The audacity of our “honorable” mayor, Andy Stern, in blatantly misinforming the community about the funding arrangements for Legacy Park, is now an obvious cover-up. Stern stated in his letter to the editor in last week’s local paper that “the only way to pay the $25 million Legacy Park purchase price was to lease the lumber yard property. There was no other choice.”
The truth is the city had $13,500,000 to start with, committed from just two sources, the California State Coastal Conservancy and the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy (MCLC), with much more coming from a great variety of environmental organizations. But, then (November, 2005) Sharon Barovsky, Jeff Jennings and Andy Stern stated they wanted “local control,” thus losing $8,000,000 from the Coastal Conservancy and $2,500,000 from MCLC. To substantiate this you may look up numerous articles written in the local papers around November, 2005.
Numerous scientific studies costing millions of dollars were undertaken to substantiate the goal of establishing wetland recovery programs, with Malibu’s wetland planned as a model recovery program. In 2001, the Malibu Lagoon Task Force presented to the Malibu City Council the Civic Center historical wetland restoration recommendations. The Task Force had UCLA conduct a $500,000 study to substantiate the recommendations but they were left ignored by these City Council members.
Our only obstacle has been, and still is, to get a “willing city council” to approach the developers with a responsible development plan. However, Sharon Barovsky and Andy Stern have, time and time again, refused to approach them. Instead, they promoted the civic center developer’s plan to build ill-placed development in the middle of the floodplain, as we are witnessing now.
Those Malibuites who supported those elected hijackers who we have to call our leaders would be better advised to think of how we will look back on this environmental travesty, which they call “Legacy Park.” The health and safety concerns of our citizens are much more important than the role they played in cheapening Malibu. I urge the citizenry to look into the facts before voting next time. If I can help, please let me know at bobpurvey@aol.com.
Bob Purvey