The City Council will have to decide on Tuesday night whether it trusts Laguna’s citizens on an important but somewhat complicated issue. Only a minority of two council members can prevent us from voting. Don’t let that happen.
What is the issue? Most Lagunans now understand many of the costs we bear from overtourism. One critical fiscal cost is that providing for all the visitors actually costs the city and tax-paying residents more than $20 million every year. That is, taking care of the visitors (public safety, public works, and much more) costs $20 million plus more than the visitors generate in revenue for our city government.
The city is considering ways to capture more revenue to reduce this huge subsidy. At a Town Hall on July 11, several sources of revenue were presented. It was clear from the hand vote that a vast majority of the more than 250 residents present supported a strategy that significantly increases Laguna’s Business License Fee, only for the category of bars and restaurants. It is a feasible and legal way to gain revenue, largely from visitors. This fee has not been increased for 28 years (!) and is capped at a very low maximum. We have proposed a way to phase in the fee increase over five years, with a progressive rate as the bar or restaurant has higher gross revenue. We can’t get all the day-trippers with this approach, but visitors provide about 80% of the revenue to our bars and restaurants. Due to a law recently signed by Gov. Newsom, bars and restaurants can simply add this as a charge at the bottom of the bill, hence not even affecting their menu prices.
There are other ways to garner more revenue from visitors, as we should, but these will take more time to implement and are more complicated (for example, installing pay parking for non-residents in all our impacted neighborhoods, while residents will have hang tags allowing them to continue to have no-charge, unrestricted neighborhood parking).
But for the moment, the most feasible option that can generate millions of dollars from visitors each year is by revising the antiquated business license fee for bars and restaurants. Unfortunately, two council members are all it takes to prevent the citizens of Laguna from considering this on the November ballot. A 4-1 vote is required. Even if two council members disagree with this policy, they should let the people decide and put the measure on the ballot.
Insist that Laguna’s citizens should have the right to make an informed decision about this, not two council members.
Jim Danziger and John Thomas, Laguna Beach
