City could get at least one Chili grant
A councilmember says more celebrities should be donating to the cause.
By Jonathan Friedman / Assistant Editor
In the wake of last week’s news that Malibu would not be receiving $8 million in grant money from various state agencies for the purchase of the Chili Cook-Off site that it previously thought it was getting, city officials have learned that it might be eligible for a $2.5 million grant from the State Water Resources Board.
The grants that were once believed to be coming to the city are no longer available because of a dispute over the appraisal of the Chili Cook-Off site and a conflict between the language of Chili Cook-Off site owner Malibu Bay Co.’s willing-selling letter and the demands of the granting agencies. Another problem was the city only recently learned it could not issue interim bonds as it had previously planned to do, and repay them with the grant money. It had wanted to do this because it needs $25 million before the end of the year for the land acquisition, and all the grant money might not be available by then.
City Manager Katie Lichtig said she has learned that the city could issue bonds for the State Water Resources money, and then pay off the bonds once it receives the grant. This would cost additional money. Lichtig said the grant requires two appraisals, and the one that was in dispute for the other grants is good enough for State Water Resources. She said the city is looking to do a second appraisal soon, but it was unlikely to happen before the end of the year. Whether the city will actually receive the grant has not been finalized. A voting board must approve it.
On Monday, the City Council will vote to officially set up the financing corporation that will issue $15.7 million in bonds. The money received from that will be combined with a $2.5 million donation from the Santa Monica College Measure S fund, $2.5 million it will receive from the interim bonds that will be repaid through the State Water Resources grant (if it is approved) and $300,000 from Malibu’s City Hall fund to go toward the Chili Cook-Off site purchase. But the city must still come up with another $3 million from the public.
Councilmember Sharon Barovsky said the city had raised about $750,000 as of Tuesday morning. The Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy has promised to match all donations, up to $500,000, made from Nov. 15 to Nov. 30. Barovsky said the city had raised $250,000 since that pledge as of Tuesday morning.
“If people continue to donate, we may make it [to the $3 million mark],” Barovsky said. “We’re waiting for some of the more substantial members of our community to donate. The one thing that really does surprise me is that Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan and Fran Drescher are the only celebrities who have written checks in a town of celebrities. I think it would be nice if they [more celebrities] gave back to the community.”
MCLC president Steve Uhring said he hopes the city is able to raise the money and his organization is looking forward to donating the $500,000 matching grant, but he said he was concerned about what he considered to be flaws in how the city handled the grant process. One concern he had was that no information appeared in the staff report for last week’s City Council meeting about Malibu losing the grant money, and few knew about it until Lichtig informed the council and the public during the meeting. Lichtig said this week that was because she did not know the extent of the situation until long after the staff report had been drafted.
“That is scary,” Uhring said. “We had a whole year to figure out how the grant process works and how to get the money, and we don’t find out the exact details until this late in the game.”
Rich Fox, a critic of the Malibu government in 2003 during the Measure M campaign, suggested in a letter to the newspaper this week that city officials might have known about the grant problems, but did not put them in a staff report to prevent the public from finding out and coming to the meeting to voice anger about the situation.
“We put the best information out as soon as we had the best information,” said Lichtig when asked why the city staff did not put out an updated staff report during the week preceding the meeting or the morning of the Monday meeting as it was learning new information.
Lichtig added that the city did not learn some of the information, including whether grants could be used to pay off debt, until two hours before the meeting started.
Barovsky said this week that city officials not being aware of all the intimate details of the grant process did not prove any incompetence on their part. She said this included Lichtig’s comment last week that it had tried to find out months ago whether grant money could be used to pay off interim bond debt, but did not receive a clear answer.
“Anybody that has dealt with a government bureaucracy as huge as Sacramento knows that it is very hard to get specific information,” Barovsky said. “I don’t even think the board members of the granting agencies knew all the details.”
Barovsky has said that the city is actually better off not getting the grant money for the Chili Cook-Off site purchase. It will be replacing the lost grant money with an increase in the amount of bonds it will issue ($15.7 million as opposed to the previous plan for $8.5 million). And Barovsky said the city could reapply for the grants after the land purchase for the wastewater/storm water treatment program it wants to construct, of which the Chili Cook-Off site will be a major feature.
Last week, The Malibu Times reported that the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which had agreed to give the city $2 million before the recent occurrences, would most likely not give the city money for the water treatment program. That information came from a comment that Barbara Cameron, the city’s grants coordinator, said at last week’s council meeting. However, the SMMC could give money for that, according to an e-mail obtained by The Malibu Times that was sent from SMMC Director Joe Edmiston to Barovsky.