Laguna Beach City Council candidates introduce themselves at forum
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Laguna Beach has enough interest in the three seats available on the City Council that it can become challenging to hold a debate.
With back-to-back forums Tuesday night at the Neighborhood Congregational Church — first for the nine city council candidates, and subsequently, those running for school board — organizers released a range of questions beforehand.
Billy Fried, chairman of the local radio station KXFM, moderated the City Council portion of the program, sharing that candidates were asked to address personal achievements and challenges, what they liked about living in the city, what they would change, and why they were seeking public office. They were each given five minutes to cover those topics in introductory comments.
And so began an evening of childhood stories, journeys that led the individuals to live in Laguna Beach, and detailing what they have done or would do as a member of the five-person governing body.
Mayor Mark Orgill, Sue Kempf and Alex Rounaghi make up the incumbents.
New council hopefuls include city treasurer Laura Parisi, restaurateur Ashley Cintas, business owner and urban planner Karen Martin, retired entrepreneur and former Laguna Art Museum trustee Edward Bayuk, and longtime locals Nick Aronoff and Joy Berry, both of whom are heard from regularly during public meetings.
Rounaghi led off the lineup, saying he would like to see more residents involved with the city’s business and a greater emphasis on long-term planning.
“I think that really improves our whole community because the decisions that we make are really high stakes when we think about wildfire safety, fully funding public safety, keeping a hospital, … making investments in deferred infrastructure, where we have a 100-year-old city next year,” Rounaghi said. “It’s cool to be a 100-year-old city for cultural and historic reasons. From an infrastructure perspective, it’s really challenging.”
Unable to attend the forum due to a prior commitment she said was made before her decision to run, Berry had a friend read her statement to the audience. It reflected on a story from her school days, when as the tallest girl in school, she was advised by her grandfather that she should ask a boy to dance.
Berry said recent councils have been “tossing the general plan aside,” resulting in changes to the town they had come to know decades ago, brought on, she said, by a “bulldozer mentality.”
“My candidacy is an invitation to dance with local residents who want their voices to be heard, want our hillsides and canyons to be protected, want our tax dollars to be carefully managed, want our historical resources to be preserved, and want our artistic community to be celebrated,” Berry’s statement read. “If we don’t ask, we don’t dance. Let’s meet on the dance floor called City Hall and celebrate and protect this town’s precious heritage and beauty.”
Martin focused on preservation of the places the community gathers, calling the dog park “a slice of heaven.”
“Other residents feel the same connection to their neighborhood park, the community garden, the South Laguna Village Green,” Martin added. “These places deserve care and investment. That means caring for our parks, keeping our beaches clean, making walking safer, and making public places easier to use.
“Even something as practical as a handicap or accessible parking space at the dog park would be such a gift to so many people in our community. When we set city spending priorities, I want to ask residents throughout Laguna what needs attention in your neighborhood? What would make your everyday life better?”
When he started attending council meetings, Aronoff said he felt like residents weren’t being listened to, adding, “Experience doesn’t really mean anything if you’re not connected to your community.”
He also spoke about time spent abroad, which he credited with helping him acquire skills to understand the pulse of a community.
“Putting yourself in those situations really gives you the chance to listen, to have to adapt, to not know everything that’s going on, so you have to learn,” said Aronoff, a fourth-generation resident. “You have to listen. Adapting when you don’t have friends, you have to create your own network, you have to meet people you don’t know, and I was really lucky for that because it taught me all those different values and different life skills.”
If some have criticized unanimous votes from the council, Kempf said she sees “collaboration” among her colleagues.
“We’re working together the way a body should function,” said Kempf, who is seeking a third term. “You can disagree with people, but you can also get to a consensus decision, which I think benefits the community in a way that gets everybody’s input.”
Orgill noted that community needs vary, but he has enjoyed the challenge.
“I think that we made a lot of progress in the four years,” Orgill said of his first term. “We have a new city manager, a new legal team, and I just really couldn’t be prouder. I think that the future really looks really, really bright for Laguna.”
In a rapid-fire session following the opening statements, a multi-level parking structure at the Village Entrance or Act V parking lots (Aronoff and Rounaghi in favor), a prominent artwork installation at the Village Entrance (Bayuk and Rounaghi in favor), roundabouts as a traffic-calming measure (Kempf, Orgill, Parisi and Rounaghi in favor; Aronoff made a noncommittal hand wave), and the city’s continued support for the community land trust (Aronoff, Kempf, Martin, Orgill and Rounaghi) drew divided responses.
