We are delighted to announce the 2016 Dolphin Award winners for their outstanding service to the Malibu community. In the larger culture where many people are indifferent to what goes on around them, we are indeed fortunate to live in a community that seems to have both heart and soul, where people give selflessly of their time and energy. Every year, we receive many many nominations. So, if your nominee didn’t make the cut this year, we encourage you to try again next year. Sometimes, we receive several nominations in the same category and only one can be chosen. We don’t have hard and fast rules about categories, but we do try to award Dolphins to every portion and every activity in the community — sort of a diversification program. Every year we have an awards ceremony, usually at the Malibu West Swim Club, which is an absolutely spectacular venue located on Broad Beach. All the new Dolphins and their guests are invited, as well as all the former Dolphin winners. We’ve now been doing this for 25 plus years and, frankly, we’re running out of space. There is a theory that people who are happy and engaged live longer, healthier lives and, looking at our roster of former Dolphins, that theory seems to be correct. So, congratulations to our new Dolphins. I can’t promise them immortality — maybe just a couple of extra years.
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Malibu is a small city of 13,000 that on a whole is in pretty good fiscal shape. That is due in part to our real estate increasing in value and real estate tax income growing. Part is due to increased sales tax revenue and part to all of the taxes from those rentals like Airbnb. We also have been fortunate and have had good city managers and good finance people and we have been careful and conservative in our estimates. In the 2016 budget, the city had a surplus of $200,000, despite the sewer project beginning. Typically, cities shoot for a reserve equal to 50 percent of their budget and we are already well past that, so the long-term question is — what do we do with the money? Do we spend it on infrastructure or to build a community center or a theater or a movie house or a skate park? Do we use it to buy land and then just retire the land as permanent green space? Do we use it to build playing fields for the children or make contributions to the schools, particularly if we get our own independent school district? There are advocates in this community for all of those positions and they obviously each take us in very different directions. Soon, this council is going to have to make some of those choices and we should all be thinking about it.
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No column would be complete without a quick visit to Washington, DC, and the Trump White House. If Obama was the “No drama Obama White House” then the Trump is one of those old-fashioned movie serials where you had to come back tomorrow to find out how it all worked out. It’s not just a question of presidential style; it’s more. Obama was smart, very cerebral, careful and logical. He took in information from advisors and then in a solitary way made his decisions. That was his strength but also his weakness. I believe he made good decisions — and a few bad ones — but he didn’t sell them well. He obviously didn’t like the handshaking, backslapping, friendly, personal kind of politics if you weren’t part of his inner circle. That hurt him with his supporters and, probably more, with some Republicans he might have swayed.
Strangely, in only 10 days or so, it has become apparent that Trump has some real operational problems as president and unless he adapts he’s in for all types of grief. First, the President of the United States is not the CEO of the United States. His powers are not defined by his personality. They are defined in the U.S. Constitution, in earlier laws passed by the congress, in political custom and in unwritten rules of comity with the other branches of government, and also the government employees. If his management philosophy really is “go along with what I tell you or get the hell out,” as one of his minions said recently (though not in those exact words), he’s going to find that many will not go along with him, nor will they get out. That is going to frustrate the heck out of him and his team because in government, you can’t just say, “You’re fired.” You also have to think things out and then plan. For example: The Muslim ban that he signed, without consultation with any of the agencies or people who were expected to enforce. It did nothing but create chaos, drama, uncertainty and wonderful television, which gave the message that this Trump administration is a bunch of clumsy clods who really don’t know what they are doing. Whether or not it’s bad racist policy or just a bad execution of an iffy idea wasn’t even the issue. His desire to appear decisive, and appear totally in control, and make Washington change the way it does business was not a success — in fact, it was clumsy and a lot of that problem could have been avoided. If he and his team don’t begin to learn fast, they’re in for a very rough ride.