April 8 is Election Day. A list of polling places is also listed.
By Jonathan Friedman / Assistant Editor
For the first time in 10 years*, at least two fresh faces will be elected to the City Council when Malibu voters head to the polls on Tuesday. Five candidates are running for three seats, and there is only one incumbent in the race. Residents are also being asked to vote on a measure that would decrease the city telephone utility tax. Another measure asks voters if they want the City Council to create a viewshed protection ordinance.
The five candidates running for council are Mayor Pro Tem Pamela Conley Ulich, who is seeking a second term, Jefferson “Zuma Jay Wagner,” Planning Commissioner John Sibert, Board of Education member Kathy Wisnicki and Susan Tellem. The three candidates who receive the most votes will be elected to a four-year term.
The campaign has mostly been a quiet one, with the candidates agreeing on many issues, including a desire to save local small businesses and to communicate with Civic Center area landowners about development agreements and other methods that could benefit the city.
However, there is a clear division among the candidates with Wagner and Tellem campaigning together against what they consider to be the old guard represented by Sibert and Wisnicki. Although the current council members, aside from Conley Ulich who did not endorse anyone, endorsed Sibert and Wisnicki, the two have denied being officially tied to the council.
“I have never been part of any sort of coalition or any kind of group,” Sibert told The Malibu Times in December when he first announced his candidacy. “My candidacy is not an extension of anything.”
However, Wagner and Tellem insist Wisnicki and Sibert are linked to a council they consider pro-development and not doing enough regarding water quality issues. At a debate last month hosted by the Point Dume Community Association, Wagner said electing “the appointees of the City Council” would mean Malibu is “going to be back into the good old boys.”
“I’m a little tired of it all,” Wagner said. “If you people want change, you need to put me in office.”
Conley Ulich, who Wagner and Tellem usually exclude when criticizing the council, has mostly avoided conflict throughout the campaign, appearing to most observers as an independent. She has received money from both sides of the perceived factions of Malibu and has not accepted any endorsements, nor given any. She has campaigned on what she considers to be council successes during the past four years, including the purchase of Legacy Park, the acquisition of Bluffs Park, the construction of the wastewater treatment facility in the Civic Center area and the recent introduction of a reverse 911 system that will alert the community when there is an emergency. However, she has also criticized the council for not supporting her proposed retail formula ordinance, which would limit the number of chain businesses in Malibu.
With Malibu suffering through several major fires last year, the threat of future blazes has been an issue in this campaign. Speaking to a group of people who lost their homes in the fires, the four candidates in attendance at forums this past week (Wisnicki did not attend because, she said, she had the flu) said they supported reviewing the response to the fires, both by the city and the Fire Department. Conley Ulich has asked for a town hall meeting to take place on the subject.
All five candidates say they support the City Council’s December vote for a proposed amendment to Malibu’s Local Coastal Program that would prohibit overnight camping in the city. The proposal will go before the California Coastal Commission, which votes on LCP amendments, sometime next year.
The council decision came a couple weeks after it had initially supported a parks enhancement plan by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy that included overnight camping. The conservancy plan also went before the Planning Commission, and how the commission voted on it has been an issue in this campaign. Tellem, who led a majority of the residents’ effort against the plan, accused the commission, including Sibert, of voting to support the plan. Sibert has denied this.
The commission actually voted to recommend the City Council approve the plan, but with a long list of conditions. One of those conditions was that a study should be done to determine if there is a need for more overnight camping sites in the area. But the commission never suggested that overnight camping should be banned, as the council later did.
Tellem has made the overnight camping issue a major element of her campaign, and this has forced her on occasion to go on the defensive because her critics point to her vocal support earlier this decade of the Coastal Commission-created LCP, which legalized overnight camping in Malibu.
“This makes me think she was supporting a document she had not read,” said Councilmember Sharon Barovsky at a recent council meeting.
Tellem told The Malibu Times the day after that meeting that, although she supported the LCP during a time when many Malibu residents were trying to put it up to a referendum, she did not agree with the overnight camping element. “Obviously I didn’t agree with everything in it [the LCP],” she said. “That would be impossible.”
Wagner has been at the center of a few controversies during the campaign as well. With his main residence located outside the city limits in Latigo Canyon, Wagner initially submitted his surf shop to the city as his address, but after admitting another person already was renting the living quarters above the store, he was told by the city clerk he could not claim it as his residence. Wagner then rented a one-bedroom apartment on Pacific Coast Highway. He registered to vote from that residence and restarted the nomination paper process. Wagner said in January he planned to live there three to four nights a week, and spend the rest of his time at his Latigo home.
In December, Wagner received an anonymous letter saying he must not return to his Latigo home or else the district attorney would prosecute. The letter also accused him of having old drug charges, which Wagner denied he had. The next month, Wagner received another anonymous letter telling him to drop out of the campaign or else information on his illegal tax paying practices would be submitted to the IRS and this newspaper. Wagner denied he has done anything wrong. Then last week, the word “dope” was spray painted several times on the surf shop. All three incidents are under investigation by the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station.
Wagner said after the latest incident, “It just seems to go in the rhythm of what else has happened to me. This doesn’t help the campaign for anybody.”
The two measures on the ballot have not gained much public interest. There were no ballot arguments for or against the measures submitted to the city.
Measure D, if approved, would lower the city’s telephone utility tax from 5 percent to 4.5 percent, but the tax could be expanded in the future to cover newer communication technologies such as text messaging. Whether those technologies could be taxed is an issue other cities are fighting in the federal courts.
Measure E asks whether the council should pursue the creation of a viewshed protection ordinance. There is such an ordinance in effect specifically for the Malibu Country Estates neighborhood. All the council candidates have said they support the passage of this measure. An ad appeared in this week’s issue of The Malibu Times paid for by a group known as “Dr. David Frankle and Friends” encourages people to vote against Measure E because it would lead to the cutting down of trees.
*Two incumbents lost in the 2000 election, but one of the challengers was Jeff Jennings, who had already served on the council from 1994 to 1998.