Latest / Laguna Talks / Laguna Talks to Councilman Bob Whalen

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Laguna Talks to Councilman Bob Whalen · Laguna Talks

0:03
Speaker 1: And good afternoon, Laguna Beach. It's two pm on Monday Tuesday.
0:10
Speaker 1: Sorry I'm getting confused here. It's time for Laguna Talks.
0:13
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Billy Freed, and I've been doing this
0:15
Speaker 1: show for a long time and I'm excited to welcome
0:18
Speaker 1: a guest that maybe holds the record for the most
0:20
Speaker 1: appearances on my show. You're kind of like Alec Baldwin
0:23
Speaker 1: on Saturday Night Live for the most hosting appearances. We
0:26
Speaker 1: have city councilmen, Bob Whale, and how are you, Bob.
0:29
Speaker 1: I'm great, Billy, Thanks for having me back. It's been
0:31
Speaker 1: a little while, but good to be back in this
0:33
Speaker 1: chair and talking with you again.
0:35
Speaker 2: We kept it warm for you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah.
0:38
Speaker 1: Well, we had a little hiatus here at the station,
0:41
Speaker 1: but now we're back and I feel like we've got
0:43
Speaker 1: more We've got more powder than we've ever had before.
0:47
Speaker 2: It's pretty exciting times here at the station.
0:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
0:50
Speaker 3: I was at the relaunch down at the Rivian that
0:52
Speaker 3: you guys put together, which was a really fun evening.
0:54
Speaker 3: And you know, I mean kudos to all of you.
0:57
Speaker 3: What a lineup you've got with this community radio afternoons,
1:00
Speaker 3: you know, Monday to Friday, and I assume that's going well,
1:04
Speaker 3: and I mean a real interesting mix of people.
1:06
Speaker 2: I think, so that's great.
1:09
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know if this could happen in
1:10
Speaker 1: any other town or many other towns than Laguna, to
1:13
Speaker 1: have so many voices. I mean, this was the bet
1:16
Speaker 1: that I made when I took over the station. Was
1:19
Speaker 1: you know, I was thinking about where does a radio
1:23
Speaker 1: station fit in today's media landscape because we can't compete
1:26
Speaker 1: on music alone. Everybody gets music from streaming sources, what
1:30
Speaker 1: have you. We have gifted DJs all day, all night long.
1:35
Speaker 1: But in order to generate income, which is what we need,
1:38
Speaker 1: donation based, I thought, really, the role that radio could
1:42
Speaker 1: play in a small community like ours is to be
1:44
Speaker 1: hyper local with its content because you know, with the Internet,
1:49
Speaker 1: all the local news sources have gone away. The economics
1:52
Speaker 1: just aren't there. We're lucky that we do have a
1:54
Speaker 1: weekly newspaper, but I only have so much newsprint that
1:58
Speaker 1: they can put out. And I thought, man, and we
2:00
Speaker 1: have so many interesting people in this town. And who
2:03
Speaker 1: doesn't like to have a microphone?
2:05
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, people aren't shy, they'll be happy to
2:09
Speaker 3: get out there. But no, it's great and you know,
2:12
Speaker 3: I hope obviously that you guys have success. And this
2:16
Speaker 3: is a long running show here.
2:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Bob, And I just want to point
2:21
Speaker 1: out that earlier we had, you know, just just today,
2:24
Speaker 1: we had Chris Prelitz doing All Things Green, which is
2:27
Speaker 1: a really important show on environmentalism and how we can
2:30
Speaker 1: all be better at our job of trying to reduce
2:35
Speaker 1: our carbon footprint, followed by George Dubin, a forty year
2:39
Speaker 1: artist here talking about the affordability issues for artists. Yesterday,
2:43
Speaker 1: Diane Armitage was on Taco celebrating Taco Day Taco Tuesday
2:49
Speaker 1: Day early, but she had the proprietors from the Coyote
2:52
Speaker 1: Grill and Rosta Taco on and she had done an
2:55
Speaker 1: informal poll herself on the best tacos in Laguna and
2:59
Speaker 1: it was very interesting to hear how many restaurants, how
3:02
Speaker 1: many qualified, and she had several hundred people vote. And
3:06
Speaker 1: I think this is the local content that is so precious.
3:09
Speaker 1: Not that people always have time to listen live, but
3:12
Speaker 1: what we are really endeavoring to do, and I've got
3:15
Speaker 1: to do a better job of getting all of our
3:16
Speaker 1: hosts to do this. In the learning curve, it's just
3:19
Speaker 1: to save the shows as podcasts and really think of
3:23
Speaker 1: this station not only as radio, but a podcast factory,
3:26
Speaker 1: and that you can go onto our website and listen
3:29
Speaker 1: at your leisure to any number of these great shows.
3:32
Speaker 1: We had Gary and Riyah Arthur talking about living your
3:35
Speaker 1: best life, natural health and all of these codes that
3:39
Speaker 1: we can drop for people on living your best life
3:42
Speaker 1: in Laguna.
3:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's great.
3:44
Speaker 3: And I like the pod cast concept because you're right,
3:47
Speaker 3: people are busy, they're running around. It's hard to you know,
3:49
Speaker 3: listen lives a lot of times, but when they're there
3:52
Speaker 3: and you can access them easily and say, oh, I
3:54
Speaker 3: might be interested to listen to that one.
3:55
Speaker 1: I mean, if you ask people today in a room,
3:58
Speaker 1: how many of you listen to podcasts, I think everybody
4:00
Speaker 1: raises your hand, right, Yeah, it's just become the norm.
4:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's it's great. It's good.
4:05
Speaker 1: So enough about self promotion here at the station. Let's
4:08
Speaker 1: talk about you, my favorite subject. You're running for reelection.
4:12
Speaker 1: This will be your fourth term on city council. Right,
4:16
Speaker 1: I'm shocked that you still have it in you. Well,
4:19
Speaker 1: you know, it's uh, we'll see.
4:22
Speaker 3: I mean, first of all, I got to get reelected,
4:23
Speaker 3: so obviously working hard for that, But I mean it's
4:26
Speaker 3: you you kind of were talking about, you know, the
4:29
Speaker 3: people in Laguna and their commitment to Laguna and their
4:32
Speaker 3: love of Laguna, and I've just had that forever and
4:35
Speaker 3: I'm still inspired by it, and I still want to
4:38
Speaker 3: contribute what I can contribute, and you know that we'll
4:41
Speaker 3: I'm sure we'll talk about some of it. But there's
4:43
Speaker 3: a lot of work ahead and a lot of exciting
4:45
Speaker 3: and interesting projects that I wanted to be a part of.
4:48
Speaker 1: If what about your lovely wife, Kirsten. Doesn't she feel
4:52
Speaker 1: somewhat neglected in all of this, No.
4:55
Speaker 2: She's great. We talked.
4:56
Speaker 3: We talked obviously at length, you know, before I made
4:58
Speaker 3: the decision to to run again. She's so supportive and
5:01
Speaker 3: she's so creative. I mean, you know, she's of course
5:05
Speaker 3: a festival artist and that's her main So it gets
5:08
Speaker 3: you out of her hair. Yeah, it gets me out
5:11
Speaker 3: of her hair, right, her hair a little bit. But
5:13
Speaker 3: you know, we obviously would like to, you know, have
5:18
Speaker 3: some more free time. I've sort of wound down my
5:20
Speaker 3: law practice, not totally but ninety percent, and you know,
5:26
Speaker 3: so her one thing was she says, I call them guardrails.
5:30
Speaker 3: She laughs, I never told you they were guardrails. But basically,
5:33
Speaker 3: she says, if you're going to run again, be more
5:34
Speaker 3: efficient with your meetings. Try to, you know, schedule them
5:37
Speaker 3: more back to back. Don't do this nine to five,
5:41
Speaker 3: you know, five days a week, because what you think
5:43
Speaker 3: about it when for most of my career I was
5:45
Speaker 3: practicing law, both when I was on the school board
5:48
Speaker 3: and on the council, you know, five days a week,
5:50
Speaker 3: nine to five, and I still got the job done
5:52
Speaker 3: and got it done pretty effectively. But you know, to
5:56
Speaker 3: the extent you have more time, you know, as you know,
5:58
Speaker 3: things expand right to fill the time available. So I've
6:01
Speaker 3: I've spent a lot of time the last year, and
6:03
Speaker 3: a lot more time at this ame.
6:05
Speaker 2: Well.
6:05
Speaker 1: I did want to ask you about your law practice
6:07
Speaker 1: because I remember way back on your probably your first term,
6:10
Speaker 1: we spoke and I said, how do you balance this?
6:12
Speaker 1: Because we all know that working in a in a
6:15
Speaker 1: law firm, especially a big firm like yours.
6:17
Speaker 2: What's the name again.
6:18
Speaker 1: It's a straddling straddling probably one of the largest in
6:21
Speaker 1: Orange County. It's usually not a forty hour a week job.
6:25
Speaker 1: It usually goes well beyond that, especially when you're trying
6:27
Speaker 1: to make partner. Now you've already made partner. But I
6:30
Speaker 1: asked you, how do you how are you going to
6:32
Speaker 1: reconcile these two And you said, well, I have great
6:33
Speaker 1: partners and they recognize this as a passion for me,
6:37
Speaker 1: and we're going to make it work.
6:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. But and we did.
6:40
Speaker 3: And quite honestly though, it was a lot of nights
6:43
Speaker 3: and weekends, right, that's where you picked up your time
6:45
Speaker 3: and and you know it was it was just always
6:50
Speaker 3: on the go. So now you know, I'm working a
6:53
Speaker 3: lot less at the law firm. You know, it's it's
6:58
Speaker 3: it's manageable.
6:59
Speaker 1: Was that a gradual thing each each term you would
7:01
Speaker 1: sort of step back or did you actually make a
7:03
Speaker 1: specific move to pull back from the from the firm?
7:07
Speaker 2: Good? Good question.
7:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I made a specific move two years ago. So
7:11
Speaker 3: you know, what you do is as you progress through
7:14
Speaker 3: a law firm and you build up a client base,
7:16
Speaker 3: your obligation to your partners is to figure out how
7:20
Speaker 3: to transition that to the people who are going to
7:22
Speaker 3: be left behind. So you know, probably the last five
7:25
Speaker 3: or six years I spent a lot of time making
7:28
Speaker 3: sure my clients were introduced to other lawyers in the
7:30
Speaker 3: firm who could who they got to know and be
7:32
Speaker 3: comfortable with, and I could turn the work over to.
7:34
Speaker 3: So now the last two years, I've really just been
7:37
Speaker 3: working on one client, which is the State of California,
7:41
Speaker 3: and there's probably half a dozen lawyers in the firm
7:43
Speaker 3: that work on it. And i'd spend some time on that,
7:46
Speaker 3: but not not a lot. But I did want to
7:48
Speaker 3: keep my hand in it, and it's been I've enjoyed that,
7:52
Speaker 3: you know, not fully fully cutting the cord.
7:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great that you can make that work with
7:56
Speaker 1: your partners and they're understanding enough that this is a
7:59
Speaker 1: passion for you and it requires a significant amount of time.
8:02
Speaker 1: I mean you were on Planning Commission for what.
8:04
Speaker 2: I mean four years.
8:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're going on nearly twenty years of let's
8:09
Speaker 1: call it public service to Laguna Beach.
8:12
Speaker 2: You must love this town.
8:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I do. I mean we've been here. We
8:15
Speaker 3: just passed forty years in town this past May. So yeah,
8:19
Speaker 3: I think between the nearly ten years on the school
8:22
Speaker 3: board and this, it's about twenty five twenty six years.
8:25
Speaker 2: Amazing city stuff.
8:26
Speaker 3: But yeah, I love it because I love the people.
8:31
Speaker 2: I love the issues that we confront.
8:32
Speaker 3: You know, I think I've made a difference in making
8:36
Speaker 3: some things, you know, better than they were. And that's
8:40
Speaker 3: why I like to be involved. I like to get
8:42
Speaker 3: things done. I just don't want to be there to
8:44
Speaker 3: say I'm on the city council.
8:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
8:45
Speaker 1: Well, let's get to some of that stuff, the juicy stuff.
8:50
Speaker 1: I do want to start by saying that, you know you.
8:53
Speaker 1: I know the current mayor suit Camp adores you, and
8:57
Speaker 1: she speaks so highly of you all the time, and
9:00
Speaker 1: especially when she was new, and you sort of mentored
9:03
Speaker 1: her quite a bit, and you got us through COVID,
9:06
Speaker 1: which was not an easy thing, and you got us
9:08
Speaker 1: through some tumultuous council terms of some people who were disruptive,
9:14
Speaker 1: and you were kind of a voice of reason through
9:17
Speaker 1: all that. And you seem to have a really good,
9:19
Speaker 1: solid council.
9:20
Speaker 2: Right now.
9:21
Speaker 1: There are two incumbent No, you're the only incumbent running,
9:25
Speaker 1: and then there are.
9:26
Speaker 3: Well no myself and George so yeah, yeah, two incumbents.
9:29
Speaker 1: Right, and then there's two newbies, Judy Mancuso and Halle Jones.
9:35
Speaker 1: And what I've seen and observed and you could perhaps
9:38
Speaker 1: correct me on this is it's kind of open season
9:40
Speaker 1: on Bob Whalen that I've not seen this level of
9:44
Speaker 1: attack ads on you. They don't seem to be going
9:47
Speaker 1: after Halle. I think the general consensus is you and
9:51
Speaker 1: Halle and George are probably the three front runners. So
9:54
Speaker 1: these people who are running the negative campaigns, I assume
9:58
Speaker 1: strategically they're not attacking Halle. Maybe there's nothing there to
10:02
Speaker 1: attack because she hasn't been on council, But they seem
10:06
Speaker 1: to sort of abdicate that Halle is going to be
10:09
Speaker 1: one of the two people this is my guess, and
10:12
Speaker 1: that you're the vulnerable one, and they're basically supporting George Weiss,
10:16
Speaker 1: and so they're they're finding ways to attack you in
10:19
Speaker 1: the media.
10:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think this is the first election
10:24
Speaker 3: that I've run in where I've sort of been the
10:25
Speaker 3: one in the sites right of the negative campaigning. But
10:29
Speaker 3: you know that that's part of the process. I suppose.
10:33
Speaker 3: I'm you know, proud of my record. I believe a
10:36
Speaker 3: lot of people in town know me, understand what I've done,
10:40
Speaker 3: and you know, I, well, see I don't I'd like
10:43
Speaker 3: to think that, you know, a couple months of negative
10:45
Speaker 3: advertising isn't going to offset you know, twenty plus years
10:48
Speaker 3: of good quality service to the community.
10:51
Speaker 2: How do you handle it?
10:52
Speaker 1: Honestly, you're all human when you see that and it's
10:55
Speaker 1: attacking you, and it makes you a cartoon character riding
10:59
Speaker 1: a white elephant, and I see these elephants are all
11:01
Speaker 1: going off the cliff, and it's talking about your expenditures
11:05
Speaker 1: over the cliff pricing. Does any of that affect you
11:09
Speaker 1: or do you just have a suit of armor.
11:12
Speaker 3: I don't know if any of us have a suit
11:13
Speaker 3: of armor. Yeah, it gets to you a little bit,
11:15
Speaker 3: but I don't dwell on it.
11:16
Speaker 2: Really.
11:17
Speaker 3: I don't spend a lot of time looking at it.
11:19
Speaker 3: Some people call me, you know, and they're outraged by it,
11:22
Speaker 3: and other people obviously are you agreeing with it? But again,
11:27
Speaker 3: I just I've always I'm doing what I've always done.
11:30
Speaker 3: I run on the issues. That's what I'm about. I'm
11:33
Speaker 3: not about personalities. You've never in all the campaigning I've done,
11:37
Speaker 3: you've never heard me attack other candidates. I don't do
11:40
Speaker 3: it that way, you know. I just I sell myself
11:42
Speaker 3: and if people are buying, they're buying.
11:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's talk about what you're selling. I've got
11:48
Speaker 1: a card here that came in the mail to me.
11:50
Speaker 1: This was very helpful. It's from the Democratic Club of
11:54
Speaker 1: Laguna Beach and inside it's a postcard that has basically
11:59
Speaker 1: what I would guess is your platform, your goal for
12:01
Speaker 1: the next four years, which we should talk about each
12:04
Speaker 1: of these first, is develop effective programs to mitigate the
12:07
Speaker 1: impact of visitors on neighborhoods, beeches, and open space. So
12:11
Speaker 1: I'm going to read these because obviously you don't have
12:14
Speaker 1: a lot of room on a postcard to explain the how.
12:17
Speaker 2: You're just kind of giving the goal.
12:20
Speaker 1: So maybe this is a longer form environment where you
12:24
Speaker 1: can give us the how. What do you think what
12:26
Speaker 1: can we do to mitigate the impact of visitors?
12:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's you know, first of all, there's Sue camp
12:35
Speaker 3: and Mark orgul or a subcommittee that's working on sort
12:38
Speaker 3: of a stewardship plan. And you know, what I think
12:41
Speaker 3: is worth noting before we get into the how, which
12:43
Speaker 3: we can in a minute, is you know, this is
12:45
Speaker 3: not a Laguna specific problem.
12:46
Speaker 2: This is a worldwide problem.
12:47
Speaker 3: Sure right, you read about Barcelona, Barcelona, Venice. You know,
12:53
Speaker 3: the world's over crowded and people are coming. So I
12:57
Speaker 3: think what I say is it's a combination of you know,
13:00
Speaker 3: stewardship and enforcement. I mean, we had a great town
13:03
Speaker 3: hall a couple of months ago led by our Mark
13:08
Speaker 3: and Orgel and I were at and was led by
13:11
Speaker 3: our city manager, Dave Kiff, and we you know, we
13:13
Speaker 3: got onto this topic. A lot and a lot of
13:15
Speaker 3: people felt like, hey, look, why don't you enforce the
13:17
Speaker 3: laws that you've got, like, you know, the no parking laws,
13:20
Speaker 3: the dope parking in a red zone, no blocking driveways,
13:22
Speaker 3: you know, and folks in South Lagunax. I think in
13:24
Speaker 3: particular experience a lot of that. Why don't you write
13:27
Speaker 3: tickets for people drinking on the beach, Why don't you,
13:31
Speaker 3: you know, enforce the no smoking on the beach law?
13:34
Speaker 3: So all of that, I think is going to be
13:36
Speaker 3: an element of it. Increased enforcement of laws. And I
13:42
Speaker 3: think part of what we need to do is figure
13:43
Speaker 3: out how can we surge our kind of people on
13:48
Speaker 3: the beach and around the neighborhoods in the summertime, because
13:52
Speaker 3: it's not exclusively a summer problem, but it's primarily a
13:55
Speaker 3: summer problem problem. You look at the beaches now, I've
13:57
Speaker 3: been on the beaches this week, and you know beach
14:00
Speaker 3: it's relatively empty, right.
14:02
Speaker 2: But.
14:03
Speaker 3: I think we need to surge personnel in the summer,
14:06
Speaker 3: probably look at more park rangers. That's an improvement that's
14:10
Speaker 3: happened over the last four years.
14:11
Speaker 2: You know.
14:11
Speaker 3: We went from sort of the beach patrol guys in
14:13
Speaker 3: their shorts and shirts and we went upgraded it to
14:16
Speaker 3: some park rangers. But the other side of it is
14:19
Speaker 3: the stewardship side, which is the educational piece, right, and
14:23
Speaker 3: I think looking for you know, more around the tide pools,
14:28
Speaker 3: in particular, more docents, maybe roping some of those up.
14:32
Speaker 3: We have in our general plan some features that actually
14:37
Speaker 3: at Almanza has pointed out that deal with protection of
14:40
Speaker 3: coastal resources. So I think we have a vehicle where
14:43
Speaker 3: we can actually put in place a coastal resources protection
14:47
Speaker 3: plan that will fit as part of our general plan
14:50
Speaker 3: that we'll have to submit to Coastal But I would think,
14:54
Speaker 3: you know that that's kind of up their alley they've
14:57
Speaker 3: got obviously they coastal access is one of their man dates,
15:00
Speaker 3: but also coastal protection, so we need to balance the two.
15:04
Speaker 3: And you know, there may there may be opportunities to
15:09
Speaker 3: you know, place some kind of limits on things.
15:12
Speaker 2: The big issue that people limits what kind of limits.
15:15
Speaker 3: Well, it's a big issue that people talk about, and
15:18
Speaker 3: the Coastal Commission has said, no is neighborhood parking. Can
15:22
Speaker 3: we create neighborhood parking zones where it's it's Laguna residents
15:27
Speaker 3: only or for a period of time it's Laguna residents only,
15:30
Speaker 3: And that happened in the hip district here the you know,
15:33
Speaker 3: behind Mozambique, And when that could put in probably fifteen
15:38
Speaker 3: more or more years ago, Coastal said that's it. No more,
15:42
Speaker 3: you know, no more residential restrictions. So we continually get
15:46
Speaker 3: requests from people to say, why don't you just make it,
15:48
Speaker 3: you know, a resident only. I think we would love
15:50
Speaker 3: to do some of that, but we got to convince
15:52
Speaker 3: the Coastal Commission that we can do that.
15:57
Speaker 1: But Bob, doesn't that mean that just more cars are
15:59
Speaker 1: going to be cycling around looking for parking?
16:01
Speaker 2: Yeah?
16:02
Speaker 3: Well, the other piece of it, sort of a revenue
16:08
Speaker 3: piece of it is, you know, we've talked about looking
16:12
Speaker 3: at more meters on Coast Highway down South in particular,
16:15
Speaker 3: so that we can generate more revenue that we can
16:17
Speaker 3: then put into the program of Management, Coastal Management. You know,
16:22
Speaker 3: it is interesting you say that, wouldn't that be just
16:24
Speaker 3: more people circulating around.
16:26
Speaker 2: We have one hundred and.
16:27
Speaker 3: Sixty eight free spaces at the hospital every summer, well
16:30
Speaker 3: we rent them and then we make them free to
16:32
Speaker 3: the public and they're never one hundred percent occupied, and
16:35
Speaker 3: we have those flashing signs to get people in their
16:38
Speaker 3: free parking and then and it's interesting people, you know,
16:42
Speaker 3: it's a behavioral thing, but we you really need to
16:46
Speaker 3: get people to go to the more remote locations like
16:50
Speaker 3: we have up at Act five in the hospital so
16:54
Speaker 3: that you're not just driving around. But people say, oh,
16:56
Speaker 3: I think I can probably find a space that's a
16:58
Speaker 3: few blocks closer, so let's just go drive around. So
17:03
Speaker 3: you know it, it is management, I think the other
17:07
Speaker 3: piece of it though, and it was really pleased that,
17:11
Speaker 3: you know, our.
17:13
Speaker 2: Public work staff.
17:14
Speaker 3: Michael Lichie, who heads up our transportation department, we just
17:17
Speaker 3: got a seven year grant from oct A seven point
17:21
Speaker 3: two million dollars to expand the off season trolley or
17:25
Speaker 3: continue the off season trolley and expand the lagoon of
17:28
Speaker 3: local service out to Al Toro Road area. So you know,
17:33
Speaker 3: we've we've we've expanded the lagoon of local service really
17:37
Speaker 3: pretty much now all over town and we need to
17:41
Speaker 3: get And I heard Alex Rnagi say it at one
17:44
Speaker 3: of the council meetings. You know, he takes it a
17:46
Speaker 3: lot when he's in town. If we could get more
17:48
Speaker 3: people hopping into those vans, yes, it would help.
17:51
Speaker 2: I mean it.
17:52
Speaker 3: There's no I'm not going to sit here. There's no
17:54
Speaker 3: silver bullet to eliminating traffic congestion. But it's these tactics, tactics,
17:59
Speaker 3: these will alleviate it in and of itself, not in
18:03
Speaker 3: and of itself.
18:04
Speaker 1: But you know, let me go back to stewardship, because
18:08
Speaker 1: when people started talking about stewardship and I was in
18:10
Speaker 1: city Hall listening to the anti defund the Visitors Bureau
18:16
Speaker 1: people and you know, demonstrating the amount of trash and
18:19
Speaker 1: all of that stuff, I didn't understand what stewardship meant.
18:24
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an interesting word because to me, it's
18:27
Speaker 1: really education. And we had a young man come into
18:32
Speaker 1: this studio a few weeks ago. He just wanted to
18:35
Speaker 1: see the station because he listens to it from Arizona
18:37
Speaker 1: and he's in love with the station. And he goes
18:40
Speaker 1: to me, he goes, I read your column about over tourism,
18:43
Speaker 1: and he goes, let me tell you, I'm one of
18:45
Speaker 1: the good tourists. When I come to a beach town,
18:48
Speaker 1: I clean up, I go out on the beach, and
18:50
Speaker 1: he goes, why don't you guys on every one of
18:53
Speaker 1: these beaches put some trash pickers a sign and some
18:57
Speaker 1: disposable gloves and a sign that said, do your part,
19:01
Speaker 1: leave no trace, go out and be part of the solution,
19:05
Speaker 1: not the problem. And I thought that's a really interesting idea,
19:09
Speaker 1: because you know, we tend to lop all the day
19:12
Speaker 1: visitors into bad visitors, and we want the overnight visitors
19:16
Speaker 1: good visitors because they spend money and they shop. But
19:20
Speaker 1: there's a lot of good day visitors who do respect
19:23
Speaker 1: their beaches and cherish them. There does seem to be
19:26
Speaker 1: a heightened level of trash. I don't know if it's
19:29
Speaker 1: just because there's more lenses, more cameras taking pictures of it,
19:33
Speaker 1: but it's I mean, I saw that kid from South
19:36
Speaker 1: Laguna who come came and dumped all that trash in
19:38
Speaker 1: front of you guys, and that was a powerful demonstration
19:41
Speaker 1: of what's going on. But I sometimes think God, more
19:45
Speaker 1: enforcement that's more money, more people, and it's more bad
19:48
Speaker 1: vibes to have people walking around. It's almost militarist, you know.
19:53
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think I was talking mostly traffic enforcement,
19:57
Speaker 3: but you know, I do think that, you know, I
20:03
Speaker 3: do think that people appreciate enforcing the laws on the beach,
20:07
Speaker 3: but particularly the no alcohol laws. So you know, I
20:12
Speaker 3: would support that, but I think stewardship and education, yeah,
20:15
Speaker 3: I think I'd go hand in hand. I mean, and
20:16
Speaker 3: that's a great idea doing something like that. You know,
20:19
Speaker 3: we did have the International Beach Cleanup Day a couple
20:22
Speaker 3: of Saturdays ago, and we started at Aliso Beach at
20:25
Speaker 3: eight am and there were a good group of people
20:28
Speaker 3: out there and the good news was now that's again
20:31
Speaker 3: post summer. Right in the assembly Woman Diane Dixon sort
20:36
Speaker 3: of organized that one and we went around for you know,
20:40
Speaker 3: an hour or so, and we fortunately didn't come up
20:42
Speaker 3: with a lot of trash. Now, Greg Viviani, who's the
20:45
Speaker 3: young man who brought the trash council, was there and
20:49
Speaker 3: Greg says, well, you know, he should have been here
20:51
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks ago, and I'm sure he was
20:53
Speaker 3: right about that. But then we went down to main Beach,
20:56
Speaker 3: and there was more down at Maine Beach. So I
20:58
Speaker 3: do think it's you know, ways of communicating to the
21:01
Speaker 3: visitors what you say, which is, you know, take care
21:05
Speaker 3: of it, take your trash, you know, leave no leave
21:07
Speaker 3: no traces, they say. But and I do think, who
21:12
Speaker 3: knows what percentage, but the very very high percentage of
21:15
Speaker 3: the visitors are just folks coming down wanting to go
21:17
Speaker 3: to the beach with their family or friends.
21:19
Speaker 2: And escape the heat. And that's great. Yep.
21:21
Speaker 3: And you know, I have been and I said this
21:24
Speaker 3: at one of the forums. I mean, I've been a
21:27
Speaker 3: little concerned about sort of the underlying tenor of this,
21:31
Speaker 3: you know, day tripper message, which is, what are you
21:34
Speaker 3: really saying, you know, there's certain kinds of people you
21:36
Speaker 3: don't want to have come to the beach. The beach
21:38
Speaker 3: is open to everybody, right, all Californians, and as as
21:41
Speaker 3: long as they come and you know, observe the traffic
21:45
Speaker 3: laws and observe the no littering laws, that's that's great.
21:49
Speaker 2: So I think we can get there.
21:51
Speaker 3: And you know, I think there's enough people in Laguna
21:54
Speaker 3: with good ideas as to how to build out a
21:57
Speaker 3: stewardship program or an educational program that you know, we
22:00
Speaker 3: could be a pretty cool example of places.
22:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what about this whole campaign of defund the
22:08
Speaker 1: Visitors Bureau, this notion that they have too much money
22:12
Speaker 1: and they spend it to attract too many people to
22:15
Speaker 1: our town.
22:15
Speaker 2: What's your feeling about.
22:16
Speaker 3: That, Bob, Well, I think people need to understand what
22:19
Speaker 3: they what they're talking about on this. First of all,
22:22
Speaker 3: it's they have the sense that the city controls the money.
22:26
Speaker 3: And this is the Laguna Beach Tourism District that was
22:31
Speaker 3: formed by the hotels, So it's a self assessment by
22:33
Speaker 3: the hotels. It's two percent. It's a two percent bed
22:37
Speaker 3: tax and it raises you know a lot of money
22:41
Speaker 3: probably you know, about three and a half million dollars
22:44
Speaker 3: a year. Now the two percent one percent of that
22:47
Speaker 3: goes to the arts, which is great, and one percent
22:50
Speaker 3: goes to the Visitors Bureau. And people are saying, you know,
22:52
Speaker 3: that money should you know, be taken away from the
22:55
Speaker 3: Visitors Bureau because they're promoting the city and inappropriate ways.
22:59
Speaker 3: And there was some concern you know about kind of
23:03
Speaker 3: social media posts that we're dealing with, you know, private
23:06
Speaker 3: coves and beaches and you know, spots. It was unnecessary
23:09
Speaker 3: and they were asked to take that down and they
23:12
Speaker 3: did take that down. But as a general sense, I
23:15
Speaker 3: mean encouraging you know, visitors to come to the hotels.
23:18
Speaker 3: That's their main mission. Come, you know, stay at their properties.
23:23
Speaker 3: I think, you know, I think they do a good
23:26
Speaker 3: a good job of that. And it's you know, the
23:29
Speaker 3: same Here's what could happen if you say, okay, let's
23:33
Speaker 3: defund the visitors bureaus so we don't next July there's
23:37
Speaker 3: a they're at the end of their current term and
23:40
Speaker 3: they'll have to come back for an extension of the
23:42
Speaker 3: going to Beach Tourism District. And if we were to say, okay,
23:46
Speaker 3: we're not you know, we're not going to extend it.
23:47
Speaker 3: We're not, Council is not gonna They would take their
23:51
Speaker 3: vote and then we would have to agree to extend it.
23:54
Speaker 3: Then what would happen, I think is what what look
23:57
Speaker 3: at what Newport Beach Hotels are looking at, which is
23:59
Speaker 3: they just say, okay, fine, we're going to just do
24:01
Speaker 3: a private assessment. It's called a tourism Assessment district, I think,
24:06
Speaker 3: and we'll just self assess ourselves and continue to do
24:09
Speaker 3: all the stuff we're doing now. So I think the
24:11
Speaker 3: right answer is to as when that comes through, the
24:16
Speaker 3: renewal comes through, reconfigure the board, make sure we have
24:19
Speaker 3: some community representation on it, because currently it's just been
24:22
Speaker 3: the hotel members. Let's get some community members on it.
24:25
Speaker 3: Let's get a city council member on it, and then
24:28
Speaker 3: you know, some representation from the hotels and you figure
24:31
Speaker 3: out how do we best deploy this one point seven
24:34
Speaker 3: million or you know, changes every year, right, but to
24:39
Speaker 3: the benefit of of Laguna. And I think the hotels
24:43
Speaker 3: are up for that. They don't you know, they don't
24:45
Speaker 3: want to create negative issues, they don't want to be
24:48
Speaker 3: the focus of attacks. What so you know, I think
24:54
Speaker 3: I think that's the way I would address it.
24:56
Speaker 1: And we need to be competitive because other cities continue
25:00
Speaker 1: to market themselves. And you know, this brings a lot
25:03
Speaker 1: of jobs to our town. This is our number one industry.
25:06
Speaker 3: It brings a lot of jobs, you know, and it's
25:09
Speaker 3: we collect about, you know, from the bed tax. I mean,
25:11
Speaker 3: the hotels contribute about twenty million a year to the
25:15
Speaker 3: budget overall, so that's you know, I think it just
25:20
Speaker 3: adds a vibrancy to the community.
25:21
Speaker 2: To have the hotels.
25:23
Speaker 3: I think there really want to be good partners, and
25:26
Speaker 3: I think we can, you know, I think we can
25:27
Speaker 3: build a good, yeah, collaborative relationship there.
25:30
Speaker 1: If we didn't have that bed tax money from Montage,
25:33
Speaker 1: we'd be upside down fiscally that we rely on that
25:36
Speaker 1: money and surf and sand we were talking about before
25:38
Speaker 1: we came on the air. This monstrous renovation is beautiful
25:41
Speaker 1: and they want to be community partners. They do a
25:44
Speaker 1: lot of good for us. They do a lot of
25:45
Speaker 1: fundraising and gifting to our town. So I think it's
25:49
Speaker 1: important there is seems to be the one last point
25:54
Speaker 1: on this over tourism. There seems to be a faction
25:58
Speaker 1: in our community that is anti tourism, and they position
26:03
Speaker 1: themselves as pro resident and I've always contended that it's
26:06
Speaker 1: not a binary world. You can be both. You can
26:09
Speaker 1: be pro visitor and pro resident. They're not mutually exclusive,
26:14
Speaker 1: and just as you can be pro progress and pro preservation.
26:18
Speaker 1: I think in that case, it just takes discernment, you know,
26:20
Speaker 1: And that's what we elect you guys to do, is
26:22
Speaker 1: decide what buildings really need to be brought forward into
26:27
Speaker 1: the contemporary and which ones are important enough to keep
26:31
Speaker 1: you know, preserve.
26:34
Speaker 2: And so some of.
26:35
Speaker 1: The what I read about is this notion that visitors
26:38
Speaker 1: don't pay their fair share for services, and there's this
26:41
Speaker 1: campaign to put a up to three percent additional tax
26:47
Speaker 1: on restaurants that restaurants would obviously pass through to their customers.
26:52
Speaker 1: And I think they're relying on a piece of research
26:55
Speaker 1: that nobody has vetted, that came out years and years ago.
26:58
Speaker 1: At the same time, this unvetted number of six million
27:02
Speaker 1: annual visitors came out that we tend to rely on
27:06
Speaker 1: that said that eighty something like eighty percent of the
27:09
Speaker 1: patrons of restaurants or visitors their go it's the visitors
27:13
Speaker 1: that would pay. Now, we had two restaurants in here
27:16
Speaker 1: yesterday on a show, Coyote Grill and Rostataco, who I
27:20
Speaker 1: asked about that tax and they said, yeah, we'll just
27:23
Speaker 1: pass it on to the customers. But I can tell
27:24
Speaker 1: you in the case of Coyote and certainly the Lumberyard
27:28
Speaker 1: and other restaurants, they say eighty percent of their customers
27:31
Speaker 1: or locals. So isn't that kind of self defeating to
27:34
Speaker 1: put that tax on. It's just going to raise the
27:36
Speaker 1: price of dining out for us.
27:39
Speaker 3: Well, you know that's what you just brought up as
27:42
Speaker 3: a huge topic, right, which is I do you know,
27:46
Speaker 3: I don't know what the you know, whether the number
27:48
Speaker 3: is twenty twenty million or whether it's now there was
27:51
Speaker 3: a recent update to that where you know, some of
27:53
Speaker 3: the proponents are saying it's thirty four million. But I
27:56
Speaker 3: think just logic tells you there's no question we spend
27:58
Speaker 3: more money as a city government because we have a
28:00
Speaker 3: lot of visitors, and I suspect we spend you know more,
28:06
Speaker 3: I do suspect we spend more than we collect from them,
28:09
Speaker 3: which is primarily sales tax and hotel bed tax. I
28:13
Speaker 3: mean those are really the visitors and parking revenues parking, right,
28:17
Speaker 3: But so there is some you know, there is some gap, there,
28:22
Speaker 3: some shortfall, and you know, who knows exactly what the
28:27
Speaker 3: number is. There's a lot of assumptions that go into
28:29
Speaker 3: those kind of computations.
28:31
Speaker 2: But.
28:34
Speaker 3: You know, there's no So the general question is should
28:40
Speaker 3: you collect try to collect more money from the visitors?
28:44
Speaker 3: And you know is there? And then the question becomes
28:48
Speaker 3: how do you do that? And there's limited tools to
28:50
Speaker 3: do that, and none of them are perfect tools. If
28:52
Speaker 3: you want a perfect tool, that says a resident of
28:54
Speaker 3: Laguna is never going to pay another nickel and tax,
28:58
Speaker 3: you know, because we're collecting something else the residents. It's
29:00
Speaker 3: not going to happen. Sales tax is you know, primarily
29:05
Speaker 3: paid by visitors. We're trying to work to get a
29:09
Speaker 3: better sense of the percentage, whether it's sixty five or
29:13
Speaker 3: seventy five or eighty percent parking revenues. If you have
29:17
Speaker 3: your sticker in town, right, you're not paying So that's
29:20
Speaker 3: primarily visitors. So I think one of the things we
29:23
Speaker 3: will look at is in seeing whether we can enhance
29:26
Speaker 3: parking revenues too, which is again is if you've got
29:30
Speaker 3: your sticker, that's going to be paid for by visitors.
29:35
Speaker 3: The you know, I don't know every restaurant in town
29:38
Speaker 3: says eighty percent of their visitors or eighty percent of
29:41
Speaker 3: their customers or revenue are local ones. I've talked to
29:46
Speaker 3: hard to believe. Hard for me to believe that that's
29:49
Speaker 3: really true. You know, I'm certain times a year, I'm
29:54
Speaker 3: sure there are a lot more locals in the restaurants
29:57
Speaker 3: than visitors.
29:58
Speaker 2: But you can't have.
30:01
Speaker 3: You know, I think it's in the millions, right, you
30:03
Speaker 3: can't have millions of visitors come into town without a
30:06
Speaker 3: fair amount of dining by visitors. But I think that's
30:10
Speaker 3: you know, bigger issue when you think about what do
30:14
Speaker 3: you want in life, what do you want your community
30:16
Speaker 3: to be like? Without the visitors, we wouldn't have a
30:19
Speaker 3: very interesting community. We wouldn't have art festivals because they
30:24
Speaker 3: it's primarily the visitors that support those. You know, we
30:27
Speaker 3: wouldn't have as many restaurants as we have. We wouldn't
30:29
Speaker 3: have a playhouse, we would you know, these are things that.
30:37
Speaker 2: These are things.
30:38
Speaker 3: That we have in part because people come to town
30:41
Speaker 3: and participate in them and make them, you know, feasible, viable.
30:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
30:45
Speaker 1: Economically, well, I just so specifically the restaurant increased tax,
30:51
Speaker 1: which would whether it gets passed on to visitors or
30:55
Speaker 1: to residents, it means a higher cost of dining out.
30:58
Speaker 2: And there is a consensus that dining out has.
31:00
Speaker 1: Become exorbitant now, you know, and it's just a I
31:04
Speaker 1: think it's the reality of running a restaurant. The food costs,
31:07
Speaker 1: the staffing costs, everything's gone up. So do you support
31:10
Speaker 1: that as a way to generate more revenue.
31:13
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think I was supporting it a
31:17
Speaker 3: couple months ago and we brought it to council and
31:19
Speaker 3: it didn't pass. But you know, Mark Orgol and I
31:24
Speaker 3: are still a subcommittee and we're looking at that. We're
31:26
Speaker 3: looking at different alternatives. But I will say this and people,
31:29
Speaker 3: you know, yes, dining out has gotten to be extraordinarily expensive.
31:33
Speaker 3: But the other the flip side of that is the
31:35
Speaker 3: business license tax, which is what all the businesses pay
31:38
Speaker 3: in town, has not been raised for since nineteen ninety eight.
31:41
Speaker 3: So what other charge, fee cost you know, hasn't gone
31:46
Speaker 3: up in whatever that is twenty six years. So we
31:51
Speaker 3: were trying to address that in part and limit it
31:54
Speaker 3: to where we thought there were more visitor impacts. So
31:59
Speaker 3: I mean, I want to take another look at it.
32:00
Speaker 3: We're taking another look at all of it. What's going
32:02
Speaker 3: to happen here is we're going to come back. It's
32:04
Speaker 3: going to be an interesting conversation. You know, this facilities
32:06
Speaker 3: master plan that has been being worked on for the
32:10
Speaker 3: last ten months eleven months is going to come back
32:14
Speaker 3: to us I think for an update at the end
32:16
Speaker 3: of October in November, and then we'll be you know,
32:20
Speaker 3: a full presentation and what we're going to see. And
32:23
Speaker 3: I mentioned this that night when we were talking about
32:25
Speaker 3: whether we put something on the ballot. What we're going
32:28
Speaker 3: to see is some very significant costs, large costs. What
32:33
Speaker 3: we're going to see is, you know, to make buildings
32:36
Speaker 3: seismically safe, to update our fire stations, to you know,
32:41
Speaker 3: do just the basic kind of modernizing that has to happen.
32:49
Speaker 3: And then the question becomes, how are you going to
32:51
Speaker 3: pay for all that? And I think what we have
32:54
Speaker 3: to do is we have to have a real conversation
32:57
Speaker 3: with the community we once we once we present sort
32:59
Speaker 3: of needs to plan and say, what do you think
33:02
Speaker 3: I mean, we're an old community, infrastructures old It's right,
33:05
Speaker 3: We're one hundred years old in twenty twenty seven. Yep,
33:08
Speaker 3: So we got to you got to do something about it.
33:11
Speaker 1: We're talking here to three term city councilman Bob Whalen,
33:15
Speaker 1: running for his fourth term here on KXFM Laguna Talks. Bob,
33:20
Speaker 1: let's go to your pet project, the one that you've
33:23
Speaker 1: been passionate about. I think since you got on council,
33:26
Speaker 1: which was undergrounding the power lines on Laguna Canyon Road,
33:30
Speaker 1: this has resurfaced. Now there is a significant group of
33:35
Speaker 1: opposition just claiming it's not necessary, it's too expensive. But
33:39
Speaker 1: we had a fascinating column this week from our new
33:43
Speaker 1: city manager, Dave Kiff and man, oh Man, I want
33:46
Speaker 1: to just say, I haven't you know, he's been on
33:48
Speaker 1: the job for a relatively short time, but I have
33:50
Speaker 1: not seen this level of transparency and communication from any
33:54
Speaker 1: of the previous city managers, many of whom tended to
33:57
Speaker 1: be kind of closed off from communicating with the public.
34:01
Speaker 1: And I find it extremely refreshing because he's a good writer,
34:05
Speaker 1: and he really laid it out.
34:06
Speaker 2: I thought, did you read it? I did?
34:08
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, yeah, and I worked on it a lot. Yeah,
34:11
Speaker 3: would have thought, but yeah, and I thought it was
34:14
Speaker 3: an excellent letter.
34:15
Speaker 1: Wasn't partisan. He just laid out the pros and the cons. Certainly,
34:19
Speaker 1: from my perspective of the pros outweigh the cons. It
34:22
Speaker 1: all comes down to whether we can fund it. Take
34:24
Speaker 1: us through from the start your efforts to get this done.
34:29
Speaker 1: I know you went to Sacramento and tried to get
34:31
Speaker 1: some money, and I think you did it. Correct me
34:34
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong. Based on this being a fire risk
34:37
Speaker 1: area and the state concluded that we were not enough
34:41
Speaker 1: of a fire risk area or some crazy notion like that.
34:44
Speaker 3: Well, I can take you back in time. So yeah,
34:49
Speaker 3: I was elected in twenty twelve, and in twenty thirteen
34:53
Speaker 3: I went to the city manager then city manager, and
34:56
Speaker 3: we created the Laguna Canyon Road Task Force.
34:59
Speaker 2: We had a counsel to approve.
35:00
Speaker 3: So we had twenty plus people on that task force
35:03
Speaker 3: to say, you know, what can we do about this
35:05
Speaker 3: quarter because it's it's right out of the nineteen fifties
35:10
Speaker 3: or earlier, right with these utility lines and wires and
35:13
Speaker 3: no sidewalks and no bike paths. You know, you talk
35:16
Speaker 3: about complete streets, this is the most incomplete street and
35:19
Speaker 3: that that I can point to. So yeah, we worked
35:23
Speaker 3: for two years on that, and Tony Eisman and I
35:26
Speaker 3: were the co chairs of it and council memberizement, and
35:30
Speaker 3: we worked for two years and we got to a
35:32
Speaker 3: point where the task force said endorsed undergrounding traffic safety improvements,
35:40
Speaker 3: but no road widening, bike lanes, and pedestrian pathways. So
35:45
Speaker 3: those are the four elements.
35:46
Speaker 1: And let me interject for the public to the listeners
35:50
Speaker 1: to whenever they accuse you guys of not vetting it
35:53
Speaker 1: with the community. Oh my god, Bob, you assigned you
35:56
Speaker 1: created a task force of about eighteen groups across the
36:02
Speaker 1: board that all in some way would be affected by
36:05
Speaker 1: this road, by the undergrounding, and you convened us once
36:10
Speaker 1: a month, I think for six months and it was
36:13
Speaker 1: a very very thorough vetting and everybody came back I
36:17
Speaker 1: think it was it was a complete unanimous decision not
36:20
Speaker 1: to widen the roads, not to add lanes, because of
36:24
Speaker 1: the idea of what's the there's a traffic.
36:28
Speaker 2: Word for induice demand.
36:30
Speaker 1: You'll just get more cars cycling in and keep it
36:33
Speaker 1: bucolic and beautiful. But at the same time put in
36:36
Speaker 1: that class one bike lane that could also be used
36:39
Speaker 1: as an express transit lane, maybe possibly stop lights or roundabouts,
36:44
Speaker 1: many many measures to make it safer and flow better.
36:47
Speaker 1: So for those of who are sitting there saying you
36:51
Speaker 1: got to get buy in from the community, I want
36:53
Speaker 1: to say that ten years ago you did well.
36:56
Speaker 3: I feel that we did and we've continued now. You know,
36:59
Speaker 3: in the last nine months there have been a lot
37:01
Speaker 3: of community meetings and outreach in our staff has been
37:04
Speaker 3: meeting with individual groups, you know, the can Do group,
37:08
Speaker 3: the environmental groups in the in the canyon to get
37:12
Speaker 3: their input. But we have remained true. Here we're ten
37:15
Speaker 3: years later, right, but we've remained true to those basic
37:19
Speaker 3: guiding principles that the task force set out. And I
37:24
Speaker 3: think you know, in the city manager's letter, he indicates
37:28
Speaker 3: we're now in the design phase. We're now getting down
37:31
Speaker 3: to brass tacks where we can you know, put out
37:34
Speaker 3: some road concepts and sidewalk concepts and bike lane concepts
37:38
Speaker 3: to the community. And I and we've been told this
37:41
Speaker 3: for years. If we can get through the environmental and
37:44
Speaker 3: design phase with a roadway and other amenities that our
37:49
Speaker 3: community you know, is supportive of, then there will be money,
37:56
Speaker 3: grant money to get the roadway done. It's expensive, but
38:00
Speaker 3: I've talked and others have talked, but I've you know,
38:03
Speaker 3: a supervisor Foley, Katrina Foley, very supportive. She's on Octa,
38:08
Speaker 3: she says, lead the charge for that. You know, we've
38:10
Speaker 3: had contacts with the California Transportation Commission and members and
38:15
Speaker 3: they said, yeah, and then you know this bike lane,
38:18
Speaker 3: which would it really completes a section of bike lane
38:22
Speaker 3: that is on the county's master plan of bike lanes.
38:25
Speaker 2: So how far does it run well?
38:28
Speaker 3: The segment we're talking about from really the sawdust out
38:33
Speaker 3: to El Toro Road is about two and a half
38:36
Speaker 3: miles long, and then it would connect up to you know,
38:41
Speaker 3: the beyond El Toro, which is the county's project out there.
38:46
Speaker 3: So anyway, going back to what you were describing, Yeah,
38:51
Speaker 3: I think it is a real evacuation route. We only
38:57
Speaker 3: have three evacuation routes out of town. You know, it's
39:00
Speaker 3: a wildfire risk. The Caltrans report that we got in
39:06
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, of the consultant report we got in twenty
39:08
Speaker 3: twenty from HDR reported that during the fifteen year period
39:12
Speaker 3: before that, there had been either six or seven fires
39:15
Speaker 3: sparked by utility lines. Thank god, none of them were major,
39:18
Speaker 3: but it noted that if the conditions were wrong, any
39:23
Speaker 3: one of those could have been a major fire. Right
39:25
Speaker 3: and we know that fire risk is increasing daily, increasing daily.
39:29
Speaker 3: You know, after the Paradise disaster, a number of us
39:33
Speaker 3: from town went up to Paradise when they similarly had
39:35
Speaker 3: three ways in and out, and one of them was
39:39
Speaker 3: blocked by the main one down the hill was blocked
39:42
Speaker 3: by down utility poles and lines. And it's not just
39:45
Speaker 3: think about it, Billy, It's not just fire that can
39:48
Speaker 3: be sparked by these lines. It's true, but you know,
39:51
Speaker 3: you have a seismic event, right a major earthquake, These
39:55
Speaker 3: poles can fall over, block the road, create fire, catch fire,
39:59
Speaker 3: and you know you can't get your emergency vehicles in
40:02
Speaker 3: and out, so there's no you know, it just makes
40:06
Speaker 3: all the sense in the world from a safety standpoint,
40:08
Speaker 3: but from a practical standpoint, given the right away limitations
40:13
Speaker 3: there and we want to protect the open space, the
40:16
Speaker 3: only way to create bike lanes and pedestrian sidewalks on
40:20
Speaker 3: the on the inland side is to put the utilities underground,
40:25
Speaker 3: because that's where you create the space for the bike
40:28
Speaker 3: lanes and the pedestrian paths. So it all makes sense
40:31
Speaker 3: that undergrounding is the gateway to the whole project.
40:35
Speaker 1: We are what happened with the funding back in the day,
40:38
Speaker 1: and I think the price tag was probably half of
40:41
Speaker 1: what it's projected to be now because of rising costs.
40:44
Speaker 1: If only we could have done it then. But what
40:46
Speaker 1: happened in your quest.
40:48
Speaker 3: Well, we do for money, you know, I did spend
40:50
Speaker 3: time in Sacramento. We got a bill approved by the
40:53
Speaker 3: legislature then Senator John Morlock and I worked on it
40:58
Speaker 3: for a long time and it got through, and you know,
41:00
Speaker 3: it got to the governor, and this was twenty and fifteen,
41:03
Speaker 3: I believe, so it was before all the major fires,
41:06
Speaker 3: before Paradise, before the wine country was burning down. But
41:10
Speaker 3: we had had July third, twenty fifteen, a fire sparked
41:14
Speaker 3: in the canyon by a down line, and that was
41:16
Speaker 3: what precipitated me to start this whole process. Anyway, I
41:20
Speaker 3: got through the legislature onto the Governor Brown, then Governor
41:24
Speaker 3: Brown's desk, and he vetoed it said, oh, the PUC
41:26
Speaker 3: is going to take care of all this. This is
41:28
Speaker 3: not necessary, this bill is not necessary. And then you know,
41:31
Speaker 3: the whole world started falling apart up there in twenty
41:33
Speaker 3: seventeen and eighteen and nineteen with you know, major major
41:37
Speaker 3: wildfires that put PGNE into bankruptcy.
41:41
Speaker 2: You know, in the state created this whole.
41:43
Speaker 3: Insurance you know, sort of wildfire bailout fund for the utilities.
41:48
Speaker 3: But it never my the bill we were pursuing, which
41:52
Speaker 3: was to sort of mandate undergrounding in very high fire
41:57
Speaker 3: hazard severity zones, which ninety percent of our community ideas
42:01
Speaker 3: didn't you got vetoed and didn't pass.
42:04
Speaker 2: And we've gotten close enough to Sacramento. We continue though,
42:09
Speaker 2: to work.
42:09
Speaker 3: There is one ray of hope and we've continued to
42:12
Speaker 3: work with Edison Southern California. Edison, and they have now
42:15
Speaker 3: as a result of all of this, you know, subsequent
42:18
Speaker 3: fires and damage and pgene, they now have what is
42:22
Speaker 3: through the PUC what's called the TUG program, Targeted Undergrounding Program,
42:27
Speaker 3: and they have put a portion of the Laguna Canyon
42:31
Speaker 3: Road project on the TUG list if they get funding,
42:35
Speaker 3: which will know in January February, so we could be
42:38
Speaker 3: looking at twenty to twenty five million dollars worth of
42:40
Speaker 3: funding from Edison if they get that approved by the PUC.
42:46
Speaker 3: So I think we need to you know, what Council
42:48
Speaker 3: did in January twenty three as we launched into this
42:52
Speaker 3: environmental design public outreach phase. It's been going very well.
42:56
Speaker 3: The feedback has been very positive. You know, our teams
42:59
Speaker 3: have been down the farmers market and the reports I'm
43:03
Speaker 3: getting back is, you know, it's all very positive. When
43:05
Speaker 3: people look at the bike lane, how great would it
43:07
Speaker 3: be to be at the farmers market and be able
43:10
Speaker 3: to ride my bike out, you know, to my home
43:12
Speaker 3: in the canyon, or ride my bike out to the
43:15
Speaker 3: open space, leave it there, take a hike, come back
43:18
Speaker 3: right into town phenomena. So you know, it's it's this
43:21
Speaker 3: is a project that if we can attract the grant
43:24
Speaker 3: funding for, we will all look back on and say, wow,
43:28
Speaker 3: why didn't we do it?
43:29
Speaker 1: So so many benefits. What about measure M money? Are there
43:32
Speaker 1: still billions sitting there?
43:33
Speaker 2: Yeah?
43:33
Speaker 3: Measure M Well that's where we were talking a little earlier.
43:36
Speaker 3: That measure M was where we got our trolley funding from.
43:41
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's part of the octa funding that is
43:45
Speaker 3: measure the sales tax. When you say measure them, that's
43:47
Speaker 3: the half cent sales tax that the county pass for transportation,
43:50
Speaker 3: where we all passed in the county for transportation. That's
43:53
Speaker 3: another potential pot of money. Yeah, yep.
43:55
Speaker 1: So really it's a matter of finding where the money
43:58
Speaker 1: is and then coming back to this to the community
44:01
Speaker 1: and saying we've got the funding.
44:02
Speaker 2: Where short this amount would you be willing to fund it?
44:05
Speaker 1: Would that be something that would need to go to
44:06
Speaker 1: a public vote.
44:09
Speaker 2: It depends how we fund the shortfall.
44:11
Speaker 3: I mean, if we decided we needed to, you know,
44:14
Speaker 3: what what we brought I think in twenty eighteen, what
44:19
Speaker 3: what I urged the council to do. And the council
44:22
Speaker 3: did was we you know, we brought the measure p
44:24
Speaker 3: the sales tax increase that would have funded undergrounding on
44:27
Speaker 3: the canyon and other places in the city. Unfortunately it
44:30
Speaker 3: didn't pass. But yeah, I think if we, you know,
44:34
Speaker 3: if we came back to the community again, if we
44:36
Speaker 3: need to to say, hey, we've got this grant funding
44:38
Speaker 3: lined up, but we have we have a matching obligation
44:41
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty five million whatever you know the number is,
44:44
Speaker 3: would you support it?
44:46
Speaker 2: You know, we'll see.
44:47
Speaker 3: I would like to think at that point the community
44:49
Speaker 3: would say, yeah, let's fill the gap and match the
44:53
Speaker 3: match to grant funding.
44:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, Bob, it feels like there's you know, you talked
44:58
Speaker 1: about our aging infrastructure and the incredible amount of risk
45:02
Speaker 1: that we live in daily, from earthquakes to fires, to
45:06
Speaker 1: mud slides to tsunamis, all of these things that it's
45:10
Speaker 1: sort of your role number one job is to keep
45:12
Speaker 1: us safe. And all of this requires big thinking and
45:16
Speaker 1: big spending. And I would say, you know, one of
45:19
Speaker 1: your primary opponents is a fiscal conservative, and there's this
45:23
Speaker 1: notion that we shouldn't be spending any we shouldn't be
45:25
Speaker 1: taking on any of these projects because of the enormous costs.
45:30
Speaker 2: How do you answer that, thinking.
45:33
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I think if we can get
45:36
Speaker 3: grant funding and you can fill the gap with matching,
45:39
Speaker 3: you should definitely do that. But some of these projects
45:42
Speaker 3: are necessary. I mean the twenty nineteen and I agree
45:47
Speaker 3: with you, by the way, public safety is number one.
45:49
Speaker 3: It's always been number one. But we put together the
45:51
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen Wildfire Safety and Mitigation Plan right with forty
45:57
Speaker 3: six different elements to it that we want to implement
46:00
Speaker 3: to keep the community safe. And we spent over twenty
46:03
Speaker 3: twenty million dollars so far doing that, Expanding fuel modification
46:06
Speaker 3: zones up in the open space and the hills around
46:10
Speaker 3: the community, putting in helicoptery filling stations, putting in an
46:14
Speaker 3: emergency outdoor warning system. You know, without the public safety
46:20
Speaker 3: aspects of it, there's nothing left here. I mean I
46:23
Speaker 3: was here in ninety three and it was devastating, right
46:27
Speaker 3: and devastating for years. So we want do we want
46:31
Speaker 3: to or need to borrow for every project? No, you know,
46:35
Speaker 3: sometimes you do want to build up and do your page.
46:38
Speaker 3: You go programming, but there are going to be certain
46:41
Speaker 3: big ones where you say, yeah, it's worth it to me,
46:45
Speaker 3: you know, to have a fire station now that's up
46:48
Speaker 3: to code. It's worth it to me to preserve the
46:51
Speaker 3: safety of my evacuation route out Lagoon and Canyon Road.
46:55
Speaker 3: So I would say, you know, let's have the conversation
46:58
Speaker 3: on each project as it comes on a merit basis
47:01
Speaker 3: and decide how it should get funded.
47:03
Speaker 1: What about what about a parking garage either at City
47:07
Speaker 1: Hall or at Act five. That's something you'd like to revisit.
47:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I I'm on the record, you know,
47:15
Speaker 3: in this campaign and previously as I'm supportive of a
47:20
Speaker 3: parking structure behind City Hall that would not be financed
47:25
Speaker 3: by any new taxes, that would be paid for by
47:30
Speaker 3: parking revenues. And frankly, I think we'd look at we'd
47:37
Speaker 3: look at the festival, we'd look at the Visitors Bureau
47:39
Speaker 3: for contributions to that because it will benefit for sure.
47:43
Speaker 1: Have you considered I think the City of del Mar
47:46
Speaker 1: did a private public partnership on their parking lot where
47:48
Speaker 1: they brought in a developer who got the ground floor
47:54
Speaker 1: and they put retail stores there and so that developer
47:58
Speaker 1: was able to generate income from the expense, sure, and
48:00
Speaker 1: then the city gets all the parking revenue. Would that
48:03
Speaker 1: be a viable way to.
48:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it depends on the location. I guess
48:08
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that the commercial retail behind City Hall
48:12
Speaker 3: would really work very well. I think it's you know,
48:17
Speaker 3: maybe maybe elsewhere that could work, but probably not, Probably
48:21
Speaker 3: not there. And I think, you know, the proformers have
48:24
Speaker 3: shown that the parking revenues would cover any cost of
48:28
Speaker 3: financing there, so I think it's I think it's very
48:30
Speaker 3: feasible if if people get behind it.
48:34
Speaker 1: Any other thoughts on improving our transportation grid and making
48:39
Speaker 1: it more complete or multimodal. What are those tactics that
48:43
Speaker 1: we can do to reduce the impact of cars.
48:46
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think we we talked about some
48:48
Speaker 3: of them earlier. Continue we continue to encourage the trolley.
48:51
Speaker 3: We've got the summer breeze it's called that we're in
48:55
Speaker 3: ridership I think was up twenty three percent this year
48:57
Speaker 3: where people can park in the summer up at the
48:59
Speaker 3: top of the Canyon Intervine, take a trolley all the
49:02
Speaker 3: way down. You know, maybe we expand that we look
49:04
Speaker 3: at can we run that up to Laguna Hills, you know,
49:07
Speaker 3: and maybe people from Aliso Viejo and and Laguna Hills
49:12
Speaker 3: look at taking that in uh to to the city there.
49:18
Speaker 2: Like I said, I'd like to.
49:19
Speaker 3: See you know, more efficient use of the how the
49:24
Speaker 3: free parking we have down at the hospital in the
49:26
Speaker 3: summer the people, and.
49:30
Speaker 2: You know, can we.
49:34
Speaker 3: You know, can we encourage more people to get out
49:35
Speaker 3: of their cars as they approach the city. That's why
49:38
Speaker 3: I've been a strong proponent. I mean, there's been some
49:41
Speaker 3: urging to truncate the trolley system before it goes down
49:45
Speaker 3: to the Ritz Carlton, you know, and there is parking
49:48
Speaker 3: down there.
49:49
Speaker 2: There's a you know, a fairly good sized parking lot.
49:51
Speaker 3: So again, if you can get our public transit going
49:55
Speaker 3: out of town to pick people up, and it's going
49:58
Speaker 3: to help a little bit. But as you said earlier,
49:59
Speaker 3: I mean, there's no you know, there's no single solution
50:02
Speaker 3: to this.
50:02
Speaker 1: You know, I'm going to run down a couple of
50:05
Speaker 1: tactics and just see what you think. Some people have
50:07
Speaker 1: mentioned imposing an impact tax on five points in the
50:10
Speaker 1: Irvine Company, which because of the amount of intensification of
50:15
Speaker 1: their developments bringing to Laguna, is that feasible and could
50:19
Speaker 1: we tell them we want you to apply that to
50:21
Speaker 1: a shuttle system. That would be an amenity for your
50:24
Speaker 1: homeowners to bring them to Laguna so they don't have
50:27
Speaker 1: to get in the car.
50:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be I think an expansion sort of
50:31
Speaker 3: the summer Breeze concept where you'd have them running shuttles
50:36
Speaker 3: from their communities. I mean, the intensification of use in
50:39
Speaker 3: South County obviously has been you know, dramatic. We did,
50:43
Speaker 3: by the way, several years ago, we went to five
50:47
Speaker 3: Points and we did negotiate a six million dollar payment
50:49
Speaker 3: from them, which we've now received because you know, we said,
50:53
Speaker 3: your your building is going to have impacts on our
50:58
Speaker 3: you know, mgin A Cannon Road in particular, or so
51:00
Speaker 3: we've been successful at that once before.
51:03
Speaker 2: You know, I think, but how do we use that money?
51:07
Speaker 3: That money has been that money has been used in
51:10
Speaker 3: the Lagundy Canyon Road Improvements improvement project to date.
51:14
Speaker 2: Got it.
51:16
Speaker 3: But you know what you're describing is something uh, you know,
51:20
Speaker 3: they they obviously want their homeowners to have you know,
51:26
Speaker 3: an experience right where they.
51:27
Speaker 2: Think, yeah, what a great amenity have they offered a show?
51:30
Speaker 3: So that may be interesting. Although there's now a lot
51:32
Speaker 3: going on at the Great Park. You talk about projects
51:35
Speaker 3: they are looking at. I think they are talking about
51:39
Speaker 3: like a billion dollars of borrowing up there too, you know,
51:42
Speaker 3: to build out that park and a cultural full cultural
51:46
Speaker 3: component to it with museums and and other things.
51:49
Speaker 2: So what about my favorite topic?
51:52
Speaker 1: You touched on it on Laguna Canyon Road with a
51:55
Speaker 1: bicycle lane dedicated, But what other bicycle infrastructure and what's
52:00
Speaker 1: your point of view now? I mean, we certainly see
52:02
Speaker 1: a lot more kids riding bikes through town, although we
52:04
Speaker 1: really don't have streets that are.
52:08
Speaker 2: Safe.
52:10
Speaker 1: Have you thought about bike infrastructure kiosks that are at
52:13
Speaker 1: strategic places perhaps where people can park and then rent
52:17
Speaker 1: a bike, an electric bike and ride.
52:19
Speaker 2: How can we get people out of their cars? Is
52:21
Speaker 2: that a viable strategy?
52:23
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I used to be a biker in
52:27
Speaker 3: a mountain biker. I haven't ridden an e bike yet,
52:30
Speaker 3: but you know, there's no question that e bikes are
52:31
Speaker 3: getting a lot more popular. It's tough, you know, in
52:35
Speaker 3: town we did you know, I think Glenaria's an opportunity
52:40
Speaker 3: right right for a better you know, and sayer bike
52:44
Speaker 3: area where you can do some of the maybe striping
52:49
Speaker 3: in the green you know the green zones where you.
52:52
Speaker 2: Know from Failure to.
52:55
Speaker 1: Legion you know it narrows from Legion downtown, but from
53:00
Speaker 1: Failure to Legion on one side of the street there's
53:03
Speaker 1: basically on about fourteen parking spaces. If we were to
53:08
Speaker 1: remove those, we could make a safe biking lane all
53:11
Speaker 1: the way and then at Legion they could actually turn
53:15
Speaker 1: and go downtown. Now they start to go down Glen Area,
53:18
Speaker 1: I suppose, but we never talk about that. How we
53:22
Speaker 1: can we own that road? We could do many many things,
53:24
Speaker 1: And I want to mention one thing because it seems
53:27
Speaker 1: to have disappeared from the conversation roundabouts. We put that
53:31
Speaker 1: one in at Elbosque. It seems to be successful. That
53:33
Speaker 1: was a trial with the goal of putting more of
53:38
Speaker 1: them in places that really need them, that are high
53:40
Speaker 1: traffic like Failure at Glen Airy or Thailua at well All,
53:45
Speaker 1: I mean in Glen Area, at Calliope or places like that.
53:48
Speaker 2: Is there any will to do something like that?
53:52
Speaker 3: You know, it would be interesting looking at it again
53:55
Speaker 3: and seeing if the what the traffic people say they're Ironically,
54:00
Speaker 3: Caltrans has been a big proponent of roundabouts, they work,
54:06
Speaker 3: and they I've seen the places where they've been put Ino.
54:12
Speaker 3: We looked at them by the way, we looked at
54:14
Speaker 3: them as possibilities in the canyon. The problem is they're
54:18
Speaker 3: out there with the because we've got you know, the
54:21
Speaker 3: three lanes. The size of the roundabout would really significantly
54:25
Speaker 3: impact the open space. So I don't think they're going
54:27
Speaker 3: to happen out there. But yeah, in places like Failure,
54:30
Speaker 3: that intersection is that's a funky intersection. Anyway, it's a mess,
54:35
Speaker 3: so it might work. I think the one you mentioned
54:38
Speaker 3: up but Los Robolos has been very well received. It Yeah,
54:42
Speaker 3: I think people like it.
54:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's nice, but it's it's not really a
54:46
Speaker 1: high traffick a it's not a high traffick area. Well, Bob,
54:48
Speaker 1: in a couple of minutes we have left, are there
54:50
Speaker 1: any other points that you'd like to touch on in
54:52
Speaker 1: terms of what you want to accomplish and why we
54:54
Speaker 1: should vote you back in for another term.
54:57
Speaker 3: Well, you know, we've talked about a lot of them,
54:59
Speaker 3: but I think one we haven't talked about is, you know,
55:01
Speaker 3: affordable housing. You can see the count Council's got a
55:04
Speaker 3: lot of focus on trying to do that. I know
55:06
Speaker 3: there's you know, one particular project over at the neighborhood
55:09
Speaker 3: Congregational Church that we actually don't have an application on yet,
55:14
Speaker 3: but we expect we'll get one, you know, and there's
55:18
Speaker 3: concern in the community about the potential size of that.
55:22
Speaker 3: But I think we need to be committed to finding
55:25
Speaker 3: you know, as I say, sort of just the right
55:29
Speaker 3: the right type of affordable housing project for Laguna, right
55:32
Speaker 3: size for Laguna visually, you know, appealing given our communities makeup,
55:37
Speaker 3: but we need to you know, artists, seniors we're getting
55:41
Speaker 3: We're an older community. There's no real there's no real
55:43
Speaker 3: good senior housing. It's affordable other than you know, the
55:46
Speaker 3: National Church Residents is down at lang Park, so affordable
55:51
Speaker 3: housing for sure. I want to see some more work
55:54
Speaker 3: and success in in that arena protecting, and a lot
55:58
Speaker 3: of it I think can happen in existing buildings for
56:01
Speaker 3: the artists out in the canyon. In particular, there's a
56:03
Speaker 3: couple that I know we're targeting. We're trying to form
56:07
Speaker 3: this community land trust that will be a private effort
56:11
Speaker 3: where people can you know, contribute to a land trust
56:14
Speaker 3: to help solve these kinds of issues. I hope there'll
56:16
Speaker 3: be a good outpouring of support for that. So, you know,
56:20
Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of good things, you know
56:25
Speaker 3: ahead and obviously we we touched on going to Canyon Road.
56:28
Speaker 3: That's a big one in the visitors, that's a big one.
56:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.
56:31
Speaker 1: And you mentioned the in your in your flyer protect
56:34
Speaker 1: and improve our environment by implementing the Climate Action and
56:37
Speaker 1: Adoption Plan that's been around for years.
56:40
Speaker 3: Well we have, but although it's it's we haven't two
56:44
Speaker 3: thousand and nine, but we really haven't had an adaptation plan.
56:46
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think there's going to be a lot
56:48
Speaker 3: of effort on sustainability in the next four years. When
56:52
Speaker 3: we voted to electrify our fleet by twenty thirty, that's
56:54
Speaker 3: going to be another costly item, but something that you
56:57
Speaker 3: know should be done. We're going to uh the adaptation plan.
57:03
Speaker 3: I think we'll have a number of elements. One of
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Speaker 3: the things I'm excited about is and this is I've
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Speaker 3: been serving on the South Orange County UH Wastewater Authority
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Speaker 3: SAQUA right, which is our city South Coast Water District,
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Speaker 3: and a number of other agencies down there. We're going
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Speaker 3: to be looking at to you know, improve, reduce the
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Speaker 3: runoff to the ocean. We're going to be We've voted
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Speaker 3: for one to participate in the first phase of the
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Speaker 3: desalination project in at Dolheeny Beach, which would combined with
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Speaker 3: the wells we're working on getting in Fountain Valley, and
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Speaker 3: that will be hundred percent local water onndred percent local
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Speaker 3: water source.
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Speaker 2: That's huge, that's huge.
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Speaker 1: Well, Bob, I love to chat more, but we got
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Speaker 1: to get onto the next show. We've been talking to
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Speaker 1: Bob Whaling for the hour. I wish you nothing but
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Speaker 1: good luck, Bob, and I hope you get on that
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Speaker 1: council for another term so you can make all these
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Speaker 1: things happen that we are counting on you to make happen.
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Speaker 2: Billy, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. You got
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Speaker 2: to take care. K X R N LP