The City Council got a surprise visit from Joyce Parker Monday night, and her testimony moved the debate over Malibu’s new Local Coastal Plan (LCP) to a higher level.
Parker is a former planning director for Malibu and is now helping the California Coastal Commission write the state’s version of an LCP for the city. Until now there has been no input from the Coastal Commission as to what its plan will say. Meanwhile, the city has been racing to revise and rewrite its previous LCP draft in hopes of having its own voice included in any LCP certified by the Coastal Commission.
Asked if the city’s new LCP draft could be the basis for the commission’s plan, Parker said, “No … it would be too hard to back up and use your draft as a starting point.”
The Coastal Commission was mandated to write Malibu’s LCP according to state legislation passed last year (AB 988).
“Coastal staff,” Parker said, “is essentially following AB 988. They didn’t write AB 988, they’re not particularly fond of AB 988. This is the first time they’ve ever been in this situation where they’ve had to write a city’s LCP and they would much rather have it the other way around.”
The normal process is for an LCP to be generated at the local level and passed upward for review and revisions. But Malibu’s first attempted LCP, the so-called administrative draft of last year, was stillborn at the Coastal Commission. It was never acted upon. No reason was given, but accusations within the Malibu community have flown back and forth.
Some have charged that city staff called the Coastal Commission and killed the draft. And Parker, in her presentation to the city, said her belief is that someone from Coastal called and asked that the city’s first draft LCP be shelved.
However, after the council meeting city staff pulled out the minutes of the Architects and Engineers Committee meeting of March 16, 2000, in which senior coastal staff came to speak. According to the minutes from that meeting, “Gary Tim (a senior coastal staff member) stated the draft as submitted was unacceptable. He indicated the draft would require a significant number of changes that Coastal did not have the resources available to review it on a word by word basis.”
“They simply said it was a mess and they weren’t going to waste their time on it,” charged Councilmember Sharon Barovsky.
Ozzie Silna, who was on the committee that wrote the original LCP, said he was told the city–with a new city council taking office–never pursued the LCP despite efforts by the Coastal Commission to start discussions.
After a week that included input from many citizens at an ad hoc session, nearly all agreed at Monday night’s council meeting that the city needed to move forward with its own LCP. But there was still debate over how to reconcile the two city versions.
The original LCP emphasized low-impact, “passive” usage of the coastline. It calls for “maintaining the natural rather than adding to the built recreational environment,” and states that “recreational uses shall be low-intensity and in keeping with the character of existing uses in the coastal zone.”
The new LCP draft deletes those passages and others like it. Councilmembers say they agree with the intent, but that such language is a red flag to the Coastal Commission. Legislation passed by the state last month specifically calls for more “low-cost visitor and recreational facilities…”
Others, like Tom Bates, former land use chair of the Malibu Association of Realtors, argued that the language was justified by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservation Act and should be retained.
Parker urged the city to get an official draft of its LCP into the hands of Coastal’s staff as soon as possible. “You need to do an official submittal because they [Coastal staff] want to see what’s being written while we’re in the middle of writing our own,” she said.
But Parker could not say what Coastal staff would do with the city’s LCP. “It could be that our comments [on the city draft] are our draft,” she said. In other words, Coastal could use their version to recommend changes to the city’s draft.
In particular, she anticipated differences in policies on visitor-serving facilities and coastal access. Councilmembers agreed.
And that, perhaps, accounts for why the city’s new LCP seems to be trying to walk the line between no-growth stridency and uncontained growth.
Meanwhile, Parker offered some encouragement to the council. “You may be surprised at how little disagreement we’ll have in the end,” she told the council. The Coastal Commission, she said, “is not interested in turning Malibu into a coastal resort.”
The first Coastal LCP draft, Parker said, is to be ready for delivery to the city by mid-August. The city then has about three months to react to the draft. The Coastal Commission will hold public hearings on the draft in November and December.
AB 988 requires the Coastal Commission to “submit to the City of Malibu an initial draft of the land-use portion of the local coastal program” by Jan. 15, 2002. Then the plan must be adopted, after public hearings, by Sept. 15, 2002.
“And at that time,” Parker said, “I expect they will give us instructions to move ahead on implementation of the plan.”
In other business, the council:
- Approved a Cultural Resources amendment that simplifies the process for review of potential impacts of development projects on cultural resources and clarifies who can be a cultural resources monitor.
- Approved a Home Occupations amendment to the city code that says no permit is required for home occupations involving less than six employees or students and which meets certain requirements.
- Postponed adoption of 2001-2002 city budget until next council meeting.
- Approved increases in assessments for the Calle del Barco Landslide Abatement District, following a 26-10 vote in favor of new assessments by property owners in the area. The annual assessment for a single-family home increases to $1,539.10 in Zone A, and $769.55 in Zones B and C. Money is to be used to finance the construction of additional capital improvements and to operate, maintain and repair the entire landslide dewatering system in the Calle del Barco area.