City of Seaside Government News

Former Seaside city manager Jaime Fontes, who City Council terminated for no cause (“loss of confidence”) effective June 6 of this year, is not done with Seaside yet.

As Seaside development expands further north with the nascent Campus Town project, which seeks to build up to nearly 1,500 residential units on dilapidated property between Gigling Road and Lightfighter Drive, a second fire station for Seaside has long been contemplated.

Ever since the City of Seaside entered into a purchase and sale agreement with KB Bakewell Seaside Venture II, LLC in 2017 to develop the Campus Town project, which envisions 1,485 housing units and more than 150,000 square feet of commercial space on 122 acres at the city’s border with Marina, progress has been slow.

A cost-saving plan to shift all of Monterey One Water's billing to collection through county property tax bills was killed just seven days before it was to go into effect, thanks to opposition from just two of the board's 10 members in a weighted vote.

Yet again, the City of Seaside finds itself embroiled in a lawsuit over its attempts to develop the former Fort Ord, just over a week after City Council finalized an $850,000 settlement with Sacramento-based developer Paul Petrovich.

Oftentimes, change happens when feathers get ruffled.

The City of Seaside has long wrestled with questions about how best to grow, which is something that, to some extent, it must do.

Numerous top staffers have left Seaside City Hall in recent weeks, and now it appears City Manager Jaime Fontes might be on his way out too.

In 2022, the Seaside City Council approved conceptual designs for a second fire station at the corner of Gigling Road and First Avenue. The station took another step toward construction with the release of a mitigated negative declaration study on March 21.

The planned new County of Monterey building in Seaside doesn’t have a name yet, nor has the county identified funding to build it, which the latest estimate pegs at $115 million. But what county officials do have is a vision.

Fireworks have long been a polarizing issue in Seaside—some people love them, some people loathe them.

On the Monterey Peninsula, the lack of available water is often highlighted by public agencies as the primary reason the region lacks adequate housing.

Laguna Grande Regional Park is jointly managed and owned by the cities of Monterey and Seaside, and the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District. For the past decade, managing the park has been a subject of controversy.

City expenditures are split among essential needs and quality-of-life benefits in a budgeting process. And with the fiscal year beginning July 1, government entities, including Monterey County’s 12 cities, are in various stages of tweaking and finalizing their annual budgets.

In Seaside, about 50 tickets are written for broken tail lights or headlights each year. The Lights On! program aims to reduce this number.

On July 6, 2016, Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez pulled over 32-year-old Philando Castile for a broken taillight near Minneapolis. The officer asked Castile for his license and registration; as he reached, Yanez shot and killed Castile.

On April 6, the Seaside City Council considered whether to censure Councilmember Alex Miller for social media comments regarding the vibrancy of Seaside’s downtown—or lack thereof.