McKay, Ann Marie CC
Subject: Two late comments regarding the Budget - Item #23 From: John Thomas
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2026 12:14 PM
To: City Council < [email protected]>; Kiff, Dave CM <[email protected]> Cc: Orgill, Mark <[email protected]>; Jones, Hallie <[email protected]>; Whalen, Bob <[email protected]>; Rounaghi, Alex <[email protected]>; Kempf, Sue <[email protected]>; McKay, Ann Marie CC <[email protected]> Subject: Two late comments regarding the Budget - Item #23 Sorry - I should have mentioned these earlier. But I have two comments regarding the budget under the heading of "reducing spending."
1. Regarding item one on the attachment "FY 2026-2027 Budget - Discussion of Unresolved Items. - Affordable Housing:
Subject: "Why not consider a more modest city contribution befitting the smaller project as the scope and cost has been substantially reduced while the city's anticipated contribution has been unchanged?"
Earlier in the process, the City Council earmarked $2,500,000 as a potential contribution to the Neighborhood Congregational Church Project.
This was at the time that the project was envisioned to be much larger and of a far more substantial scope - with presumably a much higher total cost.
As is, the scope of the project, and presumably the cost, are much reduced when compared to the earlier size.
At the time the city was talking $2,500,000 - that was a small share of the total cost.
However as the scope and cost has come down the city's anticipated contribution has not changed.
At this time the city's $2,500,000 would represent a much larger share of the project's total cost than the share originally anticipated. All that the larger share will do is either reduce the funding the project is required to raise from other sources or may allow for some increases in items that may add to the cost. What may have initially been seen as a contribution to "fill a gap" in funding has now become a very large share of the total funding.
Why not consider a more modest city contribution befitting the smaller project? An amount that would represent a share in percent of total cost terms similar to the initial concept.
2. City subsidy of undergrounding:
I don't recall when this changed, but for years the city has contributed 10% to the cost of undergrounding utilities. More recently this has changed to 20%. The city wants to encourage undergrounding of the rest of Laguna Beach, and that additional 10% is a large number. The question is - does contributing the additional 10% result in any more of the city being undergrounded? Is there any data showing that there is a measurable impact on that number of properties forming districts because of the added 10%? Perhaps that should be reconsidered. 1