I wish to thank the mayor, City Council, and all the citizens of Malibu for allowing me to be of service for the past 35 months.

During my term as your city clerk I’ve prepared and/or supervised the preparation of: 143 council agendas packages, 150 council minutes, 241 council resolutions, 49 ordinances, 4 council reorganizations, 2 city elections, more than 13 FPPC filing deadlines, 3 appreciation of service events, 3 council receptions, an initiative petition, and the tenth anniversary celebration, on top of the daily work routine.

While serving Malibu, I’ve worked with eight councilmembers including four mayors, three city managers, three city attorneys, three planning directors, three Public Works directors, two finance directors, two Parks & Recreation directions, one building official and more than 70 employees.

I’ve endured numerous uncompensated O.T. hours, infrequent however unbecoming treatment, have driven more than 116,500 round-trip miles, received three speeding tickets, been in two car accidents and one rock slide on PCH. I’ve learned a great deal from these experiences and, I’ve made several lifelong friendships along the way.

All in all, I’ve enjoyed the “Malibu way of life” while I was here. Thanks again for allowing me to serve you.

Virginia Bloom

Last week was National Turn Off the TV Week, which is designed to set kids pondering how much of their lives they’re wasting with their eyeballs glued to the tube.

A peripheral repercussion is that the specter of lost ad revenue strikes fear into the hearts of network executives, who launch a counterattack. The “suits” order additional previews of “all new” episodes of our favorite shows to be shown during tube turnoff week. I guess it must work, because nobody I talked to had a clue that TV was busted so children could abandon the couch, play outside, read and drive their parents crazy.

Some teachers ask students to account for how they spent their reclaimed time. Others stress reading and writing programs all week.

My grandson’s school celebrated something called “Young Authors Day” for which I was pressed into service as a reader. I chose “Coyote,” Gerald McDermott’s tale based on a Native American fable about how Blue Coyote had a nose for trouble and always found it. How he wanted to fly with the crows and how he became rude and boastful and the crows took back their feathers and let him fall back to earth. Three groups of first-, second- and third-graders listened wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, then offered their takes on how coyote got into so much trouble and if he learned anything. The consensus was he didn’t. Most of these kids have seen lots of coyotes and crows and saw the fine line between fact and fiction. That was fun.

My personal experience with Turn Off the TV Week was mixed. Certainly it was less traumatic than the news fast I attempted in honor of Andrew Weil’s “8 Weeks to Optimum Health,” but that’s another story.

One can turn off the TV and still get plenty of news, most of it more enlightening than the pap smeared across TV screens with “film at 11.”

News on National Public Radio is superb, in depth, serious, at times humorous and generally delivered by someone who knows what it is they’re saying instead of perky young news readers mispronouncing the names of world leaders. “All Things Considered,” “The California Report,” “The Washington Report,” “Our Ocean World” couldn’t be better. Fair and balanced coverage of stuff we care about sans car chases.

So in case my teacher wants to know how I spent my found time, here it goes.

Monday without the tube was easy. Monday TV is pretty lame, at least until you get to Charlie Rose, whose intelligent and funny interviews shine on KCET at about 11 p.m. and again at 3:30 p.m. the following day.

Instead of watching Jim Lehrer on KCET’s “News Hour,” I listened to NPR while I began cleaning the room where I push words around. My computer was at the Mac Doctor’s place all week, so I cleaned behind and beneath the desk where wires breed and computer gremlins unplug the telephone connection when no one’s looking. I was still hoovering up dust bunnies when “Jeopardy” asked its answers and responded its questions without me. Guess I’ll have to do more crossword puzzles to keep my brain cells from atrophying.

Tuesday was tougher because “NYPD Blue” was “all new,” but who knew? So I started filing clips and stuff. This led to a major reshuffling of file boxes and a minor repositioning of furniture. The result is serene order. I’m so inspired I hang up the new mirror and shelf that’s been leaning on the couch, half unwrapped, since Christmas.

Wednesday I was going to cheat and watch “West Wing” and “Law and Order,” but since I hadn’t seen “NYPD Blue” the night before, I forgot it was Wednesday, and besides, I was deeply engrossed in Al Martinez’s book, “The Last City Room.”

By Thursday, I was slipping out of TV mode. The network suits had cause to worry. Their ratings were falling like dot-com stock prices. I never even missed Sally Fields’ return to “E.R.”

Friday was the real test. “Washington Week in Review,” by far, the best of the talking heads in my view. Oh well, instead I caught “Jazz From Lincoln Center” with Billy Taylor on NPR. Then I finished listening to my latest P.D. James mystery on tape while I filed and pushed the furniture around some more.

Saturday TV is as lame as Monday, so I caught a book show on NPR: Joanne Woodward reading a short story, recollections by the mother of a retarded girl who marries a retarded young man. Powerful, poignant and fiercely funny.

Sunday morning came and went without Charles Osgood’s “Sunday Morning,” Wolf Blitzer, Tim Russert, Sam and Cokie, the Capital Gang and all the political pontificators. Blah, blah, blah. I listened to the opera instead: same intrigue, drama, whining and crying but set to glorious music.

By this time I’m so inspired I get out my Real Goods, Gardeners’ Supply and Alston’s catalogs and order a ton of stuff that will keep me outdoors and away from the tube.

Score at week’s end: books read – 3; books on tape – 2, unabridged; newspapers scanned and partially read – 14; crossword puzzles completed – 21, 2 crumpled in the dust bin; file boxes – 4, emptied and contents resorted; minor repairs, picture hanging and miscellaneous chores – 15; articles and columns clipped and put in string books – 146 (I’m up to June, 1994); photos and negatives filed – just begun when TV Turn-Off Week ended. The fact is I’m on a roll. Feeling a bit smug, like Blue Coyote. I don’t think I’ll go back to the TV routine just yet, except possibly just for “Jeopardy.” Got to keep nudging those brain cells.

We, the board of directors of Friends of the Arson Watch and Disaster Services, Inc. (F.A.W.D.S.) have voted and passed a motion to solicit funding for the purchase of a four-wheel drive vehicle to be used as an arson watch command vehicle. This vehicle will replace “Old Betsy,” your arson watch coordinator Allen Emerson’s command van.

From 1982 to 1995, Emerson has paid for all maintenance and repairs and has logged over 200,000 miles. Since 1995,.F.A.W.D.S. has paid for all the repairs. Over the past two years, repairs have become more frequent, and “Old Betsy” is on her last legs. Therefore, we have decided it would be financially wiser to purchase a new or late model vehicle.

Recently, many of you have contributed to F.A.W.D.S., Inc., and we greatly appreciate your support. We would not be asking for your help again were it not vitally important and necessary.

Thank you for taking time to read this special appeal. Please make your tax deductible check payable to F.A.W.D.S., Inc. and mail at your earliest convenience to P.O. Box 197, Topanga, CA 90290.

Allen Emerson

To put it in local context: Is a steelhead trout swimming up Malibu Creek really worth $4,200 per fish when that could pay for a kid’s schooling for practically a year? Are the skyrocketing prices of energy and gasoline due, in some significant measure, to a set of environmental laws that discourage investment in new power plants or nuclear energy, or is it all just a cover story from a bunch of energy companies out to bleed us dry?

This editorial comes from a conservative property rights think tank, but some of the questions it raises are worthy of debate.

Let me add one of my own. I’ve seen the shrunken Owens River Valley near Mammoth Lake and I’m sure it was once a lush verdant area with abundant water. I’ve watched some people wring their hands and bemoan Los Angeles’ theft of that water. Yet those aqueducts and that water are what made the San Fernando Valley. Without them, the Owens River Valley would still be lush and the San Fernando Valley a desert. Was it worth it?

I encourage others in the environmental movement, on every side of the issue, to write guest editorials of no more than 725 words. E-mail them to us at agyork@malibutimes.com and malibunews@malibutimes.com .

Guest column

What’s Powering California’s Electricity Woes?

California’s power crisis is shedding light on an issue overdue for debate: the high costs of modern environmentalism.

As they ponder whopping utility bills–and worry about brown-outs–Californians are learning that aggressive environmentalism comes with trade-offs.

For instance, it’s thanks in large part to pressure from environmentalists that no new power plant has been constructed in California over the past decade. And some of those power sources that are available are less effective, delivering less electricity than they are capable of providing, because of dubious environmental initiatives.

The federal Endangered Species Act is a prime example. In 1995, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt claimed that the Endangered Species Act costs each American an average of only 16 cents per year. But he left out the costs that show up on our utility bills. The Endangered Species Act has had a serious impact on the supply of electricity in the West.

Activists frequently invoke this and related laws to force changes in power-plant policies. Earlier this year, eight environmental groups threatened to sue Washington state’s largest investor-owned utility if its hydroelectric dam is operated in a way that harms fish protected under the Endangered Species Act. Last June several activist groups sued the federal government over management of dams on the Colorado River, including Hoover Dam, a major source of power for Southern California.

Such lawsuits have already had a dramatic effect on power production. Environmental conservation and protection have transformed Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back Lake Powell, from a 1,300-megawatt resource to a 900-megawatt resource, a loss of more than 30 percent of its generating capacity. Production fell to 330 megawatts this past summer, according to Leslie James, executive director of the Colorado River Energy Distributors Association, an organization representing hundreds of power providers in the Colorado River Basin.

“You take that amount of capacity out of the western wholesale market and it’s going to have a serious impact on prices,” he said.

In recent years the main goal of the operating plan for Folsom Dam, which generates about 10 percent of the Sacramento area’s power, has been satisfying environmental concerns and regulations– particularly protection of winter-run Chinook Salmon. Water has been released from the dam when fish needed it most, rather than when the demand for hydroelectric power has been the greatest. Such a focus on non-human needs has become typical of dam management throughout the west.

In California, air quality regulations have also done their part to prevent power plants from generating the electricity we need. The reason there has been a push to relax some regulations in recent weeks is because when they’re enforced inflexibly, clean-air rules limit plants’ operating time.

When generating facilities reach their limit each day, they have been shut down for the day–even though society’s need for power goes on.

Without question, environmental protection is a vital goal. But so is supplying warmth and light– and jobs and incomes.

Under current bureaucratic policies implementing the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and other federal and state mandates, everyday pocketbook and social needs are not given weight when measured against environmental protection.

Americans have accepted this skewed approach partly because they haven’t been squarely presented with the costs–until now. Power shortages just might end the shortage of informed discussion of the environment and the economy. While pursuing environmental priorities, we must embrace policies that strike a rational balance–and don’t leave us in the dark.

David Haddock

Pacific Legal Foundation attorney

Issues important to Malibu residents such as saving the wetlands, protecting whales and dolphins, and working to provide Americans with pure, arsenic-free drinking water were rallying cries at a celebration at Sierra Club’s Angeles Chapter 90th Anniversary on April 19.

Actor Martin Sheen, who could not attend the event because of filming of the NBC television series “West Wing,” was to receive a Distinguished Environmentalist Award, which he instead gave to Malibu activist Valerie Sklarevsky of the EarthWays Foundation.

In a letter that Sheen sent as an apology for not attending the event, he said of Sklarevsky: “She is the only one more deserving of this award, so please accept it and keep it, in love and gratitude.”

Sheen, who plays the president of the United States on “West Wing,” is also a Malibu environmental activist.

In remarks preceding the awards, Angeles Chapter President Gordon LaBedz lamented the 95 percent loss of California’s coastal wetlands. Sierra Club President Carl Pope optimistically told how it is “not too late,” to save Southern California, and each officer lauded Sheen’s environmental efforts.

LaBedz praised Sheen for working to safeguard Marina del Rey’s Ballona Creek saying, “Martin stuck his neck out when Steven Spielberg wanted to develop it.”

Sklarevsky had joined Sheen, Cordelia Rorick and Malibu resident Mona Loo, and nearly 8,000 other protestors at the controversial U.S. Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga. in 1998, and has been a high-profile force in the movement to preserve Malibu wetlands.

Sheen’s activism, cited by the Sierra Club, also includes his participation last year among a group of protesters arrested for chaining themselves to the front gate at the Vandenburg Air Force Base protesting missile tests.

Other award recipients included Nell Newman, daughter of actor Paul Newman, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, who received the Distinguished Justice Award; and Mikhail Davis, of Earth Island Institute, who received the David Brower Organizational Award.

About 150 people, including Tom Hayden, Congressman Brad Sherman, and actors Jane Kaczmarek (“Malcom in the Middle”) and Rene Auberjonois (“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”) attended the event.