Longtime Parks and Recreation Director Cassie Walter has resigned her post with the city effective Dec. 17, citing both professional and personal reasons.

Walter began her service with Malibu in 1994 and is credited with initiating the city’s parks and recreation programs. Over the years, the staff has grown to five full-time employees with several employees working part-time and through contracts. During Walter’s tenure, the city also undertook the creation of major recreation facilities on a joint-venture basis with the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, including the community swimming pool, additional tennis courts, and baseball and soccer fields at Malibu High School.

Walter also coordinated the transfer of ownership of Charmlee Regional Park from the county of Los Angeles to the city of Malibu and negotiated the current lease agreement with the state Parks and Recreation Department by which Malibu operates Bluffs Park.

This year’s Little League season was arguably Walter’s biggest challenge, facing a string of glitches in the renovation of the ball fields at Bluffs Park. Problems with leveling the ground, irrigation and laying sod on the baseball diamonds vexed parents and coaches, and delayed the season opener. Walter faced intense controversy over the project, trying to hold the contractor to the terms of his performance bond while mitigating the frustration of Little League officials.

“Cassie had the unique and difficult responsibility to found a major city department and develop a community recreation program from scratch,” said City Manager Harry Peacock. “That is an accomplishment for which she should take pride and for which the community will always be grateful. We wish her success in her future endeavors, whatever they may be.”

Vowing not to resign from her position with Malibu’s telecommunications commission, Nidia Birenbaum appeared at Monday’s City Council meeting to declare she had done nothing wrong.

“I did everything in my power to be a very good commissioner,” she said, contending Councilman Tom Hasse’s ultimatum that she resign stemmed from her unwillingness to cooperate in a scheme to discourage Mayor Carolyn Van Horn and Councilman Walt Keller from running for office.

“I am not a back-stabber,” she declared. “I don’t play games. I say it like it is.”

“I don’t work for you, Hasse!” she said. “This is not your baby. This is not your project.” She described her tenure as aimed at securing both an educational channel and a communications channel. But she lamented the city is left now “with a few thousand dollars in equipment and a government channel controlled by Hasse.”

Referring to City Manager Harry Peacock, she said, “I suffered verbal abuse from this man.” Alluding to a shouting match that led to the firing, she said Peacock “needed Prozac. Indeed, he was out of control.”

Attorney Sam Birenbaum followed his wife to the podium, repeating his earlier accusations concerning a missing tape that would have revealed the level of Peacock’s “tirade.” “There’s still a mystery about this incident that hasn’t been resolved,” he said, discounting the explanation that the tape ran out before the incident. “I would submit the tape did, or does, exist and is being suppressed.”

Warning that Hasse had never denied the truth of the conversations, including a telephone call, Birenbaum urged the firing was a “stab-in-the-back” and a “snake in the grass.”

“I would like to bring the truth out of the closet,” he said, “If you cannot be honest about yourself, then how can you be honest with other people.”

A stalled resort project originally proposed for Latigo Canyon is making a comeback but meeting stiff opposition from city and county officials and canyon residents.

The rustic camp was designed to accommodate 300-plus visitors in 95 circular, wood-framed, fabric-covered tent cabins similar to the yurts traditionally used by Mongol nomads. The upscale Malibu version — manufactured by Pacific Yurts, Inc. of Oregon — would have wooden floors, solid doors, indoor plumbing, kitchens, fireplaces and other amenities unknown to the Siberian tribes, whose portable homes were just animal hides lashed to collapsible frames.

The project was initiated nearly a decade ago by then landowner Irwin “Red” Lachman, who described the rustic camp as a New Age retreat, a quiet place for study and environmental research. Architect Ron Goldman, Lachman’s partner on the project, called it an “ecologically friendly” retreat.

Residents, however, took a dim view and launched a bitter campaign to squash the plan, which had won approval in November 1992 from the California Coastal Commission (over the objections of 40 residents who packed the hearing) and two years later, from the Los Angeles County Planning Department, partly on Lachman’s assurance the camp would be made available five days a week to give inner-city youngsters a place to study nature.

The original proposal included 123 units in 95 yurts, ranging in size from 210 to 625 square feet; a 7,000-square-foot fitness center, an 8,000-square-foot dining hall, three tennis courts, two swimming pools and an outdoor “natural” amphitheater for classes and lectures. Goldman told the commission the project would be designed to conserve energy, reduce toxic emissions, conserve land forms and recycle runoff. The architect told the City Council in 1993 that he was committed to maintaining the beauty and peacefulness and the quiet quality of the canyon. “We will not manipulate the environment to make visitors more comfortable,” he said.

In its original approval, the commission stated the project fits the local Land Use Plan designation described in its staff report as “low-intensity, visitor-serving commercial recreation.” Neighboring resident Steve Best said at the hearing it was actually a “hotel and convention center.”

After spending about $18,000 on preliminary work — brush clearance and a septic system — Lachman reportedly ran into financial difficulties. The Coastal Commission, however, deemed the work sufficient to state, “development has commenced” and reactivated his development permit. County planners followed the state agency’s lead although such permits expire after two years if construction has not begun.

Richard Weintraub, who bought the land with the approved building plot plan for $1.45 million in September, said he plans to invest about $7 million more to complete the project, which would include organic gardens along Escondido Creek.

Two Latigo Canyon residents bent on blocking the project sought support from the City Council Monday, although the canyon site lies just outside the city’s jurisdiction. Councilwoman Joan House requested the matter be placed on an upcoming agenda; Councilman Walt Keller suggested the next meeting. Councilman Harry Barovsky urged coordination with Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who said county planners’ approval was an error and “an embarrassment” to the county and has vowed to force full public hearings and environmental review.

The City Council Monday unanimously rejected a landowner’s request that the General Plan Land Use Map be amended to permit the construction of 13 homes on a 125-acre tract on Latigo Canyon Road. The site is on the northeast side of the road, some three-fourths of a mile from the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway.

Representatives of George Rubens, who purchased the property 45 years ago, said the city’s downzoning has effectively deprived him of any economic use, notwithstanding his payment of assessments for the construction of a county water pipeline during the 1960s and 1970s. At the time of the purchase, the county zoning would have allowed one house per acre. The city has given the land an RR-20 or Rural Residential designation of one dwelling per 20 acres.

Rubens, now 83, seeks an RR-5 or one dwelling unit per five acres. At Monday’s hearing, he sought a compromise that would allow 13 homes for the entire site. A spokesman said the changes in zoning over the years have effected a 98.6 percent reduction of his holdings and have deprived him of substantially all the benefits of his earlier payouts on the land.

The city hired Mason & Mason, a real estate appraisal firm, to evaluate the situation. In an August 1999 letter, the firm concluded even at $1.5 million per home, the development venture might not be possible. The cost of a road through the tract would be $1.6 million. It concluded that selling off four lots, rather than building homes, would be more marketable.

Arguing on behalf of Rubens, Donald W. Schmitz Jr. of The Land & Water Co., Agoura Hills, said the property includes flat mesas that would require little or no grading and would be ideal homesites. Citing 15 years of water assessments paid by the property owner, he said the issue is to provide fairness.

Ellison Folk, an attorney with the San Francisco firm of Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, hired to advise the city of Malibu on the Rubens’ request, said the owner’s investment-backed expectations may have been unreasonable at the time of purchase because the land was extremely hilly and difficult to build. She submitted, nonetheless, that a sale of the land “as is” would produce a profit.

Councilman Harry Barovsky, alluding to investments in the stock market, described the 1954 purchase as highly speculative with no guarantee of a profit. He moved to reject the amendment. Councilman Walter Keller noted the owner had signed a petition to form the original water assessment district and that he had never filed a request to build on the property — under either the old zoning formula or the new.

The City Council Monday:

• Adopted an ordinance relating to campaign regulations

• Adopted amendments to Malibu Code setting up a new purchasing system and informal bidding process on public projects

• Established a list of nine holidays for purposes of the city’s noise ordinance governing the construction industry

• Approved formation of a 15-member Youth Commission

• Awarded to the Malibu Surfside News a contract for advertising summary announcements of the city council agendas

• Consented to the transfer of control of Falcon Cablevision to Charter Communications Inc.

• Agreed to consider a ballot proposal that would impose a general tax on beach parking