The following statement was issued by City Councilmember Tom Hasse on 10/27/01:
During my 1994 City Council campaign, I advocated a $15 million bond measure to purchase vacant commercially zoned properties as a market-based solution to prevent the entire Civic Center from being developed.
In 2000, I coauthored, along with then Mayor Pro-Tem Joan House, the Advisory Bond Measure O that appeared on the November Special Election ballot last year. Fifty percent of Malibu voters supported the bond, saying they would support a real $15 million bond measure in the future.
So it is with regret that, after analyzing the current Bond Meaure K, comparing it to other cities’ bond measures and watching the campaingn for it and against it unfold, I find myself opposing Measure K and urging Malibu voters to defeat it on Nov. 6.
Measure K is poorly written. Almost every other city bond presents voters with pre-negotiated specific properties for specific use to be purchased for a specific price. This enables the voters to know what they get for their willingness to increase their property taxes.
Based on my experience, none of the six property owners who own 99 percent of all the remaining vacant commercially zoned land in Malibu are willing sellers.
It is wishful at best and false political advertising at worst to think that these sophisticated property owners will be moved by a voter-approved $15 million bond.
Measure K’s laundry list of uses sounds great–parks, playgrounds, playing fields, trails, community centers and to protect natural areas and wildlife habitat. But the devil is in the bond’s details. By law, if approved, only up to $2.25 million of the $15 million bond can be used for improvements as suggested.
In short, Bond Measure K cannot deliver on the public improvement it promises.
Worst, however, is what I envision happening with the remaining $12.75 million which, by the very language in Measure K, can only be used to purchase property for one of the seven uses listed above. It is no secret that there is a segment of this community that wants to acquire property for a 40-plus-acre wetlands in the Civic Center–the “protect natural areas and wildife habitat” listed in the bond. And there is another larger segment which wants to acquire property in the Civic Center for “parks, playgrounds and playing fields.” By not specifying which properties are to be acquired for which uses, since no pre-negotiations have taken place, this bond will set off a mad legal and political scamble for the $12.75 million, with each side claiming the voters voted for “K” and their purported use.
Finally, let me counter some misleading campaign rhetoric that a $15 million property tax increase is the only way to fund new parks, playgrounds, sports fileds and a senior-teen community center in Malibu.
Since 1998, working with by council colleagues, the city now owns three parks, (Charmlee Nature Preserve, the Las Flores Pocket Park and the newly acquired 12-acre Trancas Canyon Park). The city also leased property and constructed the Papa Jack’s Skateboard Park and continues to lease the Equestrian Center from the school district. And two proposed development agreements, if approved, would result in the retention of three sports fields on six acres at Bluffs Park (Crummer/State Parks) and a new 19-acre park at Point Dume along PCH, complete with a 15,000 square foot senior-teen community center and three sports fields (Malibu Bay Company). That’s a total of seven city parks–all acquired without any new taxes.
These are my concens about Bond Measure K. I hope Malibu voters will consider them carefully before they vote. I still believe that a specific bond measure could work to achieve real results in Malibu and pledge to work with my City Council colleagues and Civic Center property owners to fashion a real bond measure with real results.
Tom Hasse
Malibu councilmember