The budget includes an economic study to prepare for Coastal Commission demands in new Malibu coastal plan. Planning director details restrictions of the plan.
By Cristina Forde/Special to The Malibu Times
The Malibu City Council considered approval of a $15 million budget for the fiscal year 2002-2003, agreed to move ahead with two Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) on the complicated Bluffs Park city/state/private plan and reorganized certain departments at Monday night’s meeting.
The planning director also spoke about the scale of restrictions Malibu residents will suffer if the Coastal Commission’s version of the Local Coastal Plan goes into effect.
Keeping the budget down
The council, in a 3-2 vote, with Mayor Jeff Jennings and Mayor Pro-Tem Ken Kearsley dissenting, decided to eliminate a budget proposal to fund the position of Special Projects Manager, formerly held by Barry Hogan, who is no longer working for the city. This, coupled with the consolidation of the Public Works Department and the Engineering Program into one department, will save the city approximately $175,000.
With instructions that implementation be delayed until after the Local Coastal Plan (LCP) process is completed in September, the council agreed to find $50,000 to fund the Economic Element of the General Plan, which had not been included in the original budget.
According to Arnold York, publisher of The Malibu Times, who spoke to the council as chair of the Business Round Table, the Economic Element will provide valuable data the city will need to cope with the demands of the Coastal Commission’s forthcoming LCP.
“We need hard data or they’re going to eat us alive,” York said.
The existing economic material, he said, is anecdotal.
Mark Ball, also speaking for the Business Round Table, and is the former chair, said, “With the city facing declining revenues, it is remiss not to capitalize on that which benefits the community.”
Kearsley also supported the Economic Element.
“The Coastal Commission is going to blow by us,” he said. “We need the Economic Element for long-range planning. A lot of things are going to change after September.”
In another effort to cut back on the budget, the council asked the Administration & Finance Subcommittee to report back on June 24 with suggestions for moderating the existing city health coverage, which has increased in cost by 50 percent.
“We have the Rolls Royce of plans,” Councilmember Joan House said.
The budget material includes a comparison of Malibu coverage with that of nearby cities.
The council also asked the committee for a summary of the broad goals of the budget in order to provide more clarity.
Bluffs Park plans under microscope
The complicated land swap deal at Bluffs Park, intended to try and save the ball fields at the park by moving them, has been revised and the council decided to send out the revised deal, known as “Crummer 2,” for an environmental impact report (EIR). An EIR will also be completed for the first deal, known as “Crummer 1.”
The California Department of Parks and Recreation, which owns the land now occupied by public baseball diamonds and soccer fields, endorses the “Crummer 2” plan, according to Los Angeles District Superintendent Russ Guiney. Malibu Parks and Recreation Commissioner Doug O’Brien said, in the “Crummer 2” plan, “the fields are laid out absolutely backwards … the foul balls would all go onto PCH.”
In a properly configured field, he said, “home faces north and center field faces south.”
Councilmember Sharon Barovsky, who grilled proponents regarding the amount of grading the new plan would require and solicited assurance from Mayor Jennings the city is not committing itself to detailed terms, reluctantly voted with the rest of the council to proceed with EIRs for both Crummer plans.
Coastal Commission LCP-it’s all there to see
Planning Director Drew Purvis’s report on chapters six and seven of the Coastal Commission’s version of the Local Coastal Plan revealed the scale of restrictions to be visited upon Malibu.
The LCP includes policies relating to the phasing out of outdoor billboards and protecting the view from scenic roads (i.e., all roads in Malibu except Malibu Road and public roads on Point Dume, as per the Coastal plan).
Therefore, under the plan, the development area on most, if not all, remaining lots in Malibu will be limited to 10,000 square feet or 25 percent of the lot area, whichever is less. According to Purvis’s report, “For a beachfront lot of 4,000 square feet in size, it would limit the development area to a 1,000-square-foot footprint, restricting the maximum square footage of the structure to 2,000 square feet, including the garage.”
Residents blast “garage” construction
In the public forum of the council, several neighbors who live near a residential Grasswood Avenue lot in Point Dume expressed outrage about the construction of a 28-car garage on the lot and asked the city to halt construction. The owner of the lot lives on Birdview Avenue. The only other structure on the lot, said a neighbor, is an 800-square-foot house for “an attendant to watch over the 28 cars.”
Sam Hall Kaplan called the project “an obscenity” and a “perversion,” saying “it is an insult to Malibu that fulfills a clich about Malibu as an indulgent, spoiled community.”
In other City Council business:
- Members approved annual assessments for Districts 98-1, 98-2 and 98-3 (Big Rock Mesa, Calle Del Barco and Malibu Road). City Engineer Rick Morgan said that in Big Rock Mesa and Calle Del Barco, there was no reportable land movement and new wells were completed.
- At the request of Councilmember House, City Attorney Christi Hogin described the origin of the comment that the first locally generated Land Use Plan (or Local Coastal Plan) was “DOA” when it was sent to the Coastal Commission. “Gary Timm [of the Coastal Commission office in Ventura] used those magic words,” Hogin said.
It was during a meeting in Malibu in March of 2000, the subject of which was the first draft, “when [Malibu] was told the draft was unacceptable,” Hogin said.
- Mayor Jennings and House will join Coastal Commission members on a bus tour of Malibu on June 12. The van will be at Malibu Bluffs Park at 1:15 p.m. and proceed to Nicholas Canyon County Beach by 2:45, followed by a stop at the Point Dume headlands and back to the Civic Center by 3:45 p.m. The public is welcome to follow in cars and interact with the Coastal Commissioners.
- The council approved accelerating Morning View Drive Improvements from the 2003-2004 fiscal year up to 2002-2003 to ensure safe traffic in the school zone, “will be finished by December 1 of this calendar year.”
- The council voted to join the Malibu Chamber of Commerce.