start at 5:00 p.m. on the 2^nd and 4^th Tuesdays of the month at Laguna Beach City Hall, 505 Forest Avenue – the meeting is in the Council Chambers adjacent to Fire Station #1.   But this week, we start the meeting’s regular business at 3:00 p.m. – a special (and rare) change so that folks can attend the Sawdust’s 60^th birthday celebration later.

I’m going to focus on the agenda today, but I did just send out a Promenade Update under separate cover.  Please take a look at that, and it may answer your questions as you peer (if I could, I’d insert an eyeballs emoji here) over the fence at this very high profile site and project (I do it, too).   Have I mentioned before how interesting it is for us to coordinate a capital project so smack dab in the middle of where everyone goes? (if I could, I’d insert the barf emoji there).

There is no Study Session, as the regular meeting starts at 3:00 p.m.

I’ll highlight these items:

• We get to meet Oro, the Fire Department’s new service dog.  Who can resist a presentation involving a dog?
• Our longtime colleague and Assistant City Manager, Gavin Curran, is headed towards retirement (and a nice trip to Ireland).  I have appreciated Gavin’s calm steadiness while I’ve been City Manager here – and his wealth of knowledge as to why Laguna does what it does.  I’m going to miss Gavin, but am happy to celebrate his time with us.
• The annual report for the Laguna Beach Tourism and Marketing District is in for a receive and file.  It reports on 2024-25 activities (looking back) and 2026-27 workplans (forward looking).   The TMD already released the 2025-26 report.
• Council is asked to approve the 7-year capital plan for transit, pavement, and signal synchronization that is a part of our Measure M / OCTA requirements.  Of particular note is our relatively high Pavement Condition Index (PCI) – it’s 87.4, which means that our pavement condition is well above the OCTA required 75 and slightly above our goal range of 82-85.  Now this doesn’t mean we don’t have potholes – we do, and I’m sure after I send this out, I’ll hear about twelve of them across town 🙂  But it does mean that we’re keeping up as we should.  Yay, Public Works!
• Kudos to our Fire Admin team, who did some hard work to get more and better bids on our Fuel Mod Zone construction projects – it shows how good procurement with multiple bidders can reduce costs.  The FMZ next up for construction is FMZ 19, which is Diamond – Crestview.  Construction is a costly part of an FMZ effort  – where you remove invasives and clear back much of the vegetation from the untouched environment.  Maintenance is less costly per acre, but is forever.
• About sixteen people will be appointed to the Hospital Task Force, which will help the City prepare and respond to the possible closure of the Mission Hospital, Laguna Beach emergency room and hospital.
• Then there is the final action (we hope) on the FY 2026-27 proposed budget.  I wrote about this quite a bit, and held two town halls about it.  The last one, just this past Tuesday, was attended by about 20 folks who had very good and thoughtful questions.  We talked about position counts, trends, transparency, capital projects, how Laguna does its budgets, and much more. In summary for this year, the proposed budget is balanced and maintains our 20% reserves (plus a 7% disaster contingency reserve).  But it allocates less for capital improvements than in years past – this is in part done to address other one-time needs, as well as because we’re in this period of time where PERS costs are peaking, and we’ll have one large hotel down for construction.  I expect more good questions from Council on this on Tuesday, as well as some thoughtful ideas for increased efficiency from the Council ad hoc committee.  What we don’t tackle on Tuesday, we can work on across the summer and into the fall.  The budget itself is always subject to change, including changing economic conditions.  I really appreciate the hard work of our Finance team on this, led by Michelle Bannigan and Amy Massey (both relatively new to us in Laguna).
• There is a Council ad hoc committee proposed for the Neighborhood Congregational Church project.
• Council will discuss extending the permits for the 3 remaining outdoor dining areas (in front of Oto Sushi, Tango, and the Agean Café), which currently expire June 30, 2026.  This item also suggests that we further study the local market needs – from residents, vendors, and others – as the retail environment continues to change.
• Lastly, there will be a protest hearing on proposed rate increases associated with solid waste collection.  If there is not majority protest, and all rates are approved, it would result in about a $5 per month increase for most single family homes.  Most residential settings with 2-8 units will see a decrease.  Much of this (about $2.38 and $1.35 of the $5 per month) is caused by increased disposal fees at the County of Orange’s landfills and the mandatory CPI pass through to the contractor (respectively)  -we have no say in either.
• The Design Review Efficiency Ordinance is back for its first reading – please review the staff report (page 2) to see changes from the May 12, 2026 meeting.
• There is one DRB appeal (855 La Vista Drive), but it’s recommended for continuance to July 7^th, as one party was unable to attend on June 23^rd.

One more community note:  Another community survey is in the field possibly today and into the weekend.  It asks again about revenue measures, including a restaurant and bar 3% tax on food and beverages at these venues (this would have to be approved by the voters).  As a gentle reminder, not all surveys are alike.  Surveys like this one are intended to determine the effectiveness of arguments – pro and con – and to see if a ballot measure would withstand that scrutiny.  That’s why the questions seem leading – they are designed to mirror arguments in a campaign.  We’re not trying to get the answers we want to hear – that would be valueless.

As always, thanks for reading!  Also, please join us if you can at the actual meeting.   If you don’t want to be on this email list, please let me know and I’ll remove you (no hard feelings – we all get a lot of emails).