Laguna Beach City Council approves plan for hybrid meetings

By Andrew TurnerStaff Writer

March 24, 2021 4:19 PM PT

The next time the Laguna Beach City Council has a meeting, the five-person governing body will be convening in person.

With Orange County sporting coronavirus numbers that meet the criteria for the less restrictive orange tier, city staff came before council to discuss the future format of its meetings.

The council voted to implement a hybrid plan for meetings that would see the return of council members to the dais, while public participation would be allowed in person with modifications.

The council approved the plan on a 4-1 vote, with Councilwoman Toni Iseman dissenting.

Under the new meeting format, members of the public will be able to get in line — while observing physical distancing and wearing a mask — to speak to the panel in the council chambers. After speaking, they will have to exit the facility.

“Assuming everyone’s vaccinated by the next council meeting, the reason I want to have this is, to be honest with you, I think we’re just getting a little bit too loose on Zoom,” Mayor Pro Tem Sue Kempf said. “I’ve been getting a lot of complaints about council on Zoom and for a variety of reasons, and I think it’s better for us to be back in a very structured environment.”

There were two options that would have allowed for public in-person participation. In addition to lining up to speak at the microphone and then leaving, another option would have allowed for 15 chairs to be set up at the rear of the council’s chambers for members of the public.

Neither represents an ideal situation for in-person public participation. During the public hearing, resident Michele Monda said she would favor Zoom meetings so long as it was a requirement that council members and key city staff remained on camera throughout.

“I just wanted to say that I personally think that having people line up and then move back right outside is a totally unworkable situation because for those of us who are actually interested in following what’s going on, it would be very difficult to do that with our phones,” Monda said in advance of the council’s decision. “I’d be rushing back home so that I could catch the rest of it.”

Under the approved plan, the public will still be able to participate in the meetings online. Plexiglass partitions will also be installed on the dais at a cost of $6,500.

“I would like to say that the reason that I object to it is that I think it’s premature,” Iseman said in casting her dissenting vote. “And I would favor waiting until we can actually allow people in the council chambers who can prove that they’ve been vaccinated and have more public participation.”

Orange County reported 11 coronavirus deaths and 82 new infections on Wednesday in the latest data released by the Orange County Health Care Agency.

In three key metrics that guide reopening, the county has numbers that would allow it to advance to the orange tier. It is averaging 3.5 daily new cases per 100,000 residents to go with a testing positivity rate of 2.1% and a health equity quartile positivity rate of 3.2%.

During the pandemic, the county has had a death toll of 4,646 and a cumulative case count of 249,842.

There are currently 172 hospitalizations due to the virus countywide, with 36 of those patients being treated in intensive care units.

The county reported 9,836 more tests for the virus on Wednesday, taking the number of tests administered during the pandemic to 3,271,302. An estimated 241,709 people in the county have recovered after a battle with the virus, per data provided by the health care agency.

Here are the latest cumulative coronavirus case counts and COVID-19 deaths for select cities in Orange County: