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Ray Jackson Newsletter — September 21, 2026
📬 Councilmember Ray Jackson | Hermosa Beach | September 21, 2026
Hello, Hermosa Beach,
Let me start with a thank you. On Saturday morning, September 19, volunteers across our city joined thousands of Californians for Coastal Cleanup Day, filling bags with the debris that would otherwise wash into the water we swim in, surf in, and build our identity around. A special salute goes to the Cal State Dominguez Hills Toros baseball team, who traded batting practice for beach duty and pitched in right here on our sand. From my seat on the California Coastal Commission, I can tell you that no regulation protects a coastline quite like a community that keeps showing up for it.
The rest of the week offered a little bit of everything: young entrepreneurs learning what it takes to run a real business, a flower shop turning petals into art on upper Pier Avenue, some plain talk about access on the Greenbelt, and a Council meeting tomorrow night. Here is what you need to know.
🌊 Environment & Protecting Our Coast
🔹 Coastal Cleanup Day showed our values in action. Saturday's statewide cleanup brought neighbors, families, students, and visiting athletes onto our beach with buckets and grabbers, and Hermosa turned out in force. Every cigarette butt and bottle cap collected on the sand is one that never reaches the Bay.
→ 🎯 My take: Our coast is never saved once and for all. It gets saved again and again, by people who give up a Saturday morning to do unglamorous work, and I am grateful to every single one of you who did.
🔹 Let's deal in facts on the Greenbelt Accessible Trail. You may have heard a claim that the City planned to pave over the Greenbelt. No such plan ever existed. The project was designed to replace a stretch of non-accessible woodchip path with a firm, permeable, natural-looking surface so that people with mobility challenges can enjoy the park too, and it was supported by roughly $500,000 in grant funding from the Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District rather than falling on local taxpayers alone.
→ 🗣️ My stance: Access is a value, not an expense. When our Sunrise Senior Living neighbors can travel the Greenbelt to the farmers market, and when Mobi-Mats carry wheelchairs across the sand, that is Hermosa Beach living up to its best self. I will keep advocating for improved and permanent access to our beach and public spaces, because everyone belongs here.
👉 View the Greenbelt trail project page
💼 Economic Development
🔹 Lemonade Day put our youngest CEOs to work. This past week, working with our Chamber of Commerce and borrowing a good idea from our friends in Lomita, we launched Hermosa's own Lemonade Day, a program that teaches kids how to run a business for real: budgeting, marketing, and even the health and permitting requirements that every grown-up entrepreneur navigates. Lakewood has since built its own Lemonade Day on our model, which is exactly how good ideas should travel.
→ ⚡ Why it matters: A kid who learns to balance a lemonade stand ledger at ten is a lot more likely to open a storefront on Pier Avenue at thirty. Investing in young entrepreneurs is investing in the next generation of our local economy.
🔹 Small business spotlight: Sweet Blooms Atelier. Keiko is the creative force behind this gem on upper Pier Avenue, where flowers become genuine works of art. Small businesses like hers bring color and heart to our commercial blocks, and the best support you can offer is the simplest: walk in the door.
🏖️ Around Town
🔹 The Hermosa Beach Open lived up to the hype. From Thursday, September 10 through Sunday, September 13, the third annual Wedbush Hermosa Beach Open filled the north side of the Pier with Olympians, national team athletes, NCAA standouts, and beloved local legends, all with free admission for everyone. A neighbor posted a generous thank-you last week for the behind-the-scenes work that goes into events like the Open and our Concert Series, and I want to redirect that gratitude where it belongs: to the City staff, organizers, sponsors, and volunteers who put in countless unseen hours.
→ 🎯 My take: Signature events do not just happen. They are built, months in advance, by people who care about this community, and four days of visitors filling our restaurants and shops is the reward for that work.
👉 View the community post (Instagram)
🔹 September is Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month. Here is a statistic worth sitting with: every two minutes, someone is paralyzed. Earlier this month, our community packed Gitana Café to support Jenna and the Wings for Life mission to find a cure, and every dollar donated goes directly to research. If you are able to give, this is a cause where your generosity lands exactly where it should.
👉 Donate to spinal cord injury research
🗳️ A Note on November
🔹 Honored to stand with our firefighters. This past week, Los Angeles County Firefighters Local 1014 endorsed my campaign for re-election. These are the men and women who run toward danger when the rest of us run from it, and earning their trust means a great deal to me. Protecting this community and keeping residents safe has been a top priority in my five years on the Council, and it always will be.
👉 View the endorsement post (Instagram)
📅 Dates & Community Events
🔹 Tuesday, September 22, 6:00 PM: Regular City Council meeting, Council Chambers, 1315 Valley Drive. Agendas post at least 72 hours in advance.
🔹 Saturday, October 3: First Saturday cleanup at the Hermosa Beach Veterans Memorial. A small hour of service that keeps a sacred space worthy of the names it honors.
👉 View City Council agendas and meeting information
👉 View the City calendar of events
📱 Stay Connected
If you have a service issue to report, the Go Hermosa! app is the most direct way to get it to the right department at City Hall.
👉 Submit a service request via Go Hermosa!
For community updates and commentary between editions, you can follow me on Instagram.
👉 Follow @RayForHermosa on Instagram
Tomorrow night the Council returns to the dais, and there is a seat in the Chambers with your name on it. This week reminded me that our city runs on people who give what they can: a Saturday morning on the sand, a lemonade stand lesson, a first purchase at a new shop. Whatever your version of showing up looks like, it counts. If anything in this edition raises a question, reply and tell me about it, and I hope to see you at City Hall on Tuesday or somewhere along the Greenbelt before then.
Working together to build an ever better Hermosa Beach.
Ray Jackson
Councilmember, City of Hermosa Beach
