City, district clash over say-so on Malibu High School field lights

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School district approves proposed budget.

By Nora Fleming / Special to The Malibu Times

In response to concerns by Malibu city staff, Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education members last Thursday tabled decisions on the next steps to get official backing to place temporary athletic lights at Malibu High School. The board scheduled a special meeting this week Wednesday to discuss the lights. Board members also approved a proposed budget for next school year.

Last Thursday, board members cited concerns about miscommunication with the City of Malibu over the procedure the district was undertaking to place temporary lighting at the school for next season’s football games. On Wednesday of this week, the board met to decide whether to approve a consultant-drafted mitigated negative declaration on the lighting plan for temporary lights, as well as consider an exemption from the city’s zoning law that prohibits night lighting.

Since last fall, the district has been going through the process to draft a plan for temporary lights as well one for permanent lights at Malibu High, first proposed as part of the campus improvements project at the school. Any lighting on the field at Malibu High requires an amendment to an existing coastal development permit, issued in 2000 and which prohibits field night lighting.

The issue of lighting the field, with both temporary and permanent lights, has divided parents and students, who want the lights to illuminate evening games, and Malibu Park neighbors, who protest the number of nights the lights will be used and the environmental impacts they believe they could cause. The current plan for temporary lighting proposed includes 16 nights of lighting a year, at a maximum of 62 hours. (The plan and process for permanent lighting is concurrently being examined.)

Temporary lights for football games have been used for the past six years without the amendment, but district officials said they were unaware of the restriction until the fall, the first time residents made complaints about the plans.

The mitigated negative declaration, required by state law, asks the district to prove the project would have the least environmental impact possible and a sufficient monitoring plan in place to sustain the proposed lighting plan.

Also, the district and city are in debate over whether the zoning at the high school is municipal or state-based, as Malibu’s Local Coastal Program was mandated and approved by the California Coastal Commission, a state agency, but was instituted after the current lighting permit at the school was issued.

“It’s the district’s understanding, under the advice of our consultants, that the permission for temporary lights is an amendment to an existing coastal development permit and under the jurisdiction of the Coastal Commission, not the city,” said board president Ralph Mechur.

Under the Malibu LCP, the city has jurisdiction over certain projects.

“The district thinks they are exempt from the city’s LCP and the city planners do not,” Mayor Andy Stern said.

“We would like to work with the school district in the most efficient way possible, but believe it would be more prudent for the school district to go through the city and apply for a variance from the city for 16 nights of lights a year before going to the Coastal Commission,” Stern added.

Stern said he believed the city would have comments to make to the Coastal Commission if the district did not apply for a city-issued variance.

Next year’s budget approved

Last Thursday, the board approved the proposed budget for 2009-2010, but the district’s financial future is still uncertain and inevitable cuts to programs, services and staff are looming in the future.

Since early February, the board has discussed possible budget reductions to deal with declining state funding, which to date, has amounted to several million in reductions in both the current and subsequent school years.

The first cuts to the budget were approved in early June, and though next year’s budget has been adopted, the district hopes to cut $8 million to $12 million more during the next three years to make up for shortfalls.

The approved reductions in June total more than $4 million, and future cuts suggested by the main office could include reductions to employee salaries and benefits, cuts to programs, and shutting down the smallest schools within the district. Larger class sizes could also be a result of budget adjustments. At last week’s meeting, teacher’s union President Harry Keiley presented a list of the union’s suggestions for additional cuts and said he believed the district had not examined sufficient alternatives for reductions.

Additionally, while not factored into the current budget projections, at its third budget workshop in June, the board discussed possible revenue enhancers and the possibility of placing another parcel tax on the ballot for a special election in the spring or for the June primary. Currently, the Measure R parcel tax, passed last year, contributes roughly $10.3 million annually to the school district.

The district will have 45 days to amend the newly adopted budget if the state continues to cut funding to public education statewide.