Asks for a gag order
By Arnold G. York/publisher
Whereas they labored for many years,
Whereas they sat through many, many meetings
Whereas they argued and fought and shouted and intrigued
Whereas they ignored everyone and everything but their own inner voices
Whereas they believed that they knew the true path
Whereas they had distilled Malibu’s future to its purest essence
Whereas they were called the Local Coastal Plan Committee
Whereas they knew their plan was perfect
Whereas they named it the Year 2000 Administrative Draft
Whereas they released it to the world
And, whereas no one gave a damn.
Be it resolved they had no choice but to take radical action.
Things had changed.
The old council was gone.
Their friends were gone from power.
The city had changed.
The new Malibu City Council said, “Thank you very much and don’t let the door hit you on the way out”
The professionals scoffed and said their plan was ridiculous, the work of a committee of amateurs.
The Coastal Commission staff said it was dead on arrival.
The public sent their patron saints, Walt Keller and Carolyn Van Horn, into retirement and decided to go with a new team.
And they seethed and several moved to their Elba, the Malibu Township Council, to plot their return to power.
And then it happened.
Last year, the Governor and the Legislature said, “We’re fed up and tired of waiting.”
“We’re tired of getting phone calls from Malibu with people complaining, particularly rich people whose calls we have to take,” so
They passed a new law called AB 885 that told the Coastal Commission to go ahead and write the new Local Coastal Plan for Malibu and if Malibu doesn’t like it, tough!
And the Coastal Commission went out and hired a consultant to write a new Local Coastal Plan all by herself.
And, ironically, the person they hired to write it was Malibu’s former planning director, Joyce Parker, who, if she were still here, would be writing the city’s version herself.
And the city rushed ahead to submit another new version called the 2001 Draft to the Coastal Commission in hopes that maybe that could have some say in the final product.
And the Malibu Township Council was not happy because the city didn’t love and embrace their earlier draft so they took to the barricades.
First they tried throwing a tantrum at various City Council meetings but nobody cared so they gave it up and apparently went to plan B.
They sued and that’s where we are now.
The Malibu Township Council went to court and is asking the court to muzzle the City of Malibu, to restrain them from offering up their own plan to the Coastal Commission.
And instead to let the Malibu Township Council speak for the citizens of Malibu.
Apparently, the Malibu Township Council in its infinite wisdom knows what’s best for us, and wants the city gagged so there won’t be any confusion in the minds of the Coastal Commission. Apparently, we the people are not capable of choosing our own leaders or the corollary to that is, we persist in choosing leaders unacceptable to the Malibu Township Council. So we’ve left them with no choice but to go ahead and ask a court to gag our leaders.
I must admit that I am often not of one mind with our City Council. But they do have a right to be smart and they also have a right to be stupid. They even have the right to disagree with me, although they do so at their peril. Perhaps they even have a right to disagree with the gray heads on the Malibu Township Council, despite what some of those on the MTC may believe. And, if the City Council does something really silly, we have an opportunity to vote for some -one else next time.
We certainly don’t need some self-anointed and appointed body, with some legacy money from somebody’s will burning a hole in their pocket, to dictate to the rest of us via the court system what Malibu’s future should be.
P.S. If you’re going to send me letters telling me that the Malibu Township Council is really a broadly based democratic organization, please also send me the rest, like the membership directory, the articles and the by-laws and the numbers of members so we can call and check the facts.