and Sylvie Belmond/Staff Writer
Sharon Barovsky triumphs. Proposition N wins. Proposition P loses, and Proposition O may be on the borderline.
Malibu’s own version of political, trench warfare came to a conclusion on election day. However, like the national election, it was so close that some of the results were in doubt until after the late arriving absentee ballots had been counted at the end of the week.
The major battle between the two dueling propositions, Proposition N (which the City Council backed, allowing the public to vote on the Malibu/Malibu Bay Company Development Deal) and Proposition P (the Right to Vote on Development Initiative), resolved in two close but, nevertheless, clear answers.
Proposition N passed by 318 votes. Proposition P lost by 11 votes. However, even if both propositions had passed, the proposition with the most votes would have prevailed. Since that was proposition N, the outcome would be the same.
Proposition N was written by the city and had the unanimous and visible public support of the City Council, including Councilmember Barovsky. Also supportive of the measure were many seniors and people involved in the parks and child sports movements. The campaign for N was heavily financed by roughly $125,000 spent by the Malibu Bay Company. The passage of the proposition means the development deal will appear on a future city ballot for a straight Yes or No decision by the voters.
Proposition P was written and supported by a group of environmental activists, which included several local people from the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy and several from outside of Malibu. It also had the support of council candidate Robert Roy van de Hoek and the L.A. chapter of the Sierra Club and was well-financed by $72,000 in contributions. The race, on which more than $200,000 was spent on the two propositions, was the most expensive in Malibu history.
Proposition O, which had some support from all sides, was an advisory ballot to test whether or not the citizens of Malibu would support a bond issue to buy park/public open space. Voters gave it 58.27 percent of the vote, which, although short of the two-thirds necessary to pass a bond issue, is still close enough that the City Council may decide to put a park/open space bond issue onto a future ballot.
The City Council race between Barovsky and van de Hoek turned out to be a relatively easy win for Barovsky, who received 3,121 votes to van de Hoek’s 2,482 votes. The showing by van de Hoek, who is new to the Malibu political scene and was unknown before announcing for the run for City Council, was much better than many had predicted. According to van de Hoek, this has encouraged him to run again in a future election.
Proposition Y, the renewal of the parcel tax for public schools, which required two-thirds to pass, easily garnered the necessary votes and received almost 80 percent of the ballots cast. That vote, coupled with voters’ statewide rejection of Prop 38, the voucher program initiative, and their willingness to approve the initiative that lowered the passage of school bonds to 55 percent, would seem to indicate a resurgence of support for public schools.
Locally, Malibuite Michael Jordan, communications professor at Pepperdine University, was the top vote getter for the Santa Monica / Malibu Unified School District Board. He finished with almost 3,500 votes ahead of his nearest opponent.
In total, in the 13 Malibu precincts, which stretch from Topanga to close to the Ventura County line, 4,927 ballots were cast. With 9,003 registered voters in the City of Malibu, that means the voter turnout was 54.73 percent.