The Malibu Times sat down this week with council candidate Laureen Sills for the first of six interviews — one with each candidate leading up to the election.
What is the theme for your candidacy, for people who don’t know?
I am the grassroots candidate. I am running as an independent. I am beholden to no special interests groups. I’m fair. I’ve served the community for 30 years.
You mentioned at the Democratic Club debate about how one of your children has autism. But you stepped back from it.
I’m not afraid to talk about that at all. I’m proud of it but it’s a defining moment in your life when you’re faced with a really big challenge like that. We’ll have kids, we think it’s going to go perfectly and then when something like that happens it’s terrifying and awful and scary. I think that’s why it felt better to reach into the community and find people in the community that had people with disabilities. We’ve done, personally, everything for my son Danny. It’s been a group effort. The teachers at Juan Cabrillo, Malibu Middle School and Malibu High School are fantastic.
He taught me how to see the world through the eyes of somebody that life is not fair to. A great lesson and it’s a great lesson to be a politician. To look through those eyes and look out at everybody. I think every grassroots organization that’s been started in Malibu is started because of that. Because they don’t feel listened to and they want to gather as a group, roll their sleeves up and get something done.
Do you feel your involvement [in the Point Dume Traffic Plan] helped or hurt you based on the resolution and what was decided and how the community reacted to you afterward?
I want to go on record that on my street, Grasswood Avenue, we had a public safety issue. On the big beach day with the big swell and high temperatures, you know a hot day? Our street was lined side-to-side with visitors. You could not get an ambulance down my street. You could not get a fire truck down my street. We have some elderly people and we have a child next door that is compromised. So we went to the city to ask for some help. We did not know how they were going to resolve the problem, we just said “we had a public safety issue on Grasswood please help us.” So they striped the street, which enabled parts of the street to now have emergency vehicles to pass.
Never ever did I ever utter the words “I want to remove people’s encroachments.” I would never support it. It is not my business what goes on other people’s streets. I was only discussing what goes on on my street.
It seems a lot of people have made up their mind on you at that point.
No, I don’t think a lot of people have made up their mind. I think it was a campaign driven by one citizen on Point Dume who has never had any political or public stage. I tried to tell him that it wasn’t my idea, that he was talking to the wrong person, I did not bring it up. He did not listen. He worked very hard and he threatened me. That he was going to tar and feather me and throw mud all over my campaign. I never ever said that I wanted to remove the encroachments ever.
The civility concept was brought up a lot in a previous campaign by Laura Rosenthal. It’s well known that you two have been long-time friends and political allies. In your opinion, do you feel a vote for you is essentially a vote for another Laura Rosenthal?
Absolutely not. Anyone that knows me knows that I have my own opinions, I speak my mind, I’m fair, I reach to different people that might have different opinions from me so that I can get a fair perspective on any kind of issue.
Let’s switch to issues you focus on. According to your campaign website, the number one priority you list is to keep the small town vibe. I’m curious how you plan to achieve this while accounting for the 15 million visitors every year.
I think we need to find a way to capture money from these visitors and use the money to buy land. We need to keep the money out of the courts but we need to buy land. We need to keep Malibu rural but we need to pay for it. So we have to find revenue stream.
Do you have some examples of revenue streams?
I have a great idea. First of all, I think Malibu should have a visitable visitor center. When the tourists stop by and we can sell swag, city official swag, t-shirts, hats, mugs, anything we can think of that we can stick our official logo on. I know the city spent a lot of money getting a logo.
That would be one of the first things I would do, but the one I’m most excited about is I think we need to create a world-famous Malibu surf museum. I think we are the birthplace of surfing. We could have displays of historic boards, designs, famous surfers, different styles of surfing. I think we are the surfing capital of the world, we need to have a museum dedicated to that.
I wanted to get your opinion on how you feel. Do you think most people are happy with the current city council?
Well, I hate to say that I don’t know that everybody follows it— what’s going on in the city council. I don’t think that people have expressed unhappiness. I think there are some reasons why our council has done a really good job. I think that our bond rating has increased substantially, they’ve done a great job fiscally. We have money. We’ve been able to purchase Trancas. Which is a huge deal. I think people should be applauding them in the streets for being able to pull that off. I think they’ve done a really good job.
The order of candidate interviews was randomly selected. This interview was abridged for length and clarity. A full transcript of each interview can be found attached to the left of this story.
