The city council plan includes unlimited light usage at the Malibu High School sports field Mondays through Thursdays until 7:30 p.m., from early November to early March. Also, 18 nights of the year, the lights could stay on until 10:30 p.m. The proposal will go before the California Coastal Commission, possibly in June.
By Jonathan Friedman / Special to The Malibu Times
The Malibu City Council on Monday two-upped the Planning Commission by voting to allow Malibu High School a maximum of 18 nights of light per year at its main sports field until 10:30 p.m. The Planning Commission had proposed 16 nights. The council also added a feature that was not part of the Planning Commission concept by allowing an unlimited number of lighted nights at the field until 7:30 p.m. on Mondays through Thursdays. Also, the word “temporary,” which was part of the Planning Commission recommendation, was removed.
The council plan is included in amendments to the city’s Local Coastal Program, or LCP, and Municipal Code. The LCP amendment must get approval from the California Coastal Commission. The Coastal Commission is expected to meet in Long Beach for its June meeting, but there is no guarantee the item could get on the agenda.
Although football is not specified in the council-approved language, the 18-night amount would allow for traditional Friday Night football games to take place, which some consider to be community events. It will also make room for possible playoff games and some contests in other sports.
If the Coastal Commission approves the amendment, it does not mean the school will automatically get to install lights for night games. The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District will still need to obtain a conditional-use permit from the city, with the features of the amendment being the threshold for what the district could obtain.
Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich said she wanted no amount of nights specified in the amendment because then the city would be able to decide how many nights it wanted to grant during a conditional use permit hearing. She was unable to get any of her colleagues to support this because they feared this would not receive Coastal Commission support.
The council members added the feature of lights until 7:30 p.m. with the thinking it is a time that few could complain about.
“I would think that would be acceptable,” Mayor Sharon Barovsky said. “It’s a reasonable request.”
Numerous members of the public spoke at the meeting. Several lights supporters agreed with Conley Ulich’s idea for no night limit. Others blasted the plan for allowing any lights at night at all.
“Once this barn door is open, it’s going to be very hard to close,” Lucille Keller said. “Your first priority is protection of all residents’ interests. This amendment benefits a very small minority of our 13,000 plus residents and forces many to live with the intrusion of high-intensity lights into their homes.”
City Council candidate Laura Rosenthal said there are many families in Malibu, so Keller’s assessment was not correct. She supported the 16-night limit because it was “enough to take care of our varsity teams, but not so much that the coalition supporting us falls apart, and they [Coastal Commission] deny us altogether.”
The Coastal Commission last month rejected a request from the SMMUSD for 16 nights of lights per year at Malibu High. Coastal staff had recommended approval of the request, but the commissioners went against it because the Malibu LCP prohibits the lights. The LCP amendment would eliminate this prohibition.
Several Malibu residents attended the Coastal Commission meeting to voice opposition to the SMMUSD’s request. Barovsky said, “These people that drove to Long Beach and argued against the schools ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
Council approves city hall design
Also on Monday, the council approved the final design for the new city hall by a vote of 4-1. Conley Ulich voted against it because the final concept was not provided by the consultant until the night of the meeting.
“I would like to be able to have a conversation with you [the consultant] about some of these details and some of these numbers, but guess what, we just got it,” Conley Ulich said.
The city will now put the construction project out to bid. The project is expected to begin in June and finish in March.
Additionally, the council voted to create an ad-hoc committee consisting of Conley Ulich and Mayor Pro Tem Jefferson Wagner to study the feasibility of a municipal purchase of the Vital Zuman property and the adjacent site owned by Kristi Dewind. The two properties are located at the intersection of Heathercliff Road and Pacific Coast Highway.
A citizens committee studied the Dewind site in 2008 at the request of Conley Ulich, but nothing came of it. Conley Ulich would like the city to buy one or both properties to create a site for a teen center, senior center or for other municipal purposes.