Love her or hate her, City Manager Reva Feldman will remain at the helm of the City of Malibu for an additional four years, following a 4-1 city council vote last Tuesday night. The contract extension will carry Feldman’s contract out until May 2022 and gradually increase her annual salary to $260,000 by 2022 (up from $215,000 currently).
“If we don’t want to pay enough to keep her around, there are plenty of other cities … that would probably just love to hire her away, and all of that stuff figures into our decision-making process,” Mayor Rick Mullen said, in response to raised eyebrows over the salary increase. Mullen voted in favor of the salary extension, along with council members Skylar Peak, Laura Rosenthal and Lou La Monte.
If votes by council are any indication, citywide there are far more Feldman fans than detractors, despite growing concerns that operations in the planning department are in desperate need of reform.
Handling of the department has become a sore subject for many in Malibu, including planning commissioners John Mazza, Steve Uhring and Chris Marx, who have recently used their positions as commissioners to voice their frustrations over the department’s shortcomings, including complaining about staff in the past two planning commission meetings.
Those concerns were amplified by Mayor Pro Tem Jefferson “Zuma Jay” Wagner, who cast the sole dissenting vote against Feldman’s contract renewal last Tuesday night.
“I have seen Reva does some really good work. She did fine work on the park, and with the [wastewater] treatment system,” Wagner said. “When she has complete control of it, quite often it does turn out very successful and I thank her for that; however, down-rank, sometimes she can’t keep some of these departments working as well.”
As an example, Wagner cited the move to decrease planning department counter hours.
“When you reduce counter hours from 48 to 25, I hear from a lot of people how difficult that becomes,” Wagner described. “You may call that more efficient, but the actual ones coming up to the counter don’t call that more efficient, but because they can’t say anything, because they may be hampered if they express their opinions, they come to somebody like me and say, ‘That’s something that I can’t work with.’”
Other council members spoke in praise of Feldman.
“You’re never going to please everyone and there’s always going to be conspiracy theories and there’s always going to be everything else,” Rosenthal said, explaining that other cities have gotten to know Feldman over the years and have reached out to praise her work as chair of the California Contract Cities Association.
“That’s not to say that people don’t make mistakes. I make one at least once a day, everyone does,” Rosenthal went on to say, later adding, “If there’s certain issues that need to be looked at and reviewed, let’s do it, but I don’t think that there’s a problem.”