Laguna Beach mayor: balanced 2025–26 budget but infrastructure funding, fee policy and investment changes remain priorities

The City of Laguna Beach adopted a balanced 2025–26 budget, Mayor Alex Unagi said, and the budget includes new positions such as park rangers. “Yes. So we have a balanced budget, which is good. We're investing, you know, continuing to make the investments in public safety, you know, adding we added Park Rangers in this budget,” Unagi said.

Unagi said the city faces significant infrastructure needs and that the community development department has historically been subsidized by the general fund because fees did not fully cover processing costs. He said the council previously decided to subsidize application processing and that the long-term goal is for community development to become a 100% cost-recovery department after process improvements.

Unagi described a policy change in which the council stopped delegating investment authority solely to the elected city treasurer and instead delegated authority to the city manager and an outside investment firm, METER. He said the change gives the city access to a team-based investment approach while retaining the elected treasurer’s statutorily required functions under the Government Code.

Citing a cash-flow analysis prepared by the city manager and METER, Unagi said the council agreed to invest $25,000,000 of funds the city did not expect to need for near-term cash flow in vehicles intended to earn higher returns. He credited City Manager Dave Kiff’s leadership for improvements in the city’s financial operations and auditing results.

Unagi did not provide detailed line-item budget figures, fee levels or the specific investment vehicles METER will use; he said the city will maintain conservative investment practices consistent with legal requirements.