After eight years as a volunteer in Malibu City government-on the Parks and Recreation Commission, City Attorney Selection Committee, Code Enforcement Task Force, Planning Commission and Trails Committee-I am now an outsider, unceremoniously booted off the Trails Committee by Sharon Barovsky. I found out by reading it in a local newspaper.
Not that I really want to continue. It is time to move on. But what has been accomplished in Malibu over the past eight years? The proposed Las Flores Park that I worked on when I was vice chair of Parks and Recreation in the late 1990s is still far from becoming a reality. Bluffs Park has been saved, and the Chili Cook-off site is now owned by the city, but is destined for a passive future use.
The Coastal Commission has beaten us, and controls our zoning, it being deemed by the state and the courts as too important to leave to the whims of the residents of Malibu and their elected and appointed officials. So much for local government. Malibu is the Schiavo of cities, so important that its future life must be controlled by state legislation aimed specifically at it.
PCH is run by Caltrans and the CHP, Malibu’s beaches by the state (although Malibu’s taxpayers are obligated to pay for most of the beached-related police work), and almost all undeveloped land in Malibu is deemed ESHA. Commercial development is almost impossible to complete. Traffic gets worse and worse. Gas stations are abandoned and grow weeds and sprout graffiti. Restaurants are bought up by billionaires and are closed and sit vacant. PCH medians grow weeds and not the quality plantings one might expect from an “upscale” community like Malibu.
My question is: Why can’t we better control our future in this city?
Ted Vaill