City Manager Urges New Hiring Site for Laguna Dayworkers

The Laguna Beach city manager has proposed that the City Council allocate an out-of-the-way city-leased parking lot for use as a hiring hall for dayworkers who now draw complaints because they congregate in a residential area.

The council will consider the proposal, and a companion proposal to allocate funds to place portable toilet facilities on the new site, at a meeting Tuesday.

As many as 50 to 60 documented and undocumented dayworkers have been congregating the past several months outside a convenience store at the corner of North Coast Highway and Viejo Street.

The parking lot where City Manager Ken Frank wants them moved is two miles away in a non-residential area on the north side of Laguna Canyon Road, midway between the Big Bend curve and the Laguna Festival of Arts building.

“It’s probably not the best location, but it gets them out of the residential neighborhood,” Frank said.

Frank said in a memorandum to the council that he was forced to make this proposal because state officials rejected a request to convert a parking lot at nearby Crystal Cove State Park into a hiring hall for the dayworkers.

The city has been trying to relocate the workers ever since businesses and residents in the Crescent Bay neighborhood--where the workers have been congregating--began inundating City Hall with complaints earlier this year.

Businesses have complained at City Council meetings that the workers intimidate store owners, while residents have complained that they urinate and defecate in public.

The council decided June 21 to attempt to relocate the dayworkers away from residences. The council’s first choice was the Los Trancos parking lot of Crystal Cove State Park, located on the inland side of Coast Highway between Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar.

That parking lot can hold up to 450 vehicles and is not used in the early morning hours when the workers are usually out looking for jobs, city officials reasoned.

But Henry R. Agonia, director of the California Department of Parks and Recreation, shot down that proposal, writing in a July 22 letter: “To the extent the people seeking work cause anxiety among the residents of the city of Laguna Beach, we recognize the potential for an equal feeling of anxiety among the visitors to Crystal Cove State Park. No one should feel uneasy while enjoying a California state park.”

Agonia referred the city to the State Department of Employment Development, which at the request of Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) is exploring the possibility of opening a satellite office in south Orange County for use by day laborers.

Noting, however, that such a possibility is “probably remote,” Frank said in his memorandum that the city needed to find its own relocation site.

After study by his staff, Frank said, he settled on the unpaved parking lot in Laguna Canyon, which the city leases to provide parking for as many as 250 vehicles during the summer arts festival season. Frank said the lot would provide ample parking for dayworkers to get their cars off the street, and that it is located near a bus stop for those using public transportation.

And, Frank said, the city can install portable toilets there because it leases the property. The city has not been able to install portable toilets at the North Laguna location because it does not control that property, he said. Frank is asking that council allocate $500 for the toilets.

Several dayworkers interviewed in Laguna Beach Friday morning said they would not mind going to that parking lot instead of the corner near the Circle K convenience store on North Coast Highway.

“This place is not safe (because of traffic). Maybe the other is better,” Salvador Dias, 24, said in Spanish. He described himself as a political refugee from El Salvador.

Juan Labra, 26, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala City, Guatemela, said employers would follow the workers wherever they go.

“The bosses know we are good workers,” Labra said.

Most of the dayworkers said they take the bus every morning from their homes in Santa Ana. Since a bus stop is located near the Laguna Canyon Road parking lot, they said, they could just as easily take the bus there instead.

The workers said they travel all the way to Laguna to seek work because the police in Santa Ana will not allow them to congregate for jobs there.

Some of the workers journey as far south as Capistrano Beach, where business owners this week met with a congressional staff aide to discuss their growing concerns over dayworkers congregating on Doheny Park Road.

The business people are concerned because the number of workers has increased from about one dozen several months ago to more than 100 today, said Mike Eggers, a staff aide to U.S. Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad).

Eggers, who is also a Dana Point city councilman-elect, said he called the meeting with business owners Wednesday so they could air their complaints.

“They’re rushing to cars, and that’s proving very intimidating to some people,” Eggers said.

Some merchants are so upset, Eggers said, that they have changed their business hours to avoid the early morning congregations of workers. To help allay their concerns, Eggers told the merchants he intends next week to notify the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service that there is a problem and ask that it crack down on the employers who are hiring the workers. Under the Immigration Reform Act of 1986, the INS was empowered to impose sanctions on employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants.

Eggers said he also intends to ask for stepped-up patrols by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which will be providing contract police coverage to the city of Dana Point after its incorporation becomes effective Jan. 1.