Additional monies, totaling more than $100,000, are allocated for pollution cleanup in Malibu.
By Sylvie Belmond/Staff Writer
The Department of Engineering Services for the City of Malibu, created this fiscal year, made its first report at the City Council’s quarterly review meeting on Oct. 24. The department’s primary work involves water quality and land development matters.
The new department reported on an up-note, announcing a $550,000 grant that was recently received from the California Urban Streams Program of the Department of Water Resources to restore Las Flores Creek.
This grant is in addition to $500,000 in funds allocated by the California Integrated Waste Management Board to clean up three point sources of pollution in Malibu (see story page A3) and a $2 million grant from the governor’s Clean Beach Initiative, adopted July 1 this year.
The department wants to eliminate sources of water pollution so that no storm water treatment facilities are needed in the future.
“A big source of problems is dry weather runoff, like over-irrigation,” Rick Morgan, city engineer.
Other quarterly reports:
The city is moving forward on an economic development of the General Plan that it will discuss at a Business Roundtable meeting on Friday at City Hall.
Julia James, administrative services director, reported the city is on target financially.
Malibu adopted a budget of $19,589,658 and expects to spend $20,477,566 during this fiscal year, which began on July 1, 2001.
The differential represents amounts adopted in the previous fiscal year that were required to be carried over. Multi-year capital projects are carried over and each has associated revenues with them, explained James. But these revenues have not been formerly adopted into the budget yet.
Malibu has $8.1 million in reserves with $1.6 million saved for a new City Hall and $700,000 designated for Building Safety reserves; $5.8 million is available for emergencies, disasters or unanticipated economic reversal.
A new city Web site, developed by Kirk Biglioni of Pandemic Media, will be operational by February 2002. The site will feature a local news section, a community calendar, a library of minutes, and a search engine and permit applications in PDF format.
Dial-A-Ride: The city is looking at cost-saving options because of anticipated reserve cuts. Staff may work on a registration process so riders would have an identification card. New provider options are also being considered.
The City Council reaffirmed its opposition to the Ahmanson Ranch development proposal, which would be upstream from the Malibu Lagoon between the San Fernando Valley and Agoura Hills. The project includes more than 3,000 homes,