Like many cities, Malibu is experiencing flat or shrinking city income, greater demand for services and increasing encroachment on local control by federal, state and regional agencies. Therefore, Malibu officials need to be extremely prudent with every dollar spent. I enthusiastically applaud the acquisition of the Malibu Performing Arts Center for a City Hall, and at the same time I condemn spending an additional million dollars to construct Trancas Park for what will provide essentially identical public amenities. It’s not rational to spend these additional dollars in the face of our current financial difficulties. This has nothing to do with our City’s credit rating: with so many expensive projects like Legacy Park competing for completion we simply must not spend a single dollar more than is absolutely necessary on any given project. Adding unnecessarily to Malibu City’s debt load is irresponsible and bad governance.
On that basis I support the less-expensive “Goldman” plan for the Trancas Park build-out.
Marshall Thompson