Laguna’s wunderkind

Nearly a year ago, Alex Rounaghi arrived in the Laguna Beach City Council chambers as its youngest member in history, believing he could revitalize a moribund, bickering group of elected leaders more than twice his age.

Now that his first-year honeymoon is ending, is he still the happy-go-lucky kid who wants to change the world?

“Yes, I am. I don’t regret it,” he said, smiling. “It’s a lot of work, but we’re here to solve problems.”

Rounaghi, 25, smiles in a way that’s believable. He doesn’t have the polished sheen of a politician, at least not yet, so when he says things like, “we’re here to solve problems,” somehow you don’t question his sincerity.

Fundamentally, he’s wonky but relevant, easily boiling down issues into bite-sized data points that hold their value. He takes those bits and reconstructs them, step by step, into something that makes more sense to him.

In a way, it’s the essence of his diplomacy – finding a path forward that hopefully alienates the least number of people. He likes consensus but doesn’t let it block his path.

Sometimes his youthful eagerness shows but it’s forgivable because he brings so much to the table, according to his colleagues and supporters, who believe he is the start of something new in Laguna.

“One of the many reasons I supported Alex for City Council was that he connects well with people – due to his optimistic and generally good nature – and his ability to grasp the issues with a healthy dose of pragmatism,” said fellow Councilmember Sue Kempf.

Kempf said Rounaghi is unafraid to volunteer for some of the city’s most difficult projects, such as the undergrounding of Laguna Canyon Road.

“I have also witnessed him pressing for nuanced solutions, often begun through a thoughtful series of questions,” she said. “Like most of us serving on the Council, he is about the work versus sideshows. Make no mistake about it, the guy works. And he is a breath of fresh air.”

For Rounaghi, a Dartmouth grad, the descriptions of his ascent into public service – and yes, expected rise in politics – often starts with his age. Perhaps it wears thin on him because he’s had to answer it his whole life.

While still in high school, he was already on the Laguna Beach Parking, Traffic, and Circulation Committee. And the Orange County Juvenile Justice Commission. And working as a page for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Then there was senior class president, National AP Scholar, Model UN Secretary-General, and “Junior Citizen of the Year” in the city’s Patriots Day Parade, where he sat in a baby blue convertible, waving and smiling until his jaws hurt.

He does smile a lot.

But he backs it up with serious productivity. Chris Quilter is an affordable housing and senior advocate in Laguna who worked on Rounaghi’s campaign. He believes Rounaghi is just getting started.

“He was born in a town where he can barely afford to live, so it’s no surprise that he is our most vocal advocate for affordable housing,” Quilter said. “Despite the state mandates that require us to act, building anything in Laguna is expensive and divisive. So any housing project Alex supports will be fiercely opposed by our many NIMBYs. It will be interesting to see how he navigates this challenge.”

Rounaghi admits he feels like he has a long way to go. Nothing comes easy, and the machine of government bureaucracy sometimes weighs him down. He is, after all, a Millennial with a blushing Instagram account.

“There should never be a six-hour meeting,” he said. “Six-hour meetings are not a sustainable way of having 22,000 residents being able to get involved. Most people are working, they’re raising their kids, they’re paying their high property taxes to live in Laguna Beach. They don’t have time to be involved in a six-hour meeting. I barely have enough time to do that.”

If he could wave a magic wand, he would significantly streamline the city’s byzantine regulations, starting with the Design Review Board processes.

“If you look at our design review process, that’s what I get the most emails and calls about,” he said. “It’s like hell and back to go through a remodel on your house.”

So he’s working on changing it, along with a laundry list of other issues.

• Village Entrance: “It’s been debated for 30-plus years when really it’s kind of a simple question: Is the surface parking lot there the highest and best use for that land? And I think most reasonable people would say, no, it’s not.”
• Second-story downtown housing: “It’s going to bring our downtown alive, and it’s going to create opportunity for our young people, artists, and seniors to be part of our community.”
• Restaurant closures: “I think it’s a crisis. When you talk to residents, people are pissed off. They want to be able to go to restaurants. They want cool things. But if you want to open up a restaurant in the city of Laguna Beach, it’s a hard process.”
• Rethink rules: “We’ve been sort of complacent, saying oh, we have all these rules and we’re just going to keep blindly following them. Some of the rules make sense but then others don’t. I think more broadly, we need to be more intentional and ask, what do we want for this town?”
• Business vitality: “We can get out of the way but still regulate the things we want to regulate. Every month that a business is waiting to open, that’s another month that they have to pay rent and absorb costs. The big chains can handle that; the little guy can’t. They’re going to go to Costa Mesa and open up there instead – or Dana Point.”
• Take over PCH and Laguna Canyon Road: “It’s dangerous. A lot of these cars don’t even stop here. They use it as a freeway. If we could slow it down, it would make it a lot better for residents. I think we just need to take it over from Caltrans. In the canyon, the question is not if a fire is going to start from an above-ground utility line but when. The cost of doing nothing is way higher than the cost of taking action.”

Rounaghi can talk for days about the issues facing his hometown, but it’s never in a divisive, partisan way that is unfortunately trendy on the national stage. He just wants to get things done and make Laguna better.

“What I’ve learned so far is that in Laguna we all want the same thing. We want Laguna to be a really cool and unique place. That’s why all of us live here, right? There’s so much more that we agree on than what divides us.”

You can’t help but wonder how long Rounaghi will be content to fight the fight in Laguna. Will he move on once he gets bored or feels like he’s done enough? Perhaps, but for now he’s all in.

“I’m optimistic that for the next few years – or eight years if I’m reelected – I feel like we’re going to be able to solve some of these big problems that we’ve been talking about for years. I think now is the time to take action. That’s what makes me the most excited about being on the City Council.”