City has apparently closed its $3.2 million budget gap for next year without cutting jobs, but the path the city took to get there is still challenged by looming fire and lifeguard contract negotiations
Greenbelt is back on the table as a possible site for Hermosa Beach's first off-leash dog park, six weeks after the community group driving the project had walked away from it, following a Council vote Tuesday that revived the option and put a potential November ballot measure into play.
City has apparently closed its $3.2 million budget gap for next year without cutting jobs, but the path the city took to get there is still challenged by looming fire and lifeguard contract negotiations
Greenbelt is back on the table as a possible site for Hermosa Beach's first off-leash dog park, six weeks after the community group driving the project had walked away from it, following a Council vote Tuesday that revived the option and put a potential November ballot measure into play.
After nine years of trying to enforce a short-term rental ban that courts have now declared illegal, Hermosa Beach is poised to start collecting hotel-tax revenue on roughly 200 coastal-zone rentals it has spent the better part of a decade trying to shut down.
Hermosa Beach has roughly 3,000 dogs and not a single place to legally let any of them off-leash. The City Council on Tuesday will consider whether to change that, with Valley Park East emerging as the preferred location for the city's first off-leash dog park.
The City is spending $8M to $12M a year fixing things. Available project funding for next year: $4.7M. A pandemic-era cushion that papered over the gap is gone and the unfunded backlog has now grown to somewhere between $148 million and $280 million, with the Pier replacement now added to the list.
A $3.2 million structural deficit has been sitting under Hermosa Beach's budget for five years, masked by pandemic relief, vacancy savings, and unspent carryforward. With all three now exhausted, the council inherits a problem its predecessors chose to defer.
Council meeting opened by recognizing two pillars of the community — a gold-medal winning hockey coach and a century-old civic club — before working through a heavy agenda that included a contested fee study, Little League field improvements and police vehicle contracting.
The first comprehensive update to Hermosa Beach's master fee schedule since 2016 would shift increased costs from taxpayers to applicants, with large hikes landing on developers, businesses and dispute filers.
Hermosa Beach has quietly commissioned a voter survey on city funding and services — a move that typically signals a ballot tax measure is in the works.
