Laguna Beach Local News

Coach Sears had a sense of humor, and also a very competitive fire. Some days, those qualities would intersect. One day during my summer at freshman baseball camp, I was behind the plate-catching Coach. Everyday when he would warm-up, he would finish with a knuckleball. It was one of the...

Susan McNeal Velasquez appeals to “heart and imagination” to soften abrasive political relations in Laguna Beach. The concern is with local development policy, but her “wisdom” impinges on a much wider debate about political hatred in America. Western democratic processes have diverged from classical liberalism since the Enlightenment, a severe...

Once again Laguna Beach city staff has hired a consultant and the consultant has produced a report with glaring errors. Their target this time? The Laguna Residents First Ballot Initiative. These errors in the report are so basic and egregious that they clearly invalidate any conclusions that the city...

Forty years ago or so, the City of Laguna Beach beneficently decided to rescue South Laguna from the fiendish hands of the County of Orange. Thank goodness! For where else would the city find to foist all their undesired projects for Laguna proper? While all of South Laguna has suffered...

Recent letters by Michele Monda and Jerome Pudwill make some rather interesting claims rooted mainly what seems to be anger combined with plenty of un-founded facts, (or lack thereof). Both spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about a certain PAC and the “evil developers” contained therein. They make claims...

Tuesday evening the City Council responded to public requests for two studies into the Laguna Residents First (LRF) ballot initiative. If LRF’s initiative is approved in November, it would call for the public to vote before various kinds of developments can be approved. The request was to provide an...

The world’s most dangerous propagandist once deluded an entire nation by stating that if you dominate the media and tell a big lie often enough, people will believe it. Well Laguna residents got a double dose of big lies last week with two more factless columns by the profiteering...

On Jan. 10, 2022, Laguna Residents First submitted to City Clerk Ann Marie McKay 2,679 signatures for a “Beautiful Laguna Overlay Zoning District” ballot initiative. After the Orange County Registrar of Voters certifies that the required 1,835 signatures are valid, the Laguna Beach City Council has the option of...

Mike Ray’s column last week, Goodbye Liberate Laguna, is disingenuous at best, mendacious at the very least in my opinion. To expect anyone to believe that the three founding unhappy people, Ray, Sam Goldstein and Cindy Shopoff will have nothing to do with their PAC defies belief. These three...