According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Malibu is second only to Sonoma County when it comes to repetitive flood losses in California. But, according to some of the proponents of the development of the Malibu Civic Center, the proposed FEMA study is nothing more then a political ploy, by some, to engineer a stoppage of any development in the Civic Center without having to pay for the land.

A repetitive loss is one that occurs twice within a 10-year period. These areas are a big drain on the flood insurance funds, said FEMA representative Gregory Blackburn.

Chuck Bergson, Public Works director for Malibu, said that FEMA suggested a flood mitigation study because Malibu has had the second largest number of claims in California in the past 10 years.

“I was told that there was a grant available and they gave me a form,” said Bergson, “so I applied for it.”

“They want to do things to reduce that impact,” he said, concluding that it’s very high for a small town like Malibu.

According to the city, there are 21 major canyon watercourses that cross the Pacific Coast Highway within the city’s boundary.

The project will help identify areas of historic flooding and problem areas, determine existing hydrologic conditions in the watersheds and develop goals and objectives for the flood mitigation plan.

One of the claims has been that the Civic Center is a flood plain and thus, susceptible to flooding. A recent article in the Westside Weekly section of the Los Angeles Times suggested that the land in the Civic Center area, which is owned by the Malibu Bay Company (MBC), and targeted for development, is prone to flooding. MBC responded that these statements in the article are incorrect.

According to MBC, the Chili Cook-off site has never flooded and a claim has never been made to FEMA on this property. The MBC states that only a very small portion of the land they own is prone to seasonal flooding and this land will be dedicated as permanent open space under the development agreement.

They say that they are doing everything they can to determine how constructed wetlands might contribute to flood control improvements generally in the Civic Center area.

The FEMA study will also help consider possible solutions to the areas that do have potential flooding problems through evaluation and prioritization of the potential solutions and identification of potential funding sources.

To delineate the mitigation process, the City Council will be appointing a Flood Mitigation Planning Committee that will be composed of three staff members and three members of the public.

At the meeting, the committee solicited names for a third public member and sign up sheets where made available to the public, but only one person signed up so the city extended the application period for an additional two weeks after the meeting.

Blackburn, a Natural Hazards Program specialist from the San Francisco FEMA office said, “Once the information is gathered, a review of the existing conditions will be done and reports of various flooding concerns will be given to the city.”

“I also want to reassure you that the federal government is here with a grant to help cover the costs, provide solutions and build public consensus,” said Blackburn.

This mitigation process is expected to be finalized by April 2001, and FEMA is providing Malibu with a $150,000 grant to help pay for this process.

“We’re not coming here as big brother to grab land,” said the FEMA representative, adding that the organization is known to come into town on the heels of a disaster.

“We are here to focus on the problem first, so that we can come up with solutions,” said Blackburn. “Another advantage to having a plan is knowing where to develop and it helps have a leg up when disaster does hit.”

With that goal in mind, FEMA came to solicit input from the public. Bergson said that the plan addresses all the areas in town, as none are specified individually.

Blackburn said that having learned from prior disasters, FEMA is getting involved with the management of disaster prone areas to help prevent possible problems before they happen.

“Our role was to create money available to pay claims and to draw maps of flooding prone areas,” said Blackburn.

Maps have been created to help identify problem areas. The maps are available from title companies and real estate agents; the FEMA Web Site can also be a source to obtain these maps.

Harry Peacock admits that he will miss Malibu.

“I had the greatest neighbors I ever had,” he said of his three-year stint in Malibu as city manager.

Peacock retired July 13.

Peacock, a public service professional, has worked in four different cities–three in Southern California and one in Northern California.

He holds a public service degree, earned in 1964 from UCLA, and a master’s and a doctorate in public administration from USC. Peacock’s first job in the public service field was as city manager in Gardena in 1970. In 1973 he moved to “upscale” Rolling Hills Estates on the Palos Verdes peninsula.

After Rolling Hills, he moved to Saratoga in Santa Clara County. In 1997 he was hired by Malibu.

“I think they hired me partly because I had worked in an affluent community and was used to working with activists who were used to having their voice heard,” he recalls. “That, plus I had a lot of experience.”

Peacock said being a city manager is a lot like being the president of a corporation.

“The City Council is like the board of directors,” he said. “The mayor is the chairman of the board.”

The way Harry Peacock looks at it, the job of the city manager is to “make sure all services are delivered.”

Although Malibu was pretty new to cityhood when Peacock arrived, he said he doesn’t feel Malibu “bit off more than it could chew” by choosing to be a city.

“We have an adequate tax base to provide services,” he said.

What makes Malibu unusual, he said, is its “history of disasters.” In a way, said Peacock, the disasters presented a lot of impediments to getting things up and running as a city.

“The extra amount of time we all had to spend coping with the aftermath of fires and mudslides was that we couldn’t devote time to the normal things,” he said.

Peacock compares Malibu’s lack of progress since attaining cityhood to that of a 9-year-old who is only in the 2nd grade. When his parents are asked “Why is your child only in 2nd grade?” the parents reply, “Well, he would have been in 4th, but he had the chicken pox, the measles, the mumps and scarlet fever. By the time he recovered from all that, he lost too much time to be in his normal grade level.”

Peacock feels one of his biggest accomplishments has been to hold the line on code enforcement.

“We have rules so people won’t build houses in harm’s way,” he said.

During his tenure, Peacock recalls that there was more than one battle with a would-be homeowner who insisted that his geologist had OK’d a site.

“We don’t care what your geologist says,” said Peacock. “We care what our geologist says. If our geologist says the site is un-buildable, that’s it.”

While Peacock was city manager, he never tried to lure major businesses to Malibu.

“I didn’t see it as my job,” he said.

The two major employers, he points out, are HRL, the former Hughes Labs, which, at more than 40 years in their present location, and pre-date the city and Pepperdine, which is technically outside the city but still is its major employer. Peacock said that, unlike some cities where there is the “no growth” lobby opposed by the “fast growth” lobby, in Malibu he would characterize the two major groups as “no growth” and “really slow growth.”

“There’s no fast growth lobby in the community,” he said. “Certainly I’ve never met anyone on the City Council who represents that view. And I’ve worked with eight different council people.”

While he won’t go as far as characterizing Malibu as a city without a vision, he did say, “In all the time I’ve been here I never really met anyone or any group who could cite a model of what Malibu should be as a city. I don’t think they have come to grips with that. It’s difficult to say ‘we want to be like this city or that one’ because there are no other cities with such a unique layout–27 miles of coastline–and so many visitors.”

Peacock laments that in Malibu, the tradition of having volunteers help out at City Hall isn’t as established as it was in Rolling Hills, which had a long tradition of volunteering.

“There’s some areas where private citizens, owing to their expertise, can be a big help and do jobs that we don’t have time to do as effectively,” he explained.

Peacock counts as one of his biggest victories during his tenure finding out that the L.A. County underpaid Malibu in property taxes. Peacock was able to recover approximately $2 million of those funds. He also found the state was shortchanging Malibu.

“We got that corrected,” he said with a smile.

Peacock isn’t worried about what will occupy his time as he loads up his new Boxster Porsche and heads south. He has a lot of hobbies–he plays tennis, whitewater rafts in a rubber boat, golfs, and he and his wife maintain friendships with Navy buddies from 30 years ago. He looks forward to retirement in Carlsbad. It will still be a city by the sea, mind you, but he knows he can enjoy it more, because this time, he won’t be responsible for it.

The candidacy period has just opened for the November 7, 2000 City Council election and the first official entry into the race is recently appointed Councilmember Sharon Barovsky. Barovsky pulled her nomination papers to run for the remaining two years left on the term of office originally held by her late husband Harry Barovsky. Sharon Barovsky was recently appointed by the council to fill that seat, but the appointment only extends until the November election when she must go before the voters. The filing period for nomination papers runs from July 17 to August 11, 2000, 5 p.m. The nomination papers require the signature of 30 registered voters from Malibu.

Although no one else has yet pulled papers, others mentioned as possible candidates are Commissioner Ted Vaill, who had indicated earlier that he intended to run, and possibly former City Councilmember Carolyn Van Horn.

A Malibu resident was arrested for battery on a traffic officer and obstructing an officer’s duties Saturday morning in front of Blockbuster Video on Webb Way.

The incident escalated from a citation for illegally parking in a handicap zone, into a dramatic arrest of Cindy Vandor, a resident of Malibu for 12 years.

Vandor, who has taught a class on broadcasting as an adjunct professor at Pepperdine for five years and has worked for 20 years as a TV news anchor for KCAL and KTTV, had pulled up into a handicap parking space in front of the Blockbuster store to drop off a video when Traffic Officer Cheryl Allen had pulled in behind Vandor and proceeded to write her a ticket for illegally parking in a handicap zone.

“I was with my 9-year-old son,” said Vandor. “The plan was that he was going to jump out of the car, drop the videotape and return immediately to the car.”

According to the police report filed by Deputy Frank Bausmith of the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff’s Department, Vandor allegedly became irate and asked Allen to give her a warning instead of a ticket.

“She [Allen] came up to the car without listening to my belief that I haven’t parked,” said Vandor.

“I said that we were simply dropping off a tape and were not parking,” said Vandor. “She immediately started to write a parking violation citation. I said, ‘wait a minute, I’m not parked.”

While Vandor admits that she may have been wrong in stopping in the handicap space, her account of what ensued after Allen began writing her the citation conflicts with that of the police report that was filed.

The police report states that Vandor shouted profanities at Allen and that she grabbed her hand and pulled it into the vehicle.

Vandor said she did become angry and did utter profanities at Allen. “I did not graciously accept it [the citation], I’ll admit that,” she said.

Vandor also said that she did reach for Allen’s pen while she was writing the citation.

However, Vandor stressed, “I never, ever, ever touched her.”

Vandor’s son, Jacob, who was in the car at the time with his mother, said in a phone interview that his mother did reach for Allen’s pen, but “took the pen not a centimeter off the page [citation].”

“My mom let go before Allen said let go,” said Jacob.

“She [Vandor] never touched the lady’s [Allen] hand,” he said.

Lt. Thom Bradstock, who is in charge of the Malibu area, in a phone interview said, “When one of our personnel is confronted by someone and endures verbal abuse, that’s one thing. But, when it’s physical, that’s another issue. I don’t feel that my personnel should endure that.”

What ensued afterwards, according the police report, is that Vandor, having exited her vehicle, “continued to yell profanities” at Allen. At one point, according to witnesses at the scene, Allen said she was going to call for backup and Vandor said “go ahead call for backup.”

“[I was] welcoming that deputies were on the scene,” said Vandor. “I wanted to explain that she [Allen] was being unfair and hostile.”

Three deputies arrived at the scene, including Bausmith and Deputy Steve Colitti.

Her arrest came at a point, witnesses said, when Allen was back in her vehicle about to leave. Vandor got back out of her van and said something else to Allen. At that point, witnesses said Allen got out of her car and went over to the deputies to confer with them. Vandor was then handcuffed and put into Bausmith’s patrol car.

However, before she was put into the patrol car, Vandor was cussing and yelling, trying to move away from the officers while she was handcuffed, the witnesses said. She was saying that she had a son in her car and couldn’t leave him alone the witnesses said.

“The worst nightmare,” said Vandor of the incident, “had to be my son. I could not see my son.”

Vandor said a woman that she did not know had later taken her son, while she was handcuffed, into the Blockbuster store to call his father.

“This very nice lady took care of me,” said Jacob.

As to what the deputies told Jacob about what was occurring with his mother he said, “I was told they put her in handcuffs to calm her down.”

“It was very scary,” he said. “Everybody in the shopping center didn’t agree with the officers. A few people were brave and did go up [to the deputies], but they [the deputies] didn’t listen.”

Vandor was cited for misdemeanor battery and obstruction of an officer’s duties.

Meanwhile, Vandor has filed her own complaint against Allen and deputies Bausmith and Colitti.

“They are manufacturing charges,” said Vandor of the complaint filed against her.

“[It’s a] very serious charge,” she said. “I tried to tell Bausmith he doesn’t really want to be arresting a Malibu mom in a mini-van.”

At the last council meeting a process server came in to serve Mayor Tom Hasse with a civil lawsuit that charged that he borrowed $7,500 from a former friend, Brian Fox, and failed to make any payments on the loan and was in default.

According to the information in the court documents, which Hasse confirmed, he borrowed the money from Fox on May 27, 1999, signed a note to make monthly payments which included interest, and had not made any payments as of the filing of the lawsuit which was June 30, 2000.

Fox is the owner of B. D. Fox and Friends, a successful advertising agency that does a wide variety of advertising and media work in the entertainment field whose quality of ad work is highly regarded. Fox said he took the legal action, because he wanted his money back and he kept getting promises for payment that were not being kept. Hasse said that, despite the note, there was a gentleman’s understanding between them that he would pay back the entire amount of $7,500, plus interest out of the proceeds of a piece of family property that was being sold. He also said there have been some delays in the closing.

In fact, according to Hasse, the escrow did close in early July, just after the lawsuit was filed, and just this week Hasse delivered a check to Fox covering principal and interest. Fox said he intended to dismiss the lawsuit once the check cleared.

Hasse charged that this loan became an issue with Fox after his ex-wife, Kara Fox, joined the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy (MCLC) Board in December 1999.

He then started getting calls from Fox. He said Fox, who was a political activist in the past, and in fact, had early-on created many of the full-page political ads that ran in the Surfside News, was trying to embarrass him only because of the proposed Malibu Bay Company development deal, which has been adamantly opposed by those on the MCLC. This was merely another step by that group to try and discredit Hasse and thereby the deal.

Fox responded that, not only was he not involved politically anymore, but that he himself felt former councilmembers Walt Keller and Carolyn Van Horn should not run again. And, in fact, he declined to participate in the last election campaign even though several people had tried to get him back. Fox said he didn’t care about the politics and all he wanted was his money back, and the reason he served Hasse at the council meeting was that he was “pissed off” at him, and he figured that if he wasn’t going to get his money back, he at least was going to embarrass Hasse.

An visibly unhappy Planning Commissioner, Charleen Kabrin, quickly walked out of Monday’s planning meeting apparently upset over the commission approval of a zoning map and general plan amendment, as well as a tentative parcel map for a two-lot subdivision on Winding Way.

The applicant had requested approvals to subdivide one 11.7-acre parcel into two separate parcels for two future single-family residences.

This property was originally part of a 140-acre parcel in Escondido Canyon of which 128.3 acres are now parkland.

After the owner originally obtained the title to the 140-acre unimproved property, the property was assessed $750,000 to pay for street and water improvements. After Malibu became a city, the zoning of the property was changed from 23 home sites, equaling one house per five acres, to allow only five single-family homes.

The owner sued in 1996, alleging that the city’s action deprived them of the benefits of the improvements for which they paid.

In 1997, a tentative settlement was reached between the City Council and the landowners. It specified that the owner, Blank Par-E, could subdivide the subject 11.7 acres it still owns into two, 5-acre home sites, which would allow for the development of one 7,000 square foot, single-story home on each lot.

This project came in front of the planning commission because it required an amendment to the city’s general plan and zoning map. The staff recommended that the commission forward the project to the City Council for their action of approval.

Initially, the zoning amendment concerned some commissioners, because they did not want to set a trend for future developers. The current general plan and zoning designations for this parcel are rural residential (RR-20), which allow for one dwelling per 20 acres.

Therefore, the proposal was to amend the general plan and zoning map to RR-5 to accommodate this project.

Planning Commissioner Richard Carrigan asked if this project would influence the future terms of events and encourage a down-zoning trend, to which Planning Director Hogan said, “This is particular to the facts of this case since this was a settlement.” But, there is no guarantee that some people won’t request some in the future, said Hogan.

Kabrin was concerned about the environmental impacts.

“There are a lot of biological concerns,” she said, stating that she was not opposed to the project, but wished for a continuance because this issue was not clarified in the plans.

All the while, representatives for the applicants were restless in their seats, waiting for their turn to speak. Blank Par-E’s attorney came to the podium and was very brief.

“I think we’ve really gone astray here,” he said.

The court has endorsed the settlement because they like the idea of an agreement being reached with the city government, he said.

Another representative said that the city biologist’s conditions have been integrated. They worked with forestry, eliminating a large irrigation zone to avoid impact on the native vegetation, she said.

They also stated that they intend to build the houses with a design that will blend with the natural environment.

After debating some more, the commission agreed, except for one member. Kabrin moved for a continuance but the motion failed.

“This is consistent with the general plan,” said Chair Ed Lipnick, who moved to approve.

The commission voted to approve the project with the condition that items be corrected regarding the tentative parcel map so that the information can be given back to the commission for clarity’s sake.

Storage sheds disallowed

The commission denied a request for two storage sheds within the side-yard setback of a home in Point Dume.

The owner had asked for a variance of the side-yard setback guidelines, which currently require an 11-foot setback.

Don Schmidt came to the meeting to represent the property owner, who was said to have constructed two storage sheds without permits.

Schmidt said that one of the sheds was already on the property when the current owners purchased it approximately seven years ago, adding that shed is not visible from the street.

The second shed is a pre-manufactured one and the owner did not believe that a permit was required, said Schmidt, who passed on apologies to the commission on behalf of the owner.

“Granting a variance will not provide special privilege,” he said, “since there are many more like it.”

He emphasized that sheds give better sightlines than having bikes and surfboards out in the open, and that it is a typical feature found with single-family homes.

However, the commission was concerned about the side-yard set back issues. They said that the current set back guidelines are to ensure that properties will not develop too close from one another to preserve view sheds.