• The battle over short-term rentals continues to rage with Planning Commissioners John Mazza, Steve Uhring and Chris Marx trying to ban them altogether, while more rational heads on the city council, understanding that many older citizens are dependent on that income to stay in Malibu, try to strike a reasonable balance with the absolutists.
• Sharon Adamson Gee, matriarch of one of Malibu’s founding families, died at age 85. She attended Stanford, was a longtime sailor, the daughter of a naval architect and a swimmer who took three gold medals in the Pan American games in 1951 and was considered the fastest female swimmer in the Western Hemisphere—and eventually went on to the 1951 Olympics in Helsinki.
• After a major manhunt, a suspect was arrested in a series of Malibu Canyon burglaries, but it turned out he was not the Malibu Creek Park killer who was the real object of the manhunt.
• The Malibu City Council has been struggling with a problem that many homeowners are now facing: homeless rats and, if that wasn’t bad enough, termites. Apparently, the homeless rats seemed to have little problem living in harmony with bureaucrats, much to the dismay of the council and city staff. The council finally decided, as Rick Mullen said, to put “all weapons on the table” and, though it is not quite clear what that means, rats have been suitably warned to vacate the premises.
• Although some Point Dume neighbors were initially fearful of the traffic impact of combining Pt. Dume Marine Science and Juan Cabrillo elementary schools, the city sought to reassure them—and the subsequent fires sadly moved a bunch of children out of the Malibu school system, which may have solved whatever problem was thought to exist.