Laguna’s first City Council Candidate Forum brought 28 questions, surprising consensus, sharp differences … and one unexpected revelation from the City Treasurer.

Village Laguna hosted the first candidate forum of the 2026 election season this Monday, Aug. 31, bringing all nine candidates to City Council Chambers for questions ranging from housing and wildfire preparedness to tourism, parking, development and City spending.

The field included current Mayor Mark Orgill, Councilmembers Alex Rounaghi and Sue Kempf, longtime City Treasurer Laura Parisi, and challengers Nick Aronoff, Joy Berry, Karen Martin, Edward Bayuk and Ashley Cintas.

With nine people on the dais and answers generally limited to a minute, there wasn’t much opportunity for leisurely policy discussion. There was, however, plenty to learn!

A word before we begin: Running for public office in Laguna Beach takes courage. So does sitting on a dais before a packed room and responding, often in 60 seconds or less, to questions you haven’t seen in advance – some straightforward, some pointed and some the candidates themselves challenged.

This article isn’t a scorecard. It’s an effort to give Laguna voters a clearer look at what each candidate actually said, where they differed and, where the facts behind a question or an answer needed additional context.

Village Laguna provided Best of Laguna Beach™ with its written questions Tuesday after the forum at my request. I’m including that exact wording here.
In all, candidates fielded 28 questions over the course of the forum. Rather than march readers through every single one, I’ve focused here on the majority – questions and exchanges that revealed the most about the candidates and the issues facing Laguna.
A note on Verification of Facts: Best of Laguna™ independently checked factual claims, figures and contextual information presented during the forum. When additional context materially clarifies what was said or asked, I’ve noted it as Best of Laguna™ Verified.

When nearly everybody says “no.”

The first lightning round demonstrated one of the challenges of separating nine candidates in a single evening: Sometimes there just isn’t much separation.

A taxpayer-funded downtown parking structure? Negatory.
City acquisition of Laguna Canyon Road, with its substantial ongoing costs and liabilities? Another universal no.

The use of Roundup in Laguna’s open space didn’t find much love either.
Transparency with City General and Environmental Plans? Of course.
Develop more recreational facilities? Consensus: Nice idea but, for the most part, we have bigger budget fish to fry.

Should the City get more aggressive with short-term rentals? Hard “YES.”

The more interesting moments came when the answers began to separate – and when candidates challenged the question itself.

First up: 675 homes downtown?

Village Laguna opened the forum with the Downtown Specific Plan:

Q: The city is preparing changes to the Downtown Specific Plan that include increasing the current building height limits and allowing developers to demolish existing one and two-story buildings that will be replaced with taller structures, potentially adding 675 residential units. Where do you stand on changing the DSP?

Whatever voters may think about adding housing elsewhere in Laguna, one thing became clear quickly: there was no groundswell on this dais for substantially rebuilding historic downtown to accommodate it.

Nick Aronoff opposed adding stories downtown.
Mayor Mark Orgill emphasized preservation of Laguna’s historic core.
Joy Berry argued that an already constrained downtown floodplain was the wrong place to add substantial housing and that “downtown is not broken.”
Sue Kempf pointed instead to adaptive reuse, including converting upper-floor office space in existing nonconforming buildings, and greater housing opportunity farther into the canyon.
Karen Martin raised both flood and wildfire-evacuation concerns.
Edward Bayuk opposed significant redevelopment of the downtown corridor, noting that there are plenty of other options in town.
Laura Parisi opposed substantial downtown development.
Ashley Cintas questioned the economics and logistics of demolishing existing buildings when other alternatives citywide exist.
Alex Rounaghi went after the number itself, challenging the suggestion that 675 units represented what Laguna was actually being required to accommodate downtown.

Alex has a point there.

The Best of Laguna Verified:
“675 units”

The 675 units cited in the question are not Laguna Beach’s state housing mandate, nor is the City under orders to build 675 residences downtown. The figure comes from a higher-density scenario being studied as part of the environmental review (EIR) of possible Downtown Specific Plan changes.

Laguna’s current Regional Housing Needs Allocation requires the City to plan to accommodate 394 housing units citywide through 2029. It does not require the City itself to build them.

How do we bring in more City revenue?

Adding potential revenue to the City’s coffers started with this question for all the candidates:

Q: Given that 74% of the revenue of Laguna bars and restaurants is from visitors, would you support a ballot measure to impose a tax on bar and restaurant customers to help cover the costs to the city incurred from visitors?

This was a hard “no” across all the candidates, with most commenting that revenue can be found other ways. Ashley Cintas added that this could increase restaurant closures, Laura Parisi commenting that it puts our restaurants at severe disadvantage to thos in neighboring cities, and Joy Berry adding that the City needs to protect its small business owners “at any expense.” Sue Kempf closed the chapter by stating that the Council had already decided not to put the measure before voters this November.

Q: Millions of visitors to Laguna every year result in both physical and fiscal impacts on Laguna Beach: near gridlock-like traffic, mountains of trash, high levels of DUIs and the city’s finances are strained to fund visitor related costs that far exceed visitor related revenue. What specifically should we do to better manage tourism?

Ashley Cintas again started with the numbers. She questioned whether Laguna is making tourism decisions using sufficiently current information and called for better data on who is visiting, what those visitors contribute economically and what they actually cost the City.

Laura Parisi also called for better data, arguing that the City needs a clearer accounting of what tourism actually costs Laguna compared with the revenue visitors generate before deciding what additional measures are warranted.

Alex Rounaghi focused more heavily on enforcement. While the City is increasing police, lifeguard and other public-safety staffing, he noted that actual enforcement is key.

Sue Kempf pointed to measures already underway to manage visitor impacts, including additional public-safety efforts, more numerous trash receptacles, regular beach enforcement and ongoing discussions about how the City can monitor beaches at night.

Karen Martin raised the broader issue of “carrying capacity” studies needed – how many people Laguna’s beaches, roads and infrastructure can reasonably accommodate.

Nick Aronoff reached for another tourism driver altogether: social media. A viral post can send large numbers of people toward a particular beach or location regardless of anything Laguna’s own tourism organization is doing, and he suggested we begin working with those companies to monitor and “pull down the throttle” on these potentially harmful posts. He also noted that Laguna Park Rangers are stretched very thin across large expanses of parks and beaches.

Edward Bayuk offered one of the evening’s more unusual proposals. Pointing to the disgruntled South Laguna residents who say new parking meters will just drive traffic and crowds into their neighborhoods, he suggested we do what other tourist-laden cities have done: meter virtually every public parking space in Laguna, including those in front of residences. Each household would receive three placards for residents and their guests; visitors otherwise would pay.

Joy Berry offered perhaps the night’s sharpest departure from Laguna’s current tourism strategy: stop marketing the city. Pointing to Carmel, where she owns two hospitality properties, Berry told the audience:

“Our City Council told our Visitor’s Bureau to stop marketing.”

This drew quite a reaction from the listening audience. She suggested Laguna consider a similar approach, directing visitor bureau budget resources, instead, toward managing the visitors already coming rather than attracting more.

Mark Orgill pointed toward a different approach already underway in Laguna. He reminded the audience that Visit Laguna Beach now contributes $500,000 annually to the City toward downtown improvements and services, including public safety.

Q: Pacific Palisades is very like Laguna Beach – similar population, adjacent to open space, and only three ways in and out. In spite of preparations like much of the Palisades having underground utilities, the Palisades was devastated by wildfire with massive loss of property and significant loss of life. What more should we be doing to avoid such a catastrophe?

Here, the differences weren’t so much about whether Laguna should prepare as what the next stage of preparedness should be. Some candidates concentrated on the mitigation infrastructure Laguna is already building. Others asked whether evacuation, development and communications systems are prepared for the day all of that infrastructure is tested at once.

Ashley Cintas offered one of the night’s more concrete operational suggestions: stress-test Laguna’s entire evacuation plan under realistic conditions. Does it actually work?

Karen Martin argued that evacuation capacity – including visitors in our town at the time of a fire – should play a larger role in planning and development decisions. She also pointed to use of private pools for added water supply.

Edward Bayuk turned to his business acumen in emergency communications and technology to argue for stronger communications systems that have been adopted elsewhere, along with additional technology, including heat-sensing drones.

Nick Aronoff might have provided the most surprising answer by stating that the City Council should be commended for their “great work” in all the fire mitigation they’re doing.

Sue Kempf concentrated on mitigation already underway noting that Laguna currently maintains 27 fuel-modification zones adjacent to neighborhoods and has two operational HeloPod helicopter-refilling systems, with funding secured for another intended to improve coverage in South Laguna.

And Kempf revealed another significant project Monday night: Southern California Edison has just recently committed to approximately $100 million in utility undergrounding work in high-fire-risk areas of Laguna Beach.

The second lightning round produced one of the evening’s more confusing exchanges:

Q: Do you support the city providing $4.2M to create 28 affordable housing units at the Neighborhood Congregational Church property?

The candidates’ answers went in several directions in part because the financing described in the question isn’t quite how the project is structured.

Sue Kempf was the first to challenge the question. “If the question is $4.2 million, I’d say no,” she said, pointing out that the City provided a $2.5 million match to the state’s $2.5 million grant. She supported that decision.

Other candidates responded to different aspects of the question – the need for affordable housing, state mandates, the number of units being produced, whether a mixed-income project might have been preferable and whether other financing structures could have produced more housing. In other words, the lightning round never really produced a clean comparison among the nine candidates on this issue.

Candidates differed over whether that level of public support was justified, exposing the larger question Laguna will continue confronting: how much public subsidy is reasonable to create permanently restricted affordable housing in one of California’s most expensive real-estate markets?

Nine candidates, nine unique questions

The forum shifted gears when Village Laguna posed a different question to each candidate.

Nick Aronoff:
Q: The St. Catherine’s property continues to be under-utilized and taxpayers are scratching their heads about why after four years since the purchase it’s still underutilized. What are your thoughts on how this property could be best utilized?

Aronoff said the property remains underutilized and needs investment and activation, but opposed selling it off.

Mark Orgill:
Q: Visit Laguna has been either accused, or credited depending on your perspective, with increasing tourism, and especially day trippers. You negotiated a 10-year agreement to change the spending of Tourist Marketing District dollars to support a Stewardship Program. Residents asked for specific objectives and metrics. What hard data do you have that shows how this is working?

Orgill acknowledged that some measures – including whether visitor education actually reduces trash – are difficult to quantify at this point, that the organization has “come a long way and it had ot be dealt with. I believe that anything can be better managed.”

Joy Berry:
Q: You successfully sued the city to prevent them from approving building on grades over 45%. The city appealed, which is still pending. What led you, personally, to take on the city on this issue?

Berry cited geologic instability, runoff, the blocking of emergency access and wildfire safety, arguing that the City should follow protections already contained in its General Plan.

Sue received one of the most pointed questions of the evening –
Sue Kempf:
Q: Forest Avenue has since the 1920s been the city’s main commercial throughfare, providing essential goods and services, curbside parking; and framed by its signature eucalyptus trees. The trees are gone, lower Forest Avenue permanently demolished and the Promenade project was late, over-budget and for some, the results are underwhelming. As a leading advocate for this project, what do you think could have been done differently?

Kempf challenged the cost premise in the question, stating that the project is actually under budget by almost $500,000. She added, “The trees were a concern for us. They were part of the plan all along but this is an old town, and we found we had a lot going on under the street. We have better infrastructure there now.” What she might have done differently, she said, was hold more individual meetings with business owners and the arts groups.

Karen Martin:
Q: Under the banner of increased efficiency for the design review process, the City is routinely granting variances to residential building proposals and reducing resident’s [sic] opportunities to appeal decisions. How do you strike the balance between approving building proposals with the rights of current residents for privacy and view protection?

Martin, an urban planner with more than 30 years in the field, was asked about changes intended to make Design Review more efficient. She questioned the wisdom of revising Laguna’s zoning code before completing an update of the General Plan and said the City’s recent “efficiency” efforts may be creating additional problems rather than solving them.

Edward Bayuk:
Q: Laguna Beach is known for its historic resources, featuring many homes and cottages from the early 20^th Century. And yet, many of these resources are being threatened by new property owners who want to demolish these resources and replace them with much larger homes that are out-of-character for the neighborhoods. What is your position?

Bayuk advocated greater use of preservation tools such as the Mills Act and the City getting more involved in educating and encouraging new or existing homeowners to apply for the Mills Act to keep the original character of the home. He pointed to his own 1934 home (owned for 25 years), which he said he intentionally kept within its historic footprint.

Alex’s question returned to the Promenade –
Alex Rounaghi
Q: If you had known in advance of the saltwater intrusion impacting the trees on the Promenade, would you have gone along with the plan that you approved?

He defended the decision and pointed to the professional and public-safety information available to the Council at the time.

Laura Parisi
Q: Our city is looking at budget deficits and is facing hard questions about where to cut expenses and where to raise revenue. What ideas do you have to bring greater fiscal responsibility to City Council decision-making?

The longtime City Treasurer called for more frequent financial reporting, including monthly information that would allow the Council and public to better track revenues and expenditures and the introduction of AI for some of the reporting and coding.

Ashley Cintas:
Q: The financial contribution to the city government from Laguna businesses is primarily sales tax which comprises less than 4% of the total city budget. Yet, Laguna’s millions of visitors create costs for the city government far in excess of the revenue from sales tax. What can the city and its businesses do to help better cover those costs?

Cintas, who owns the Laguna restaurant, Oto Sushi, offered another route to increasing City revenue: fill the vacant storefronts we’ve already got.

Cintas noted that Laguna’s retail vacancy rate is 8.3%, substantially higher than recent Orange County retail vacancy benchmarks of approximately 3.8% to 4.5%. The Laguna figure includes the 34,478-square-foot former Gelson’s property – closed for nearly two and a half years.

Cintas argued that filling existing vacancies PLUS recapturing a solid portion of the spending now leaving Laguna by its own residents should come before asking residents or businesses to pay more in taxes. It was more than a “no” to another tax. It was an argument for growing the City’s existing revenue base instead.

Perhaps the most consequential statement Monday night didn’t come in response to a Village Laguna question at all. It arrived during Parisi’s closing remarks.

Parisi has served as Laguna Beach’s elected City Treasurer since 1999. She told the audience that she is running for Council in part because she believes Council and City management have made it “increasingly difficult” for her to perform the duties voters elected her to perform.

Then she got specific.

Parisi said one of her responsibilities is making required interest and principal payments on assessment-district bonds using funds collected from property owners.

She alleged that, although the City had received the appropriate payments from the County, there was insufficient cash in City accounts to make required payments.

Parisi said she discovered the issue during the second week of July and reported it in writing to City management on July 25 and again Aug. 10.

She said she also consulted with bond counsel, the assessment administrator and fiscal agent and was ultimately forced to set next year’s levy without being able to determine whether some bonds could have been paid early – something she said potentially could have reduced the levy for residents.

Her explanation for seeking a Council seat was equally direct:

“I haven’t been able to resolve the issues from the inside, so I am running for Council, in part, to restore the functioning of the elected Treasurer position to what you expected of it when you voted for me.”

Those are substantial allegations from the City’s sitting elected Treasurer.

Monday night’s forum didn’t neatly divide nine candidates into competing camps.

It did, however, begin revealing how they approach problems.

Kempf frequently pointed to City work already underway. Cintas repeatedly approached questions through data, operations and measurable outcomes. Rounaghi emphasized expanded enforcement and existing government mechanisms and progress. Berry was more willing to question whether Laguna should continue some existing policies at all.

Martin repeatedly connected individual issues to larger land-use and planning questions. Bayuk brought both historic preservation and some unconventional infrastructure ideas to the table. Aronoff raised issues ranging from better use of City property to the impact of social media on visitor demand.

Orgill largely defended or sought to improve existing City programs, while Parisi – initially the candidate most firmly planted in the numbers – ended the evening by raising an entirely new question about the City’s financial operations.

But after Monday night, Laguna voters have something they didn’t have before: a first look at not only what these nine candidates think … but how they think.

One forum isn’t enough to decide a nine-person race.

The next candidate forum is already on the calendar. KXFM will host its “Good Luck Potluck” on Tuesday, Sept. 8 at Neighborhood Congregational Church, bringing together candidates for both Laguna Beach City Council and School Board – 14 candidates in all. While all have been invited, not all have RSVPed as of publication. The potluck begins at 5:30 p.m., with the forum at 6 p.m.