Did we just fall into a rabbit hole?

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    First our Malibu City Council tells us it has to make a deal with the Malibu Bay Company (MBC) because otherwise MBC can get permits to build a shopping mall and an office building on the Chili Cook Off site and the property next to City Hall. This doesn’t sound right because we also hear that the City Council doesn’t have to approve variances involved in MBC’s applications–and there are “unmitigatible” traffic, air and water pollution effects that should trigger rejection.

    The City Council also tells us they have to make a deal with MBC because it is the quickest way to get some land for badly needed playing fields and a senior center plus a few million bucks to build it with. They don’t tell us the City has to set aside a few million bucks for management costs, negating the few million bucks gift. That comes out in a public meeting. At least that’s the first time we hear about that part of the deal. Should we have been paying closer attention?

    They also don’t tell us the “amenity” of land the MBC offers for ball fields and senior center probably isn’t big enough to accommodate what we need, and is rife with California Coastal Act constraints, ingress/egress problems, and geological questions that probably make it nearly useless to MBC as well as to the City.

    Next the City Council holds a press conference to tell us we should all vote for Measure N so we can have a referendum in case they approve the deal they don’t have to make in the first place.

    And sure enough, right away we get a pretty mailer from two prominent neighbors telling us why it’s so important to vote for N and not to vote for P (P is the right to vote on commercial development initiative that a huge number of Malibu voters petitioned for, which, by the way, N would negate).

    The return address on that mailer is, astonishingly, the Malibu Bay Company. So, the Malibu Bay Company agrees with the City Council that we should vote for the measure that the City Council offers as a defense against their Bay Company deal that the City Council doesn’t have to vote for. My goodness!

    If only Alice could see Malibu now; it would surely remind her of Wonderland.

    Marcia Hanscom