Recently I received a call from a nice lady from Pocono. She said she was doing a phone survey of Malibu and asked for a short interview to which I un-characteristically agreed. The questions centered around development, mainly Malibu Bay Company development. How I felt about developing the property in the civic center and the chili cook-off field. How Point Dume would be a great location for ball fields and how the Bay Company would, as I understood it, donate millions to the city if it were allowed to build. This donation, I’m sure, would be tagged for very noble causes. I began to enjoy, what I felt, was the unabashed attempt to influence my opinion in favor of development until the questions became tedious and repetitive. Apparently my answers were not falling neatly into her check list and at one point she told me her supervisor was urging her to speed up the interview. She was asking for my evaluation of our current city council members when she mentioned Carolyn Van Horn. Apparently her sponsor needs to update their material.
I suggested to her that, in my opinion, the best thing that MBC could do for Malibu is to divest itself of its real estate holdings by selling to private investors. I don’t think Malibu needs to become another company town and owe its soul to the company store. For those of us that have not ventured much past east of Chez Jay, the Pocono is a mountainous resort area in eastern Pennsylvania. Having something in common, we commiserated about growth, tourists and the resulting traffic problems. The tel-con was quite revealing and worth the time.
Jack Singleton