CITY OF LAGUNA BEACH PROPOSED UNDERGROUNDING PLAN

A hodgepodge of wiring hangs over narrow residential roads like 8th street in Laguna Beach. Officials want to bury power lines to prevent fires like the recent ones in Northern California.(Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Laguna Beach City Council is developing a plan to underground all utilities in the City.  The plan is comprised of two parts.  The first part is to underground the key evacuation routes in the City [staff report link] to ensure unobstructed evacuation routes in the event of fire, earthquake or other natural disaster.  The second part is to underground the remaining neighborhoods that are not yet underground.

In October 2017, the City retained a polling firm to conduct a community survey to determine the level of support among voters for undergrounding and for various ballot measures to fund undergrounding.   The survey was conducted in the first two weeks of January 2018 and over 900 voters responded to the survey.

At the February 6, 2018 City Council meeting the results of the community survey were presented [survey results link].   The survey showed strong support for potential ballot measures to underground the key evacuation routes but not sufficient support at this time to pursue ballot measures for neighborhood undergrounding

Based on the results of the survey, the City Council voted unanimously to have staff proceed to develop a funding plan and ballot measures for the November 2018 ballot to underground the key evacuation routes.

The survey showed strong support for a 1% increase in the sales tax  which could raise about $80 million to underground the evacuation routes.   More than half of the voters surveyed  (56%) said they would support a general obligation bond to fund evacuation routes.  A two-thirds vote is needed to pass a general obligation bond so an education effort will be necessary to reach two-thirds support.

The Council Undergrounding Subcommittee members Bob Whalen and Rob Zur Schmiede will work with staff and return to Council in May with recommendations on what measures to place on the November 2018 ballot to fund undergrounding of the evacuation routes.

The key conclusions from the survey presented at the February 6, 2018 are [page2 staff report link]

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