Regarding the recent Malibu 2020 Vision Initiative, I want to make it clear to all residents of our wonderful city the answers to two important questions. Participants and reviewers of our work raised these questions recently before and during the first workshop held December 6 at City Hall attended by 64 people.
First question: Is this initiative simply redoing what has already been done in the General Plan completed in 1995?
Answer: We intend to use the General Plan and other plans to the maximum extent possible and build on them. The General Plan will be ten years old before we are finished and it may need updating. It is a legal document and has a certain subject matter structure (elements) defined by the State. It has no priority setting mechanism and it may omit some things that Malibu residents might want to consider. What these are we don’t know, but we will attempt to find out through the proposed process. The emphasis is to bring new and fresh thinking to the subject of Malibu’s future.
Second question: Are we are totally independent and citizen driven?
Answer: We are a group of citizens with no political or special interests. The team is made up of people with strategy planning backgrounds in industrial, non-profit and government organizations. We will do this work on a pro bono basis only with complete independence from the City Council and any other body wishing to impose its will on our city. We hold ourselves out to be completely objective and wish only to find out what large numbers of residents want for this city in the future. We intend to collaborate with all interested parties, including the City Council, for the betterment of the City. We will need the City Council’s backing and monetary support for consultants, meeting activities, guest lecturers and the like but will accept no control from the Council or the City. Only in that way can we demonstrate the independence that such an effort requires in order to be successful. We hope to eventually engage several thousand people in this effort. We plan to build a rational process for engaging the City and its residents in a meaningful discourse that will provide a future for Malibu based on consensus and agreement. The result will be a process that enables the citizenry to put pressure on the City Council to do the things it wants.
Rich Davis
Malibu 2020 Vision Team