Arnold G. York
From film fests to politics
Celebration a smash hit
The first Malibu Celebration of Film was a smash hit, and hopefully we’ll have an operational theater for next year’s event so we can locate the festival in the center of Malibu. The organizers pulled off this first event with a handful of volunteers, a dedicated staff, not nearly enough money to do the job, and against the conventional wisdom and some real doubting Thomases who thought it would never happen. They also had some very pleasant surprises. People stepped up to help from unexpected places, which fortunately counter balanced some others who promised big and delivered little. Still it was a nail biter. Anyone who has ever put on an event in Malibu knows that people don’t RSVP; in fact, many don’t make up their minds about attending an event until the last moment, so you never quite know whether you’ve got a success or failure on your hands until people start showing up.
A bevy of Robert Altman stars showed up to honor the director at the Saturday gala event at Lilly Lawrence’s castle, including Elliott Gould, John W. Reilly, Lindsay Lohan, Malcolm McDowell and Virginia Madsen.
De Butts Terrace
Who would have believed that changing the name of De Butts Terrace would end up as a hot button media issue? The interesting part is that almost 20 years ago, when Karen and I first bought The Malibu Times, we inherited a columnist by the name of Marianne deButts who wrote a wonderfully little homey column called “Squeaky Mesa,” which was about her family and friends and life on De Butts Terrace. Not long after Marianne she wrote her last column, she drove down to the newspaper and dropped it through the mail slot, then returned home, and she passed away.
Legacy Park (teams in the running)
The Legacy Park (the old Chili Cook-off site) project is moving ahead and the city is in the process of picking the firm that’s going to be a consultant on the project, which includes designing the wastewater treatment plant and the large ponds and streams that will run through the site. Then it’s up to the landscape architects to build a world-class park, with walking trails and meadows, and plantings on the site.
Conservancy battle fires up
The turf battle between the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the homeowners in Ramirez Canyon and the city of Malibu is growing from a little brushfire into a major conflagration. It all revolves around the appropriate use of the former Barbra Streisand home, which is located at the back of Ramirez Canyon and which the conservancy and its executive director, Joe Edmiston, use as a business office. The conservancy wants to turn it into an event facility, despite the fact that Ramirez is a box canyon with only one serviceable road in and out. The city had earlier put a stop to Edmiston’s ambitions for the center when they beat the conservancy in Superior Court, and again when the appeals court agreed with the city. Well, Edmiston is never one to accept defeat graciously so he’s come up with a new plan to end-run the city by forming some regional parks. He is trying to enhance the Ramirez Park as well as two others through what is called a Public Works Plan. That way he no longer needs a city permit and pretty much the conservancy will be able to do whatever it wants in Ramirez Canyon. The agency that has the say over Edmiston’s plan, which has the power to approve the regional park, is the California Coastal Commission, which historically has had a hard time ever saying no to Joe. Edmiston has always been a major player in creating and passing all those gurgling water bonds you all keep voting for, so he controls a big pot of environmental money. In fact, the water bond on November’s ballot has a great big multimillion-dollar hunk of change in it for Edmiston and his minions.
But the Malibu residents have also gotten smarter. This time they hired former Malibu City Attorney Steve Amerikaner, who is a smart litigator, and they’re beginning to look at things like where Edmiston’s money is coming from (principally bonds) and how it’s being spent (legally or not). Bond money comes with all sorts of legal restrictions and it’s not supposed to be someone’s big cookie jar.
Recently it was charged that Edmiston and the conservancy were using Proposition 50 bond funds illegally. State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who is running for state treasurer, immediately jumped to the conservancy’s defense and said there was nothing illegal going on. He may very well be right, but Lockyer will no longer be the attorney general, and it looks like the person who will replace him is going to be none other than former governor, Jerry Brown. Now Brown has never been someone who just goes along with the crowd, and I’m guessing that he’s going to take a much harder look at some of these state agencies and what they’re doing with bond money. Additionally, although Brown is a longtime environmentalist, several of the green state agencies, like the Coastal Commission, thwarted him and beat him up pretty good when he tried to make some improvements around Oakland. And old Jerry Brown is a man with a long political memory, so I’m speculating that the game could get very interesting if he becomes the new attorney general.