The Huntington Beach City Council met on July 18, 2023, at 5:00 PM in Council Chambers. The meeting began with councilmember comments, a closed session, and reconvened at 6:00 PM for open session. Key actions included decisions on state legislation positions, a Banning Avenue improvement project, a cell tower appeal, a middle-income housing program update, and a proposed charter amendment regarding property tax foregone.
The meeting adjourned at approximately 12:15 AM. Next regular meeting August 1, 2023.
Order a regular meeting of the city council public finance authority. Um City Clerk, may you call the role. Yes. Councilmember Kalmick. Here, Councilmember Mosher. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Vandermark. Here. Mayor Strickland. Here. Councilmember McKeon. Here. Councilmember Bolton. Here. Councilmember Burns. Here. All present. Thank you. Council members, would anybody like to make a comment? We're at the three minute council member comments. Seeing none. I was gonna kid it in. Go ahead. Uh kid from Huntington High got drafted first round in the uh major league baseball. Congratulations to him. I believe uh Navarro was his name. So hats off to him. Congratulations. Great. Councilman. Yeah, mayor. Thank you. Just wanna for those residents that did not watch the the June 26th City Council budget meeting. I wanted to reiterate uh how proud I am of the budget we passed for fiscal year 2324, which I feel is far uh superior to the initial budget that was presented on June 6th. Um since being elected, we have worked really hard to get this budget right and took the time that was required to ensure we charted our city on a strong financial path. And then comparing the final approved budget from the budget presented on June 6th, we went from a balanced budget in fiscal year 2324 to a 5.4 million dollar surplus. And then in fiscal year 2425, we went from a projected 7.4 million dollar deficit to a balanced budget, and incredibly re reduced the projected deficits in fiscal years 25-26 and 26-27 by over 63%. And most importantly, we did this without any cuts to libraries or city services. And obviously, there's still much work to do, but we had now have two years of runway, and we have charted our city on a strong financial path. And then secondly, uh visit HB under the media press releases tab on their website. Just recently released the 2022 Air Show Economic Impact Report by destination analysts who are tops in the industry. And the economic impact report shows that 690,000 people attended the event. Eight and ten were non-local residents who reside outside of HB. 520,000 were incremental visitors who live outside of HB and visited the city primarily to attend the event. The total economic impact over three days was 120 million dollars. There was 70 million dollars in direct spending to our local economy and 3.7 million received in tax and assessment revenues for Huntington Beach. And there was an estimated 11,342 incremental hotel room nights that were generated. And I've been made aware that some um have pointed out comments I made that the air show itself has not made a profit and is therefore not successful. But I'm hopeful people understand the difference between the profit or lack thereof that the event itself makes for the promoter and the economic impact the event creates for the city with the increased visitors and the money they spend during three non-peak summer days. And a resident just sent me their hotel receipt for three nights at the waterfront Hilton during the air show, and the tax for those three nights alone was $912, and the rate per night was $2,200.