Proposition M stands for maximize. Traffic, commerce, congestion, and ecological destruction. Imagine placing a commercially encouraging sewage plant smack in the middle of the Chili Cook-off site as our latest gift to the world! Instead, let’s really limit commercial growth and cover the Civic Center with a park with lovely, rooted trees that take up and treat water naturally. The Civic Center – liquefaction and flood plane where the water is intolerably close to the surface and hundred year floods would inundate both land and structures.
Money is the bottom line with Proposition M. The Malibu Bay Company and Jerry Perenchio are businessmen, not environmentally structured civic planners. M is just the tip of the iceberg for development. Ask MBC what they really have in mind. M holds us hostage to larger plans. Let’s think years ahead to our “quality of life.” The Planning Commission has done that and unlike the City Council does not recommend Prop M.
Many of us moved here with a willingness to forego a lot of material amenities while first seeking harmony with the ecosystem. What better place to educate our children in stressing the divinity of creation and the magic interplay of all things. We can still do that in Malibu where the mountains meet a sea that laps at our feet and stills the pressures of the urban world. Let us put our humanity and lovely geography first and no longer flirt with cancerous growth. Let’s not vote in favor of Proposition M but in favor of nurturing our home.
Ronn Hayes