Malibu Weathers Wild and Wintry Water Woes Well

• Clean-Up Crews Lauded for Efforts

BY HANS LAETZ

A Caltrans geologist will examine an apparent crack in a cliff over Pacific Coast Highway at Latigo Beach; a cleft that partially gave way after a series of storms dropped prodigious amounts of rain on the coast.
The rockfall on PCH Sunday afternoon may have been the biggest consequence of the series of three storms capped by a weekend soaker that dropped 3.3 inches of rain at Trancas in 24 hours. Despite fears for the fire burn areas, little damage occurred.
U.S. Geological Survey officials said their studies show that soils in the fire areas are draining quickly, and shed much of their accumulated water within a few days of a heavy rainfall. But some of that groundwater migrates downward, possibly activating the large historic landslides lurking below numerous spots in the Malibu hills, scientists said.
All weekend, the City of Malibu stationed a bulldozer and plow at Latigo Beach for use on roads climbing fire-loosened hillsides in the burn area. But the contract crews were used only to clean up limited mudflows in the Canyon and Corral Fire burn areas.
“This is the most action they’ve had,” said the municipal public works superintendent, Richard Calvin, as he watched city crews remove a jumble of rocks that had cascaded onto PCH at 4:50 p.m. Sunday.
Malibu City Councilmember Andy Stern was driving north on the coast road when the rocks crashed down in front of him. “I stopped and used my car to keep other cars from hitting them,” Stern said, squinting into the setting sun directly behind the rocks.
The fallen rocks exposed a crack in the palisade above the state highway, and Caltrans said its geologists would check the hillside later this week. The danger zone is next to a section of historically unstable cliff that was cut back several years ago by Caltrans crews who reduced traffic to one lane in each direction for several weeks.
Another repeat geological problem was discovered last week on PCH above Broad Beach, where a slope beneath the road is slumping next to a culvert near Looschen Road. A five-inch-diameter water line broke and was repaired, but the replacement of drainage pipes may take a month, Caltrans said.
One northbound lane on Highway 1 is closed beyond Trancas Canyon Road, just to the west of where a similar failure in 2005 required the complete replacement of a culvert and fill area. That $5 million emergency project, funded by FEMA flood relief money, took nearly a year.
Along Malibu Creek, more than two inches of rain fell on most of the watershed Saturday, briefly submerging the deck of the Cross Creek bridge in Serra Estates. That bridge is designed to go underwater in floods. Its railings collected weeds and bushes as they washed downstream.
One large rock fell onto Malibu Canyon Road and struck a van, but no one was injured, the California Highway Patrol reported. City streets, patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, had one fender-bender in the rain Friday, and no reported crashes during the height of the weekend storm.
At Carbon Beach, silt and small gravel chunks washed off a fire-scorched hillside and into the highway next to the landside commercial center. The city’s trucks cleaned that up Saturday, as well as the normal muddy runoff that covers PCH at the Rambla Vista west intersection.
In the hills above, a small rockslide covered both lanes of Schueren Road east of Rambla Pacifico on Saturday. It was also quickly plowed away, this time by county road crews who made short work of numerous watery slides throughout areas of unincorporated Malibu.
In Menlo Park, near San Francisco, U.S. Geologic Survey scientists kept a close eye on satellite-delivered data from the network of cameras, rain gauges and surface-flow sensors that they have laced around Malibu’s burned-out hillsides and canyons, and reported that the fire-scarred hillsides appear to be shedding their water content quickly after storms pass through.
“We have some good real-time data from both the Canyon and Corral fires,” said Kevin Schmidt, “and we had somebody down there on the ground during the storm downloading data from the other gear.”
Schmidt said the burn areas appear to shed much of the water trapped in dirt and ash on the surface, but are not drying out completely between each pulse of rain.
“A lot of the ash has already washed away,” he said. “Most debris flows in a fire area will happen right away.”
Schmidt said the biggest fire-related danger zones are assumed to be wherever large amounts of silt and sand washed down last weekend, such as the flows onto PCH at Carbon.
“People who live at the base of the steeper slopes, who experienced heavy debris flows last weekend, are in general in places that are most susceptible to sudden slides,” Schmidt said.
The USGS study is focused on fire-related landslides, but Schmidt stressed that the big landslides that bedevil some areas of Malibu have nothing to do with heat-scarred hillsides. The big danger of large-scale slippage, he said, will result from migrating rainwater trickling down to strike zones beneath steep hills.
Those big slides will take several months to develop, and are independent of fire damage. “It takes a long time for the water to lubricate the landslide slip surface,” he said. “The highest surface displacements might take place in June or July.”

Planning Panel Turns Down City Hall Development Deal

• Majority Votes for Smaller Project

BY BILL KOENEKER

A majority of the Malibu Planning Commission, meeting last week before a standing-room-only audience, determined that the benefits of a developer donating a city hall in exchange for a larger civic center retail/office complex were outweighed by the project’s impacts.
On a 4-1 vote, with Chair Regan Schaar dissenting, the planning panelists recommended the city council approve a 99,177-square-foot commercial office and retail package east of the library building that conforms to municipal code but offers no public amenities.
Don Schmitz, the land use consultant who sheparded the La Paz application through the approval process for the last eight years said, “I respectfully disagree with the commission. There are different development standards for a city hall and they are appropriate, just as we have different development standards for overlay districts. I still think a city hall project would be a good project.”
The two project versions were heard simultaneously. In a series of votes, the commission recommended denial of a development agreement that includes a proposal for the construction of a 112,058-square-foot commercial shopping center that included a 20,000-square-foot city hall.
“I have a lot of problems with the city hall project,” said Commissioner Joan House. “It takes away more than it offers.”
House cited traffic problems noted in the Environmental Impact Report and the loss of the amount of landscaping and open space if the larger project with the donated city hall is approved.
House noted the plans went the wrong direction for the city since so many variances and amendments would be required in order to obtain the public benefits.
“If city hall breaks all the rules, that is not a good example,” she added. “I would hate the city hall to be [the reason] for all of the legislative requests.”
Schaar said she could support neither proposal, asserting that a piecemeal approach to developing the civic center is flawed and that the municipality should have a specific plan for the area.
“For the last four years, I kept saying, why don’t we have a civic center specific plan? How is this going to impact future projects?” she asked.
Schaar, who listened to the history of how the city completed a specific plan that was turned down by a previous council, said nevertheless she could not approve either project because there were too many unknowns.
The planning chair, who along with the other commissioners heard conflicting expert testimony and opinion about traffic impacts and wastewater disposal, said a specific plan or some kind of overall plan could have helped address such issues.
“If we had a specific plan, maybe it would have tied in with the Legacy Park plans,” she added.
Schaar said she did not see the pressing need for a city hall at this time and said she seriously doubted the retail space provided by the project would in any way help to keep or bring mom and pop stores. “They will be flagship stores. We will still be going over the hill,” she said, adding she would have been more interested if there had been some other kind of public amenity offered.
Commissioner John Sibert, who is running for city council, said he shared some of the same concerns as House.
“It is great to have a city hall. The problem is this city hall is shoe-horned into this,” he said.
Sibert, who said he was concerned about traffic, said he had to grudgingly believe the EIR’s traffic expert, who said the terrible conditions of the surrounding intersections were already so bad, that the incremental addition of traffic from the shopping center would not make things any worse than they already are. “I would vote to recommend the .15 FAR project,” he added.
Both Commissioners Carol Randall and Les Moss, who eventually voted with the majority for the smaller project, mostly talked overall about what conditions they wanted to see attached to approval.
Randall said of all the alternatives she could approve the ones before her were acceptable as opposed to a big box store.
She noted the property has been zoned commercial for years and years and that it was now the charge of the planning commission to decide what could go there. She also said she thought panelists would need to act despite there being no specific plan. “That is what the planning commission is going to be,” she said.
Moss said the panel had talked about every issue. “I like the project. It looks pretty nice,” he said, while making specific recommendations such as 24/7 security, fencing to separate the project from the Malibu Knolls, no amplified music and low key lighting per the EIR. “There is no reason this should not be forwarded to the city council,” he said.
There was a wide array of public comment from those who called for a moratorium on building in the civic center to those who elicited a number of reasons why they wanted to see more development, including a wider array of restaurant choices—two 5000-square-foot eateries are planned—to the addition of retail space possibly lowering space rent for mom and pop operations.
Observers noted that the packed chambers with many public speakers sounding off was in stark contrast to the previous commission meetings and workshops were there has been a seemingly paucity of interest in the projects which have generated little controversy.

• The Publisher’s Notebook •

Malibu Should Vote As If It Matters

BY ANNE SOBLE

The only vote that counts is the vote that is cast at the polls, so we encourage every registered voter to reaffirm the concept of participatory democracy and makes themselves heard. That women and people of color now see themselves projected on the presidential campaign screen seems almost unbelievable when one reads the campaign rhetoric of only a dozen years ago, when it was automatic to refer to presidential choices only as male, and males, though it was usually unspoken, who were white. Though women and those of color—black, brown, red, yellow and the myriad shades in-between that now make up our communities—still face obstacles in the political and economic arenas, their presence now on the national stage is proof that other barriers also will fall if the will to make that happen perseveres. Children now paying attention to election news coverage are being sent a powerful message that they should tolerate no gender or color barriers to striving for the highest political office in the land or any other achievement or accomplishment they hope to attain.
As artificial barrier after artificial barrier is swept away, and they will be, society then can tackle the task of removing the odious taint from those who are engaged in politics. If campaign finance reform can be realized, the pool of prospective ethical candidates for public office will grow. This will result in an expanded and an enthused electorate, and diminish the cynicism that is so pervasive in the declining voter turnout at this time. Voting always matters, but when citizens are excited about casting their ballots, the process sings.

Malibu Ferrari Crash Driver Deported to Sweden

• Expedited Processing Leads to Release of Stefan Eriksson from ICE Custody

BY ANNE SOBLE

The deportation of the Swedish businessman and convicted racketeer who crashed a $1.5 million Enzo Ferrari on Pacific Coast Highway two years ago has been expedited. Stefan Eriksson flew to his homeland last Thursday, where authorities say he is now a “free man.”
Eriksson, whose spectacular destruction of the rare sportscar made headlines around the world, is now just another Swedish citizen according to Elinor Lundmark, a press officer for the Foreign Ministry Department of the Swedish government in Stockholm.
Lundmark told the Malibu Surfside News this week that “this is now a closed matter for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” Eriksson is “a citizen with all of his rights and free to do all that a citizen can do.”
It was not known whether Eriksson was planning to travel to Germany where his wife and daughter have been living with relatives while he served sufficient prison time to be paroled to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency for deportation on charges related to illegal entry into the United States in 2004.
Lundmark said Swedish citizens do not need visas to visit other European countries, and he “can move about as he wishes.”
European gaming websites are rife with speculation that Eriksson may become associated with a resurrected Gizmondo gaming console. He was a highly-paid and lavishly-perked executive for its manufacturer, Tiger Telematics, before the firm went belly up.
Whatever Eriksson does, he will find it difficult to elude the media spotlight. He has become a cult figure in Sweden, and the electronic gaming community appears bent on assuring that he never knows anonymity.
The man known as the Ferrari Swede served less than two-thirds of prison sentences related to the crash and circumstances connected to the car’s ownership and importation into the United States.
Eriksson had pleaded no contest to drunk driving in the accident itself. Then he pled no contest to embezzlement charges on two other high performance cars and felony gun possession.
The crash remains an enigma and has attained iconic status on racing blogs around the world. Eriksson and a passenger, Irish citizen Trevor Michael Karney, were traveling over 162 mph in the Enzo when it was rent asunder. The pair walked away unharmed.
At the crash site, Eriksson claimed that a German known only as “Dietrich” was driving the car and fled the scene. Sheriff’s deputies bought his story and did not even book the ostensibly inebriated Swede.
When authorities realized they had been tricked, Eriksson was taken into custody, denied bail and shackled at courtroom appearances like a mass murderer.

Petition to Explore Separate School District Supported by Malibu City Council

BY BILL KOENEKER

With little discussion, the Malibu City Council this week unanimously gave its endorsement for a petition to determine if the voters support reorganization of the current Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District into separate Malibu and Santa Monica school districts.
Malibu parent and education activist Laura Rosenthal had made the request on behalf of a contingent of local parents who are interested in exploring the creation of a separate district.
Mayor Jeff Jennings said he had some problems with some of the language that seemed to take an advocacy position in the resolution.
However, City Attorney Christi Hogin said she had crafted the language and apologized if it stepped over the line. “Just strike it,” she advised council members.
Doing so, the council voted on the matter which could take up to two to four years.
The petition, which must contain 25 percent of the signatures of registered voters in the Malibu portion of the school district, is the first step in a lengthy process that involves the county Department of Education making a recommendation.
The county will conduct public hearings and commission a detailed study to detail the feasibility of a Malibu school district.
The matter is subsequently sent to the state Board of Education, which conducts a California Environmental Quality Act analysis and if the board approves the request, then an election is called for.

Another Round of Massive Development Plans Unveiled by Pepperdine

• This Time Emphasis Is on Expanding Sports Facilities, Student Housing and Parking

BY BILL KOENEKER

Pepperdine University officials have recently submitted plans to the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Department that call for a major remodel of the university’s undergraduate campus with an emphasis on expanding athletic facilities.
The university’s development plans include student housing rehabilitation, building what is described as a new town square with added subterranean parking, constructing a new soccer field and athletic events center, expanding a multipurpose recreation building and additional parking and completing a health center conversion.
A makeover of the current student housing entails 210,651 square feet of new student housing. The multi-purpose building would consist of 39,721 square feet of space including parking, offices and shops. The athletic event center would become a 239,300-square-foot structure from its current 29,940 square feet.
When the dust settles, the completion of a soccer field structure with bleachers and construction of a town square or campus quad would add up to a total of 422,447 square feet of new buildings.
The plans for student housing include renovating and expanding sixteen residential halls, adding support facilities and providing four new community buildings. The renovation would add 300 new student beds.
A remodeling of housing for upper classmen would increase building size from the current 145,952 square feet to 255,537 square feet and reach a height of 42 feet and 10 inches above grade.
The town square or new campus quad would act as a gateway to Seaver College, incorporating landscaping and green grass.
The square would consist of two levels of underground parking with the landscaped quad on the third or top level.
Plans for the multi-purpose recreation and parking facility propose two tiers of parking erected over the existing expanse of the soccer field and track and would provide 1268 parking spaces. A new synthetic field and an NCAA-compliant track would be built on the top of the parking structure.
A new soccer field would meet the needs of the university’s very successful women’s soccer program, according to university officials, by providing an NCAA-compliant competing venue and provide lighting for nighttime use. The bottom level of the structure would house locker rooms, restrooms, storage space and concessions, while the bleachers and press box would comprise the upper level. The bleachers would provide approximately 1020 seats.
The new multi-purpose athletics event center would satisfy the school’s need for NCAA regulation volleyball and basketball competition venue.
The completion of the Firestone Fieldhouse in 1973 was considered the “jewel” of West Coast Conference. Today, it is considered, according to university officials, as “outdated undersized and one of the least preferred basketball venues in the conference.”
The building footprint of the area for the center would be about 107,400 square feet and reach a maximum height of nearly 75 feet. The facility would total 239,300 square feet
The Firestone Fieldhouse would also be renovated with an increase of 11,300 square feet to convert the complex into a full-time student recreation center of 84,743 square feet.
Pepperdine’s current development project is described as an effort “to enhance academic campus life, support education activities on campus, update aging buildings on a thirty-five-year-old campus and provide necessary support facilities.”
In 1972, construction started on the undergraduate campus and a limited campus enrollment of 2500 full time equilevent students was initially permitted and subsequently increased to 3500 FTE. Onsite development continued through the 1970s with infilling occurring. After 1977, all undergraduate programs with the exception of the Bachelor of Sciences in Management were housed in the Malibu campus. In 1978, the school of law was relocated to the Malibu campus. Currently, all five of the university’s schools hold classes on the Malibu campus.
The university over the past several years just finished a major expansion with completion of the upper campus known as the Drescher Graduate Campus.

Council Declines to Rescind Its Action on SMMC Amendment

• Conservancy Banks on Coastal Panel

BY BILL KOENEKER

Without comment, the Malibu City Council last week formally said “no” to Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Executive Director Joe Edmiston’s request for the city to reconsider its vote on an attempt to ban overnight camping in public parklands.
Edmiston during the holidays, when the council was recessed, had asked the council to rescind its vote on the highly controversial issue or else he would take further action.
The Conservancy had applied to the city for a Local Coastal Program Amendment for its parks and trails plan.
The city and SMMC had reached an agreement during the past year that lead to the Conservancy submitting an LCPA for city approval, instead of going directly to the California Coastal Commission.
Edmiston was furious with the results when the council did a turnaround, swayed by public opinion, and deleted all provisions for overnight camping
In a memo to council members, City Attorney Christi Hogin acknowledged that although the Conservancy did not obtain “all that it sought in the LCP amendment, the city approved or conditionally approved significant parts.”
Consequently, Hogin recommended that if the Conservancy feels that the city’s modifications are inconsistent with the Coastal Act, there will be an opportunity for the SMMC to make those arguments to the Coastal Commission. “Accordingly, out of respect for the full and lengthy public process that the city has undergone in connection with the Conservancy’s LCP amendment and because the process had not yet been completed, staff recommends that the city council allow the process set forth in the LCP and the Coastal Act to be completed according to its terms, notwithstanding the Conservancy’s request to the contrary,” Hogin wrote in her recommendation.
Edmiston did not actually wait for a formal response from the city council and has proceeded with an LCP override process and in effect will resubmit a revised public works plan.
In an ironic touch, Edmiston had recommended to the SMMC advisory committee and the board of the MRCA to grant additional funds to complete an Environmental Impact Report for the public works plan that will be submitted to the Coastal Commission.
The MRCA approved such a scope of work and the LCPA override at its meeting on Jan. 8.
Municipal officials had originally chastised Edmiston, when he was going to originally submit a public works plan, stating it would not have the level of review that an LCPA would have. It was one of the original arguments by city officials for attempting to convince the Conservancy to submit a LCPA. At the time Edmiston said it was not necessary.
Subsequently, the SMMC director has acknowledged there is a difference of opinion by counsel on that and proceeded to recommend an EIR for the parks and trail plan.
Additionally, the LCPA would also propose merging the park and city shuttles to link up Zuma, the Point Dume headlands, Charmlee Park and Corral Canyon. The state agency was granted $100,000 in funding to the city for such a project. That action will be considered by the SMMC board at its meeting on Jan. 28 when it will also consider adopting findings for a LCPA override with a public works project.

Five Candidates Qualify for April 8 City Council Race

BY BILL KOENEKER

Five candidates’ names will appear on the April 8 ballot, according to the Malibu city clerk’s office, which verified nominating papers submitted two weeks ago. “All five qualified,” said City Clerk Lisa Pope, who said the next opportunity for any council hopefuls is the filing period for write-in candidates from Feb. 11 to March 25. Three council seats are up for grabs.
The five who qualified are Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich, Malibu Planning Commissioner John Sibert, activists Jefferson Wagner and Susan Tellem, and school district board member Kathy Wisnicki.
There will also be two other items on the municipal ballot, including a non-binding advisory measure to see if voters want the city to consider a view protection ordinance and a utility users tax that would expand the city’s ability to tax cell phone calls.
When the candidates submitted nominating papers, they also included statements describing why they were seeking office and their qualifications.
Tellem, 63, who owns a public relations firm, indicated that with 30 years experience as a successful business owner and public relations executive she has the tools and experience needed to lead and make decisions for successful outcomes.
Conley Ulich said she wants “civility and professionalism in local government” and has worked to ensure that government is responsive and respectful “of all Malibu residents.”
Conley Ulich, 41, ticked off a laundry list of accomplishments during her last four years in office, including defeating the LNG facility, acquiring Legacy Park and Bluffs Park, arts and cultural accomplishments, spearheading work showing underpayments to the Malibu Library and showing fiscal responsibility by increasing the city’s reserve accounts to $11 million among other achievements.
Wisnicki, 45, completed her doctorate in Applied Statistics and Education and worked as a researcher at UCLA. For more than three years, Wisnicki has represented Malibu on the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District board including a term as president.
Sibert, 70, has a PhD in chemistry and has been a professor and administrator at Yale, Caltech and California State University.
Wagner, 55, who lists his occupation as pytrotechnician and business owner including owning and operating the Zuma Jay Surfshop since 1975. He became a reserve deputy sheriff in the 1980s and as a surfer “led efforts to clean up coastal waters from uncontrolled development.”
Former head of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce Ed Gillespie, along with Ryan Embree and Wade Major, did not return their papers and briefly discussed why.
Gillespie said family complications keep him from running in the 2008 race. “I’m really disappointed. I have been talking about this since the last election,” he said. Gillespie, who said he thought he had a good chance this year, said he is determined to take another shot at it and will aim for the city council race in 2010.
Wade Major, who wrote a lengthy missive about his endorsement of better qualified candidates, said, “After much deliberation, I have elected to withdraw myself from the forthcoming election.” He endorsed Conley Ulich, Wisnicki and Sibert.
Embree said his personal life and business will keep him too busy to run in 2008. “There were a lot of people who encouraged me to run this year,” he said. “I intend to endorse Susan Tellem and Jefferson Wagner. Malibu needs independent council members that don’t take orders from Sharon Barovsky.”

County Tentatively Agrees to Sell Former Malibu Sheriff’s Station Space to Santa Monica Community College District

• Board of Supervisors Gives Nod for Negotiations to Proceed

BY BILL KOENEKER

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors recently gave the green light to selling the old sheriff’s station, which is a portion of the county-owned Malibu Civic Center complex, to the Santa Monica Community College District.
Malibu city and college officials had approached the county on behalf of the Joint Powers Authority that was formed between Malibu and the Santa Monica Community College District. The joint powers is interested in obtaining a fee interest in a portion of the Civic Center property that includes the former sheriff’s station to build an educational facility.
County officials maintain that any sale would have to take into consideration the ongoing county uses at the civic center complex, including parking and the needs of various other county departments housed at the complex.
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who made a motion to authorize the chief executive officer of the board to begin discussions with city college and JPA authorities about a direct sale, indicated the proposal offers a “unique opportunity for the county to join with other public agencies to expand educational opportunities in the Malibu area.”
Yaroslavsky’s motion also calls for an evaluation of any operational cost implications related to the subdivision of the civic center and requires a report back to the board within 45 days.
Supervisor Antonovich said he was concerned about losing a high value property, especially if the sheriff concluded he needed back the former station.
Yaroslavsky said the sale of the county property would not be to a private developer.
“It’s a sale of a property to the City of Malibu and to the Santa Monica Malibu Community College District for a community college campus on that property. This is something that we are working very closely on with the City of Malibu. It has community support and the framework of it has the support of my office,” he added.
Yaroslavsky went on to say that one of the aspects of the negotiations between the parties is that if the property ceased to be in public use it would revert back to the county.
“We have no use for it. I know the sheriff would like to have a substation in Malibu. But they don’t need the substation in Malibu,” added Yaroslavsky.
The complex comprises about 9.2 acres and consists of two buildings that together include 85,260 square feet. The main building houses the courthouse, public library, and public works office space. The second building is the site of the former sheriff’s station and is a free-standing building. The sheriff’s station was decommissioned in 1991.
There is a separate utility building that contains heating and cooling equipment and serves both the main building and the former station. The property includes a maintenance/utility yard, a communication tower and FAA-approved heliport and employee and public parking, according to county records.
The civic center was constructed in 1963 and while the main building is in generally good condition, according to county officials, the former station is vacant and has become hazardous as a result of flooding caused by a plumbing malfunction.
The municipality maintained its city hall in the station for several years before it was moved to its current location.

Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District Officials Say BB Advisory Committee Erred on Measure BB Recommendation Procedure

BY BILL KOENEKER

A recent action at a Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District BB Advisory Committee meeting that was called into question by Malibu activists and parents has been characterized by school district officials as flawed by procedural errors and process.
The committee is charged with making recommendations about how Measure BB bond money is spent throughout the district for capital improvements.
The action, which was called political maneuvering by some, has also been seen by others as helping to support calls for separating Malibu from Santa Monica and forming a separate school district.
The action has provided fodder for those opposed to Measure R who contend the powerful contingent of Santa Monica leaders and parents needs to be taught a lesson by the Malibu electorate.
The matter in question involves a motion made by local committee member and parent Laura Rosenthal attempting to reallocate funding to Malibu High School’s campus, which was pushed aside for a substitute motion that essentially countered her motion. The substitute motion was voted upon, and a majority of committee members considered the matter settled.
Now, based on a written complaint filed by Malibu City Councilmember Andy Stern and an e-mail from a Malibu parent, the school district administration is calling the process a “procedural error.”
Stern said he sent a letter to the district’s Superintendent Dianne Talarico asking district officials to look into the matter.
“I am hereby asking for a formal investigation of the conduct of the chair in this regard and also asking for an opinion of the attorney that represents the school district to determine if this ruling by the chair was correct. I consider this serious and I hope you do too,” wrote Stern.
Rosenthal’s motion was seconded, but rather than the committee voting on the motion, there was a substitute motion, and the chair stated that the substitute motion must be voted on instead of the original motion. “My research indicates that is not correct,” said Stern, who added he had heard the Robert’s Rules of Order were invoked to verify the correctness of the substitute motion.
Consequently, Talarico said after consulting with the school district’s attorney and reviewing Robert’s Rules of Order, “It would appear that the [Stern] claim is correct. The procedural error was regarding the handling of the original motion and the substitute motion.”
Additionally, Malibu parent Colleen Baum told school district officials that the action taken at the committee meeting was also not in compliance with board policy 1220.
A decision of a district advisory committee can be made only upon an affirmative vote of a majority of its members in attendance. The vote taken on the substitute motion was seven yeses, six noes and one abstain, which does not constitute a majority.
Talarico said she talked to some committee members about what happened. “ I have spoke with Gleam Davis regarding this matter and she intends to make a statement during the committee’s report to the board. The statement will indicate that the procedural error and process issue will be remedied at the committee’s next meeting,” Talarico said.
However, the next regularly scheduled meeting is Feb. 4, the day before the presidential primary election, when the voters will decide on the district’s Measure R. Consequently, the meeting on the fourth was cancelled and the next meeting is Feb. 15.
Malibu board member Kathy Wisnicki said the matter was discussed at some length at last week’s board meeting.
“We can’t fault the committee for not fully grasping Robert’s Rules of Order,” said Wisnicki, who is currently running for Malibu City Council.
Wisnicki said the important aspect to the board’s discussion was its commitment to return the funding to Malibu. “We have given that directive to staff and recommended the committee consider its vote,” she noted.
When questioned about how the recent committee and board actions might impact Measure R, which needs a two-thirds vote, Wisnicki said, “It is two separate issues.”

• The Publisher’s Notebook •

Malibu Should Send SMMUSD Measure R Back to the Drawing Board

BY ANNE SOBLE

Malibuites have a well deserved reputation as strong proponents of public education but this support for public education will begin to erode if the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District doesn’t get the message that it crafted a faulty funding package in the form of Measure R. That measure should be opposed, and the district told in no uncertain terms to go back to the drawing board and redraft it in a way that voters will find acceptable. There is over a year to do this, as current funding measures do not expire until 2009 and 2011. Any revised measure must sunset; a time limit of five years is best, seven is acceptable. This is important for two reasons. First, funding measures should not last in perpetuity as that removes demographic changes and fiscal cycles from the educational policymaking process. It binds the hands of those who might prefer alternative approaches in decades ahead. Second, Malibu is exploring the feasibility of a separate school district, something that I hope proves to be viable. A decade ago, I would have opposed separation, but Malibu schools are no longer the homogeneous enclaves they once were. Student demographics cross socio-economic and ethnic lines in ways that foster real world interface. A measure time frame that takes the gestation period for district division into account is imperative.
The revamped Measure “X” should also provide a blanket optional exemption for seniors for its full five, or however many, years without making those choosing to take it jump through administrative hoops annually. The bureaucratic glitch that occurred last year doubled their burden. For the most part, those taking the optional exemption are not Malibu’s much mediated mega-millionaires, but teachers, HRL administrators, auto mechanics and others who settled in Malibu 30 and 40 years ago. Sure, the school district might secretly wish these folks would sell their humble abodes at 2008 prices, but many of them hang in there with pensions and Social Security checks, and should be given a break without being made to feel like pariahs.
This is a school district, even some of its most ardent fans reluctantly agree, whose administration appears not only to prefer to conduct public policy formulation behind closed doors—witness the special education brouhaha—and come down hard on its critics, but also to be media averse. Reporters who don’t play the PR game can have a difficult time getting their questions answered, let alone their telephone calls or e-mails returned. The need for more openness throughout district operations is paramount. That is why the electorate needs to be informed and do its job. When Malibu voters go to the polls on Feb. 5, they should tell the district that there is no need to ask for whom the school bells toll; they toll for Measure R.

Malibu Ferrari Crash Driver Is Settling Up and Being Prepped for Deportation

NEXT CHAPTER—Bo Stefan Eriksson’s four-year American interlude may be drawing to a close. Having served state prison time and pending upcoming restitution proceedings, he will be readied for deportation to his native Sweden, where government spokespersons say he will be able to resume a “normal life,” or as normal a life as possible if the media ever tires of the scintillating saga of the “Ferrari Swede.”

IGNOMINIOUS END—The remains of the Enzo Ferrari, one of only 400 built, that crashed on Pacific Coast Highway on Feb. 21, 2006, sits on a flat bed waiting to be towed. Swedish national Bo Stefan Eriksson, now acknowledged as the driver when the vehicle careened out of control at speeds of over 162 mph, walked away unscathed, as did his passenger Trevor Karney of Ireland who fled the country only to be apprehended months later. The accident fostered a media frenzy and was the prelude to extensive legal woes for both men. Eriksson, paroled from the state prison system on Dec. 13 and now in the custody of the U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, is completing restitution proceedings for embezzlement. He is slated for deportation to Sweden, but may opt to go to Germany, where his wife and daughter now live.

• Swedish Government to Grant New Passport to Bo Stefan Eriksson; Expects His Arrival ‘in the Near Future’ •

BY ANNE SOBLE

A Swedish electronic gaming device entrepreneur and ex-felon who crashed a rare $1.5-plus million Enzo Ferrari two years ago that set off an international media frenzy is completing the last stages of restitution proceedings for fraud in Los Angeles and being readied for deportation to Sweden, according to the latest word from a spokesperson for the Swedish government.
Bo Stefan Eriksson crashed the bright red Enzo, one of 400 built, on Pacific Coast Highway on Feb. 21, 2006, while driving under the influence at over 162 mph, according to a lengthy Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigation. Eriksson, in highly unusual circumstances, was not detained at the scene of the 6 a.m. accident, which remains shrouded in mystery.
Sofia Karlberg, a press officer for the Foreign Ministry Office of the Swedish Regeringskanleit in Stockholm, told the Malibu Surfside News this week that Eriksson is slated to be deported to Sweden “in the near future.” She said the government “does not provide more specific information than that on matters like this.”
Karlberg said Eriksson will be issued a new Swedish passport and allowed to resume a life without constraints if he chooses to remain in Sweden. She said, “In Sweden, if you have been punished for what you have done, you are a free person.”
Following a trial with a changing cast of attorneys, Eriksson was sentenced in November 2006 to three years in state prison after pleading no contest to multiple counts of embezzlement related to the Enzo and two other high-end performance cars, as well as the charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
He had already received a concurrent six-month jail term after pleading no contest in October 2006 to a misdemeanor charge of drunken driving. Eriksson spent most of his time at the California Mens Colony in San Luis Obispo, which in the past has been described as a country club prison.
According to Lt. Mike Siebert at CMC, Eriksson was technically paroled on Dec. 13, the day before his forty-sixth birthday, and remanded to federal custody to complete pending restitution proceedings in Los Angeles, in addition to being prepared for deportation.
Among the bases for deportation are charges of improper entry into the United States in 2004 because Eriksson did not disclose the prior felony conviction and prison time in Sweden on an array of racketeering charges. Similar entry violations relate to importation of sports cars he brought into the country in 2005.
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement—ICE is the investigative branch of the revamped Department of Homeland Security—could opt to include hefty financial penalties with these charges.
Eriksson still has unfinished business with the British creditors who own the stable of mega-cars that Eriksson co-opted. The English bank holding the title to the demolished Enzo, whose battered image was relayed around the world, has more than $1.3 million in civil judgments against him. The owners of other cars—another Enzo, a Rolls Royce Phantom and a Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR, involve similar amounts.
Eriksson is being held in a detention center outside Los Angeles, while awaiting a Superior Court hearing in mid-February to address the last restitution proceedings related to the embezzlement convictions.
Eriksson’s wife, Nicole Eriksson, occasionally referred to as Nicole Persson, 35, was widely quoted in European and Swedish-American media last week as looking forward to the end of what she has described as a difficult ordeal, during which all of the couple’s extensive assets were frozen and confiscated.
While here, the family reportedly led a lavish lifestyle in a gated Bel Air estate. Cars, the club circuit, travel, designer clothing and conspicuous jewelry were visible hallmarks, but Eriksson’s wife has been quoted in the Swedish press as saying that came to an end and the couple now “has nothing left financially.” She and the couple’s daughter moved to Germany to reside with her parents when Eriksson began his formal sentence.
Los Angeles attorney Tracy Green, a member of Eriksson’s legal team, has described Nicole Eriksson as supportive and participating in raising funds for her husband’s escalating legal costs.
Adding to the final bills at this juncture is the possible toll that ICE may try to extract from the financially-strapped Eriksson. This could be the most important detail in the deportation process. There may be no shortage of ill will as it was ICE that kept Eriksson from being able to post bond during the months of pre-trial incarceration because he was seen as a high flight risk. That Eriksson alleged ties to the Department of Homeland Security at the Ferrari crash scene may be compounding any agency eagerness to press maximum charges.
Whatever the specifics, Eriksson’s grandiose four-year American adventure—or at least this phase of it—is drawing to a close. Most agree that it was no saga of “innocents abroad.”
The public may even learn one day why Eriksson, accompanied by a gun-toting Irishman, was driving drunk on Pacific Coast Highway in western Malibu after dawn one February morning when he gunned one of cardom’s most beautiful machines, crashed it and found himself in a media spotlight that made him an iconoclastic icon and put him back in prison garb.

Coastal Commission Head Sees Public Access Donnybrook Brewing with the City of Malibu

CHALLENGE—The public access advocacy group known as The City Project has asked the California Coastal Commission to issue a cease and desist order to the City of Malibu to take down all signs “purporting to prohibit camping” in Malibu, including but not limited to the signs at the southern city limits on Pacific Coast Highway and on Malibu Canyon Road near Hughes Laboratories. The Malibu Municipal Code reference for this law was changed to 9.08.090 in 2003. The CCC enforcement supervisor for Southern California, Patrick Veesart, said the matter is “currently under investigation” but preliminary statements by commission staff and members indicate that the city cannot ban public camping.

• Executive Director Says LCP Amendment on Camping Is ‘Waste of Public Resources and Funds’

BY ANNE SOBLE

A letter to California Coastal Commission executive director Peter Douglas from The City Project, a public access and civil rights advocacy group based in Los Angeles with strong academic and policymaking credentials, led to sharp words about the City of Malibu’s compliance with the state Coastal Act.
Speaking after a presentation by The City Project at last Thursday’s commission meeting in Marina del Rey, Douglas said the city’s recent attempt to ban camping on public lands has him “very concerned about the direction that the city is heading in.”
City Project’s executive director and counsel, Robert Garcia had told the panel that Malibu’s “illegal” attempts to ban camping predate the recent wildfires as evident in the three-to-six year old signs posted at city boundaries. He said the signs show “Malibu [is] fishing for rationalization to keep people who don’t live here and can’t pay high camping fees out of Malibu.”
Garcia said Malibu’s “action is reminiscent of efforts by Manhattan Beach to drive out blacks in the 1920s and 1930s.” He said that city destroyed the only black resort in Southern California, a social injustice that only recently has begun to be “rectified with the naming of Bruce’s Beach.”
A somber Douglas replied that “I thought the city was coming into the twenty-first century and was accepting its responsibilities under the Coastal Act.” Then he said, “I can see us heading toward a real public donnybrook with the city over access issues.”
Adding that the city’s recent Local Coastal Program Amendment attempting to ban camping on public lands calls for “a waste of public resources and funds to process,” Douglas indicated there’s “no way it can be found to be consistent with the law.”
Coastal Commissioner Sara Wan, who lives in Malibu and has been severely criticized for aggressive stances on public access, described the political “scene [in Malibu as] very ugly and very unfortunate.” Wan said the personal attacks are “unreal.”
To illustrate this, City Project and others have posted on various websites segments of the Dec. 5 Malibu City Council meeting where close to 200 people crowded council chambers, and booed and catcalled anyone in support of public camping.
At that meeting, a seemingly intimidated council majority backtracked on its previously stated support for an agreement with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and approved a camping ban, ostensibly on the grounds that public camping was a public safety and fire danger issue, even though no wildfire in Malibu history has ever been attributed to legal public camping and the same is true statewide since record keeping began in 1910.
It was also at that December meeting that City Project’s Garcia first raised concerns about the existence of the no camping signs. He was shouted down. A former prosecutor in New York, Garcia said, “I’ve never seen public proceedings as intimidating as you have in Malibu.”
Also booed and heckled was City Project’s policy director Angela Mooney D’Arcy, a member of the Acjachemen Nation Juaneño Band of Mission Indians who has worked at the Wishtoyo Foundation, who urged the city council to comply with state law as outlined in a letter from the Native American Heritage Commission, encouraging “respectful government to government consultation with Native American leaders before cutting off public access to public lands that may implicate Native American religious rights and freedoms.”
When residents tried to drown out D’Arcy’s final comments, Councilmember Sharon Barovsky asked the crowd, “Is this really how you want to present the image of Malibu to the public?” Jeering residents responded with a thunderous, “Yes!”
A Latigo Canyon resident then directed the crowd’s ire at the council members themselves, stating that “as God is my witness, I will recall every single person I can that votes the wrong way.”
The speaker said, “I grew up in Florida in a resort city. [Malibu] looks like the most hellacious city I’ve ever seen in my life. You’ve told me, Barovsky, that you were going to clean up this, this illegal slave operation we have out in front of, of the city hall. We don’t even know if they’re illegal or not. We don’t know who could have been starting fires anywhere.”
Many in the crowd applauded, but someone in a back row quietly mouthed the earlier words of SMMC Executive Director Joe Edmiston who said one needs “tough skin” in Malibu and has to “take faith that [they] sleep the sleep of the just.”
Patrick Veesart, the CCC enforcement supervisor for Southern California, said City Project’s complaints about the signs are “currently under investigation.” He noted that there are ongoing illegal signage issues in Malibu as access groups assert that private signs are put up to try to restrict parking and beach access.
There are those in the city who say they are concerned with the council vote on camping but they state they are reluctant to go on the record with their opposition.
At this Monday’s city council meeting, Councilmember Ken Kearsley was criticized for expressing concern that the camping issue has been taken over by what he called a “mobocracy,” a small group using legal camping as a scapegoat for wildfires rather than addressing actual wildfire prevention and preparation, including poor planning, overdevelopment, outdoor smoking, faulty work equipment, poorly maintained vehicles and senseless arson.
Political observers are waiting to see how Malibu’s camping brouhaha plays out in the upcoming city council campaign and whether a candidate’s position on public camping will be a key litmus test for 2008.

Five City Council Hopefuls Turn in Their Nomination Papers

• Greatly Reduced Field Includes Two Ph.Ds, an Attorney, a P.R. Agency Owner and a Pyrotechnician

BY BILL KOENEKER

The deadline for filing nominating papers passed last week with incumbent Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich, Malibu Planning Commissioner John Sibert, activists Jefferson Wagner and Susan Tellem, and current school district board member Kathy Wisnicki returning paperwork to vie for the three seats on the April ballot.
In the candidate statement filed with her papers, Wisnicki, 45, describes herself as a parent with two children, married, and living in Malibu since 1996. She completed her doctorate in Applied Statistics and Education and worked as a researcher at UCLA. For more than three years, Wisnicki has served on the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District board, including a term as president.
“[That] has given me the requisite managerial, financial and other essential skills that will ensure that I will be effective as your council member,” she wrote.
Sibert, 70, who describes himself as a business technology consultant in his statement, talked about his work with Save Our Coast, acting as a director of the Malibu Township Council and, for the last five years, serving as chair and a member of the city’s planning commission.
Sibert is married, has a Ph.D in chemistry and has been a professor and administrator at Yale, Caltech and California State University.
“As founding executive director of the $100 million Alaska Science and Technology Foundation, I instituted and funded programs in infrastructure development, environmental management and most importantly, K-12 science and math education. The experience has given me a keen interest in public education and as [a] city council member, education will be among my top priorities,” he said.
Wagner, 55, who lists his occupation as pytrotechnician and business owner, said he has lived and worked in Malibu for most of his life. Although residency issues have been raised with regard to his candidacy, Wagner asserts that he is now a city resident.
Wagner’s background includes owning and operating the Zuma Jay Surfshop since 1975 and he is the Malibu Pier concessionaire. He became a reserve deputy sheriff in the 1980s and, as a surfer, said he “led efforts to clean up coastal waters from uncontrolled pollution and litter.”
Susan Tellem, 63, who heads her public relations firm, indicated that with 30 years experience as a successful business owner and public relations executive, she has the tools and experience needed to lead and make decisions for successful outcomes.
Tellem, the mother of four, started numerous Neighborhood Watch programs and served as an LAPD reserve officer specialist now retired.
“As an RN and member of the Medical Reserve Corps of L A, my commitment to Malibu’s health and safety is a priority,” she noted. “As a crisis expert, I help companies, nonprofits and government agencies overcome legal issues and barriers to communication. Malibu desperately needs these skills.”
In 1990, she and her husband Marshall Thompson founded the American Tortoise Rescue organization and have been volunteers with the California Wildlife Center.
Conley Ulich said she wants “civility and professionalism in local government” and says she has worked to ensure that government is responsive and respectful “of all Malibu residents.”
The mother of two and an attorney, Conley Ulich ticked off a laundry list of accomplishments during her last four years in office, including defeating the LNG facility, acquiring Legacy Park and Bluffs Park, initiating arts and cultural events, spearheading work showing underpayments to the Malibu Library and showing fiscal responsibility by increasing the city’s reserve accounts to $11 million.
Former president of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce Ed Gillespie, along with Ryan Embree and Wade Major, did not return their papers.
Gillespie, who was the first to announce interest in the council race and was expected to run a vigorous campaign, said family matters related to an unanticipated recent death in the family prevent him from seeking a council seat.
“I’m really disappointed. I have been talking about this since the last election,” he said. Gillespie, who said he thinks he had a good chance this year, added he is determined to take another shot at it and will aim for the 2010 council race.
Wade Major said, “After much deliberation, I have elected to withdraw myself from the forthcoming election.” He endorsed Conley Ulich, Wisnicki and Sibert.
Embree said his personal life and business will keep him too busy to run in 2008. “There were a lot of people who encouraged me to run this year,” he said. “I intend to endorse Susan Tellem and Jefferson Wagner.”
Other council hopefuls are not precluded from running in the greatly narrowed field. The filing period for write-in candidates begins Feb. 11 and ends on March 25

Drive to Separate School District Goes Public

• City Council Asked to Endorse Petition Process

BY BILL KOENEKER

The Malibu City Council was asked this week to consider endorsing a petition to determine if the voters support reorganization of the current Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District into the Malibu Unified School District and the Santa Monica School District.
Laura Rosenthal gave the presentation to the council, which indicated it would put the matter on a future agenda.
“We believe that the time has come for the formation of our own district. It is part of the natural progression of our community and city. Right now the decisions that affect Malibu students are made by a seven-member board, with six of them living in Santa Monica. The board is naturally more concerned with Santa Monica issues where they and 80 percent of the students live and go to school. With only 15 percent of the registered voters in the district, we have little hope of affecting school board elections or bond elections,” she told council members.
Malibu school board member Kathy Wisnicki, who is running for city council, would leave the panel if elected.
Rosenthal, a Malibu parent who has been very active in current school district affairs, said the process can take from two to four years. “There is a well laid out process to district reorganization governed by California Education Code and it involves the City of Malibu, the unincorporated areas that are part of our school district, the county Department of Education and the state Department of Education,” stated Rosenthal, who said the first step is in the form of a petition, which says the community of Malibu is interested in exploring the creation of their own school district.
“We believe it must be done. It does not make sense anymore to be in this district,” said Rosenthal, who noted that the petition must contain 25 percent of the signatures of registered voters in the Malibu portion of the school district. That includes unincorporated areas, such as Sunset Mesa, Decker Canyon and other out-lying areas.
This triggers the next step, in which the county will conduct public hearings and commission a detailed feasibility study to determine if a Malibu Unified School District is viable based on a detailed analysis of nine criteria.
Rosenthal said she and others believe that many of those criteria are now met by the Malibu schools, such as an adequate number of students and substantial community identification. The the separation must include an equitable division of property. “We keep what falls in Malibu. The four schools plus the land,” she added.
Rosenthal insisted she thought Malibu would now meet the criteria for racial equity.
Other criteria demand that the separation won’t disrupt performance nor increase costs or increase property taxes.
She said what is very important is a fiscal analysis of both districts must be undertaken. “The county committee recommends approval or disapproval. And must send it to the state Board of Education, regardless of their vote. The county committee may approve the proposal if all of the conditions are substantially met, or they may approve it if the committee determines the circumstances provide an exceptional situation sufficient to justify approval. The county committee must send it to the state board of education within 210 days of receiving the petition. Once it reaches the state level there are no timelines,” she added.
Then a California Environmental Quality Act analysis is done and more public meetings are held and if the state approves the request, then it is a matter of calling for an election.
If the state approves the proposal, they will set an election date and determine who will participate in the election process, just the Malibu part of the district or Malibu and Santa Monica. A board of education would be elected at the same time as the vote on the district.
Rosenthal said the parcel taxes in place at the time would stay for the “old” district but would not be in place for a Malibu district. The new district could set its own election for a parcel tax.
A steering committee calling itself MUST, Malibu Unified School Team is spearheading the current drive, according to Rosenthal, who told council members the push has been greeted with enthusiasm by other Malibu parents.

Opposition Is Gaining on Measure R in Malibu

• School Seeks Parcel Tax in Perpetuity

BY BILL KOENEKER

It is just weeks away, but many if not most Malibu voters are little aware of a parcel tax being sought by the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District on the Feb. 5 presidential primary election ballot.
Measure R, if enacted by the voters, will in effect continue a current property tax about to sunset, but would earmark $346 per year for SMMUSD.
Because of the power politics currently being played out between Santa Monica and Malibu contingents of parents and community leaders, there is expected to be opposition to the ballot from the usual supporters of school funding.
Malibu Councilmember Andy Stern said he is “absolutely” opposed to Measure R.
Stern said his objections stem from what happened to the monies originally earmarked for Malibu from Measure BB that were at the last minute “ripped off,” by the board. “I do not trust this board. Why would anyone vote more money to a board that does not keep its promises? If it passes, they will pay less attention to Malibu. If it fails, they will start to pay attention to Malibu and give us our fair share,” he said. “I had asked the board to not put it on the ballot until we reach consensus on the other issues on BB.”
Stern said he thought it interesting that none of the RR proponents had come to the city council for endorsement.
“I told them if you come and ask for our support, you will hear from me,” said Stern.
Malibu Mayor Jeff Jennings had a different take. “I support it. Period,” said Jennings, who added he thought opposition to the measure would be harmful. “I separate the board issues,” said Jennings, who indicated that in the last 15 years that he has been involved in school district politics there has always been this give and take. “We usually get our fair share of the money. I think that is what will happen,” the mayor added.
That opposition could become critical, since Measure R needs a two-thirds majority of those voting in order to pass.
Malibu parent Laura Rosenthal, who is helping spearhead an effort to see if Malibu can separate from the school district (see separate story) is opposed to Measure R.
When asked if she will actively campaign against the tax, Rosenthal said she was going to write letters and talk to everyone about her opposition.
“We currently have two parcel taxes (Y & S) running concurrently. Measure Y runs through 2011 and Measure S goes through 2009. Measure R combines those two parcel taxes into one tax, in perpetuity,” said Rosenthal, who noted her objection is that she does not trust the board and school district administration to do what “is right and fair for the Malibu community.”
Rosenthal said she does not want to give the district any more money until an effort is made that they have a true interest in what Malibu schools need.
“This is our only chance to flex our muscles and show the board that it must listen to our needs. If R passes, there is no political reason for the board to ever listen to us again. Personally, I am a proponent of parcel taxes. Just not this parcel tax,” she added.
Rosenthal said that Malibu pays about 32 percent of the current parcel taxes and gets back about 20 percent.
Measure R supporters contend the funding is needed because when the voters approved Measure BB in November 2006, that was a bond measure that can only be used for capital improvements.
Funds from Measure R can go directly into classrooms for program and staffing.
Measure R proponents insist it is not a new tax since it is a measure that would renew an existing parcel tax.
Seniors will be exempted from the tax but will have to fill out forms every year.

Coast Guard Can’t Defend Woodside LNG Ships in Santa Monica Bay

Photo credit, GAO
TERRORIST TARGET—The MV Limburg, a French-owned oil tanker, was attacked by Al Qaeda speedboats in the Arabian Sea in 2002. A new federal study says the Coast Guard does not have enough ships or personnel to protect LNG vessels proposed for U.S. waters. An application for a terminal near Malibu was rejected last year over fears that an LNG ship “could be run aground in Santa Monica,” but two others are still proposed for the area

• Blue Whales Down Under May Be Adversely Affected by Company’s Air Gun Explosions

BY HANS LAETZ

The Australian company that wants to build a liquefied natural gas terminal nearly 22 miles off Malibu is coming under heavy criticism from environmentalists for using underwater explosions to explore for oil and gas in Australia’s best-known summer whale habitat.
Woodside Petroleum is also under fire for a natural gas processing problem near Perth that disrupted LNG production, and created an electrical crisis in Western Australia, two weeks ago. LNG opponents have seized on that as proof that the reliability of LNG production and transport technology is not certain.
And in Washington, a congressional study released last week painted a dismal picture of the nation’s ability to protect petroleum vessels such as floating LNG terminals from domestic and foreign terrorism. The U.S. Coast Guard agreed that it does not have the resources to adequately protect existing facilities, much less the dozens of LNG terminals now on the drawing boards for U.S. coastlines.
The General Accountability Office report cited a half-dozen terrorist attacks on oil carriers, and noted that just three percent of the energy imported into the U.S. via ship is in the form of LNG. But LNG carriers contain a fuel that is more combustible than oil, making them a more attractive target if they grow in number, opponents say.
California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, as he cast the deciding vote against the BHP Billiton LNG platform proposed last year, cited the threat of an LNG ship being commandeered, “sailed into Santa Monica and blown up.”
The GAO report notes that LNG is “highly combustible and pose(s) a risk to public safety of fire or—in a more unlikely scenario in which they are in a confined space—explosion.”
LNG ships are viewed by maritime experts as attractive targets, because the energy they carry is exponentially greater than an oil tanker. Although LNG technically cannot explode or even burn, the moment it is released from a closed container it starts to expand explosively, choking off oxygen in a colorless cloud until it reaches a state where it can burn or explode just like the natural gas found in buildings and pipelines everywhere.
The little noticed GAO report issued last year said the state of the art of knowledge on how massive LNG spills would behave is based on large-scale extrapolations from small-scale tests done with limited technology 40 years ago. That study concluded that scientists cannot possibly make any conclusion as to LNG safety given the lack of research into how massive cargo ships would react when multiple failures occur, or when the -260 degree cargo spills and suddenly regasifies, expanding 600 times as it comes into contact with air and water.
The GAO study said there is no credible threat for attacks in U.S. waters right now, but Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said the World Trade Center attacks show that there doesn’t have to be a recognized credible threat for an attack to occur. Markey’s district hosts an LNG terminal, and the study was done at his request.
Opponents have noted that Al Qaeda successfully attacked a French tanker; the Limburg, in an area heavily patrolled by U.S. Navy forces, and also was able to nearly sink the U.S.S. Cole in harbor. Markey and others have worried publicly that a floating LNG terminal in U.S. waters, or ships unloading their cargoes, could meet a similar fate.
The Coast Guard is undermanned and underequipped for its existing duties, and has said that the addition of just one LNG terminal in New York’s Long Island Sound would require another Coast Guard ship and nearly 100 more crewmembers.
“If it takes more resources, we’ll take responsibility [for paying for it],” said Woodside President Steve Larson in a telephone interview Friday. “This is an area of the Coast Guard and if there’s a problem with their resources, [Woodside] should fix it.”
Larson said the use of American citizens on its proposed twin LNG depot ships, and heavy security on board, will address security threats.
“I think this demonstrates how they are completely overselling the safety of their project,” said Rory Cox, an anti-LNG activist at Pacific Environment in San Francisco. They say, ‘No need to worry, the Coast Guard is watching our back.’ Well, the Coast Guard is not prepared to do that.”
The whale flap stems from oil and gas exploration just being started by Woodside off the west coast of Victoria, Australia. The company is using hundreds of explosive undersea air blasts, similar to bombs, to map the subsurface strata of a potential oil and gas field.
Woodside’s environmental report in Australia acknowledges, “There may be some temporary displacement of (whales) as a result of the seismic survey and localized impacts on feeding behavior.”
Peter Gill, a whale expert quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald, said “there is no doubt that the sounds produced by seismic air guns are right in the frequencies used by blue whales for communication.” Experts said the exploration is likely to drive away dozens of endangered blue whales that congregate there every Southern Hemisphere summer, when ocean currents concentrate krill and attract the leviathans.
Woodside’s American official told The News Friday, “I don’t really see any relationship with us. Not any type of similar equipment would be used here,” Larson said.
California whales, he said, would not be affected by the Woodside LNG terminal planned for Santa Monica Bay, called “Ocean- Way,” because it would be 22 miles off the nearest coast, Point Dume, and whales like to stay by the shoreline.
That theory is hotly disputed by some whale experts, who said frequent whale sightings in the San Pedro Channel and Channel Islands show that the Woodside site, which likely will also generate loud noise, is exactly on a migratory whale path.
Compounding Woodside’s bad public relations month was a small fire at its mammoth Karratha gas processing facility in Western Australia, where LNG cargo schedules were disrupted for several days and natural gas deliveries to the Perth region were cut off early this month.
Electrical generation was diminished all across the state owing to fuel shortages, and customers were asked to throttle back air conditioning on a 107-degree afternoon. The Western Australia government has opened what it calls a “please explain” inquiry to Woodside as to what happened.
The Woodside “Ocean- Way” project is one of three active LNG proposals for the Southern California coast. It is currently undergoing environmental review by the U.S. Maritime Administration, the Coast Guard, and the City of Los Angeles where the pipelines would come ashore. A decision on it, as well as an unrelated LNG terminal proposed for an offshore oil rig near Ventura, could come next year.
Malibu residents galvanized last year to help successfully defeat BHP Billiton’s proposed “Cabrillo Port” LNG terminal 13.8 miles off Malibu’s westernmost point.

Federal Official Tours New USGS Monitoring Equipment

• Data Collected from Monitoring Malibu Burn Areas Could Have Predictive Implications

BY HANS LAETZ

Web crawlers anywhere in the world can now pan, tilt and zoom a new remote control camera overlooking Malibu Creek, mounted as part of a flood warning and research project that was just turned on by the federal government.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne walked into the canyon to observe the new devices Monday. The U.S Geological Survey has wired several unpopulated canyon areas with snooping devices to learn about how water, mud and ash behave during floods in mountainous areas that are recovering from recent wildfires.
In Winter Canyon, north of the Pepperdine University campus, researchers have straddled the chasm with a steel gantry, and slung high-tech devices that can differentiate between flowing mud and water, as well as calculate stream flow and how it relates to rainfall amounts gathered by an automatic rain gauge.
Similar devices, plus the camera, are mounted north of Serra Estates along Malibu Creek.
Data are fed via small satellite uplinks to an orbiting geostaionary satellite 22,000 miles above Malibu weather satellite, which relays the information to USGS geologists in Pasadena, and the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
Installation of the devices was rushed to meet the threat that the 5000-acre Canyon Fire presented as the winter rainy season approached. After the project was finished, the equally large Corral Fire struck just to the west of the study area.
Heavy rains in early January did cause some limited ash and debris flow, experts said. A catch basin in Winter Canyon, near Civic Center Way at Malibu Canyon Road, filled with sand and dirt to a depth of about four feet, well below the top of the structure.
Heavy ash flow did not materialize even though some areas got as much as four inches of rain, because the rain did not fall in intense cloudbursts, meteorologists said.
Kempthorne surveyed the installations Monday as part of a USGS tour of the newly installed equipment to monitor the burn area.

• The Publisher’s Notebook •

Malibu Doesn’t Need Enemies...

BY ANNE SOBLE

Even as we all are mesmerized by every new gadget of the modern technological era, it might be wise to remember some of those treacly cliches that passed for the wisdom of yore, such as “be careful what you wish for, you might get it,” “actions speak louder than words.” and “appearances are more important than reality.” Slight deviations of phrasing notwithstanding, these maxims may contain more than a modicum of relevance to much of what passes for Malibu public policy today. Last month, members of the Malibu City Council heeded the call of a small but vocal group that maintains that Malibu would be wildfire safe if no more legal public camping is permitted in its midst. The same would probably also be true if the city council banned international terrorists from the public parklands in Malibu. And from a public policy agenda perspective, the likelihood of an Al Qaeda-started wildfire is greater since its members are prone to pack things like machine guns and rocket launchers with their hiking boots. But then there are probably some folks at city council meetings who think that typical camping families bring arsenals with them as well.
I groan every time I check references to Malibu on the web and find hundreds of postings for tragic examples of what passes for celebrity in the year 2008 and an equal number of pitches for high-priced rehab centers with ostensibly worse recidivism rates than the prison system. Now websites have the Dec. 5 Malibu City Council meeting to kick around. Local residents are booing and heckling speakers with impunity. I expect outsiders to misread local intentions, but when locals misrepresent facts or act churlishly, it reflects on all of Malibu. I’ve watched wildfire edge onto my land, but fear of wildfire can be worse than the flames. If the fear wins out, there’s incapacitation. There isn’t any effort to prepare and prevent. People begin to delude themselves with false smugness about their safety. Outsiders who criticize Malibu cannot inflict as much damage as Malibuites do when they are their own worst enemies.

Christ Child Figure Stolen from Malibu Creche Scene

STOLEN—The hand-carved and painted Christ Child figure from the public Malibu Nativity scene in the Civic Center area was taken from the manger sometime over the weekend. The life-sized wood figure had been bolted in place

• Latest Theft Raises Issue of Enclosing 44-Year Tradition

BY ANNE SOBLE

Keep Christ in Christmas project member Jackie Sutton said she held up under the weekend theft of the Christ Child figure until a little girl asked her, “Why would anyone steal Baby Jesus?” Sutton said she fought back tears.
The theft of the life-sized figure that occurred between Saturday evening and Sunday morning at the creche scene at Pacific Coast Highway and Webb Way constitutes grand theft in light of the value of the hand-carved Italian figures, considered showcase Nativity scene carvings.
KCIC is a non-profit group with private ownership of the creche and figures, which it has been allowed to place on Los Angeles County property at the high visibility intersection.
Sutton doesn’t want to put a price tag on the figure, which she describes as irreplaceable considering its one-of-a-kind nature, but a carved lamb stolen in 2001 was valued at $7000 at the time.
The theft was noticed by members of the Randy Sall family, who have been monitoring the manger scene. The figures are bolted down but the creche does not have the fencing found at many public Nativity scenes.
There are no clues as to who might have taken the work, the fifth major theft of figures in KCIC’s 44 years of putting on programs of holiday caroling and candlelighting.
An unbolted Christ Child figure was the first loss. It was taken the day after Christmas in 1980. At the time, it was valued at $1000. A note described by authorities as “obscene” was left at the scene. The case was never solved.
Funds were raised for a replacement in time for the next Christmas. Next was the first of the two angel thefts on Dec. 30 or or 31 in 1986. The most spectacular of the manger pieces, the four-foot-tall angel was valued at $5000. It was suspended from the rafters by wires. Given the carving’s weightiness, authorities indicated it would have taken at least two people to remove it.
A new five-foot-tall angel was hoisted aloft and secured with heavy chain and padlocks the next year but that one was stolen at Christmas in 1992. Links of cut chain hung in its stead. Again, several people had to have taken part.
After each of the thefts, volunteers rallied to raise funds to replace the figures. These thefts and several episodes of vandalism kept the group in a quasi-perpetual fundraising mode as the figures became costlier to replace or refurbish.
Damage from wind, rain and the salt air, as well as flaking paint, wood rot and breakage also take their toll as pieces age and require work by specialists in the field of carvings restoration.
In only one theft was the figure found. A lamb, valued then at $7000, was stolen on Dec. 21 or 22 in 2001. The lamb had been bolted to the floorboard of the creche, and its feet were broken by whoever forcibly removed it.
That figure was found on Sunday, Dec. 23, resting atop a mailbox not far from the Malibu Cove Colony area. It cost nearly $1000 to repair the broken feet.
Last weekend’s theft is currently under active investigation. Anyone who thinks they may have seen something that could assist in finding the perpetrators is asked to contact the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station at 310-456-6652.
The question of adding increased security to the manger tableau arose with each of the thefts. In many urban areas, creche scenes are fully encased in chain-link or other security fencing to avert the removal or vandalism of carvings, which has increasingly become commonplace.
KCIC members have steadfastly tried to maintain the openness of the Malibu manger scene, but as replacement figures approach five-figure price tags, a few of them acknowledge this stance may have to reconsidered.
According to KCIC lore, the original woodwork for the creche was carved over four decades ago in the tiny Tyrolean village of Ortezay (Urtijei) at the base of the Alps. Italian artist Goffredo Moroder supervised the first carvings. considered to be on a par with work done for major cathedrals.
Each of the figures was carved from a solid block of Larchwood, a pine native to the area. The colorful paints were laboriously hand-rubbed into the specially cured and tooled woodwork.
Sutton said KCIC will undertake another fundraising campaign if the Christ Child figure is not returned. Anyone wishing to make a tax-deductible donation can contact the group at P.O. Box 833, Malibu, CA 90265-0833.

Malibu Holds Its Own during Triple-Storm Offensive

• Scientists Set Up Local Monitoring to Determine How Burn Areas Handle Rain and Mud Problems

BY HANS LAETZ

Creeks that hadn’t flowed in nearly three years were full of water—but no ashen debris flows appeared—as Malibu and the rest of the Santa Monica Mountains easily weathered three days of steady, moderate rain over the weekend.
Only a few rockfalls bedeviled motorists on canyon roads, county officials said. Most of them were outside the burn areas.
The series of three low pressure systems that brushed Southern California dropped less than half of the rain predicted as possible by forecasters, although it hit Northern and Central California as promised. Nevertheless, it was the largest rainfall event in Malibu since January 2005.
Spotters at Circle X Ranch, in the western peaks of the Santa Monicas, reported 5.8 inches of rain over the three storms, the National Weather Service said. Other storm totals included 4.4 inches in Agoura, 2.1 inches at Trancas, and 1.8 inches at Leo Carrillo State Beach.
There was some heavy rain Friday night, when 4.7 inches of rain fell at the Monte Nido fire station on Piuma Road. But despite the intense precipitation, the freshly burned slopes in a half-dozen canyons burned in the October and November fires held fast during the rains.
In advance of the triple-punch storms’ threat, U.S. Geological Survey catastrophe experts held a news conference in Malibu Thursday, and said they had rushed to activate new remote flood and mudflow-sensing equipment in three Malibu canyons prior to the big storms.
Scientists said they had calculated that torrential rains could wash down enough material from just three of the burned canyons—Winter, Sweetwater and Carbon—to cover a football field with 40 inches of debris. Add in the massive burned area in Corral, Escondido and Latigo canyons, and Malibu might have seen enough mud, ash and boulders to close Pacific Coast Highway in several locations, bury houses and claim lives, said USGS Southern California Multi-Hazards Coordinator Lucile Jones.
“We could have boulders the size of minivans, and minivans the size of boulders, down there,” Jones said at the news conference held under dark skies at Bluffs Park, overlooking the fire-scarred Civic Center area.
Debris flow from the Canyon and Corral fire zones is of such concern to National Weather Service and USGS that the agencies have set up remote monitoring equipment in several locations, including one in a narrow canyon north of the Pepperdine University tower.
Automated equipment, including a web camera that should begin operation soon, will measure ash and water flows in Winter Canyon, uphill from two schools, a small sewage plant and other key facilities on Civic Center Way.
Mudflows down Winter Canyon could cause major backup above a flood culvert below PCH, spilling out onto the beach just west of Malibu Colony. But the small arroyo draining past the schools was running with nearly clear water as the storms subsided, the flow having washed away soil dried by three years of drought that was then cooked by the Canyon Fire.
Another new USGS installation is a solar-powered stream flow measurement system at the Cross Creek bridge in Serra Estates. It will give emergency workers a real-time sense for how much water, and how much ash-laden sediment, is flowing out of the Santa Monica Mountains.
“Using rainfall thresholds from our rain gauge networks, we are able to monitor and keep track over the various burn areas that prompt the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood warning,” said Jayme Laber, an NWS hydrologist.
USGS and Weather Service scientists are using Malibu and other recent Southern California burn areas as a laboratory to research precise behavior by rainfall on freshly burned mountains. Some burned areas in Malibu have been laced with soil moisture probes, stream flow measuring devices and sediment flow gauges. Highly detailed topographical surveys have been undertaken as well.
Scientists at the press conference also unveiled a map that predicts in great detail which parts of burned-over Malibu are at greatest risk for mudflows. Sweetwater Canyon above Carbon Beach, and Palm Canyon north of Serra Retreat, were predicted to be the biggest risks in October’s Canyon fire burn zone.
Maps have not yet been finished for the area scorched in late November during the Corral Fire.
Susan Cannon, a USGS landslide expert, said Malibu provides a particular challenge because geology and rainfall totals can vary widely among the more than 25 different canyons and creeks that drain from the Santa Monica Mountains into the Pacific Ocean.
Cannon said scientists are hoping to avoid broad-brush predictions, and study how differing terrains shed water and debris in intensive rainfalls such as occurred this week.
A mobile Doppler radar truck, usually posted in the Midwest to chase tornados, was parked at Los Angeles Airport waiting for the storms to move in. “Our Smart-R truck gives us a gap-filling radar that can see the lower levels of clouds,” Laber said.
“It can see right down to the ridge tops, and information from the Smart-R truck is fed in real time to the Oxnard Weather Office for forecasters to analyze,” he said.
Laber said the total amount of rainfall is not as important as the intensity of the downpour. A cloudburst of two-tenths of an inch in 15 minutes, or a half-inch in one hour, will be enough to trigger ash flows in burn areas.
Jones, who has seen more than her share of catastrophes running the ISGS earthquake lab in Pasadena, said Malibu residents need to be aware that the debris flow threat is much greater than just mud flowing into a house.
“People get killed by these,” Cannon said. “The Christmas Day 2003 flood in San Bernardino moved four-foot boulders 20 feet per second.”
Jones said the installation of special monitoring equipment in the hills above Malibu, and in the Santa Ana Mountains near Irvine, is not designed specifically to trigger an improved warning system for those areas.
“We’ll not be issuing special warnings for Malibu, but we’ll be using Malibu as a guinea pig to improve future warnings,” Jones said.
After the storm, most of the guinea pigs in Malibu seemed to have come through without problem. One Los Angeles TV station mistakenly equated the Friday night flash flood warnings with “mandatory evacuation orders for Corral Canyon,” but the local sheriff’s office said conditions remained well below that level when the storms arrived, and no evacuations were ordered at any time.
Southern California Edison said there were no widespread or lengthy problems in the area, although a couple of traffic lights on PCH were left flashing after momentary outages Saturday at Point Dume and Sunday at Carbon Beach.
Beaches were covered with seaweed and debris to a high level, a result of eight-foot waves and a five-foot high tide Saturday. Waves trickled up to the sea wall at Zuma Beach for the first time in about two years, as the ocean once again chewed into beaches that had built up over the past few stormless years.
Motorists on Kanan Dume Road Monday were greeted with a 180-degree panorama of snowy mountains, as the Topatopas north of Ojai, the peaks north of Santa Clarita, and the San Gabriel Mountains above Pasadena looked like snow-capped ranges are supposed to look in the winter.

Measure BB Advisory Group Stands By Allocation of Funding

• Issue Reflects Growing Differences Between Malibu and Santa Monica School Interests

BY BILL KOENEKER

It was supposed to be an opportunity this week for the Malibu contingent of the Measure BB Advisory Committee to see if they could get money reallocated for Malibu middle school projects that had been eliminated despite strong local support.
Six members of the citizens panel had previously voted to recommend to the board, which approved the matter, eliminating the allocation for the construction at the middle school in Malibu.
The action, which has created an observable power struggle and self-acknowledged politicizing of the committee, had created a call by some Malibu parents for the district to split.
A recent tour of the Malibu campus by committee members and some of the subsequent comments made by the Santa Monica contingent had given the impression they were open for reconsideration.
However, no sooner had committee member Laura Rosenthal made a motion Monday afternoon to allocate $42 million to the district’s three middle schools, in effect reinstating Malibu money that was previously stripped, than a substitute motion was made effectively blocking the her motion. Kathy Wisnicki, the only Malibu resident on the board, was not present.
Committee member Dennis Crane was the maker of the substitute motion that offered support for the secondary schools, but postponed any further allocations depending upon consultation with the architects. The measure was approved on a seven to six vote with one committee member abstaining.
Panelists were told the substitute motion trumped the Rosenthal proposal that was still on the floor.
One of the Santa Monica contingent laid out the rationale for keeping to the board’s vote.
“I visited Malibu. I understand the single campus. That project makes sense,” said committee member Chris Harding. “However, other projects make sense. We are spending a disproportionate amount of money on middle schools. What is the explanation?”
Rosenthal, however, shot back what she thought was the underlying motive. “It is an attempt to make sure Malibu did not get more money,” said Rosenthal, who after the meeting said she was extremely disappointed about the recommendation of the committee, which Superintendent Dianne Talarico said would require no additional action by the board.
“I am astonished by the substitution motion. It just shows how difficult it is for anybody [because of the power struggle],” she said.
Rosenthal warned the committee vote had far reaching consequences for the district. “It dealt a death knell to the parcel tax. I will not support it. I am leaning toward openly campaigning against it,” she said.
Rosenthal’s warning is not considered idle. She is making a presentation on the reorganization of the current Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District into two separate districts at next week’s Malibu City Council meeting.
Rosenthal acknowledged there is much work to do to find out if the separation of the districts is viable, especially financially.
She said there is already a steering committee, a petition is currently in circulation for registered voters to sign and there are more than two dozen volunteers to help move such an agenda.
Earlier in the meeting, committee member David Resnick called the previous votes on the matter “uninformed,” and urged approval for the Malibu allocation because he thought the board would approve it. “I am particularly sensitive to the reallocation of the Malibu funds. Those funds were really for the middle school and the high school,” he said.
It appeared at one point, before the substitution motion was made, that some committee members were being swayed.
Committee member Don Girard said he was one of the six members who voted for the cuts because he thought the needs of Samohi are “transparent,” but the money could be allocated to Malibu. “I don’t think it was a mistake, but there is no excuse to not provide the financing authorization for Malibu High,” he said.
Malibu was not the only one lobbying for money. Parents and school children from Lincoln Middle School urged the committee to visit their school and allocate additional money for projects that were originally called for in the school’s master plan but were unfunded.

• The Publisher’s Notebook •

Sonic Step Forward in Coastal Waters

BY ANNE SOBLE

It has been more than 25 years since the first local calls for restrictions on sonar testing by the U.S. Navy in coastal waters that could adversely affect whales, dolphins and other marine mammals were issued by groups including Malibu’s Save Our Coast, The News and a handful of scientists who spoke out on behalf of marine mammal protection. It ultimately took the persistent pressure of large and well-funded efforts by the National Resources Defense Council to bypass political pressure so stringent that it once questioned the patriotism of those who didn’t think the military should do whatever it wants when it wants, even if endangered species are jeopardized. Last week’s federal court ruling achieved by the NRDC is the most significant win for marine mammal protection to date. The Navy may be considering what to do next, but it finds itself on the wrong side of the arguments again and again. U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper in Los Angeles has barred the use of sonar at any time within a 12-mile-wide belt along the coast. Where it can test, the Navy is obligated to spend an hour scanning waters for mammals before starting an exercise to assure none are present. The Navy must watch for whales and dolphins during exercises and suspend activity whenever one is within 2200 yards. The Navy had proposed sonar shutoff at 200 yards, but the judge said that was inadequate. Cooper admonished, “A number of studies indicate that sonar injures marine mammals not only via acoustic harassment, but by panic-induced rapid diving or surfacing, which leads to decompression sickness.” She indicated in her 18-page ruling that the sound waves used in underwater exercises cause injury and death.
There’s a message here for others beside the U.S. Navy. Down Under energy powerhouse Woodside, which hopes to ply local waters with liquefied natural gas vessels, is being criticized for its indifference to the impact of seismic exploration for oil and gas on Australia’s best known blue whale feeding ground at peak season. Environmentalists say the mammals will be subjected to weeks of airgun explosions to map geology under the sea floor. Scientists there second U.S. research that noise can harm marine mammals if it is too close. They cite evidence that blues encountering this noise will shy away and get cut off from the critical food supply that is located in the area. Blue whales, which were nearly wiped out by 20th-century commercial whaling operations, are drawn to the waters where Woodside wants to engage in seismic exploration in large numbers

Five Suspects in Corral Fire Await Next Court Dates

• Men Split in Groups of Three and Two to Be Handled Separately on Same Set of Charges

BY HANS LAETZ

The last of five men accused of arson for the catastrophic $100 million Corral Canyon fire was released on his own recognizance Monday, after county prosecutors said new investigations showed he was not a further threat to society, and would likely show up for his eventual trial.
Brian David Franks, 27, was granted his freedom in Superior Court in Van Nuys and released from the county jail system later that afternoon.
“There has been further investigation continuing in this case, and as a result of that we did not oppose his release,” said the District Attorney’s spokesperson Sandi Gibbons. “He is not a continuing threat to society, nor a flight risk, and as you know those are the two conditions for granting bail that we must consider,” she said.
Last month, Franks’ attorney said his client was a longtime employee at a Starbucks outlet and had friends he was living with, and indicated that he had a criminal record that solely consisted of a seat belt ticket that had been paid. A Los Angeles woman testified that she had taken care of Franks after his mother was killed when he was a teenager, and that he “does not have a criminal bone in his body.”
Franks and co-defendants Brian Allen Anderson, 22, and William Thomas Coppock, 23, are charged with three counts each of arson-related crimes for throwing bundles of stolen firewood onto a small campfire in a cave above Corral Canyon early in the morning Nov. 24.
According to arson investigators, a drunken Anderson kicked the burning logs down a hillside as Santa Ana winds howled, laughing and instructing Franks to try to stomp out the embers. Although defense lawyers say the men put the fire out before leaving the cave that night, arson investigators say the playing with fire sparked the blaze that roared down to the beach and destroyed 53 houses in less than six hours.
The men are charged with causing a fire with great bodily injury, recklessly causing fire to an inhabited structure, and engaging in arson during a state of emergency.
If convicted of that third charge, the three men face a minimum of two years’ state prison time, a charge that one defense attorney said is unwarranted.
Andrew Flier maintains that the Santa Monica Mountains were not in a formally declared state of emergency at the time the brushfire broke out.
The two Culver City teenagers who started the original campfire, Dean Allan Lavorante, 19, and Eric Matthew Ullman, 18, are also charged with the same three crimes in separate proceedings. Prosecutors said their actions were different from those of Anderson, Coppock and Franks, meaning a separate trial will be held for the Culver City residents.
They face a preliminary hearing on Feb. 14.
Under California law, defendants are entitled to a preliminary hearing within 10 court days of their first court appearance, and at that preliminary hearing the state must lay out criminal evidence that is sufficient for a trial. That preliminary hearing was scheduled to begin last Monday, because Franks was still in jail and anxious for court action to proceed.
But his release from jail means that Franks could—like his codefendants already have—waive his right to a speedy preliminary hearing, which defense attorneys usually prefer in order to have more time to prepare their cases.
A date for the preliminary hearing for the three men, when the public will learn more details of the alleged acts on the night of the Corral Fire, is slated to be set on March 3, and the hearing itself will likely be several weeks or months later.

Scientists Monitor Malibu as Three Storms Head Its Way

DANGER ZONE­—Areas threatened by mud and ash flows in the Canyon Fire burn area between Malibu Canyon Road on the left and Las Flores Canyon on the east are mapped. The orange area—Sweetwater Canyon and Palm Canyon above Serra Estates—is the most threatened in this projection.

DATA—Jeffrey Agajanian, a USGS mudflow expert, examines the new automated stream-flow gauge just installed near the Malibu Creek bridge in Serra Estates. The solar-powered device will feed water-depth and mud percentage data to a satellite, which will relay it to National Weather Service computers and forecasters.

• Experts Warn that Dangers of Flooding Should Not Be Minimized •

By Hans Laetz

The U.S. Geological Survey rushed to activate the new remote flood and mudflow-sensing equipment it set up in three Malibu canyons this week in advance of the trio of big storms that threaten local flooding.
Scientists told reporters Thursday that torrential rains possible through Saturday could deposit enough material from Winter, Sweetwater and Carbon canyons alone to cover a football field with 40 inches of debris.
Add in the massive burned area in Corral, Escondido and Latigo canyons, and Malibu may see enough mud, ash and boulders to close Pacific Coast Highway in several locations, bury houses and claim lives, said USGS Southern California Multi-Hazards Coordinator Lucile Jones.
“We could have boulders the size of minivans, and minivans the size of boulders, down there,” Jones said at a Thursday afternoon news conference held under dark skies at Malibu Bluffs Park.
Debris flow from the Canyon and Corral fire zones is of such concern to the National Weather Service and USGS that the agencies have set up remote monitoring equipment in several locations, including one in a narrow canyon north of the Pepperdine University tower.
Automated equipment, including a web camera that should begin operations next week, will measure ash and water flows in Winter Canyon, uphill from two schools, a small sewage plant and other key facilities on Civic Center Way.
Mudflows down Winter Canyon could cause major backup above a flood culvert below PCH, spilling out onto the beach just west of Malibu Colony.
Another new USGS installation is a solar-power stream flow measurement system at the Cross Creek bridge in Serra Estates. It will give emergency workers a real-time sense for how much water, and how much ash-laden sediment, is flowing out of the Santa Monica Mountains.
“Using rainfall thresholds from our rain gauge networks, we are able to monitor and keep track over the various burn areas that prompt the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood warning,” said Jayme Laber, an NWS hydrologist.
USGS and Weather Service scientists are using Malibu and other recent Southern California burn areas as a laboratory to research precise behavior by rainfall on freshly burned mountains. Some burned areas in Malibu have been laced with soil moisture probes, stream flow measuring devices and sediment flow gauges. Highly detailed topographical surveys have been undertaken as well.
Scientists at the news conference unveiled a map that predicts in great detail, which parts of burned-over Malibu are at risk for mudflows.
Susan Cannon, a USGS landslide expert, said Malibu provides a particular challenge because geology and rainfall totals can vary widely among the more than 25 different canyons and creeks that drain from the Santa Monica Mountains into the Pacific Ocean.
Cannon said scientists were hoping to avoid broad-brush predictions, and determine how differing terrains shed water and debris in intensive rainfalls such as are expected this week.
A mobile Doppler radar truck, usually posted in the Midwest to chase tornados, is parked at Los Angeles Airport, waiting for the storms to move in. “Our Smart-R truck gives us a gap-filling radar that can see the lower levels of clouds,” Laber said.
“It can see right down to the ridge tops, and information from the Smart-R truck is fed in real time to the Oxnard Weather Office for forecasters to analyze.”
Laber said the total amount of rainfall is not as import as the intensity of the downpour. A cloudburst of two-tenths of an inch in 15 minutes, or a half-inch in one hour, will be enough to trigger ash flows in burn areas.
Jones, who has seen more than her share of catastrophes running the ISGS earthquake lab in Pasadena, said Malibu residents need to be aware that the debris flow threat is much greater than just mud flowing into a house.
“People get killed by these,” Cannon said. “The Christmas Day 2003 flood in San Bernardino moved four-foot boulders 20 feet per second.”
Jones said the installation of special monitoring equipment in the hills above Malibu, and in the Santa Ana Mountains near Irvine, is not designed specifically to trigger an improved warning system for those areas.
“We’ll not be issuing special warnings for Malibu, but we’ll be using Malibu as a guinea pig to improve future warnings,” Jones said.

STORM WATCH—January 3, 2K8

Malibuites in at-risk areas should take every precaution to prepare for the impending weather, review their emergency plans, continuously monitor the latest weather reports and listen for any warnings or special instructions from public safety personnel.

GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS

• Prepare or update family emergency plans and make sure all parties know the plan.
• Identify a meeting place outside the immediate area.
• Make sure family members know where to go to re-unite if they are separated.
• Make arrangements for all pets and livestock before the watch or warning.
• Listen to available media for the latest weather information and instructions.
• Update emergency supply kits by including: Drinking water; food; medicines; battery-operated flashlights and radios; first-aid kit and book; warm clothing; animal supplies (leads, carriers, etc.)
• Learn the difference between flash flood watches and flash flood warnings.
• Teach children to avoid creeks, canyons, drainage control channels and washes at all times.
• Drive only when necessary.
• Meet with neighbors to discuss and coordinate possible assistance.
• Contact county flood control personnel and other experts to learn what actions, including sandbagging, can protect property from small mudflows.

BURN AND FLOOD AREA CONCERNS

• If officials have determined that a home or business is in an area at risk to flash floods and debris flows and a warning is issued, be prepared for evacuation should that prove necessary.
• If located in a canyon, burn area or other location subject to flooding, mudflows and debris flow, stay alert and monitor the weather, particularly at night.
• Listen for crackling trees, boulders knocking together and other sounds that indicate that debris or mudflow is occurring.
• Watch for other signs of large mud and debris flows, including small mud and debris flows, sudden increases and decreases in water flow and changes in the clarity of the water in the stream or channel.
• Evacuate immediately, preferably to higher ground, if you hear these sounds or see these signs.
• Alert authorities to dangerous conditions.

Malibu Weather—After Drought Comes Deluge: Winter Wends Its Way in Watery Waves

• A Troika of Pacific Storms Brings Promise of Sufficient Rainfall to Suppress Local Fire Danger

BY ANNE SOBLE

The new year is getting off to a start with more of the meteorological bipolarity that is becoming the norm for Malibu’s weather patterns. This week’s winds and unseasonably high temperatures are—and once again the weather experts are in complete unity in their forecasts—slated to give way to a one-two-three sequence of Pacific storms that are capable of giving the community the heaviest cumulative rainfall it’s received since this time of year in 2005.
Residents in the burn areas and along local water courses are being warned of the potential for flash flooding. City and county public safety officials remind those in vulnerable areas of the need for preparation, such as cleared flood channels, so fast-moving water does not back up.
Malibu fire stations have sandbags for the filling, and private prefilled sandbag contractors report a brisk local business since the latest weather forecasts were first announced. Jute and other materials for instant channeling are also in demand as homeowners contemplate the various alternatives for runoff management.
Even Malibu water courses that barely contain an inch of sluggish water at mid-week could start flowing fiercely if three to five days of steady rainfall accumulates. The rain sequence slated to kick off on Thursday is expected to grow in intensity as it wends its way southward.
The heaviest rain is being forecast for Friday into Saturday from the second of the storm systems, which will possibly be accompanied by the kind of powerful winds that have so dominated local weather patterns in recent weeks—but without the accompanying fire danger. However, safety officials warn that downed power lines and trees can be just as perilous when triggered by intense downpours as they are when the humidity hovers at zero.
The effect of the local mountain terrain on rainfall totals also mandates increased attention to potential debris flows from burn areas, further compounding the problems of fast-moving water that results from heavy rainfall.
The third system from Saturday into Sunday is expected to pack a lesser, albeit colder punch. Locals who may have already experienced plant damage from low temperatures in the last quarter of 2007 are reminded to take landscaping precautions. Tropicals are especially vulnerable and should be protected from the cold.
The storms are also expected to usher in a large westerly swell. This will bring high surf conditions to west-facing beaches and the reminder that stormy seas should be respected.

Conservancy Committee OKs LACPA Override for Park and Trails Plan

• Panel Also Gives the Nod for Expenditures for an EIR and Possible Litigation Expenses

BY BILL KOENEKER

The advisory committee of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy last week, with Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks dissenting, approved a Local Coastal Program Amendment override and also authorized $300,000 for the preparation of an Environmental Impact Report for the revised plan that will be directly submitted to the California Coastal Commission by the Conservancy. The revisions eliminate any proposal for camping at Charmlee Wilderness Park and bring back the original request for campsites in Ramirez, Escondido and Corral canyons.
SMMC Executive Director Joe Edmiston explained to the committee why he was recommending the override procedure.
“At this point to get the Conservancy’s proposals before the Coastal Commission in a timely and fair manner, the procedures of the commission’s override regulations are directly on point. In this way the full range of proposals and public benefits can be submitted to the Coastal Commission without the limitations and fetters that were negotiated with Malibu and from which Malibu subsequently benefited by limiting the project scope,” he said.
Edmiston said the override process contained in the Coastal Act are regulations “that contemplate a situation where one municipality’s actions could adversely affect regional or statewide public sponsored projects.”
The SMMC head was referring to the Malibu City Council’s attempt to ban overnight camping in the city by not allowing it on public parklands or zoning designated as open space in its LCPA, which was recently approved over the strenuous objections of Edmiston.
The SMMC director explained that the proposal would have the same fundamentals that were contained in the Public Works Plan that was previously scrapped when the city urged the SMMC to come before it using the LCPA process.
To no avail, the city’s appointee to the Conservancy, Dennis Seder, sought to keep matters on the negotiating table by suggesting the Conservancy consider camping sites closer to the coast where many folks who opposed overnight camping in the mountains said they would be comforted by campsites placed near the water’s edge such as at Leo Carrillo and Point Mugu.
Seder suggested the state agency consider Westward Beach.
However, Edmiston responded that he did not believe that Westward Beach, which is county-owned, or the Mountains Recreation Conservation Authority holding at Lechuza Beach could be considered viable for overnight camping.
No other Malibu city officials besides Seder were present or spoke. Five local residents attended and made comments.
Council hopeful Susan Tellem insisted the SMMC was ill-prepared to take on more recreational projects when its rangers and other personnel at State Parks and the National Park Service were spread out so thin.
She said the shortfall for the upcoming budget for rangers has not kept pace with either crime or the amount of acreage needed to be patrolled.
Tellem’s husband, Marshall Thompson, concurred, “We don’t believe any new campsites will be supervised. It is not irrational for us to have a fear of fire. The issue is fire.”
Kate Novotny, a resident and local real estate agent, said to put camping in the mountains and canyons below homes is absurd.
“We can’t even get trash cans and toilet paper in the parks,” Novotny said.
Edmiston acknowledged the shortfall for other state and federal agencies, but noted the MRCA has a budget for rangers that is not tied to the line item budget of the governor and legislators.
Additionally, another advisory committee member, Ron Schaeffer, who heads up the local district for State Parks, said there are five new rangers graduating from the academy that will be assigned to the Santa Monica Mountains sector.
The executive director also told committee members he thought it obvious that going the individual coastal permit route through the city, even if the CCC approves the Conservancy’s LCPA override submission, “will be tortuous, if not a torturous process.”
“Much better in terms of everyone’s time, efficiency and fair play is to use the Public Works Plan process. Members will recall that under the PWP process, once a detailed plan is adopted by the Coastal Commission, rather than have individual permits submitted for approval, a notice is given to local government and the Coastal Commission, and then unless there is an appeal that the proposed project is outside the scope of the PWP, the project goes ahead without further permitting delay,” he added.
Edmiston said since there is a disagreement among counsel with respect to whether a PWP needs an EIR, that with the near certainty of litigation, “the present course of action is to prepare a full EIR on the proposed PWP.”
With that in mind the Conservancy director successfully sought approval for a $300,000 grant for the work—with up to $50,000 related to legal fees for outside counsel if necessary.
Edmiston outlined how he anticipated the process would work. The process involves the submission of a proposed LCPA to the CCC’s executive director who has 30 days to determine if the submission meets the criteria unanticipated by the agency proposing the project at the time the LCPA was before the CCC for certification and meets the public needs of an area greater than that included in the certified LCP.
If Peter Douglas, the CCC executive director, rules favorably, then the proposal is submitted to the affected local government for its review.
The local government has 90 days in which to consider the proposal. If the local government fails to amend within that time, then the applicant can file directly with the Coastal Commission.
The newly submitted plan will include a request for up to 32 major events at Ramirez Canyon Park, completion of the Coastal Slope Trail and linkages from Corral Canyon Park to Ramirez with camping, restrooms and parking provided at Escondido, Corral and Ramirez canyons.

Volunteer Efforts Come Up Empty in Malibu Mountains Search

• Family and Friends Hoped for Clues in Missing SoCal Student’s Disappearance

BY HANS LAETZ

Los Angeles celebrity attorney Gloria Allred pointed a group of evangelical Christians to the mountains of Malibu last weekend in an effort to keep the name Donna Jou in the headlines—and to give canyon roads a thorough search for the young woman’s remains or belongings.
More than a dozen carloads of members of Trinity Search & Recovery came from as far away as the Bay Area to comb roadways and byways above the coast, looking for any sign of the young woman. They were met by local volunteers who fanned out on every road between U.S. 101 and the shoreline, seeking anything.
They found nothing.
Jou was a 19-year-old pre-med freshman on vacation from San Diego State University last summer when she hopped on the rear of a motorcycle driven by a man who had replied to her free offer of math tutoring on Craigslist. He turned out to be a convicted sex offender. She was last heard from when she sent her mother a text message indicating that she was being held against her will in a bathroom at a West Los Angeles house owned by the man, John Steven Burgess, 35.
Burgess has remained silent as to Jou’s whereabouts, why his motorcycle disappeared, why he was spotted washing his belongings and throwing them in a dumpster a block from his house, or why he fled to Florida. Burgess has been sent to prison on a probation violation charge.
Allred told reporters she could not reveal why she was pointing volunteer searchers to the Santa Monica Mountains where they searched by car Saturday and Sunday, stopping at every pullout to look for a backpack, helmet, or other sign of Jou.
Members of her family came up from southern Orange County to the command post at Malibu Bluffs Park. They told the press of their devastating loss, and then went searching along Kanan Dume Road, the serpentine 13-mile canyon and mountain link that Burgess was known to favor on weekend motorcycle rides.
Twenty-four specific search areas were examined by volunteers led by Trinity Search & Recovery, a Pleasanton-based evangelical group that mixes prayer with activist outreach efforts. Its director, Mike Melson, said he started the group after being embarrassed that evangelicals from Texas and the Midwest would come searching for missing people in California.
Melson said the group traveled 400 miles to Malibu to mix prayer and active reconnaissance in the search, and give Jou’s family hope. Sheriff’s deputies had reportedly searched local canyon areas last summer, when Burgess was first identified as a suspect and his frequent trips through the mountains were noted.
Some of the canyon areas examined by the group were burned in the two major fires that swept the area last fall.
Following the two days of searching and prayer, Allred told reporters that the effort was not a waste, as it eliminated possible places where Jou, her belongings or Burgess’s missing motorcycle could have been disposed of.

Local LNG Foes Get Boost from Major Environmental Watchdog

• Green Powerhouse Litigation Group Announces It Will Take On Woodside Project •

BY HANS LAETZ

An environmental watchdog group with a history of filing and winning green lawsuits has surfaced to challenge the proposed Woodside liquefied natural gas terminal proposed for halfway between Malibu and Catalina Island.
The Tucson, Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity has filed a letter demanding that federal and state regulators protect whales, calculate worldwide greenhouse gas impacts, and decide if California can comply with tough new anti-global-warming laws if it opens up a new stream of imported fossil fuels.
Although those demands have already been voiced by other ocean-advocacy groups and individuals, the entry of the CBD into the local LNG fight potentially ratchets up the legal battle, and gives scattered environmental groups along Santa Monica Bay a possible lead agency in the anticipated battle over the proposed Woodside terminal, 21.8 miles south of Point Dume.
“We are in the preliminary stages of evaluating the Woodside process, and haven’t yet decided what exact role we will play,” said CBD attorney Jonathan Evans. “But we are prepared to assume that role when it starts to become a little bit more contentious.”
At issue is a proposal from the Australian-based company to station two LNG ships in local waters, and use them to ferry cargoes of the hazardous material from transpacific carriers that would then transfer it farther offshore and upwind of the bay. The twin ships would regasify the LNG at buoys in the bay, and send the gas into an ocean-bottom pipeline that would come ashore and cross Los Angeles International Airport.
The Woodside terminal, marketed as “OceanWay,” would use a regasification process said to be cleaner than that proposed by BHP Billiton for its “Cabrillo Port” LNG initiative, a proposal for 12.8 miles off Malibu that was shot down over environmental concerns last spring. The environmental review and permitting process for the Woodside project are underway, with a decision at least a year away.
The Center for Biological Diversity has been a frequent thorn in the side of developers and government agencies in the Southwest, challenging Bush administration policies that have left many environmental laws under-enforced. Two weeks ago it gave notice it will sue the federal government over a plan to sweep aside environmental protection laws to pave the way for new high-voltage electric lines across California.
Evans is CBD’s Los Angeles attorney. He said his group noticed that no lead agency has surfaced to take on Woodside by coordinating scientific and legal challenges and decided to take action. The BHP Billiton terminal went down after the California Coastal Protection Network hired Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center for that role.
CCPN director Susan Jordan said her group, and the Santa Barbara lawyers, have their hands full with the NorthernStar LNG terminal proposed for an offshore oil platform off Ventura, and cannot work on the Woodside proposal off the City of Los Angeles.
Woodside officials were not available for comment, but have said in the past they welcome the highest levels of environmental scrutiny. Company spokesperson Michael Hinrichs said last November that the company “anticipated and support(s) the addition of the greenhouse gas life-cycle analysis” as already requested by the federal government, which delayed review of the Woodside project at the request of coastal advocates while the greenhouse gas and other issues are examined.
“This helps us provide the public and decision makers with the most accurate and complete information,” Hinrichs said.
Woodside officials, he added, are “proud that we are the first company in California to conduct such an extensive analysis to evaluate our potential full-cycle air emissions and compare the results to other energy sources.”
In legal documents filed this month with the federal government, the CBD questioned if the greenhouse gas emissions from transpacific shipments of LNG can possibly comply with California’s strict new laws.

• The Publisher’s Notebook •

The Malibu New Year: 2K8 in the Wind

BY ANNE SOBLE

How else would Malibuites have expected the new year to be ushered in? Strong gusts of wind shredded celebratory confetti out of mounds of kinetic leaves and outdid any horns in deafening din as the clock struck twelve. But strong as these winds were—they were clocked in some areas in the low 50s—now veteran local wind watchers who experienced the previous bouts of 75-plus mph blasts took them in stride. With the winds came the red flag alerts and the reassuring presence of additional fire crews, engines, dozers, helicopters and the vigilance—theirs and ours—that is the key to it all when the humidity drops and the fire danger escalates. Routine preoccupation with the weather is no longer optional in Malibu, as we become acolytes of all things meteorological. Three days of wind and unseasonable warmth are slated to give way to a series of storms in the northwest that are headed our way. Those who need flood protection should have sandbags at hand, if not already in place, and then even the local burn areas should be able to appreciate the much needed moisture these storms could bring. Several days of well tempered rain will do more than add to the statistical data bank, as those numbers don’t tell the full story of how dry the wildland patchwork into which we are interwoven actually is. Even as we approach average rainfall figures, many areas—especially those west of Kanan—remain susceptible to wildfire.
Malibu’s vulnerability and dependence on what nature holds in store will continue to be in the spotlight throughout 2008. Just as climate change is the single biggest natural force to be reckoned with on a planetary level, so too is the way Malibu reflects that change with patterns of drought and conflagration susceptibility paramount on the local level. Those who turn to oversimplification and political expediency to avoid grappling with the complexity of the issue do the community a disservice. For Malibu to always react after the fact rather than taking the lead in wildland interface management and enlightened development controls is a lost opportunity. Just as that spotlight shines brightest on Malibu when disaster strikes, it could also light the way to better planning and preparation.

Corral Canyon Fire Victims See Positive Side of Tragedy

• Although Extensive Book Collection Was Lost, He Leaves His Mark at Legacy Park

BY VANESSA HARRIS

When Christopher Hudson, a longtime Malibu resident, wrote a letter-to-the-editor regarding the tragic loss he and his wife took after the most recent fire, he touched the hearts of many of our readers, those who shared similar feelings as they recovered from their losses, and those in the Malibu community-at-large who watched the toll taken by three local wildfires in 2007.
Hudson, a publisher who has dedicated his life to the making of books, said he has found that in times of emotion it is best to set pen to paper as was shown in his letter. He sees his writing as a way of “getting things off his chest before rebuilding and putting life back together.” As owner of one of over 50 homes lost in the fire, Hudson eloquently spoke on behalf of all the residents in this time of trial and tribulation, but a time that can result in reflective learning and gratefulness.
Hudson, whose native land is England, bought the home in Malibu in 1989 that he resided in for the past 18 years with his wife, Lois Lyon. In this home were the Hudsons’ extensive collections that took years to accumulate—music, maps, art and artifacts, personal journals and artwork, and a 5000-volume library of books were all quickly lost as flames ripped through their home leaving nothing behind.
Since the fire, nothing from the Hudsons’ home of nearly 20 years has been recovered. For now, the two are staying in a townhouse in Malibu courtesy of their insurance policy. Although they say this residence will never compensate for a lost home filled with irreplaceable memories, they indicate that they are thankful to have been treated fairly in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. Further, Hudson recounts that the “overwhelming majority of the community and officials have been wonderful,” and he said that “adversity brings out the best in people.”
This seems to be especially apparent in Hudson’s case as he takes a more liberal perspective in the punishment of the men who are being tried on charges related to the spread of the fire. Hudson is not sure if a jail sentence is the best way to handle the situation because he believes it is “not going to help the victims, particularly if sentenced.”
Instead of focusing energy on their verdict, he believes that as a victim, it is best to be patient and do what is important to recover.
In terms of his personal recovery, Hudson has taken a number of steps. Among them, he wrote an inscription on a tile to be part of the display at the Malibu Legacy Park. Hudson, who has a background in Latin, inscribed on one of the tiles “Domus deletasest Malibu manet jucunda.” Translated, Hudson’s message is “Our house burnt down but Malibu still remains a joy to us.”
Following the numerous hits Malibu has taken with natural disasters in the past few years, Hudson has observed that emotionally, a number of people are thinking enough is enough. However, for him and his family, Hudson will continue to stay loyal to the community that remains a joy to him despite the tragedy that will ultimately be only part of a much bigger picture.