0n July 9, the City Council unanimously voted its support of the citizen petition for a referendum being appealed to the California Court of Appeals. It was almost a year ago that we sat at Ralphs collecting signatures as people stood in line to sign. One was a middle aged, well-weathered man who laboriously signed his name, telling us he had been born in Mexico. I asked him if he was a registered voter? ” No!” I explained I would have to line out his name. He grinned and said, “I want to sign. This is Freedom.”
One third of our electorate, that is 2,600 Malibu voters, signed that petition for a referendum in only ten days. It was a miracle of citizen response and consensus. And the Mexican man was right. This is the recourse of free local citizens to laws restrictively imposed on them against their will.
We have been in a battle with the California Coastal Commission for three years to work out a Local Coastal Plan with which we can live and that honors our uniqueness as a community and our trusteeship of the environment. The plight of some 70 builders and re-modelers caught in the pipeline has our sympathy. However, these are but a few of the tragedies and growing costs in this battle. Everyone who owns property here is a potential victim of the state proposed plan.
With a lot of work and cooperation with other coastal cities, we recently bombed with mail the State Assembly Resources Committee and Appropriations Committee to stop Assembly Bill 947 (backed by the California Coastal Commission) that would prohibit beach owners all along the California Coast the means to protect their property from destruction by the sea. Its goal is to return the beach to its natural state of 200 years ago. The Bill is not gone. It is just on hold until the next legislative session. And the way that bill is constructed threatens the most massive taking of private property by the state without paying for it in our history.
A city to the North has been told to amend their Coastal Plans with 186 amendments-no doubt to bring it in line with what is being imposed on Malibu.
The Commission plan for Malibu is already being applied in the adjoining unincorporated areas as well as in Malibu. One family, if they lose, will face millions of dollars in fines and already has suffered costs well into the six figures. Not many of us have the courage nor the resources to stand against the outrageous demands of the California Coastal Commission. And this is the fate that threatens all of us.
And why the insistence on rolling out this “one plan fits all” coastal plan up and down the coast? And why the eagerness to force Malibu to its knees? Is this the leverage to make the other cities comply? This is no longer the original idea of those citizens who supported the creation of this commission. The creator- citizens envisioned environmental plans carefully sculpted by the local to fit the uniqueness of each part of the coast. What this has turned into is, pure and simple, a power grab by the state.
There are great constitutional issues of freedom, property and local rights involved. We local citizens cannot afford to surrender because the battle is getting harder and harder. Our forefathers 227 years ago with their bloody footprints refused to give up and left us this heritage to carry on. We have the right to a referendum, no matter how many court decisions it takes. Freedom must be fought for again and again.
Georgianna McBurney