With the Malibu City Council election barely over, the City is now contemplating a severe shift in its subdivision ordinance, which has the ability to change the character and beauty of Malibu forever. On the evening of Monday, May 13, citizens who care about whether or not Malibu becomes overdeveloped are advised to attend the City Council hearing at which this topic is scheduled to be addressed.
Two areas of grave concern include lot line adjustments and certificates of compliance, seemingly obscure land-use terms that are the beginnings to opening up development on currently unbuildable parcels of land and making them buildable. This translates to more development, more traffic, overcrowding in schools and other impacts that accompany unbridled growth.
What is the City Council being asked to do? Abdicate their own authority over these issues and allow staff the final and supreme authority over giving old, antiquated, unbuildable lots the reconfigurations they need to turn themselves into speculative profits for outoftown real estate speculators.
Under the current proposal, neither the City Council nor the Planning Commission would be allowed to hear appeals on these issues, as municipal bodies like these do in countless cities and counties throughout the state. The staff would decide, as they say they have always done since we’ve been a city. If this is true, then the City has not been following standard procedures for lot line adjustments or certificates of compliance, and no wonder we see new mansions cropping up on every hillside each week.
The current subdivision ordinance has a public review process, through the Environmental Review Board’s oversight of these decisions, which will be officially eliminated in the new ordinance. The community’s voice is essentially eliminated in this process, with no appeal possibility and no review by elected officials. While in recent months the city has chosen not to convene the Environmental Review Board, all candidates in the recent election publicly stated their unwavering support for the Environmental Review Board being an active oversight body for development issues in Malibu.
Brian Sweeney, who has been a master of using these subdivision tools to make himself gobs of speculative money from public agencies, has been buying up more and more land in the Santa Monica Mountains and now even in Malibu. His scheme is to use these tools to increase the possibility for entitlements to build and then try to force agencies who do not want such lands to be built on to buy the land from him. His scheme was uncovered by The Los Angeles Times, and his activities led to the passage of SB497 last year, which limits the ability to profit from this type of speculation. This subdivision change is not consistent with the new state law, and would play right into Sweeney’s hands, making future land acquisitions for open space the city might covet more difficult and more costly.
SB 497 states that parcel reconfigurations between four or more lots must comply with all provisions of the General Plan and Local Coastal Program. Is this determination best left to the city staff or to an elected body like the City Council, answerable to the voters?
I sincerely hope that Malibu citizens will awaken from their slumber in time to realize this issue affects not only the future of their commute times and their property values, but their quality of life in this community.
Marcia Hanscom