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Boyd persuaded the council to create a Homeless Task Force, and on which he and Iseman served. Fourteen of the task forces’ recommended solutions for solving the homeless issues were approved by the council, well before a lawsuit was filed Dec. 23, 2008, by the American Civil Liberties Union, a Newport Beach legal firm and the dean of UC Irvine’s neophyte law school. The suit claimed that the city’s anti-sleeping ordinances amounted to unconstitutional harassment through illegal “sweeps,” subjecting the homeless population to middle-of-the-night interrogations and citations.

Locally, eyes rolled and heads were shaken. Lagunans are used to thinking of themselves as the good guys, not Scrooges, as one ACLU spokesman called the city administration, council and police.

During his term as mayor in 2009, Boyd named an Advisory Committee on Homelessness to implement the task force recommendations, again calling on Iseman as his partner.

The committee’s work culminated in the ACT V haven for the homeless, which has restored the intended use of Laguna’s parks and beaches, which is not a camp site.

Boyd described Iseman’s contributions as “phenomenal.” She said the outcome of homeless issues would never have happened without Boyd’s efforts.

Their bonhomie was tested when Boyd bitterly opposed the proposal to close all of Laguna’s coastline to commercial and recreational fishing, which Iseman espoused, along with three other council members.

Iseman spoke in support of the proposal before the state’s Blue Ribbon Task Force, saying that 80% of the townspeople favored the closure. Boyd, who had been instrumental in gathering 1,971 signatures on petitions in opposition to the ban, blew his stack.

Boyd publicly accused Iseman of a flagrant falsehood in letters to the editors of newspapers and of highhandedly ignoring the wishes of the voters in a letter to the task force.

Iseman addressed the accusations at the Nov. 17 council meeting.

“I may have misspoken,” Iseman said. “My intention was to say that 80% of the people I have spoken with agree with this [a city-long reserve].”

Iseman said she was able to contact three of the five task force members to clarify her statement.

“So at this point, I am hoping we will take a position of mutual respect, civil discourse, and be able to communicate and worked comfortably with one another,” Iseman said.