Visit Laguna Beach? Actually, Please Don't! Part I Of A 2 Part Series

Visit Laguna Beach? Actually, Please Don’t!?

Part I of a 2 Part Series

The "SS Laguna Beach" is like a lifeboat or raft: Limited space and precious, unique supplies, unusual resources, similar to rations of exotic food, fresh glacial water to drink and until recently, un-fouled, clean air. Why did we start funding our own eventual destruction?

The earmarking and structuring of money that ended up in the coffers of Visit Laguna Beach, once upon a time known as the Laguna Beach Visitors Bureau, IMO needs to be reopened asap: Funding severely reduced, reassessed, maybe cut off completely. [1]

As originally proposed and championed by the Laguna Beach City Council in 2002, I clearly remember sitting there in Chambers and admiring the way (then) Councilman Wayne Baglin bravely opposed it.

The sole voice of concern, Wayne understood what was implied: Diverting 1% of the additional 2% increase to the (then) 10% TOT/BID might not have been thoroughly thought out.

The amended 12% Temporary Occupancy Tax (and/or BID) yearly revenue, tithing 1% to VLB, was akin to underwriting commerce with our money, paid advertising for those profiting from less than 30-day lodging here. [2]

20 years later, and easily $25-30 million later, I think that it’s high time to reconsider, recalibrate, reboot, refresh our metaphorical browsers. And maybe time to view all of that previously donated money as seed funds instead.

Sort of wean them off of such automatically appropriated, discretionary spending of the City's gross revenue sums. Can’t they do a little more of the sustenance fundraising internally, by passing the hat among their beneficiary food chain membership?

Do they really need $1.8 million (last year’s approximate share) to survive?

The Good News? VLB’s mission has been accomplished. We’ve become that “Year Round Destination.”

The Bad News? We’ve become that “Year Round Destination,” and to long term residents like myself, we’re now victims, hostages, prisoners of our own device.

Translation: We’re over-run by these visitations. They eat up our coastal and downtown parking, space seekers bulging into residential neighbors previously unaffected, clog up our streets causing year-round gridlock, and cost us a fortune in community support services.

Waiting lines for our favorite watering holes and grindage (food) have become much much longer.

Worser, IMO, the County recently unloaded a lemon regarding South Laguna properties. To my knowledge no one’s proven that the acquisitions won’t in the long haul further diminish and severely drain, not increase our coffers.

Liabilities, not assets.

We have a high sales tax rate at 7.75%. After 2 TOT/BID increases from 10% in 2001, those taxes are at 14%.

Where is all of the freeking money going, and to whose advantage? "Qui bono?," i.e., who is profiting?

We now have smog, our air quality affected and impaired according to AQMD of OC records. Which in a coastal community is nearly impossible, what with a constant onshore sea breeze.

Where pre-2000 we inhaled on Memorial Day, exhaled on Labor Day, that’s out the window. Now there’s no respite from tourists, no resting, no healing or refractory period. I live near PCH, the air smells like ozone and the traffic noise only subsides for about 2 hours: 3-5 am.

Where pre-2000, only the summer months and holidays featured backed up traffic, morphed, are on weekdays today, year-round. What only happened about 25% maximum days out of the year previously, is now 24/7/365.

The hours of these adverse vehicular impacts have been extended as a byproduct too. Our downtown, the Canyon Road and PCH never calm down anymore.

On the other hand, where did the 6.3 million beach visitations/year statistic come from, as ascribed to LB Marine Safety sources?

Whose peer reviewing or fact-checking Caltrans/DOT claim that there are 36,000 trips/day on PCH and Laguna Canyon Road?

Maybe 36,000 trips don’t necessarily = 6.3 million beachgoers, perhaps it’s a spurious, false correlation because many are driving through, not stopping and hitting our strands?

I just know what Laguna was like traveling through here since childhood, living here for 52 years, k?

Residents are now subservient to the gods of commerce in general. As many of the increased visitor volumes are the wealthy “trendoids,” seeking high end dining/drinking venues plus overnight accommodations, few remember the “Once Upon A Time In Laguna….” vibe.

“NO MAS ALOHA” is my personal take, mashing Hawaiian and Spanish. Laguna’s once upon a time character was rooted in these cultures and a reflection of their languages. Fact is, So Cal natives didn’t even use the “Beach” part.

A person only needed to say “Laguna,” and everyone knew where that was, what to expect when getting here. A classic funky coastal enclave featuring artists and beach worshipers, eclectic shops sprinkled about to be discovered, comparable to anywhere on the California coastline.

Those incredibly stupid “Wayfinding” signs, that are not only visual blights but which only pedestrians, not drivers can view?

Obviously, they were approved and installed throughout town due to the direct influence of our Chamber of Commerce and repeat offender VLB.

As if we’re Disneyland, one big amusement park, chopped up into districts (lands), as if each "land" featured uniquely named rides.

Conceptualized in 2016, installed in (I think) 2017, this is an excellent example of evolutionary obsolescence. Online apps, coupled with the predictable cell phone expanded usage and database, today no one needs them but yet there they are: Stranded, antiquated assets, hundreds of thousands of $$$ only 7 years later.

Hello? “We don’t need no stinking wayfinding signs,” to paraphrase from the movie “Treasure Of The Sierra Madre.” Locals knew the quirks of our streets that meander, we’re not lost. [3]

Did we even need to promote ourselves, or join the Sister City BS Parade? Places like Menton, along the French Riviera next to Monaco, where 95% of we commoners can’t even afford the travel expenses, let alone stay for a week?

Why as residents are we forced to purchase parking permits when we already pay pay pay through the nose via taxes and high rents or leases?

Shouldn’t it only take proof that we live here, a token $10-15/year administrative fee to get a sticker?

Like the Wayfinding signs, we as residents don’t need no stinking parking permits either!

That our streets are imperfectly aligned, lots irregular in shape, nothing master planned, is a result or function of the slow growth that occurred, the build out over the decades previous to about 1960 or so. Even outsiders find a certain bucolic charm in it.

I both traveled through and came to Laguna back then, mostly on surfing safaris and mini-vacations. So don’t hold me to 1960 as the bright, hard, demarcation line, k?

Take our greedy, visually blighting parking meters. Please, take them effing away, cut them off at the base and recycle the parts.

I don’t remember parking meters prior to my 1972 immigration. If there were any, they were few in number and not readily visible.

At least in my memory, I can’t recall them making sidewalk travel the crucible, the obstacle course it is now.

Now, like the famous Star Trek episode “The Trouble With Tribbles,” they’re ubiquitous, seemed to have bred prolifically. Everywhere, and to this So Cal coastal native, obscene in that reproductive and expansive increase.

To me, they’re Laguna’s equivalent of Las Vegas slot machines, bandits. Personally, I’m not even certain if they help or hinder commerce, or if they are disincentives to the casual day use tourists.

Once Laguna got hooked on the revenue from the meters, coupled with the fines for violations, it was “All over now, baby blue.” City Hall has a junkie’s mentality, like hungry, voracious sharks on the prowl, looking for more places to plop ‘em down.

The customer base which is the high value target of the VLB saboteurs doesn’t come here to relax, if you thought that, then you need psychiatric assistance pronto. It's because they now associate Laguna with affluence, a narcissistic reflection of their wealthy entitlement.

The pro-VLB personages want big spenders, not beach people, not day trippers who can’t afford $300 meals for a family of 4, let alone $20 drinks.

Combine them all and basically they have incited an interminable siege, a veritable conflagrant bonfire of the vanities......so handing that 1% of the TOT or BID funding over to the VLB non-profit was in effect just slow suicide, death by a thousand cuts.

The majority on that LBCC 20 years ago in essence funded our demise, sabotaged the way we were. RIP, they instigated the final death throes of an era, not to mention it’s kicked back, it can wait beach community, that “mañana” ‘tude.

A little-known fact is that when the Marine Safety HQ was being planned the GM of The Inn was on the VLB Board. It was supposed to be 2 stories above ground to avoid a basement.

A basement below sea level is counter-intuitive, a formula for construction failure. Seawater degrades steel and concrete. The Inn threatened litigation because 1 measly room would lose a portion of its view.

Instead, the GM and VLB cabal screwed our Marine Safety Department. Our (then) City Manager John (Baby Huey) Pietig drank their kool-aid. I went nose-to-nose with him at an onsite workshop over the ridiculous years of delays.

Our lifeguard men and women deserve the best, top notch tools, their work environs and their facilities among these tools. Ditto for our fire personnel and police officers.

I will add here that maybe back when passed, subsequently increases in revenue for the nascent Laguna College of Art and Design seemed necessary. Do they even need us as their benefactors anymore, looks to me like they’re capable of self-sufficiency now, aren’t they?

And why our Chamber of Commerce gets ANY subsidies is beyond me. Don’t they only pay $1/year on their lease? If local business members can’t keep it afloat, why is it the resident’s responsibility?

Instead, couldn’t we divert precious funds that might be better spent elsewhere, that benefit ALL of us culturally, not just commerce?

There seems to be a lot of overlap, redundancy of goals and objectives regarding VLB, Arts/Cultural Commission and the Chamber. Paring their funding back and directing the money elsewhere is a legitimate topic for discussion.

The Citizen's Audit Review and Measure LL Investment Oversight Committee is in a sense the grandchild of the original TOT/BID funding arrangement.

The Committee formed as a result of the 2% TOT/BID increase to 14% after Measure LL was passed in 2016. A lot has changed, and as another rubber-stamping, City Council-anointed committee, their minds appear static and stuck in yesteryear.

I don't think that I'm lone in distrusting government appointments myself. I question all of our CC appointees. They're too vulnerable to allegations of political patronage instead of expertise. I suspect that a lot of favoritism, back door maneuvering and manipulative mischief takes place.

Maybe we’re overdue for a revisioning, who gets what, who controls the back room $$$ gatekeeping, the carving up and doling out of both BID and TOT funds, not to mention Community Assistance Grants.

Engineered or heavy-handed management sometimes identify problems, technical in nature or otherwise. They don’t always solve problems, but they can provide launch points to start the solution conversation.

I feel like Laguna is in a kind of lost mode---as we said in the Marines, sometimes if you find yourself lost, indecisive, any direction is a good one, better than remaining a stationary target.

Laguna’s in flux, has been a work-in-progress from birth. Let’s accept that, bring a pliable mentality into the community square discussion, leave the static mindset crowd behind.

Change for change’s sake won’t do it either. We venerate, we admire long term committed personal friendships and marriages, perpetuation of our common values, but they don’t thrive or survive frictionless without adaptation.

What strangers and newbies don’t always get is that we have a type of personal, intimate relationship with Laguna. Things that jeopardize our "life partner," Laguna’s essence and traits, creates an atmosphere of wariness. We're not afraid, we're repulsed.

Hence “adaptation” might be the best way to portray or typify the conundrum we face moving forward: Admit that it’s caused by the increasing urbanization of this once sleepy village, a haven, a cultural sanctuary for artists and beach enthusiasts alike.

In Part 2, I’ll get into the weeds, be more specific about where I believe at least a portion of that 1% for VLB, plus other revenue and funding streams like TOT, BID, local and state grants, etc., might go in this ever changing, ever evolving place that I call home.

[1] https://www.visitlagunabeach.com

[2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-mar-02-me-32441-story.html

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OcM23Hbs5U