Arnold G. York
Looking for the upswing
Normally, this time of year things start getting quiet, but there doesn’t seem to be anything normal about this year.
The stock market is suffering some sort of chronic disorder. Although showing occasional signs of being over the worst of it, these types of struggles are typically followed by a relapse, with the Dow spiraling down and consumer confidence falling with it. This constant roller coaster ride freezes up everything, even in Malibu, which for a while looked somewhat immune to the ride but is now showing the effects.
For one thing, the real estate market has slowed to a crawl. We might actually hit 100 single-family residences being sold this year in the Malibu ZIP code (90265), which is the lowest number of annual sales in the last 20 years. Check out Rick Wallace’s column in last week’s issue of The Malibu Times for the analysis and the statistics online at www.malibutimes.com (click “Archives” and use “Rick Wallace” for search terms). If history is any guide, we’re probably (and hopefully) getting close to the bottoming out of the real estate market. I’m hoping for the beginning of the up-climb in about mid-2009, although I must admit some friends think I’m a bit Pollyannaish about this.
Another running indicator of the state of the real estate market is the number of foreclosure notices we’ve had in our paper. Last week the legals were more than two and half pages, although most of the foreclosures were in Calabasas and in parts of the Conejo Valley, which is pretty typical. A few Malibu houses may go into foreclosure but, in the main, people here either take their houses off the market or just sit and wait. Credit is still tight but there are loans out there and if you have cash there are many good buys out in this market.
The local restaurants are feeling the impact and traffic is down. People are going out less often and ordering less when they do go out. The same for many of the local retail stores which have seen a major drop-off in sales since Sept. 15 when the stock market took its big drop. The sales discounts that normally don’t show up until after Christmas have already begun in many of the local stores.
If we want to see some of these stores survive this downturn we’re all going to have to try harder to shop locally. If we don’t, not only are some of the shops not going to make, it’s also going to impact our local municipal revenue since the largest portion comes from sales tax revenue and a piece of the real estate taxes.
Oops
We made an “oops” in last week’s newspaper. In Barry Haldeman’s column about the state of the movie industry we had a minor typo. Haldeman made reference in his column to $100 million movie budgets and we put that as $1 million movie budgets. Sadly, in the movie business these days, $1 million is about the cost of a day’s shoot, if your director is really frugal. We’re fortunate in Malibu in having industry insiders like Haldeman write a column for us. If any of you out there are knowledgeable about the TV and movie industry, or the music or digital industries, call or e-mail me (agyork@malibutimes.com) or our editor Laura Tate (laura@malibutimes.com) and let’s talk.
Coming attractions
There was a big meeting downtown at the Regional Water Quality Control Board headquarters and, as we have in the past, the citizens of Malibu got onto a bus to go downtown en masse and let their feelings be heard. Although nothing much happened at the meeting other than the board talking about more studies, it really is only round one in what promises to be a long battle over the way Malibu handles wastewater and runoff of groundwater. The big issue is not that the problems need to be fixed. I think both the board and Malibu agree on that. The real problem is who is going to be paying for the major costs of doing the cleanups and whether the board and the enviro groups like Heal the Bay and Santa Monica Baykeeper can force those costs onto the citizens of Malibu when a great deal of the problems are really regional problems. This is only the beginning and I expect to be writing on this issue both here and in Sacramento in the future.
Trancas Park
The downtown meeting was child’s play compared to the battle about Trancas Park, a new city park in the West End of Malibu. I always thought parks are a good thing, but this one is turning into our own version of the Gaza strip. The meeting degenerated into name calling and tears, and all the combatants-the dog park people, the Malibu West crowd and the sports field people, who include the game field people and the practice field people-did not appear to be living in “green” harmony or anything even close to it. Stay tuned.
Last but not least
The Malibu Times is losing its longtime reporter and assistant editor, Jonathan Friedman who, after six years of toiling in the field of journalism is moving on to the environmental field where they actually pay living wages unlike in journalism, which almost requires a vow of poverty. His competence and good humor will be sorely missed by all of us at the newspaper and I know by many of you in the community.