Showing of the cards
From the Publisher/ Arnold York
Much like a poker game, at the California Coastal Commission hearing this week in San Luis Obispo, all the players are going to have to show their cards for the Malibu Local Coastal Program (LCP).
Up until now, there have been discussions, meetings, preliminary votes, workshops, phone conferences, office visits, proposed drafts and revised proposed drafts regarding the LCP moving among a variety of factions, including the City of Malibu, the coastal commissioners and coastal staff. But everyone knows that state law requires an approved final LCP plan by Sept. 9, which is to be voted on at the September meeting of the Coastal Commission in Los Angeles.
The presentation to be made this week by coastal commission staff is sort of their final version of the proposed plan that is to include input from all the different sources, as well the changes, compromises and altered language-in effect, the draft of the final document.
If past history is any precedent, the final draft that will be presented is going to be hated by most everyone, and, this last month, between the August and September meetings, it is going to be bare knuckle politics at its finest. Everyone is getting into the act, including the City of Malibu, the County of Los Angeles, possibly other coastal counties and cities, the Coastal Commission and its various factions, the Mountains Recreational people, the horse people, the Farm Bureau, the California Association of Realtors, the wine growers, the active and passive sports people, various local and state lobbying groups, and, probably most important, Gov. Gray Davis, his opposition, Bill Simon, Speaker of the Assembly Herb Wesson, Sen. Pro Tem John Burton, and a bevy of other politicians, including our own Sen. Sheila Kuehl and Assemblymember Fran Pavley, and a virtual cast of hundreds, if not thousands.
And last, but not least, will be all those lobbyists and land-use lawyers making lazy circles in the sky, contemplating that retirement home they’ve always wanted. It’s not going to be pretty.
The season’s gala
The Malibu Film Festival, now in its third year, takes place solely in Malibu this year and is going to run for a week, from Aug. 16 to Aug. 22. It kicks off with what promises to be a start-studded gala in the castle up on the hill, directly above the Civic Center. Lilly Lawrence, who really knows how to throw a party, is hosting the gala. I went to the kick-off a couple of years ago and it was incomparable. The fresh flowers alone were enough to start a botanical garden. If you’ve always been curious about the castle, this is your opportunity to see it for a really good cause. The event is a fundraiser, so the tickets are a wee bit steep at $250 per head, but this is anything but the usual rubber chicken gala. It’s a must see. For more information, check the advertisement on page A14 in the back of our newspaper, or go online to the film festival’s Web site at www.malibufilmfestival.org. The films will be screening all week at the New Malibu Theatre at Cross Creek, and the final awards ceremony will take place at Taverna Tony.
Malibu property prices rising
L.A. County Tax Assessor Rick Auerbach’s report for 2002 just came out and it’s official-the value of Malibu property went up 8.2 percent this past year, according to his count. That puts Malibu among the top 20 cities in the county as far as value growth (actually our percentage is in the top six). This means, if you own the average $2,000,000 Malibu home, your wealth just increased by $164,000, which for most of us is a good thing because it will begin to cover some of the shorts from the stock market.
P.S. By our own Rick Wallace’s analysis, the assessor is overly conservative. We have seen much stronger growth in values than that, this past year in Malibu.