The Malibu Times sat down this week with council candidate Jefferson “Zuma Jay” Wagner for the second of six interviews — one with each candidate leading up to the election.
What do you think is the theme of your candidacy?
For me, I think we have overdone our commercial development. We’ve allowed it to get out of control. I know there are some who would say: “we haven’t had any commercial development,” but it’s what’s in the pipeline [that] these property owners have the rights to build. I respect those rights. They earned those entitlements. But for me, it’s causing a great deal of frustration for the residents and the residents are the ones who are voting.
I wanted to ask — since it’s been a little bit of time since you’ve been in city hall — do you feel this city has changed in the meantime? There’s been new issues that have popped up. Do you feel you’re ready to jump back into the fray with those issues, or do you feel you’re sitting on issues that were relevant back then but not so much now?
No, it’s a continuation. Your point was, do I feel familiar with the current issues that are facing the city? I am. I was part of Measures R and W. I was right along with the Reiners supporting it. I put my time into it even though I wasn’t in city council for the last four years. I made it to quite a few meetings at either the council or the planning commission level. Even a couple of weeks ago, the ZORACES meeting. I was also on the Civic Center task force. I was appointed by Council Member John Sibert. I earned his respect to be appointed to something that was a very valuable learning experience for everybody about the Civic Center development area — which is a key issue right now. Having been on that task force, I got up to speed on a lot of things.
The city talks a lot about how social media is affecting Malibu’s tourism. Do you have any thoughts on how that can be stemmed?
We really can’t — we don’t want to be looking like the people trying to curtail visitation. That becomes very NIMBY.
All of these social media hits are driving people here. We’ve identified it; how do we deal with it? Code enforcement — that’s how you deal with it.
They need to have a ranger assigned between those three beaches, moving from one beach to the next to the next, doing his citations, doing his “warn and advise” and making contact. Bringing alcohol down on the beach, bringing dogs down on the beach — if you have a badge and an officer there, they tend not to do it as much. Or they tweet their friends, “Hey they got a ranger here today. No dogs.” You do that for a couple of months, all of sudden people won’t show up with dogs. “Oh by the way, no open fires. Well, I just got a ticket,” They tweet that. “I’m not going to do that again,” neither will 10 other people who read that. You can use social media effectively to warn and advise, cite and make sure that the codes are followed and eventually catches up. As quickly as they came here, quickly they will modify their behaviors and come in compliance.
You’ve spoken a bit about “following through” with Measure R. What do you envision the follow-up plan to be? How do you think it would benefit the city?
Understanding what’s driving the other side of Measure R — you have to understand what’s driving that. Most people just pound their fists and say, “No more, no more, no more.” You have to take the incentive out of those developers and those out of town property owners. The incentives are taken away by not granting modifications or variances to the malls. For instance, when they hook up to the treatment system, no preference. The cost should be shared equally among the property owners that are identified that are going to be putting into the treatment system. No favoritism. The building restraints that are going to be put on them as mall owners have to be fortified. You have to stick to the code. A code officer has to go out there and make sure that they’re following the codes. Getting an entitlement should be earned, not given.
I think people are curious how far you’re willing to take your interest in following through with Measure R.
Time-wise and finance-wise, I think the city — you can fact check — we’re probably into the defense of Measure R a couple hundred grand. I don’t know the exact numbers, but we certainly have spent a lot more in other directions defending the city’s position. Whether it was with the NRDC or the final buyout of Trancas property for the 30-some-odd acres out there. We fought that since we were a city, from day one in the ‘90s. I don’t know what the tallies are on these things, but it’s substantial. I feel we need to follow through with Measure R in the same vigorous way that we defended ourselves with the NRDC and with the Trancas property owners.
As a previous mayor — and you’ve been part of the community for several decades — it’s fair to say you’re a trusted figure. You didn’t necessarily need a slate ballot to help yourself get elected. With that in mind, why have you chosen to run your campaign with the two other candidates? Especially since you’ve never served with either of them before. Did you feel you needed their help to win your election, or did they need your help?
That’s a tough one because we have a new member who’s not as well known — Rick Mullen. He’s known to the first responders very well, but to the community he may not have the recognition. Certainly Skylar has a great deal of recognition, and I do through retail business and prior occupation in city hall, but we felt that we were similar enough in understanding of where we stood that the familiarity drew us together. It’s hard running a campaign. Financially, it helped us out to corral these efforts. We’re also talking about a lot of contacts. Contacts are votes, eventually. Skylar has his group of younger, fun-loving, different group. My draw is with the older, establisher, gray-haired, old farts. Rick’s are with the middle-aged. Those demographics should be reached by all three of us. Our slate says, “Hopefully, the three of us can make change.”
In reality — you’re familiar with politics — not a lot changes. It’s just the nature of life. I don’t want to break it to these other candidates, but change is difficult. If you just stick to a couple of ideas and a format, hopefully you can bring the rest of the population to believe the way you do. I think we tapped on something that’s new. It’s certainly never been done before like this.
The order of candidate interviews was randomly selected. This interview was abridged for length and clarity. A full transcript of each interview can be found attached to the left.
