Laguna Beach outlines ‘surge 2025’ plan combining stewardship messaging and stepped-up enforcement

Laguna Beach officials on Monday outlined a combined stewardship-and-enforcement plan meant to blunt summer 2025 crowding and related quality-of-life problems, while asking residents to help shape long-term messaging.

City Manager Dave Kiff framed the effort as a dual approach: the city will emphasize enforcement and operational changes, and Visit Laguna Beach will lead a stewardship campaign intended to shift how day visitors treat the community. “To be prepared for the impacts of summer 20 25 and to chart a different path for how visitors, especially our day visitors, interact with and treat Laguna Beach,” Kiff told the town-hall audience.

The plan responds to last summer’s spikes in visitors and the city’s own data on calls for service and quality-of-life complaints. “The police department’s primary mission is to protect life and property,” Chief Jeff Calvert said during the presentation, adding that the department handled “over 51,000 calls for service” last year and that priority-1 calls averaged a 3 minute 30 second response time.

Key elements presented

- Enforcement and field staffing: Calvert and staff described a stepped-up enforcement posture. The city is budgeting for eight park rangers (the chief said the city worked with an over-hire authorization so nine rangers will be in the field this summer), and rangers will handle leash and anti-camping rules, drinking in public and other quality-of-life issues. Park rangers are equipped similarly to officers except for a firearm and will be visible across beaches and downtown; some are trained to work…