City to Meet on SMMC Park Plan

• Critics Say Overnight Camping Increases Wildfire Threat

BY BILL KOENEKER

A special workshop and meeting focused on the proposed Local Coastal Program amendment on the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy’s trails and park plan, including overnight camping in Charmlee Park, will be held on Saturday, Nov. 10, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Point Dume Elementary School auditorium, City Attorney Christi Hogin announced last week at the city council meeting.

“Representatives from the Conservancy, the fire department and the city will be on hand,” said Hogin, who noted the council will consider the LCP amendment at a hearing on Nov. 13 at City Hall.

Municipal officials are quick to point out that is not the end of it after council consideration. If the LCP amendment is approved by the council, it must be heard by the California Coastal Commission for certification.

Councilmember Sharon Barovsky said the workshop meeting would be an opportunity “to get some misconceptions cleared up.”

Barovsky said she hopes the workshop would also provide a forum for a free exchange of information and dialogue.

Municipal officials have watched a growing number of opponents speak out about overnight camping in the mountains because of a fear of campfires and the possibility of campers starting a fire above their homes.

The opposition reached a fever pitch when a civic group, the Malibu Township Council, took out ads last week in the local media, criticizing the council for “considering allowing overnight camping in our narrow canyons.”

Both city and Conservancy officials insist that no campfires would be allowed and that even camping gear would be limited.

Critics maintain that no new camping is needed given the opportunities that are currently available at four state parks in the area and a commercial RV park and tent camping facility located on the coast.

In an unusual move that reflects the importance of the issue to the city attorney’s office, Hogin submitted an opinion piece to the local media to preface Saturday’s meeting.

The city attorney revealed that besides the 44 campsites the Conservancy was originally considering—currently the SMMC plan calls for 24 sites—the state agency is considering at least a half dozen campsites on federal parkland in Zuma Canyon.

Hogin noted the city considers camping in Escondido and the Zuma Canyon area fraught with “unmitigatible adverse impacts.”

The city attorney has fashioned the situation for city officials as having only two options with the city only being able to retain control over one of them.

Critics contend those two options are self-imposed parameters of a proposed settlement agreement since the city did not want to litigate the issue with the Conservancy.

Later, during last week’s meeting, the city council, without comment, quietly approved a $100,000 engineering and design contract for a consultant to come up with plans for a Charmlee Wilderness Park nature center, in part perhaps because the funding will come from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

The funds will be used to hire the consultant Roesling Nakamura Terada architects to complete conceptual plans, perform a topographical survey, develop a working construction budget and other preliminaries required to build a 3000- to 5000-square-foot nature center at the park, according to a staff report.

The design may include a small amphitheater, additional restrooms, living quarters, classrooms, meeting room, city staff and docent offices and live and preserved animal displays. Some docents, who are also opposed to the SMMC’s plans for overnight camping in the city-owned park, privately complain that an entirely new center is not required and the $100,000 could be better spent to refurbish the existing facility that is used for a center.

Although, the numbers are not known at this time, the costs to build a nature center would be in the millions of dollars and it remains unclear where that money would come from to construct a new building and other appurtenant facilities.

“With costs that high, nothing may ever get built and they could have used the $100,000, to make improvements to the existing center,” one docent said.

Neither SMMC nor municipal officials will acknowledge that there is any relationship between the $100,000 grant to the city and the Conservancy’s attempts to get though its park and trails plan which includes overnight camping at Charmlee.

Recently, the planning commission unanimously approved the SMMC proposal over the objections of some Charmlee docents, nearby residents and neighbors.