The Silly Season struck with gale force as the Coastal Commission and State Parks put their heads together and came up with THE solution for Malibu Bluffs Park. The playing fields will be torn down, the park building will be torn down, all the grass will be torn up and transplanted with Endangered Coastal Sage at a cost of only eight million dollars. For a mere two and one half million, the city may replace its ballparks on land to the North but no longer blocking the view of motorists coming over Malibu Canyon Road.
And who will pay for all this? The State – No! The City – No! The Taxpayer-Yes! And it is to the credit of the city council that it has been working consistently to save this park.
Now contrast this Public Agency Solution to the situation in Sacramento. The great state surplus at the time Governor Davis entered office has rapidly drowned into a sea of deficit. The population grows larger. The costs grows bigger.
Something has to give, says the governor. According to the L.A. Times, that something may well be in children’s health programs, school class sizes. After all can we prove that smaller classes really helped. And then there are those pesky elders-they cost us a lot. That gets young people and the elders. Oh, yes, we probably will have to raise taxes. That’s fair-everyone is punished.
And in that climate, the Coastal Commission and State Parks are proposing an eight million dollar expenditure to tear up a park that is constantly visitor and community serving as is. It certainly meets the mandate of the Coastal Commission and the State Parks far better than a museum field of coastal sage of interest only to tourists. This park, as is serves thousands of children and adults from the Los Angeles Region and is the site of gatherings, the latest of which was an Indian Pow Wow, that drew visitors from Arizona and New Mexico.
In a democracy, government at any level is not our friend. It is our servant. It is a structure of order created by us to assure local citizens can free from the tyranny of chaos and repression.
The moment we forget that a democratic society rests on the shoulders of local citizens, then we have handed over the power of our mandate to be free. As Lord Action said in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute Power corrupts, absolutely.”
Local Rights have been given to us by the Constitution. That is what Malibu is fighting for now. The return of our local rights!!!!
Georgianna McBurney