The following letter was sent to the Malibu Planning Commission in lieu of public comment, which was not allowed at the April 2 meeting.

Subject: Civic Center Guidelines.

The Malibu Township Council urges the Commission to postpone further consideration of the guidelines proposed for discussion tonight, or any Civic Center development guidelines, pending completion and evaluation of a Cumulative Environmental Impact Analysis, as required by state law, encompassing all potential development in the Civic Center. MTC believes that a Cumulative Environmental Impact Analysis evaluating the capacity of the environment to absorb development, in conjuction with an EIR evaluating the impact of the development on the environment, will provide the information currently lacking that is necessary to prepare realistic and achievable guidelines.

With all constraints on development identified and evaluated, the planning process can commence prioritizing community needs for playing fields, parks, community building, wetlands, and other open space. After these paramount community needs have been addressed, the task of specifiying the extent and description of commercial development for each Civic Center property consistent with community needs, the capacity of the infrastructure and environment to sustain the impact, and the rural character of the community can be undertaken.

MTC reminds this Commission that although the City Attorney and staff claim these proposed guidelines have no legal effect, a draft ordinance following approval by this Commission and the City Council would have a legal effect leading to a change in the General Plan and IZO and require an EIR. Adopting at this time these seemingly development-friendly guidelines of shared wastewater treatment plants, city-provided roadway and intersection reconfiguration and improvements, easing of design standards, intensification of permitted uses, etc., would imply approval, and would act immediately to drive up the value of the Civic Center properties. The effect would significantly conflict with the efforts by bond measure, or other funding means, to acquire portions of the Civic Center land the community sorely needs for public purposes.

MTC is concerned that these guidelines will not guide the future and serve the needs of this environmentally blessed community that so overwhelmingly endorsed the values and spirit so strongly expressed in the General Plan Vision, “Malibu is a unique land and marine environment and residential community whose citizens have historically evidenced commitment to sacrifice urban and suburban conveniences in order to protect that environment and lifestyle,” and the General Plan Mission Statement, “Malibu will maintain its rural character by establishing programs and policies that avoid suburbanization and commercialization of its natural and cultural resources.”

In addition, from the Economic Plan prepared by Applied Development Economics in April 2000 and approved unanimously by the City Council, “A significant segment of Malibu’s citizens wanting the Civic Center area to remain as open space … [the] City should commission a study of all tools that can be used to protect the area as open space [i.e., down-zoning propery, acquisition, etc.] and implementing the study’s recommendations.”

It is quite a departure from these lofty ideals to be considering proposed guidelines tonight which appear to be designed to facilitate and support the addition of new, predominantly commercial development that almost quadruples the existing commercial development in the Civic Center, resulting in an astounding potential total build-out of about 1,200,000 square feet without due regard to known environmental constraints.

For these reasons MTC requests that the Planning Commission recommend to the City Council the following:

1. That it drop consideration of these excessive growth-inducing guidelines.

2. That it do nothing at this time which would conflict with efforts of Malibu citizens and others, by bond initiative or other means, to raise funds for acquisition of land for playing fields, parks, open space, or other community needs.

3. That guidelines for development in the Civic Center be considered only after completion of a Cumulative Environmental Impact Analysis of all properties in the Civic Center and a preliminary determination by the council of the extent of development which might be permitted each property owner.

Efrom Fader

President of MTC

Re: Faith-based charity. In this instance, the politicians are doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. Charities are indeed, as history and experience have proven, the best safety net. As the publisher of this paper pointed out they are more efficient and caring. Government welfare is at best a destructive failure as the numerous destroyed families, multiple generations of children having children, people who know nothing better than a life of government dependency, special-interest leaders whose political and economic existence depends on the largesse of government money, and a parasitic bureaucracy that only wants to perpetuate itself, not actually solve any poverty. Where President Bush and the Republicans have it wrong is that government is not the one to fund such private charities. With government money comes government control and that naturally raises the specter of separation of church and state. Do we support the varied religions with state money? Would religions submit to government control to get government money? Does this violate the First Amendment: “Government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”? As we have seen throughout history, the best way to destroy freedom of religion is to have the government fund it.

The real point that is usually missed by voters is that politicians want to have control. I am a Libertarian and am well aware of this. As long as Washington controls the money whether by grants to faith-based charity or money put into welfare programs, politicians are the ones that you have to come to, if you want more money, changes in policy or power. They are not really concerned about the elimination of poverty or human suffering otherwise welfare programs as the failures they are would have been gone a long time ago. They only use these issues to retain power and stay in office. Bush wants to please the religious right by instituting charity as a safety net, all well and good, but he still retains power and control by using government money, in other words our tax dollars. It is a way of buying votes from his constituency like the liberal Democrats buy votes with the welfare programs for theirs and that is the bottom line for any of these politicians whether they are Republican or Democrat. Staying in office, staying in power, controlling the money and making sure that voters come to them, well that is the real reason behind all of this.

Charities are indeed the way to go, but Bush and also the Democrats will not do it the way it should be done. If the Republicans really wanted charities to do it, this is the way it would happen. The politicians would return tax money to the people, then take money out of their own wallets and give that money to the private charity or faith-based charity of their choice and encourage all Americans to do the same. That is the way a Libertarian would do it. As long as voters keep electing Republicans and Democrats the perversion of charitable giving and the destruction of freedoms written in the Constitution will continue and this society will suffer even more as a result.

Charles Black

State Senate candidate, Libertarian Party

It is clear we won’t be getting much in the way of leadership from our guv, Dithering Davis, whose management style could be described most kindly as glacial. In the nine months since the power price crunch hit San Diego, he has been in denial, apparently wedded to the if-I-do-nothing-it-won’t-be-my-fault theory of governing.

Did he really think this mess would go away on its own? Did he think he could save his political backside by reminding voters that his Republican predecessor signed deregulation into law? Not any more, sir.

An instant replay:

It’s December, and Davis blasts the feds for rejecting his bid for a regional price cap on wholesale rates in favor of a temporary cap while ordering an overhaul of the state’s wacky electricity market.

Then he spends about $3 billion buying electricity for the utilities, which say they are going belly up. Next he tries to broker a deal to buy the transmission lines to give utility companies enough money to pay the billions they owe to power generators. None of this solves the real problem. Californians use more power than they produce.

Obvious answer: Use less while you figure out how to produce more. Politicians can’t take this tack because it angers their big donors and frustrates voters.

The new power plants under construction belong to out-of-state companies. Hey, they know a good thing when they see it. The plants will use natural gas, also in short supply and getting costlier every day. Could it be these same guys own the natural gas wells?

Meanwhile, existing co-generation plants sit idle because they haven’t been paid for deliveries to the utilities since last fall. Wind generating plants in Tehachapi are often off production, not because the wind doesn’t blow, but because transmission lines aren’t adequate to handle the load. And negotiations to buy the existing lines have bogged down over whether the state can buy the land beneath them or just the lines.

All the while Davis swears he will not allow rate increases to consumers and businesses. When the state Public Utilities Commission orders a hefty hike March 27, our fearless leader leaves PUC President Loretta Lynch out to dry, “distancing himself” from the rate-hike decision. Puhleeze.

Davis spent billions of taxpayers’ money to shore up the state’s utilities, saying the state can’t allow the lights to go out. Why couldn’t he have spent the money buying back the power plants from the Texans and building new transmission lines? And maybe funding construction of new plants that use alternative energy sources. We seem to have more than enough wind in Sacramento to give the state power independence.

In his much heralded address to the state Thursday, with deer-in-the-headlights delivery, he reversed every position he had held until Wednesday. He says, with a straight face, rate hikes are now good, conservation is now good, out-of-state power generators are still bad and federal regulators are worse for not cracking down on those dirty price gougers. This is a plan? What does he expect? The feds work for Dubya. The power generators are Texans. Duh!

The next day debt-ridden PG&E files for bankruptcy, notwithstanding the $2.5 billion cash it has on hand, but not before paying its own managers more than $50 million in bonuses. Aren’t these the same folks who took the billions they got from selling their power plants a few years ago and paid it to the parent company’s shareholders? Is this whole thing a giant shell game? Whose money is it? Where is it? Better not wait for our guv to produce the answers.

I think I’ve figured out what makes films like “Erin Brockovich” so successful, beyond the underdog fighting the system and winning. I think it feeds into our national paranoia. We are cowed by the bigness of corporations, their control — through lobbying and soft money — over politicians, the food supply, medical care, just about everything.

We are powerless, literally, to control our electric, gas, even water supplies, which will dwindle to a trickle this summer, they say, because the snow pack is only whatever percent of normal. Do we believe that? Or could it be tied to the gigawatts of electricity needed to pump water over the mountains to slake our thirst and keep our desert gardens green.

I’m not even talking about water quality — chromium 6, arsenic, pesticides from agricultural runoff. Things we would like to blame on bureaucratic bungling, we secretly believe to be sinister plots. Is our governor turning gray with fright because he’s losing votes, or because his campaign was fed as much by utility companies as agribusiness? Is he for real, paralyzed by fright? Or could he be an automaton, unable to move without continuing infusions of power?

And does paranoia have to be imagined or can it be based on fact? Every year as the ides of April approach, humorist Dave Barry lampoons the IRS. This year he takes it all back in a paean to the tax gods because, guess what, he has been chosen for an audit. Coincidence, maybe. Paranoia, for sure. “The IRS wants me to produce every document that has ever existed, including the original Magna Carta,” he writes.

So instead of poking fun at the IRS, he says what fine folks they are: “They’re regular people just like you, except that they can destroy your life.”

This is funny only if you are on a fixed income, never itemized deductions, and never won anything on a game show or in Las Vegas. And speaking of Las Vegas, “60 Minutes” producer Don Hewitt tells Bryan Lamb on “Booknotes” this week about Frank Sinatra’s paranoia, agreeing to an interview only if he was not asked about Las Vegas and the Mafia. Hewitt’s book will probably be as successful as “60 Minutes” because we’re all paranoid about big-time crime from “The Godfather” to “The Sopranos.”

PBS just aired Bill Moyers’ documentary, two years in the making, which chronicles abuses by chemical manufacturers and industry regulators. This feeds my personal paranoia about pesticide residue killing us softly. Organophosphates live longer than we do. They’ll still be around, even the banned or regulated ones, to plague our great-great-grandchildren. Moyers had his blood tested and discovered it contained 52 chemicals. Malathion — sprayed on his home as the government promised it was safe (and who could stop them anyway?) — dioxins, PCBs, a veritable toxic soup coursing through his veins. Better living through chemistry? He thinks not.

David Willman’s recent articles documenting cozy relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA feed our paranoia about the safety of drugs touted by our doctors and advertised on national TV. Many have side effects worse than the condition for which they’re prescribed. And those are just the ones we know about. I wonder if Willman will be chosen for an audit by the friendly folks at the IRS.

It’s my guess nobody understands the pervasiveness of paranoia better than Tom Sawyer, whose novel “The Sixteenth Man” has attracted as much attention from the government as from book sellers. His fictionalized account of how the assassination of JFK might have involved everyone from the Mafia to the military, prompted a call from the FBI. The special agent said he was curious about Sawyer’s sources for the book and wondered how he spelled out some of the Mafia figures in detail. “I couldn’t believe they were asking. I told him I just tried to imagine them as real people. It came to me by osmosis over 38 years, and by making a living making stuff up [TV scripts for ‘Murder She Wrote’ and others]. It was all fictionalized, the senators, the military. I probably know less than Oliver Stone.”

He didn’t share with the special agent that the story (also an opera and an episode of “Murder She Wrote”) came from his own paranoia. He says he really believes the assassination was a coup, a huge cabal, and that both Kennedys were done in because “they just stepped on too many toes.” After he hung up the phone, he was suspicious the call was a phony. “So I pressed star 69 [to redial the last incoming call], and it really was the FBI.”

Sawyer says he learned in Hollywood that people rarely say what they mean. So fictional characters should never say exactly what they’re thinking. And does this apply to characters from the FBI? The IRS? How paranoid is this? He shrugs. “I consider it protective paranoia.”

Tom Sawyer tells more about “The Sixteenth Man” on “Connie Martinson Talks Books” airing in April on local Channel 3.

Veg heads, please keep your hooks off of our pier! It’s one of the very few places we can take our kids fishing in Malibu. Are these people who say they can’t stand the sight of “poor creatures flopping around in buckets” the same ones who pay big bucks for sushi? Or are they oh-so-politically correct veg heads trying to force their radical views on the rest of us? How about a small hose on the pier so people fishing can clean up the slop? The State Parks Department has the obligation to keep our pier open for the enjoyment of the taxpayers. And before we get too sanctimonious, I happen to know that living, breathing plants were actually KILLED to make way for the houses of Malibu!

Hans Laetz