Joyce Parker-Bozylinski, City of Malibu planning director, spends much of her day mapping out Malibu’s development, attending meetings, overseeing a staff of 17 and answering seemingly endless emails and phone calls, making plans for other people and cities.
“I make decisions,” Parker-Bozylinski said. “I answer questions and manage all the various things that come up. There’s always a question. It’s rare for me to actually sit [at my desk] and work through a project.”
It may be surprising, then, that Parker-Bozylinski’s own journey to Malibu had little to do with following a plan.
She grew up in a southeast Colorado farming community, but was living in Denver when she was presented with an opportunity to move to California with the man who would later become her husband.
“You know how these love stories are,” she said. “He was from Baltimore and he was on his way out to California. He had stopped in Denver for a while and we met and he said, ‘Hey, I’m heading out to California,’ and then we moved up to Marin County. It was just one of those things where he had friends there and he always wanted to move out to California and I was young enough then that I was like, ‘Sure! Why not? It sounds as good a place as any!”
Parker-Bozylinski changed her plans again while studying social work at San Diego State University. An internship showed her she didn’t want to spend her life as a social worker, so she began to search for a new plan.
“I went to the library and picked up an urban planning magazine from L.A. and went, ‘This is what I want to do,’” she said. “I really believe that land use decisions are some of the most important decisions a city makes. It’s what sort of defines the city and the look and feel of it.”
She received her master’s degree in urban planning with an emphasis in the built environment from UCLA, and held a few planning positions in nearby cities before serving as Malibu’s planning director from 1993 to 1996. She left to work in Oxnard, then as a planning consultant.
But one run through Malibu was not enough, and she boomeranged back in 2010 to fill her own old shoes.
“It was the most comfortable thing for me to do,” she said. “I felt like I was coming in to familiar territory. I knew most of the people, I knew all of the issues in Malibu, I didn’t have to learn anything and I had a great time here before, so it seemed like the perfect fit.”
Now Parker-Bozylinski spends her days planning and regulating all major decisions regarding land use in Malibu. She said her time is filled with overseeing other planners, working with code enforcement staff, putting together Planning Commission agendas, preparing for weekly City Council and planning meetings, and responding to phone calls and emails to answer any questions that come through her office. She and her staff work on long-range planning, like the proposed formula retail ordinance, as well as current planning of day-to-day issues, such as building houses.
“Right now, our big focus is getting ready for the formula retail, but I’m still working on other things,” Parker-Bozylinski said. “There’s always something to do.”
Her planning also goes beyond the immediate needs of the city. She said one of her biggest goals is to update Malibu’s zoning code and local coastal program to help clarify discrepancies between the two.
“Often times, they are in conflict with each other because they were adopted at different times,” she said. “We spend a lot of time interpreting the [zoning] code. The people that have worked in this community for a long time, the architects and engineers, have learned how to work within the code, and sometimes the results we get, I don’t think were the intention of the provision.”
Although her work with the city keeps her busy, Parker-Bozylinski is able to return home to Thousands Oaks to relax with her husband, her dogs and cats, yoga and a good book.
But sometimes, Malibu finds its way into her relaxation.
“I just finished a book on audible.com, a mystery, and it was by a former Malibu Times reporter, Penny O’Malley,” she said. “Her recent book was about a reporter for The Malibu Times. It was very fun to read because it was set in Malibu.”