At a special meeting last week Wednesday, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education unanimously approved the next steps to get the legal endorsement to use temporary field lights for evening football games at Malibu High School next season.
High school football players, school Principal Mark Kelly and parents spoke to the board in favor of approving a mitigated negative declaration, or an environmental analysis of the project that states the project will cause no substantial impact to area topography, as well as an exemption from the City of Malibu’s local zoning laws.
The current plan, approved by the board, allows for temporary night lighting for 16 games per year, with a maximum total usage of 62 hours of light.
“Supervised night activities deter students from unsupervised and potentially personally destructive activities, [and] foster a sense of community and instill pride in our young people,” said Kelly, urging the board to approve the project. “There is no comparison between a Saturday afternoon game and one under the lights on a Friday night. ‘Friday Night Lights’ is a staple of American high schools and our young people in Malibu deserve to have that experience.”
The board’s approval will now enable the school district to proceed in applying to the California Coastal Commission for an amendment to an existing coastal development permit that prohibits both temporary and permanent lighting on the field.
Malibu High has used temporary lighting on the field since 2003 without the amendment, to the chagrin of some of the neighbors. The amendment, if approved by the commission, would provide the state’s backing in using lights in the future, which the district said it hopes will be before next football season.
The meeting on Wednesday was called for at the board meeting the week as a response to a letter issued by the City of Malibu questioning statements in the district’s mitigated negative declaration and confusion over whether the district was seeking exemption from municipal zoning or the state mandated Local Coastal Plan, which also regulates land use.
The city had previously made comments that the district would need to get a variance for lights before applying to the Coastal Commission, but the district said it did not need city approval on the project.
After meetings between board members, district officials and city representatives in the days before the meeting, the City of Malibu sent a letter to the district affirming that the commission had the authority on the application to allow lighting.
The possibility of installing permanent field lights for subsequent sports seasons is also being pursued by the school district as part of a construction project at the high school, supported by Measure BB, a bond measure that passed in both cities in 2006.
Since the fall, the district has hosted a number of community workshops on the project, which will support the renovation of school classrooms and making the campus more green friendly, among other features.
The issue of lighting the football field came up during these workshops as a source of conflict between students and parents who want evening sports games and Malibu Park neighborhood residents who fear the lights will be on too many nights a year and cloud their views of the evening sky.
The new plan for temporary lights includes a monitoring program to ensure that the number of nights and hours of use is followed. None of the residents who oppose the use of night lighting on the field were present on Wednesday.