It is inaccurate to say that the Lily’s Caf Steering Committee hates everything. We are strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes our members forever ineligible for public office. On Sept. 10, at 6:30 p.m., the Malibu City Council will attempt to resolve the disagreement as to their priorities, first to last, “if” the $15,000,000 bond issue, Measure K, passes. This is the current Malibu City Council’s effort to clear up, by resolution, the “such as” wording of bond Measure K.

The Lily’s Cafe Steering Committee encourages every Malibuite who is interested in natural areas, wildlife habitat, people parks, dog parks, playgrounds, playing fields, trails, a community center, low income housing, disaster preparedness equipment, traffic congestion, urban sprawl or any project for which the bond money can be used, to attend this public council meeting. It is important that you, your group or your self-appointed, non-compulsory steering committee be heard in order to gain a position on the funding and priority list of the $15,000,000 to be spent by the Malibu City Council.

And that is all we have to say.

Tom Fakehany, Chair

Lily’s Cafe Malibu Steering Committee

Nine o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. So then why are the three wise men of the Lily’s Cafe Malibu Steering Committee contesting with Deirdre Roney’s self-appointed and self-selected steering committee. Why has the Malibu City Council not given Roney more than modest support of her committee’s poorly written $15,000,000 bond measure. After all, the Council will have the $15,000,000 to spend as they see fit. Either Measure K is dead, the Malibu City Council is dead or my watch has stopped.

K. K. Klien

Labor Day has come and gone and life returns to its old rhythm. The kids are back in school, and their teachers are asking them what books they read over the summer vacation.

One of the benefits of leaving home for a long holiday is you can get away from the distraction of all those weekly and monthly magazines with their colorful covers and 5-second write-bites. (OK, The New Yorker still writes long, but the rest are into gratifying the short attention span.) So, summer is the time to get down to some serious reading. I mean real books, the ones you bought last spring but just couldn’t get around to.

So here, Teacher, are the titles that kept me absorbed during the lazy days of summer. Actually, I’m cheating just a smidge and including a few I read earlier in the year, but didn’t find time to write about.

For suspense, it’s hard to beat Tom Sawyer’s “The Sixteenth Man” (iUniverse.com), a complex, brilliantly plotted thriller that brings a new dimension to the most compelling true murder mystery of the past century. Deftly juggling the JFK assassination with a present-day private eye on an entirely different assignment, Sawyer kept me turning pages even as I wanted to slow down, spot the clues, and try to figure out where and how these parallel stories were going to intersect. I gave up and surrendered to the blistering pace, time later to probe the structure.

For another view of the chaos of the sixties, L.A. Times columnist Al Martinez gives an inside look at a once glorious metropolitan newspaper on an unstoppable slide to its demise. “The Last City Room” (St. Martin’s Press) is fiction, but it could only have been written by a reporter who had lived and worked on a San Francisco daily during the years of anti-war protests. His experience informs this novel in a way no amount of research could. Today’s corporate media bear no resemblance to those fiercely independent publishers struggling against the changing tide.

In “The Poet” (Warner Books paperback), Edgar Award winner Michael Connelly puts aside Det. Harry Bosch to let crime reporter Jack McEvoy investigate the death of his twin brother, a homicide detective, in an apparent suicide. Murder was Jack’s beat, but when it strikes close to home, the roles are reversed. Now it’s a TV reporter shoving a microphone in his face and asking him how he feels. He’s sure his brother was murdered and turns detective to find the killer. The FBI is hunting a serial killer with a similar MO, but the last thing the agents want is a nosy reporter playing gumshoe. I was really paying attention and didn’t even get close to figuring this one out until the “gotcha” scene.

Still, I will most remember this summer as the one when I became a Barbara Kingsolver fan. Before July, I had read only her book of essays, “High Tide in Tucson” (HarperCollins), which I borrowed from my sister. I got on the library’s waiting list for her latest novel, “Prodigal Summer,” and it arrived the week before I left on vacation. I lugged it to Paris (the hardcover weighs several stones) but it was worth it. I didn’t read it so much as I became immersed in it, absorbing it slowly, layer by layer. I didn’t want it to end, but when it did, I went right to Brentano’s in Paris and bought “Pigs in Heaven.” When I finished that, I found “The Bean Trees,” which should be read first as it introduces the characters and the story that winds up in Heaven, the town of the book title. Taylor Greer is running, or driving, away from her poor Kentucky home to find youthful adventure and has motherhood thrust upon her, ready or not, in the form of an abused, 3-year-old Indian orphan girl. Outside an Oklahoma diner, the child’s aunt places the pink blanket-wrapped baby on the front seat of Taylor’s ’55 Volkswagen, the one with no starter, and says, “Take this baby.” The road trip from hell winds up in Arizona, territory Kingsolver knows well. She also knows her characters to the bone, knows them all by ear and by heart. The stories evolve with humor and love, desperation and serendipity.

“The Poisonwood Bible” — different characters and locale (the Belgian Congo in 1959) — is next on my list. I can’t wait to discover these people, in that time and place, through Kingsolver’s words.

“Prodigal Summer” has turned my summer, and autumn, to gentler and more insightful prose. It’s a different kind of thrill in Kingsolver country.

I must commend the Malibu Times for putting, front and center, the article regarding the devastating impact the Ahmanson Ranch proposed development will have on the Malibu Creek and lagoon. What a nightmare: toxic pollutants, increased traffic crippling the 101, destruction of endangered and threatened species habitat and eradication of heritage oaks, coastal scrub and grasslands.

And I am not impressed by the full-page ads Washington Mutual has placed in the Los Angeles Times and both of Malibu’s local papers. I hope their publicity campaign is not fooling anyone.

Our environment’s health is an indication of the health of all living beings. We have got to stop destroying nature.

Valerie Sklarevsky

Oh where, oh where has Sharon Barovsky gone,

Oh where, oh where has she gone?

With her short council career,

And her re-election so near

Oh where or where has she gone?

Oh where, oh where has Sharon Barovsky gone,

Oh where, oh where has she gone?

With her support of Measure K so queer

We now need to see if she’s right or wrong

Oh where oh where has she gone?

Henry Petersen

Your last editorial was mean-spirited, ill advised and simply unnecessary. It is indeed true that if the food supply is reduced, population (be it kangaroo rats, a protected species) or humans (an unprotected species) will decline. This sage axiom has been followed by our civic leaders ever since Malibu became a city. For example, if you reduce available housing, those unfortunates who cannot get permits from the city or Coastal Commission, will be reduced to living like the Chumash and will experience a reduced longevity. Similarly, by reducing food producing land, the supply of food will correspondingly decrease. Thus we will have fewer children and no need for ball parks; yea, verily, we will have no need for any recreational land and, therefore, those who cheer on the current bond proposal will, if successful, be able to acquire more open space, presumably where the coyotes can happily munch on the few remaining neighborhood cats and dogs, now reduced to a feral existence because the populace, to avoid starvation, will have either moved to Ahmanson Ranch or commenced eating Mighty Dog to satisfy their now depleted protein requirements. Or they could all be living in pre-1980 communist style high-rises, forced there in order to preserve the likes of the belding savannah sparrow, the El Segundo blue butterfly and the tidal goby.

You see, the logical failure of your editorial is that it does not think locally as Malibu has done under the reign of Walt and Carolyn. But let’s put it all in perspective. If we eliminate those marginal creatures who currently live north of PCH–which runs east to west and west to east for the uninitiated–we’ll have more land for those truly valuable members of our society to build, with Coastal Commission blessing and chicanery, triple lot hotel-like mansions on Carbon Beach. Another method of population reduction can be achieved by the Coastal Commission when it seeks to place beach access on blind corners and dangerous curves. See for example the unfortunate accident on the west end of La Costa to which another of your first page articles refers.

With all this open space, the bond money can be applied to paving over large tracts of Malibu so that the beach will become public (except where the worthies live, of course) and we can invite every Crip, Blood, Playboy and Homie over for the day. They can all have access to the beach, thus fulfilling a joint State Lands and Coastal Commission erotic dream, for whatever rumbles they desire. This, too, may have the salutary effect of a minor decrease in population. The parking fees can be used to reduce the bond indebtedness, and to pick up the multifaceted trash, examples of which can be seen in the parking lots on the Santa Monica beaches each Monday morning and as food for the seagulls.

Under this scenario, we should all, fatalistically, ignore those grumblings emanating from Lily’s Caf, vote for the bond proposal and be done with it. On the other hand, we could . . . .

To quote a member of the Lily’s Caf curmudgeons, “and that’s all I have to say.”

Todd M. Sloan

When I started to write this column I thought I’d be able to report a settlement of a lawsuit at Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park. Unfortunately, the case was in court on Tuesday and the settlement stalled. Perhaps by the time the paper hits the stands on Wednesday or Thursday, last minute kinks will have been ironed out and it will all be over–or the case will be in trial.

After many years of fighting and litigation, the anger and economic uncertainty the litigation inflamed may finally be subsiding.

About 60-plus tenants, coach owners (roughly one quarter of the park) and the park owners (the Kissel Company) last week arrived at a tentative out-of-court settlement of the suit, which is set for trial this year.

The coach owners, the plaintiffs, had sued the Kissel Company, charging a failure to maintain the park because of alleged septic overflows, untrimmed trees whose branches were falling on coaches, dilapidated roads and serious electrical problems. The Kissel Company countered that as a result of the rent control ordinance and the unwillingness of the city to allow rent increases or a fair return on their investment, the park could not be properly maintained.

But recently, after several years of litigation, discovery, attempted mediation and settlement conferences, as well as the departure from the park in recent years of some of the older, more confrontational tenants, a momentum has built for settlement and final closure. Apparently, most everyone has grown weary of the battle.

The park and its insurance carriers have reached a tentative settlement with the coach owners for almost $2 million, which the coach owners overwhelmingly approved at a meeting last week. Observers said, after the deduction of attorneys’ fees and costs, it will leave about $1 million or so to be split among the coach owners for an average of about $15,000 per plaintiff. However, all coach owners would not receive the same amount. A formula has been created based on the amount of harm to individual coaches, which will determine how much the individual plaintiff will get.

Barring any last minute hitches, and it was rumored that an insurance carrier might want to pull out of the settlement, the matter, if approved, may finally put to rest many years of litigation in the park in many jurisdictions.

Earlier this year in April, in another Paradise Cove lawsuit, a settlement was reached in which the Kissels received their long, sought-after rent increases and they, in turn, as we previously reported, “agreed to use some portion of the increased rents to upgrade the common area amenities and facilities of the park. These will include a replacement and upgrade of the wastewater collection” that allegedly resulted in sewage overflowing into the park.

The rent increases were substantial. Estimates at 50 percent or more for most, with the spaces now renting from a low of $321 per month to a high of $1,331 plus a 15 percent rent raise whenever a space changes hands.

The Kissel Company owns the mobile park land and any improvements on it. The coach owners pay a rental to put their coaches on the land. The coach owners own the mobile homes, many of them with ocean views. Recent coach prices are reportedly in the high $400,000 plus range.

According to Joe Buchwald, a longtime park resident and board member, “The overwhelming acceptance of the earlier settlement led the way to this most recent proposed settlement … The bad news is that the rents are now higher, going up an average of in excess of 50 percent. However, the good news is the adversarial relationship is now gone and the park is friendlier and the relationships with the Kissel Company and the Dahlbergs have improved dramatically.”

The Paradise Cove legal and political battles in the past have been deeply enmeshed in the politics of Malibu. Shortly after Malibu became a city in 1991, the then City Council passed a rent control ordinance, which rolled back the rents to a 1984 base line, which quickly resulted in a lawsuit in federal court. After several years of litigation, a judge ruled against the city, in part, and the city ended up paying $2,500,000 plus in damages, attorneys’ fees and costs. The residents of the park were strong supporters of the Walt Keller/Carolyn Van Horn political machine, often voting 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 for them, and giving them large pluralities in their precinct that was often an important element of their margins of victory. The City Council and the rent control commission often strongly supported the interests of the coach owners over the mobile home parks. Resulting years of litigation created a high degree of tension in the parks and had substantial impact on resale, according to some observers.

This settlement, if successful, would signal the end of a long fight and a change from a city that supported confrontation and divisiveness, frequently to benefit some members of the council and their friends, to one that encourages rational settlement of disputes.