There is a lot of misinformation circulating about the Coastal Commission and the City’s local coastal program and I have done some inquiry to educate myself on the facts. It appears that ever since we became a city, a number of City Councils let years go by without submitting a Local Coastal Plan (LCP) to the Coastal Commission. While this is not commendable, it is not exactly a capital crime. It was only this current City Council and the one before it that actually completed and transmitted a draft LCP to the Coastal Commission. By that time, however, the Legislature had already empowered the Commission to write the plan themselves-an unprecedented exercise of State Control. This is especially unusual since there are still several coastal cities that have not submitted an LCP to the State. What has happened in the past must be put aside. What we have to deal with today is a plan that the State is forcing upon us and seeks to put into place by September, whether we like it or not.
The City understands this and has been working very hard to protect our interests, since most people do not even realize the monumental changes that will come to Malibu if the State’s LCP becomes the law. Nevertheless there seems to be a small group (apparently supporters of unsuccessful council candidates) who are getting their facts confused. They certainly have the right to speak their opinion, but their inaccuracies are misleading to the community.
Case in point: Efrom Fader’s letter to the Surfside News (and, unfortunately, the Surfside News’ confused account of the TLC lawsuit against the City). As an attorney, I can set the record straight on a couple of obvious points. First, the court “sustained the City’s demurrers without leave to amend.” Translation: “TLC” was thrown out of court and told not to come back. I just do not understand how the Surfside News can make the statement in a news article that “both sides can claim victory….” The City prevailed, period.
Second, Mr. Fader lists a series of “facts” that he claims that the court found to be true. Wrong. The Demurrer was a pretrial motion brought by the City to test the TLC case. In bringing the motion, the City was saying to the judge: “Even if we assume all of the claims made by the TLC are true, they still do not have a case against the City and should be dismissed.” So for purposes of the motion only, the Court assumed that all the facts claimed by the TLC were true in order to determine the validity of their lawsuit. The result: the Court ruled that even if TLC were correct on the facts, they did not have a case. To describe the situation otherwise is to seriously mislead us.
We are losing sight of the real issue here. The State is imposing upon us a plan that will throw kids off Bluffs Park, limit the kind of plants we can grow, downzone areas of Malibu to remove multiple family dwellings, dictate the color of our houses, severely limit the use of our land and generally let the State tell us what we can do in Malibu. That’s the issue.
We need to support Mayor Jennings, the City Council and other citizens in their efforts to stop an unaccountable State Bureaucracy from taking over our town. Please, please educate yourselves on the facts.
E. Barry Haldeman