Laguna Beach hopes to spur residents to get behind undergrounding utility lines

Looking to encourage more residents to take a proactive role in protecting the community against the threat of wildfire, Laguna Beach made revisions to its policy on the formation of underground utility assessment districts.

The City Council on Tuesday approved changes that include reducing the number of signatures required from property owners within a proposed district from 60% to 50%. State law dictates the petitioners must still make up a weighted majority of the assessable land for a proposed district.

The city will also be dropping a prior requirement of a non-refundable $500 deposit from each person who signs a petition for a proposed undergrounding district. Deposits had been put toward start-up costs such as assessment engineering, utility designs, bid document preparation and entitlements when potential districts were brought to City Hall. If a district was approved by a vote of affected property owners, the deposits were then applied to the individual assessments.

A consultant hired by the city identified five areas with concentrations of remaining overhead power lines, the potential districts accounting for a total of 2,857 parcels. Those neighborhoods include South of Downtown (1,197 parcels), North Laguna (968), South Laguna (462), Upper Bluebird Canyon (146) and Top of the World (84).

The City Council agreed the boundaries of the five potential undergrounding projects proposed seemed reasonable. A staff report noted that property owners in the Top of the World and Upper Bluebird neighborhoods have expressed interest in moving forward with the process.

Councilman Bob Whalen called the continued push to underground overhead utilities in the community through the provision of incentives a “pure wildfire mitigation effort” that was “worth the investment.”

In December 2023, the formation of a 380-parcel undergrounding district in the Woods Cove neighborhood of the city garnered the required support of property owners there, allowing that project to move forward about a decade after the idea was first put forth.

“I think what we learned in the Woods Cove case is that the larger districts do tend to benefit from size in terms of being able to spread some of the costs,” Whalen said. “I really like what staff has done here in terms of identifying the five potential zones. They’re all good size, they’re large. … Both North Laguna and South of Downtown would be the largest we’ve ever had. … I think that would be beneficial for residents to try to hold down the overall cost. It’s not cheap. I get it.”

Whalen noted that both the Emerald fire in February 2022 and the Coastal fire in May of the same year were caused by power lines.

“Anything we can do to motivate our residents to move ahead with these remaining districts would be good,” Whalen added.

Wildfire mitigation and fire safety jumped back to the forefront of the minds of residents earlier this week, when authorities said the lighting of an illegal firework by a teenager led to the ignition of the Rancho fire on Monday afternoon.

A rapid, multi-agency response helped slow the spread of the flames and resulted in the lifting of the associated evacuation orders by that evening. City officials said the fire was 100% contained on Wednesday morning.

At the time the Woods Cove assessment district was under consideration, the City Council reduced the required age to participate in the assessment loan deferment program from 62 to 55. On Tuesday, the council removed the age requirement altogether and granted the city manager the authority to exercise discretionary approval, on a case-by-case basis for candidates who did not meet the requirements for the loan deferment.

“I think as more and more homes turn over, people buy properties for higher and higher prices, people are going to be more likely to support undergrounding,” Mayor Alex Rounaghi said. “... What I really like is that we have expanded the deferment program here because that creates an opportunity for people who are on fixed incomes. … It’s a really good balancing act here.”