Easy call on initiative opposition

The Laguna Beach City Council recently voted to oppose three initiatives on the November ballot.

Of course they did. The initiatives should never have made it on the ballot in the first place. They are:

1. An Ordinance Creating an Overlay Zoning District and Requiring Voter Approval of Major Development Projects.
2. An Ordinance Creating a Hotel Development Overlay Zoning District and Requiring Voter Approval of Hotel Development Projects.
3. An Ordinance Amending the Laguna Beach Municipal Code to Create a Minimum Wage and Workplace Standards and Protections for Hotel Employees.

There is a fourth one, but the council did not announce a position:

4. An Ordinance Rescinding the City of Laguna Beach Ban on Cannabis Businesses and Authorizing the Establishment and Regulation of One Cannabis Storefront Retail Business and One Cannabis Delivery-Only Business in a Portion of the Laguna Canyon Area.  

Essentially, the three initiatives take power away from our elected officials and force the public to decide everything, which is idiotic. Already, very few things get done in Laguna. Can you imagine if the voters had to decide every new development?

Standstill. And it would be costly.

“The voter approval requirement for such a broad range of projects adds increased risk and uncertainty to projects, for new construction and renovations, thereby discouraging investment in properties in the city,” the resolution said. It estimated that millions of dollars would be lost.

Despite the initiative’s title, it’s not just “major” projects that would require voter approval, but smaller cumulative projects as well.

Senior housing, assisted living housing, and other mixed-use housing would also require voter approval, adding unnecessary time and expense for the most needed projects.

None of this makes any sense. There is already existing oversight that prevents rampant “major” development.

This initiative is a political play by no-growth fanatics desperate to halt any and all development in Laguna. The City Council is absolutely right to oppose them.

The second initiative is similar in spirit to the first but applies to any hotel project. Again, completely unnecessary. There are plenty of safeguards in place to monitor hotel development.

The third one is just bizarre. It says, basically, that city government should become the HR police for private hotels. The initiative says, among other things, that hotel workers should be given “panic buttons” in case of an emergency. This is completely unnecessary. The working conditions at Laguna hotels are safe and always have been.

In the words of the city resolution: “The proposed ballot initiative is seeking to address a problem which does not exist in the city.”

Reality is hard enough to deal with, let alone the fiction that is made up by political whack jobs.

Let’s focus on the real issues at hand in Laguna Beach and stop the nonsense.