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Part three of a series.
Seal Beach has $200 million in unfunded improvement projects, according to Public Works Director Iris Lee. Lee told the City Council this during the Seal Beach council’s May 8 budget workshop.
The workshop also looked at the city’s five-year capital improvement plan and the five-year financial forecast.
In other news, the city is looking at funding the construction of a new lifeguard headquarters. Staff confirmed that money for the McGaugh pool project had been moved into the fund for a new lifeguard headquarters.
Among the projects staff is working on is a Main Street/Pier area vision plan. This will include the lifeguard headquarters, parking, economic development and revitalization of Main Street, according to Lee.
The following is not a transcript of the meeting but highlights from the May 8 budget workshop.
Unfunded projects
According to Lee, the city has $40 million in unfunded water projects. The unfunded water projects include the Sixth Street Alley water and sewer upgrades, advanced meter infrastructure, the College Park East and College Park West water system improvements.
Lee told the council that Public Works was finally starting the alley re-pavement project. Lee said that had been on the city’s unfunded list “for quite a few years.”
“We’ve finally starting our Lampson well treatment system that we’ve been talking about from the water rate study,” Lee said.
Seal Beach has $19 million in unfunded sewer projects.
During the meeting, Lee said without a rate adjustment the water and sewer system would simply fail.
She said the city was holding off on the sewer mainline improvement program. She said the design was ready to go, but staff was waiting to see in which direction the rate adjustments would go. She said staff was worried that there would be an emergency that the balance of the city’s reserves cannot fund.
Recent and ongoing
projects
Recent and ongoing projects include the Eighth and 10th Street parking lot design, the annual arterial street resurfacing project, the rehabilitation of a pump station, and the San Gabriel River trash mitigation project.
Lee said the pavement in the lots was beyond the typical patch that can be done there. Lee said the Eighth and 10th Street parking lot project has been designed and budgeted. Lee said because of the scope of the project, it might be divided into two phases.
Where does the money come from?
According to Lee, funds for improvement projects come from the General Fund, the gas tax, grants, the water enterprise fund and the sewer enterprise fund. “These funds are used solely for water and sewer purposes,” Lee said.
She said many projects are funded by external funding. One example she gave was the renovation of the North Seal Beach Community Center, which was funded with the Community Development Block Grant and the matching funds from District Five Councilman Nathan Steele.
Lee said there was “quite a bit” of fund carried over.
2025-26 projects
This year’s upcoming projects include storm drain projects, the pier concrete abutment testing and phase 2 rehabilitation, Americans with Disabilities Act improvements, City Hall staircase improvements, council chamber improvements, the Lifeguard Headquarters/Police Department substation, Tennis and Pickleball Center upgrades, and the park improvement program.
“I talk about ADA a lot,” Lee said.
“ADA is probably one of the nation’s biggest unfunded mandates,” Lee said.
“It would cost the city over $40 million from a programmatic and infrastructure standpoint to bring us into compliance,” Lee said. “Of course, that is a moving target.”
Councilman Steele asked where the $40 million number came from.
Lee said the city had an ADA transition plan that was an inventory of all the facilities, programs, and infrastructure throughout Seal Beach.
“I do want to emphasize that while $40 million did sound like a lot a couple of years ago, it’s probably a lot more now given the inflation and the cost of labor [and] material,” Lee said.
“Still sounds like a lot to me,” Steele said.
Seal Beach has $6.4 million in street and transportation projects. Those projects include the annual slurry seal program, paving, ADA barrier removals, traffic signal upgrades, and alley repair.
“We haven’t been able to tackle our alleys in the past and we’re happy to move forward doing so, again systematically because we can’t do everything at one time,” Lee said.
Lee said paving funds have become available. She said the city would submit an application for funding the completion of paving of the balance of Seal Beach Boulevard.
In response to a question from Steele about paving, Lee said the city had a pavement management project that is done every two years.
District One Councilman Joe Kalmick asked if due to recent past weather, streets were deteriorating more quickly.
Lee said water infiltration does expedite pavement degradation. She said salt also speeds up degradation. “So slurry seal is very important,” Lee said.
Sand replenishment
Lee said Seal Beach had not replenished the sand on the main beach for a while. “So what we have been doing is just back-passing every other year, moving sand from one side of the beach to the other,” Lee said.
“The Army Corps of Engineers, don’t they pay for that?” asked District Three Councilwoman/Mayor Lisa Landau.
“They will execute the project,” said Kalmick. “We have to ensure that Congress funds it and that’s what our battle is right now.” He said the last time, the city wound up with 800,000 cubic yards of dredged sand. He said because of weather conditions, the dredge kept leaving. According to Kalmick, the city was supposed to get 1.25 million cubic yards of sand. (Kalmick said the last project called for 1.75 million cubic yards of sand.)
According to Lee, various coastal cities, the county, and the state contribute to the cost of the sand replenishment project. She said the Army Corps of Engineers pays for a major part of the project.
Lifeguard headquarters
Lee said there was seed money to start the lifeguard headquarters and police substation project. (The 2021-21 budget put the expected cost of the project at about $9.5 million. See the 2020 article “Seal Beach officials looking at renovation or reconstruction of Lifeguard Headquarters” at sunnews.org.)
Later in the meeting, Landau asked what was the dollar amount that was being held for the pool.
“That pool money was repurposed for lifeguard headquarters,” said Finance Director Barbara Arenado. She said the $4.4 million was carried over in the budget and was “sitting there” for the lifeguard headquarters.
Landau asked the cost to redo lifeguard headquarters.
“Twelve million,” Arenado said.
Arenado said staff would come back with the Main Street/Pier area vision plan. “But until that comes back, it would be fiscally irresponsible make, you know a goal until we figure out what that amount is and what we can do to allocate it,” Arenado said.
“We have such small pots of money,” Arenado said.
Resident James Jensen said, “Everything we do effects the property taxes.”
“That pool was put in when I was a kid,” he said.
Resident Catherine Showalter she was getting angry listening to the meeting. Showalter said knowing the effort that went into raising the money to build the pool to find out that the money has been moved to another fund, even though it’s a very worthy fund, was annoying.
“And frankly, it’s not OK,” Showalter said.
“If there’s a way to get the money back into a pool fund, I think that’s something that should be looked at with the City Council,” Showalter said.
“Yes, we need a new lifeguard station. I don’t think we should wait until we get all of this other stuff taken care of before we get the new lifeguard station,” Showalter said.
She said the expense just keeps going up.
Showalter said in her mind, the pool and the lifeguard headquarters were not getting the attention they deserve to be funded. “Put a plan together. Work towards it. Don’t just keep putting it off in the future,” Showalter said.
In September 2008, a consultant, Rowley International Inc., recommended replacing of the McGaugh pool. For more on the McGaugh project, see “Seal Beach swimming pool project: a chronology of events” at sunnews.org.
Public comments
Resident James Jensen said he appreciated what the huge amount of coverage that Public Works was responsible for. “It’s pretty massive to see it all laid out,” he said.
He said several years ago, some of his neighbors on Catalina and Crestview had to replace their sewer laterals. “I think that the city needs to consider making that their responsibility, like other cities around like Long Beach” Jensen said.
He said he didn’t think there was anything more important than water coming into our homes and “the bad stuff” leaving.
Resident Matthew Terry suggested an allocation for red curbing streets for the state’s “daylighting” law that restricts parking near intersections.
