City council unanimously voted to “extinguish” the Trails Dedication Incentives Program during its meeting on Monday, Sept. 12.
The program sought to connect public trails with private trails by incentivizing private owners to make trails through their property open to the public, but high property values and increasing volume of visitors has left residents uneasy about the program.
“When this was all started, many, many years ago, the trails were used in very different ways,” Council Member Laura Rosenthal said. “I think it’s a new world now.”
Property owners in Ramirez Canyon and Sycamore Park spoke against the program, arguing the incentives are used to benefit developers and damage the unique character of the neighborhoods.
“The problem isn’t trails. Trails exist. They’re not a problem,” President of Ramirez Canyon Preservation Fund Rick Mullen said. He later continued in a statement to the council, “More often than not, those who offer the dedications are not even the ones to build the house once their newly permitted property is sold, let alone live in it.”
Property owners who dedicate a trail could receive several incentives, including a five percent increase in the maximum allowed development square footage of the property. Residents claimed developers who built larger houses, only to flip them back on the marketplace, abused this incentive.
Council Member John Sibert shared his personal history with such incentive when he ran into them while serving as a Planning Commissioner nine years ago.
“The reason [the incentive program] bothered me is because we were getting at least half of the projects that came to us were spec homes,” said Sibert.
“Spec homes,” refers to a house that is built for a specific site and intended to be sold.
It seems many of the issues residents had with the trails program were old problems coming back in another form.
In May of this year, residents from Ramirez Canyon and Sycamore Park petitioned the council to erase the controversial Haunted House Trail from the program. The motion passed unanimously, but instead of being removed outright, a request to remove them was submitted to the California Coastal Commission.
“Our confidence that this removal request would be approved by the Coastal Commission is very low,” Mullen said.
In addition to slow bureaucracy and developers taking advantage of the program, many residents were dissatisfied with the maintenance of the current trails.
Malibu resident Dale Schafer recalled finding pulled-up signs and cigarette butts that remained littered across the trail for weeks.
In July earlier this year, Schafer found the usual crop of humble lilies were killed after they were sprayed by herbicides.
“If they can’t afford to preserve and maintain the trails they already have, let’s not give them more,” Malibu resident Brittany Stephens said.
City council members and Malibu residents alike addressed that the trails program has existed for a long time and likely started with good intentions, but the current conditions of Malibu make it unfeasible to pursue the project.
“This trails incentive program sounds good and may have been originated by good people for all the right and noble reasons in a bygone time with 10 million less visitors to Malibu,” Mullen said. He continued later, “Accusations of NIMBYism or keeping the public out simply no longer carry any weight with 14 million visitors in a town of 13,000.”
The program might have been salvageable, but the council did not express a desire to pursue it.
“The one thing we do know is you can’t unring a bell,” said Council Member Joan House, “If this were to pass tonight and we were to redo it later, that bell has been rung.”