Fifty-five years before Hermosa Beach's city council voted to put a half-cent sales tax on the November ballot, a newspaper editor on the same stretch of coast typed nearly the same warning: find new revenue or watch the city fall apart.
The Hermosa Review reprinted the column on Wednesday, July 22. Originally published on page 1 of the Hermosa Beach Review on July 1, 1971, the unsigned "Notes from the Editor's Desk" reads less like a historical artifact and more like a draft of this year's budget staff report.
The 1971 numbers
In 1971, Hermosa Beach's proposed city budget was $2,075,723. The police department consumed $679,857 of that — 32.7 percent of total spending. By comparison, El Segundo's police budget was 16.6 percent of its $6.5 million total, and Manhattan Beach's was 15.1 percent of $6.2 million.
The editor noted that Hermosa had "absolutely no industry" and that the newspaper itself was the city's largest private employer. The city had just borrowed $200,000, and the council was scrambling to trim $125,000. Staff had been cut to the bone: no full-time city engineer, no assistant city manager, no finance director, no public works director.
"No other city in the area operates with such a skeleton administrative crew," the editor wrote. Manhattan Beach's public works director, the column noted, earned more than Hermosa's city manager.
The warning that echoes
The editor's conclusion could have been lifted from a 2026 council presentation: "The only answer lies in raising more revenue from new sources. Every single avenue should be explored and acted upon, and quickly. Time is running out for the property owner in Hermosa Beach."
The column also observed that residents resisted every revenue idea floated — high-rises, offshore drilling, card clubs, urban redevelopment — with "loud screams in the Council chambers, scaring the local politicians half to death."
Today's version of the same fight
The structural pressures the editor described never fully resolved. On June 23, 2026, the Hermosa Beach City Council voted 4-1 to place a half-cent sales tax measure on the Tuesday, November 3, 2026 ballot, hoping to generate an estimated $2 million a year. Councilmember Dean Francois cast the lone no vote.
The city faces a $3.2 million structural deficit driven by rising labor costs and escalating Los Angeles County contracts for fire, lifeguard, and beach maintenance services, Finance Director Brandon Walker told the council in May. City Manager Steve Napolitano said at the May 26 council meeting, "It won't be about doing more with less. We're already doing that every day."
Councilmember Ray Jackson argued in June that Hermosa is roughly $12 million behind where it would have been had the 2022 and 2024 sales tax measures passed. Voters rejected Measure B in November 2022 with 55 percent voting no, then rejected Measure HB in November 2024 by an even wider margin.
What's next
The council meets Tuesday, July 28, 2026, at 6 p.m. to finalize ballot language ahead of the county's Friday, August 7, 2026 filing deadline. Whether Hermosa voters break the pattern the 1971 editor described — loud opposition, council retreat, nothing done — will be decided November 3.
Upcoming community dates
- Tuesday, July 28, 2026 — Hermosa Beach City Council meeting, 6 p.m., City Hall
- Friday, August 7, 2026 — County filing deadline for November ballot measures
- Tuesday, November 3, 2026 — Hermosa Beach general municipal election (half-cent sales tax measure on ballot)
