Having been a minority member of the Local Coastal Plan Committee for four years, I have an insider’s perspective to share. The then City Council (Van Horn & Keller dominated) asked us to use the L.A. County Certified LUP of 1986 as the basis of our work. Even though many of the policies had been proven illegal over the intervening years, the majority of the committee ignored the city planning staff and legal advice provided by the land use attorney during the General Plan adoption hearings and they inserted deleted General Plan policies. They even insisted that the LCP would supersede the Malibu General Plan if there were conflicts in policies.
The city hired an experienced coastal plan consultant to work with the committee but his advice was ignored. It is no surprise the committee also ignored the advice of the coastal staff when they came to give guidance as to the Coastal Act policies. This ignorance resulted in the coastal staff rejection of the preliminary draft at a meeting in Malibu on March 16, 2000. Subsequent to that meeting the committee continued to try to resurrect their ‘very own’ LCP draft. However, they had no concept of working with city staff, consultants or coastal staff. When they submitted the reworked ‘administrative draft’ (without any City Council public hearings) the result was what we are living with today–special state legislation the Coastal Commission pursued–AB988.
Time ran out for Malibu because of the Keller/Van Horn block. AB 988 attempts to take local control from our hands but at the same time it allows consultation with our City. The Malibu Township Council’s legal actions insisting that our City Council does not have the right to submit a Local Coastal Plan of their own was rightly rejected by the judge on Monday. The MTC board is no less than a reconfigured LCP committee dominated by Keller/Van Horn supporters. They are wrong to waste City of Malibu money defending our right of local control. These legal defense funds could be better spent on our schools or playgrounds. This is the same old problem from this same old group of people.
The same Keller/Van Horn clan did not listen to legal counsel on Lunita-Bailard and now we are looking at 38 condos instead of 6 single-family homes. Now we may face a Coastal Commission LCP that we do not support. Malibu citizens need to work together in a united front. The first phase of the LCP is the land use designations. We should all be supporting our City of Malibu designations instead of the L.A. County vision but that same old group will probably fight that even though they are the ones who adopted that zoning just because they are no longer on the council.
Judy Decker