LAGUNA BEACH : Council Endorses Day Labor Penalties

A divided City Council has decided that day laborers should be prohibited from soliciting work anywhere in town except a city-designated hiring area.

After years of supporting day laborers, who come to this city from around the county to seek work, the council asked the city staff Tuesday to prepare an ordinance that would make it a misdemeanor to solicit jobs outside approved areas.

Currently, workers are allowed to seek day jobs at a city-approved hiring lot in the 21000 block of Laguna Canyon Road.

Under terms of the proposed ordinance, both contractors and those seeking work would be vulnerable to citations. A misdemeanor is punishable by a maximum of six months in jail or a $1,000 fine.

The majority action was opposed by council members Lida Lenney and Robert F. Gentry.

“I could have supported a new law that would have prohibited employers from hiring,” Gentry said Wednesday. “But I can’t sleep at night knowing there are people in my community who have hungry children and I was a part of not permitting them to seek relief from that situation.”

Lenney said Wednesday that she opposed the ordinance because of reservations about the stiff penalty that could be imposed.

“I just didn’t think we should be passing a law against working that would have that kind of penalty,” she said.

The proposed law has strong support, however, from residents in north Laguna Beach, where day laborers have for years clustered along Coast Highway, particularly in front of the Circle K market at Viejo Street. It was also endorsed by the city’s Human Affairs Committee.

Members of the Laguna North Neighborhood Assn., who helped shape the proposed ordinance, say day laborers have created ongoing problems in their community, intimidating residents and clogging pathways to businesses.

The city has tried, with limited success since 1988, to encourage day laborers to relocate from the north end of town, where a bus leaves many of them each day, to the hiring area on Laguna Canyon Road.