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Laguna Beach mayor urges shifting budget priorities to fund wildfire prevention
Summary
Mayor Alex Renaghi told a local radio program the city finished an updated wildfire mitigation plan and he proposes dedicating roughly 10% of the general fund (about $10 million) annually to wildfire prevention; implementation and funding were framed as the next steps.
Mayor Alex Renaghi said on the Fair Game Laguna Beach radio program that the city completed an updated wildfire mitigation plan and is moving to implementation, while urging a major budget shift to pay for prevention.
Renaghi, speaking with host Tom Johnson, said the plan — updated by staffers Bob Whalen and Sue Kim within the 90-day window — covers utility undergrounding, fuel modification and early detection technology and involved both the Laguna Beach County Water District and the South Coast Water District. "We discussed our updated wildfire mitigation plan," Renaghi said. "The question is not if, but when the next wildfire happens."
The mayor described several barriers to faster fuel-modification work, including California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requirements and coastal-zone permitting that can take years. He said the administration is examining whether a recent governor's executive order could speed approvals for some actions. "How do we take advantage of the executive order to get those zones approved so that we can ... create the necessary fuel modification that we need to protect the community?" he said.
Renaghi urged a substantial reallocation of city resources to prevention. "We should really be putting 10% of our general fund, which is could would be around $10,000,000 a year in a wildfire prevention," he said on the program. He identified implementation and budgeting as the next steps and said the allocation would be a priority-setting question for the council.
On financing and cost savings, Renaghi described exploring contract renegotiations and a consulting arrangement with a firm he identified as Procure America to capture recurring savings on utility and other vendor bills. He said the city captured savings on electricity bills in the tens of thousands of dollars — "less than a hundred thousand, but ... more than, I think, 50," he said — and proposed reviewing the largest vendor contracts for further savings.
Renaghi said the plan also discusses use of AI-enabled cameras to detect fires earlier and that local water districts participated to confirm water-supply roles in wildfire response. He cautioned that implementation will require funding choices and staff work: "It was a collaborative process ... The next step is sort of implementation. And that's gonna be a key budget question because it really comes down to priorities."
Practical next steps: Renaghi told listeners the city's published budget is on the city website and the first public budget study session is scheduled for next Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. He invited public review and input ahead of subsequent hearings.
The discussion described council direction given to staff to update the city's 2019 wildfire mitigation plan; Renaghi credited the staff work for meeting the 90-day update target but said further implementation action remains to be budgeted and scheduled.
For now, the conversation was a policy and budget preview during a radio interview rather than the text of a formal council motion or vote.
