Proposed Malibu view ordinance
Come next Monday the Malibu City Council may be making some major decisions concerning the proposed Malibu view ordinance. There are some very basic questions the council is going to have to tackle, and no matter what the answer there are going to be a lot of very unhappy people.
The seminal question is, should the government even be involved in this kind of an ordinance, in which invariably neighbors are going to go up against other neighbors, and both sides of any dispute are going to try to get the city government onto their side?
I hate to sound like Ron Paul, and perhaps it’s the liberal/libertarian side of my personality, but I really wonder what the hell the government is doing refereeing neighborhood trees. I understand there are a bunch of people in Malibu who are just bad neighbors, who refuse to cut, thin or even trim their trees, but there are people who love their trees the way some people love their views, and really what we are deciding to do is take the side of the view lovers over the tree lovers.
Still, we had an advisory ballot a few years ago and 60 percent or so said they wanted views restored. So this being a republic, when the majority speaks, politicians listen.
Of course, it begins as it always does with the zealots who want it all, until they find out that although they are very upset with everyone in front of them blocking their views, they never think about the guy behind them who probably wants his own trees cut back. But of course that’s different.
So to try and get a better handle on this, I downloaded the council’s staff report on the view ordinance. After reading the seven-page report my conclusion was it could have been written in Hungarian and it couldn’t have been any more obtuse. It isn’t that the staff isn’t competent, in fact we have a very competent planning director. The problem is that view ordinances are very complicated, filled with definitions and esoteric language, and difficult to understand and interpret.
You might well ask how I know that. It’s simple. The proposed ordinance-the enclosures, the planning commission findings and reports, the environmental documents, etc.-runs 179 pages. Don’t think of it in terms of how long it’s going to take you to read the ordinance and the rest. Think of it in terms of how much you’re going to have to pay a lawyer, at $450 per hour, to read the ordinance and then perhaps appear on your behalf.
While I suspect the council will pass a view ordinance despite my apprehension, hopefully they’ll be smart about it. No matter what ordinance they pass, it’s going to take a few years to work out the kinks, and during the interim period there are going to be a number of lawsuits. Whatever the city does, they should try to avoid getting caught in the middle between competing neighbors. The city doesn’t need to spend a fortune on your behalf because you think your neighbor ought to cut back their trees. I believe unless we are clever-which means letting all final decisions be made by an independent outside party, and not some city body-we are going to be sucked into a lot of lawsuits. If you don’t believe me, asked the city attorney if her firm will cover all of the litigation related to the ordinance on a flat fee basis and not an hourly rate.
There is a last piece to this proposed ordinance that’s got “nightmare” written all over it. That is that the city is proposing restoring the views that existed when we became a city in 1991, or whenever you bought your house if it was after 1991. That’s the kind of ordinance that sends lawyers and expert witnesses salivating. I can tell you unequivocally that to try and prove what existed 21 years ago, particularly with something as questionable and manipulable as a line of sight, is one expensive proposition. It will involve photographic expert witnesses, tree growth experts, aerial photos experts, contour mapping experts, rainfall tables, etc., etc., etc.
Can it be done? Sure it can. All it takes is lots of money.
So my advice to the council is: Go very slowly and carefully. Be careful where any of you may have a personal stake because of your own trees or view problems, think long and hard, and then check with all the cities that have ordinances so we can avoid their mistakes.
By that I don’t mean just a phone call. I mean send our planning director or hire a retired planning director to visit those cities and really vet their ordinances and our proposed ordinance. This ordinance is going to be with us for a long time, and there is no rush to push something through to please a few angry people, or to finish it before our next council election.