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Hit the road
I’m in favor of spending the $15,000,000 in bond money on hiking trails, especially when they are used by council members who annoy me.
Tommy Thomas
Bad for small businesses
Council Member Ken Kearsly’s rental fee increase via Measure K will once again drive the small business landlords and mobile home parks landlords to enhance their coffers by a mandated rent increase to pay for $15,000,000 in open land. Not only will this bond increase our rents, it will also take property off the tax roles, forcing those who remain in Malibu to absorb the costs of the city with less parcels to tax. Once again increasing our rents. Measure K is an effort to drive the small guy and his family out of Malibu.
Freddy Nanny
Malibu resident pulls victim from flaming car
A Malibu resident rescued the surviving victim of a horrendous accident on Pacific Coast Highway that ended in flames, with car parts strewn across four lanes of traffic, killing the passenger and leaving the driver in serious condition.
At about 3:20 a.m. on Aug. 22, Santa Monica resident Tarek Ahmed Tolba, 29, was allegedly speeding eastbound on PCH at 90 to 100 mph, as reported by a witness to sheriff’s officials, when he lost control of his open Mercedes convertible at Rambla Vista, which went airborne and crashed into a concrete mailbox pole.
He then collided into another pole, which struck the driver’s side. When his car finally stopped it caught on fire. The passenger, Andrea Schackne, 24, from San Diego, was thrown from the vehicle, according to sheriff’s officials, to the ocean-side shoulder by the force of the collision and died on impact. Tolba was pulled out of the burning car by Malibu resident Ken Crane and was airlifted to UCLA Medical Center.
“He was busted up really bad,” said Sgt. Kevin Mauch of the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff’s Station. “He broke his spine in several places.”
Crane, a flight attendant, was returning to his home in West Malibu from LAX when he saw the wreckage. He said the mangled debris, which “didn’t even appear as a car,” was everywhere. “It looked like a satellite fell out of the sky onto PCH. It was dark and eerie–no one else was around.”
The passenger door was ripped off and Crane “saw a body slumped over the console. “He was moaning. I was apprehensive about pulling the individual out because of possible neck and back injuries.” But when flames from the front of the wreckage began to shoot out toward the windshield on the driver’s side, he realized Tolba probably had no chance of survival if left in the car so he pulled him to safety.
Another motorist stopped to help and called 911 while Crane jogged to the fire station at Carbon Canyon. When Crane returned, the motorist told him another body was lying on the shoulder of the highway, motionless. And because of the growing flames, he’d had to drag Tolba farther away from the car.
A witness who was driving on PCH told sheriff’s deputies that Tolba passed her at about twice the speed she was traveling.
There was so much debris on the highway–the Mercedes’ engine was more than 100 feet from the crash site up Rambla Vista–that by 9 a.m., southbound traffic on PCH from Cross Creek Road to Las Flores Canyon Road was still being diverted onto a northbound lane. The accident also caused a backup on the Ventura Freeway.
Tolba was intoxicated at the time of the accident, according to sheriff’s officials. Mauch said that Tolba could be charged with manslaughter or second-degree murder and a felony DUI.
An interesting idea
From the publisher/By Arnold G. York
Pam Linn suggested in her column last week that perhaps we shouldn’t be feeding the animals in the wild because all we’re doing is increasing their food supply.
If that happens, it naturally follows, their population will increase.
She suspects the same thing about human overpopulation with our genetically modified crops that artificially increase our food supply.
This week we have a letter to the editor complimenting Pam that says, ” … you hit the nail on the head. It is a proven fact that overpopulation is directly related to increased food supply.” The letter writer has a solution apparently for both human and animal populations. “Slowly cut down the food supply and the overpopulation problem will slowly decline.”
Assuming that they’re both correct, and I suspect they may be, I began to wonder just how far we would go to protect our environment from overpopulation, and just how much we’re prepared to do.
We could require that farmers produce 20 percent less or that they destroy 20 percent of their crop, but we already do that in a way when we pay them not to plant crops. But then there would be a black market since we’re creating a food shortage, so we’d have to be ready to police that.
Since it takes awhile for populations to reduce, there would be people starving while the system accommodates itself to a sustainable population level. We, of course, would have to resist our natural but ill-informed humanitarian instincts to feed these people. Recognizing that most decent people would have a hard time saying “No” to a hungry child, we’d have no option but to remove these children, store them someplace, and then just feed them minimally until they die. Of course, as the people population decreases, the animal population will probably increase.
Hungry people would try to live off the land, so we’d have to guard against that and make it a capital crime to poach the government’s deer or other animals.
But then I began to wonder. Perhaps there are other things we do that increase population and therefore place strains on the ecology of the planet.
For example, in the last generation or so we have begun to extend our life expectancy significantly. There was something in Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times about all the centurions now living. I don’t want to sound crass about it, but by the time most of us hit 70 or so, we aren’t of much economic utility to our society.
All that Medicare or Social Security does is prolong the inevitable. Despite what some of you might believe, death is really not yet optional in Southern California. We’re all going to die sometime. Medicare and Social Security merely delay it.
If older people died sooner, we’d be able to reuse their homes. Their heirs would get their assets while they were still young enough to spend them foolishly, the economy would prosper and we’d be saved the expense of both Social Security and Medicare and the environment would be better off.
We also, of course, would need to cut out legal immigration as many in the Sierra Club had suggested in voting in its recent plebiscite and also deal harshly with illegal immigrants by making it a capital offense. I know some of you might think that overly harsh, but we have to be strong and we can’t let residual liberal tendencies keep us from saving our environment.
Then there are several things that have always been the primo controls on population; famine, war and plague. We’ve already dealt with famine. War will pretty much take care of itself since human beings appear to have a love affair with their weapons, and there are countries all over the globe just itching to reduce each other’s population problems instantaneously.
Plague is of course a little more difficult. It seems to be a natural phenomenon occurring in all places, but the problem is how to keep it confined in the right places. Science may be able to help us there. We could give everyone the plague but only we control the antidote. We’re kind of doing that right now with worldwide AIDS. We didn’t create it, but we maintain control of the medications to cure it or at least contain it so we can then population manage for a better planet.
Our writer says, “We as human beings think we know best and each year we feel we need to find bigger and better ways to feed this burgeoning planet.” She’s probably right. The scientists would be a problem so we’d have to strictly regulate them or this would never work.
The logic of the proposal is ruthless but necessary, and in time we might get over our lingering attachment to our older parents, or unnecessary children. And although it would sometimes be difficult, in time we would see that it’s the only way to build a better world.
School bells toll on over-enrolled, but physically upgraded schools
As the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District gets ready for the new school year beginning Sept. 5, lack of space due to over-enrollment seems to be a predominant concern in Malibu elementary schools, while Malibu High’s enrollment remains stable for the time being.
“It shows people like the schools,” said John Deasy, the new SMMUSD superintendent, who is working on solutions to accommodate all students. “It’s a tough situation from a positive point of view. We have a contingency plan, but we will make sure we have an actual head count when students arrive first. Should students come in and a school actually be over-enrolled, than we would have to make an extra classroom.”
On that up note, many school constructions projects that were underway throughout last year are now completed, so students will benefit from new playing fields, libraries and updated academic programs.
This year, Webster Elementary School expects an estimated 450 students, with 80 incoming kindergartners. But the school barely has space to accommodate all the students and they are over-enrolled in the 1st and 2nd grades.
Webster now has a new library and a computer lab, said Principal Phil Cott. A second playing field will open in a month or two and will be available for community use during off hours.
Academically, Webster will use new math and science programs that include hands-on activities.
“This will be the first time in many years that all the schools are using the same math program,” said Cott. “We believe that it will help all students district wide meet the state standards because it was written specifically after the new standards were set.”
Webster will also have three new teachers, replacing three longtime teachers who retired at the end of the last school year.
Point Dume Marine Science Elementary School is also full.
“We’re really trying to figure out strategies of who has the room,” said Cynthia Gray, Point Dume principal, about the overflow. “It has not been so in the past. Point Dume opened six years ago to create that outlet and we’re cutting back. Now I have room only in second grade.”
Point Dume has about 350 students enrolled, with 47 incoming kindergartners. The school is unique because many of the teaching positions are filled by teachers who job-share, which means they share one contract and each one usually works 50 percent of the time.
Juan Cabrillo Elementary is also overenrolled in four grade levels with waiting lists. As for improvements, Cabrillo is getting a face-lift with exterior paint and an upgrade to one wing.
An informal introductory meeting between students, teachers and parents will take place at a barbecue at Juan Cabrillo on Tuesday, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Malibu High School expects 1,200 students this year, with 50 or 60 incoming 6th-graders.
“But we never quite know how many we are going to have until they actually sit in their seats,” said Principal Mike Matthews.
However, unlike the elementary schools, Malibu High is not running out of space because enrollment remains stable thus far.
“One of the goals we always have is to make sure we know our students well,” said Matthews.
This year, the school hired an additional English teacher and one middle school counselor. “We now have a middle school assistant principal and the Boys and Girls Club to meet the needs of middle school students,” said Matthews.
In an effort to offer continuity for older students, high school students will now have the same homeroom teacher for the entire four years of high school, enabling students and teachers to know each other well.
Malibu High will feature a new track and field with a new all-weather track, and Matthews hopes the 12-classroom building, now under construction, will be finished this year.
The school also hired an athletic director who will help expand the program, said Matthews.
Malibu High will become the Malibu headquarters for the district superintendent. In an effort to be directly involved with Malibu schools and the community, Deasy opened an office at the school, where he plans to be available Thursdays or Fridays, depending on board meeting dates.
