When did holding people accountable for their actions become “not fighting fair”? Telling the truth is not “below the belt politics.” The actions of our elected officials should be transparent. Showing up at the end of the SMMUSD board meeting last Thursday, Laura Rosenthal spoke to the board, offering to help however she could with the Malibu High School contamination issue. Why hasn’t she been prioritizing this issue up to now? Why hasn’t she ever come forward with public offers of assistance when, by her own admission, she first learned of this problem at the SMMUSD board meeting on Nov. 4, 2010?
Laura “set the record straight” at this month’s city council meeting and stated “half of Malibu” attended the Nov. 4, 2010, meeting and were all informed of the MHS contamination issue at that time. She states “no one was upset or concerned enough to pull it to find out more.” That is simply not true. I watched the archived video of that meeting and not a single board member or public speaker addressed BB Item A13 (the item detailing the MHS contamination remediation proposal). Not one. The item was titled mundanely as a Removal Action Workplan.
Despite Laura’s fable, what happened at that meeting was as follows: The MHS contamination issue was buried in the agenda, ignored by the board during the meeting and never mentioned during public comment. Everyone went home none the wiser. Laura has been curiously silent over the last three plus years regarding the MHS contamination topic. She, and in all fairness, others too, had a responsibility to inform the community about the toxins found in the soil of MHS and about the remediation done by Arcadis while our children, teachers, and staff were on campus. We should be able to trust our elected officials to bring important issues to our attention so we can make informed decisions. They need to be accountable for their actions and inactions.
Scott Greco