Hoping to keep his seat for a second term on the Malibu City Council, 23-year Malibu resident Lou La Monte first became involved in city issues when he joined the board of directors for the Big Rock Mesa Homeowners Association. Aside from working as a television commercial producer, La Monte has spent time serving as a Public Works Commissioner before his election to the council in 2010 and helped in local efforts to create an independent Malibu school district.
Why Lou La Monte? Why not take a chance on a new candidate?
My feeling is that there’s a couple projects that we’re kind of in the middle of. One is the Bluffs Park, the plan to figure out what we can do with that and the plan to get public input to find out what we can do with those 83 acres that now we have a lease on, and I want to be part of that process.
With the lease swap, I understand no development can take place, but do you have a vision for that park?
I know a lot of the parents would like more sports fields and so would I. I think the fact that the City of Malibu only has one soccer field just doesn’t make any sense for a city with as many kids in AYSO playing soccer that live here.
Are you worried that camping will be installed or developed at Charmlee?
I’m not as worried about that happening as I would be if there were 40 campsites at Bluffs Park. That’s much more worrisome to me. In addition, at Charmlee, there’s a 200,000-gallon water tank within yards of the proposed campsites, and they’re also cold camping sites, which are not open campfires and I’m not so sure they’re ever going to happen anyway.
Your opponent, Hamish Patterson, argues the city doesn’t put enough focus on the infrastructure of the city with several development projects coming down the pipeline. Do you think the city is failing to address that concern?
It used to be that each individual project would do their own little traffic study that applied to them and I believe we recently sent them all back to where they started so that they would understand that the traffic isn’t just applicable to their particular location, it has to be addressed in the entire Civic Center area. In all the EIRs we’ve done, those are the comments we’ve started with. That’s the beginning of that process.
But the real solution to that entire issue is the Civic Center master plan.
Do you think the “Your Malibu, Your Decision Act” ballot initiative is a proper alternative to what the city council is trying to accomplish?
I’m hoping that that the master plan will move ahead so quickly [that] the ballot initiative might be unnecessary.
When you walk through the Country Mart, Malibu Village, what sense of character do you get? Is that Malibu, a microcosm of Malibu?
This [Civic Center] is a different part of Malibu. You have to remember that we’re also across from “Billionaire’s Beach” and it seems to me that somewhere between the Malibu Pier and Duke’s there are enough people that could write the checks that could retire all the land in the Civic Center, and that would be a wonderful thing for them to do.
What regrets do you have as a city councilmember? What would you have done differently?
One of the things that I think I would have done differently and am going to do differently is those 50-plus businesses [out of city code compliance] that we inherited from another city council, 20 years [ago] … At that point in time it was somebody 20 years ago kicked the can down the road and now it’s time for us to kind of look at the can, and that’s what we’re doing.
Is there a chance you’ll kick the can again?
No, I don’t want to kick the can, I’d like to eliminate the can.
Biggest achievements on the council?
I’m proud of getting the CHP back on the highway, I’m proud of this land swap, I’m proud of the $14.4 million reserve that we have, and being on the Administration and Finance committee, I helped get that there. I’m proud of the Cultural Arts Commission. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made with AMPS.