A Year’s End Message From The Mayor
By Sue Kempf
Dear Laguna Beach Community,
As 2021 comes to a close, I can’t help but be extremely proud of everything we have accomplished over the last year to improve quality of life in Laguna Beach. As a City Council, we all share a passion to serve you and remain focused on continuous improvement for our residents year in and year out.
Although our accomplishments this year were numerous—a few stand out as making a marked difference in our residents’ lives. We made neighborhoods, beaches, and parks cleaner and safer this summer through our new Neighborhood and Environmental Protection Plan, and we became the first city in Orange County to ban single-use plastic from our beaches, trails, and parks. The Coastal Commission’s approval of our Downtown Specific Plan will help us strike a better balance between allowing flexibility in land uses, while continuing to protect the unique character and aesthetics of the Downtown. Our community development department has worked to make it easier for you to do more business with the Department online rather than in person and made the department accessible on weekends by adding a Code Enforcement officer to take calls for weekend nuisance issues. We expect further process improvements in Community Development when the Coastal Commission hears our request for streamlining early in 2022.
We extended our successful Outdoor Dining and Parklet Program for another two years and have initiated a process to develop plans to upgrade the Promenade on Forest with permanent improvements. Live music at the Promenade and events at parks, like Circus Bella, brought us together safely in a year when reconnecting and community connection were so important to all of us.
This year we also made strides in our Wildfire Mitigation and Fire Safety Plan implementation by completing our new expanded Outdoor Warning System, Evacuation Time Estimate Study, and Defensible Space Guideline Ordinance. With nearly 90 percent of our City in the highest risk fire zone, fire safety remains among our highest priority.
Earlier this year, we hired new City Manager Shohreh Dupuis who has been actively engaging with the community and has demonstrated that she is here to listen and incorporate new ways to enhance services and make our City an even better place to live and work. One way all residents can contribute to that effort is to take the City’s Community Survey—which includes questions about quality of life, important characteristics of the community, services provided by the City and priorities for the future. We ask you to please take time to participate at polco.us/lagunabeach before Jan. 10, 2022, as we will use the information collected from the survey at the City Council Strategic Planning Session in February to help incorporate community feedback into our goals for the next five years.
It is my hope and expectation that we will emerge from our latest COVID bubble in 2022 and return life as we know it—perhaps with a few changes that keep us moving in a positive direction. The strength of our residents, businesses, City staff and festivals continues to grow and evolve to meet every and any challenge. Thank you for all you have done in 2021 to make Laguna Beach the special place that it continues to be.
Wishing you a happy and safe New Year!
Sue is the Laguna Beach mayor and was elected to the Laguna Beach City Council in 2018.
Hopefully, new Council leadership will recognize the need for a qualified Marine Biologist on staff to inform the City about Laguna’s unique, fragile ocean ecology now slowly recovering from a century of mindless over-fishing. The first step is to understand we are surrounded by the Gulf of Santa Catalina. The actual Pacific Ocean begins west of the Channel Islands. This fact is important since gulf waters retain and recirculate Laguna’s secondary sewage discharges hidden underwater just 1.5 miles offshore. The ocean provides us with air for every other breath and rainwater to quench our thirst and irrigate food crops. The ocean’s health determines Laguna’s economic health, property values and vibrant lifestyle. If we love the ocean, why do we still use it as toilet? Ignorance and apathy feeds ocean pollution.