As the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board members are preparing to allocate funds for the next fiscal year, the Special Education Department says they need an additional $1.25 million more than last year’s budget.

At a board meeting Thursday, the SM-MUSD superintendents of Special Education, Laurel Schmidt and Rose Ecker, presented a comprehensive plan for the 2000-2001 school year that would shape up the district-wide program and bring it back to compliance.

“Are we willing to think outside of the box and take some risks?” said superintendent Neil Schmidt. “We’re at a juncture where we have to take a really hard look at how we’re going to invest in our children.”

Board members spontaneously agreed to discuss forming a new position called “Assistant Superintendent/Student Services” at another meeting which took place Wednesday.

“That would allow us the leadership we need and the connections with county and state,” said Ecker.

“It is my strong belief that because of the depth and breadth of responsibilities and challenges facing Special Education/Student Services, including our responsibility and commitment to continuously looking at ways of doing a better job to meet the needs of all our students, it is important that the board approve the establishment of this position,” said Neil Schmidt.

Special Ed outlined a plan that calls for

• Building new classes and buildings to relieve overcrowding,

• Providing occupational and physical therapy services at schools using district personnel

• Establishing services and training personnel for autistic students

• Adding support staff, reading specialists and speech pathologists

• Increasing the central office staff.

Although the new plan would reduce the amount of money currently being paid to agencies, the projected amount is partly attributed to hiring district personnel, training teachers and hiring Inclusion Specialists for eventual integration of special education and regular education.

In other action, the board heard that bid packages for district-wide school modernization are going through.

Portions of Bid Package 1C, for upgrades for the physically handicapped at Pt. Dume and Webster school campuses, were distributed to contractors by Monday.

Plans for the scopes of work for Bid Packages 2B and 2C (Recreation Fields, Panelized/Portable classrooms and the Recreation Buildings) were also distributed by Monday.

Plans for Bid Package 3A, for Malibu High School’s wider, all-weather track and expanded staff parking, will be distributed by next Monday.

Board members fine-tuned the measure to be added to the general election ballot this November for a $98 parcel tax for the next ten years, adjusted annually according with the Consumer Price Index-Urban.

The date for the public hearing on the issue will be June 29.

The tax, otherwise known as Proposition K, would generate more than $3 million in revenues starting in 2001-2002.

In his report, the superintendent released an assessment of “Unmet Programmatic and Operational Needs.”

While the exact cost per program or need was not written, the total cost in this early assessment is reckoned at $12-15 million.

While the superintendent held the floor, he officially announced his and his assistant’s retirement next year in June.

Referring to recent controversial commission decisions, Planning Commissioner Charleen Kabrin Monday asked the commission to have a “land use” attorney present at future commission meetings.

A city attorney had attended meetings for years, until there were budget constraints, said commissioner Kabrin.

“It would be appropriate to have a land use attorney present, so decisions on projects involving, for example, the determination of a beach stringline might not end up in court,” she said.

Kabrin might have been referring to a series of decisions on the stringline (a rule of thumb for determining how far seaward beachfront homes can extend on the beach) of the Carbon Beach home of David Perez.

Throughout much of 1999 and the beginning of this year, decisions were made for and against Perez and the neighbor who was appealing, Gil Segel.

Newly elected commission chair Ed Lipnick suggested that Interim Planning Director Henry Engen convey to the City Council the request for city attorney presence. The money should be added as a “line item” on the budget the Planning Department is submitting to the council, Lipnick said.

Highlights of the proposed two-year budget (for fiscal years July 1, 2000; June 30, 2002) include:

Current planning budget

Current planning includes implementation of the 14 recommendations of last year’s Permit Streamlining Audit by the end of 2000, writing and adopting a permanent Zoning Ordinance by the end of the year, and forwarding policy questions to the commission within 30 days of identification. Within the proposed current planning budget of $151,620, the department wants to add an Associate Planner and increase the hours of a clerk.

Advanced planning budget

Advanced planning goals are: to revise the administrative draft of the Local Coastal Plan (LCP) into a public hearing draft after it is reviewed by the staff of the California Coastal Commission, complete the LCP environmental review by the end of 2000, and have the City Council review and approve the LCP by the end of Fiscal Year 2001. The LCP Implementing Ordinance would also be completed by the end of Fiscal Year 2001.

Zoning administration budget

The proposed zoning administration budget of $491,600 includes: goals of processing all applications within the time limits established by the California Permit Streamlining Act; conducting inter-departmental review of all discretionary development applications within 30 days of receipt; providing staff analysis and recommendations to the planning commission which lead to acceptance of staff recommendations at least 75 percent of the time; and providing customer-oriented service by telephone and at the public counter so that complaints to the City Council are less than one per month.

Reassuring people this was just the beginning of the process, the City Council voted 2-to-1, with City Councilman Ken Kearsley dissenting, May 23, to set three public hearings on the city’s proposed long-term development deal with the Malibu Bay Co.

Hearings are set for June 27, June 28 and July 5 or July 6 to define a project for an environmental impact report. The meetings take place in various locations of the city.

The council will then debate the project at its July 10 meeting.

Before public comment, City manager Harry Peacock said hearings were not a referendum on the merits of the agreement, but to define a project for an environmental impact report.

“We will not be approving the development agreement or donation agreement,” said Peacock, noting that copies of the documents were available at City Hall.

“When the council meets July 10, it needs to modify the agreements solely for the purpose of going for environmental review.

“The agreement will go before the Planning Commission in fall or winter, and come back to the council in ordinance form,” Peacock added.

Reacting to comments by resident Candy Clark and Mayor Pro Tem Joan House that sewage standards and legal descriptions were not spelled out in the agreements, Malibu Bay Co. spokesman Dave Reznick said the standards could be added the first week in June. Peacock noted the legal descriptions are being prepared but add little to the agreements.

“This is simply the beginning of the process. There will be many hearings after June,” noted Peacock.

Kearsley and city councilman Jeff Jennings said calls for negotiations with eight other Civic Center landowners before hearings on the Malibu Bay Co. deal could not be accommodated.

Time is of the essence and the opportunity for comprehensive negotiations had been missed with rejection of the Civic Center Specific Plan, said Jennings and Kearsley in response to comments by Malibu Township council president Frank Basso and residents Art London and Daniel Frumkes.

“If this were three years ago, when we talked about the Civic Center Specific Plan, it would have been a lot easier to achieve the goal of coordinated planning,” said Jennings.

‘What we are talking about is not the standard development process, where the city calls all the shots. We are talking about an agreement here,” he said. “We are getting something in return for giving something up. That process requires everything to be subject to negotiation, including timing of the process.”

“One of the disasters in this city was rejection of the Civic Center Specific Plan,” said Kearsley in response to Peacock’s comment that no one could agree on the Civic Center Specific Plan project to be reviewed.

This, the second in a series of differing views on the Civic Center development, presents the views of Gil Segel, president of the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy (MCLC), and several of his associates: David Gottlieb, a filmmaker and a director of the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, Ozzie Silna, MCLC treasurer, and Marcia Hanscom, Executive Director of the Wetlands Action Network.

Often it seems that the controversy over development of Malibu’s Civic Center has raised passions to an adversarial level incapable of compromise or even conversation.

Not so, Gil Segel asserts.

“We have never been either-or,” he said of the MCLC’s position on development vs. non-development.

“We were characterized in Arnold’s paper (The Malibu Times, published by Arnold York) on an either-or basis, as people who are only environmentally predisposed,” said Segel. “That’s not who we are, that’s not who we’ve been.

“We do have environmentally involved people with us, but our concept has always been two-fold,” he explained. “Our focus and goal has only been towards an aspect of conscious development, and controlling the perennial problem of pollution of the Malibu Creek Lagoon and Surfrider Beach.”

Few would argue with Segel over Surfrider’s problem, a beach that seems to get an “F” rating in dry weather as well as wet, which brings in mountain runoff.

“We know that pollution is not specifically a Malibu problem,” said Segel. “It’s regional; 109 square miles dump into Malibu Creek. If we don’t find ways to deal with that pollution, we will have a chronic problem forever.

“I feel so bad when I watch those kids out there every day on the greatest beach in the Southern California area,” he adds. “They get rashes and they get ill. A total development within the Civic Center just to maximize square-footage will only add to the pollution.”

The solution as offered by Segel and his associates?

Set aside a significant part of the Civic Center property as a “wetlands,” which could, by natural oxygenation, cleanse the pollution.

Segel said his group is presently making studies that will determine how much of the land should be set aside to do the job (they consider the Environmental Impact Report done by the Malibu Bay Company, the major site owner, inadequate and failing to deal with the “totality of potential development by all nine site landowners, most of whom have already filed for building permits”).

Unlike the 20-acre Chili Cook-off site, which is situated on the flatland (and which the MBC has agreed to leave undeveloped for a decade), Segel seems to have little objection to a reasonable development of the eight-acre Ioki parcel running uphill from the Civic Center.

“I don’t want to fight with the developers,” he adds. “I recognize there is a private right to develop their property. But this community should be able to put together enough funds–state, federal and local–to set aside an appropriate amount of land in a restored wetlands concept that would work toward cleansing the creek, lagoon and ocean.

“Let’s put together the funds to buy land so the developers don’t get hurt.”

Hanscom said of the wetlands concept, “The Malibu Lagoon and the creek have been considerably fragmented over time, much of it before we knew how wetlands work.

“As one example, not many people know that Jerry Perrenchio, owner of MBC, has a private golf course just northwest of the lagoon, which can be a source of pollution.,” she said. “So we need a larger wetlands, and they don’t work in a vacuum. They are part of an ecosystem including wildlife like the Great Blue Heron and egrets, which you can often see here as well as the white-tailed kite, a protected species which the EIR says is probably nesting in the area. We are looking for a way for humans to survive, as well as the many species which call Malibu home also.”

“And it will enhance their development,” Segel added. “Think about an office building that is surrounded by a park.”

(As the Corps of Engineers has found, that, other than for a small section, the Civic Center site does not fulfill the government’s definition of a “wetland,” ).

Gottlieb suggests as an example of potential funding sources, the recently approved acquisition of 1,640 acres in lower Topanga from the L.A. Athletic Club, with $40 million from state Prop. 12 funds.

“I would love to see a people park/wetlands restoration that people can canoe on, that you could walk in, that people who come from the city can see and experience what this area was like and can be like forever,” said Segel.

“Were we to acquire it, we would turn it over to some entity to hold on a permanent restricted basis–but it’s a park. The more land we are able to get, the more public access,” he said.

Since no one is pro-pollution, and Segel’s group claims they are not adamantly opposed to some “development,” how did the issue become so violently adversarial?

“It’s economic and it’s political,” he said.

Political?

“Certainly getting control of the city at some level,” he added.

Traffic, as it was for Ed Niles who argued the case for reasonable development in The Malibu Times May 18 issue, is also a concern of Segel’s.

“How do you make reasonable economic development within the community if you can’t get here?” he asks.

Although he offers no concrete suggestions, Segel dismisses the premise that Malibu gridlock is inevitable.

“Nothing is absolutely inevitable if you think about it before it happens,” he said. “I’m not willing to say that this has to become another Laguna or Newport Beach. We want to be able to move around. We’re trying to say ‘take the whole concept into consideration.’

“That was the concept of the General Plan [the overall growth plan for Malibu created in 1994.] The more land we can acquire simplifies addressing the problem of PCH.

“There can be development in the Civic Center,” he repeated, “but there also can be ball-fields, and meandering paths and a wetlands restoration large enough to be effective. This is the sole purpose for which we started our conservancy; not to be antagonists but to be consciously constructive of the community’s welfare.”

“I’ve been the enemy of [the] paper for a long time,” Segel said of The Malibu Times. “But its time for everybody to unite, try to do the best job we can, and, with the assistance of the state and the federal government, solve a perennial problem potentially forever. Malibu can be an example for the world.”

Malibu joined the nation Monday on Memorial Day in pausing to respect and honor those who died in America’s wars as its citizens drove down the coast to the 114-acre Los Angeles National Cemetery in West Los Angeles.

There they silently prayed among the 86,000 graves of veterans and their families from every war since the Civil War, including World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Here in Malibu, several veterans remembered their own military experiences for The Malibu Times.

Two served in Vietnam and one served several tours of active duty during his 37-year career in the Naval Reserve. While each man’s experience was unique, each indicated he had emerged stronger and more mature.

Veteran John T. Payne, CEO of Payne and Co. Insurance Brokers, began his military career while still in high school as a Seaman Recruit in the Naval Reserve.

He said he values his time both on active duty and in the Reserve, serving 37 years before retiring with the rank of captain in 1995. Today he continues to extol the Navy and naval careers as a leader of The Navy League in Malibu.

“I enjoyed my time in the military,” Payne said. “I still miss it–the camaraderie, the people you meet, places you go and things you do. I don’t know why more people aren’t interested. It’s a great experience.

“My first active duty, following Submarine School at New London, Connecticut, was with the USS Catfish out of San Diego.”

Payne’s had a variety of assignments since then, including the command of an aircraft carrier reserve unit supporting the first nuclear powered submarine, the USS Enterprise.

Payne expressed disappointment that he was not called up for Desert Storm in the early 1990s.

“It would have been an honor and a privilege for me to do something like that,” he said.

“The Navy gives people a lot of responsibility,” added Payne. “One of the benefits of my military service was to learn a management style that I could use in my personal insurance business.”

Another Malibu veteran, Jeff Jennings, an attorney with a specialty in estate planning, is a city councilmember and was mayor of Malibu from 1997-98.

Graduating from Yale in 1965 as an artillery lieutenant, his active duty was delayed for studies at Stanford Law School and for two years of teaching law.

Then he trained in artillery in Oklahoma and was shipped to Vietnam in March of 1971 with the rank of captain. Assigned to the 101st Airborne Division “way up north near the demilitarized zone,” he found the military needed his skills as an attorney.

“I spent most of my time on legal duties or connected to legal affairs,” said Jennings.

“Our camp was ringed by firebases, and we experienced rocket attacks from time to time,” said Jennings. “When shells fell, we went to sandbagged shelters. I experienced ‘moments of fear’ from the shelling, and in armed travel from place-to-place to investigate cases. But basically we were not supposed to be in combat.”

Jennings indicated that although the experience was unpleasant from many perspectives, he is glad he went.

“At the time I didn’t like it, but the edges blur over time,” he said. “I forget the unpleasant aspects and realize I learned something from the experience. It made me more skeptical of easy answers and positive solutions. It was a maturing process.”

Jennings added that he had been vocal in the anti-war movement before going to Vietnam.

“I was young; I was sure I had the answers,” he said. “I went over there with certain fixed ideas. Slowly they began to wear off. The picture was more complicated; I could see reasons why we were there.”

Remembering fallen comrades, Jennings said, “I had close buddies who died–people who I worked with, prosecution and defense counsels, people in different units. Sometimes scheduled trials didn’t take place, as those involved were killed in action.”

Jennings, who is married with 3 sons, left Vietnam Christmas of 1972.

Todd M. Sloan, now an attorney specializing in civil trial and business litigation law and member of the Code Enforcement Task Force, served two tours of duty with the Marine Corps in Vietnam. He was there during the early days of the conflict when Americans were advisors to the South Vietnamese Army, and later when conflict had burgeoned into full-blown insurgency warfare.

“I think often of friends who were casualties,” he said. “I was lucky. When I think about Memorial Day, I think of the wonderful, brave Marines who are dead now. They were the finest men I ever knew in my life.”

Sloan served all over the country as an infantry, intelligence and scuba officer during his two tours of duty. He saw great changes between 1963, when he was a first lieutenant in the extreme western part of Vietnam, and 1968.

“The country in 1963 suffered from relatively insignificant communist guerrilla activity and some 3-4,000 Americans served as advisors,” he said. “Our job was to observe the North Vietnamese coming south on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

“Initially, Americans were there to support the South Vietnamese Army,” he added. “But, by 1966 this had changed and we were fighting in the countryside and they were back in the bases. Although there were many fine South Vietnamese people in the field, I was struck by the number of draft dodgers and people who didn’t want to fight.”

By 1968, during Sloan’s second tour of duty, the American feeling was to “get the job done,” Sloan said.

“Basically, the South Vietnamese conned America into going out and doing the fighting for them,” he said.

“When I returned home,” he said, “I really had an understanding of how the war started. I read history. I knew the diplomatic overtones. I certainly learned to appreciate living in a country where you are free.”