Reva Feldman, city manager, and the city council owe Malibu West an explanation for organizing, and paying for, an event that was advertised as a “Trancas Field Community Outreach-Workshop,” but turned out to be much less.
It’s not every day in Malibu that you get such an enthusiastic turnout like last Wednesday night. Maybe 100 neighbors arrived in high, friendly spirits expecting, as advertised, a workshop, an opportunity to share ideas as to what Trancas Field could become, since the city is in the process of acquiring the 35-acre property.
One man said he drove an hour and a half to get there on time.
Instead, at the Malibu West Beach Club photographs were mounted and attendees were given five red stickers to show what we didn’t want Trancas Field to be and five green ones to show what we wanted. We were instructed to put them on the photos, for example: A swimming pool, or an equestrian center. Except, let’s say, there were 50 photos, so how did a measly 10 stickers per person indicate anything? Everyone ran out of stickers before we’d seen half the posters.
Very quickly, most of us ended up feeling angry and disrespected. I asked a woman who looked official, “Who thought this up?” She identified herself as Lisa Soghor, assistant city manager, and explained, “I’m new. I don’t know anyone here. Reva and the city council put this together.”
That rinky-dink event wasted everyone’s time, and probably turned off future participation, which might have been the point.
As president of the MalibuGreenMachine, I did a major landscaping project on PCH, and I attended the workshop because I was looking forward to ideas being exchanged in a friendly environment.
Instead, it took less than 10 minutes to put up my stupid stickers. It felt like Trancas Field is already a done deal by insiders, and this “workshop” was only to give the impression that the city is interested in community input.
Jo Giese