The summer season is just about over and things are getting back to normal, which in Malibu typically means that all of the political players are coming back, rested and ready for battle. I’m going to take you on a quick tour through the battlefronts so you’re prepared for your fall reading.

The initiative

The battle, really more of a brawl, over The Right to Vote on Development Initiative, coming up on the November ballot, keeps getting larger and including more players. I just received a multipage document from the Malibu Township Council (MTC), which supports the initiative, apparently attempting to refute some of the questions raised by the Malibu city attorney. City Attorney Steve Amerikaner sent a recent memo to the council outlining his concerns with what he sees as the legal weaknesses in the initiative. Unfortunately, there is no way to evaluate what the MTC says, because what they sent out is both unsigned and you can’t tell whether it represents a knowledgeable attorney’s opinion or whether it’s just a political response to try and discredit the city attorney.

It appears to me that the city attorney has raised some legitimate legal questions about a very complicated area, the gravamen of which is — if we pass this initiative we’re entering one expensive legal quagmire. I would think that the appropriate response from the initiative people would be to produce their own legal opinion from a large, well-known and respected law firm to refute what the city attorney has said. I must admit, I actively practiced law for 22 years and I haven’t got the faintest idea if the city attorney’s judgments are correct, because the legal area of initiatives is hyper-technical and takes specific legal expertise. A bunch of non-lawyers sitting around a kitchen table voting to tell me not to worry doesn’t give me a high degree of comfort.

According to the initiative people, their initiative was drafted by some well-known, high-priced lawyers and, if so, they should be willing to put their opinion in writing onto the table, so we can all make an informed judgment.

There is another little twist to this picture. There apparently are some time limits for city action on proposals set by both the Permit Streamlining Act and the Subdivision Map Act. The city attorney thinks that poses some problems. Apparently, the time clock on these acts starts running once their application is complete. What I just discovered is that there are a bunch of Civic Center projects for which the time clock is already running. They are:

Project Complete application

Pepperdine Wave office complex June 2000

Schultz Retail and office September 1999

La Paz Retail and office June 2000

Crummer Tract Map (on the Bluffs) May 1999

Malibu Country Park (Ioki) December 1998

Malibu Village (Chili Cook-off) December 1998

From what I understand, the rule is there is one year to do the Environmental Impact Report and six months to decide. The parties, I assume, have in the past agreed to extend the time, but that probably will change if the initiative passes. The question is, even if the initiative passes, is it in time to affect these projects, which are most of the Civic Center proposals? That question deserves a real answer from a professional who knows.

Pepperdine

Aug. 31 there is a hearing before the Regional Water Quality Control Board about some sort of water-related permit Pepperdine needs, and the city is going to battle. The city has even hired Greg Aftergood, the attorney for the Malibu Road Property owners, a veteran of many water battles with Pepperdine, to represent the city. This seems to me to be a message to Pepperdine that the city is not in a particularly conciliatory mood. Many on Malibu Road are convinced that Pepperdine has been dumping water illegally for years and that this is somehow linked to some of the geology problems on the road. On the other side of that ledger, I’ve been told by some old-time real estate types that Malibu Road has been sliding for years, even back when it was Roosevelt Highway, and all this hoop de la is nothing but that. Others, unhappy with the planned Pepperdine expansion, are looking for any way to slow down that locomotive, and the water permits coming up now and again in the next month or so are the most likely tactics.

AB 988

That’s the bill steamrolling through the legislature that has just been in the Senate Appropriations Committee. It is really a 1,000 pound hammer to let the City of Malibu know that they better work out a Local Coastal Plan fast, or the Coastal Commission will do it for them. As the bill is presently written, the Coastal Commission has to consult with us, but this, if they want, can mean consult a lot or consult a little, depending on whether they think we’re cooperating or not.

To be continued.

Although there isn’t really a Malibu police deptartment, there is a unit of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. assigned to the Malibu beat, a team with many responsibilities — a team that some call the Malibu P.D.

Sheriff’s Detective Joseph Jakl is one deputy assigned to this beat.

Jakl, who pronounces his name “Jay-kull,” a native of the San Gabriel Valley community of Eagle rock, has been wearing a sheriff’s star for 12 years, 10 of them while working in the Malibu area. He has worn a detective badge since 1995.

Jakl explained, since Malibu has no police department of its own, the city has contracted with the county for law enforcement.

Up to 140 sworn personnel are used to cover an area of more than 200 square miles, including Malibu, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Agoura, Westlake Village and the unincorporated parts of Chatsworth, Topanga and Malibu Lake.

Most are uniformed personnel with a handful being plainclothes detectives like Jakl.

Capt. John O’Brien, head of the Malibu-Lost Hills station, said there are 11 detectives, including two sergeants and a lieutenant, with four of them assigned to the Juvenile Intervention Team.

Why do they need detectives at all?

“The uniformed officers gather information at the scene of an accident or a crime,” explains Jakl. “But sometimes we need to get follow-up information on something like a hit-and-run, say, for example, going out to examine a suspect’s car,” he said.

“It’s less obtrusive to show up in civilian clothes. Especially if the person is innocent.”

Not to mention plainclothes and cars with plain brown wrappers make it easier to sneak up on the bad guys.

“We do have a surveillance unit as well,” said Jakl. “They drive cars confiscated from drug dealers.”

Traffic duty

Undercover aside, the number one job of sheriff’s deputies in Malibu is controlling traffic.

“Speed on Pacific Coast Highway is our biggest problem,” said Jakl. He provided a chart showing that the number of fatalities on PCH has dropped since 1991, when the Sheriff’s Dept. took over patrolling duties on PCH from the California Highway Patrol. “But we could get them down still further if people slowed down.”

Jakl is wistful about changes that could be done to improve the safety of PCH.

“Pedestrian walkways, prevention of roadside parking–we have made many suggestions to Caltrans,” he said.

The California Coastal Commission also has its say in whether any suggestions will be adopted.

“We really complained when the center medians were taken out along PCH,” recalls Jakl. “It gave people crossing PCH a refuge when they were halfway across [therefore, making it easier to cross].”

One way the Sheriff’s Dept. evaluates its effectiveness is statistics. While the national average is 25 citations issued to each traffic injury, among the Malibu department it is 137 citations to one injury.

Jakl points out that the number of injuries drops markedly as the number of citations climb.

Security needs

Another task for the Sheriff’s Dept. is creating a secure climate for homeowners, some of whom are celebrities. It is not uncommon for a resident to ask for extra patrol.

“When someone is leaving town, they might ask us to swin by more frequently to make sure no one has broken in,” said Jakl. “And certainly, if they have a reason to think somebody is targeting them, we will patrol there.”

Many celebrities, he adds, hire their own security firms, some of which have employees who may be armed. This is legal if those employees have a state license to carry a gun.

There are special occasions, he points out, such as the recent Brad Pitt-Jennifer Aniston nuptials, where the Sheriff’s Dept. provides special security, but in that particular case it was both a public duty and a separate fee arrangement.

“We knew that spectators would be a problem since the wedding was taking place on a property adjacent to Pacific Coast Highway, so we blocked off one lane,” said Jakl.

That portion was at the public expense.

“Anybody planning an event that could affect traffic can apply for a special detail,” said Jakl.

But, for the Pitt-Aniston wedding, some off-duty deputies were hired to provide security in addition to the private security firms already retained by the wedding planners. The City of Malibu was paid a fee for this service, which in turn went to the Sheriff’s Dept.

The fee for each deputy for such a detail is roughly $52 an hour.

When talking VIP’s, movie stars are a three a penny. But there is only one President of the United States. When he decides to come to town to pal around with his Malibu friends, as President Clinton did during the Democratic National Convention, the Sheriff’s Dept. is alerted. “Fortunately, the secret service brings plenty of their own security service personnel,” said Jakl. “There’s not much more we can add.”

On a previous occasion when the President was visiting, deputies took the precaution of parking a bus in front of the home he was at to minimize the damage that could be caused by bomb-laden cars and posted “no parking” signs, but, so far, Jakl says that presidential visits haven’t cost the county much more than normal.

‘Safe’ beach community?’

A problem larger than the small population of Malibu warrants is car theft.

“If it’s hot inland, we can get up to 500,000 people at the beaches,” said Jakl. “People should be aware and take precautions.”

For some reason, he said, beachgoers don’t think of security as they would if parked downtown.

Elementary precautions he recommends are locking your car, rolling up the windows, and hiding things of value. Theft from cars is also a big problem with beach visitors, as many inlanders tend to park their cars with valuables showing, mistakenly feeling that precautions aren’t necessary because they are in a ‘safe’ beach community.

One thing the department hasn’t had a need for is a bomb squad.

“Almost every time we get a report of a bomb, we find it is a leftover movie prop,” said Jakl.

Burglaries on the web

After the problem of fatalities on PCH, and traffic accidents in the canyons, the next most serious problem is home site burglaries.

“Not so much home burglaries because of all the alarms,” said Jakl. “But we do have theft of construction materials. I guess some people think it’s easier to shop at an unguarded construction site than go to a Home Depot.”

A new boon to security that has yet to make its effect felt, but which will greatly simplify their task, is the Web cam.

“The technology exists to have a video camera or a number of video cameras trained on your house and to dial up those cameras from anywhere in the world on the Web and see if any intruders are in or about your house,” said Jakl. “I expect in the future we’ll get more calls from our residents who are out of town who detect an intruder through this means.”

Drinking and swimming do not mix

A problem particular to summer is drinking at the beach, which is handled by the Beach Patrol segment of the department.

“People wonder why we have jurisdiction over what’s in their cold drink container,” said Jakl. “Well, it’s against the law to drink alcohol in public and the beach is considered public property. Not to mention that you still have to drive home after a day of drinking at the beach. And when you think about a drunk swimmer, well that’s something the lifeguards don’t want to see.”

Jakl acknowledges the feeling some people have that a “local” police force is preferable to a contract one.

While it is true that more than 40 cities contract with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. for services, he points out: “We are ‘local’ in the sense that we have the same 18-20 officers working in Malibu all the time, some of them for many years. So, although it’s not called ‘Malibu P.D.’ it’s what we are.”

Last Friday, while I was in Topanga Canyon, my 1997 PCH Suburban caught fire and burned.

Besides myself, my husband, who is disabled, and my 80-year-old mother were in the car.

We managed to escape unharmed, and due to the quick response of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept., L.A. County Highway Patrol, and the Topanga Fire Dept., there was no personal injury and no fire in the canyon.

I cannot say enough about how wonderful all these men were.

Because my husband has C.O.P.D., we had an oxygen tank in the car. This made for an extremely dangerous situation. Thanks to the grace of God, and the professionalism of these men, everything turned out well.

They really went the extra mile for us. The Fire Dept. sifted through the ashes for me to find the remains of my purse in the metal skeleton that remained after the fire.

The sheriff gave us a ride to Malibu where we could arrange to be picked up. They even offered us cold drinks at the scene of the fire!

We also owe a special thank you to Dave, the assistant manager at the Chart House, and to Marguerite Garrison, also at the Chart House, for allowing us to come in when the restaurant was closed and wait for our ride home.

Even though it was a stressful event, the kindness of these people made it a lot better.

Thank you all, so much.

Donna MacDonald, Charles Hudson, and Alfred Buscaglia

I still cannot quite believe the article I just read about the Malibu mom who was arrested for battery.

Battery! Please, are they kidding?

We would all be in jail if this were battery.

Come on, instead of hassling carpooling soccer moms, couldn’t they find any crack dealers, car thieves, ax murderers or dog knappers? Were all these bad guys taking the day off? What’s next, getting a ticket for 14 items in the express check out lane at Ralphs?

I do not personally know Ms. Vandor however, I’d be willing to spearhead a campaign about the outrageous charges. After all, that could easily have been me or any number of my “mommy” buddies.

Pamela van Ierland

PS: Where is Johnny Cochran when you need him, because after all “If the parking space doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

It seems the “peace” officers assigned to Malibu, and possibly the entire Lost Hills Sheriff’s Dept., have lost sight of what it means to protect and serve.

In whose best interest is it to ticket a peaceful local resident for dropping off a video at Blockbuster? (We are all guilty!)

Does the officer do this all day long? Is this part of some ridiculous quota, at $330 a pop?

It is completely ridiculous that this officer was writing a parking ticket for a car that was never parked, and pathetic that she could not keep the situation from escalating, calling for back-up, causing a fine lady to be handcuffed in front of her young child and having the horror of seeing her child leave with a total stranger.

You would be incredulous at how many of us have similar stories. Hopefully, we will now be able to organize and make these incidents heard. I hope Ms. Vandor has a great lawyer and is able to instigate some real changes in the way Lost Hills conducts itself with the good citizens of Malibu.

Susi Manners

He’s known among the most talented actors in the business as one of the best at his craft. Malibu resident and leading character actor John Savage will appear on the screen, this time the smaller screen, this fall as Lydecker, a genetic wizard of sorts in the upcoming youth-oriented dramatic series on Fox called “Dark Angel.” “James Cameron and Chuck Egley came up with this really cool conceptual story and put these young people in it as having been genetically altered,” said Savage, who has been enjoying filming on location in Vancouver this summer. “My character is somehow responsible for that.”

The personable Savage first became known to mainstream America on the big screen during the seventies when he starred opposite Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep in the Academy Award-winning movie, “The Deer Hunter.”

Savage began his career of performing in front of his classmates at the age of 10. An aspiring vocalist in a church choir, punishment for not showing up with homework completed was to stand in front of the class and sing. Solo for a shy guy can be torture. Humor came to his rescue.

“It turned out I was funny when I did it,” said Savage. “They laughed. I went along with it.”

Standard school work did not provide the best stage for Savage to excel.

“Teachers helped me out because I couldn’t get it together at school. I was a dreamer, a fantasizer,” Savage said, adding that he was guided toward study in subject areas no longer provided for many students in schools today.

“At that time they actually had this kind of thing called ‘arts and music’ at school,” he said.

This is where Savage found his connection to the real world.

The real world connected with Savage time and again from the Broadway stage, first in the musical “Fiddler On the Roof,” with Zero Mostel, and later in David Mamet’s “The American Buffalo,” where his talent caught the eye of De Niro.

This recognition led to the starring role in “The Deer Hunter” in 1978. Savage later appeared opposite Al Pacino in “The Godfather III,” continuing to a role in Spike Lee’s film, “Do The Right Thing.” More recent film credits include “Message In A Bottle” and “The Thin Red Line.”

While music was his first love, acting has been the music of his life. “I wanted to be a musician, but that required homework,” muses the now 50-year-old actor. “I don’t see this as work. It’s weird. Thank God for some of the representation in the business, as hard as it is for me to understand or accept, ’cause I’d be doing it for free.”

Savage, a New York native, sailed through studies he earned on scholarship at the Academy of Dramatic Arts.

“I loved that,” Savage remembers.

He also loves his family, including children from a first marriage, a grandchild, and his wife of 10 years, actress Sandi Schultz. He approaches his life with the same sincerity and humility as his acting.

“At this point in my life I’m thinking less,” said Savage. “There’s a need for me to be more available for anyone that might need me. I want to keep it simple. Being responsible is a big deal.”

Savage experiences his career as a journey rather than an enterprise. Though he will turn 51 this month, he is admittedly still a child at heart.

Savage said of his work, “It’s discovery. You know there are much more accomplished actors who can break down a character, or part, or role and put it back together.

“I’m more of an actor who wants to act so he can slow down life a little and maybe get a little closer to it.”

Arnold G. York/Publisher

Questions about the Malibu Bay Company/City of Malibu development deal dominated Monday’s council meeting as the forces of opposition led by Gil and Joanne Segel and a dozen or so of their supporters from the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy (MCLC) tried a number of stratagems to derail the prospective deal.

At the top of the list is the MCLC proposed ballot initiative in which Malibu voters will ultimately have to decide if they want the opportunity to vote on pretty much every proposed commercial development of more than 25,000 square feet. The signatures gathered in the initiative campaign by MCLC to put the measure onto the ballot are currently being checked by the L.A. County Registrar of Voters. If they don’t finish the counting job by Aug. 11, it will be legally too late to get the measure onto the November 2000 ballot. Several from the MCLC group came to the podium and charged that the city was manipulating the signature verification process to delay the initiative, to slow it down and keep it off the November 2000 ballot. An obviously frustrated Mayor Hasse responded to them that it was not the case, that there was a legal process set forth in the statutes for handling initiatives and that process was being followed.

Perhaps fueling the paranoia of MCLC advocates Dan Frumkes, Marcia Hanscom, Steve Uhring, Marilyn Dove and Tami Clark was the council’s decision to put two of their own referendum matters onto the November 2000 ballot for the voters’ decision. In the first, which they passed unanimously 5-0, Malibu voters will be asked for an advisory opinion–if they would be willing to pass a bond issue for $15,000,000 to buy land for public parks, wetland and other public amenities. In the second referendum, in a 4 to 1 vote (Jennings dissenting), they decided to put the ultimate decision on the proposed Malibu Bay Company Development deal onto the ballot.

The MCLC group spoke vehemently against putting the council’s referendums onto the November ballot charging they would only muddy up the issues and confuse the voters, however, several councilmembers said that the Malibu voters were educated and wouldn’t have any problem sorting out the issues. They called the MCLC position hypocrisy because on one hand they were advocating a public vote, providing it was on their initiative, but resisting a public vote on anybody else’s.

The council did agree 5-0 to instruct staff to begin the process of analyzing the impacts of the proposed MCLC-Segel Ballot Initiative and directed all city department heads to look into some of the following; consistency with state law, impacts on permit streamlining process, impacts on affordable housing, costs of defense, impacts in situations where counsel must make findings, coastal act conflicts, fiscal impacts from special election and any other legal problems.

The development deal, which was originally on Monday night’s agenda, was continued the next council meeting in August, to allow time to make some corrections in the property appraisals.

Next council meeting

At the next meeting the council will vote on the final version of both referendums again; also, whether to send the proposed development deal out for an EIR, over the objection of the MCLC opponents, and whether the MCLC Initiative will get onto the November 2000 ballot, if it makes it back from the Registrar of Voters in time.

Point Dume Preserve

The council, in a 5-0 vote, over the objection of some neighbors who still don’t like the idea of parking on Point Dume near the Headlands Preserve, put their stamp of approval on a legal settlement between the city, the Coastal Commission and State Department of Parks and Recreation. Their decision ends a multi year tumultuous battle between the city and the Coastal Commission in which the city made the area around the preserve a “No parking” area and then put down large boulders alongside the preserve on the state’s right of way to prevent parking. An incensed Coastal Commission had initiated enforcement action against the city for doing it all without a coastal permit and threatened the city with large fines. The final deal the parking was cut from 32 spaces to 10 spaces plus a shuttle bus. They’re still working out the exact location of those parking spots and the neighbors are still threatening to sue.

Home Occupations and Code Enforcement get relief

The Building Department, speaking in a much more conciliatory tone put into writing many of the building department policies concerning code enforcement, and the council ordered them adopted as council instructions to staff in a 5-0 vote. They also tried to address council concerns about people being evicted during this interim period while they, the council, are trying to decide where they want to go with changes in the codes. Building Official Vic Petersen articulated what he saw as the underlying philosophy of enforcement by saying, “As long as it’s safe, it’s OK (see Page A1).

In other action the council

• Heard several attacks on Pepperdine University for dumping water into Marie Canyon adjacent to the school, which several speakers felt was undermining the stability of Malibu Road Assistance was requested at Pepperdine’s upcoming hearing before the Regional Water Quality Control Board on their permit;

• Delayed action of the beach string-line issue to the next meeting to allow staff time to work out the wording, but indicated their intent to develop some uniform string-line standards; one for decks and another for houses, to try and eliminate some of the beach warfare that has taken place lot by lot over the past few years

• Agreed to proceed on a twin-track to explore the reopening of Rambla Pacifico Road, closed since a slide in 1984. One track is for a smaller private road project with a gate paid for by the local homeowners (many have agreed to pony up $10,00 each plus annual maintenance), or alternatively some public project either over or around the old slide, done through a special district.

• Agreed 5-0 to hire retired City Manager Harry Peacock to continue work on the MBC/ Malibu Development deal over the opposition of the MCLC -Segel group, who thought someone else would be better.

• Agreed to extend and link up unconnected pieces of the DG horse trail across the street from Malibu High School.