The Malibu City Council was lambasted by a group of zero growth activists at last week’s council meeting during a hearing of the draft version of the Local Coastal Plan for Malibu.
The activists were unhappy with the draft, which had been written by the Interim City Manager Christi Hogin. Staff had prepared the draft for transmittal to the California Coastal Commission.
The draft document is designed to open fresh negotiations with the Coastal Commission in an effort to head off the imposition of a Local Coastal Plan (LCP) currently being written by regulators in Sacramento.
Protesters at the City Council meeting, asserting that the public had been left out of the development process, referred to the staff-generated document as the “Christi Hogin version LCP.” They urged the council to reject the document.
But councilmembers, who had just returned from a lobbying trip to Sacramento, stressed that if Malibu does not give the Coastal Commission something resembling what it wants–and soon–the city will lose all ability to control its own destiny regarding development along its coastline.
That option may already be fading. During her visit to Sacramento, Mayor Joan House said that Coastal Commission Chairperson Sara Wan and Executive Director Peter Douglas “wouldn’t talk to us.”
The Coastal Commission, whose mandate is to make California’s coast accessible to the public, wants to see a Malibu that looks less like an exclusive, private bedroom community and more like a visitor-friendly destination. The commission, House said, “wants hotels, bed and breakfasts, restaurants. They want to do this. They are chomping at the bit.”
Malibu has failed in six years of work to provide the commission with a document containing acceptable public use and access provisions. The commission flatly rejected Malibu’s first LCP version, which was the product of 110 public meetings and was completed last year. Many of the protesters at the May 29 council meeting had worked on that document.
“We’ve been trying to write the LCP since 1994,” House said. “When it was delivered, they [coastal commissioners] wouldn’t read it.”
“It’s a doorstop at the Coastal Commission,” said Councilmember Ken Kearsley.
Frustrated state legislators, who were tired of the endless stream of adversarial Malibu projects that appeared before the commission, last year passed a bill empowering the commission to bypass the city and to write a new Malibu LCP itself. The commission then hired former Malibu Planning Director Joyce Parker to draft the document.
In response, the Malibu City Council instructed Hogin to come up with a document that would be acceptable to the Coastal Commission while addressing local environmental concerns.
Now it’s a race to see who drops the document on Wan’s desk first, and whose version will prevail.
Malibu City Council members conveyed a sense of urgency in the matter.
“Her [Joyce Parker’s] goal,” House said, “is to get hers to coastal before we get ours.”
In response to the objections to the current document, Hogin said, “It is not ‘my document.’ I did not draft any policies or any language. In the staff report we included all polices [from] the LCP Advisory Committee.”
Agreeing that some policies in the staff-generated document are “more abstract, more vague,” she urged further readings and public scrutiny, which will “increase the comfort level” as the policies begin to sound more familiar. But there is not much time. “We’ve been feeling pressure,” she said. “It’s like a horse race.”
The City Council, pummeled by the unfriendly atmosphere emanating from Sacramento and aware that historical precedent is not entirely favorable, is carefully urging residents to be pragmatic.
“Where do we want our land-use decisions to be made? We want it in Malibu,” said House.
Malibu City Council member Sharon Barovsky said, “The Coastal Commission wants to take control of our wastewater situation. Can you spell ‘sewers’ ladies and gentlemen, if the Coastal Commission writes our LCP?”
But the protestors remained unconvinced. The new version, said Joan Plummer, a member of the old LCP committee, opens the city to development. “The policies we wrote were carefully crafted,” said Plummer.
In other action:
- The council unanimously named Katie Lichtig as the new assistant city manager. She will immediately become the acting city manager and will begin to serve within a few weeks, at which time Hogin will begin service as the Malibu city attorney.
- Heard Rev. Warren, the Franciscan director of Serra Retreat, describe the dangerous intersection at Pacific Coast Highway and Serra Road and asked the council for a stop light at the entrance to Serra Road.
- Unanimously approved the new Native American Cultural Resources Guidelines.
- Unanimously approved (first reading) the new Home Occupations Guidelines.
Public hearings to review the new draft LCP document are scheduled for June 11 and 13.