Laguna Beach outlines 2025 ‘surge’ plan: more rangers, parking enforcement, transit and stewardship messaging as residents raise trash and parking concerns

Laguna Beach officials on Wednesday laid out a coordinated “surge” effort for summer 2025 that pairs increased field enforcement and parking citation capacity with a new stewardship messaging campaign aimed at changing day-visitor behavior.

City Manager Dave Kiff and public-safety leaders described steps the city will take — more park rangers, additional motor officers and traffic aides authorized to write citations, expanded transit service and targeted trash-collection changes — while Visit Laguna Beach presented a branding shift to encourage visitors to “connect authentically and respectfully” with Laguna’s environment, culture and heritage.

The plan matters because city revenues and quality of life are both affected by visitor impacts. “We’re calling it a surge for 2025,” City Manager Dave Kiff said. He noted the city relies on visitor-driven revenue streams — hotel bed taxes, parking revenue and sales taxes — to operate services residents use.

The policing and enforcement component includes measures to redirect existing staff and add seasonal capacity. Laguna Beach Police Chief Jeff Calvert said the department handled more than 51,000 calls for service last year — a 13% increase over 2023 — and described response-time benchmarks and citation activity. “We wrote close to 1,700 speeding citations last year, 340 loud-exhaust citations,” Calvert said, and highlighted about 22,000 parking citations recorded last year. He said officers made more than 1,000 felony and misdemeanor arrests, including 284 DUI arrests; 238 of those DUI arrests were visitors and 46 were residents, and the department has begun sending DUI-notification letters to businesses identified during arrest reports.

Calvert and other staff said enforcement alone is not enough, and the city will deploy other personnel and tools. The city plans nine park rangers this summer (the city budgeted for eight but authorized an…