A vote on a proposal to ban parking on one side of certain streets in the La Costa area has been temporarily put on hold.

At its March 21 meeting, the city’s Public Safety Commission briefly discussed the issue but then continued the hearing to its April 18 meeting, citing the need to visit the neighborhood and hear from the local fire chief.

The commission will vote to recommend a proposal for a permanent no-parking zone on one side of the street in the La Costa area. The affected streets would be the south side of Calle Del Barco, Paseo Hildalgo, Paseo Portola, Paseo Serra and Rambla Orienta.

A temporary zone already exists, said Chuck Bergson, public works director, but “most people park on the hillside and not the oceanside, due to few driveways on the oceanside. It’s not a strict rule.”

Several homes in the area are under construction, thus adding more trucks, vans and other work-related vehicles during the daytime. “With all of the construction going on, we do have to go up there and enforce it,” said Bergson.

Fire department regulations call for a minimum 20-foot-wide clearance in order for fire trucks to drive through. When the roads are absent of parked cars, the width measures anywhere from 26 to 32 feet, says Bergson. With cars parked on both sides of the road, it’s nearly impossible for them to squeeze through.

“The residents can’t get out and the fire and city people can’t get in,” said Bergson. “We’re still going to try to keep the fire access up there. The fire department said they could not get access to some of the streets.”

However, Ryan Embree, a member of the city’s Public Safety Commission, argues that when some of La Costa’s homes burned down in 1993, nobody notified the city that fire trucks could not get to their homes.

Embree said that no notice was sent to the area residents about the temporary parking restrictions and the March 21 meeting. “It was very bizarre. [The city] just put these temporary stakes up to indicate no parking,” he said.

Bill Stump, of Rambla Vista, said that while he favors the city adopting the restrictions, no notices were mailed to La Costa homeowners.

Of a handful of residents who attended the March 21 meeting, most were in favor of a proposal to establish a permanent no-parking zone. However, Joan Levine, who owns two houses on Rambla Vista, said she opposes the restrictions and calls it “a new issue” since the street widths have not changed since the 1950s, when she moved into the neighborhood.

Claire Douglas, who lives on Paseo Serra, favors the parking restrictions because of current hassels in the delivery of mail, bottled water and packages, and the pick-up of recyclables.

Joel Landson, who lives along Pacific Coast Highway, said that while he’s not a La Costa resident, he visits the area and when cars are parked on both sides of the road it’s too hard to pass between them.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the commission voted to recommend that the city issue notices of the April 18 meeting to all La Costa parcel owners. It also agreed to ask Interim City Manager Christi Hogin to approve a shuttle-operated site visit for the commission, Bergson and the sheriff.

“We want a drive-around chance to see the area,” said Embree.

The Malibu City Council voted 3 to 2 to terminate City Attorney Steven Amerikaner’s contract and replace him with Christi Hogin, current interim city manager, in a special meeting early Monday morning .

This unusually quick governmental move, which was only placed on an agenda on Friday afternoon, produced three actions by the council:

• The law firm Jenkins & Hogin was selected to provided the city’s legal services. The firm is owned by Michael Jenkins (Christi Hogin’s husband) and Hogin.

• Interim City Manager Christi Hogin’s contract is extended until June 1, when she will take the position of city attorney.

• A new assistant city manager position was created.

The 3-2 vote, separated Councilmembers Sharon Barov-sky, Jeff Jennings and Ken Kearsley from Mayor Tom Hasse and Mayor Pro Tem Joan House, both of whom were not pleased with the process taken in the sudden decision.

The short notification process also created discontentment in the ranks of the opposition, specifically among supporters of the old Carolyn Van Horn/Walt Keller council.

“The short notice and the coincidental proximity of the weekend when City Hall is closed makes it difficult, if not impossible to get information on the subjects and be able to express intelligent views prior to the actual meeting,” said Efrom Fader, president of the Malibu Township Council, in a letter addressed to the council.

“They acted pretty fast,” said Art London. “I question from a public viewpoint how people can go to a meeting like that.

“You’re dealing with two major office holders and it is decided without public input,” he said.

The councilmembers who supported the actions defended the process, indicating that personnel matters were discussed in closed session three times before and the decisions needed to be made quickly since the interim city manager contract expired on March 21.

“Occasionally you have to put politics aside and vote for what you think is the right thing and pray that it’s right,” said Councilmember Barovsky, about the actions taken on Monday.

The decision to switch the city’s law firm from Hatch & Parent to Jenkins & Hogin, thereby assigning Hogin as the new city attorney, was a cost-saving measure for the city, said Kearsley.

“The city is bleeding money for legal services. The costs have gone up 50 percent because the last council voted a very capable but costly attorney,” said Kearsley, who is a businessman.

“I don’t know what information they are relying on because I never got that information,” said Mayor Hasse.

“Instead, they awarded a rather lucrative contract to the law firm of Hogin & Jenkins without a competitive bid.”

However, according to Jennings’ figures, the first year with Hogin as city attorney will save up to half a million dollars in legal fees.

“I have no doubt it will end up being a much more economical arrangement than what we have now,” said Jennings, in support of the actions.

“On top of that, Hogin is almost finished writing the LCP [Local Coastal Plan]. We had a bid to do that work for $150,000 and she did it as part of her job for the city,” said Kearsley.

“What’s the rush?” asked Hasse. “To award a $216,000 yearly contract which covers legal services only, not legal cases that will cost an extra $195 per hour if a case goes to litigation on top of the legal services fee?

“The bottom line to me,” said Hasse, “is that I was not given information that supports that agreement. If Hogin & Jenkins believe they can provide services for less then Hatch & Parent, then we should get an RFP [Request For Proposal] and compare with other firms.”

The mayor is not happy about the short notification process for the special meeting, either.

“It’s a very bad way to run a city government,” he said.

House supported extending the interim city manager’s contract until June, but she did not support the other actions.

“There was no staff report, no financial comparison,” said House. “The legality of the whole situation was not assessed.

“In view of the fact that they creamed lobbyist Jim Dantona and they had a lot to say about other contracts, there was no information on this,” she added.

Moreover, Hasse feels that the sudden termination was not fair to Amerikaner, who was not given an opportunity to compete.

“He was not given a chance. He was there for less than a year and though his evaluation was good, there was a concern about the cost, but he was not given the chance to put cost in line,” said Hasse.

Additionally, Hasse opposes the creation of a new position, “because it’s not the interim city manager’s job to find her replacement, it’s the council’s job.

“She has created a position that will eventually become the city manager when she leaves, and she will recommend to us who takes the job.”

The council should put a notice in a professional journal and find somebody that way, explained Hasse.

“All other cities do this all the time,” he said.

The position of assistant city manager was created with hopes of keeping City Hall running smoothly during the transition period until the city decides on a permanent city manager, said councilmembers.

“One thing we all know about Christi [Hogin],” said Jennings, “she will get the work done. I have no doubt it will end up being a much more economical arrangement than what we have now.

“Hogin will handle most of the attorney work and Michael [Jenkins] will provide backup. He is one of the most prominent attorneys in this field.”

George Ryan, governor of Illinois, will be the keynote speaker at the April 5 meeting of the Malibu Bar Association. The meeting is being held at the Mission Club (the recently renovated old Malibu Court-house on PCH) and is open to the public.

Ryan, a Republican, declared a moratorium last year on executions in Illinois after a series of articles by a Chicago Tribune investigative reporting team, and a study by Northwestern University’s law and journalism schools, showed major irregularities in Illinois’ death-penalty process. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in Illinois, 13 people on death row have been exonerated and 12 others have been executed.

Ryan, who supports the death penalty, decided in a very controversial and highly courageous move that he would stop executions until a special commission he empanelled finishes its investigation and announces its findings. In the interim, the governor has said that “Until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure to a moral certainty that no innocent person is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate.”

Call the Malibu Bar Association at 589.9662 for reservations. Because a large turnout is expected, reservations are a must. It is possible there may be no tickets left by the evening of the event.

A power blackout rolled through sections of Malibu on March 19 at 3:30 p.m. The outage was part of one of the “rolling” blackouts that have been affecting various communities throughout the state during California’s current power crisis. So, how often can we expect to go without power?

Rolling blackouts will occur “whenever the state declares that we’re in a power emergency and there’s not enough power in the state for customers,” said Mark Olson, regional manager of west side cities for Southern California Edison.

A rolling blackout is “predetermined in an emergency plan,” Olson continued, and affects “small sections that will be out for about an hour.” Olson explained that blackouts are “randomly dispersed throughout the community.” During a power emergency, various communities linked to the state’s power grid are chosen at random, and then areas within those communities are blacked out for about an hour, Olson said.

There is always a potential for power to go out in a small section of a community whenever there’s an emergency, he added.

There’s no accurate way to predict what areas will be hit by an outage at any particular time. “The state might not let us know beforehand,” Olson said, “because they might not know.” Besides, he pointed out, “For security reasons, the state doesn’t want to announce in advance where a blackout might occur.”

The City of Malibu has no plans for dealing with emergencies that might arise during a blackout. The distribution of power isn’t up to the city, points out Hap Holmwood, emergency preparedness coordinator for the city — and neither is law enforcement.

“The only concern that we observe is that the sheriffs have to deal with traffic,” said Holmwood. “Other than that, there’s not much the city can do. It’s out of the city’s hands.”

The Sheriff’s Department already has plans in place for dealing with blackout-induced traffic snarls.

The department has “identified key signals that need to be manned by deputies” when power is out, said sheriff’s Lt. Thom Bradstock at the Lost Hills substation. Deputies “prioritize” problem intersections, but leave intersections alone where there is “not a high volume of cross traffic.”

Bradstock reminds the public that motorists are “required to stop [at a nonfunctioning traffic light] as if it were a flashing red light,” and take turns passing through the intersection. A flashing red light is the same as a stop sign.

He was optimistic that, as summer approaches, and with it more power outages, the “public will become more familiar with procedures” and that traffic will move relatively smoothly.