As the polls closed and ballots were counted, Mayor Andy Stern led the pack with 1,343 votes. Sharon Barovsky and John Mazza were eight votes apart-207 provisional and absentee ballots remained to be counted Wednesday.
By Jonathan Friedman / Assistant Editor
With 207 absentee and provisional ballots left to be counted, nobody had clearly won the City Council election as The Malibu Times went to print late Tuesday night. Mayor Andy Stern was leading the pack, with Councilmember Sharon Barovsky trailing him by 80 votes, but Barovsky was ahead of John Mazza by 56 votes. Ryan Embree and Ed Gillespie are a distant fourth and fifth respectively.
As of Tuesday night, Stern had 1,343 votes, Barovsky had 1,263, Mazza was at 1,207 and Embree had 794, while Gillespie was in last with 349. The remaining ballots were to be counted at City Hall on Wednesday.
Stern has been on the council since 2002 and has served as mayor since 2005. If Barovsky is eventually determined to be the winner, she will be elected to her second full term and third term overall. Barovsky was appointed to the council in 2000 following the death of her husband, Councilmember Harry Barovsky. She was elected to a partial term later that year and to a full term in 2002. If Mazza were to win, he would be joining the council with a history of political involvement. He has attended nearly every council meeting for several years, usually speaking in opposition to the members.
Stern and Barovsky had endorsed each other’s campaigns and often campaigned together. However, unlike most campaigns in Malibu’s history, there was no organized opposition. Mazza, Embree and Gillespie ran separate campaigns in their attempt to oust the opponents.
The major issue in this year’s campaign was the city’s purchase of the Chili Cook-Off site, the 20-acre property that stretches along Pacific Coast Highway from Cross Creek Road to Webb Way. Malibu bought the land from the Malibu Bay Co. for $25 million late last month. No candidate was opposed to the purchase, but it was disputed whether the city properly handled the acquisition.
Malibu had acquired several grant guarantees from various state agencies to go toward the purchase. But it soon lost $8 million worth because of a conflict with the state over the appraisal process. Although the city could have attempted to do another appraisal, city officials said they were no longer interested because of the state’s request for easements on the property. To make up for the loss, the city increased the amount of certificates of participation it issued to accumulate the funds from $8 million to nearly $17.5 million. The COPs must be paid back over the next 30 years.
Although the incumbents said this was the best plan, the challengers said the city could have made its debt much smaller had city officials done a better job with acquiring grants.
Another contentious issue was the Point Dume Safe Routes to School program. The proposal to create a trail system along the streets of Point Dume for students to use to walk to the elementary school was supported by Stern and Barovsky and Gillespie. But Mazza and Embree say in its current form, the proposed program fails to address too many issues, including the results of a 2002 Point Dume traffic study.
The candidates also disagreed over the city’s problem with constant staff turnover. Mazza and Embree said the problem was due to a lack of leadership in the city, while the incumbents said it was simply an issue of people taking jobs in other cities for more money than Malibu’s small budget can offer.
Of Malibu’s 8,418 registered voters, 2,881 residents-34.2 percent-cast ballots.
Daniella Bosio contributed to this story.