Parking on Pacific Coast Highway (on the beach side) one day to visit a friend in the Las Flores Beach area, I return to my car to find a note on the windshield: “Please don’t park here again or you will be towed! You’re in my tenant’s spot.”

Signed: “Owner.”

I look for official “No parking” signs (there are none). I look at the wall, covered by a bush, that I parked in front of to make sure I was not blocking a driveway or entrance (I wasn’t). Annoyed, I mutter to myself, “I can park here if I want to, and next time I visit, I’ll park in the exact same spot. Hmmphh!”

Where to park?

The bitter battle over precious parking space in the City of Malibu is an endless one.

At next week’s council meeting the city will grapple over whether to ban parking overnight–citywide–allowing only residents with permits to do so, and whether to adopt an ordinance banning sleeping overnight in vehicles on public streets.

Overnight parking is already prohibited on Civic Center Way in front of City Hall.

But the real battles exist not only between residents and out-of-towners, but also between neighbors.

Det. Robert Evans, of the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff’s Station, said that calls come in all the time about a resident complaining of a neighbor parking their car in front of the complainant’s house.

“We say, ‘It’s a public street, he can park there any time,’ ” said Evans.

And that’s a fact.

In effect, a person can park their vehicle anywhere on a public street or highway, unless there are city or county signs that ban parking. The only other restrictions against parking are: red curbs; if a vehicle blocks a driveway to a residence; or, according to the L.A. County code, the vehicle blocks a private street or highway. Also, according to Title 15 of the county code, a car cannot park between a curb and an adjacent property line if it poses a traffic hazard or public nuisance. Parking restrictions also exist where there are yellow (loading only), white (three minutes or less for passenger loading), green (limited time parking) and blue (handicap) curbs.

That’s my spot

To fight for (what they may consider) their right to reserve parking for themselves, their tenants and visitors, some residents post signs, which are unenforceable but effective in intimidating people from parking on streets where it is legal to park.

“I’ve seen that, where someone posted a private sign to intimidate people from parking,” said Chuck Bergson, Public Works director. “Sometimes it works.”

However, as Bergson says: “A private party has no authority over a public street.”

That doesn’t stop residents from putting signs up. It also hasn’t stopped them from trying to paint their own curbs.

“Last week, we had several calls [from] a neighbor who complained about another neighbor painting a curb red,” said Evans.

Evans said deputies referred the caller to the city, saying code enforcement handles such issues.

Red curbs are painted at the direction of Public Works, per county code, at the recommendation of a Caltrans traffic engineer. In Malibu, there currently exists 3,696 feet of red, 285 of yellow, and 25 feet of white curbs

Red zones are painted when it is determined that there is a hazard or risk posed in regards to visibility for exiting a driveway, whether residential or commercial.

Businesses and residents can put in requests to Public Works for review and recommendations for red curbs.

Last ditch threats

If the signs or falsely painted curbs don’t work, then there is the threat of towing an unwanted parked car.

Bergson said that a towing company will not tow a car unless at the direction of the sheriff’s department. If a car is illegally parked, a person has to call the police or sheriff’s station. A sheriff’s deputy will then either ticket or tow the car.

However, Adail Gayhart, owner of Malibu Towing, said sometimes a car will be towed after a resident signs a form that lists the license plate number of the vehicle and information about where the car was parked. If the property owner is wrong about whether the car was parked legally or not, then it becomes a civil matter, he said.

Gayhart did say that if a car is parked on the outside of a line of demarcation (a line that separates private and public property), then the tow company will request a sheriff’s deputy to come out and determine whether or not the car is parked legally.

Gayhart also revealed that the city receives an approximate $30 fee for each sheriff’s department tow.

In what may be good news for some (especially nonresidents), Gayhart reported that his company is down 900 tows this year. He said this might be due to the condition of the economy–meaning less spending, hence less visitors to stores and restaurants.

Whatever the case may be, parkers beware.

It’s inevitable. Everyone gets rated in life.

Children get report cards. Employees are evaluated by their bosses.

Hence, it only seems natural that The Malibu Times should be rated by those who mean the most to it– its readers, clients and members of the community.

The Malibu Times is conducting a local reader survey. The survey will be part of a nationwide reader survey conducted in association with the National Newspaper Association. We would appreciate your opinion on the content of The Malibu Times–what you read, don’t read–and your evaluation.

The survey (on-line at www.pulseresearch.com/malibuca) also asks questions about your spending habits, where you like to shop and what types of items you most frequently purchase. Why? To make sure The Malibu Times has the local ads you want, to make informed purchasing decisions.

While answering the questions will take a small portion of your time, there will be many long-term benefits.

The survey will provide crucial, candid information–what our strengths are and where we have weaknesses. Please be candid. Criticize us if you wish (constructively, that is). Only by getting honest feedback can we truly meet your local information needs.

From this information, we will learn how we can improve to serve you better. We want to continue to provide a professional, high-quality local community newspaper that is committed to covering the events and issues that are important to you.

It’s also important for you to know that once your surveys have been completed, the results aren’t going to sit on a shelf collecting dust. We’ll take the input we receive and make changes.

Pulse Research, a nationally respected, independent newspaper research firm in Portland, Ore. will tabulate the results. Everyone at The Malibu Times will use the survey results. All departments will do their best to meet your needs whether it’s in our circulation, classified ads, retail advertising, composition or news department.

As a way of saying thank you for completing the survey, your name will be entered in a drawing for a first place cash prize of $3,000, $1,000 for second and $500 each for 3rd and 4th. Pulse Research will be offering a total of $5,000 in cash prizes. Winners will be selected from all respondents to The Malibu Times reader survey and more than 100 other papers conducting a local reader survey sponsored by the National Newspaper Association. We also will conduct a local drawing where the winner will receive 20 tickets to the New Malibu Theater.

The reader survey is being done over the Internet. It’s secure, private and will only take about 10 minutes. Log on to www.pulseresearch.com/malibuca and tell us what you think. The survey is fun, easy and very important to us. Thank you.

Many residents who are being ousted from their homes in the Lower Topanga Canyon area may receive $50,000 to $60,000 each in relocation fees from the state, which is buying the land that tenants now occupy.

Residents in Lower Topanga, across Pacific Coast Highway from Topanga State Beach, currently pay an estimated average of about $850 a month in rent. Under the relocation law, the state is obligated to help people they evict from their homes to find a comparable place to live and also help them with an allowance to pay the difference between their current rents and higher rents when necessary. The law sets a limit of $5,250 spread over a period of 42 months.

That would hardly be enough to bridge the gap between comparable housing elsewhere along the coast, where rents in the neighborhood from Santa Monica to Malibu are considerably higher.

But there exists an out in the relocation law.

Barry McDaniel, vice president of Pacific Relocation Consultants (PRC), said a “last resort” clause in the law allows the state to ignore the cap when comparable housing cannot be found at the current rents tenants are paying. PRC, a private firm, is handling the relocations for the state.

As a result of the last resort clause, tenants in Lower Topanga are negotiating much higher settlements. Not just in the $50,000 range, but “some much higher,” said McDaniel.

“Our lawyer, Frank Angel, told us we should at least hold out for at least $100,000,” said Berent Capra, a 21-year resident.

Capra admits that the $1,000-a-month rent he pays for his five-bedroom house is “a very good deal,” but he says there have been tradeoffs. “The landlord provides no maintenance,” he said. “If the roof is damaged, or the septic tank needs repair, or if I’m flooded out, I have to make all the repairs.”

In fact, Capra said his house had been flooded out and abandoned in 1980 when he agreed to rent it “as is” and clean it out himself. Also, the five bedrooms include a separate guesthouse, which he built himself and will lose if, and when, he is evicted. “It was a risk many like me were willing to take to live here,” he said.

There are 49 occupied residential properties at the foot of the 1,659-acres of land that the state is acquiring from LAACO, parent company of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, which has owned the property since the 1920s. Many residents have lived there for decades. Some had long-term leases at the beginning, but most of those had been reduced to month-to-month rentals by the 1990s, and a tenant could be removed at any time. The state is buying the property for parkland at a cost of $43 million, with an extra $5 million for relocation and other administrative costs.

Like Capra, many residents are resisting the move, but McDaniel said some two-thirds of them had by now filled out individual, private surveys and done interviews with PRC staff regarding their economic abilities and their choices for relocating.

“We’ve found quite a few matches in the Santa Monica-Malibu area” that will be affordable with the new and much higher supplements, said McDaniel.

Capra indicated it might not so easy with some residents. Not only is he going to negotiate the price, but also, “If I have to go, I want them to give me three years to locate the right property and negotiate for it.”