The Year 2004 in review
By Arnold York/Publisher
January
-The year opens with Malibu getting major help in its legal battle with the California Coastal Commission. The California League of Cities files a brief with the California Court of Appeal in support of the city. Councilmember Jeff Jennings says he is pleased to see Malibu’s case gaining interest from those outside the city. The Office of the Attorney General says it will not guess how the league’s brief will affect the case.
-The election for City Council begins to heat up after longtime council member and former Mayor Joan House decides to call it quits and not run for a fourth term, creating an open seat for the race. Council members Jeff Jennings and Ken Kearsley say they will run, as do John Mazza from Malibu CAN and Jay Liebig from Taxpayers for Livable Communities. Former Mayor Walt Keller starts a comeback when he tosses his hat into the ring. Also, political unknowns Pamela Conley Ulich and Bill Winokur enter the race.
-The Malibu Times 2003 Dolphin Award winners are announced:
€ Carol Dillon
€ Helene Eisenberg
€ Pat Greenwood
€ Lilly Lawrence
€ Malibu Kiwanis Club
€ Scott Robinson
€ Saint John’s Health Center
€ Jane Seymour
€ Kathy Wisnicki
-Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy gets a mouthful from Malibu parents at a Malibu High School PTA meeting. Deasy explains to the parents his gift policy proposal for a portion of all donations made to district schools being placed into a fund that would be distributed throughout the district on a weighted scale. Malibu parents protest, saying it would greatly harm fundraising at their schools.
February
-In a battle that promises to grow more intense as development pushes in on the Santa Monica Mountains, the Regional Water Quality Control Board passes some increasingly restrictive requirements regarding wastewater treatment, horse stables and agricultural runoff. The effect, critics charge, is to practically push horses and agriculture out of the mountains to make way for large, expensive mansions. They say this will force Malibu homeowners to make unnecessarily expensive upgrades to their septic systems. The enviros counter that Malibu Creek and Malibu Lagoon are becoming increasingly more polluted and they intend to fix it, so get over it.
-The temperature of the Malibu City Council race heats up as Malibu political newcomer Pamela Conley Ulich initially storms out of a public forum run by Malibu CAN, accusing the organization of giving the forum questions in advance to candidates it favors, and not to the others. Malibu CAN President Steve Uhring denies the claim, but admits that he told candidates Jay Liebig and Bill Winokur what the Malibu CAN issues are prior to the forum because they asked.
-The Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club is back in the news when Robert Roy van de Hoek, Sierra Club activist and former Malibu City Council candidate, announces his candidacy for the Sierra Club’s national board. The board race is particularly hot this year because a coalition of animal rights activist have combined with a coalition of anti-immigration groups, some of which are accused of being racist, to try and seize control of the Sierra Club. Their try will ultimately fail when their candidates go down in defeat.
March
-Veda Anderson, 77, a blind resident of the Point Dume Mobile Home Park, is rescued from her burning home by her neighbor Richard Mendez. He runs into the burning, smoked-filled mobile home, and carries her out to safety. The fire, which is believed to have been caused by a failed electrical outlet, is fanned by strong winds and ultimately engulfs the entire mobile home.
-Bill Winokur drops out of the City Council race. Malibu CAN, which had supported him, brings in City Council meeting regular attendee John Mazza as a write-in candidate. Controversy surrounds an ethics consultant who was hired by the city to oversee the election, as some candidates accuse her of siding with the incumbents in her decisions on the complaints. Property rights advocate Wade Major unsuccessfully sues Malibu CAN activist Ozzie Silna to prevent him from donating money to the campaign, alleging Silna has violated city campaign laws.
-The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education approves Superintendent John Deasy’s gift policy proposal by a vote of 5-2. The dissenting votes come from Shane McLoud and Malibu representative Mike Jordan, who say the policy will lead to divisiveness in the district. Jordan announces later in the month that he will not seek re-election in November.
-A new issue appears on the city of Malibu’s radar screen when the plans to build a liquefied natural gas deepwater port 14 miles northwest of the Malibu coast moves ahead. The highly explosive gas mixture, which would be pumped to an Oxnard processing plant via an ocean floor pipeline, galvanizes many of the local communities, which organize to block the large project. The controversial project by the Australian mining giant BHP Billiton has the full support of the Australian government, whose prime minister will later meet with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to lobby his support for the project.
April
-A rash of mailbox thefts hit Malibu, causing people to purchase mailboxes that lock. Winding Way, Cuthbert Road and Las Flores Canyon Road are among those hit. Later in the month, the Culver City Police Department apprehends a suspect possessing a Malibu resident’s check stubs, believed to have been taken from her mailbox.
-Councilmembers Jeff Jennings and Ken Kearsley are re-elected handily when 3,424 ballots are cast out of a pool of 8,779 registered voters, a voter turnout of 39 percent. In a surprising upset, newcomer and a virtual political unknown attorney Pamela Conley Ulich stops former Mayor Walt Keller’s comeback bid, as she edges out Keller by 69 votes.
-Kenneth Starr, controversial independent counsel for the Bill Clinton Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations is selected to become dean of Pepperdine University School of Law. Starr, previously the solicitor general of the United States, a Federal Circuit Court judge and a man thought to be on the fast-track to a seat on the United States Supreme Court, gives a lengthy interview to The Malibu Times, where he speaks about what he learned from his experiences and its impact on the country and himself.
-The Malibu Times suffers a loss when Reta Templeman, widow of the newspaper’s founding publisher, dies at age 85. Templeman wrote for and edited the newspaper, took care of finances and sold advertisements. Longtime friend Ted Gillespie says, “When they made Reta, they threw the mold away. There’s just one Reta.”
-Sharon Barovsky is elected mayor by her peers on the council. Andy Stern receives the nod to become mayor pro tem. In her outgoing speech, Joan House calls for an end to divisiveness in the city. Newly elected Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich announces her goals, including starting an arts commission, passing an ordinance to prevent the opening of retail chains and to create a fund for municipal land purchases.
May
-The Malibu real estate market continues as hot as the rest of California, as the medium home price in Malibu rises to $1,815,000, a $153,000 jump from a year ago. Overall median home prices are currently increasing at the rate of about 2 percent per month.
-The Malibu City Council votes to ban all cigarette smoking on public beaches, becoming the third city to ban smoking on the beaches, following the lead of Los Angeles and Santa Monica.
-The city of Santa Monica votes to allot $6 million per year from its budget to the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School district, and to continue to fund the district for that amount until at least 2007. Malibu students constitute approximately 20 percent of the district, so, as a practical matter, about 20 percent of those dollars will be going toward the benefit of Malibu students.
-Los Angeles County, under heavy financial pressure, decides to close the Malibu Court lockup, saving the county about $194,000 per year. Local officials and the Malibu Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station captain are upset because it means that local custody criminal cases will not be tried locally. Therefore, Sheriff’s deputies will spend more time transporting custody prisoners and going farther to testify, which means the deputies spend more time away from patrol. It’s also feared that, with a lighter criminal trial load and with another county financial crisis, the courthouse might be closed down altogether.
-Software tycoon Larry Ellison, who purchased five homes on Carbon Beach, appears to be on a shopping spree in Malibu. He adds the former Windsail Restaurant property to his collection, having purchased the former PierView Restaurant property in late 2003. The Ellison camp is tight-lipped, and all that is known is that he intends to run them both as restaurants and they’re currently under renovation.
June
-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger makes three appointments to the California Coastal Commission. They are Stanford Law School professor Meg Caldwell, who later will become the new chair of the commission, William Morris Agency Executive Vice President Steven Kram and Humboldt County Supervisor Bonnie Neely.
-Malibu Bay Co. President Jerry Perenchio agrees to donate his 10-acre, three-hole golf course to the state as open space upon his and his wife’s deaths in exchange for receiving California Coastal Commission approval for the property, which was constructed in 1982. Perenchio also agrees to improve the property’s drainage and landscaping to meet environmental concerns.
-The complete reopening of the Malibu Pier struggles on with the latest twist being that a San Fernando Valley attorney claims to have the trademark rights to the use of the Malibu Pier name. The state of California, which owns the pier, files for the trademark.
July
-After a state audit reveals that the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, headed by Joe Edmiston, has misused bond money, the State Department of Finance strips $21 million from the SMMC budget. It takes the intervention of Sen. Sheila Kuehl, and a marathon four-hour meeting of all the players to get the money back, but only after the SMMC promises to be good and to open its books to state auditors on a regular basis. The conservancy also agrees to have spending requests be approved by the attorney general. Time will tell if the slap on the wrist has changed anything.
-After an 11-year run at the almost impossible job of being the principal of Malibu High School, Mike Matthews steps down, or really steps up, to become the assistant superintendent of human resources and chief of staff for the school district. Mark Kelly, an administrator at Santa Monica High School, takes over as the new principal at Malibu High.
-Sparked by the approval of Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy’s gift policy, a group of Malibu parents and education activists decide that it may be time for Malibu to have its own school district. After an initial study, the group, called MUST or Malibu Unified School Team, starts the long process that, in time, may lead to independence for Malibu, which currently has about 20 percent of the students in the school district.
-A Los Angeles Superior Court judge rules against the Sierra Club in its lawsuit challenging the approval of the Forge Lodge. Sierra Club attorney Frank Angel says the ruling is “nothing short of a Dred Scott decision.” Mayor Pro Tem Andy Stern calls Angel’s comparison “horrifying.” The Sierra Club announces it will appeal.
August
-A $175 million bond measure proposal is rejected by the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees. Later that week, a $135 million measure is put before the board and approved to go on the November ballot. The bond measure, which only needs a 55 percent vote to pass, includes a guaranteed portion of $25 million for Malibu. It is rumored to be directed for the purchase of the Chili Cook-Off land at Webb Way and Pacific Coast Highway.
-The city of Malibu’s legal challenge to the California Coastal Commission-drafted Malibu Local Coastal Program, which practically makes Malibu a vassal state of the Coastal Commission, receives an enormous setback when the Court of Appeal rejects Malibu’s argument and sides with the state. Even though more than 2,400 Malibu voters signed a referendum petition for the right to vote on the LCP, the Court of Appeal says “to permit local voters to overturn state enactments would upend our governmental structure and invite chaos.”
-Malibu education activist Kathy Wisnicki kicks off her campaign for a seat on the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education. With Mike Jordan not running for re-election, a Wisnicki victory is needed for Malibu to have a representative on the board.
-A fatal plan crash, just off Broad Beach, is apparently caused when two private planes sideswipe each other in midair. The crash kills three people, including Malibu resident John Rossato.
September
-The lengthy negotiation between the city of Malibu and Jerry Perenchio’s Malibu Bay Co. finally ends in a deal. The city has until December 2005 to come up with $25 million to purchase the 20-acre Chili Cook-Off property, which is located in the heart of Malibu. Although not required, the city can build a wastewater/ stormwater treatment facility on the property, but nothing else, under the terms of the deal. The city is looking to the availability of clean water bond money and grants for the cleanup of Malibu Creek and the lagoon to help finance the purchase.
-After years of inactivity, and almost no commercial action in the Malibu Civic Center, suddenly the commercial real estate market is changing. The Malibu Times learns that the Yamaguchi Family Trust sent a letter to the city in August, offering to sell its two properties that total 17 acres for $20 million.
-Not to be outdone by the hot commercial real estate market. The Malibu Times real estate writer Rick Wallace reports the residential real estate market has hit new highs this year when, for the first time in memory, there is not a single house offered for sale in Malibu for less than $1 million. A number of the mobile homes in the various parks in Malibu are also beginning to break the $1 million mark, with three this year selling for $1.2 million, $1.3 million and $1.5 million. Condo prices also hit a new high, with none offered for less than $500,000.
-The City Council votes to petition the state Supreme Court to hear its case against the California Coastal Commission. City Attorney Christi Hogin tells the council that the chance of the court agreeing to hear the case is slim because it hears so few.
-Traditional enemies unite to campaign for Measure S, the Santa Monica College bond measure. The leaders of the campaign are former Planning Commissioner Richard Carrigan and Mayor Sharon Barovsky, who opposed each other on the Malibu Bay Co. Development Agreement election in 2003. Malibu CAN activist Ozzie Silna, who campaigned against Measure M, the Malibu Bay Co. deal that Barovsky supported, throws support behind Measure S as well.
-Although he rules that the city did not follow its law in granting a building permit to Carbon Beach property owner Bill Chadwick, the judge refuses the request by the owner of the neighboring property, music mogul Lou Adler, for the permit to be revoked. The judge instructs the City Council to make that decision. The issue was presented to the Planning Commission the previous year, and led to the firing of two planning commissioners and the resignation of another.
October
-After what has been, in effect, a two-year moratorium on construction caused by the ongoing legal battle over the California Coastal Commission-drafted and mandated Malibu Local Coastal Program, the city of Malibu cautiously begins the process to issue coastal development permits. The problem is, no one knows if the permits the city issues are going to be valid, and the Coastal Commission refuses to commit.
-The Malibu Marathon, originally scheduled for December, is called off by the promoter because he is unable to get a permit from the California Department of Transportation to close down a portion of Pacific Coast Highway. Caltrans says that to qualify for a permit he would have to partner with a nonprofit organization and also the city would also have to support it, which the city is reluctant to do.
-A battle that has been going on for months between the city of Malibu and the Los Angeles County librarian over excess library rent charged to the city, which was uncovered by City Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich, may be coming to an end. The city discovers it has been paying rent not only for the library, but also for an equal amount of space in a basement under the library that the library not only didn’t use, but also to which it didn’t even have access. A deal is in the works to give Malibu more library dollars.
November
-Malibu goes to the polls. In blue-state style, Malibuites handily vote for John Kerry for president. Voters also pass Measure S, the $135 million community college bond measure. Malibu local Kathy Wisnicki is also elected to the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education.
-The Malibu High School girl’s tennis team, led by senior Kelly Stewart, takes the CIF Championship for a second year in a row. It is a very tight contest, with Malibu edging out the Fairmont Prep Huskies, 75 games to 72 games.
-The fate of the half-century old hardware store and lumberyard of Malibu Lumber appears in doubt as the giant Weyerhaeuser Co. is getting out of the retail lumber business. The rising demand of commercial real estate, the lack of new development in the Civic Center, the spiraling commercial rental rates in the Civic Center and the added uncertainty of the entire Civic Center being sold has made it very difficult for new operators to come in to buy the lumber business and make the numbers work. For now, people are saying nothing final has been decided, but it still appears to be moving inexorably toward closure.
-The City Council declines to reject Bill Chadwick’s permit (Lou Adler’s neighbor), despite a Los Angeles Superior Court judge having ruled the permit was incorrectly issued. The council’s logic is that the law that was violated no longer exists, so a bad precedent will not be set. Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich, who casts the lone dissenting vote, says the only factor that matters is that “the permit is void from the beginning.”
December
-The Malibu High School Sharks football season comes to an end with a 28-20 second-round playoff loss to Linfield Christian. The Sharks finish the season with their first-ever playoff berth and their best regular season record, 9-1. With many returning players, the Sharks look forward to another winning season in 2005.
-The state Supreme Court decides not to hear the city’s case against the California Coastal Commission. This means the Coastal Commission-drafted Local Coastal Program is the law of the land. Malibu must hope it is successful with other ongoing lawsuits against the state agency or that the Coastal Commission accepts the city’s amendments it has proposed to the LCP. But Coastal Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas tells The Malibu Times his staff has done a cursory review of the amendments and says, “We would obviously not recommend approval of those changes.”
-In a holiday bon-bon for Democrats, and to a less-than-warm welcome from local Republicans, filmmaker/activist/author and all-around Bush gadfly Michael Moore comes to Malibu’s Diesel, A Bookstore. Moore preaches to the faithful and outrages the opposition. He also sells a few books, and then goes on to a local celebrity hangout to be fêted by the glitterati of show biz.
-There may be some light at the end of the Coastal Commission tunnel. In a move that some observers interpreted as a defeat for Malibu’s own often-contentious Sara Wan, her handpicked candidate for the new chair of the Coastal Commission, William Burke, is edged out by Meg Caldwell from Stanford University, one of the governor’s new appointments. It sort of renews hope among some critics (no names given) that perhaps we’re headed to a more reasonable Coastal Commission, which we might say is my New Year’s prayer.
-In a historic moment, the city of Malibu issues its first two coastal development permits, ironically to itself. The Planning Commission approves the permits for the realignment of Zumirez Drive and for a drainage system in Big Rock. Meanwhile, there are more than 100 projects waiting for a coastal permit, and everyone is expecting the city’s workload to skyrocket.
Happy New Year!