Local government meeting. Common terms.
Local government meeting. Common terms, roll call, second, aye, abstain, quorum, agenda item, ordinance, resolution, city council, public hearing, minutes, adjourned.
Local government meeting. Common terms, roll call, second, aye, abstain, quorum, agenda item, ordinance, city council, public hearing, minutes, adjourned.
Local government meeting. Common terms, roll call, second, aye, abstain, quorum, agenda item, ordinance, resolution, city council, public hearing, minutes, adjourned.
ස්හශ් මටාවා ඇතාවන්න් පි මැසාවාවාව,වාවෙක්ල් මෙස්ල්ල්, දැ වැස්ලාවාවන්න, පින්වු මෙස්වාන්න්ල් මට්ල්ල්ල පිවුවාන්ල්වාවාවාවාක් ඇවෙශ
අපින් කින් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කරන් කර�
Local government meeting. Common terms, roll call, public comment, motion, second, aye, abstain, quorum,
agenda item. Common terms, roll call, public comment, motion, second, aye, abstain, quorum,
quorum, agenda item. Common terms, roll call, public comment, motion, motion, resolution,
ʀᗗᗡᗜᗙᗗᗜᗜᗜᗜᗙᗕᗜᗙᗕᗗᗕ...
ʀᗗᗡᗡᗙᗙᗙᗜᗕ,
ʀᗗᗡᗕᗕ,
ʀᗗᗕᗜᗕ,
වව දැීමා කාව වාවාන්තිලා.
වක්ලා එක්ලා නැලිනින්ලා.
වෙහෝසින්ලා වෙහෝසින්ලා.
වීසින්ලාලා.
වීසිවාන්ලා.
Music
Local government meeting. Common terms, roll call, public comment, motion, second, aye, abstain, quorum, agenda item, ordinance, resolution, city council, public hearing, minutes, adjourned.
Local government meeting. Common terms, roll call, public comment, motion, second, aye, abstain, quorum, agenda item, resolution, city council, public hearing, minutes, adjourned.
Local government meeting. Common terms, roll call, public comment, motion, resolution, city council, public hearing, minutes, adjourned.
Good evening, everyone.
And I called to order this February 3rd, 2026 regular meeting of the city council at 610.
We have the pledge of allegiance.
Mary Corn, would you like to lead us in the pledge today?
Thank you.
Thank you, Eric. Appreciate it.
Madam City Clerk, may you call the roll call, please.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have one announcement to make. On Thursday, January 29th, Council Member Jackson requested to join this evening's city council meeting virtually in accordance with AB 2449 due to travel on official business as a California Coastal Commissioner.
AB 2449 requires that your camera and audio be on throughout the meeting and you disclose whether there are any other individuals 18 years of age or older present in the room at your remote location and the general nature of your relationship with such individuals.
Lastly, it requires that all votes tonight be taken by roll call.
Council Member Francois.
Here.
Council Member Keegan.
Here.
Council Member Jackson.
Here and all along.
Mayor Pro Tem DeToy.
Here.
And Mayor Seaman.
Here.
Yabba Quorum.
Thank you.
Mr. City Attorney, would you provide us with a closed session report, please?
The Mayor and City Council met in closed session on the items listed on the agenda. There are no reportable actions.
All right. Thank you, sir.
Let's move on to number nine announcements upcoming city events. Do any of my colleagues have any announcements?
Anyone?
No.
Council Member Jackson.
No.
Okay. No announcements. Let's move on to approval of the agenda.
Do I have a motion to approve the agenda?
Mr. Mayor.
Yes.
I have an email received from a business owner involved to request to move the meeting agenda.
It's going to be a little convoluted.
Move that we move 17C adjustment of fees for commercial encroachment areas to the next meeting.
We can still hear public comment on that.
But again, based on the email that we all received from the business owner, just kicking it to the next meeting.
Appreciate that. Is there a second?
I'll second that.
Excuse me.
I'll second that.
Any discussion?
And then I'll just move.
Sorry.
Go ahead.
Oh, yeah, I just have a question.
I got the email as well.
There's nothing to prevent us from taking the action tonight.
And we can always revise these fees or reconsider them later because we're going to have a long time before there's another meeting and it'll just fill up the schedule and in all fairness to people that were expecting to be here tonight to hear it.
I didn't quite understand the logic of continuing it now.
So if you could chime in a little bit more on why, because the email we got didn't really explain why it needed to wait.
We can always revise these again.
Well, I honestly don't really see any reason to hear the issue tonight and make a decision on it tonight and then bring it back again in another meeting.
We either do it tonight or we move it forward for another meeting.
So there's a motion and a second.
Well, but the motion is to remove it from the agenda. Is that correct?
Yes, and to move it to another meeting.
I don't see why we can't keep it there, collect public testimony.
If we can come to an agreement on some things, we can go ahead and do it.
I appreciate that.
If that's your opinion you want to have a substitute motion you're welcome to, but at the moment we have a motion and a second.
Well, I will oppose that order for that reason.
So unless anyone else will chime in on it.
Anyone else have any comments?
Your Honor, if we could clarify.
I think the motion said to the next meeting, if we could have flexibility though, depending on what the burden on the next meeting is,
whether it's very busy or not, we've pushed a lot of things to March, so appreciate that.
Thank you.
Yeah, and I don't see any urgency to do it this evening either.
Although it has been said that people have been waiting for this.
Well, and businesses will continue to have to pay that higher fee until we've adjusted them.
And so that's going to continue on for at least another month.
Well, that's an interesting question.
The fees, any, well, we don't know if the fees are going to be higher or lower or say the same.
Well, they're 250 right now.
That's for discussion.
Any changes to the fees in either direction?
They don't take place immediately?
Well, no, Your Honor, the fee schedule that is actually in the staff report increased fees 23, 24, 24, 25, 25, 26.
So the new schedule that you see in there where it says proposed actually should have said adopted because those fees went into effect at the beginning of the fiscal year in July 1st, 2025.
So they're already in effect.
It's already at two fifths.
So if we make changes to it, when will those changes come into effect?
You would have to adopt those changes and then I believe it's 30 days after you adopt the changes.
So if you change it tonight, it would be 30 days from now.
Otherwise, they're going to change you on that higher.
We change it the next meeting is 30 days after that.
So it's not really a problem.
It seems like to me at any rate.
So there is a motion on the floor unless there's any other discussion.
Call the motion.
Council Member Francois.
No.
Council Member Keegan.
Aye.
Council Member Jackson.
Aye.
Mayor Pro Tem DeToy.
Aye.
Mayor Seyman.
Aye.
Motion passes four to one.
Council Member Francois voted no.
Okay.
Mr. Mayor, move that we approve the balance.
I'll second that.
Any discussion?
I'm sorry.
Let's see.
Approve the balance.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Seeing none.
Oh, yes.
Council Member Jackson.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I thought you had.
I apologize.
Sorry about that.
I thought you had your hand up.
All right.
Madam City Clerk, would you call the question please?
Council Member Francois.
Yes.
Council Member Keegan.
Yes.
Council Member Jackson.
Aye.
Mayor Pro Tem DeToy.
Aye.
Mayor Seyman.
Aye.
Motion passes.
All right, let's move on to proclamations and presentations.
Madam City Clerk, would you announce the presentation please?
Item 11A is canine armor and canine arco presentation.
Thank you.
Police Chief Phillips, would you come to the podium and to present the canine team.
Thank you, Mayor Seyman and Council Members.
Good evening.
So we'd like to do a quick introduction of our canine supervisor, our canine handler,
Officer Ivan Torres, and canine arco.
And most importantly tonight, we're here to recognize and thank canine armor who co-founder
Suzanne Saunders is going to talk about canine armor, what they do.
And I'm going to share with Council and staff one of their wall magnets.
But Miss Saunders is going to talk about why that's important for our canine.
First I'm going to bring up Officer Ivan Torres.
He's going to talk a little bit about himself and canine arco.
Is he going to smell our luggage or anything?
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.
Hello?
All right.
Good evening everyone.
I'm Officer Torres of their Milster Beach Police Department.
And this here is canine arco.
Arco is a three-year-old Belgian Malinois imported from the Netherlands.
Specifically, the Netherlands is important because they breed and train some of the most impressive police dogs.
Arco holds a KNPV title, which is a prestigious title from the Royal Dutch Police Association,
which emphasizes in control and apprehension.
You can see he's excited.
With this title, you can see that prior to arriving in Hermosa Beach,
canine arco already established an elite standard in police work.
Now prior to his arrival, or excuse me, after his arrival,
Arco and I attended a 240-hour intensive police training program in the city of Riverside.
This training program covered a wide variety of obedience,
a wide variety of searches and real-life scenarios where Arco can be deployed.
Upon certification, our training doesn't end there.
Arco and I are required to train a minimum of 20 hours per month
in order to maintain his crucial skills,
apprehension tactics, and keep his physical and mental skills sharpened.
So with that being said, Arco is an apprehension dog,
and eventually he will be an explosive detection dog.
So what apprehension means is Arco, in a very dangerous situation,
could be used to locate and apprehend a violent suspect
who may be concealing himself from officers and possibly armed.
This means that, well, crucially, his mere presence is a tool in and of itself
because it can encourage the safe surrenders of these kinds of situations,
of these kinds of suspects, and allow us to not use force,
allow us to not get in any particular situation that allows officers or the public to get hurt.
So he is a de-escalation tactic, which more often than not,
if you hear this guy barking, you'll come out.
Eventually he'll be trained in explosives where he'll use this powerful sense of smell
in order to detect explosive materials to where, basically,
to the mere human eye it's nearly impossible to detect.
This is a crucial skill in which Arco will assist the city in keeping our schools,
public events, and any other facilities safe.
So all that is being said because a crucial piece of gear for Arco in order to maintain safe
while performing his duties is a ballistic vest.
This ballistic vest will allow Arco to still effectively perform his duties,
but allow him to be safe.
Just like officers here in Hermosa Beach where we run towards the danger first,
Arco will as well, so having a ballistic vest is very important.
So with that, I'd like to introduce Ms. Suzanne Saunders, co-founder of Canine Armor.
Canine Armor is a public charity which takes donations in order to distribute
police vests like this one to Canines all over California.
And Ms. Suzanne Saunders has graciously chosen Arco to be the next recipient.
Thank you, Officer Torres. Thank you, Canine Arco.
Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council members.
Thank you so much for inviting me.
My name is Suzanne Saunders and I am co-founder of Canine Armor.
It is a public benefit charity that raises money to give bulletproof vests
like this one to California police dogs like Canine Arco.
Now, sadly, some dogs are injured and killed in the line of duty
when they don't have a bulletproof vest.
So they need them and they deserve them,
but most departments don't have the budget for a $4,000 vest.
So I'm here tonight to ask the Council to vote for a $4,000 donation
so that I can buy these and then give them to the officers for free
because we love them and want them to stay safe and they deserve it.
And we keep the money in California because this vest,
for the first time in 20 years that I've been doing this,
they've been asking me for a vest that has a removable collar.
And this is a removable bulletproof vest collar
and it doesn't hinder their movements
and so he can still run and bite and do his duty,
but it'll keep him safe.
Sadly, Burbank PD Canine Spike was killed in November of last year
so there's a reminder that he had one of the beautiful vests
that we've been giving from Canine Storm,
but they haven't had a collar until this one made by Project Seven
and sold by Ardvark Tactical in Laverne, California
where I went this morning to pick it up
because we don't have enough to be able to have loners.
But I do have this one today to be able to
and a few others in the trunk to make sure that he gets a custom fit
because I have been doing this for 20 years and measured 200 dogs
so I want to make sure that it fits him correctly
when you get something that important.
So I appreciate the fact that you depend on your dog with your life
and thank you for putting your lives on the line
for the city of Hermosa Beach
and thank you council members for taking care of the citizens
and I hope you'll approve a donation to be able to protect
beautiful Canine Arco.
So thank you very much and God bless our Canine heroes.
Thank you, sir.
Any questions?
Questions?
I have one.
Sure, thank you.
Do we currently have bulletproof vests on our Canines in the city here?
As of right now, no.
This is the donation that we're receiving.
This is our only Canine.
So we have not budgeted for them or provided?
We've never had a dog with this level of skill
for that type of requirement.
Our previous Canines were narcotics
and strictly explosives detection.
So the Canine Arco has added skills.
All right, got it.
Okay, thank you.
The previous talks we've had have just traveled in the car with our officers or with the one
officer that's trained. Yes, the dog stays with the handler. All day,
every day, they go home with them and, yes, Ken and Arco will ride in the car with Officer
Torres every shift. So even though they're trained for sniffing narcotics and so on explosives,
they do every day in the car work. Yeah, they respond to calls, they take crime
reports, they respond to non-emergency calls, emergency calls, and until the K9 handler deploys
the dog, the dog stays in the car. Great. All right, well, thank you. Appreciate it.
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Chief. Oh, I'm sorry. Does K9 and Arco get bilingual
pay for, because I know... Can you speak to the public about, I mean, Dutch, right?
They have to learn Dutch. The dogs learn Dutch. So I don't know if you want to speak a little bit
to that. Yeah. I have a family member who has the Belgian Malta. Does the dog speak Dutch?
Mm-hmm. All with names. And English? Well, French, too. Yeah, Belgian.
So he does speak Dutch, which is where, in the basic course, we had to learn
the Dutch commands. But in all honesty, to my surprise, there aren't very many.
There's maybe about 10 to 12 type of commands. But more importantly, he understands context
more than anything. So, for example, we were taught to train them when to take a potty break.
So every time he went to, or was attempting to try and use the restroom, I tell him,
take a break, and he understands the context. Very smart, very intelligent dog.
But on top of that, when he's ready to work, when he's in drive,
yeah, he's just all go. I'll give you an example. If I go out in the morning to come to work,
and if I come out in my police uniform, he's not eating breakfast because he sees me in my uniform
and he's ready to go. So this guy makes me come out in PJs first, has his breakfast,
and then I come out and let's go to work. But, yes, very smart intelligent dog.
Commands are important, but, like I said, context is everything with it.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And we appreciate that dog on our floor.
Thank you. Please say it. Thank you.
Okay. Let's move on to 11B. Madam C. Clerk, would you announce the presentation please?
11B is Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce presents review of 2025 programs and vision for 2026.
Thank you. Michelle Crispin, would you come up? Thank you.
Hi there. Make sure our screen is up. My mic on.
There we go. I apologize in advance. I'm a little froggy.
Welcome. Thank you so much for having us here.
Mayor, excuse me, Mayor Seaman, Rotem, Michael Detoy, city manager, city staff.
This is our 2025 year end review and vision for 2026. As the 501C6 nonprofit, the Hermosa
Beach Chamber of Commerce exists to promote, inform, and empower the local business community.
We serve a diverse membership that includes service providers, restaurants, salons,
professional real estate agents, nonprofits, musicians, artists,
online businesses. The list goes on and on. Next slide, please.
We're currently at 430 active members, including 90 new members in 2025. Strong
momentum as we continue refining and strengthening our organization. Our base is anchored by small
businesses with a mix of solo entrepreneurs, nonprofits, civic groups, artists, and a smaller
segment of larger employers. That diversity we feel reflects Hermosa's DNA, which is independent,
creative, and community driven. We've been intentionally refining our membership model to
focus less on volume and more on alignment, value, and engagement. Next slide, please.
2025 was about getting honest with our numbers and making strategic decisions based on performance,
not just on tradition. We looked at every event that we do through two lenses,
community impact and financial sustainability, both matter.
Fiesta remains an economic engine for us with over 755,000 in revenue with a net
of 176,000. It continues to fund chamber operations and helps us support our mission to serve our
membership. The St. Patrick's Day Parade continues to be deeply loved and well attended. That said,
as we talked about last week, it resulted in a significant loss of nearly $19,000. We're
committed to preserving community traditions, but as stated in the last council meeting,
we need a fund rating model that makes sense long term if we're going to continue to produce the parade.
After reviewing the numbers for Oktoberfest and listening to business feedback,
the ROI simply wasn't strong enough for us to continue that event, with a $13,000 loss in 2025
and limited merchant benefit, it no longer made sense to continue that event.
We intentionally scaled Hermosa for the holidays down to reduce costs and risk,
and it was very well received by the community. The streamlined approach that we took
resulted in a positive net of $4,869, showing us that right size events can be both meaningful
and financially stable. Next slide, please. We hosted the best of Hermosa at St. Rock,
which we miss dearly, to celebrate standout local businesses and community members,
and we're continuing that tradition next Monday at the Lighthouse.
Lemonade Day featured 23 young entrepreneurs across 12 stands across town, with students from
grades 3 to 8 completing a hands-on business training program before they launched their
lemonade stands. We held three seasonal sidewalk sales winter, spring, and summer to drive
local shopping and create pop-up space for small and non-brick and mortar businesses.
Our tiny chamber concerts and monthly songwriter showcases have supported local working musicians,
energized local venues, and helped celebrate Hermosa's robust music culture.
We partnered with local experts and the city to host lunch and learns on practical topics
like emergency preparedness for businesses, AI, marketing, trade marking, and branding,
just to name a few. With city support, we celebrated eight new businesses through
ribbon cuttings, making continued investment and confidence in Hermosa's local economy.
Next slide, please. The Chamber's marketing engine continues to be one of our strongest
value drivers for our members, and this year that work was recognized nationally.
We just found out last week that we earned first place in 2025 for a social media impact award from
the Western Association of Chamber Executives, competing against more than 450 chambers across
the United States. I'll hand the rest of this slide over to Shelby, who is our marketing and
operations manager, who is pretty much directly responsible for that award and makes a lot of
this great marketing stuff happen. This is Shelby Foyan. Thank you. Nice to see you tonight.
In 2025, we sent a total of 59 promotional emails to a subscriber list of 22,000,
which promoted chamber members, events, and local initiatives.
Promotional emails remain one of the most direct benefits we offer our members,
giving them exposure to over 1,000 engaged subscribers with each send.
We managed two key social media accounts, Hermosa Chamber and Truly Hermosa on both
Instagram and Facebook, which together reached nearly 25,000 organic followers,
that's no payment, all organic. In 2025, we achieved 596,600 social views on our
Hermosa Chamber account and 350,000 views on our Truly Hermosa account.
With no paid social media spends, these results speak to the authenticity and
impact of our storytelling and community voice. We're consistently ranked in the top 10
influencer accounts in Hermosa Beach. In 2025, we produced one edition of the Truly
Hermosa Magazine and Destination Guide, which was fully designed and created in-house.
10,000 copies were distributed to regional hotels, coffee shops, community centers,
and local businesses throughout the South Bay. This edition focuses on Hermosa's roots.
It promoted chamber members, told local stories, and showcased the small businesses
that make Hermosa what it is. Due to limited ad sales and ongoing business hardship,
we did scale back from two additions to one, which is a reflection of the need for
sustainable tourism funding. We also advertised in South Bay Magazine,
which featured Downtown Hermosa Beach and a curated shopping guide, which
extended our regional reach and positioned Hermosa as a destination for locals and visitors alike.
Thank you very much. Next slide, please.
Beyond events and marketing, another role in the Chamber, excuse me, is being a voice
and resource for our business community, which is where advocacy comes in.
These are just a few examples of our advocacy this year. We've worked closely
with businesses in the city to streamline permitting with clear communication and timelines.
We've gathered feedback on employee and holiday parking, supported permits and liquor licenses,
and shared resources while compiling input from members impacted by ADA compliance lawsuits.
With an even sharper focus in 2026, we're ready to build on this work
and expand our advocacy efforts. Next slide, please.
EDAC. Led by our Chamber Board member and head cheerleader, Tony Cordy,
EDAC focuses on identifying the real drivers of local economic growth,
including how we attract visitors who stay longer and spend more.
Our EDAC committee is proposing a quarterly dashboard of key metrics built in partnership
with city data so that we can track real progress, spot trends, remove obstacles,
and make smart data-driven recommendations moving forward. Next slide, please.
All of this work, events, marketing, advocacy, economic strategy, everything comes back to
how we manage our time and resources to best serve our mission. The Chamber's revenue comes
from events, membership, sponsors, and magazine advertising. Our largest expenses are event
production, staffing, and core operations, all of which support the programs and services
we provide to our business community. We operated at a loss in 2025, and we made the
intentional decision to use reserves during our reset to stabilize our operations.
With stronger systems, tighter oversight and more disciplined budgeting in place,
we're positioned to build back our reserves and move toward long-term financial sustainability.
Next slide, please.
So with that in mind, here's where we're headed in 2026. Operational restructuring,
as I mentioned before, remains a paramount objective for us. Stronger oversight,
greater transparency, a focused commitment on long-term sustainability. We cannot have a
stable mission without stable funding. Expanded networking and education is about delivering
direct member value. Businesses tell us they want connection, they want practical tools,
they want networking, they want more opportunities to get in front of the people that matter.
Increasing these opportunities strengthens our local economy from the inside out.
Bringing back the Labor Day Fiesta was a decision that we made based on business feedback
and will be returning in a way that's more localized, scalable, and financially responsible.
It's about honoring tradition without compromising sustainability.
We plan to revisit the formation of a hotel-led TID with its own governance and
financial management. It's a proven statewide model that provides consistent funding for
destination marketing and visitor engagement, which is, as you know, especially important
with major events like the Olympics and other things on the horizon. We've already begun
conversations with local leaders in that arena with dedicated tourism funding in place.
Hermosa can be ready to fully leverage that opportunity. Next slide, please.
This year, we bid farewell to our beloved Millie after five years of dedicated service to the
Chamber. As part of our restructuring, I've taken on Millie's responsibilities as membership
director, and Shelby is now working an additional 15 hours a week as marketing and operations
manager. I am very grateful for our diverse, our new, diverse, and committed Board of
Directors. They've already stepped up in a huge way, tackling challenges head-on
and staying focused in supporting our mission. I'd also like to thank all the amazing volunteers
who are the backbone of all the events that we do. And finally, I'd like to thank City Council
and staff for your continued partnership and support. I'm looking forward to 2026 as we work
together to strengthen Hermosa's business community and our future. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Well, thank you, Michelle. I appreciate that. It's a great report. Are there any questions?
I'm counseled.
No? I have a question.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you for the great report. It's refreshing to see what visibility you're giving us
on what the Chamber is doing. I attended the seminar last week with some of the small
business leaders.
I was just wondering if the Chamber is going to think about hosting some workshops to advise
them on compliance or maybe referring them to some type of certified access specialist?
Absolutely. Absolutely. We've already done an outreach to our member database to see who
is willing to come forward and talk about what complaints they've had, what lawsuits they've
had. So we've assembled a list and we are putting together one sheets and informational
items for them to be able to prepare for it and know the next steps.
Yeah, that's really great. To ensure that they're in compliance because the hopes of getting
something passed at the state level is only one thing, but there's a lot of proactive things
we can do. Well, to make sure they're compliant, but also there were over a dozen businesses
that got back to us with feedback that they have been affected by this already and to
know what next steps are for them in that regard as well.
Right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Sure. Michelle, I have a couple quick questions. Let's see, back here, one of the first,
I think the third slide, about advocacy. How do you specifically improve the permitting process?
You mentioned the first thing was that we advocate for the permitting process.
How do we improve it?
No, how are you improving it? How is this?
Oh, improving. I'm sorry. Like, it's not up to us to approve it.
Yeah, that's true. Basically, we just try and, it depends on what level that our member is at
when they come to us. Sometimes they're just looking for just straight up advice on what's
the process. Who do we go to? Where do we start? Sometimes they are further along in the process
and they show us all of what they're going for and we know it's coming to council.
We take that all under advisement. We talk to other businesses as well to see what
their experience or their input might be and then we form what our level of support is for
them on that. It really depends on what level they're coming in as far as what support they need.
Okay. Everybody's different.
Appreciate that. And what about the liquor licenses? What is it that you essentially do
regarding the liquor licenses?
Kind of the same thing. I mean, when C-Sprite, for instance, when they were
trying to get into their liquor license, we looked at all the pros and cons of what
people were saying with that. We talked to neighboring businesses. We talked to other
businesses that have been in similar situations that they had been and to see what they had
experienced. And we move forward with the board's approval on how to proceed.
All right. Great. Thank you. Any other questions? None?
All right. Thank you so much for your report. We really appreciate it.
Thank you. Looking forward to 2026.
Do we go to public comment on this?
No. Okay. So let's move on then to item 11C.
11C is Recognizing Black History Month.
Okay. I'd like to read this proclamation regarding Black History Month for 2026,
whereas in 1976 Black History Month was formally adopted to honor and affirm the
importance of Black History throughout our American experience and is full of individuals
who took a stance against prejudice, advance the cause of civil rights, strengthen families,
communities, and our nation. And whereas National Black History Month serves as both a
celebration and a powerful reminder that Black History is American History,
Black Culture is American Culture, and Black Stories are essential to the ongoing story
of America, our faults, our struggles, our progress, and our aspirations. And whereas
shining a light on Black History today is as important to understanding ourselves and growing
stronger as a nation as it ever has been, that is why it is essential that we take time to
celebrate the immeasurable contributions of Black Americans, honor the legacies and achievements
of generations past, and confront those injustices that still fester today.
Now, therefore, I, Rob Seaman, Mayor of the City of Hermosa Beach, and on behalf of the
entire City Council, do hereby recognize February as Black History Month, let us all
recommit ourselves to continue the fight for justice, equality, and a more diverse,
supportive, inclusive, and protective union. Thank you all very much.
All right, thank you. Let's move on to item number 12 then, public comment.
Madam City Clerk, do we have anyone for public comment in person or in Zoom?
This is the time for members of the public to address the City Council on items on and not
on the agenda, but within the Council's jurisdiction. Each speaker is limited to three minutes and
will be taken in person and Zoom. A reminder that if you address the City Council on items
listed under public hearings or municipal matters, you will not be able to address
the Council on the same item when it is heard at a later part of the meeting.
We have a speaker card from Sarah Harper.
Aim that one that way. Aim it away. There you go. Now try it.
And is the handheld still there? Yeah, try it now. That should help.
Beautiful.
Residents of Hermosa Beach, I am happy to announce that today the Hermosa Beach Library
reopened for service. They are continuing to work on our restroom remodel project,
but we are open again and we are happy to be providing programs.
This Saturday, we will be having the Iwalani Family Music Show at 10.30 a.m., especially
for ages 0 to 5, and their parents and caregivers. Next Saturday, February 14th,
we will be having toddler art time. In honor of Lunar New Year, we will be making
paper Chinese lanterns, and that's for ages 2 to 5 with their parent and caregiver.
Then the Saturday after that, we will be having another family music concert on February 21st
at 10.30, music time with Mr. Michael, and that's especially for ages 1 to 5
with a parent or caregiver. On Wednesday, February 18th, for our school-aged children,
we will be having history of the traffic light in celebration of African American and Black History
Month. We will be learning about the inventions of Garrett Morgan, prolific black American inventor,
and making our own traffic light bookmarks for ages 5 and up, and that is all I have for tonight,
and I hope to see everyone back at the library. Thank you. Appreciate your presentation.
I know that many public comments about when is the library opening, when is the library opening,
and a lot of people are very excited about it, and myself included, and really happy to see it
back in action, and I see that we've hit the ground reading instead of running. So thank you so
much for that. And let's, any other public comment? Next is Elka Warner. Good evening,
Mayor and Council members. I'm here tonight to support Lana and the Green Store, a place near
and dear to my heart. Growing up, my friends and I would stop at the Green Store on our way home
from the beach. We'd walk in with sandy feet and wet bathing suits to buy abazabas,
bitter honeys, and slurpees. Thankfully, not much has changed at the Green Store.
Lana and her brother have been able to keep the same atmosphere and sense of community
that we all know and love. They have added a small patio and deli. Lana works the deli and register
from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day. The cool thing about the Green Store is that you can order food
inside and eat it on the patio or take it home. But the Green Store is not a restaurant,
and the patio is not a major revenue generator like it is for the peer plaza restaurants
or marthas across the street, which is known for its outdoor dining or outdoor seating.
The Green Store patio, and I live up the street from it, is a community space that Lana created
for her customers and to make the store more welcoming. At the January 13th council meeting,
you proposed a $2 square foot fee, an encroachment fee for businesses that don't have
table service or alcohol on their outdoor dining decks. While $2 may not sound like a lot,
it adds up for a small store like the Green Store and Mickey's.
The staff report says the city will lose about $4,000 a year by reducing the rate to $2.
Why are we hassling small businesses over nickels and dimes when we just gave the
chamber $51,000 for the St. Patrick's Day Parade? Don't get me wrong, I love the parade,
but we should also be supporting small neighborhood stores that have been here for decades.
Once these small iconic businesses are gone, they don't come back. They get replaced by something
generic or corporate, something that doesn't reflect the character of Hermosa Beach,
the best little beach city in California. I respectfully urge the council to roll back
the encroachment fee to $1 a square foot for businesses like the Green Store.
That rate reflects the difference between neighborhood grocery stores and full service
restaurants. It also helps ensure we don't price out the very places that give Hermosa its soul.
Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Next is Mark Peay.
Good evening, Mayor and Council. Good to see you guys.
I just wanted to come up here and talk about the sales on the beach opportunity. I think it's
going to be a great opportunity for local businesses and for sponsors for the event
in helping support both here in the community. So I think it's a great ad.
With the alcohol on the beach, I think it's also something that we should be considering
in working with, maybe even starting with some of the local sponsored events that the city is a
partner with, like the Hermosa Beach Open, the music on the beach. Those could be great
starts to really see and really get an idea of how that will work on the beach. I think it's a
great opportunity to look into that and it's been successful for many other cities on the beach
that I think it's worth the time and effort to put into that. I also want to express my
support to the Green Stores Wall. I live down the street from there and I meet some of my friends
there to have a little drink or food and stuff on the little patio there. So I think it's very
valuable. Lawner and her family do a great job in her staff. They're really making it a community
based location and so it's a really, really reflects what Hermosa Beach is truly about.
I've lived here for almost 50 years now and grown up on the south side where we had
the smaller restaurants and bars down by Second Street and the Mickey's Deli and now I live up
by 19th and 20th streets and the same type of vibe still exists there and I think it's great
between the restaurants we have there, the Bottle Land and the Green Stores. So if we can
continue with that and supporting those local restaurants, that's what makes our city
and I think that's what everybody, why we all moved here or live here now. So if we can keep
that as much as possible, it'd be great. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Lana I.
Hello, good evening. I don't know exactly what happened with the
agenda tonight but I saw Elka speak and Mark speak so nicely and I left the store early,
closed it down so I could speak to you tonight. With all the chaos that's going on in the world,
I'm planning at a hard time that we're or I'm still wrestling with the city
about this common sense encroachment fee that the city back in 2022 or 2023 I can't
remember anymore, took it upon themselves to impose it on us small businesses without
even giving us an opportunity to speak about it beforehand and to show our concern or to say
anything. They just broadsided us with the letter saying, hey, your fees are going to be increased
100% and when I got the letter from the city and from me, a city colleague, I was shocked and
I reached out to Douglas Cross twice, emailed him, called him, had him come over and I was like,
how, what basis did you guys come upon this fee and how do you increase it 100% it's absurd
to me and he just said, yeah, there was countless meetings like how, where were we not notified
I never got a letter, I never got anything sent
And to me, no one came and said, you know, I'm there every day from morning until night.
No one came and said anything. So I think the lack of transparency for us, small businesses,
and the fact that when I heard Douglas Cross make his information to you guys, to you council
members two weeks ago, I believe it was, at the end of after I spoke, I found it very
disturbing because it was supposed to be information guided to you so you were informed about the
decision. But it wasn't, it was misinformation. And I don't believe it was informative correctly
because it was very framed, basically he, I speak fast, he, it was, there's no set criteria.
If you all go back and listen to it, I was shocked because there's no set criteria. I heard
he could not speak to the factors leading to the increase. He never took anything in consideration
besides the fact that it was between retail and plaza. There was just the type of business
and the hours of operation. So they didn't take in consideration that we don't have sun
on our patio like over half the year. And people usually come want to sit in the sun.
And we don't serve alcohol. We're not a, we're, I'm very different than Martha's
and Bottle Land that serve alcohol and have table service and have all this stuff.
My average ticket is different than theirs, but that's irrelevant. Even my business
is very, oh sorry, so it's time finished. Even my business is very different than Mickey's,
but I think factors were not considered. Sorry for going over.
Thank you.
We didn't receive any additional speaker cards.
One more in chambers. Your Honor, you might want to announce again what the action was.
I'm sorry. You might want to announce again what the action was to remove. Oh yes,
of course. 17C was moved to the next meeting, which a future meeting, a future meeting.
So I was going to bring this up during Council Member Comet. So I'll wait until then and
then address that. So please stick around for a little bit. Please. Thank you. Eric.
Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Council, staff. It's good to see you guys. I agree with
what Elka Warner said. I'll just mark that for future use. I think that these are two
businesses, they're two of our oldest. These are pillars of our town. I think what we heard
from Lana is the story of somebody who is trying to make it work and trying to create
a convening place in the north end of town, and I think she excels at that. I will
say I grew up on the south end of town, and me and my friends would always hang
out at Mickey's. Maybe somebody would buy a meatball sub, but a lot of times we just hung
out at those benches. You didn't actually need to buy anything really to access those
benches. You don't need to go into the store to access the patio. People are just hanging
out there. It is practically public space. I think that either lowering the fees for
these two or waving them would be a nice gesture. Later in the evening, my understanding
is that you are considering retiring the 2022 economic development strategy. Now, I'm
sure that this doesn't mean that you are just throwing in the towel on economic
development and that you intend to think about as a council how to move forward
with advancing the business priorities of our town, but I would offer that at
Mayor Siemens Town Hall, there was a commenter that suggested doing a town
hall just on business concerns. Now, I've been thinking about this for a while. We
have a structure in council manager form of government where it's very hard to
actually put broad agenda items on the calendar. The tool that seems most
applicable to taking a strategic look at, say, economic development is the study
session. My recommendation to you would be if you do intend to retire the
economic development strategy, you should at one of the next city council
meetings hold a study session on economic development. You should specifically
inform the chamber to bring their priorities forward. You should inform
local businesses. You should inform the public. When you broaden an agenda item
and make a specific council session about that topic, you bring more people
into the chambers to speak. I think it would be a good idea to do that. We heard
earlier that the chamber is still looking at doing a TID for advertising for
Hermosa Beach, especially in the run-ups to the World Cup and the Olympics. I
would very much like, again, to hear from our city manager about what his
colleagues are doing in Manhattan Beach at a local level to think about
using that opportunity, the Olympics, to drive economic development in Manhattan
Beach and what we can be learning and doing here in Hermosa Beach to
replicate those efforts. I would also be interested if we're trying to gauge
where the public and where our businesses are at on the effectiveness of the
economic development strategy, doing a survey. Do a survey either to businesses
or to the public. I know that they do them in Manhattan Beach. My belief is
that the city manager would like to do one. I urge you to appropriate the
resources to do so. It's a good bang for your buck. Thank you.
Next is Laura Pena.
Hi. I wasn't planning on, well, I was planning on speaking on the encroachment,
but that got moved. I understand. I won't be here for your next meeting in
person, so I know you guys are sad about that. I'm here to talk about the
encroachments. I have received a tremendous amount of feedback from our
community on this one issue, and so that's why I feel because Lone has taken the
effort to come here twice to speak to you guys how important this is. 1914.
That's how old the green story is. I'm wearing this hat because when I went to
the state of the city and the town hall, it talked about our business
community. It talked about the long-standing iconic businesses that we
have here, and I'm thinking we should want to do everything we can to keep
them thriving and supporting our community. One of the things I noticed on our
Economic Development Strategy Progress Report is we haven't had a lot of
progress on the placemaking, and I go, oh, well, why not? We don't have
resources. Got it. When I look at it now, it talks about the city does endeavor to
activate underutilized spaces, and I'm thinking this is a great opportunity.
People go to Mickey's deli. Since 1953, that's been open. People go to the
green store, and so I'm thinking why don't we look at this differently?
Rather than looking at, well, we're going to subsidize their costs to
their space, why don't we look at it as an opportunity for placemaking?
Because when I went to the green store before they had their outside dining
deck, I would go grab a sandwich, go on the beach. Now I go there to meet
community. Just this weekend on Saturday, it was packed, and a lot of
it was because of the weather. Just this weekend, it was amazing because
the community came out there with their kids. Some people got up and
moved the tables and chairs so that other people could sit, and we were
such a tight community. This is who we are. This is not just a hat that
we wear. It's who we are because it's what we believe in. And in that
beautiful video, Mayor, that you had, and you showed the green store,
you showed Mickey's deli, we should not just show them. We should
embrace them. And one way to do that is to help them. A dollar per
square foot, right now with insurance premiums going up, cost of
goods. As a business owner, I understand these things. And you may
think that these little things don't make a difference. Fixed costs
do. So anything that you can do to help Spider Surfboard, who we
were very busy this weekend, but I noticed that there was a big
empty space. That would have been a wonderful place for them to
come out. We say we support retail. Why don't we support our
retail that needs us now? Thank you. Thank you.
We'll move over to Zoom.
Good evening, John Barry. Two things. One, to talk briefly about
the Chamber contract that you discussed at the last meeting. The
Chamber's financial position is substantially worse than you were
told last week. It's almost 75% possibly double the loss last year
if you take it on a cruel basis based on the checks that they
didn't write for the liabilities in 25. So they made a loss of
somewhere between $150,000 and $190,000 last year. Now why is
that interesting in the context of the contract? What you
did was you wrote a contract that you'd either describe as a
three-year deal with a reviewer one year and two years, or it's
a one-year deal with two renewals. I just want to nudge you
to say just make sure that you will view that contract in
enough time that if you did want to RFP those events
next year, you have enough time to do that and set up to
do it. Because otherwise it's an academic thing. We were in the
same place last year as we are this year where the parade was
almost upon us and there isn't an option. So it's just a
nudge to say please have that review in September or October
and then perhaps if you did want to RFP those events
out to a third party contractor, you'd have enough time. The
other thing I wanted to mention, I've been spending some time
with the groups in Laundale and Redondo who amazingly managed
to defy the odds over the Metro sea line extension and defeat
what looked like an inevitable choice of the row option. And
it's an inspiration for any citizen group that thinks
that the odds are against them and they can't do
anything about something. And they asked me to pass a message
on tonight to you, Mike Detoy, because you're going to be the
next mayor of this city probably. And they asked that you
might give them the consideration or the courtesy of
explaining the single dissenting vote that you
cast against our neighbors in favor of the row option. Against
our neighbors who supported us when we needed them on oil and
will undoubtedly need them in the future. So you said not one
word in the session, not one word to explain your vote, and
you're going to be the next mayor. So give them a ring or
write them a letter or have the courtesy to sit there and
explain your vote. They'd really appreciate it. Thank you.
Moving over to Zoom, we have Nancy Schwaupach.
Hi, I am someone who is super, super supportive of
transparency in government and moving agenda item 17c related
to the dining decks. That was super confusing. I don't know
what open quote, the email, close quote was all about, which
led you guys to continue this. That could have used some
explanation. But if Lana and other businesses are paying a
higher fee for another month, instead of getting a reduction
30 days from now, I am with council member Francois. Why not do
that and give them the lower fee even for a month and then
figure it out. But again, not knowing what the email was, that
was super weird. Sorry. My main point of talking tonight was
to thank Mayor Seaman for his town hall. I really
appreciate the opportunity for civil engagement. And then I
really like to thank Joe San Clemente and his team in
public works, Brandon, Brianna and Andrew. We had our first
shovels in the ground on Monday for the North Hermosa
under utility undergrounding district. It's a project that's
been in the works since 2014. And we literally had shovels
in the ground on Monday. Much to the consternation of
everybody. It's really loud, but we are so grateful. And it
couldn't have happened without Joe's team. And they are
awesome. And we're so grateful. And then I reached out
today to Guillermo in the building department related to
private conversions. It's complicated. But he is all on
board. He's providing as much information upfront as is
reasonable to do. And he's standing by to respond as
needed. And I just want to say, in my opinion, this is now a
city which gets stuff done. And I am so grateful for that.
Thank you to everybody.
Thank you.
Next is Tony Higgins.
Yeah, hello. I wasn't gonna call in tonight, but listening
to the reordering of the agenda on 17C patio encroachments, I
sure hope that you're going to provide
In the earth helpful comments. A good substantial explanation of why it was removed from the agenda
or put to a later date at the last moment. Because you know and I know that testimony has a shelf
life. And all these people that have come down to testify now or to speak on behalf of reducing
the encroachment fees, you know, that is going to fade into the memory very easily. So I think
we deserve an explanation, a precise explanation of why the agenda item was moved at the last
possible minute. We need to understand that that patio is a community space. It's not a
dining facility or any of that other stuff that you've heard over and over. I can't tell
you how many times I've been down there and seen 16-agers sitting at one of the tables
sharing a bag of potato chips. That's community. I would also like to point out that even
if you go or to reduce it to $1 per square foot per month, I looked at the staff report
just now, it would still cost slana for almost $4,000 a year for that patio. It's 312 square
feet times $1 times 12 months. So it's still a substantial expense. I hope you give us an
explanation of why this was put off. Thank you.
Thank you, Tony.
Next is Ann Gotthoffer.
Yes, hi. Good evening. My name is Ann Gotthoffer, as you said. And granted, this proposal seems
very innocuous on its face. And of course, we all support local businesses such as Mickey's
and the Green Store. I understand the issue is not being decided tonight, but when I
realized some others were speaking on it, I thought I'd go ahead and throw in my two cents
something to think about for a future meeting. My concern is that this could be a slippery
slope with more than these two or three places eventually benefiting. Perhaps the locations
that it could apply to should be more clear. For example, will restaurants on Pier Plaza
be able to offer takeout type service and pay very little for the use of our public space?
I mean, who would be monitoring if people are bringing their alcohol outside or if
a waitress steps outside to drop off an appetizer, etc.? So I know it doesn't seem
like much loss of revenue to the city. I'd agree with that. But I'm just concerned that it could
end up costing us a lot more revenue in the future. Thank you.
Thank you, Ann. Just a reminder that if you are joining us by phone to dial star
9 to raise your virtual hand. Mr. Mayor, I don't see any additional speakers.
All right. Thank you. And none left in chambers? Okay, seeing none, I'll close the public
comment. Bring it back to council for councilmember comments. Before we start, I think I'd like
to address Alana Elka, Mark, Eric, and Laura, everyone who spoke on the fee adjustments 17C.
I voted to postpone this because I thought there might be more information that might
be pertinent to this particular issue. And I thought that one meeting, if it was a couple
of weeks away, hopefully it would be our next meeting, would not make much impact economically
to any of the businesses. I think I'm sorry that you all had to come down here and speak
at this and then maybe not be able to come back when this comes up again. I hope you
do. I think that your public comments is important and credible and should be heard.
And it's true that sometimes public comment only has a shelf life to it and once it's out
there, it just kind of loses some of its power maybe over a few weeks. I hope that's not
the case. I honestly do. I would please ask you all to come back again when this issue
comes around. I would have been happy to hear this. I was kind of excited to hear
it tonight and discuss it. But I think that if there is information that might
help us, something else that we haven't heard yet, I think it's worth a wait for
a couple of weeks, which I hope that is the case and it's not a month or two months
and so on. So appreciate your words. I agree with you. When I was 20-some years old
and a bachelor, I lived across the street on the most avenue from the Green
Store. That place was our lifeline for food and beer and everything in life at
the Green Store. None of us had cars or money and transportation to go up to
Vons or whatever the market was back in those days. It was 1969 or 70 and that's
my recollection of the early days of the Green Store and Mickey's too, but
nonetheless the Green Store. So I appreciate everything you said. I agree
with you and I hope you do come back because this is an important issue.
This is, as it was mentioned about at the city, state of the city, those places
are our heart, our soul. This is our city here and nobody, I don't think
anybody wants any of them to disappear. We want to help those businesses.
So we'll have to wait and see when it comes back around again, but please
be patient. We will hear it again and I hope you all come back.
So that's what I have to say about that. Anyone else have any comments?
Yes.
Thank you.
Excuse me. Not yet, but Councilman Detoy.
Thank you.
As it said at the beginning of the meeting, we did receive an email at 11 a.m.
today for your public records request to make it easy. Go into the city council
and to the city manager and I'll read verbatim. That said, I am asking you
that you please do not make any finality of the public right away. Use
the slash rental until we can meet and go over how it will negatively impact
our constituents and shareholders. And then at the end of the email,
please, can you please put a hold on the rate for plaza slash business
use a pedestrian right of way until we can all meet. And again, this is
from a business owner of one that is impacted. So with those two please,
that was the whole idea about pushing this item until we were all able
to meet with said business owner. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Thank you. I think that's important information. Thank you for providing
that. Any other comments? Yes.
I appreciate you sharing that email because it is frustrating for
members of the public when we talk about emails we receive.
In the spirit of the Brown Act, if we receive an email and it forces
us to change a position or develop, we should reveal those things.
You know, we've been through this issue twice now on
an agendized item. Now we've delayed it once.
At the last time we met on it, three of us on the council
agreed to a compromise to bring it from $250 down to $2.
I don't know why we couldn't have done that tonight.
There's nothing new in that email that suggests anything different.
We can do something in the future that different.
And, you know, it's too bad we can't do that.
But eventually we can't just keep continuing things all the time.
We don't seem to move ahead in this city if we're going to continue
to do that. So, you know, I'm sorry that it's going to be that way.
Could I just ask the city manager, when we come back with that
report, can we have a better delineation of that third row
category because that's what we're talking about, the different
rates and different definitions of that third row on that box.
Because I think that's what we're coming down to, how to
define those categories and what kind of rates we're going to come up with.
We'll add what was proposed as the action item, and then it's up to
council, though, whether to follow through with what was proposed,
lower it, raise it.
Right. Because it's my third category there where it says
off-peer, on-peer, retail, service with food, you know,
all different categories in there that have been kind of flushed out
and social media has made it look like we're raising the rates.
We're actually working.
Enjoyers are working to lower those rates.
So, I just wanted to clarify that.
Thank you.
Any other comments?
Mayor, thank you.
I just wanted to address a couple of things on the comments.
And one was about the Olympics and the World Cup and things
like that.
And I did want to mention that Santa Monica was vying to
have the volleyball and they got a study back when they
were looking at hosting the volleyball, which is now going to
be in Long Beach.
And the study that they commissioned said that if they would
have gotten the volleyball, which they didn't eventually,
because maybe they didn't offer enough to the committee,
they would have lost $10 million.
I'm sorry, $1.4 million they would have lost.
And by not having the volleyball, they think they'll get
$10 million in profit from just additional tourism that would
come to the city just because it's the Olympics and there is
a desirable place to go.
So, I think we're going about it currently with the staff
going to meetings with LA 28 and we're in a measured approach
and we probably want to lean towards how do we attract
tourism as opposed to official events because we might
end up having to pay to get them and get in a net loss
situation like Santa Monica was looking at.
And I wanted to also mention the patio encroachments.
I brought that forward as a motion a couple of months ago
and we're still working through it.
And I'm sorry we didn't hear that tonight, Lana.
I know I spoke to you today and I've spoke to you several times.
And so, and I also spoke to Dennis Jarvis yesterday
and he did want to delay this also.
And he's the owner of Spider Surfwear.
One of the partners there with his partner, Dickey.
And I want to mention when we do do this encroachment
change I'll be making sure we make in the motion that
any savings is retroactive to January so that these people
aren't losing money and it can be credited back through
accounting.
In other words, they're not losing time because we would
have heard the one tonight and it would be over
and they'd already be implementing it.
So, I'll be asking it for it to be retroactive the savings
if there is voted there is any savings at all.
So, I hope I can get my colleagues to agree to
something like that when and if we make that decision.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilman Keegan.
And I totally agree with your last comment about making
it retroactive.
I don't see why that couldn't happen.
All right.
One last thing that I would like to make a comment about
Eric mentioned having a study session on economic
development and it was also mentioned about having
another town hall meeting that was specific about
economic development.
I think those are both pretty good ideas.
Mr. City Manager, would it be possible to just come
back with a report about the feasibility of having
either another town hall about economics or an
economic development or a study session on that?
Your Honor, I don't think we need a report.
We can certainly do that.
It's going to be at the discretion of Council.
We'll have a new mayor at that time and whatever
Council directs we will follow up with.
It will be up, we'll leave it to the mayor or Council
whichever wants to put on a forum.
If you want a study session that would require all
the Council and it's just a matter of putting together
the schedule for that.
Great.
I'd like to explore those ideas and see if it's
viable.
All right.
Great.
Thank you so much.
No other public comments?
No other questions or comments from Council?
Councilman Jackson.
Apologize.
I'd just like to say greetings from Half Moon Bay.
The California Coastal Commission is celebrating
its 50th year of the implementation of the Coastal
Act.
That's 50 years of Coastal Protection, Public
Access, and Community Voices.
So we are working hard to protect all this
near and dear to our coastline for all to
enjoy.
So that is why I am taking this meeting
to be a Zoom.
Great.
Thank you, sir.
Sometimes when you're here on Zoom, it's kind of,
it's a tendency to forget that you're there
because you're not sitting here physically.
So apologize if I've done that.
Thank you for your comments.
And I'll keep an eye on the screen.
Make sure you get a chance to speak.
Okay.
Public comments be closed then.
And let's move on to item number 14.
Can I make one more comment, Mr. Mayor?
Thank you.
Sure.
Since it was brought up.
I have a community forum scheduled on March 12th,
so we could incorporate economic development
into that community forum for that date
that's here in the council chambers coming up.
So thank you.
All right.
Thank you for that.
Let's move on to item 14, updates on city council.
Madam City Clerk.
Item 14, updates on city council activities.
This is the time for members of the city council
to report on their attendance at ad hoc subcommittees
or standing committee meetings, conferences
or other official activities as city representatives.
Great, thank you. Do any of my colleagues have any updates? None? Councilman Jackson? No? Okay.
Seeing none then, let's move on to 15, the consent calendar. Motion to approve, Mr. Mayor.
Have a motion and a second. Madam City Clerk, please open the voting. Roll call.
Councilmember Francois? Yes. Councilmember Keegan? Aye. Councilmember Jackson? Aye. Mayor Protem-Ditoi?
Aye. Mayor Saiman? Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. I am 16. Public hearings. Madam City Clerk,
would you announce the first one, 16A? 16A is introduced in ordinance approving the
zone text amendment TA25-03 amending various sections of Title 17 of the Hermosa Beach Code
pertaining to appeal periods and the transmission of planning commission decisions. This item was
continued from January 27th and will be presented by community development planning manager Alexis
Oropisa. Thank you. Hello, Alexis. How are you? Good morning. I mean, good afternoon. Good
night. Good night. Alexis Oropisa, planning manager. So good evening. This is the zone text
amendment. Next slide. That pertains to appeal periods for planning commission decisions. The
planning commission considered the zone text amendment at its December meeting and recommended
approval. And this was in a follow-up to Title II changes that the City Council made in
October of last year. Next slide. The amendments recommended by planning commission create consistency
throughout the municipal code and include changing the public appeal period for a variety of
entitlements from 10 days to 15 days so that they're all in alignment. The public appeal
period also begins the day after the planning commission's decisions. This amendment also
makes an elimination of the reference to the Board of Zoning Adjustments, which is the defunct
decision-making body. And the recommended amendments create overall consistency in the
appeal and review timeframes, making the process more straightforward and more predictable
for the staff and for the public. These amendments also aligned with goals and
policies established in the general plan governance element, which aims to conduct
development review process in a predictable manner. Next slide. The proposed ordinance was
reviewed in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act and as it relates
to procedures is exempt from CEQA. In accordance with the Municipal Code, legal notices were
published in the newspaper posted on the website and around the city. That concludes my
presentation. Staff is recommending that the City Council take action to approve the
recommendation of the planning commission. And with that, that concludes my presentation
and I'm available to answer any questions that you might have.
Thank you. Are there any questions? No questions? Councilor Jackson? No questions?
Thank you. Thank you very much. So let's move on to open public comment.
Madam City Clerk. Each speaker is limited to three minutes and we did not receive any
speaker cards. Moving over to Zoom. We have Nancy Schwabhawk.
Hi again. I spoke against this change in October when you guys first did it and maybe
this is how efficient economies work where developers need to have a timeline to get
their development approved. But to me, it seemed to produce a under the table behind the
scenes means to decide whether something gets approved or isn't approved because two council
members secretly by email decide that they're going to have a de novo hearing. And this
happened with the 901 Hermosa project. I was at the council meeting when that was on
the consent calendar to approve the planning commission minutes and it was pulled and there
was quite a bit of discussion about the project. And I did not hear anybody saying anything about
council having decided it was going to be open for de novo hearing. And I walked out of that
meeting with Commissioner Isant of the planning commission and he said, oh, it's up for de
novo hearing in two weeks. And I was like, what? How would anyone know that? And he said, well,
you know, it went through the process to council members by email said we'd like to hear this de
novo. And honestly, I sat through an entire meeting about this and had no idea that that
had happened. And I'm sympathetic to developers who would like an efficient process. But I'm
sorry, democracy is messy. And if I don't even know who the two council members were who decided
to pull it. To me, that is not open. It's not transparent. It's backroom dealing. I don't like
it. So I would suggest this entire regime be reconsidered and that the public have a right
to understand when something has been finally approved or two council members who are unknown
have decided that they're going to bring it up de novo when we don't even know that when we're
listening to it at a meeting. I just don't like the whole process. I'm about transparency. Thank
you. Thank you, Nancy, for that. Any other
Zoom comments? Mr. Mayor, I don't see any other hands raised.
All right, then seeing none and there's no one else in chambers, I will close the public
comment on this item and bring it back to council.
I'd like to ask the city attorney, Jason, can you clarify this procedure of de novo
hearing? Is that the appropriate method of calling for a de novo hearing? Is any two council
members can send a letter or an email in this case, requesting a de novo hearing? Is that the
proper way of doing it? Well, that's what's in your code. And so that is the appropriate to
do it because you have adopted something that's now appears in the code. That is the
process. So, yes. I'm not asking this out of ignorance. I'm one of our citizens thinks this is
somewhat subterfuge and isn't correct and shouldn't be done that way. And I want to just
make it clear that that is the appropriate way to call for de novo hearing is to say any two
council members can send a letter in. And if they happen to communicate with one another
to decide that they want to do that, that's also allowed under the Brown Act if you can
discuss any item with one more member as long as it's just two. Correct. Is that correct also?
That's correct. Okay. So there really isn't anything fishy about that? Correct. The way
the code is written, that's the process. Okay. Thank you. Nancy, I hope that answers
your question and makes you feel a little better about the process. That is the
appropriate process. So having said that, I'd like to move on with public comment. Is there
any other? Yes. I have a question. We've finished public comment, right? Yes. The public comment
is closed. This is back to the council. I understand the concerns of the back real
deal thing. So first of all, as far as the Brown Act is concerned, there's no requirement
that only two talk. Any council member can go to any other council member and state
to them that they're going to pull it. Is that correct? There's no, there's no,
can only talk to one other because it hasn't become a future agenda item yet.
So that's information that one council can provide to another and it's not considered
any violation of the Brown Act. Well, if a council member is saying something to
another, just one other council member, that's not a violation. That is correct.
Okay. When it comes to procedure, it doesn't apply. One council member could tell all the
council members or any one of them that they plan to pull it. That would be information
that the council may or may not want to know. That would not be violating a Brown Act.
Correct? Right. That council member is openly saying this is what I'm going to do. Yeah.
Okay. Fair enough. So with regard to the project that Nancy brought up,
I don't know, she seemed to insinuate that there was some indication that they knew the night that
project was made that council members had requested it. And I doubt that's the case,
but maybe for transparency purposes, is it possible that when one person
requests to pull it, that the other council members can be known so it's out in the public
and that avoids this backroom deal? Impression? I don't know if there's some
better way to divulge it so that we all know what's happening with regards to that.
Well, Alexis, do you want to speak to... Hermosa didn't adopt something that hasn't been done
in other cities. It is done in other cities just like this. When it's called up, yes,
two councilors do it, it's really no different than what the public does in calling something
up to. The public can file an appeal, pay an appeal, and the names aren't necessarily...
The names, I believe, were revealed in the staff report going forward,
but it is done that way to keep a schedule, again, for developers so there's a certainty
that, okay, after 15 days it's either been appealed or not because sometimes when,
for instance, take a month, August, November, there's only one meeting, then it might be weeks
and months before it's set for a hearing again. So it was brought to bring some
certainty to developers and bring closure to the appeal period so it didn't just
continue on until the next council meeting. Yeah, I understand. I support this because
we've done this and made it more equitable and easier for property owners to know what
they can expect within 14 business days and then they can move ahead with their project,
but with regards to transparency, letting other council members know, I mean,
if one council member wants to pull it, they obviously would have a desire to communicate
with others and there's this question, so is there a way where when a request is made,
the other council members know that a request is made and they have an opportunity to request
a second one. I'm just trying to make this more transparent if we could.
The process, last time I believe, you filed it and then council was notified that appeal was filed.
So in just real quick, this zone text amendment is for the public's appeal
period of decisions and it's a 15-day appeal period with regards to the city council
provisions. The city council has the ability to call it up within the same time period.
I don't believe we disclosed who the two members were in the last city council,
but we could certainly adopt that as a practice going forward.
And whenever an item is called up de novo, it is renoticed. So there is a public hearing
noticing for the appropriate radius. We repost the notices on site, mail them out,
post them on the website. So there is adequate public notice that also occurs through that process.
Just a reminder that the adoption of this item is so that it reconciles and is consistent with
what's in the municipal code. So you're adding the provision that you've already adopted into
the zoning code. All right. So I guess what I was suggesting is when one council member
requests that call that the council member doesn't need to be revealed, but the other council
members know that one person has. But apparently there's no provision in doing that.
So we would not know until it's been finalized. So my question is, do we need to change
something here? We can make that a policy or the rest of us going to be in the dark as far
as whether one council member has requested it and whether another council member needs to take
action to request it. I would refer to the attorney as to the Brown Act issue there.
Well, the issue is if you're trying to change, if you're trying to change the processes currently
in the code, you can do that as long as you make the change as a council. And so that's
because it's in the code, you have to follow normal procedures and do an encode amendment.
Well, the code doesn't address notification to us that one council member has.
But if you're trying to clarify something that's in the code, that
you can clarify. And I thought without going through all that process, we could just have
a policy. No, you'd have to do that. So it's kept in the dark. The public doesn't know who
requested it. Other council members don't know what other council member requested it. Well,
it's two different things. The first thing, can we let council know and the public know
which council members pulled it? Yes, we can do that. We can add that to the staff
report. We can add that to the notice. But as far as letting the rest of council know that one
council member pulled it, if that's good under the Brown Act,
That's a problem. By doing that, it's kind of like a serial meeting. Everyone, you're communicating
with the other council members, and that's the problem. If you start out saying, if you verbally
said something to one council person, that's okay. But notifying all the council members
of this action prior to the council meeting, that's really a serial meeting, and that violates
the Brown Act, so it's really not appropriate.
Does essentially force us into asking another council member about pulling the item, or one
council member asking everyone individually, or not asking, but informing them if they're
going to pull it.
You can't go to every single council member because that's a problem. The cleanest way
is if you want to pull something, you wait until you get to the council, and if you
spoke to one person, fine. But when you start talking to more than one council person, that
gets into the problem area of the Brown Act.
Councilman?
Yes.
This conversation is interesting, but I think it's really not germane to what we're voting
on right now at this moment on this item. Can we move on to the item at hand? You're
discussing procedures and so on, and how do we change it, and so on and so forth.
What we're talking about right now is just getting this ordinance, Title 17 updated.
So can we continue that at another time?
Would you want a future agenda item on this?
Whatever you want with it, I'm saying it's just not necessarily part of this item here,
and I'd like to move on with our meeting.
Okay, well, I beg to differ it is related to this item, but that's fine. I'm not
recommending any changes to this based on this information I've provided, and there's
still some question about Brown Act violations regarding this that needs to be clarified.
Okay.
Because it's my impression you can inform more than one, and there's no Brown Act violation
because there's no future agenda item.
Okay. All right, thank you. So if there is no other...
I've got it.
Yes.
Councilman Jackson.
The light of the previous discussion. So the five of us received notice that with
assigned requests from council members Keegan and Francois that they wanted to pull this
item. So there's an assumption that the two of them discussed that and agreed to pull
it hence the signature. Is that...
I'm trying to figure out, reconcile what happened and what I'm hearing the discussion
in terms of a serial meeting. I mean, if I talk...
If one of them spoke to the other, they decided to pull this item, signed it, we were all notified.
And I don't think there's anything inappropriate about that. Am I correct?
That's my understanding. There's nothing inappropriate about it all. That is...
My first question to the attorney was, is that the appropriate method in order to
call it de facto hearing? And that is exactly it.
Right.
And it takes two. Any two council members can write a letter or an e-mail in this case.
Legally acceptable to request a de novo hearing. And if they discuss it amongst themselves ahead
of time, that is also allowable.
Right. That's complicit with the problem.
Yeah. So there's nothing here.
Yeah.
But if I had spoken to one, Mr. City Attorney, and the other one didn't agree
with me, let's just say, one talked to the other, decided they didn't want to sign.
Is there an issue with asking a third council member then or a second one?
I don't see an issue there.
That's right.
I mean, you're just asking to sign on.
There's no issue with that as long as you don't divulge the conversation that you
had with the other person.
So you went to Dean and Dean said, no, for these reasons.
And then you go to Keegan and you said, well, I'm coming to you because I spoke to Dean
and that's the Brown Act problem.
Right.
You just go and you're saying...
I'm looking for a second signature on this.
Yes.
Would you be willing to sign it?
Right.
Yes. That's fine.
Okay.
All right.
And I might add that when the hearing is scheduled, that doesn't mean that those
two that signed on are Brown Act buddies throughout the thing.
They can go and be a Brown Act buddy with some other council member when the hearing is
scheduled.
It all turns to conversation.
Yes.
Right.
If you talk about what you spoke to another council member, that's the Brown
Act problem.
Right.
Okay.
Now we've clarified this and I think that's great.
Great.
Thank you so much for clarifying this.
All right.
This is the clarification I think we needed regarding this item.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Thank you.
Mr. Mayor.
I think we need to move that we determine the proposed ordinance except from the
review under the California Environmental Quality Act known as CEQA and
number two, adopt the ordinance amending Title 17 to update appeals periods.
Is there a second?
Second.
Very well.
It's been moved in second.
Is there any other conversation or discussion?
No.
Seeing none, Madam City Clerk, would you call the question?
Council Member Francois.
Yes.
Council Member Keegan.
Aye.
Council Member Jackson.
Aye.
Mayor Pro Tem Detoy.
Aye.
Mayor Seaman.
Aye.
Motion carries.
Thank you.
Let's move on to number 17.
Municipal matters.
17A, adopt two resolutions adopting side letters to the memorandums of understanding
for the general and supervisory employees bargaining unit and the professional and
administrative employee group.
This will be presented by Interim Human Resources Manager Tyler Cashman.
Hi, Tyler.
Good evening, City Council.
How are you all?
All right.
So today we are talking about the two side letters for both the professional
administrative employees group and the Teamsters Union for our employees.
We are looking to add education incentive pay to both of these unions.
To give you a little background, the unrepresented group currently receives a $400 per month
incentive for having a master's degree related to their field of work.
And then $350 a month if they have a certificate related to their field of work as well
subject to city manager approval.
This program began on July 1, 2025 with the most recent labor negotiations.
And historically the police unions, both police management and also the police
officers association receive 5 to 10% of their base salary for having a post
certification, various post certifications or associates or bachelors degrees as well.
Next slide, please.
And the city enacted in fiscal year 22 a sign on bonus program which was for all
recruitments that the city was putting forth regardless of what classification we were
recruiting for.
The purpose at the time was that we were well below 100% of our staff and had a
lot of vacancies within the city.
So the purpose was to attract employees to Hermosa Beach when the staffing
levels were critically low at the time.
And during that time and moving forward up to present day, we've averaged about $200,000
a year through that sign on bonus program and have budgeted that much per fiscal
year as well.
And the sign on bonuses ultimately were created to boost recruitment but with
that not being needed as much now, we would like to redirect those resources
towards harder to fill roles and move that budget over to the education incentive
pay for Teamsters and PAE unions.
So ultimately the purpose of both of these side letters for both of these
unions is to address the inequity in the education incentives that the
other groups and unions are receiving and aligning PAE and Teamsters
benefits with the unrepresented group that was received in these most
recent labor negotiations.
And ultimately to maintain competitive compensation in a high-cost labor market.
The fiscal impact of this would ultimately be very neutral seeing as though
we are currently spending over $200,000 a year on this sign on bonus program
which we would be reallocating those funds to the education incentive
pay since we are planning on pulling back the sign on bonus efforts.
And as mentioned those resources would be redirected to those harder to fill
roles and the remainder of that would move to the education incentive pay
for PAE and Teamsters.
So the recommended action from staff is to adopt the resolution for the
side letter with Teamsters local 986 union and adopt the resolution
for the side letter with the professional and administrative
employees union.
And I am available for questions, thank you.
Great, thank you.
Are there questions of staff?
Councilman Jackson?
Sure.
Anyone?
All right, thank you.
Thank you so much for your report.
Appreciate it.
There are no questions of staff.
Let's go on to public comment then both in person and on Zoom.
We did not receive any speaker cards moving on to Zoom.
We have Tony Higgins.
I'll be quick.
We're facing a $14 million operating budget deficit by 2031.
The city's own numbers now back when I was working you got hired
because you had degrees or certifications and you got job
security by getting more certifications and more education
and based on performance, not certifications.
It seems like you're shifting away from performance and, you know,
each bargaining group is leapfrogging over the other.
Can you really afford this?
That's it, thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. Mayor, I don't see any other hands raised.
All right, then I will see none in chambers either.
I'll close the public comments and bring it back to council for
deliberations, discussion or a motion.
Mr. Mayor, motion approves to ask for recommendation.
I'll second that.
Any further discussion?
Further motions? No.
Madam City Clerk, would you call the question please?
Council Member Francois.
Yes.
Council Member Keegan.
Aye.
Council Member Jackson.
Aye.
Mayor Pro Tem DeToy.
Aye.
Mayor Seiman.
Aye.
Motion carries.
Thank you.
Let's move on to 17B.
Madam City Clerk, would you announce the item?
17B is update on homelessness efforts.
This was continued from January 27th and will be presented
by Senior Management Analyst Sarah Russo.
Thank you.
Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council.
Staff will be providing information on the city's
homelessness efforts related to the HB CARES program.
Next slide.
In 2023, the city received a $1 million grant from
Congressman Ted Liu's office to start a pilot mobile
mental health and crisis response team.
A contract was awarded to the Los Angeles Center for
alcohol and drug abuse to provide those services.
In 2024, the city was granted a one-year no cost extension
to continue the program, which ultimately ended in
September 2025 due to lack of continued funding.
Next slide.
HB CARES provided services Monday through Thursday
between the hours of 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. from May
2024 through September 2025.
Their goal was to take the 34 individuals experiencing
homelessness in our city and move that number down to zero.
In that time that they were here, they were able to
assist nine individuals, three continue to stay in
their cars, and 22 were service resistant.
Next slide.
While the pilot program had success stories,
challenges were met that made it difficult to
accomplish the goal.
Those challenges included staff term and over,
limited staff during peak periods,
lockata was unable to set up a second team.
It was difficult to engage with individuals who were
service resistant and there were barriers to housing
resources.
Next slide.
Through the course of their service,
HB CARES took a total of 336 calls and provided
234 services.
Services ranged from providing emotional support to
housing navigation to client advocacy.
This concludes staff report.
If you have any questions you may have.
Thank you.
Appreciate your comment.
Is there any questions of staff?
None?
All right.
Thank you so much.
Let's open the public comment then.
We did not reach out to staff.
Let's open the public comment then.
We did not receive any speaker cards.
If you would like to speak on this item,
please raise your virtual hand.
Oh, I'm sorry.
We have one here in public.
Good evening, John Burry.
If you haven't already read it,
I commend that
Belka Warner's column that we published in the Hamosa Review entitled Valerie's Story.
It's Valerie's Story is the story of Valerie Campos and she is an amazing woman. She is an
outreach worker with Harvard Interfaith. She is a lady who has overcome the most unimaginable
adversity in her life to pull herself up and to become an incredible resource for homeless
people in the South Bay. And the reason I commend it to you is not just because it's such an inspirational
story but because she has some very interesting things to say about how we get some of
these service resistant people off the streets and some of the things she has to say are not
necessarily what you might expect her to say so I highly commend that to everybody.
The second thing is that in the course of writing that story and talking to Valerie and
talking to some of the people that she helped, I discovered something which I think our city
manager is too modest ever to tell anybody and he'll probably not like me for saying
it but Stephen Polatano's contribution to helping to rehouse or to find housing for
a lady in this city who everybody would recognize who was on the streets in our city for
something like six years, his personal contribution to that which she told me about, he didn't tell
me about is remarkable and that we should celebrate people that do these things quietly
and selflessly so thank you Steve for what you did for Dee. And the third thing I want
to say is that we should take a really good look at where that million dollars went and
I think there's some lessons in there about grant money and not quite treating grant money
the same as we would treat our own money out of our own pockets because a million dollars
has been spent, the program has finished and there's not much of a legacy to show
for it. For a million dollars we might have expected deeper routes to have taken root and to
have some infrastructure or foundation for the next group of people who take over so I really
would urge maybe a look and a proper review at the million dollars that was spent under HB
CAS. Thank you. Thank you. On Zoom we have Nancy Schwabhawk.
As usual John Burry stole my thunder. Thank you so much Steve for what you're doing.
We are so grateful for an honest report. This I think people think we could have done better
and we're going to get lessons learned out of it and if we didn't have an honest after-action
report we would not be able to learn from it. So rather than criticize what went before
I am grateful that people are looking now and saying okay what can we learn
how can we do better and that was an abject failure. However I think we're taking the right
messages away from it and again thank you so much Steve.
Mr. Mayor I don't see any other virtual hands raised.
All right thank you then I'll close public comment bring it back to council.
Councilman Ditoi. Thank you. Mr. City Manager I know this report was retrospective but
moving forward what is the city doing regarding its homeless efforts you know partnership
are we seeing better I don't see a ROI on it. I'm going to call the person I'd like
council to recognize and give credit for and that's Sarah Russo our senior management
she's been doing this for quite some time she recognized the challenges of the last group but
we're really on the right track we feel with the new group and I'm going to let her talk about that
because she deserves a shine in this light. Perfect just so you can hit on it some fun like
where's the funding coming from you know as you said since September how the success rate
has been etc. Right so as soon as we did the analysis and we got the reporting back from
Lakota we made immediate conversations with the South Bay Council of Governments to let them know
with heroes we needed to see some different approaches being done in our city so we're
now meeting monthly with them to have really honest conversations about the work and the
outreach and navigation that's being done so I think that's been a huge improvement and we've
actually had another individual housed recently within our city so numbers are starting to
come down and we couldn't be more thrilled with how heroes are supporting us but I think
it's due to the challenges that we incurred that we can now make those improvements.
And council I'd like to also give credit to Chief Phillips he has followed up on the
anti-camping ordinance and we've got cases before prosecution which most likely would be in
homeless court to get these folks on a better path as well so he's done a great job in stepping
up and addressing those issues especially the camping and vehicles. And then just regarding
the heroes program is that funding through COG or is that funding from our general fund or
where does that funding come from? That is funding through the measure H funds currently
through the COG. So we are contracting essentially with the COG services in our city
correct us Manhattan and Rodondo are all contracting for heroes at this moment
in time. And then how many teams are moving through the three cities at once or is it
just one team? Just one team at the moment because they're still fairly new themselves
but they are dedicated to being here in her most of Mondays and Fridays.
And then as needed I assume. As soon as we get a call and we see an individual that's
new to us or staff we immediately contact them and then hopefully they're here within
two to four hours. And are they seven days a week right now or are they?
They're only five days right now Monday through Friday. Okay perfect thank you. Thank you very
much. All right so close the public comments. Bring it back to council for a motion discussion.
There is no discussion. I move that we receive and file this report.
Second. Second. Thank you. Councilman Jackson. Madam City Clerk would you
call the question please? Councilmember Francois. Yes. Councilmember Keegan.
Hi. Councilmember Jackson. Hi. Mayor Potemde Toy. Hi. Mayor Salmon. Hi. Motion carries.
Great thank you. Let's move on then to 17C has been moved to a future meeting and then 17D.
Madam City Clerk would you read the... 17D consideration of vendor sales on the beach
in conjunction with a special event permit. This item was continued from January 27th
and will be presented by Brian Sousa. All right. Good evening Council. We finally got here.
Mayor Pro Tem. Members of City Council, City Manager and City Attorney. Brian Sousa,
Senior Recreation Supervisor for the Parks and Newly Found Parks and Recreation Department.
Thank you Councilmember Keegan. On behalf of staff, recommend City Council consider approval
of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission's recommendation to consider the
amendments to the Hermosa Beach Municipal Code Chapter 12.20 Beach and Strand Regulations for
a solicitation to allow for the sale of pre-pared food, non-alcoholic beverages and or merchandise
on the beach by vendors associated with an approved special event and to establish
a per vendor daily fee with a discounted rate for Hermosa Beach based businesses holding
a valid City Business License. Next slide please.
For background, at its August 26, 2025 meeting, City Council directed staff to bring an item to
the Parks and Recreation Commission to review vendor sales on the beach, food beverages and
merchandise sales and potential alcohol use consideration at beach events. At its January
6, 2026 meeting, the Commission reviewed the applicable provisions to the Hermosa Beach
Municipal Code and recommend City Council consider approval of the amendments to Section 12.20.300
to allow for the sale of pre-pared food, non-alcoholic beverages and or merchandise
on the beach by vendors associated with an approved special event and to implement a daily
per vendor fee with consideration to the discount to Hermosa Beach businesses.
Sorry, can you go back real quick? This was based on feedback that received by event producers
requested in the past previous years. This code amendment would allow greater vendor
flexibility. This would improve financial viability to enhance and improve their
events experiences and also bring more tourism inspectors to the events. Next slide.
Under the Municipal Code solicitation, currently only the event producers themselves
associated with the event are permitted to sell food, non-alcoholic beverages,
a brand of merchandise on the beach or on the strand. No additional vendors are permitted to
sell as part of an approved special event on the beach or strand. Vendor sales are currently,
vendor sales may occur on other public property locations other than the beach and the strand
with vendors associated with the event, special event permit. And alcohol consumption and
sales are permissible in other public areas where special event permits are permissible.
HB, Municipal Code section 12.20.040, alcoholic beverages, violation and penalties prohibits
alcohol consumption on the beach and strand without any exception. Next slide.
For discussion today, staff conducted research on the cities of Manhattan Beach
and City of Redondo Beach. Municipal codes pertaining to the sales of food,
non-alcoholic beverages and or merchandise by vendors associated with an approved special event
on the beach. Summarize this table one in your staff report. In summary, Manhattan Beach allows
vendors to sell at certain city-approved events, also approved previously by their City Council.
Alcohol is only allowed at city council approved events and only at the peer currently.
For City of Redondo Beach, vendors are allowed at city-approved events, but alcohol
is permitted off at offsite beach events, but alcohol is not permitted on the beach for
special events in Redondo Beach. Key differences here is that from Redondo Beach and Manhattan
Beach is her most beach currently owns and fully regulates its own beach. Next slide.
Recommended action, City Council to consider approval of the proposed code amendments to
allow additional vendors on the beach associated with an approved special event.
No change to, staff is not recommending change to the strand regulations. Out of concern,
this would limit and impact negatively the public access and circulation concerns with
pedestrian traffic control on the strand. With the code amendment, this vendors would be
limited to approved event footprint only, meaning they would only be approved to sell
within the approved site plans of the special event permit. Vendors must be approved, pre-approved
by the city. Special event producers would provide city staff in advance. The vendors that would
be located in the site and the city staff would approve that. And event producers responsible
would be responsible for the vendors compliance of all city code and regulations,
as well as the insurance coverage and preventing and reporting unpermitted
vending on the beach. Next slide.
As well, the recommended action for Council to consider tonight is to include a pre-vendor
daily fee that would be added to the special event policy guide. This would replace the requirement
for an annual business license requirement currently, which vendors, special event producers,
as vendors are required to obtain. The proposed fee would be $115 per vendor per day per event.
The charge too would be directly incurred by the event producer themselves in which the city
will invoice the special event producer in the final, in the permitting process.
The fee is associated to a mid-range balance based on the best practice research from comparable
cities that have applicable vendor fees for their special event programs. And the recommended
action would also consider eliminating the co-sponsor fee for monetary sponsorship only
if sponsors decide to sell food beverages or merchandise. The
per-vendor daily fee will be applied for them. Next slide, please.
So tonight staff also has recommendations of no change to the alcohol sales or
conceptions would not be recommended or any code amendment changes regarding the alcohol
on the beach. This is based on public safety concerns as discussed with our public safety
team and our Hermosa Beach Police Department. This would also, if considered, would increase
police staffing requirements, potential liability insurance impacts, and potential Coastal
Commission permitting.
Any implications? And I believe that is the end of my verbal report. As always, staff is
present. If you're answering any questions, the council may have, and we also have a representative
from the police department, Chief Phillips, on hand for any questions. Thank you.
Thank you for your report. Appreciate it. Bring it back to council for questions. So,
are there any questions of staff? No? Seeing none? Yes, I've got Mr. Mayor.
Oh, he can go ahead. Go ahead, Mr. Dexter. Thank you for the brief, Brian. I had a discussion
with the city manager and I appreciate the vendor comparisons by other cities. I think
part of my problem with this staff report is I don't think we got sufficient data to make
a decision with regard to the alcohol. I mean, we know that cities up and down the coast
permit or don't permit alcohol service and VIPs. And I'm trying to understand why these
approaches may work elsewhere but couldn't in our city. I mean, did we talk to Manhattan
Beach about what they do and how they do it, what works, what doesn't work? Did we talk
to some of the other cities up and down the coast that serve alcohol or permit alcohol
on the beach during their events, what works, what doesn't work? I mean, we got a lot
of conclusions but no data or analysis outside of public safety. But there's nothing
that specifically outlines what is feasible, what isn't feasible and the factual basis
for these conclusions. So I'm trying to figure out what we did or what didn't we do. So it's
a long statement to get to the question is, I guess why didn't we do a real analysis
and look at what other cities are doing? Good, bad and indifferent so that we as the
policymakers can make an informed decision either way as opposed to just a conclusion
that we don't want to change the code. Yeah, that's a great question, Councilmember Jackson.
In our best practice research for Hermosa Beach, we always try to, you know, specify
using comparable cities. So cities that are also within the South Bay are regional cities
than coastal cities that have the same population or demographic comparisons as Hermosa
Beach. Miami Beach does allow alcohol use for city council approved special events
but only at the peer themselves. I think they utilize that isolated space because that's
the easiest way that they can monitor it through public safety measures and through
their special events checks, et cetera. We did look at LA County beaches in Harbor
who we've reached out to extensively several times in trying to get their best practices
and information on how they manage and mitigate their beaches up and down the coast
line here. Unfortunately, they were unresponsive in our attempts to reach out to them but we
do know LA County beaches and harbors do not permit alcohol use on any other beaches
and which is in comparison and compliancy to what we would, you know, if we decided
to allow alcohol sales, we would be going against what a standard practice is from
our other LA County beaches. No, I appreciate their response but the staff report tells
me nothing about Manhattan Beach. What they do, what they don't do, how they don't,
how it works. We're not just limited, I mean you mentioned Imperial Beach and
other beaches in here so we're going outside of LA County. So I'm just
trying to figure out if we're going to make an informed decision we should
have a factual basis to do that and what isn't, I mean did our public
safety folks talk to Manhattan Beach and because I don't see any of that in the
report and I guess that's where I'm struggling. Right, Councilor just speaks
to some of that. We did revise parts of the report and it does provide an
overview of what the, I'll let Chief Phillips speak for himself but you know
what the requirements would be if an event organizer wanted to serve
alcohol what the considerations would be, the added security, the overtime
police officers that would be necessary. Of course it would depend on the event and
the circumstances so it's a little hard to say well this event gets this and
this would not get that because it depends on what they do. Could there be
an event organizer that wants to take on the cost of these things? Sure,
there could be and so that's up for council consideration. We did try to
provide a little bit more balanced approach and saying okay these are the
requirements because this is what was done in Manhattan Beach for instance
for the ABP. They have, I know the Chief and I'll let him speak for himself but
I know the Chief did talk to them. They do use overtime police officers. They do
require security and I'll let him speak to that right now so I don't want to
say that this was totally not part of it. I think what was meant to say
that the Commission recommendation was not to have alcohol. Staff is here to
provide options for council. So Chief do you want to address that?
Is that information in the staff report? Did I just mention that Chief?
There should be information there because what I approved was information
regarding, let me get to the alcohol part,
events would require a combination of private security and assigned police
officers on an overtime basis and whatever plan there would be would be
evaluated in conjunction with but not in place of assigned police officers. So we
wouldn't be taking police officers off the beat to do this. It would be over
time officers. So that information is in the leader in the staff report on page
seven. Chief do you want to? Did we do an analysis with regard to potential
applicability in our city if we were to move forward with say a pilot
program? Again that's council's choice. It would apply depending on what with
the circumstances of the event would be in terms of size, in terms of a
sequestered area where they would serve it. They would have to have fencing, they
would have to have wristbands, they would have to have all sorts of things.
Again that Manhattan Beach and other cities require when they allow alcohol.
Chief do you want to address any of those? Thank you Mr. City Manager. I think you've covered
pretty much everything I was going to say. That was perfect. But yes we did
talk to Manhattan Beach, we did talk to Redondo Beach as best comparison. We
talked to Manhattan Beach regarding their AVP deployment and it has a very
separate area. It's access controlled. There's dedicated security at every
access point. There's ID checks, there's limitations on service, there's a lot of
other considerations. It's not just open and about for the entire event and
that's not something that could be safely controlled. We did talk to Redondo
Beach, there's not exactly a fair comparison of if we're talking again
using a volleyball tournament, AVP as the example. We know Redondo Beach does
beach life, that is a much different animal, very hard to compare. But that has
the same access control security checkpoints, a lot of staffing. So
there's things we did talk to our neighboring cities and talking to
Manhattan Beach in all fairness with AVP, they said it's never been an
issue. They do staff for it, they have private security and officers that are
staffed on overtime for those events, but they do a good security plan and
they've had no issues with that. So those are the considerations we looked at.
We worked with now Parks and Rec department on that and yeah just
echoing Mr. City Manager. I'm happy to speak about Manhattan Beach and
their experience there. Thank you. I appreciate it. My point was I mean
they have these events up and down the coast, Newport, Huntington Beach, Manhattan
Beach and so I appreciate the fact that it is doable and the question is
is that something we want to consider? So thank you for that. Thank you
Councilman Jackson. Any other questions? Yes. Thank you Mr. Mayor. As stated in
your staff report I originally proposed this to model it after Manhattan
Beach and you did use the chart showing us how it works in Manhattan and it says
you know during major volleyball tournaments on the beach when recommended
food sales are allowed in subject to fire conditions and so on and I was hoping
to modify it after that because those producers of volleyball tournaments have
expressed a desire and an interest to do that but now we've expanded it
with the recommendation from the Commission to include all events and I'm
just wondering is there some way to limit the type of events because you know
for fear that this could just envelope into a mushroom of commercial activity
you could have a running race or a surfing contest that doesn't need the
revenue but they turn it into many vendors on the beach and it becomes
an event about the vendor selling things on the beach and I'm just wondering are
there safeguards in place or how can we modify this to ensure that it doesn't
lead to something like that. Yeah absolutely Councilmember Francois. The
recommendation would be up to City Council. I think the Commission provided
the report and I apologize for misspeaking of not including alcohol
sales or limiting the vendor use but it would be up to City Council how you
like us to monitor if you would like to consider a recommendation to not
include all special events on the beach and only include volleyball events that
would be up to your prerogative. The consideration from Council and staff
was in consideration of just being equitable to all special event
producers applying to use the public property on the beach and just
keeping it uniformity but we're open to your recommendation. So when we
say all special events are there some events that are not considered
special I mean could there be an association of vendors putting on an
event on the beach? Well I mean all new special events go through the
special event permit process which goes to Commission and Council for
approval regardless. So any new special event that comes up and you
know specific commercial businesses wants to know about this new policy
that's implemented will then apply for a special event you will have the
prerogative to review that special event in advance to approve it or not
approve it regardless. So they if the concern is commercializing the beach
because of these code amendment changes that they would still have to go
through the permit process even be considered for approval. The policy
would only be basically implemented after the code amendment changes for
any returning special events. But the permit process doesn't really evaluate
as I understand it or look at the effects it has on public use of the
beach or commercialization it's basically the way it is unless we put
some criteria in place. The special event policy guide does have some
criteria in place because we do we do monitor that we receive
applications throughout the previous years that I've been here for
example of organizations trying to commercialize the beach for example
last year and Nike reached out wanting to do a shoe release on the beach and
they try to turn it into a special event but in investigation looking in the
event it was really just a brand awareness opportunity for them just
to promote their shoe brand and put it on social media which we said did
not apply for the special event permit program that's more of a pure
plaza promotion which is substantial $15,000 fee to operate and
commercialize pure plaza for the day and which then they voided their
application. So there is a monitoring and an evaluation process internally from
our team. I mean it could be limited to sporting events for example or
they're non-sporting events. I mean that would be up to the council to
decide because we do have a diversity of events on the beach obviously the
majority of the events on the beach are volleyball tournaments but we do have
other events other than that. Okay that's fair. Two more questions here. Another
possibility is we could have whenever an event is approved for using outside
vendors we could just have it on our consent calendar so we could kind of
just take a look at it in case there's a feeling it might be getting out of
hand. Is that another? The pre-approved list of vendors? No just
when the event gets approved by the the Parks and Recs Commission approves level
one and two. Correct. It doesn't go any further. But only returning events. Excuse
me? Only returning events all new events regardless of their impact levels go
to Commission and City Council. So even if it was a low impact level one or
two event it would still come back to City Council if it's a new event. Yeah.
Okay and then my final question I have written down on my notes here. Oh I
might have another one let's see. I noticed there was language in there that the
vendors will be vendors and then they will be waived paying the producer a
sponsorship. Is that a requirement or how does that work? Yeah good question.
Currently we have a co-sponsor fee associated with a special event
permit program for the special event policy guide. That co-sponsor fee is
for any sponsors that come on an event as a title sponsor and is identified as
such on all their marketing material. Good example of this is
WebBush sponsors the Hermosa Beach Open. The Hermosa Beach Open is the
event that is approved by City Council by the event producer Day at the
Beach Events. WebBush is not as only associated as a sponsor so they have
to pay a co-sponsor fee because they're titled in the event. The
recommendation tonight is to eliminate the co-sponsor fee to allow more
financial sustainability for the event but where the per vendor fee will to
apply for that sponsor is if they wanted to additionally sell merchandise or
goods or food on the beach. Meaning if WebBush wanted to put up a 10x10
tent, sell t-shirts and hats of their own brand at the Hermosa Beach
We would charge them the per vendor fee.
They still could be a cosponsor if they wanted to. That's optional.
They could. We just wouldn't apply the cosponsor fee.
So we're not requiring the vendors to also be a cosponsor?
Correct.
It's just an optional thing that depends on how the producer organizes.
That's up to the producer, correct.
Yeah, okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
All right, thank you so much for your report. I appreciate it.
You're welcome.
We will move on from council questions and open public comment.
Madam City Clerk.
We did not receive any speaker cards.
Okay. And in the Zoom.
Laura Penya coming up.
Brian.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Not your speaker.
You knew desk.
Hi. Laura Penya, mayor, council member,
staff.
I'm just listening to this.
Not that I didn't read the report I did.
Here's a great opportunity for us right now.
And in our business community,
we need to start creating and thinking about experiences.
The fact that we own our own beach,
like that's amazing.
But what does that mean?
And so as I was listening,
I'm going looking at our economic development strategies.
I know we're going to retire them soon,
but there are so many of them that could be utilized
with vendors on the beach to really attract experiences.
Just one off the hand, 25,
explore music events and activities to celebrate
Hermosha's beach music history and provide experiences.
Now, it doesn't necessarily say the beach,
but we could have had something more expansive
with our summer concerts.
So I'm just hoping that we take an open mind approach.
Let's look at activating some of our places
and think creatively out of the box.
That's what we need.
That's what our business community needs.
And the only ask that I would propose for council
is if we're going to have outside vendors,
create a space, a booth for our local businesses.
One, where because a lot of our businesses
are brick and mortar, we're invested here,
we should be able to promote our businesses here.
So that's the only ask that I would have
on behalf of all of our businesses.
Thank you.
Moving over to Zoom, we have Tony Higgins.
Yeah, I'm really worried that this is going to result
in the over commercialization of the beach.
If you look at the fine print,
basically the producer can sell vendor foods
to anyone he wants, maybe subject to approval,
but he's going to be selling this for profit.
And you have to ask who really wants alcohol on the beach?
Who really wants food service on the beach?
Maybe do the local businesses want that?
Do they want the competition?
Or do they want free booths?
The whole thing just seems to be a slippery slope
to over commercialization of the beach,
a slippery slope to bring in more and more tourists
that maybe the community doesn't want to see that.
They appreciate the pristine, beautiful beach.
We don't want Coney Island.
We don't want events where food service or alcohol service
become the event.
It's a slippery slope to that.
And I sure hope you take steps to prevent it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Tony.
Next we have Barbara.
Good evening.
Sorry, I have cold.
There were a couple of things I wanted to talk about.
One was when Laura Pena discussed the local businesses,
I hope you all watched our commission meeting
because I think we did a very good job
of discussing most of this.
And Andrew at Curious pointed out that a lot of the vendors,
the local businesses don't come down
because they have to take care of their own tent.
They need to bring all their wares.
They have to hire people to work.
And it usually does not work out well for them.
So we did discuss about having one larger tent
where everybody could come down.
Of course, they would have to organize it
through the chamber probably or through the event,
but that they would be able to sell
or at least encourage people to come to their store.
Councilmember Francois,
I hope that you'll explain a little bit more
about your comment about volleyball only
and that we honestly believed that this,
when you open it for one, you need to open it up for all.
So if you might be able to explain your thoughts on that,
I would appreciate it.
Because we do have the LA Galaxy.
We do have flag football.
We have the Rams.
We have a lot of events that do come down.
And if they can handle the restrictions
that we would give them about how the vendors that they use,
maybe giving a discount if you're a local vendor,
we don't feel that you should make this for one group.
So if you could defend that, that would be great.
I'm also curious, Councilmember Francois,
you didn't want a VIP section for an event earlier tonight.
So I'm hoping that you can explain the difference
between having a VIP area for one event,
but you seem to be happy with the thought of having another,
something different for a different group.
So I'm just very confused about that.
The vote was 5-0 to not have alcohol on the beach.
I did reach out to Manhattan Beach and other cities.
I reached out to our city manager.
And yes, we all agree that Manhattan Beach doesn't have a problem.
Keep in mind that Manhattan Beach has very few events.
We have a lot of events.
So I did talk to the chief of police.
He made a comment that it's not mandatory
that our police officers take overtime.
So if we have a lot of events,
we ask them to do a lot of overtime.
We don't have a guarantee that they would be able to do this.
So these are all the things that I just want you to keep in mind.
I think we did a good job of going through everything
about not having hot food on the beach.
We have so many restaurants that we would like to keep it local.
So I think I'm done with that.
But again, Council Member Francois,
if you could just explain some of your thoughts tonight,
I would really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Barbara.
Next is Nancy Schwabock.
So as Eric Horn said earlier tonight about Elka's comments,
I am agreeing tonight with Barbara.
So I think the commission did a great job.
I think they were very thoughtful and I appreciate their service.
Thank you, Nancy.
Mr. Mayor, I don't see any other virtual hands raised.
All right.
Anyone else in Council?
Seeing none, I'll close public comment.
Bring it back to the Council for deliberation, comments, and emotion.
Any deliberation or comments?
Yes, Mr. Mayor.
I don't know if it would make it easier tonight
if we were to bifurcate the retail aspect of it
and non-alcohol aspect of it from the alcohol aspect of it.
So I feel comfortable, you know,
making a motion to approve the commission's recommendation
on everything except the alcohol beverages.
I want to have a little bit more of a conversation on that
and good with everything that they, you know, spent hours liberating.
I would second that if that was a motion.
All right.
Any deliberation on that or a substitute motion, anything else?
Yes, go ahead.
That's fine.
So, Mayor Pro Tem, you're recommending staff recommendation,
which does not address alcohol, correct?
It does address alcohol.
No, we're not making any, there is no recommendation
to change anything with regards to alcohol.
It still will be not allowed.
So you're comfortable with that recommendation, correct?
That's the first part of this and I think, you know,
I've heard interest from different colleagues
about is there a desire to have alcohol,
what it does it look like, and, you know,
versus what the commission has recommended.
Right.
So that would be a different discussion at a different time
because that's not the agenda.
No, no, it would be tonight.
What?
It would be tonight.
But again, I think the low-hanging fruit,
I think the commission did a great job,
staff did a great job working through, you know,
everything that is proposed in front of us,
the only thing I would want to have is a deeper dive
on the alcohol conversation,
whether it's interest for a pilot program, et cetera.
I would like to make a substitute motion then
to approve the staff recommendation
without bifurcating the alcohol issue.
Just leave it as is and approve the whole thing.
Is there a second for that?
I'll second that.
All right.
Any more discussion?
So your motion is separate than Mayor Pro Tem's motion.
Your motion states approving staff recommendation period.
The way it is, no alcohol on the beach.
Okay.
All right.
That is my motion and it's a second.
Thank you.
So Madam City Clerk, would you call the system?
Mr. Mayor, if I were to make a motion,
a substitute motion, would that go before your second?
All right.
That's correct.
A substitute goes first.
Yeah.
Substitute motion goes first.
Okay.
I would like to make a substitute to your substitute then.
All right.
I would motion that the direct staff
to implement a pilot program permitting limited alcohol
on the beach in 2026
for the LA Galaxy Watch Party
as well as the Hermosa Beach Open Only
consistent with best practices, public safety protocols,
and all applicable laws and permits.
And then as a secondary to that,
I would recommend we approve staff's recommendation.
All right.
Is there a second to that?
I will second it just for conversation.
Council Member Jackson, why those two events?
Is there any interest?
I mean, I...
Well, I think because at the end of the day,
I think these are the two best events
that would have the...
That would be willing to consider
whether they want to do it or not.
I mean, we can authorize it.
They may choose not to
because the requirements may be too onerous,
but they may choose to do it.
We know that it works up and down the coast.
So I think these are two big, you know,
like Galaxy obviously has the...
They ask for alcohol in the VIP section.
That's consistent with what other folks do.
The Hermosa Beach Open can do the same.
That gives them greater latitude
in terms of their ability to generate revenue.
That helps us eventually.
And, you know, I think we have to think outside
of the norms that we've done.
I mean, Laura, when you mentioned, we own our beach.
So we don't have the constraints that others have.
And again, we're going to...
Public safety is first and foremost.
And, you know, it's...
I mean, I chuckled because, you know,
you're at the Hermosa Beach Open and, you know,
within the perimeter, there's no alcohol,
but you walk five steps outside, there's alcohol.
You know, we got Fourth of July, the Iron Man, you know.
And so, you know, it's a controlled environment.
It works.
And if it doesn't work this year,
we can table it.
We can say, hey, we tried.
It doesn't work.
But at least let's try.
And I think we have two operators, two really good operators
that have proven themselves worthy of at least
an opportunity to try this.
And just to tack on to the vendor component.
I mean, most of these vendors when they...
I see that most of these operators
when they host their events.
I mean, you talked to Mark Pallui and Denny
and those folks.
I mean, they are buying local.
So they will go get 200 subs
from one of our self-places.
They will get the cookies and the cake
and all that stuff.
So they make a concerted effort.
And of course, our parks and rec says, hey,
we will obviously look for opportunities
to further increase those partnerships.
So, I mean, these folks are good partners.
They want to be good partners.
I think it's worth a shot.
And if we're going to do it,
this is the perfect time to at least explore it.
And again, if it doesn't work, we can table it.
But I mean, they've done it.
Every year for how many years and are most in Manhattan Beach. They do it in Huntington. They do it in Newport. They do it, I mean, up and down in San Diego. So, you know, I think with the public safety protocols, all applicable laws and permits, why not give it a shot?
All right. Thank you, sir. Any comments? Councilman Keegan?
Just to staff, didn't we approve the LA Galaxy to have an alcohol area? Wasn't that part of the approval?
We did not.
No, we, the part of the event would to consider allowing VIP access, but that does not incorporate alcohol sales.
Okay. Just to clarify.
I would like to just remind council that any recommended action tonight, the city council approves any of the aforementioned recommendations that staff would prepare such code amendments in addition to the fee being adjusted in the city master's fee schedule.
And now we'll come back to city council for review through a public hearing. So that would be another opportunity to discuss.
All right. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. So let's unwind this a little bit. We have a substitute motion to a substitute motion, which Mr. Jackson has, Councilman Jackson has brought forward.
A motion and a second.
Madam City Clerk, will you, let's just for the records where we're all clear about what's going on. Can you reread the substitute motion to the substitute motion?
This is to include a pilot program to allow alcohol sales for the Hermosa Beach Open and LA Galaxy Watch Party events and also staff recommendation.
Okay. Thank you. So call the question, please.
I have a comment regarding this. If I may, if we could deliberate more on this. Thank you.
I'm against this idea of pilot program alcohol. It presents serious coastal act and coastal commission issues.
The VIP section wasn't even requested by the Galaxy, but was brought up by the council member who now is pushing for alcohol at that VIP section, which, you know, they haven't requested it.
The volleyball tournaments haven't requested it. And it's just concerning that we would have a test pilot on how you would measure its success.
So I would just state that, you know, when you have a VIP section on the beach, that's already potentially impacting 25% of a free public viewing area.
The LA Galaxy is providing a free public viewing area for the World Cup.
It's not like they need to raise money to be able to put this on. Again, commercial activities on the beach. So I am definitely opposed to this substitute motion.
I'm in favor of the original substitute motion, which kept it simple to approve staff recommendation. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Madam City Clerk, would you call a question, please?
Council Member Francois?
No.
Council Member Keegan?
No.
Council Member Jackson?
Aye.
Mayor Potemde Toy?
No.
Mayor Seaman?
No.
Motion fails.
All right. Then on to the substitute motion. Would you read that back, please?
Which I understand is to approve the staff recommendation.
That's correct.
As is.
Okay.
And that was moved by Mayor Seaman and seconded by Council Member Keegan?
Correct.
Council Member Francois?
Yes.
Council Member Keegan?
Aye.
Council Member Jackson?
Aye.
Mayor Potemde Toy?
No.
Mayor Seaman?
Yes.
Motion carries four to one. Mayor Potemde Toy was a no.
All right. Thank you. So the question has been answered. Let's move on then to 17E.
Madam City Clerk, would you read the item, please?
17E is report on Planning Commission's review of land value recapture ordinance
and adopt a resolution amending the city master fee schedule to amend fees
for the land value recapture program for affordable housing.
This item was continued from January 27th and will be presented by
Community Development Planning Manager Alexis Oropeza.
Good evening, Mayor, members of City Council.
The item today this evening pertains to an amendment to an existing fee
established to implement the city's land value recapture ordinance.
As a way of background, the LVR program was incorporated into the city's
2021 through 2029 housing element at the outside of the housing element update
process in 2021.
The housing element itself was certified by the Housing and Community Development
Department in August of 2024.
And at that time that effectuated the land value recapture ordinance.
At the time of certification, HCD noted in their evaluation of the city's
housing elements that the LVR program along with other programs
should be evaluated every two years.
So in March of 2025, City Council directed staff to have the Planning
Commission review the LVR ordinance as it pertains to small lots.
Small lots as defined in the ordinance pertains to lots that have a
maximum density of no more than four units.
So in October of last year, Planning Commission did undertake its review
of the land value recapture ordinance and made recommendations to change
the fee structure.
So with that, I just want to take a moment for members of the public
who may not be familiar with the land value recapture,
discuss what that is and then give some policy context to land value
recapture as it relates to the city of Hermosa Beach.
And at its core, land value recapture policies are based on the principle
that properties gain value from city or government actions such as
rezoning or large infrastructure projects and that those actions
add value to a property.
And that some portion of that value that's added should be retrieved
or captured and put into public benefits.
And so in the city of Hermosa Beach, the LVR policies that were
adopted are intended to fund affordable housing in the city.
And so with that, if I can go to the next slide.
And so land value recapture, as mentioned, is Program 7 of the
housing element.
And the objective is to create affordable housing through a housing
trust or through private public partnerships or however it may be
envisioned.
So with that, we can go to the next slide.
To implement that program, the city made some zoning changes.
Specifically, the housing element overlay rezoned a number of
residential properties to allow for the ability to develop residential
on its own or as part of a mixed use project.
In follow-up to the rezoning, the housing element overlay
established, which properties would be required to be developed with
affordable housing or to, in absence of developing that housing,
if it was a residential project, be required to pay the LVR fee.
And so projects that are exempt would, or sites that would be
exempt would be sites that are not developed for residential.
So if you maintained commercial development and did not propose
residential housing, you would not be subject to the fee.
Next slide.
So the LVR ordinance, as it was designed, was intended to incentivize
development of affordable housing through the imposition of the LVR fee.
The fee was set at rates that were intended to encourage the development
instead of the payment of the fee.
And then, again, just to recap, LVR fees are not required
if the property owner maintains the commercial development.
So the fee was implemented as a two-tier fee structure,
providing a lower fee for smaller lots.
And again, that's lots with four or fewer units.
Next slide.
The Planning Commission in their review of the LVR fee
determined that there should be some adjustments
and made several recommendations to change the fee structure.
Specifically, tier one was subdivided into two tiers,
as shown on the left side of the screen,
so that one lots that had a maximum density of one to two units
would no longer be subject to the LVR fee,
regardless of whether they built housing or not.
And then lots that have a maximum density of three to four units
are being recommended to have a reduction for 24 months
from $76 to $40.
And Planning Commission also made a third recommendation,
which was to undertake zone text amendments
that could help to facilitate the development
of residential units on these smaller lots.
Staff's recommendation is that if this direction
is given from the City Council tonight,
that the zone text amendments be incorporated
into the broader zoning code work that's being done
and not taken forward as an isolated item
so that we can continue to make progress
on the larger work effort.
Next slide.
The amendments to the fee schedule are exempt
from the California Environmental Quality Act.
And with that, next slide,
the recommendation is to find the project exempt
to amend the fee schedule as recommended
by the Planning Commission and direct staff
to pursue zone regulations
that would facilitate residential units on small lots
as part of the larger zoning code update.
With that, that concludes my report.
I stand by for questions as is Director Becker available.
Thank you very much for your report.
I appreciate that.
Are there any questions from Council for staff?
Yes, Councilman Jackson.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Thank you for the brief.
I appreciate it.
Question one is, has any developer or business owner,
anyone within the city come to your office
with actual plans or even conceptual early stage proposals
for a mixed use project anywhere in the city?
Yes, we do have in the city in general.
Yes, we've processed a couple of mixed use projects already
downtown Hermosa.
Can you tell me, I'm aware of one that's outside
of the downtown area.
Is there another one somewhere that I'm unaware of?
On Hermosa Beach, Planning Commission approved one,
Hermosa Avenue, excuse me, approved a,
I think it was a two unit with ground floor residential,
but it's in an existing mixed use zone.
On the overlay site specifically,
we have not had a mixed use project.
Okay.
And how are we doing overall with our HCD numbers?
How many units have been built period with regard to affordable,
very affordable market rate, et cetera?
Where are we with those numbers?
Because we're talking about, you know,
the focus is affordable housing and we had a policy
that to help to hopefully promote affordable housing,
but the rolling back of this land value recapture would
promote market rate housing as opposed to affordable housing.
So I'm trying to figure out where we are overall
with our HCD numbers because we're focused on
the land value recapture component,
but where are we overall with those general numbers?
Thank you for the question.
With regards to affordable housing units,
so non-market rate,
we have no devoted or deed restricted units thus far?
Okay, and that's throughout the whole city.
And are you familiar with land banking?
In concept, yes, I'm familiar with it.
And so with this current proposal,
prevent land banking where the landowner basically holds
onto the property indefinitely without building
or contributing to the economic activity within the city?
Would it prevent land banking?
Right.
We've rolled this back and there's no land value recapture. And so somebody in theory could bank,
is there anything that prohibits somebody from holding on to the property indefinitely
without ever building? Because you mentioned that in one of the, I think it was number two, you said
regardless, they maintain the value, the value is increased regardless of whether they build housing
or not. That was one of the statements I believe you made. Thank you for the clarification. Yeah,
so there is nothing to prevent someone from holding on to the property. Okay.
Thank you. That's all I had, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes,
Councilor Francois. Thank you. It was several years ago when the land value recapture program was
added into the housing element, is that correct? Correct. Yeah, and I believe that at that time
Mayor Pro Tem D'Toy and myself voted against including it, but it got included in the housing
element and so now it's part of a housing element. It is a part of the housing element. And at the
time I personally voted against it because I didn't think there was any evidence to show that
it was going to help our housing stock at all. So now that it's in our housing element,
are we in jeopardy at all if we remove the land value recapture from the housing element,
if we realize that it's not really a known incentive? Is there a problem with
our housing element if we do that now? So today the city has a certified housing element that
includes one of the strategies being land value recapture. So I think it would put the city
in a situation mid-cycle to make such a change. I think if you, City Council, wanted to make
change a more appropriate time would be to think of the next cycle and
the city would have to have other mechanisms and strategies for facilitating affordable housing
in the city in place of that. Right. And you will be pursuing other avenues, developer
fees and other things that could help with those numbers, correct? That would be in the process?
For example, well on the agenda you have future looking at
explore zoning regulations that encourage development, right? That's what we're talking about, right?
That is a part of today's action, correct? So your recommendation tonight is to
remove the fees for one and two units, the lowest size because those are least likely to ever
be developed if we have this fee structure in place, is that correct? That was the Planning
Commission's recommendation was to eliminate the fee for one and two units. Now, is there any
reason why they didn't recommend that for larger units? So lots that with five or more units,
the discussion was not focused on the larger lots based on City Council's direction. It was
really focused on the smaller lots. But what I will say is in terms of the history of the LVR
ordinance, five is kind of opens up avenues in terms of the development potential. It's linked
to the density bonus at state law. So I think the thinking there is there's a greater potential
to likelihood for development of affordable housing with five or more.
Gotcha. So if we were, for example, to recommend this evening that we eliminate fees for not just
one and two but three and four, that's under the five threshold. We would not be jeopardizing our
housing element by just reducing those fees to nothing. Is that safe to assume?
Or are you just going along with Planning Commission's recommendation to eliminate fees on
one and two? I'm just wondering the difference between one and two and three and four.
She isn't going along with anything. She's just reporting.
Well, it's a matter of the impact on our housing element. That's the stickler here, I think.
Yeah, for the record, this is Allison Becker, the Community Development Director.
I recommend that we be, you know, we're gingerly handling the request from the council to
consider changes to the Land Value Recapture Program. We're mid-cycle. We will be beginning our
process to develop our next cycle housing element within two years. And at that time,
if we are really not seeing uptake with Land Value Recapture in terms of
revenues, which can help us subsidize or otherwise support affordable housing production,
we can design a new program. But LVR is a foundational piece of our affordable housing
development strategy. And so I would be very careful about expanding the
reduction in potential impact of the program. Okay, I appreciate that answer. I thought there was
some legitimacy to it being okay to make it apply to under five units. It was a five-unit cutoff
that the state would not, it wouldn't affect our housing element if we reduced it to zero on
up to four. So as we were preparing for the planning commission meeting, we did look very
specifically at the total number of parcels that are covered by the affordable housing overlay,
the percentage of them that meet the very small definition versus the
not quite as very small definition, and are again really trying to kind of find that balance
and reduce the total impact on the units, the affordable units that are associated with
particular parcels that are on our survey. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for
answering those questions. All right, thank you. Are there any other questions of staff?
Seeing none, I will move to public comment, open public comment right now. Madam City Clerk.
Mr. Mayor, we did not receive any speaker cards for this item. On Zoom, we have Matt McCool.
Good. Okay. I'm a little taller. John David. So I guess, so I've been up here since 2022, 2023.
I've warned that this is a poison pill program. It does no pathway for affordable housing,
and it just blocks housing altogether. It functions as a regressive tax,
so it reduces any possibility of development, reducing supply, drives up cost, and that doesn't
help people with affordability, hurts the lower income people the most. That's just not my
conclusion. A study from UCLA concluded that. So what is the program? It is just a program
that programmatically makes small infill housing in Hermosa Beach infeasible on our commercial
lots. It's not me again saying it. Just go look at page 13 through 16 on Cosmon Study.
By the city's own math, you can't build a six unit, an eight unit. All you can build is a
density bonus 12 unit project. So it's literally a war on our small development
forces property owners to build density bonus projects or nothing. What you got is you got
nothing. That's an ineffective program, and you can't capture any value if you don't create
that value. The other thing is the program fails to really understand the owners who are
small lots. They're past and present shop owners, residents. These properties function as people's
pension plans for the entrepreneurs. You can't slap a 55 year deed restriction that limits
pension payments and expect you're going to get any participation. That's completely unrealistic.
The other thing about this policy, it's an incentive trap that pushes small property owners
to sell their properties to large development that will consolidate. That's not a success.
That's not what the community wants. The other thing to realize is that HCD didn't ask for
this. They didn't ask for this program. What they're asking for is numbers, and this program
blocks housing. The attorney maybe can talk about it. It creates an amazing amount of
legal jeopardy because we've seen no progress. We've proven mathematically that it blocks
housing, protected housing, 10 units and under. Although we have to be cautious of not triggering
a mid-cycle review, we have to be careful also of following the law, of having HCD come to us
and say, we mathematically proved, our study, proved that we're blocking housing, blocking
protected housing, and why didn't you fix it? My recommendations for you tonight is first
follow the rule of holds. If you're in a hole, stop digging. Eliminate one to two unit projects.
They were just market rate anyhow on their housing element. Exempt three to four units
and then go ahead, ask staff to look at exempting 10 units and under so we can comply with law,
and then look for positive incentives. Sorry, I went over. Thank you, John. By the way,
I know both of you and several other people waited here all night long earlier, and the rest of
leaving tonight also. So I'm going to give you a little leeway on the time a little bit. So
you've certainly put in your time to be able to speak on this subject. So
I appreciate it. A little bit extra time. So thank you. Next we have Laura Pena.
Laura Pena, 2021, that's the only question I want to give to John's statement. We've been up here
talking about land value recapture. So I went back to some of the old meetings and I can't
believe we're still talking about it. There's a correction on the PowerPoint. You didn't
increase Tier 2 to 112 or 114. Not that I know. So, you know, wrong. I recently heard three interesting
quotes. It appears to me land value recapture has become a constraint on the development of
residential properties on upper peer. Two, so far it has generated zero for low-income housing.
The program has failed. Three, I cannot fathom another hurdle, restriction, cost. If I had it in
my way, I would like to see this go away completely forever. These are not my words. These are the
words of your own planning commission appointed by council who reviewed the evidence, read the
reports, talked to business owners, listened to residents, and voted unanimously to remove LVR
on our smallest lots. Now, this unanimous felt matters because it reflects clarity, not politics.
It reflects reality, not theory. I'm here tonight as a business owner and a resident to
say something very simple. We should listen. But I think we can go further because what I did
is I went back to plan Hermosa, you know, that 240-page document that we're supposed to
rely on. And this program is in clear contradiction to policy 5.3 in goal five that says establish
clear and unambiguous regulations and policies to clearly communicate the city's expectations
for new development. LVR revolves on an evolving assumption about value creation and future
market conditions. That's so much ambiguity. No one would ever predict it. The general plan
assumes that property owners will respond to incentives. They will like regulations that
enable not block the desired outcomes. So if you've got zero application and zero
housing projects, this is a failed policy. And pretending a failed policy is working
is making our housing crisis worse. I agree with staff's recommendations to explore zoning
regulations that encourage development. Your planning commission has told you clearly,
now it's your turn. Remove LVR off small lots and don't pull a number out of the hat.
That is exactly the kind of policy that's going to get our city in trouble. And for
those of us who have been fighting for five years trying to tell you what would happen,
I'm done talking about this anymore. Thank you.
John Burry, I wish Cosmant were on the stand tonight because you could cross examine them
because not even they would stand up for this. I don't think it was ever
implemented in a way that Cosmant truly
You adopted something that was novel by your own admission. It was something that was in less than 30% of cities in California, and then you took a look at the similar cities and the fees, and then staff made a recommendation, and then the council then, at that point, ignored those recommendations.
And then you looked at other cities and their exemptions of small lots, and you saw that the vast majority of comparable cities exempted the small lots, and you ignored that evidence. And then you heard the testimony from commercial property owners, and yet you ignored that.
And let's be honest, LVR was always a poison pill. There's a piece of this that was conceived more as a deterrent to build as remedy threats, as much as any real incentive to affordable housing, and it's resulted in zero development, zero affordable housing, and zero improvement of the building fabric in some pieces of the downtown, which is not great.
It's a policy that was championed by three attorneys, or quasi attorneys, who somehow think that a penalty can magically become an incentive. Just tread a little less heavily in everybody's lives, and we might be a bit better off.
It was championed with such certainty by those three council members, and one particular ex-member of the planning commission, it's a dud. The only way it's going to explode is right in our faces, in a court, challenged by a developer, challenging our entire housing element as this piece is a poison pill that can make affordable housing infeasible.
So I would go further tonight than the planning commission recommended. I leave it up to you, but I would go a little bit further than the planning commission recommended. It should never have happened like this.
It was driven as much by ideology as it was by logic, and it needs to go away and you need to learn the lesson.
Thank you.
Moving over to Zoom, we have Matt McCool.
Hello City Council staff, Matt McCool. Great public comment so far. Appreciate it. I'm not going to repeat any of it, but I want to go ahead and say I called this out when this happened. I told you so. Nothing has happened.
Mr Burry talked about ideology. This was driven by woke ideology, and you have two conflicting ideas working here. You want to have mixed use in the downtown area, but you also want to have affordable housing.
Calfman Jackson, when he's gone over this for many years and he's talked about affordable housing, affordable housing, first off, there's no such thing as affordable housing. It's called government subsidized housing.
And I have always said this, and I said this when we had these meetings, there is plenty of affordable housing in Hermosa Beach. I know this because I took advantage of it. It was early on in my life, in my 20s, it was called having roommates.
So there's plenty of affordable housing. But this government restriction is preventing mixed use happening in the downtown area. I consider myself a foremost expert on this because for many years I live in the only mixed use building in the downtown area in Hermosa Beach.
I had many, many parties where people would come over and they said they would love living on a mixed use building on Pier Avenue. The city is restricting this development. They're restricting the culture and the development of the city that everybody wants to have.
My heart goes out for lower opinion and her frustration. The demand is there. The demand is there from the people who want to go ahead and live on Pier and there's demand there for the people and the owners and the developers.
This needs to be addressed. I don't know how far and how deep you're going to get in this tonight, but at the very least I agree with Councilman Francois. You need to go ahead and do the zero reduction to the four units. That's my time. That's my piece. Thank you.
Thank you. Next is Nancy Schwabach.
I really appreciate Alison's presentation and acknowledgement that it's time to take a look back and it goes back to the same after action reports that we did with the unhoused. Okay, we tried something. It didn't work.
I would hope that the State Housing Board would say, hey, you tried something. It didn't work and now you're reassessing it and changing it and whether it leads to affordable housing or it just leads to more housing.
I think it will be a great thing and I would like to call Councilmember Jackson out when this first happened. He said, we don't need more affordable housing in Hermosa Beach. We need more housing or vice versa and it was at the same time that he was saying we're not going to give anybody parking passes.
So not to conflate to issues, but if we are going to, which I think we should, get rid of this thing entirely, don't reduce it, whatever, land value recapture should not be there.
And then we're going to have to look at whether we are going to allow developers and property owners parking concessions in connection with this new housing.
And I think we should, much like we do with ADUs, but it's all part and parcel that needs to be considered in my opinion in a more thoughtful manner than it was under the old administration, which just was ridiculous in my point of view. Thank you.
Thank you Nancy.
Sir Mayor, I don't see any other virtual hands race.
Okay. Anyone left in Council?
Last call. All right. Seeing none, I'll close public comment and come back to City Council.
I did have another couple of questions of staff if it's okay.
The question of parking actually just did come up, and if on a mixed use development, let's say for instance on these small ones that we're talking about, land value capture or otherwise, on a mixed use there are parking requirements for the residential unit above the commercial unit for mixed use.
Correct.
And those parking requirements are what we currently have for all other residential units or are they somewhat different because they're in a mixed use project?
I believe we have in the mixed use section that there is considerations for shared parking between the commercial and the residential and offhand.
I can't remember what other, if it's a reduced parking rate.
And then when you get into projects that are utilizing the state density bonus, there's alternative parking based on that.
Right. Yeah, they get density bonuses.
Is it possible for a mixed use project that has no possible way of providing parking?
How do we deal with that? Do they buy in lieu spaces like a commercial property? Would they pay a fee for?
So in the downtown zone, they could be eligible for, I think, in Llufi. I don't think there's a restriction on the program as to only being commercial, but we would, I think if it was a mixed use it would still be eligible, but I think I would need to double check how that in Llufi was written.
Also, I know from years and years of experience when you develop a residential property, not necessarily mixed use, but a residential property on a residential lot, that you have to pay sewer use fee, developer fees, school tax and so on and so forth.
These units that would be built in a mixed use project would be the same. Would they be subject to all of those?
Yes, they would.
And I know in Manhattan Beach they're discussing a developer fee for these projects. Do we have anything such like that?
I'm not familiar with what Manhattan Beach is currently.
Impact fee.
Oh, an impact fee for new development. I'm sorry, what type of impact fee?
Yeah. Do we have anything like that?
Per unit impact fee for infrastructure.
In other words, they pick up, these units would be impacting our infrastructure, our sewer system, school system, water system and so on. Do they pay a fee for that?
So we do have some impact fees. I don't know if ours is equivalent to what Manhattan Beach is currently doing.
But we do.
We do have some impact fees for it.
All right.
Okay, that's all the questions I had. Thank you.
Okay.
Discussion.
Let's bring it back.
Public comment is closed. Let's bring it back to council for discussion.
All right. I'd like to start.
And if no one else does.
So from the very beginning of this issue of land value recapture, I have been struggling with it.
Maybe six, seven years ago, maybe eight years ago was on planning commission.
I was an active developer at that time.
And of course, since then I've retired.
But I've been struggling with this issue since then.
As a retired developer at first, I honestly, I objected to any entity reaching into the pocket of a property owner or developer,
thereby causing a higher cost for project.
I just could not fathom how we could possibly even imagine that.
As a developer, there have been projects where I have pretty much mortgaged myself up to my ears and put everything I had into a project to purchase the land,
which is incredibly expensive and or most of we all know that.
Get the plans strong, get the financing going, get the mortgage myself to the limit to get a project underway and then get it completed.
And then stay up nights worrying about there's a real estate market going to just drop out of the bottom of this and I'm going to be stuck holding the bag.
I'll end up going back to pouring concrete and framing apartment buildings in the valley.
So I could not understand why we would ever want to go, hey, Mr developer there, even some developers, of course,
they got a lot of money and they come in here and they're going to just blow through everything and make a bunch of money and leave her most and they don't really care.
I was never like that. I lived here. This was my town and I worked here and I built these things in this city because I wanted to improve it.
I wanted to make money, of course, that was my business, but not at the expense of building a poor project and not at the expense of paying a fee to someone that did not share with the responsibility of developing something like that in this city.
So I was against it. I thought it was a ridiculous idea.
But then after time, that was when I was on Planning Commission, after time state mandates came along and they really changed the face of development and they imposed local control on us.
And I saw some merit in sharing some of the added value in producing low income units.
So I was changing my mind a little bit and I was sort of for it and I voted for it on Planning Commission when we did this.
And then I'd like to just stop right here for a second and say that I think that being able to change your mind as a Planning Commissioner or Councilman or Mayor or wherever you are in city government, I think is a plus, not a minus.
I don't think it can't make up your mind, you wishy washy, you don't really know what you're talking about, why don't you just pick a side and stay on it.
I don't think that way at all. I think it's a plus to be able to reevaluate something, a decision you made once, to reevaluate it and say the world changes, the situation changes, life changes, and so your opinion should change to go along with that.
And so I changed my mind at one point and I agreed with Van Valley Recapture.
Now we're in a different world, everything is different again because we're here, we're doing it and I realize that it is a failed experiment, it isn't working.
Honestly I think that what we have to do is change our mind again, we have to change the direction in which we've been going and I think Land Value Recapture is a place that we can do that.
I am in favor of kind of a balanced approach, I think that we should retailer the Land Value Recapture and I am in favor of a measured balanced approach and having development to encourage development, residential development in the commercial area as mixed use.
And I think that's best done in increments if we want to just do this the way that I think is the right way to do it now.
That we should eliminate land value recapture on small odds of one in two units minimum. I think I'm
in favor of reducing the fee for three to four units to $40 as the planning commission recommended
and leaving the other fees for larger projects the way they are for at least a period of
one or two, I would say two years because we're two years away from the next cycle.
I think we can evaluate how that works. If it works on lower and smaller lots and it encourages
development and makes more sense then next time around we'll maybe eliminate it completely.
So I'm not necessarily against, I just don't think we should just start hacking away at it
completely and dissolve it. I think there's maybe some merit to it in larger projects.
If you're going to build 16 or 20 units on somewhere on Pacific Coast Highway,
maybe the land value recapture, there might be some value to that then. Let's see what happens.
But for right now I think the very best thing we can do is follow the planning commission
recommendation. I think they got it right. I'm glad they thought of it. I'm not there
anymore. They did that on their own. God bless them and I agree with them. I think we should
lower the three to four unit properties to $40 a square foot, eliminate the land value recapture
on smaller lots, one and twos. And that's where I am with that. And so I'm sure there's more
comments and suggestions. And if there isn't, I would like to make a motion to
follow the planning commission recommendation. I'll second that, Mr. Mayor.
Moved and seconded. Any other further comments? A couple of comments, Mr. Mayor.
Yes, thank you. Councilman Jackson. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, everybody,
for your public comments. The argument is that LVR is stifling development.
The claim is that we'd be building if only the city relaxes rules. But there's zero data
to support that notion. And whether we like it or not, I mean, you mentioned it, Mr. Mayor,
HCD is taken away and the state has taken away our local control. So whether we agree or not,
affordable housing is our mandate. And as we've learned with taxes, just like taxes,
trickle down housing doesn't work. So we need to try to incentivize
the building of housing that has an affordability component to it. So if someone has a 3,000 square
foot lot and they built a 400 square foot ADU or something like that that may benefit from
that upzoning and pay nothing into land value recapture. There are folks that are
in this panacea that if we relax the rules, all of a sudden it was going to be building
downtown. But we know from public comments that the most vocal folks who have been pushing this
have no plans to build. They're not displacing their tenants. They have no plan to build.
And I don't know of anybody else. We've got one person that's building and that's outside of
Peer Avenue. I mean, there are multifamily homes on either side of Peer Avenue right now.
So the thoughts that building a couple, again, there are no plans to build with somehow
jumpstart downtown, but the downtown is a whole separate issue and that's the business mix that
we've talked about. So whether we like it or not, affordability is the component.
Our community development director said, maybe the recommendation is we look to the
next cycle before we make any changes. You made one comment, Mr. Mayor, that I think if you would
support this, a LVR waiver structure that would apply to these small-scale projects. So we could
waive the land value recapture, but it would expire in three years if construction doesn't
start. So it's performance-based, somebody wants to build, they show that they're making good faith
effort to build, and that incentivizes action, which at the end of the day is what we're looking
for. We want projects that are actually going to, they're going to activate, underutilize spaces
and contribute to our community needs. So, and at the end of the day, you mentioned
infrastructure and everything else. That's the purpose of the land value recapture,
to provide that revenue stream for roads and lighting and all those things that come.
So, I don't know if there's any support for a waiver structure that would apply to these small
projects, but they have to show that there is some actual performance moving forward,
and they just don't bank the value of the up zoning for that property.
Well, thank you, Councilman Jackson, for your discussion. And I appreciate your thoughts.
I have to disagree with some of what you said. I think that by waiving these
of the fees completely on the small lots is an opportunity to see how it works. Let's get
started. And as Allison said here, that we're going to be starting on our next
phase of the housing element within two years. We need to have it ready in two years.
Are you ready to go? Yeah, okay, good. I hope we are.
Last eight years ago, I know it was, or six years ago, actually, we weren't ready on time. And so,
I want to be ready on time this time, and I want to get started on it. So, in two years,
we will be rediscussing all of this, including land value recapture.
Another thing you said was that the purpose of land value recapture is
to have that money to support our infrastructure, roads, and so on. That is not true at all,
actually. What the plan for this money is, and this is another concern I have with land value
recapture in general, is where is this money going to go? It definitely doesn't go into the
general fund. Definitely doesn't go into anything else except perhaps a housing
co-op, where we actually give this money to some other place so that they can develop
low-income housing, or to develop more low-income housing within our own city,
not roads and pavement and that sort of thing. So, I question that. By leaving it in for larger
developments, we have an opportunity to see how that, if it works there, then we leave it in. If
it doesn't, then we remove it on our next time around in two years. But I think it's important
to go one and two, remove it completely, and from three to five units to drop it to $40
a square foot and see if that does stimulate some work. I have to just point out one other thing.
This is a personal anecdote, but it's so important to what we're talking about right now.
I visited an apartment building in a Hormosa neighborhood just west of Pacific Coast Highway.
It was a 25-unit, I'm not sure exactly the number, but it was around 25-unit building.
They're completely remodeling the building, they've ripped out all the windows, all the doors,
everything they're putting into kitchens, the hardware floors, the whole works,
redoing every single unit in the building. But along with that, they have a central driveway
into a central garage parking area, common gate, and parking spaces on both sides of it,
probably 15 or 20 spaces on each side, one for each unit above them.
So, and again, forgive me for the numbers because they didn't go around counting
front doors or parking spaces, but at least 15 parking spaces on both sides,
presumably then maybe around 30 units. They took out 15 of those parking spaces and are
putting in six or seven 80-us replacing that many parking spaces, 15 or so parking places that
was required parking at one time. This is an older building. This building was built in the
70s and they've taken out 15 of their required parking spaces and replaced it with 80-us.
No other parking requirements for those 80-us. So now there are 50 more cars on our street
and now there are six or seven more 80-us, also six or seven or maybe 10 or 12 more cars
on the street. And they're allowed to do this because of the housing element.
This is not a good thing for Hermosa Beach. So why are they doing that?
Well, because it's profitable. That's why that building sat there for 30, 40 years, just the
way it was and it just made money for the landlord over and over again for all those years.
But now there's added value to that building now. Someone decided to go and spend a million
or more dollars rehabbing it and removing those parking places and adding those 80-us
and adding a greater parking burden on our city. But we get to deal with that parking now.
So there is some added value there. There's some developers going to catch.
So maybe on these larger buildings, if that's what's going to happen and it is happening right
now, it's already underway. They're almost finished with it, by the way. If that's what's
going on, then maybe there is some merit to catching that value, that land value that's
there. Maybe we should get some of that money. So my recommendation is on the small
loss, I think it's clearly that isn't doing anything. It isn't doing anything good for us.
And that's why my recommendation is what I made it. I think that's a wise thing to do.
I think if we simulated some development in the commercial area on the smaller lots,
we would be gaining housing. We'd be gaining property tax for the city
if they pay some fees to handle the infrastructure. And if there was some
way to make them supply parking when they can, or if they can't perhaps pay in lieu fees,
and I hope that's the case, is that there's one way or another that we can work that
parking problem out, because there is a big problem. But if we can figure that out,
I don't see any reason why we shouldn't do this. We should open the gates here.
Let's get this land value recapture thing out of the way on these smaller lots.
And let's see if it works. Let's give it a shot and find out what works.
So that's my motion. It's been seconded.
Can you restate that motion? Because you just said one to five units,
but the staff report says one to four units. My original motion was one to four.
Okay. I just was you said that and I was wrong.
I misspoke a moment ago, but my original motion, I said,
remove it on one to two units completely and lower it to $40 square square from three to
four units. Can I speak to the item? Yes, please. Thank you.
In listening to your comments about the development near PCH, I'm familiar with that property. It
sold for $20 million and they're probably putting about, I don't know, another $5 million in it.
And so it went from paying about $7,000 a year in taxes. Now it will pay,
I mean, $7,000 gross in taxes. It was very lowly
assessed and been owned for almost 40 or 50 years. Its current tax rate will be based on
about a $25 million value. And so the city is going to see
probably about an extra $80,000 a year. So we are getting some recapture from that property
by the improvements and the money they're pouring into the property by renovating it
and the extra buildings they added. I don't know under what case that was done or how
that permitting was done. I'd be curious to find out what housing section they used to add the ADUs.
It would be a good lesson for all of us here. I'd ask Steve maybe to find out how they added
those spaces without following the city zoning because I hadn't heard we had any projects doing
that. And to go back to the item at hand, I want to, I'd like to make a substitute
motion to waive fees for master fee schedules for one to six units and make it
no LVR fee at all and keep the rest of the pricing for anything above six units. So that's my motion.
Is there a second?
So your motion was to eliminate it from one to two and go along with staff recommendation for
lowering the fees from three to four. And there is a notion that under five seems to be the cutoff.
So are you making a substitute motion to remove it completely from one through four?
In other words, up to six units are subject to no LVR.
What do you come up with? What's the basis of the six? Because it's a small lot.
Okay. Well, it's my impression from eight.
Well, if I can't get a second from you, I'll lower that to five.
I'll go along with four if you want to do that and I'll second your motion.
I'll amend that to four.
Great, because I second that. I think that we don't need to see how things go.
This was doomed from the start. There's a long time period to even realize whether it's working
or not. If staff was already recommending lowering the fees for three to four,
then it would make sense to just lower them to zero for three to four.
Why would that make sense?
Because if you're lowering the fees from three to four and that doesn't
impact the housing element, then lowering to zero shouldn't impact the housing element.
How do you know it won't impact the housing element?
Well, no one knows for sure. But the logic here is that if we're lowering the fees on three
to four and you said let's just eliminate them for small lots, great.
One through four are small lots and I see no impact on the housing element.
Do you know what the lot size is for three or four units?
It's small enough to require a zero fees. It's zero fees. That's it.
You know what the lot size that a three to four unit.
About 4,000 feet.
Are you aware of what it is?
About 4,000 feet.
I'm asking him.
I second the motion. I support the motion.
It's quite clear that all of the lots one to four should reduce fees to zero.
And, um, you know, I don't need to get in a long discussion or deliberation over that.
It's quite simple. We don't have enough time to see whether this is going to work and then
revisit it again. It was doomed from the start. Let's make it zero from one to four lots and
get rid of this program for the small lots. Those are the small lots.
That's your right to have that opinion. That's fine.
Yeah.
So you're going to second his public motion.
Yes, I second it.
All right. Any other discussion?
I just want to add, Mr. Mayor, that if someone is building a four-unit and one of those is
low income or moderately low or anywhere on the threshold that they would not have to pay
even the reduced fee for the whole project. So they want to put in a four-market rate
and they have the potential for it. They can pay the fee, but if one of them is going
to be one of the thresholds of income restriction, they would not be paying for the whole
project.
We're still going to support the original motion. Again, this is what I think almost verbatim
except for Tier 2 was initial proposal in 2021. If you want to, don't quote me on that one.
Okay. So Madam City Clerk, if there's no other discussion, will you call the question
on the substitute motion?
Motion from Council Member Keegan, seconded by Council Member Francois to waive master
fee schedule for a one-to-four unit and keep pricing for anything above four units.
Council Member Francois?
Yes.
Council Member Keegan?
Aye.
Council Member Jackson?
No.
May I pretend detoy?
No.
Mayor Seaman?
No.
Motion fails.
Thank you. Now, Madam Clerk, would you please call the question for the original motion
to follow Planning Commission recommendations?
Yes. And this motion is by Mayor Seaman, seconded by Mayor Pretend Detoy to approve Planning
Commission recommendation to reduce fees for three to four units to $40 and remove completely
for one to two units.
And before we start, I can ask one more question. Just a little bit more discussion on this.
I think the Council Member online spoke about how many applications have been proposed about
low-income housing, how many doors have we even added in this housing cycle. I know that we
approved the development on Second Street, which is, what, 16?
I'm sorry, in general...
In general market rate?
I don't have that number off the top of my head. We're actually starting to look
at the last year, Allison.
Well, there's at least the one on Second Street.
Second Street.
There's six more.
That one is 12.
12.
First Street, 911 First Street.
That one is 12 units.
But we do have net increase more than that. I just don't know the number through ADUs.
But in terms of entitled projects, that's the largest. And then we have lots of two
units where we're gaining one unit here, one unit there.
So I'm sorry, I don't have a figure for you off the top.
And a lot of this is, yes, we have an affordable housing issue.
We also have a housing issue. We have a massive missing middle issue with housing.
And I do think that is where a lot of these small lots can come in.
Recent college graduates, couples, newlyweds, whatever before they start families.
Naturally smaller units.
Or again, the aging side on the, is you get all their kids out of the house and move
into this comfortable spot, easily accessible units.
Again, I'm a big fan of the mixed use in downtown areas and would love to hopefully
grab the third vote to support this one. Thank you.
All right. Thank you for that.
Madam City Clerk, would you call the question?
Council Member Francois?
Yes.
Council Member Keegan?
Yes.
Council Member Jackson?
No.
Mayor Potemti Toy?
Aye.
Mayor Seyman?
Yes.
Motion passes four to one.
Council Member Jackson, a no.
Thank you, Madam City Clerk.
So now let's move on to...
17F.
17F, yes, thank you.
Economic Development Strategy Progress Report.
This item was continued from January 27th.
And will be presented by Community Development Director Allison Becker.
Okay. Good evening.
Honorable Mayor, Council Members, we're going to shift gears a little bit
and talk economic development.
Okay. Next slide, please.
Okay. So the City's Economic Development Strategy originated in 2020
when Council and the Planning Commission formed the...
an Economic Development Committee.
Over two years, the committee and a 20-person stakeholder working group
met regularly to develop a comprehensive plan
for Homosa Beach's Economic Future.
Council adopted the final strategy in July of 2022.
Next slide.
The strategy can...
The strategy contains 30 strategic actions
organized into five categories
and prioritized as short-term, mid-term, or long-term initiatives.
Next slide.
The implementation involves multiple city departments,
the Chamber of Commerce, and occasionally outside experts.
For several years, staff has provided Council
with twice-yearly progress reports to monitor our work and adjust priorities.
So in the realm of community beautification,
you'll notice the highlights from the last year.
24 utility boxes were wrapped with art,
two beautification awards were presented,
and major funding was secured from a local donor
for a new Gateway Monument sign on the Community Center campus.
Next slide.
For the downtown holiday parking program was renewed,
13 major special events were hosted,
and 13 local businesses secured permits for dining decks.
Next slide, please.
In terms of our work on code amendments,
we updated the rules for temporary special events,
and that was our key deliverable last year in this category.
Next slide.
Business outreach efforts were spearheaded by the police department
and our city manager's office.
Next slide, please.
In terms of process streamlining,
we instituted an expanded concurrent plan review,
finalized the workflow mapping, coding,
and configuring for the electronic permit system,
which will be rolling out next month.
Next slide, please.
Now, so where do we stand?
The sixth progress report shows that our comprehensive progress
over the past three and a half years
suggests that all actions are aligned with our work program.
The report itself includes a table
which represents all action items in numerical order
as they are presented in the strategic plan
and detail what we have completed
from the initiation point to date.
As I mentioned, the good news is that we've successfully
aligned our work program to address
most of these strategic actions,
and on those occasions where we haven't made
a lot of progress,
that has primarily been due to staffing constraints
and budget constraints.
Given that this strategy was formulated
as a, you know, one to five year plan
and it is now reaching the end of its useful life,
staff recommends retiring the reporting cycle.
We will continue to advance the strategic actions
until they are renewed or replaced
through a new strategic planning process.
Could be kicked off with a study session
or a town hall, as was discussed earlier.
So that is the substance of my report.
I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.
Thank you, Allison. I appreciate that.
Are there any questions of staff?
No?
Yes, go ahead.
Thank you.
I thought you wanted to go.
Has the beautification subcommittee met
since it was formed?
Yes, it has.
It has.
So what has come out of that subcommittee then?
We have had the,
myself and the community and the Public Works Director
convened the subcommittee just a couple weeks ago.
The committee had its initial meeting
and I am tasked with preparing the meeting minutes,
which will then be circulated.
Okay.
Who's on that?
Your Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Jackson.
Okay.
Thank you.
Now the beautification awards you mentioned in April,
I believe you're referring to the ones that I gave out
during my State of the City address when I was mayor.
Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah, that wasn't, okay.
So by retiring this,
and I understand these strategic goals
are from several years ago,
does it make sense to,
from an efficiency standpoint,
instead of a study session or survey or all that,
to have a subcommittee of two Council Members here
that can assess our needs for future economic strategies
and work directly with businesses and retail experts
to come up with some best practices for the future
so that we can reinvigorate these economic strategies going forward.
Does it make sense to do something like that?
The Council is free to design the process that it feels.
That's a policy decision for Council.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
No, I was just wondering if that would make sense.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Of course.
Any other questions of staff?
All right.
Seeing none.
Thank you, Allison.
Appreciate it.
Let's then open public comment.
Mr. Mayor, we did not receive any speaker cards.
Hi.
I could do another card if you want.
Laura Pena.
I think I'm the last woman standing on this.
Me and 17 other business and property owners
convened with the city for two years
and Mayor Pratim, Detoy,
and we faithfully did so.
Thinking that this was a collaborative partnership
working together for these strategies.
I don't think we intended them to be 30 though.
I mean, I think we thought 10 maybe.
So here's my point.
I do agree with staff and I do appreciate the staff report.
It has a lot of filler is what I've heard,
meaning some of the things that the city has done,
it almost looks like, well, you know,
if it's here, so why not stick it here?
That's not helpful.
That's not how you would do it if you were running a business.
You don't fill columns to show outcomes.
This should never have been an activity-based report.
It should be an outcome-based report
with milestones, measurements.
That's, you can show progress.
We have two CIPs that came out of this.
The first one was in 2019 and the downtown lighting.
There's no progress on these progress reports.
So was it meaningful, not meaningful?
Not sure.
But I do think one thing that came out of the advisory group
is we developed our strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, and threats.
And we told council, the subcommittee,
what's in store for us at that time.
We need to revisit that because at the pace at which we're going,
there's going to be new weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats that we don't even realize.
So I would hope that we could do something smaller.
I love the idea of a study session,
but it needs to be action-oriented.
Because you're not going to get buy-in from businesses to come
and participate again because they're going to ask me.
And I'm going to say, no way, don't do it.
But if we had a smaller group, experts advising you guys
on what we can do, we can move mountains.
I really, really believe that.
But we need to do it in a way that is not about pushing reports
and talking about things that have nothing to do with these strategies.
I want to match the willingness, the clarity, and accountability
with something that we can be proud of.
And we can do this together.
I'm looking forward to it, but I want it measured.
Thank you.
Thank you, Laura.
Your Honor, staff would request a short recess.
Apparently, we're having some issues with Zoom.
Oh, OK.
So we need to clear those up for a minute or two.
Can I just give a new rule as we have to make sure
that Zoom is available?
That was fast.
Are we OK?
No. So let's take a 10-minute recess, come back here at 5 after 10.
Is Councillor Jackson still on?
Yep.
Okay, just making sure.
All right, 10-minute recess. Thank you.
Thank you.
Testing.
Please take your seats. We're about to begin.
Keegan.
Michael Keegan.
Dean.
Can we get started, please?
Thank you.
All present again.
Mr. Jackson, can you hear us?
Are you good?
Madam City Clerk, would you take roll call again, please?
Council Member Francois.
Here.
Council Member Keegan.
Here.
Council Member Jackson.
Present.
Mayor Pretendi Toy.
Here.
Mayor Simon.
Here.
You have a quorum.
Very good.
So let's move on with item 17G.
Madam City Clerk.
We were on 17F.
Yes.
And next public speaker is Maggie, both LaMonica.
Oh, I'm sorry.
That's right.
We were in the middle of F.
Sorry.
Good evening, Mr. Mayor.
Council.
Reminder, we're on the Economic Strategy Plan.
And I came here tonight because I heard comment earlier about a one off town hall
or perhaps a study session.
And I wanted to put forth my recommendation that you have a vehicle with this plan
to meet twice a year.
And I think with the council being really strategic about what the performance
measures are off of some of those strategy items,
you can have a different conversation twice a year about what you want staff
to think about what you want them to measure and how we're going about
putting out a vision for the city.
So I think there's a lot of really good actions in there.
You had obviously a committed group of business owners,
community members who put a lot of time into it for us to shelve it
and bring it back again in two, three years.
You're burning time.
You're burning resources and good relationships.
So I would encourage you to keep it but tweak what the outcomes are.
Thank you.
I don't have any other speaker cards.
No other speakers in council chambers?
Moving on to Zoom, we have Nancy Schwabhawk.
The performance measures are off of some of those strategy items.
You can have a different conversation twice a year.
Hi, I have stuff going on in the background.
I'm sorry.
Hello?
What was that?
Hi, I think we're talking about the economic development plan
and I think this is one of those.
Hold on.
I'm sorry.
Hold on.
Excuse me.
We have two people on the line at the same time here.
Nancy needs to turn her TV off.
Turn your TV or radio or phone off.
Okay.
Nancy, are you there?
Nancy, if you could mute your background noise.
Also some of those strategy items.
You can have a different conversation twice a year.
Hi, I have stuff going on in the background.
I'm sorry.
Same problem.
She needs to turn the sound off on her laptop if she's coming in on her PC.
Okay, Nancy left the meeting.
She may come back.
I don't see any other hands raised at the moment.
I was going to suggest we go on and then come back to her. Nancy, can you hear us?
She's not online anymore.
Okay. Would you like to have her comment? So why don't we bring it back to council, and then if we do get connected with her, would you let me know?
We can take her comments. Okay. So, Tipper Ely here, for the moment, let's come back to council for comments and deliberations.
Anybody want to start?
Sure. I do think it's time to retire this version of this report. I thoroughly enjoyed the two years that we set on Zoom.
I know the SWAT was one thing that you highlighted, Laura, as a success of this plan.
But I think having this group together as we entered the pandemic was also very important.
And that's something that we faced immediately when we started this group and the walkthroughs of the downtown area and pulling everything on the streets
and trying to get a letter, it'll be a lifeline for our community, businesses, and our community as a whole,
really to figure out how we're going to get through the next, you know, was it supposed to be two weeks, eight weeks?
So this plan started off on a rough footing in that regard.
And I think, you know, eventually we got to a place where, sure, we have our 30 strategies, and I know that we were not able to touch a lot of them.
But I think that we need to narrow down our focus. I think we need to focus, you know, specifically on, and this is where I think the chamber needs to play a key role
in the stakeholder side of it and the advocacy side of it is, you know, I think economic development needs to be in every single one of our departments, right?
How do we, you know, look at economics through our special events? How do we look at through, you know, public safety, our community development or processes
in, you know, getting a sell-up online and making sure that the streamlining of, you know, either special events or building permits,
all of that is part of economic development. But how do we narrow that focus into, you know, simple, attainable goals
so that we can actually not necessarily just check a box, but actually improve as a city moving forward?
So how does that look? Does it kick off with a study session? Do we look at a consultant to come in to moderate to kind of a goal set for this group
and the chamber to get together to, you know, where do we really need to define our goals moving forward?
In favor of retiring this set of strategies, but looking forward to developing and not spending two years and developing a new set of lists.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Thank you. Any other comments?
Councilor Francois.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
I go along with what Mayor Trotem suggests. I think that a good way to do that would be to form a subcommittee at the council level
and we can put together stakeholders, shareholders, business owners, experts, come up with some new goals and strategies.
I think that's the best way to do it because we don't have that structure in place.
If we hold off to a study session, you know, that just I think puts unnecessary verbiage into this or energy into this that doesn't get directed
and I think by forming something at the council level, I think that would be the best way to do that.
So I'd be in favor of retiring this program here but complementing with a new subcommittee to deal with new strategies,
come up with what works, what doesn't work, where we're going, result oriented and moving ahead in that idea.
So that's the type of situation I'd like to see here regarding this item. Thank you.
Thank you. I would like to, I think I'm more in line with Mayor Trotem D. Toys idea of having another economic development committee,
not necessarily a subcommittee from City Council. I would certainly want to have some City Council personnel on that committee
but I think without input from the stakeholders and the Chamber and people like you too right there on that committee,
I think one or two person council group is not what we need. I think a larger group of people on that subcommittee is a much better idea,
much similar to the first one, only as you put it I think it makes sense to me to have it smaller and more focused.
So I would be in favor of forming such a committee like that that would have two council members on it and maybe Planning Commissioner or whatever.
Maybe we should have a meeting and discuss that. Have a, I don't know if you call it a study session or if you want to call it,
maybe have a town hall meeting and kick it around in public and kind of come up with some ideas and then come back to council with it
and we'll form such a committee and get that going. I think retiring this one I think we should do that. It's time.
But let's not just not do it anymore. Let's get started on something else and I think Councilman DeToy's suggestion is probably our best way to go.
Anyone else have anything to say?
I think we should retire this. Maybe we should just direct staff to come back with some alternatives for us to choose of a path to work on economic development.
That's not a bad idea.
Councilman Jackson, do you have any comments?
No, Allison talked about the beautification piece and I also sat on the Economic Development Committee with the Chamber and we fleshed out a lot of these things.
But a lot of the things that we talked about in the beautification committee are items that were on the,
on the list that the Economic Development Committee came up with over those years.
We're looking at sort of focused on what can we do now between now and the World Cup and we sort of have a space in between there before the Olympics
and what can we do to paint, what can we do to plant, what can we do to beautify, what lighting can we improve,
can we just change the bulbs downtown to give us, so those are the things we're looking at sort of now.
And then, you know, as we, and also the signage pieces included in there as well.
So I think then as we move forward, I think, consistent with Mayor Pro Tem's comment,
I mean, I think every director, every department should look at everything through that lens, you know, public works.
What can we be doing to improve through that public works lens, community development?
You know, what can we do to improve things through that lens and all of that feeds in public parts and rec as well.
So, I mean, I think that is a good start in terms of, you know, I'm not a big fan of another committee to talk about things that we already know
that we need to get done that we're sort of working on now.
You know, if there's an opportunity to augment or supplement that at some point,
but I don't think we need another town hall or study session to know some of the low-hanging fruit that we can address now
that we've talked about at the Economic Development Committee as well as the Beautification Committee.
So that's where I am. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Thank you for that comment. You know, I look at this, these words, beautification, lighting, wayfinding.
I don't disagree with those. They're not bad ideas or good ideas.
We should be working on those. I totally agree.
But when I see the words economic development, I don't know, maybe have a little different point of view.
I think in terms of what can we do to get some development going in the downtown area?
What about parking lot A? What about parking lot D?
What about building something worthwhile that doesn't destroy our city?
It's not a 20-story hotel. It's something that will stimulate the rest of the downtown and wake it up.
Get it going. Get it started.
You know, the Bank of America is a project that's sitting there, and it's privately owned,
and they're doing what they want to do with it. We have nothing to say about that.
But we do own parking lot A that's right behind that.
It's been sitting there really basically doing nothing for so many years.
This is a gift we have. This is something that we should be good stewards of these gifts that we have.
And that area there has just been sitting lying fallow. It's kind of an ugly parking lot.
We need parking down there, but we need some stimulation. We need some new retail.
Maybe we need a restaurant. Maybe we need a small hotel.
I don't know what those things are. I'm not proposing that it has to be this or that or the other thing.
But I'm saying as long as we're talking about beautification and lighting and way-finding,
we're letting that thing sit there.
So this Economic Development Committee, I think, should be addressing economic development.
Let's get something going there.
We always say, yeah, that's a great idea, but year by year by year, it just sits there and we get no progress.
Now I think there is some progress going on and, you know, there's talks happening and this doesn't happen overnight.
But I think we need to stimulate that.
So if this committee, if we have a committee, a smaller, more focused committee,
could address those things at the same time. Why not? Why don't we do that?
So I don't know about the study session or the town hall meeting.
That'd be nice to get some feedback from the public. That'd be a great way to do that.
But after that, we'll really get down to the bones of doing it.
I think we really need the stakeholders in the Chamber of Commerce and Council,
some representation from Council to get started on these things and get working on them.
Councilman Jackson's suggestion of, you know, we have the Olympics coming up
and other things that there's things we can do now, and I totally agree,
putting some lights up and making some beautification.
I think we just paved everything pretty much so, you know, public works may not be involved that much,
but I think rather than involving our each department to look at something they got enough to do already,
I think this committee could do that. Put together some short-term goals and some long-term goals.
Well, that sounds familiar. I think we did that already the last time around.
But that doesn't mean that this time is going to be, you know, it's going to be the same thing.
It could be good and it could get started. It could get us started in the right direction.
So that's what I would like to see. Yes.
If I can just do it.
Oh, sorry.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
Like any good government, we should have a meeting on how to schedule the next meeting.
Now let's have a meeting about the meeting.
Yeah, real progress is made.
I mean, we are very fortunate. I mean, we have major universities nearby that have, like,
serious professionals, UCLA was mentioned, USC, LMU.
Like we have a lot of capacity here of knowledge.
And so getting some of these folks in here to look at, you know, whether it's a thesis study.
I know we've had a ton of studies in the past.
Again, another great thing the government does.
But all of it won't change unless we change our parking requirements,
FAR, height restrictions, and all these things that I could just feel my colleagues' shoulders tense up
when I say all those things.
Because right now it is not desirable to build in the city.
And so until we have conversations about what that looks like to keep Hermosa,
Hermosa, but also evolve with the times of, you know,
rubber taxis and all those other crazy future things that are going to be here in like three weeks.
So there's no reason to study any of it unless there's a willingness to change.
And I'll leave it there.
Thank you. So where are we?
I can just add one last thing, Mr. Mayor.
Yes.
You know, part of that, you know, we've talked about this.
You know, we, obviously the city yard is going to drive a lot of decisions.
And then that'll, the storage unit lot that could come into play in terms of potential parking.
And we've also talked about the 24-hour parking lot.
And I know that the city manager is having discussions there.
And I, and I, hopefully the chamber is involved in that as well.
Because those are things now sort of relatively easier things that we could start doing now to sort of drive this economic engine
in terms of, you know, 150 parking spots and 24-hour fitness.
Maybe we end up doing something with the storage unit lot.
So, I mean, there are things happening now.
Of course, nothing happens as quickly as we'd like it to happen.
But there's a lot going on as well as the normal day-to-day stuff that we're trying to keep our head above water.
Your Honor.
Yes.
Just to chime in to add on to Councillor Jackson's point.
I just want Council to feel assured that when I wake up in the morning, when I go to sleep at night, I'm thinking about economic development.
Staff is thinking about economic development.
We're thinking about ways to facilitate, to streamline, to ease the burden, to bring people in, to encourage people in.
I met today with Larry Cosmont.
We went over a number of different potential opportunities that we're following up on.
That's one of the things that I hit the ground running when I first started.
And we're going to continue on that.
And Mayor Pro Tem Dutoy's point, yes, we're looking at all the different.
We will be bringing things along the way. So we are knee deep, shoulders deep, head deep in economic development every day we're going to continue to be.
If anyone has any specific requests, I appreciate the mention of LMU, by the way, my alma mater, but aside from that, I think it's obvious that if you, as we go around the room here, economic development means different things, different people.
And what I think staff is looking to do, again, is to facilitate, make it easier for businesses to get up and running, bring back options to council to help in that way when we need that help, and then look to some of our long-term properties for revitalization so that they can bring the people down here to Hermosa Beach so that they can take advantage of the amenities and the services and drive the dollars here.
Because that's what it takes. It's about getting people here and having them spend their dollars. So we are on that, we will continue to be on that, and we will follow up with ideas and suggestions along the way as to how we can shape this.
But of course, we take direction from council, so if you've got direction from us, we will follow that as well. Thank you.
Mr. Mayor, Nancy's back online.
Oh, great. Okay, so let's go back to that. Nancy, can you hear us?
Hello?
Hey, mom.
There we go.
So all I wanted to say is what Steve just said. I appreciate that we have considered everything that was in the past, and now we are looking forward, and I am so grateful to Steve and to the council and to the economic development of this city that, okay, we can set aside what was there,
and I'm really super grateful that you guys are looking forward. And Steve, thank you so much.
Well, thank you, Nancy. I'm sure Steve appreciates it.
Okay.
One last thing, Mr. Mayor, then I'll show you.
Yes. Yes, please.
You know, one of the things that we've talked about planning commission talked about this, we talked about this at her last meeting is, you know, we have to do.
We also have to take an honest look and maybe look to what our neighboring cities did in pausing ground floor services. You know, if we're not looking at restaurants and retail for ground floor, then I think we are going to miss that mark because that's what really is going to bring folks to our town to spend the money.
So I think any long term plan has to include, I think, an analysis of the right sizing of the business and maybe a pause on any services and we look at retail and restaurants.
So I just throw that out there for consideration.
Appreciate that. Thank you.
Okay. Is there any more comment?
Mr. Mayor, I move that we receive a file and retire the 22 economic development strategy.
All right. Is there any appetite on your part with this motion to include retire the set of strategies, but also develop a new list of strategies with a new economic development?
I think the city manager has some direction and will grace us with staff's ideas.
We do. You don't need to come up with specific solutions tonight. I get the sense here. I get the sense of the community.
We will come up with things and there are things that, of course, we'll want all the stakeholders and everything to be part of.
There are things that we're doing as internal staff that we're going to continue to do to streamline and help along the way.
So I wouldn't suggest that you need to find a specific thing if you don't have one tonight.
No, I agree with that. I'm just saying that we would like to direct staff to come back with some outline of a new economic development committee and possibilities for that work.
Okay. So we have a motion. I'll second that motion.
More discussion?
Yeah, I just wanted to say a little bit more about we're close to what I originally suggested. I did suggest two council members, but I didn't mean that it was going to be just two.
But I think it's important to have this committee level to council members.
Two council members, a beautification committee only just met, but it wasn't dealing with all of economic development.
So we need to have two council members committed to this. Yes, they can meet and come up with suggestions.
I'd like to have all that on the table. I think if we get too distracted with raising height limits and talking about building parking garages,
I think we're losing the sense of let's look at what the city can do to incentivize the business engine, what makes things work for our small businesses.
And if there's something specific we can do, I think that's the best thing, but we'll take a look at all those alternatives when it comes back in front of us.
So thank you. I support the motion.
Thank you. There is no other comments.
Madam City Clerk, would you call the motion, please?
Council Member Francois?
Yes.
Council Member Keegan?
Aye.
Council Member Jackson?
Aye.
Mayor Potemti-Toy?
Aye.
Mayor Seiman?
Aye.
Motion carries.
Thank you, Madam City Clerk. Let's move on to 17G. Would you read the item, please?
17G, Approval of Military Equipment, used by the Hermosa Beach Police Department pursuant to Assembly Bill 418.
And this will be presented by Police Chief Landon Phillips.
Thank you.
Welcome, Police Chief Phillips.
Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. We have a presentation coming up.
So pursuant to Assembly Bill 481, which created a California law in 2022, City Council's required to review and renew the military use policy and resolution.
Next slide, please.
As I said, effective January 1, 2022, this law required for all public safety agencies to report on the inventory and use of what's defined as military equipment.
The state has a very broad definition of military equipment.
As an example, any drone in any configuration is considered military equipment.
So we are required to adopt a policy, which we do have that is posted on our city website and it's available for anyone to view.
In April of 2022, Council adopted Ordinance 22-1446, adopting the military use of that equipment.
And since then, this ordinance and policy has been renewed each year.
Next slide.
Per the law, we're required to report any complaints, any concerns or any internal investigations regarding the use of this military equipment.
To date, we have had none.
As I said, the policy is still in effect. It has not changed since we started it.
We're also required to update the annual inventory, which includes the purchase sale.
Whenever we get rid of equipment, all of that is included in the staff report attached to this report.
This year, we did acquire several 40-millimeter launchers. These are one-shot launchers.
These are only for civil unrest type activities, require officers to have training on them.
They have not been deployed except in training, and those were purchased with asset forfeiture funds.
Next slide.
And with that, we are recommending, excuse me, Council to renew the ordinance to receive and file the annual report.
And again, the only uses of any of this equipment, well, let me rephrase.
As far as the rifles and stuff like that, it's only been used in training.
We use drones every week.
Drone is technically military use equipment. We use those all the time.
Some other things such as our watch commander vehicle, those are used very frequently.
So that's the report on the use of state-defined military equipment.
Great. Thank you, Chief.
Any questions?
Mr. D. Toy.
Thank you. I actually got a few texts about this when I put up the agenda preview.
What spurred that, yes, it's good to have conversations of why this is on our agenda,
but B, could this go on the consent calendar in the future?
That's a very good question. We asked the same.
The law requires that there be an open public discussion.
By having it as a municipal matter, it allows public comment and allows that public discussion to happen.
This serves that purpose.
Perfect. Thank you.
Any other questions?
Nope.
Council Member Jackson?
Nope.
All right. Thank you, Chief.
Great report.
Let's move on to public comment then, please.
Madam City Clerk.
We did not receive any speaker cards.
Moving over to Zoom, we have Nancy.
Hi.
I just participated in the March on Sunday for standing for democracy,
and I heard about a 40 millimeter or something, and I'm not quite sure what it was.
It went pretty quickly.
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with our police department engaging in military activities against our civilians.
So I'd like to hear a little bit more about whatever the latest acquisition was,
and thanks. That's just all I'm asking.
Thank you.
Thank you, Nancy.
Any other calls?
Mr. Mayor, I don't see any other virtual hands raised.
Okay.
I'll close public comment then.
Ordinarily, public comment is not a two-way conversation.
Chief, do you feel like you want to respond to Nancy's question about the 40 millimeter launcher
and what that is and what we use it for and so on?
Certainly.
A 40 millimeter launcher is a single shot munition.
It does use something similar to a firearm, but it's considered a less lethal firearm.
It fires things such as foam bullets, other things of tear gas,
or other things that are used in civil unrest.
We have eight of them.
Again, we've only used them in training.
These are only deployed in civil unrest situations.
So that's it.
And the actual specifics of what was purchased is included in the staff report.
So the public comment individual can look at the attachments and it's listed right there in the annual inventory.
All right.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
And Nancy, I hope that answers your question.
And there is no other comments.
One question, Mr. Mayor.
Yes.
Thanks, Chief.
So no one will utilize that unless they are properly trained.
Yes, and it requires our policy is that all officers have to have regular ongoing training.
And with our firearms instructors, they have all worked with these particular firearms.
The instructors themselves have to go to a specialized training to be an instructor on this specific device,
because it's not the same as the regular firearms that police officers train on.
So the instructors have specialized training and they are going through with every one of our staff
and they will do regular ongoing training every year.
Got it.
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you, Chief.
I appreciate it.
All right.
So we are still technically in public comment.
So Madam City Clerk, is there anyone else on Zoom?
No, I don't see any other virtual hands raised.
And I'll close public comment.
Come back to council for comments, deliberations or a motion.
If anyone doesn't, if there are no comments, I'll make a motion to adopt the staff
recommendation to renew and review and renew ordinance number 22-1446
and ordinance of the city of Hermosa Beach adopting military use equipment in accordance
with assembly bill 481 and receive and file the annual military equipment report.
Is there a second?
Second.
Moved and seconded.
Any further comments?
Deliberations?
Seeing none.
Madam City Clerk, would you call the question please?
Council Member Francois?
Yes.
Council Member Keegan?
Aye.
Council Member Jackson?
Aye.
Mayor Potenditoy?
Aye.
Mayor Seiman?
Aye.
Motion carries.
Thank you.
And then let's move on to item 18, future agenda items.
I have two items that I'd like to bring up for a future agenda.
I am seeking support to direct staff to prepare a bid package for the St. Patrick's Day
Parade and the Memorial Day and Labor Day Fiestas for 2027 so that we can request
proposals at the earliest convenient date this year.
This avoids waiting until the last minute to consider any changes to the
contract that we have.
I don't have any problem with the contract.
I don't have any problem with the chamber.
We're done with that.
That's already set in place.
But I think that it's important that we start sometimes this year in the
next few months so that we have an opportunity to put this package together,
look at it, set it out there and see what there is out there.
Maybe nobody will bid on it.
Hopefully the chamber will bid on it also.
It'll be a competitive thing and we'll see what comes of it.
But for us to wait till January to do that I think is absurd.
So I would hope that I could get at least two other people so this could be an
action item when it does come back around.
And I hope this is at the next earliest convenient date this year.
Is there any support for that?
I'll second that.
All right. Is there a third? Anywhere? All right. Well, there's two. So that's a...
You're honored to clarify. Are you including, when you say events, because the events also cover in the contract sidewalk sales?
No, no, no, no, no. This is just for the three events. St. Patrick's Day, Memorial Day, and Labor Day.
For the fiestas and the parade.
Yeah, just for the fiestas and the parade.
Not Hermos for all.
This is a package deal. Everything else stays as it is with the chamber.
And once again, if this comes to fruition and we do this, I would hope that the chamber would bid on it.
And I just honestly hope that they are successful at it.
So it's just that for the last two years, we've waited until January to come back.
It'll come back as information.
We can't do anything. It's too late. I don't want that to happen again.
I'd like to start early this year, sometime this year, and get that out there and get going on it.
So we have two people. We'll have a report and find them, yes.
Yes, thank you. All right.
My second item that I would like to have as a future agenda item.
I would like support to direct staff to prepare a letter of support to modify SB 84 to include our small businesses in regard to ADA lawsuits without a cure period before litigation.
There are multiple lawsuits that are being brought against our small businesses here in Amosa, not just our, they're all over the place.
And so to protect our own businesses, I would like to see this letter of support, which we can bring to the state legislature and give to our representatives to show that Amosa Beach is in favor of modifying SB 84 to include small businesses.
SB 84, just quickly so we know we're talking about, SB 84 is up for approval in this election cycle, and it gives construction-related projects an opportunity to cure ADA imbalances.
So if you're building a building in the middle of it, we discover that the ramp is not correct or the bathroom circle isn't right or there's some ADA requirement that you're not meeting.
You have a period of time, 60 days or 90 days to cure the problem before you get into litigation.
The way things are now today, there are many of our businesses here in Amosa Beach who are being sued without any cure period.
In other words, they get sued, whether you fix it the next day or not, maybe it's minor.
And regardless of when you fix it or not, or if you fix it or not, you have to appear in court and you're likely to pay legal fees, at least some thousands of dollars, just to appear and say, I've already fixed it, it's all done.
And so most people settle out of court and this is a problem.
So if we could just modify SB 84 to include our businesses along with construction-related situations, this would be a really great opportunity for us to support our local businesses and make a stand to try and put an end to these frivolous lawsuits.
I think our small businesses deserve that help and protection and I'd like to provide it for them.
And I'd like the council to do that together.
So I'm looking for support for that.
I'll second that.
Just to clarify, I'd like to clarify, SB 84, we should have a letter of support for SB 84.
It already has built in it 100-day right to cure notice.
So essentially, I think what you're saying is we want to support SB 84.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all.
You want to add something else to it.
Our small businesses are not part of that because SB 84 is written for construction-related ADA deficiencies, not existing small businesses.
So they're subject to these litigations, lawsuits, that there is no cure period for it.
You're being sued.
You have to go to court and answer for it whether you fix it or not.
I guess we'll clear it up when it comes back.
I support it.
I support SB 84.
It's my opinion that it includes that.
Staff has three votes.
Yeah.
All right.
And we really don't make, we take positions on proposed legislation, but it's rare we take positions on proposed legislation.
And then add things to it, right?
We pretty much oppose or...
As counsel directs.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, fine.
I support the concept.
That was my proposal.
All right.
So are you in favor of it?
Yeah, in favor of the concept.
Anyone else?
We have three.
I guess that's all we need for an action.
And just for, just for edification, that's the position that contract cities and ICA is also supporting because of the rash of these lawsuits.
There you go.
Absolutely.
So, yeah.
So in addition to their support, I would like this council to lend its support to the same thing.
But they're supporting that SB 84 current legislation.
No, they're supporting the modification of SB 84.
You were at the same meeting.
We have your direction.
Thank you.
Okay.
Any other future agenda items?
I have nothing to add.
I just want to say thank you to staff for cleaning up the list.
I want to thank, make a point to thank Anne and Rihanna.
Nice job tonight.
Yes.
Thank you.
I'll second that.
Appreciate that recognition.
Yes.
Very good job.
Thank you both for your work.
I'd like to thank Mayor Seaman.
This is his last full meeting as mayor and look forward to the new transition proposed to the mayor pro 10 Detroit moving up to mayor and council member.
Keegan moving into mayor pro 10.
So I look forward to that.
That'll be happening at our next meeting then.
Thank you for that.
Appreciate it.
Yeah.
Appreciate everything you've done.
I'll wait till the next meeting to talk about being mayor and all that.
So it is quarter to 11.
If there's no other new agenda items, I adjourn this meeting.
Manager report.
I know you've been waiting for this.
I'm so sorry.
Please Steve.
And for those at home who've been waiting.
Just two short things.
Reminders residential parking permits.
First the 2026 27.
Residential parking permits are now on sale.
Permits may be purchased online.
This is the fastest option, but you can also purchase them by mail via the drop box outside city hall or in person on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 7am to 3pm.
The current 2025 26 permits remain valid through March 19th 2026 and more info is available on the city's website.
Next presents day holiday.
The city hall and community center offices will be closed on Monday, February 16th.
Observance of presence day.
Street sweeping and parking enforcement along PCH will be suspended that Monday as will all construction work while other local parking regulations remain in effect.
Trash will be collected as scheduled.
As always, police and public works remain available throughout for non-emergency assistance.
Please call the dedicated police department line at 310-524-2750.
Thank you, your honor.
Thank you.
And by the way, nine months as mayor, have I messed up the city manager's report every single time?
I must have gotten it right at least once.
All right.
Well, anyway, I apologize for the nine out of 10 times that I forgot about it.
Appreciate that very much.
All right.
So I will adjourn this meeting at 1048.
Thank you.