City of Laguna Beach careers

Laguna Beach's city government serves 23,000 residents and roughly six million visitors a year, which tells you most of what the work is. The city's own description is a small town of beaches, hiking trails, a walkable downtown, and summer art festivals, occupying 8.84 square miles of southwest Orange County, and its staff is what keeps that arithmetic workable.

Unusually for a town this size, Laguna Beach provides a full range of services itself: its own police and fire protection, marine safety on the beaches, transit operations, recreation, cultural arts programming, community development, administrative services, plus the public works crews maintaining streets and parks. Authority sits with a five-person City Council, while a City Manager carries out its policies, oversees daily operations, and appoints department heads. The city was founded on June 29, 1927, and it holds onto small-town markers with a straight face; the official city tree is the lemon-scented gum and the official flower is the geranium. The visitor load makes this municipal employer closer to a resort operator than a sleepy beach town's back office, and the marine safety and cultural arts roles in particular exist in few other city governments. On the coast, the town that hires you is also the product you maintain.