City of Hermosa Beach · Transcript · · Updated
City Council Candidate Forum Sponsored by Leadership Hermosa Beach - October 19, 2026 – Transcript
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- Eric Horn states he would immediately develop short-term rental regulations in the coastal zone and proposed block-by-block density limits.
- Dean Francois expresses opposition to the proposed half-cent sales tax increase, noting he is the only council member against it.
- Rob Seeman states he is not in favor of giving away the ownership of the city's beach to the county.
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>> Yes. Can everyone settle down, please? Good. I'm not sure that Yes, I think they are. Can everyone settle down, please, so we can get started?
Excuse me, can we settle down? >> >> Thanks, James. >> Good evening, everybody. Good evening. How's the beach?
We'd like to get started. Thank you. Please save your discussions for afterward. I'm sure there'll be a lot to talk about. Please pay attention to our moderators. >> Thank you. Good evening and welcome to Leadership Hermosa's City Council Candidate Forum. I'm Paul Ryder.
>> And I'm Askon Zaker, and we'll be your moderators tonight. Thank you to our candidates, our volunteers, everyone joining us, and Leadership Hermosa Beach. Uh we are a non-political 501c3 educational organization.
>> We know many of you have attended uh one or two of the prior debates, so we're not trying to rebroadcast those. Tonight we want to try to go deeper in not just what the candidates support, but how they make decisions with tradeoffs that they would accept and where their approaches differ from each other.
Before we begin, let's introduce the candidates in order they are seated, which was selected randomly. Dean Francois, well, feel free to name yourselves. We'll go in that order.
>> Hi. Thank you, everyone. >> Hi there. My name is Elka Warner. >> Hello, everyone. My name is Eric Horn. Thank you for joining us. >> Good evening. Maggie Bavair LaMonica. >> Good evening, everybody. My name is Rob Seeman.
>> Good evening. Ray Jackson. Thank you, everybody for being here. And thank you, Leadership Hermosa, for hosting this event. >> Thank you all. So, here's how tonight's going to work. Every candidate will answer every main question. Initial answers will either have 60 or 45 seconds. We'll announce the time before each question and rotate the starting speaker.
Each candidate also has three 60-second and four 30-second response cards. After everyone has answered, you may raise a card to elaborate on your answer or respond to another candidate's position.
Please wait to be recognized. You may use one extra time card per question. They're optional, but unused time does not carry into the closing question. >> Ashton, how many total questions?
>> 13, possibly 14. >> This is a forum with the opportunity for debate. Yet, that said, it's not a free-for-all. Uh please challenge ideas and politics, not personal motives. There will be no interruptions or or speaking over other candidates. That said, there will be timekeepers uh right there at the front table who will advise you when you have 30 seconds and 10 seconds left.
Our timekeeper, yeah. So, um we're not scheduling a break, unfortunately. We do expect to finish before 8:40, and we ask you to please hold your applause until conclusion so we can preserve everyone's speaking time.
All righty. Well, let's begin if there's no other questions. >> So, first question. It's a 45-second question. So, generally, these questions 45 seconds should be a little simpler. 60-question second questions have a little bit more involved that we expect a little fuller answer.
If elected, what is the one city priority or approach you would change from the current term, and what is the one you would one thing you would continue, and explain why? Let's start with Dean.
>> Thank you very much, and thank you for everyone coming this evening. So, you're looking for one thing that I'd change and one thing I'd keep. I guess the one thing that I would like to see changed going forward in 4 years from now is that you know, we we we have a lot of dialogue at the council level, a lot of people that work hard together.
Uh but it takes leadership for people to accept all sides and wonder where people are coming from and accept different viewpoints and I'd like to see in 4 years from now we have a council that works deliberatively, people interact better and we've restored that type of civility that we have in our meetings that I believe I brought forward a lot when I was mayor.
What I'd like to see changed and there's my 45 seconds. Okay, thanks. >> to you. >> Uh what I would like to see changed is um more talks about the housing element and um explaining to the community what exactly it is, what low-income, moderate-income housing is, what our obligations are under the state mandates. And um I
believe last time we did this, we had 26 people fill out the survey and that's just not enough. I think we need to communicate better with the public, let them know how this will impact them and their neighborhoods.
Do we do the second part now or >> Yeah, you're in all within your 45 seconds. >> Oh, okay. And uh what I would keep are the budget talks and explaining where we are financially and the um challenges we face.
>> Great. And Eric? >> Thank you. The immediate thing that I would change is developing immediately a suite of regulations for short-term rentals in the coastal zone in response to a lawsuit that we lost in March of this year. I would reverse the council's decision to halt regulatory development for 6 months and proceed with community hearings and meetings to develop a package that may include limits on the total number of short-term rentals,
density caps on a block-by-block basis, a surcharge tax on short-term rentals, and dedicated code code enforcement for nuisance violations so that we can protect our neighborhood character. One thing that I would continue is like uh El Kassem, I think that we had a professional budget process that was laid out by our city manager this year.
We had six hearings. I'd like to continue with that level of rigor at least from a staff perspective on our budget. >> Thank you. Maggie? >> Maggie. >> Yeah. >> Uh good evening, everyone. Um one thing I'd like to change is to focus on making sure that Hermosa Beach is uh changing its reputation for being business-friendly. We can do a lot in terms of uh altering our reputation. The first would be to put in place a permit and a code clock. When somebody comes in to look uh to start a new business or to
rebuild their house or to develop their properties, they'll know exactly what they're getting into and not be frustrated by delays. That will help alleviate our reputation for being bad for business. In addition to that, we could uh um deregulate some of our zoning in order to allow for pop-ups and also to penalize uh folks. And the one thing I'd like to keep is ensure that our council uh our city manager has a council that's supportive of him.
Thank you. >> Rob. >> Thank you. One thing that I would like to uh improve upon in the future is uh to improve the permitting process for both residents and for businesses. It uh we've been working on it for very hard for the last year or so and it's been improving, but it's just not quite there yet. I think it's important that we say that that we fix that so that entrepreneurs and businesses that want to come here and that Hermosa Beach is open for
business. And that's the that's what we want to project to those people. Uh one thing that I like that's been going on is uh we uh have a great new city manager and I would uh really love to see him continue to uh to uh improve on our staff. Thank you.
>> Okay. Ray? >> Thank you for the question. I I think the biggest thing we need to do is, you know, as is inscribed on the wall at the community center is without vision the people perish. And I think one of the challenges for us and one of the things we need to do better is the mindset. The mindset of how we get to yes as opposed to no. When you talk to businesses, when you talk to residents, they always get the the sense that the
city is saying you can't do this. Well, what is it I can do and how can we get to yes? Because oftentimes it's it's the mindset of the individual who is receiving the call and there's oftentimes the opportunity to actually help somebody as opposed to pushing that person to somebody else because it's not my job. And um another thing we have to do is we have to do a wholesale look at
our revenues. We have to address our budget deficit. That is priority number one because without that we won't have we won't have the ability to do anything else. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Uh so so far we have Dean wanting a 30-second uh response. Anyone else?
Okay. Dean, go ahead. >> Yeah, I just thought I'd start right out here with the bottles. Why not? >> Yeah. >> Call a little action here. Uh one of the candidates continues to have this um notion that immediately want to start uh regulating short-term rentals. It's not as simple as that. Uh we took a good fast-track approach on the council, voted it with a majority to uh fast-track it with 6 months in gathering data. That's what the Coastal Commission requires. He knows that just as well and he's this inflammation of stirring up