Higher taxes mean higher rents in Malibu and my rent is sky high. I agree with Ed N. Peterson (letter to the editor 8/2/01 The Malibu Times). Low-income housing in the center of Malibu around the City Hall is the way for the City Council to spend my part of the $15,000,000. There is a bus line to get to work, shops, markets, restaurants and bars all within walking distances. I want to be a Malibu property owner and no longer be a Malibu renter.
Leory Thomas
The Malibu Times wants to know what readers think about it as a tabloid. I think that the most precious thing we have is life. Yet it has absolutely no trade-in value. I was reminded of how important The Malibu Times is in Malibuites’ lives when I received a call from a follower of my “letters to the editor.”
This Malibuite has been restricted to his living quarters for sometime with a rare disease, but wanted to join the Lily’s Caf Malibu Steering Committee (no this letter is not about local politics, it is about this newspaper). As he has written to The Malibu Times from time to time, we reminisced about the assortment of articles he has composed. He (I haven’t been given permission to use his name) showed humor and imagination in each of his observations about Malibu.
We both agreed that The Malibu Times is jam-packed with the commentary of outstanding contributors, both professional writers and the helper donors of poets and letter writers. Pam Linn’s article in the June 22, 2000 issue of The Malibu Times regarding her “Dear Old Dad” is a case in point. Her observations were enlightening, educational and revealing. Pam demonstrated a deep perception of life with her father, which was considerate, affectionate and kindhearted. Not leaving out mothers, I recall an editorial written by a cantankerous publisher of a Malibu newspaper that showed the same qualities when writing about a visit to his mother a few years back.
The predicament at The Malibu Times, we concluded, is the significant wealth of writing genius in such a diminutive community and a limited amount of space in which to publish exceptional articles and wonderfully written “Letters to the Editor.” We don’t always agree with the scribe of the letter, however, we enjoy the substance of a correspondence that demonstrates the author has put their essence into the letter. The same holds true when your staff writers show character in their articles.
I wonder how many Malibuites observe the community in which they live through the observations and soul of The Malibu Times? I wonder how many citizens look faithfully for their weekly edition of The Malibu Times? I wonder how many “letters to the editor” never see the ink of day? I wonder if your staff looked around the pressroom would they find a “letter to the editor” explaining “relativity” from Albert Einstein or even a set of plans by Ed Niles for Noah’s Ark?
In a world of full-size and bulky newspapers The Malibu Times is nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore, The Malibu Times is perfect.
Can I have my $3,000 prize now?
And this is all I have to say (sure)
Tom Fakehany
The battle between the farmers of Klamath Falls, Ore. and the endangered suckerfish of the same region, over who has the first rights to the water in this drought year, is coming to a head this week.
On Thursday, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is scheduled to spin the valve and slam shut the temporary supply of water to the farmers. If it does, it may be an end to the farms, the stock and ultimately to the farmers’ way of life. No one is sure just what’s going to happen because sympathizers are flooding into Klamath Falls from all over the west, and it’s dry and hot and people are angry. Some are armed.
Part of that procession of sympathizers began here in Malibu on Aug. 15 when a group of farmers and ranchers, hunters and fishermen, with their picket signs, pickups and flatbed trucks, began the long trek up the coast to Oregon.
It was a classic confrontation. The pickup and Budweiser crowd come to the land of chardonnay, SUVs and TV cameras to look for help and support. They succeeded, at least in the latter. The television and newspaper coverage has followed them up the coast.
Up to now in the battle for water, the fish have been ahead. In April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a “biological opinion” to the Bureau of Reclamation stating that it is required under the Endangered Species Act to maintain specific water levels to protect the endangered fish. The Bureau of Reclamation then ordered the local irrigation districts to withhold water from approximately 1,400 farms in the Klamath basin to protect the fish.
There is an Endangered Species Act that protects the fish, but apparently there is not an Endangered Farmers Act, so the water was shut off. The resulting explosion led to the taps being reopened for a short period of time. They are due to be closed on Thursday, but something may be changing.
The farmers have challenged the science put forth by the environmentalists. They charge that it’s not peer reviewed. They say it’s not an open process. They say only government agencies are involved in the review process and that the farmers and their allies are all but excluded from the process. They charge the environmental community’s assumptions are questionable or at least arguable and, in some cases, simply wrong. And surprise of surprises, the Bureau of Reclamation is beginning to agree.
The bureau just issued a letter calling for major changes in the guidelines for protecting the endangered fish. It has told the agencies involved they have to be more flexible and open to peer review by independent scientists. To sum it up, the reclamation bureau has told the other federal agencies, “You can’t just be arbitrary about this. You’ve got to be fair.”
I bring this all up because we have similar situations locally.
The alphabet soup of federal, state, county, regional and city agencies that impact our little town is staggering. The Regional Water Quality Control Board, the California State Parks, California Fish & Game, the Army Corp of Engineers, the National Marine Fisheries, the California Coastal Commission, the Coastal Conservancy, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and a legion of politicians, private and public trusts, all making policy, and many feeding at the same trough that Malibu periodically replenishes with bond money.
As in Oregon, these agencies and commissions are sometimes right and probably just as often wrong. They trip over each other. They all compete and grab for the dollars for their agency or cause. They crank out reports by the pound. They support an entire industry of consultants and impact every aspect of our lives.
Anyone who has ever tried to add a toilet, build a tool shed, ford a creek, ride a horse in the hills or keep governmental commercial development out of their neighborhood knows the frustration those farmers must feel when you get trapped in the labyrinth designed by Kafka.
You can’t help but wish them luck and be thankful it’s not you.
Summer sales in Malibuy Rick Wallace / Special to The Malibu Times
From the top of Latigo Canyon to the shores of Las Tunas Beach, from Broad Beach to Tuna Canyon, these are the most recent sales in beautiful Malibu this summer.
The buyers for homes in Malibu Cove Colony just keep on coming. Most recently, a newer home at the east end sold for just under $4 million. Cove Colony has had the biggest rate of turnover of any neighborhood in Malibu the last year or two. Another home, with a short market time, brought $2.6 million in June.
Very recently closed was an escrow involving a three-bedroom home on Carbon Beach, selling at the general average price for the beach, $2,850,000 for 50 feet (width of beach front property).
Two glass contemporary artistic style homes in shaded surroundings have found new owners. One, in Latigo Canyon, included a pool, for $760,000. Another, located downstream in Sycamore Park, was a unique two-bedroom home that sold for $875,000.
Two Tuna Canyon homes in the Saddlepeak area have sold for more than $1 million each. Both homes had multiple acres and 3 bedrooms, and both improved on sale prices from recent years for the same homes.
A larger Mediterranean home in Malibu Park was on and off the market for many years, but sold recently for almost $1.5 million. It has less than an acre, but is close to the beach, with six bedrooms. Also in Malibu Park, a two-acre estate with a tennis court and pool, five bedrooms and an ocean view was just reported closed in the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) for almost $2 million.
Nearby, a hillside home with a pool and three bedrooms sold for $1.1 million. Two other sales in the area: A cottage on about 1-1/2 acres of gently sloping land sold at just above $800,000, and an architectural home with a guest unit on less than an acre with an ocean view sold at $880,000.
Two new estate villas in a newer subdivision of Malibu Park had recent sales just over $2 million and at $3 million.
With about one-and-a-half acres and an ocean view, a Kanan area home sold for $1,440,000. Nearby, another home had its fourth sale in eight years. The last one was at about the same price as the year 2000 deal of $1,150,000.
In the highest reaches of Latigo Canyon sits a large marble Mediterranean estate on five acres with a pool and superb top-of-the-mountain views. It sold for more than $1.8 million.
A brand new home in the Cavalleri area, on a new street, has sold for nearly $1.5 million. It lacks an ocean view but features about an acre of land.
On Las Tunas Beach, a three-bedroom home brought one of the highest prices ever for the beach, selling in May for $1,800,000. Another nearby home on 30 feet of beach sold for $1,650,000.
In Decker Canyon, a three-bedroom home with under an acre closed escrow in July for $450,000.
A newer home in the Winding Way area included a pool with four bedrooms when it transacted in May for almost $2.6 million. Separately, a resale of another home in the same area, bought for $1.5 million two years ago, netted that owner almost $400,000 more. The home had two acres and a terrific ocean view.
The only published sale in the MLS so far this year in Malibu Country Estates was an ocean view cul-de-sac home with three bedrooms, selling at $1,125,000 in the spring.
Corral Canyon home sales of late have landed at $415,000, $450,000, $685,000, $455,000, $487,000, $766,000, and $552,000 for both parts of the canyon.
Five bedrooms and a good ocean view in La Chusa Highlands was worth nearly $1.2 million. Another property nearby, on a private gated knoll with over an acre and a six-bedroom home, sold for just under $3 million.
Out at County Line Beach, a four-bedroom, two-story con-temporary home was bought for $2.4 million.
A typical older, original Point Dume house with three smaller bedrooms and some ocean view has sold for more than $1.1 million. The property had about an acre, virtually all usable. Another home on the Point, with an unobstructed ocean view on a flag lot, sold for $1.7 million, more than double its price in a 1997 sale.
A contemporary home in the Rambla Pacifico/Hume area sold quickly for $965,000. It had a superb ocean view and was a rebuild from the 1993 fire. It featured three bedrooms on less than an acre, hillside.
An ocean view home in La Costa Hills has closed escrow recently for more than $1 million. The same home was one of the first in the neighborhood to break $1 million, in 1998. The house has four bedrooms and excellent views to the west. Down the hill, on landside Pacific Coast Highway/La Costa, a three-bedroom home closed at $715,000.
Trancas Highlands was the site of a $1.3 million sale in July. The home had about two acres and a guesthouse.
The most recent sale in Sea View Estates involved a home with a pool that sold for $765,000, $200,000 more than when it sold in 1995, at the bottom of the market. Two other homes, side-by-side, sold for $650,000 and $670,000 in the same week during the spring.
Two bedrooms on Las Flores Beach, with 40 feet of sand, was worth $1,260,000, after a long time on and off the market.
A celebrity property on Broad Beach got full price at just under $9 million. Another full-price sale on the same beach was at $5.25 million.
Rick Wallace of the Coldwell Banker Company has been a realtor in Malibu for 13 years. He can be reached at RICKMALIBUrealestate.com.
I’ve been reading about the new land bond issue and the various arguments for and against. I’m 34 years old and my wife and I have a 14-month old son. After listening to both sides, we are confident that our son will be able to enjoy the benefits of the land bond issue. . .parks, ball fields and a community center. It seems like a basic feature of any community to have parks, ball fields and a community center. We hope that Malibu is not the exception. My wife and I are definitely voting “Yes” on the land bond issue in November.
Norman, Kerry and Noah Ollestad.
Every week we read in your newspaper articles and letters about the “three guys” against the bond issue the Malibu citizens are trying to pass this November. Their biggest complaint is that this bond would be a blank check to our City Council. History has shown that communities across the country that have implemented this type of open space and land acquisition bond have had overwhelming success. In fact, many times the Feds and the State Government have matched these types of bonds knowing how committed the local citizens are. With any luck we could triple this bond amount.
This town has spent 10 years fighting amongst themselves and never thinking about the future. As far as we’re concerned the future is here and now. We finally have an opportunity to take local control of our own open space needs. If you think about it, every year we send our hard earned money (tax money) to Washington D.C. and Sacramento having no accountability at all. Why don’t these “three guys” go after D.C. and Sacramento and complain about the blank check. Personally, we feel comfortable knowing that our citizens, with our City Council, know what’s best for us. We are voting “Yes.”
Bob LaBonge
Lata Ryan
Drivers swerving out of control, smashing into parked or traveling cars and knocking down power poles seems to be a daily occurrence in Malibu lately.
Four cars traveling on Pacific Coast Highway in the Carbon Beach area slammed into each other like tumbling dominos on Tuesday morning, injuring three people, including a child. A BMW had stopped for a crossing pedestrian and was rear-ended by a pickup truck.
According to Dep. Doug Duvall of the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station, “The BMW shot across traffic, clipped a car in the oncoming traffic lane and then hit a parked car.”
After it hit the BMW, “the pickup truck careened into a parked trailer and knocked the trailer into traffic.”
Traffic on PCH encountered yet another delay after an accident occurred in the late afternoon on Saturday, while beachgoers and residents crowded local beaches.
Two people were injured and traffic was backed up significantly when a vehicle hit a telephone pole between Rambla Vista and Carbon Canyon.
“A person in a van apparently drifted off the road and smashed into a telephone pole,” said Duvall. “Deputies arrived to find two people injured at the scene.”
However, the identity of the driver is not yet known. “At this time they are still determining who the driver was,” said Duvall.
After the accident, the power lines were deactivated for a while, and although Duvall said the accident was cleared in about 45 minutes, traffic was delayed for several hours on PCH, according to witnesses.
Another injury accident occurred Aug. 13 on PCH at Topanga Canyon during morning rush hour, when a driver careened headlong into a power pole and then into a parked car. On the same day, a cement truck overturned on Stunt Road, downing power lines for much of the afternoon. In yet a third incident that day, a driver crashed into a power pole on Kanan Dume Road at Castle View Drive, which fell into the road. Southbound traffic was diverted into northbound lanes and it was midnight before all lanes were open again.
The California Coastal Commission’s local coastal plan (LCP) for Malibu is moving ahead as planned and will be ready for review and comment in the first part of September, according to Chuck Damm, commission senior deputy director.
The LCP will spell out what the city can and cannot do in the way of developing much of its own land, regulating commercial usage along the coastline and even how to control sewage waste. The Coastal Commission was required by law to submit an LCP for Malibu after the commission rejected the city’s own draft plan last year.
The fate of a new and revised Malibu city-drafted LCP, submitted to the Coastal Commission on July 26, is unclear. City Attorney Christi Hogin said it appeared to her that “there is resistance to accepting our plan” by the commission.
The city rushed its plan to completion in the hope its provisions would be considered for inclusion in the commission’s draft. But deputy director Damm, in an Aug. 7 letter to Hogin, listed several requirements that were missing from the LCP submittal.
In essence, Damm’s letter cited failure to include:
“It was pretty nit-picky … they were basically asking for a copy of our mailing list,” Hogin said. And she speculated the commission was resisting acceptance of the city plan because once it is formally on file, the commission must then begin a 90-day period of hearings and recommendations for changes. In other words, they would be under a time pressure to get their own draft ready for scrutiny.
“I think they’d like to avoid it (the Malibu LCP) altogether. That’s the message,” said Hogin.
But Damm denied any such motive. In fact, in his letter to Hogin, Damm wrote: “Notwithstanding the inadequacy of the city’s submittal for filing, staff will review what was submitted and will incorporate those provisions that are deemed appropriate for inclusion in the LCP” being drafted by the commission. He reaffirmed that commitment in a later interview.
Hogin said the list of missing requirements would be easy to comply with, and that there should be no further cause to delay the LCP’s filing.
The Stanford 9 test scores results are out and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District continues to improve in nearly all areas of studies in all schools, said SMMUSD Superintendent John Deasy after looking at preliminary results.
However, Malibu school numbers show increases in some areas and grades while indicating a small decrease in other grades and areas of studies.
And, except for math scores for Malibu High’s ninth grade, high school level testing scores turned out lower overall than the elementary and junior grade levels.
This was the fourth year of testing in the state’s STAR Program for students in grades 2 through 11. Students in grades 2 through 8 took the reading, mathematics, written expression and spelling sections of the Stanford Achievement Test (Stanford 9). Grades 9, 10 and 11 did not take spelling, but took tests in science and history-social science.
These tests were designed to help the state monitor the progress of school districts throughout California.
But Deasy noted that the Internet results, which were posted on Aug. 15, should be regarded as preliminary until they have been reviewed.
“Our test coordinator and entire leadership team will be checking the results for any reporting problems,” said Deasy in a press release.
But for now, test results indicate that SMMUSD’s results are improving in some areas while others have lost some ground.
Math scores were notably higher at Juan Cabrillo Elementary’s third grade level where scores improved from last year with a jump from 69 percent to 91 percent. These numbers reflect the percentage of students scoring at or above the national average on the 2001 Stanford 9 test. A 50 means that half the school’s students were at or above the national average).
The third grade improved in spelling as well, which went from last year’s numbers of 56 percent to this year at 75 percent.
Webster and Point Dume elementary schools, overall, stayed steady in most areas of study. However, Point Dume’s fifth grade class was at 100 percent in reading, 13 percent higher than last year.
As with elementary testing scores, junior high and high school scores showed mixed results.
However, big differences were seen from the jump to the 9th, 10th and 11th grades, where scores in reading, math and language were notably lower than junior and elementary grades, with Malibu High school scoring in the 60th and 70th percentiles.
The district, in its press release, concurred that the results, after four years of testing, will help the school district gather data with other achievement information to see if its efforts to strengthen curriculum and instruction are having an impact overall.
Demographics, English proficiency, economic status and varying student needs should also be taken into consideration since they can have an impact on the overall scoring system. Results are also reported separately for different groups such as boys and girls.
