It seems to me that the citizens of Malibu have been misled by the city government for a fair amount of time regarding the acquisition of the Chili Cook-off site. How can a group professing expertise like the council, the city manager, and the grants director and in particular, the city’s attorney have not been able to hold onto $8 million in grants. In an apparent cavalier attitude, when faced with this very bad news, the council then decided to have the proposed bonds increased to handle the shortfall! Whoa, that’s an obligation passed onto the city in the blink of an eye for $8 million dollars!
The city manager cited “several technicalities” in the failure to get this money. There are no technicalities; it’s all a technicality in civil administration and real estate acquisitions. To minimize the importance of terms and conditions in grants and land acquisitions is to miss the point of government.
Let’s look at this transaction from the beginning. It has basically been static, unchanged since the city announced that the Malibu Bay Company would be willing to sell its ownership for $25 million. Nothing has moved, jumped, hopped, run away or skedaddled since they announced the deal. So why were the “technicalities” not dealt with or disclosed along the way?
As to the appraisal issue raised by Lichtig, it borders on the absurd. It was up to the city manager to review the requirements and make sure the appraiser could comply.
The issue of the nature of the easements to the Grant givers is not disclosed so it is difficult to get a handle on the matter but this should have been addressed and solved at the table with the seller a long time ago. Isn’t it fair to say, unless you have $25 million in your car trunk, that some reasonable method will be required in raising the money and that the seller can’t object to it? Frankly otherwise it never really becomes a sale.
Finally on the issue of whether or not the city needed to “bank” the grants before Dec. 31 not being important as long as the grants were approved truly boggles the mind as the city manager then says “the city learned that was not legal” at virtually the 11th hour. Didn’t the city manager and the city attorney construct and execute a complex plan to achieve success? The answer is apparently (and technically) not!
Jay Liebig