Do Malibu Voters Want a View Protection Law?

• Council to Consider Placing Measure on April Ballot

BY BILL KOENEKER

The Malibu City Council is expected to consider placing an advisory question to the voters on the April 2008 ballot on whether Malibu residents would favor adopting an ordinance that would require the removal or trimming of landscaping to restore and maintain primary views from residences.

Over the years, the council, during various public hearings, has heard from the public for and against citywide view preservation, according to municipal officials who said it remains unclear if there is a majority of residents who would be in favor of any such ordinance.

The council just recently adopted an ordinance exclusive to the Malibu Country Estates for a view protection measure and was told by some other residents that view protection should be made citywide.

In a memo to city council members, City Attorney Christi Hogin explained that an advisory measure is a question that is placed on the ballot “solely for the purpose of allowing voters to voice their opinions on substantive issues or to indicate to the legislative body approval or disapproval of the ballot proposal.”

Hogin stressed the measure will not bind the city council to any definite course of action, but can provide the council with an idea on the local sentiment about view preservation.

As the landscaping—much of it planted in the 1950s and ’60s—has grown, it has increasingly blocked out the views of many residents not only on the hillsides, but also in some canyons and especially on Point Dume.

Those views can translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars in property values and have caused some residents to clamor for the city to get involved in protecting what are inarguably spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean, Channel Islands and Santa Monica Mountains.

The city’s current land use regulations only protect views to the limited extent that they may be impacted by a new structure in excess of 18 feet.

All over the state those preexisting views are impaired by landscaping, according to city officials, who noted some jurisdictions have enacted view preservation ordinances that require the removal or trimming of landscaping in order to preserve and maintain views from private homes.

The suggested ballot language written by Hogin would ask the voters if the city council should “adopt an ordinance that would require the removal or trimming of landscaping in order to restore and maintain primary views from private homes.”