Malibu should not price residents out of their own view protections

By By Jo Drummond, Co-Founder, Malibu Rebuild Task Force · Mon Jul 20 2026

Malibu’s View Preservation Ordinance was adopted in 2012 for a simple and important reason: to protect residents’ established ocean views and property rights. That ordinance did not appear out of nowhere. It came after years of resident effort, public debate, and City work to create a fair process for protecting views that are part of the value, character, and quality of life of Malibu homes. But on Monday (July 13) night, the City approved fees that make that protection nearly impossible for ordinary residents to use.

Under the newly approved fee schedule, a Primary View Determination now costs $977. A Planning Director-level View Preservation Permit has jumped from $396 to $4,641. A Planning Commission-level permit has risen from $1,693 to $6,814.

That was not a minor adjustment. That was an increase of more than 400% to over 1,000%.

A law designed to protect residents should not cost thousands of dollars for those same residents to enforce.

The unfairness at the heart of this decision is impossible to ignore: a resident trying to protect a City-recognized view is being charged thousands of dollars because another property owner refuses to maintain overgrown foliage.

The view owner is not the problem. The noncompliant foliage is the problem.

In most City enforcement matters, that distinction is clear. If there is unpermitted work, the City does not ask the neighbor to pay thousands of dollars to enforce the code. If there is a nuisance, the City does not ask the affected resident to fund the compliance process. If there is a code violation, the City applies and upholds its own rules.

View preservation should not be treated differently.

The City should not place the financial burden on the resident who is trying to protect a right the City has already recognized. If a foliage owner ignores notices, refuses to cooperate, or allows noncompliant vegetation to block a protected view, the City should use fines, enforcement penalties, or bill the responsible property owner if the View Preservation Permit is granted.

That would be fair. Monday night’s approved fee schedule is not.

This is even more troubling in a fire-prone community like Malibu. Overgrown, unmaintained vegetation is not just a view issue. It can also be a fire-safety issue. After the fires Malibu has endured, it is hard to understand why City policy would make it more expensive for residents to address overgrown, noncompliant, and unsafe foliage.

All around Big Rock, residents can still see large dead burned trees on street after street that were not removed after the fire, despite residents’ understanding that hazardous trees would be addressed through the debris removal process. Many of us know firsthand how unmanaged trees and vegetation contribute to fire spread and the loss of homes.

That reality should make the City more committed to practical vegetation enforcement, not less.

The timing could not be worse. Hundreds of Malibu families are still trying to rebuild after the fire. Many are facing insurance gaps, construction inflation, permit delays, temporary housing costs, and the emotional toll of being displaced from their homes. This is not the moment for the City to make existing resident protections more expensive, more complicated, or more out of reach.

Rebuilding Malibu should not only mean pouring foundations and issuing building permits. It should also mean restoring the livability, safety, property values, and neighborhood character that residents are fighting so hard to return to. Protected ocean views are part of that. Fire-safe vegetation management is part of that. Fair enforcement is part of that.

To the City’s credit, Malibu is finally getting closer to the 100-permit rebuild milestone that the Malibu Rebuild Task Force has been pushing for over the past several months. We are now at 88 permits. That progress matters. But it also makes the point: when the City focuses, streamlines, and removes unnecessary barriers, rebuilding moves forward. The same principle should apply here. The City should not create new financial barriers that make basic resident protections harder to use.

For years, residents have been told that the City would eventually take a serious look at the View Preservation Ordinance, its enforcement problems, and its fee structure. Yet each year, the fees go up, and the larger policy problem gets kicked down the road again.

Monday night’s approval should be the breaking point.

Malibu is more than flush. The City has substantial reserves, reportedly more than $60 million. No one is suggesting the City should exhaust its reserves irresponsibly, but reversing these excessive View Preservation fees will not come close to breaking the bank. A resident-protection ordinance should not be turned into a revenue strategy.

The City should also be aggressively pursuing state and federal funds, including funds connected to the Governor’s $2.5 billion fire recovery package for emergency response, debris removal, cleanup, sheltering, and related recovery costs.

Before keeping resident fees at unaffordable levels, the City should use fair enforcement mechanisms, available recovery funding, and reasonable budgeting.

Residents should not be City Hall’s fallback plan.

The solution is straightforward: keep View Preservation fees reasonable, stop penalizing residents who are trying to enforce protections the City created, use fines or enforcement penalties for noncompliant foliage owners, and if a View Preservation Permit is granted, shift the cost to the property owner whose overgrown vegetation created the problem.

This is not complicated.

A resident who has a protected view should not have to spend nearly $5,000 — or almost $7,000 — just to ask the City to enforce its own ordinance. Plus then pay the high cost of trimming the foliage as per the ordinance.

Malibu City Council may have approved these fees Monday night, but this issue cannot be kicked down the road again. Council must correct the View Preservation fee structure as soon as the budget comes back for renewal next year. Residents should not be priced out of the protections they fought for, relied on, and were promised — especially as so many are still trying to rebuild their homes, neighborhoods, and community.