The Malibu Stage Company will go before the City Council at its next meeting, Monday night, to request a release of $50,000 of a $75,000 grant that was originally approved by the council in 1999.

The stipulations of the original grant were that it be a one-time grant only and that the company match the funds with donations and contributions from subscribers.

At a September 1999 council meeting, Malibu Stage Artistic Director Charles Marowitz requested a release of grant funds, but it was without the approval of Malibu Stage board members, several other members charged. Immediately after Marowitz made his request, Larry Berkholder, former Malibu Stage treasurer and board member, and former President David Weintraub, went before the council to request that the grant be frozen while the company reorganized.

The council froze the funds and requested that the company provide a financial report prior to any further moneys being released.

The Malibu Stage Company is now coming back before the council offering a financial report that is a two years old and a tax return for the fiscal year 1999-2000. They also have submitted a list of contributions from 1999 to 2000, an estimated budget for the 2001 production year and a proposal for a joint-operating agreement with the Point Dume Community Services District.

The Malibu Stage Company received $53,521 in revenue, including $15,000 in contributions and $34,742 from production and performances, according to the 1999-2000 tax return. They were left with a operating deficit of $15,018 in February of 2000, after total expenses of $68,539.

Certified Public Accountant S. David Abrishamian was hired by Malibu Stage to complete the financial statement, which is now being offered to the council in support of the company’s plea for the release of the additional funds. In a cover letter submitted with the financial report, Abrishamian wrote: “Management has elected to omit substantially all of the disclosures ordinarily included in financial statements. If the omitted disclosures were included in the financial statements, they might influence the users conclusions about the organizations assets, net assets, support, revenues and expenses.”

Attorney/CPA, Norm Goodman, consulted by The Malibu Times, said that financial statement is basically a “regurgitation of a client’s record put in a CPA’s format.

“You can’t put as much prudence on these financial statements as you can in an audit,” said Goodman.

In a letter to the council, current Malibu Stage Chair Geoffrey Ortiz wrote that the board anticipates a 2001 budget deficit of more than $2,300. The board plans to make up this deficit with co-productions and their downtime rental revenues.

According to Ortiz, Clark and James Cowan, owners of the property, gave approval of the proposed plan to work with the Point Dume Community Services District to bring in and share downtime rental revenues they book.

Laura Tate/Editor

Two former Malibu High School coaches, upset and angered by recent news articles about their dismissal from the cheerleading team, have contacted The Malibu Times, firing off letters, threatening lawsuits, and making demands for apologies.

The articles that ran in The Malibu Times last week and in the Surfside News in early December, reported that Ceillia Whiteford and Barbara Mills, both Malibu residents, were dismissed as coaches of the MHS team because of allegedly permitting mistreatment of a special needs student on the cheerleading squad. The student is legally blind and deaf.

In an earlier interview, Whiteford said that she and Mills were told by Malibu High Principal Mike Matthews that they were being dismissed because of several incidents where the special needs student was verbally abused by other squad members. Matthews reportedly said that the dismissal was not based on one incident, but a series of events dating back to a year ago. It was also reported that the Junior Varsity Squad quit the cheerleading team a year ago because of problems with the coaches.

Both Mills and Whiteford, in recent telephone interviews, vehemently deny the allegations. Whiteford, Mills, and Whiteford’s husband, David Schwerdtmann, all told the Times that they believe the two were fired because of political reasons.

“I think it’s political,” said Mills. “I think the parent [of the special needs student] was very upset. The program was becoming very demanding. I think she went to the district and demanded an interpreter. As Matthews put it, he had to do something. I think he knew that by getting rid of the coaches he got rid of the program.”

Schwerdtmann said he believes that the cost of providing interpreters for the student would have been too expensive, therefore, Matthews solved the problem by firing the coaches, therefore dismantling the team.

Asked how he came to this conclusion, Schwerdtmann said, “If you put all this stuff together that’s going on in this situation, that’s the conclusion.”

Mills wrote that she and Whiteford have met with Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Superintendent Neil Schmidt and the district advisory committee about their dismissal.

Matthews, in earlier news reports, said he was legally restricted from commenting on the matter. Schmidt released a statement saying he could not comment because it was a personnel matter. It has been reported that a lawsuit has been filed against the school district in connection with the special needs student.

Whiteford said that a week before they were fired, Matthews had told her that students had been coming into his office, saying that some of the girls were being brutal to the special needs student.

“It is absolutely ridiculous that we would allow this treatment,” said Mills. “As a parent, coach and an advisor, I don’t like the implication.”

Mills wrote in a letter to the Times that when she and Whiteford took the special needs student onto the squad, they did so “out of kindness” and “as a charitable act.”

“There were never any negative comments made by Ceillia and I, or any other cheerleader, about [her],” wrote Mills.

“I did not know what they were talking about,” said Whiteford, in a telephone interview. “I had not seen anything happen.”

Whiteford later added that she did remember an incident where another cheerleader had yelled at the special needs student. Whiteford said the incident occurred at a football game in September, a month and a half prior to her dismissal by Matthews. She said she was not present when the incident occurred, but was informed of it by a special education teacher.

Both Mills and Whiteford said they believe the article in the Times was biased because the reporter’s sister was on the JV team that quit last year. Mills also wrote in a letter to the Times that she believes the editor handling the article favors the reporter and probably made the decision to publish the “one-sided smear” in the Times. (See Opinion, page 4.)

“What upsets me is that this girl writes a letter about the whole thing and basically bashes us,” Mills. “She is the sister of a team member, I do feel that this has an influence on her.”

Mills wrote a letter and left it on the doorstep of the reporter, last Friday, in which she said: “Your defamatory article contained many untrue statements that were known by you to be untrue and were clearly meant to defame me in the eyes of the Malibu community. You succeeded in your mission.”

Mills also demanded a retraction and an apology in writing through the Times and the News and threatened to sue for defamation of character. She also requested that she be allowed to respond with her own “unfiltered article.”

As far as reasons why the JV squad quit, both Mills and Whiteford said they do not know why they did.

Several JV team members in a collective interview said they quit because of “poor leadership.” The girls had quit the cheerleading squad after a trip to Hawaii where the entire squad competed against other teams.

Whiteford said that when the group returned from Hawaii, she and Mills had a meeting with Matthews to go over budgeting items. She said Brian Banducci, athletics director for Malibu High, was present. She said she was told that it was reported that she and Mills had acted inappropriately during the trip to Hawaii. However, Whiteford said it was the JV girls who were out of hand. She said the girls have been a disciplinary problem, not wanting to follow rules. According to Whiteford, several of the JV girls had “disappeared” one morning, not informing the coaches of their whereabouts. They had gone to breakfast, she said.

However, she said it was normal “teenager” behavior that occurred, and did not mention the girls’ behavior to Matthews.

Mills concurred with Whiteford about the girls’ behavior during the trip.

After the meeting with Matthews and Banducci, Whiteford said she came out with a list of rules for the girls to follow. It was after this that the girls quit the team, giving no reason, said Whiteford.

“The worst part of it, is that I loved these girls,” she said. “They’re 14, what they did was no different than what any girl had done in the three years I’ve been coaching.”

“It was a shock to us, after all the fundraising, that all the girls said they were quitting,” said Mills. (Mills and Whiteford said they conducted fundraisers to enable the JV squad to accompany the Varsity squad on the Hawaii trip.)

Mills, Whiteford and Schwerdtmann said several of the girls on the remaining squad went before the Sports and Physical Education District Advisory Committee last week to express their dissappointment that they were left midseason without a coach.

Mills’ husband, John Mills, said: “The bottom line is, the fact that, for whatever reason, he [Matthews] summarily dismissed the coaches for the team who worked together for four years … when they were dismissed there were no backup coaches. The girls accomplished a lot of positive stuff that’s getting dragged through the mud. I think the girls were discriminated against.”

“There are five senior on that squad,” said Schwerdtmann. “They’ll never get their time back.”

Los Angeles County Animal Control Officer Rachel Riva doesn’t believe there is a hyper-aggressive dog problem in Malibu. Those kinds of problems come from abused animals and “this is an area where everybody tattles” and because of that, there is little outright animal abuse, said Riva.

“People in Malibu have little tolerance when they feel something is wrong with an animal or the way an animal is treated,” said Riva.

However, what does make Malibu unique for L.A. County Animal Control is that it’s a tourist destination, she said. The beach brings in many people from other areas and they bring along their animals, and frequently don’t know the rules.

There is an issue with people who let their dogs loose on the beach, which is against the law, she explained. Crowded beaches and dogs don’t mix.

“You’re going to have confrontations when people bring their dogs to the beach,” she said, and this often results in fights between dogs and sometimes dog owners.

Dogs are not allowed on L.A. County beaches at all because these are populous beaches, said Riva. Moreover, there are rules and regulations for private beach property owners. Dogs are not allowed on the public potion of the beach either, which is where the wet sand is, said Riva.

“If the dog’s feet are wet, then you’re going to get a violation,” said Frank Bonjiorno, field supervisor at the Agoura Animal Shelter. Bonjiorno clarified that two separate violations exist for dogs near the ocean. Dogs are not allowed on public beaches and they are not allowed in the ocean at all.

There are problems sometimes with dogs that are aggressive, said Riva. Sometimes dogs show aggression just because they are disoriented and unsure. And other times, aggression can be linked to the dog’s mother. If a puppy is born of a mother that was scared and skittish she may pass that behavior on to the puppy.

“Sometimes it’s imprinted and that makes the dog hard to train,” she said. This is especially true for abandoned dogs that are not used to human contact.

This is why dogs that have bitten somebody are not automatically put to sleep when they are brought to the shelter, unless they have bitten more than once, which is rare, said Bonjiorno.

Riva said she gets calls four or five times a year from people who are concerned that a dog may be aggressive, but when she gets to the location, she finds usually that they are not.

“People misunderstand the dog and they don’t want to take a chance,” she said.

When L.A. County’s Animal Control gets a call about a possible vicious dog, they try and contain the animal so it does not harm anyone, including itself, and they confine it, said Bonjiorno. They then bring it in to the shelter and try to locate its owner.

In order for animal control to initiate action, they have to first receive a signed complaint. Then they investigate to find out if the dog is licensed and vaccinated and to find out if the dog has ever bitten somebody.

They usually issue a misdemeanor citation when a dog actually bites another dog or a person, but only if the dog breaks skin.

The recent fatal attack on a young woman by a couple of large mastiff cross-breeds in San Francisco, has caused many people to wonder if it could happen here. On a warm and sunny Malibu Sunday, dogs were playing and running loose all over; on the beaches, in the neighborhoods, in the Civic Center, or sitting peacefully next to a table at Deidrich’s. The lots were full of pickups with dogs sitting in the beds–some peacefully wagging their tails and others snarling at anyone who came too close.

We asked a local vet, a local psychologist and animal shelter workers if there was such a thing as a bad dog or a bad breed, or was it just bad owners. Some of the replies were surprising.

There are no inherently “bad” dogs, according to local veterinarian Dean Graulich of Malibu’s Pacific Coast Animal Hospital. Roughly 60 percent of Graulich’s clients are dog owners.

“There are dogs that have been poorly socialized, but they give plenty of warning signs that they can be dangerous,” he said.

Graulich owns a bull mastiff, a dog similar in ancestry to the two mastiff-Canary Island cross-breeds that killed sports coach Diane Whipple in San Francisco a week ago, thus starting the most recent controversy about which breeds are “safe to own.”

The most basic sign of a poorly socialized dog, said Graulich, is that “the dog is fearful of strangers and is overly protective of its master.”

With his own mastiff, Graulich said he “introduced it to as many people as I could when it was a puppy and took it with me everywhere.” Therefore, he asserts that his mastiff is nicely behaved, even with strangers.

Graulich does warn that keeping two or more dogs together of a breed that is known to be aggressive could lead to “pack-like” behavior.

In the event of the fatal attack on the Bay Area woman, witnesses said one dog took the role of the lead attacker and the second dog then joined in. Consequently, many blame the owners more than the dogs.

Graulich said he can cite examples at infinitum of dog owners who refuse to see a “bad dog.”

“We had one client with a really aggressive dog,” he said. “We told him the dog is a liability waiting to happen. But he was blind to it. I have seen people almost lose their insurance because the insurance company told them after an incident, ‘You will have to get rid of that dog before we will renew your insurance.’ It’s at that point when they realize it has become serious.”

The problem with angry dogs can sometimes be traced to owners who live in denial about their dog’s true nature, said Malibu psychologist Bruce Rays.

He agrees with Graulich, saying, “Some people really imbue their dogs with human-like qualities–as if it were a child.”

He feels owners of aggressive dogs should come to terms with reality and post signs warning service people they have dogs, send their dogs to obedience school and treat their dogs like they are loaded guns–with great care.

In Malibu, Rays sees one problem repeated time after time–service personnel being attacked by dogs when the dog’s owner failed to warn the workers about its territorial attitude. “I don’t know if it’s that they are not thinking about it, or just being careless, but they should take the time to introduce each of these people to their dog so that the dog accepts their presence,” he said.

Graulich cautioned against the ownership of certain breeds in the case of an owner who has small children in the home. “I would say a Rottweiler, a German shepherd–those are two I would not have with small children. But most of all, I wouldn’t recommend owning a chow around children, because they are snappers.”

Graulich said there isn’t a particular breed to blame.

“I don’t label this breed or that as one that shouldn’t be owned because it’s too aggressive.

“Of course, some dogs, when they do bite, can cause more damage, such as a pit bull, whose jaws can lock on you and they won’t let go.”

Despite his lack of support for outright bans on certain breeds, he does acknowledge that one country has chosen to outlaw ownership of certain breeds deemed to be socially undesirable: “Australia has outlawed ownership of pit bull terriers, Tosas (Japanese mastiffs), Dogo Argentinias (another mastiff breed) and the Fila Braziliero, a third breed of mastiff. The Fila Braziliero is the most aggressive dog in the world.”

But Graulich maintains that dogs have to be judged on an individual basis: “I have seen sweet Rottweilers, nicely behaved Dobermans, gentle German shepherds–it all depends on how the particular dog is brought up.”

During Rays’ 25 years of living in Malibu, he has seen several alarming examples of dog ownership. “One of the most bizarre was a man who would walk on local beaches every day accompanied by six Rottweilers, none of them on a leash,” he recalled. That man, he believes, was a troubled man and was reported to be having constant problems with his neighbors.” But yet, there is no law requiring you to leash your dog in that area,” he lamented.

“Whenever I see bizarre dog ownership by an owner, I began to suspect psychological problems,” said Rays. “I remember another Malibuite who had six black Afghan hounds and six white ones, plus a lion. When I see something like that, I suspect the owner might have problems.”

Graulich said buying a dog who may have been bred to attack can be prevented if one is careful. Graulich pointed out that when buying a dog found through an ad in the paper, one must remember the sellers are not always honest in describing the dog’s personality. “You might buy one that’s been abused, and has a problem,” he said.

Graulich draws the line at keeping a dog after a second biting incident. “You shouldn’t be keeping it if it attacks people,” he said.

One precaution a dog owner can take is to fit a “cage”–in effect, a metal muzzle–over the dog’s jaw before they take the dog out.

“The dog gets used to it and after while, doesn’t mind it,” he said. The cage prevents biting incidents and helps the dog get socialized without any penalties.

He approves of a dog being taken to the beach where permitted. “I think dogs should be allowed to run up and down the beach. “Providing, of course, they are under control of their owners.”

The size of the dog has nothing to do with judging its penchant for aggressiveness, said Graulich. “A small dog can bite as much as a big dog, but because they are smaller, there’s less damage.”

There are also dogs that can be too much for the owner. “A first-time dog owner should not get a Rottweiler, a shepherd or a chow,” he said. Some owners are in denial, said Rays.

“The problem with that, is that it causes some people to be blind regarding the flaws of their dog, e.g., if the dog’s a biter, they don’t want to know about it.

“Sometimes,” said Rays, “the owner will go to any lengths to protect their accused dog.”

He recalls one Malibu resident whose dog bit several people in Point Dume. “Rather than have the dog destroyed, she moved with the dog to San Diego,” he said.

One psychological reason that some dog owners are so resistant to having their dog’s aggressive tendencies curbed by training is that “some dog owners feel attacked and threatened personally when you are only talking about their dog,” said Rays. “It is difficult enough to get along with your neighbors as it is, but having a mean dog gives the neighbors something else to fight with you about.”

He even feels that there is a bit of transference going on when the neighbors criticize a dog owner for having an aggressive dog .

“The neighbors become the ‘parents’ criticizing the ‘child,’ e.g., the dog owner,” he observes. “And when people get criticized for having a ‘bad dog,’ the first thing they want to do is rebel,” said Rays. “And that’s when we have people buying even more aggressive dogs.”

Rays said the safest way for owners to handle a possible aggressive dog is, the “owners should be conscientious and responsible.”

The Malibu Farmers’ Market received a Conditional Use Permit from the Planning Commission on Monday, allowing it to once more operate in the parking lot in front of City Hall on Sundays.

Last year, the market, sponsored by Cornucopia Farms, operated under the assumption that it did not need a CUP, but market organizers later learned that one was needed since the market did more than just sell fruits and vegetables.

However, this is not what closed down the market at the end of the year.

The market first opened in May of 2000 and provided live entertainment for people while they were shopping. Although market officials say it closed in the fall because vendors did not have enough produce to sell, given that they can only carry California grown produce, unofficial sources say the market closed because it was doing poorly and revenues were down.

But organizers are attempting a come back in the spring and they needed the CUP from the city to do so.

The commission found that the market brings a desirable element to the community and does not have negatively impact the commercial neighborhood where it operates. The market takes place once a week when surrounding city and county facilities are closed.

In other matters, a 4 to 1 vote by the commission denied a request to build a couple of two-story homes on Galahad Drive. The commission denied the request because the increased height and proximity of the two houses would have a negative impact on the ridgeline’s natural topography and visual impact would be too great.

However, the commission did not completely deny the project since they concurrently approved two variances for the same project, allowing for one-story homes to be built on the site.

The commission allowed the developer to reduce front yard and side yard setbacks and they also agreed that the homes could be built on a slope steeper than the norm because the two lots are located on long and narrow parcels that do not give the builder other options.

But when the commission focused on the impact that the homes would have visually, they referred to the zoning code, indicating the city shall minimize visual impact on hillside development and protect public views. The code also expects builders to minimize hillside development.

Commissioner Ted Vaill disagreed with the majority because he thought the builder should be allowed to build the two-story homes. He said the code states, minimize visual impact, not eliminate it.

In other matters, the commission approved a subdivision request for a property located near Malibu Country Estates, west of John Tyler Road.

Architect Ron Goldman proposed to subdivide a 6.47 acre lot into four parcels. This proposal became agreeable with neighbors who initially had some concerns about the impact of four new homes and a road near their properties when Goldman said he would mitigate their concerns by providing adequate landscaping to protect their privacy.