Time to pull together

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Now that the elections are behind us, I hope everyone in Malibu will stop attacking each other and make a commitment to working together to limit the development that certainly faces our community. Instead of trying to gain political advantage, we need activists who will pull together for the common good. None of us want to see Malibu turn into Newport Beach, but it will take all of us to prevent it. If we spend our time fighting each other, we will have no time to fight those who would remove local control, whether to impose “visitor serving” facilities like hotels and casinos or implement environmentally-sensitive zones that give control to state agencies.

At times this means accepting compromise on smaller projects to present a unified front on projects that would cause our community to lose its rural character. It means we must be very careful not to turn every request for a building permit into a major battle. If we try to stop growth-limiting projects or those that are reasonable, we will drive a wedge into our unified opposition to the large projects none of us want, or open ourselves to legal action and court-ordered projects. And somehow, if we can convince Mr. Perenchio of our good intentions, we must come together to create a plan for his extensive Malibu holdings that will work for all of us. It’s now time to put our campaign arrows back in their quiver and look for approaches that will unite our community. This will take a lot of ego swallowing on everyone’s part, but the alternative is more, rather than less development.

Scott Dittrich