A good Friday evening to you! 

 

What follows is a summary of the City Council meeting set for Tuesday, May 12^th, 2026.  

 

In this 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. 

 

This week we have a Study Session, starting at 3:00 p.m. and going til about 4:40 or so.  The big item on the calendar is ourProposed Budget for the City for Fiscal Year 2026-27, the year that begins on July 1, 2026.  Again, this is the proposed budget  – it is subject to corrections, revisions, new ideas, and updates between now and adoption time on June 23^rd, 2026.  

 

I’m going to highlight here what I think are the most consequential things in the document:

• Two buckets of revenues – hotel bed taxes (or TOT) and sales taxes – are projected as generally flat.  Property taxes are projected to be up a modest amount.  We have one larger hotel going out of service for repair soon (something that will last two years or so), and sales taxes overall have trended flat. 
• We’re proposing eliminating or ending 8 positions (all positions that were staffed – but have no current incumbents), and adding one (a jailer, merging two part-time positions). This may still change before the Final Budget’s approval.  This is different from holding positions vacant (we have some of those, too).
• We have a Capital Improvement Fund that receives about $8M in general fund sources of revenues.  Given that Public Works has a backlog of projects, I’m suggesting that we take a year to use these funds to transfer a portion to operations and assign the rest to both brick and mortar capital projects and other one-time needs – like replacing a portion of our costly 800Mhz system radios, adding to our Wildfire Mitigation & Fire Safety Fund, and restoring some of our Insurance Reserves.  We’ll still do a significant amount of capital projects – including streets, roads, and wastewater projects.  I wanted to assign a bit more funds for Fire Station costs, in case the national economic environment impacts that.  
• We’ve also trimmed back multiple line items from last year, from contract services to capital outlay.
• Importantly, we are proposing modest service reductions to off-season Trolley services and to off-season On Demand/Laguna Local.
•  We also are asking the Council to authorize us to start charging a fare of up to $5 per rider on Laguna Local. I know, Laguna Local is a terrific benefit for many – and to retain it, we think we should charge a modest fare.  It’s not uncommon in other locations where their micro-transit charges a fare.  We examined charging a fare on the Trolley, but it’s challenging and costly to collect – maybe more expensive than the revenue we’d generate.  Further, we don’t want a fare level that would cause people NOT to use Trolley and its seasonal parking lots (instead, driving into town In their cars and causing more traffic).
• The budget includes a modest citywide parking fee increase for meters, lots, and pay station areas (but not for Shoppers Permits!) – this was recently approved by the Planning Commission and takes effect soon.  Remember that the California Coastal Commission regulates (via our CDP process) what we can charge for parking, as well as hourly durations of parking. 

 

There are more, but those are some of my highlighted items.  The General Fund part of the proposed budget accepts a transfer from the Capital Improvement Fund (which also is made up of revenues typically in General Funds) and is balanced – we will again not draw from reserves (instead, we’ll add to them slightly to maintain the 20% contingency reserve and roughly 7.5% in disaster contingency reserves). 

 

I know that the budget as proposed will have its detractors – but I’d ask you all to consider where we are today. With sales taxes being flat, a hotel being down, and as we approach the crest of our annual PERS costs (these go from $7.1M in FY 2025-26 to $9.1M in FY 2026-27 and to $10.5M in FY 2027-28 – then they flatten, and slowly start to decline by 2030-31), we need to be cautious.  At the same time, the City has the same cost pressures (wages, insurance, fuel, benefits) that you see at home.  I try to cut back where I can, but I also don’t want to unilaterally disarm from visitor impacts and ratchet back core safety and maintenance services.

 

Again, this proposed budget is a discussion piece to be examined, probed, questioned, have its errors fixed, and edited then brought back to you all by the end of June, 2026.  I earnestly welcome ideas as to other approaches. 

 

Wrapping this subject up (for now), I really appreciate the Finance team’s work on the proposed budget to date, as well as my departmental colleagues’ willingness to pare back.

 

Regular Session (starts at 5:00 p.m.)

I’ll highlight these items:

• We have the proposed adoption of the Master Fee Schedule – this one raises many Community Development fees to start catching them up to actual costs.  Appeals fees – now at $2,500 – are proposed to go to $4,500 (less than we first asked for at $6,290).  Council members can still “call for review” projects (for “free”) when asked, and where merited.  Council can also remand fees to the appellant if Council finds that an abuse of discretion occurred in the deliberative process.
• The approval of another Utility Undergrounding District, this time along South Coast Highway and funded in part by our Street Light fund and in part by SCE’s Rule 20A program.  It’s always nice to see more lines going underground, especially along evacuation corridors.
• A big item will be the Council’s consideration of whether to take a position on a pending petition before the California Department of Fish and Game Commission to declare a new “no take” section of the waters off of South Laguna.  The existing State Marine Protected Area (where no take is allowed) is off of central and north Laguna.  In other words, folks would not be able to fish or take other marine life in South Laguna, too. 
• Two public hearings involve nuisance abatement steps for weeds and view blockages on private property – if you think your property might be on the list, you should maybe fix the nuisance now.    Otherwise the City does it, and we apply the charge to your property tax.
• I mentioned above the possible fare for Laguna Local.  That is involved in a separate agenda item involving awarding a contract following a competitive procurement for Trolley and On-Demand services.  The proposed award of a 5-year contract would go toLAZ parking, which is our current vendor.  But included in the action steps is authorization to charge up to $5 for the On Demand fare.
• Last item of great import is the consideration of a long-discussed “Design Review Efficiency Ordinance” – these are proposed changes to our Zoning Code that move some things out of Design Review entirely, and that moves other things from DRB to Administrative DR.  There’s more in here, too, so those of you who pay great attention to Design Review should read the staff report and the redline ordinance.  This is “first reading” of the main ordinance, but there also is an urgency ordinance planned for introduction a few weeks from now that would make some aspects of the changes apply on adoption.  I appreciate the hard work of the City Attorney team and Community Development (as well as DRB and the Planning Commission) to get to this point.

 

There are no appeals items on the May 12^th agenda, but there are three the following day – Wednesday, May 13^th (aka our next “Appeals Day” – starting at 3:00 p.m!) will hear appeals to the Council involving:

 

• 31526 Valido – this is a property in South Laguna and involves the Egan homestead site.
• 31985-31987 Coast Highway – this involves a property on the ocean side of South Coast Highway across from 10^th Street.
• 238 Chiquita Street – this involves a proposal to place an ADU on a property that has a home on the Historic Register. 

 

As to community notes,  I wanted folks to be aware of a couple things that have happened and some that are coming up:

1. The Planning Commission this week heard (and amended and then approved) a plan for paid on-street parking along South Coast Highway including spots from Moss Street south to nearly Three Arch Bay.  This still has complex implementation steps ahead, but please see the PC’s agenda page if you want to watch that discussion and presentation.
2. Coming up on the May 26th meeting – but hopefully with a detailed draft staff report presented in advance – is a furtherance of the Council’s discussion about Laguna Canyon Road.  When we last left this issue, the City was considering whether to accept the “relinquishment” of the road from Caltrans, along with accepting $14.4 million in funding that comes with the road.  Staff was asked to further examine liability issues, possible improvements and their funding (especially undergrounding!), and what improvements could be achieved if Caltrans kept the roadway vs. our ownership of it.  It’s a complex issue and discussion.  Remember that the main reason to consider this at all is safety – Caltrans will not allow the utility lines to be undergrounded in a manner that is feasible – even though this is a critical wildfire zone and evacuation / ingress route.  But if the City owned the road, that could occur more easily (funding permitting).  I’ll write more about this soon.
3. A Promenade update.  The underground work in nearing completion, so construction will move soon into the next phase –  installing the new herringbone brick in the center of the promenade and near businesses.  The brick work will mainly be done at night so as to not disrupt the businesses.  Also planned but date TBD will be craning in and planting some of the trees (which now include a 96” box sycamore, 2 120” box southern live oaks, and several 48” box eucalyptus polyanthemos).  Please review thePromenade web page for more updates.    

 

As always, thanks for reading this far.  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).

 

Dave Kiff City Manager, City of Laguna Beach 505 Forest Avenue Laguna Beach, CA  92651 949-497-0704 | dkiff@lagunabeachcity.net

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