From Malibu’s Vision Statement: “Malibu is a unique land and marine environment and residential community whose citizens have historically evidenced a commitment to sacrifice urban and suburban conveniences in order to protect that environment and lifestyle, and to preserve unaltered natural resources and rural characteristics.”
There you have it. What a simple statement. “Less is more” is clearly the theme of the Vision Statement. We drive over the hill or along the coast to Thousand Oaks, Oxnard or Santa Monica to shop at Target, Walmart or the mall. By driving there instead of having it here, we enable the people from those towns to be able to come and share in the relatively undeveloped area that is Malibu. Southern California is largely concrete, from Santa Monica to Riverside and from San Fernando down to Newport Beach and beyond. Because of the foresight of those who have gone before us, we find ourselves living in this small, rural, coastal town that is an anomaly. Let’s keep it that way. It is why we became a City in the first place — to preserve the beautiful town we live in and decide for ourselves the way forward.
The City founders were wise to choose the words of the Vision Statement as they did. Let’s follow their road map to success and use those words as our guiding directive. Powerful forces are lined up to change our town. They see gold to be mined in the hills, canyons and shoreline of this small town with worldwide name recognition. There is gold there, it is in the unique beauty of Mother Nature and it is our responsibility to preserve it — not mine it — for future generations. Measure R will help us keep the gold in the hills, canyons and shorelines of our very unique town.
Rick Mullen