I am shocked and mortified by the callous and untrue statements made by Walter Keller about the business study and the demise of Crown Books in Malibu. My daughter and many of her friends at OLM loved to go into Crown Books and browse among the children’s books. For your information, Mr. Keller, they also purchased books at Crown Books. Now my daughter must travel to Westlake, Thousand Oaks or Santa Monica to purchase books. It is really an inconvenience.
The pier is a disaster for residents and for tourists. Who would want to come to Malibu to see a pier that has been padlocked for so long? Perhaps Walt Keller and Joan House should revisit the poem, “No Man is an Island.” For too long people on our City Council have acted like ostriches and buried their heads in the sand. Walt Keller promised at a meeting at the home of Elsie Muslin that he would turn over a new leaf, if he were elected, after his ignominious defeat. Walt Keller has not changed his spots. He is a man who lives in the past in a vacuum.
With the highway shut down or narrowed for so much of this year, we should be considering options to make Malibu a self-contained Utopia.
My wife, my daughter and I love going to Bristol Farms, Costco, Crown Books and other elementary conveniences that a modern suburban town has to offer in the 20th century. I sometimes wonder if Joan House and Walt Keller have spent too much time reading “Rumpelstiltskin” and watching the movie “Back to the Future.” It is time to develop the area around the Civic Center to make Malibu a functional, modern city. If it takes new members on the City Council in the next election, so be it.
The statement by Mr. Keller is that he is totally against development is typical of his anachronistic outlook on life.
Reopening the pier to commerce, to residents and to those “God-awful” tourists that Walt Keller abhors is a palatable idea to this individual. If Mr. Keller and Ms. House want to live like hermits, I suggest that they move up to Idaho and commune with the denizens of that area.
We do not live on the island of Niihau in Hawaii where the residents have no running water, flush toilets, electricity or modern conveniences. Sometimes, I feel that our City Council believes that we should go back to the past and stay there to avoid the conveniences of modern life. Maybe we should turn off the electricity, gas, water, garbage pickup, telephone service to the homes of Walt Keller and Joan House, and then they can have the desired result they want for the rest of us to share in our community.
It is high time that we had a final development plan for the Civic Center in this town. Wasted gasoline, time and the loss of tax dollars forced by their antiquated policies are a major inconvenience to many of the residents of our community. Maybe we should revert to the days of the Rindge Family, bring out the shotguns and keep everybody out of Malibu.
J. Patrick Maginnis