Planning Commission Sends Legacy Park EIR Back to Staff

• Environmental Groups Blast City’s Plans and Approach

BY BILL KOENEKER

Responding to pleas by environmental groups to neither certify the Environmental Impact Report, nor give a recommendation for approval of plans for Legacy Park, the Malibu Planning Commission, with chair Joan House absent, unanimously agreed to send back the EIR for further review without further recommendations.
Mark Gold, the executive director of Heal the Bay and spokespersons of Santa Monica Baykeeper, Surfrider Foundation and the Regional Water Quality Control Board testified that the official responses to comments made by them and others were inadequate and did not address the issues, or share enough information and details about the current plans.
Another expressed concern was that the city was proceeding with stormwater treatment plans for the park without taking into account the need for plans to address wastewater treatment for the Civic Center.
The stormwater treatment components planned for the park would include a lined detention pond to collect stormwater runoff for treatment at an existing plant that was described as overbuilt and over designed by Gold.
City staff and the consultant emphasized that they want to proceed in phases, to first implement stormwater facilities at the park and address solution of the septic problems when the former has been completed.
Commission members, however, shared some of the concerns of the critics.
“I am not pleased with the Environmental Impact Report,” said Commissioner Jeff Jennings. “I understand the concern of the environmemntal groups that we changed the target. Legacy Park is not large enough to handle both problems.”
Jennings said he was concerned about the quality of the responses to comments and thought the staff needs to take a hard look at those responses.
Commissioner John Mazza had a slightly different take on the matter. He said he was influenced by what the Regional Water Quality Control board staffer Elizabeth Erickson said about the plans.
Mazza said, “I think Ms. Erickson was very diplomatic, but without a comprehensive EIR, we can do the whole process, but it would stop dead at the doorsteps [of the RWQCB],” and added, “I agree with Jeff it needs to come back.”
Commissioner Regan Schaar said she wants a more comprehensive review of the plans to see if the integrated approach that was the genesis of the project could work. “What about expanded ponds?” she asked.
Earlier in the evening, during the three-and-a-half hour session, Commissioner Ed Gillespie said he thought the plans and EIR could be certified, approved and moved forward. However, he later voted with the majority of the commission without elaborating on his change of views.
Much of the rest of the meeting was devoted to commission questioning of the heads of the environmental groups, the consultant and municipal staff, including City Manager Jim Thorsen.
While the consultant made the case all final computations point to Jennings’ conclusion that the Legacy Park property could not handle both stormwater and wastewater treatment, the city reiterated the intention to proceed with the stormwater component, since it found a way to accomplish this that fits all of its objectives, including habitat restoration and a city park.
However, Gold and others argue that the city and the consultant did not have all of the answers, and that wastewater was such a big issue, municipal officials could be closing the door on another possible undiscovered solution if all aspects of wastewater treatment were not studied concurrently.
Everyone agrees it could take another year to two years to complete those studies.

City Council Wants to Add Sewage Plant to La Paz Center

• Majority Gives Tentative OK to Larger Commercial Development with Conditions

BY BILL KOENEKER

Despite clear calls from environmental groups to deny approval of La Paz, a shopping center/office complex planned for the Civic Center, the Malibu City Council majority this week tentatively approved a 132,000-square-foot commercial center by directing its staff to negotiate a development agreement that calls for utilizing a donated 2.3 acres for a municipal sewage treatment plant to serve the entire Civic Center area.
Councilmember Jefferson Wagner was the sole dissenting vote. After the meeting he said the project is just too big and he wanted to see two 7000-square- foot restaurants eliminated from the plans.
The sewage plant idea was offered by Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich. “It struck me like a bolt of lightning to put a wastewater plant there and put off a city hall,” she said.
Conley Ulich was referring to the development agreement offered by the applicant that sought to trade a “public benefit,” 2.3 acres conveyed to the city for the purpose of constructing a city hall and a $500,000 cash contribution to build out a city hall, in exchange for building a 132,058- square-foot shopping center/ office park that would include the municipal offices.
The alternative project was no development agreement, or public benefit, for approving entitlements for a 99,117-square-foot commercial development, which was the recommendation made by the city’s planning commission.
Conley Ulich said construction of a wastewater system on the property might help settle the lawsuits now facing the city over clean water issues and offer municipal officials a way to affordably build such a plant in the Civic Center.
But members from groups concerned with clean water issues, including Heal the Bay and the Santa Monica Baykeeper, were not swayed by the plant idea as part of a major development.
Their representatives urged the city council to issue a moratorium on all commercial building in the Civic Center until the issues of stormwater and wastewater disposal were resolved for the Civic Center area as a whole.
Even though council members were made keenly aware of the environmental community’s viewpoint, it remained unclear what the applicant and his army of land use consultants, attorneys and experts thought about the mayor’s proposal that seemed to gather council consensus as the lengthy meeting wore on.
In a somewhat unusual approach, City Attorney Christi Hogin insisted the council not approach the applicant’s consultant Don Schmitz during the meeting for any kind of feedback.
After the meeting, Schmitz, his attorney and the owner of the site declined to comment publicly about the council decision.
Both the mayor and Hogin seemed to keep an open mind about what might be acceptable if the applicants turned down the wastewater proposal.
“The use of the parcel is something to negotiate. They may not accept it. We can take it back to the developer,” said Hogin.
Conley Ulich said though the council would be giving up a city hall for another municipal use, those other uses might include selling the parcel, a teen or senior center, or setting up another retail operation like the Malibu Lumber yard shopping center.
Councilmember Sharon Barovsky said she warmed up to the idea after hearing testimony that lead her to believe many groups and agencies were accusing the city of not being serious about wastewater issues in the Civic Center.
“Now, if we have two acres, we could use it for wastewater to prove how serious we are. The Legacy Park is going to do stormwater and we can address it right now,” added Barovsky.
The council heard a litany of testimony, including staff members of the Regional Water Quality Control Board, various other experts and Malibu residents, some who opposed and others who supported the project.
RWQCB staffer Elizabeth Erickson told the council the EIR had some problems not addressed in the city’s responses because there was no quantifiable data about what would take place during a giant storm event.
She said plans for La Paz’s stormwater and wastewater described as no net discharge systems were proposals headed in the right direction, but the city should ever be mindful of the cumulative impacts of groundwater discharge.
Malibu resident Marshall Thompson said he was originally came to like it and now supported it. “It seems like a terrific deal,” he said. “Now is the time to give the developer the OK.”
Other residents, including as Dennis Torres and Rick Margolis also offered support, suggesting more retail and office space would drive down the rents thereby helping mom and pop operations. Malibu Chamber of Commerce head Rebecca Evans said the same thing.
Alan Block, who represents the Gustavson family who built a home near the then vacant La Paz land decades ago, cited several objections about procedure in the city’s handling of the project application process, said there were flaws in the EIR and told the council the family was still unable to reach an agreement with the developer over siting of the commercial development so close to the residential neighborhood.
Resident Steve Uhring cited what he said were flaws in the traffic study. “The traffic counts could be undercounted by 50 percent,” he said
Expressing concern about wastewater processes was longtime local engineer Don Michael, as well as Sally Benjamin, a representative for the Malibu Township Council.

Bluffs Subdivision and Rambla Pacifico Road Recon Start EIRs

• Two Very Different Projects Are Slated for Scoping Meetings and Public Input

BY BILL KOENEKER

The Crummer site subdivision and the Rambla Pacifico Road reconstruction project are scheduled for scoping meetings for their upcoming Environmental Impact Reports.
The so-called Crummer site subdivision, located on a 24-acre parcel, borders Malibu Bluffs Park to the west and Pacific Coast Highway to the north, and is adjacent to private property to the east and south.
The public scoping session for Crummer is planned for Thursday, Oct. 2, at 6 p.m. in the large conference room at Malibu City Hall.
The Rambla Pacifico Road project is scheduled for a public scoping meeting for a focused EIR on Wednesday, Oct. 8, at 5 p.m. in city council chambers.
The site consists of acreage near the area north of Pacific Coast Highway, west of Las Flores Canyon Road, east of Paseo Hidalgo and Rambla Orienta Street and south of Deerpath Lane and the northern city limits.
The plans for the Crummer site include subdividing the property into eight individual lots.
Lots one through five would be developed with single-family residences. Lot six would be developed with a new private street, which would connect the proposed residences to Winter Mesa. The remaining two lots, Lots A and B would be maintained as private and public open space.
Lot B would be dedicated to the city and be developed with a baseball field. The dedication of Lot B to the city would expand Malibu Bluffs Park by two acres. To serve the ball fields, 35 parking spaces would be created along Winter Mesa.
The Rambla project consists of the reconstruction and realignment of a private section of Rambla Pacifico, which was destroyed by a landslide in 1984,
The proposed 1800-foot-gated road would re-establish a linkage between the northern and southern sections of Rambla Pacifico.
The proposed roadway would include two lanes, one lane in each direction. The road would be private and gated with the Rambla Road Owner’s Association owning the road and the rights of easement.
The public easement held by the city on the destroyed road would be vacated prior to the finalization of the new road, according to municipal documents.
Each residence of the Crummer subdivision would be two-story homes of about 11,100 square feet each. Most of the lots are of two or three acres, and plans call for basements and swimming pools. Homes planned for lots two, three, four and five include a detached cabana, and residences on lots one and five would have detached guesthouses, according to municipal planners.
The gated street to the housing tract would be a private tree-lined road and would terminate in a cul-de-sac. No variances should be required for the homes, according to the applicant.
The proposed Rambla Road alignment includes gates, retaining walls, and drainage devices. The proposed roadway includes automated gates on both the north and south that could be opened by any of the members of the road association. Boxes for emergency access will also be in place.
Three retaining walls will be constructed along the northern boundary of the road between the roadway and adjacent hillside. Concrete drainage swales and drop-in catch basins will be built along each side of the road to collect and convey surface runoff out of the landslide area. An underground storm drain pipe system is proposed for the conveyance of the flows discharging from the catch basins.
About 32,670 cubic yards of cut and 23,080 cubic yards of fill will be required to build the road, including nearly 9,590 cubic yards of exported material. The construction would take place over three and one-half-month time frame.

Regional Task Force Members to Take Part in Malibu Paparazzi Meeting

• Supporters Rally for Two Local Men Facing Pap Battery Charges

BY ANNE SOBLE

A meeting called by Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich, in her role as the volunteer coordinator of the unofficial local paparazzi regulation effort, is slated for Thursday, Oct. 2, at the Malibu Performing Arts Center from 4 to 6 p.m.
Conley Ulich says the public meeting will address what she repeatedly describes as “paparazzi car chases on PCH, traveling in packs, running red lights, and making unsafe or illegal U-turns in the pursuit of their subject.”
Conley Ulich said the session will address “adoption [of a] a citizen’s guide for dealing with aggressive paparazzi; review specific legislation targeted at protecting school zones; explore the feasibility of licensing; and determine the next action steps.”
The meeting will provide the first formal look at five draft ordinances that are part of a package of regulatory materials prepared under the direction of faculty at the Pepperdine School of Law.
The mayor has invited the members of the Los Angeles Regional Paparazzi Task Force to take part in the two-hour session. The RPTF is a non-legislative, multi-city panel that is also critical of the paparazzi and calls for stringent local laws to curb their actions in the public arena.
That group’s chair, L.A. City Councilmember Dennis Zine, has emphasized that concerns about possible litigation over the media’s First Amendment protections should not impede efforts to control paparazzi, whom he has described as “wolves on the prowl.”
The Oct. 2 meeting is also becoming a rallying point for local residents and surfers who want to show support for Skylar Peak and Philip John Hildebrand, the two Malibu men facing misdemeanor battery charges following a widely publicized skirmish between beachgoers and paparazzi on Little Dume Beach in June.
The pair are slated for arraignment on Oct. 14 in Malibu. Peak told the Malibu Surfside News this week he is confident “that justice will definitely be served,” but he is concerned that the men’s legal costs are mounting.
A multi-website campaign is urging the pair’s supporters to show up at the Oct. 2 meeting as a sign of solidarity. Some of the supporters are expected to sport the T-shirts that are being sold to augment the legal defense fund for the men, who are best known locally as the co-owners of a popular special events production company called “Sicky Dicky.”
It’s not known whether the two most visible current “celebrity” proponents of stringent paparazzi controls, Paris Hilton and Balthazar Getty, plan to attend next week’s meeting.

Injunction Granted against Paragliding on LADWP Property in Corral Canyon

• Malibu Location Is Where Man Taking Lessons Died in August

BY ANNE SOBLE

The Los Angeles City Department of Water and Power prevailed in court last week in its quest for a preliminary injunction in the matter of the City of Los Angeles v. Fiset et al.
The preliminary injunction prohibits Claude Fiset, the owner of Malibu Paragliding; his students; the employees, officers, agents of his company; and anyone acting with him, in concert with him or on his behalf, from entering or utilizing LADWP property in Corral Canyon in any way until the trial on the permanent injunction, or further order of the court.
A case management conference with the presiding judge, James Chalfant, has been scheduled for Jan. 9, 2009.
The LADWP contends that Fiset has been using the 102-acre undeveloped site owned by the City of Los Angeles to illegally conduct a commercial operation offering paragliding instruction and tandem flights. Trespass issues are also involved.
A student of Fiset’s Malibu Paragliding operation, which distributes brochures throughout Malibu, died from blunt force injuries when his craft flew into a hillside on the property on Aug. 8.
The court’s minute order states that there was no appearance on behalf of the defendant at the Sept. 17 hearing. Fiset emailed the Malibu Surfside News, “I was there, I missed it by five minutes.” He added, “I agreed not to go on their land way before that day. It would save us all time and money if they dropped this now.”
Fiset has also run afoul of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy for using Malibu Bluffs Park as a launch and landing site. However, nearby residents inform The News that PG flights have occurred nearly every weekend since the agency issued its prohibition. The residents are not able to determine if these are Fiset’s craft.
But Fiset’s equipment and gear were definitely involved in a face-off with Los Angeles County lifeguards last weekend in the Trancas/Broad Beach area.
Lifeguard Capt. Remy Smith, the on scene captain, told the Malibu Surfside News that Fiset was about to take a customer for a tandem ride when lifeguards approached him to raise concerns about public safety.
Smith said Fiset told them he had permission to launch from a homeowner on the beach. When they tried to question him further, the lifeguard said, “[Fiset] grabbed a customer and took off.”
A subsequent check with the homeowner indicated that no permission was ever granted.
The lifeguards called for a backup sheriff’s deputy. The deputy told them there are no laws prohibiting paragliding, but he radioed a helicopter unit to monitor the paraglider until he landed.
Because Fiset had left his gear on the county beach while he was airborne, five lifeguards waited for him to land and warned him about endangering beachgoers and local residents. Smith said, “We could tell he was not hearing anything we were saying.”
Without even inquiring what the lifeguards had said about him, Fiset told The News that “the lifeguards lied and the sheriff’s helicopter pilot is dangerous...much more than any of us.”
Fiset added, “It would be good if the local authorities had a chance to travel [to places paragliding is promoted] and see how much freedom exists elsewhere.”

• The Publisher’s Notebook •

Open Skies and Public Safety

BY ANNE SOBLE

A bystander at Broad Beach last weekend called The News to say that he was astounded when he overheard several lifeguards and sheriff’s deputies discussing that, because the City of Malibu and the County of Los Angeles do not have laws regulating paragliding from, to, or immediately over, property in their jurisdictions, there is no way to cite anyone inappropriately using local air space.
We are still researching the specifics to make sure there aren’t FAA regulations or other laws involved, but, in the interim, there is the issue of what lifeguards and deputies concerned about public safety can do when they encounter a paraglider using the beach to launch and land, and they think this activity may be endangering the beachgoers and local residents they are charged with protecting.
Paragliding websites are rife with righteous indignation that the non-paragliding public does not appreciate the beauty of their sport and its ability to emulate the sensation of being a bird on the wing. However, the very real wonders of paragliding are not what’s at issue, but whether a community as populated as Malibu, with a high-speed main roadway, is the appropriate place for free flight.
Malibu recently experienced an accident involving an accomplished PG pilot and another with someone in training that resulted in a brush fire and a fatality, respectively. A check of the same PG websites provides ample evidence of accidents that run the gamut from near-misses with power lines, to broken bones, to other lost lives. While I and others may enjoy extreme sports, venues have to be appropriate for participants and bystanders alike.
Even the most ardent paraglider acknowledges that more and more of once permitted sites in the United States are being stricken from the rolls, usually due to liability issues. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has taken legal action to protect itself in the case of paragliding activity on its land. It may be time for other agencies and the City of Malibu to consider whether they should take more formal action to establish rules.
There should at least be tools in place to enable law enforcement, whether on the roads, hillsides or beaches, to address unsafe behavior by those who might endanger others. Philosophically, it is one thing to espouse a notion of free skies, but all aircraft is regulated. The purpose of the regulation is to protect those in the air and those on the ground.

District Unveils Design Plans for Malibu High School

• Innovative ‘Green’ Roof Tops Dramatic New Profile in Campus Makeover

BY HANS LAETZ

The front of Malibu High School would be radically changed in favor of a sweeping pair of buildings topped by plants and photovoltaic cells, according to the first architectural drawings for new classroom and library facilities released this week by the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.
The familiar 1960s-style entrance to the school would be razed, and the main entranceway moved to the southeast side of the campus, under the plan to replace the school’s library and outmoded front office with a student, counseling, meeting and administrative center.
The “Schematic Design Submittal” unveiled by district officials Monday starts the public comment period as the district solicits comments from parents, faculty and students on the sweeping changes funded by the $168 million bond issue approved by voters. And it differs significantly from a “Master Facilities Plan” approved by the school board before the public vote.
The schematic design was to be formally unveiled at a minimally publicized meeting scheduled for Wednesday night, after the Malibu Surfside News went to press. District officials gave The News a sneak peak, and said a series of public meetings to listen to comments about the proposed architecture, school facilities and traffic plan will be held this fall to solicit input before any final plans are drawn.
As currently envisioned by the HMC architecture firm of Ontario, a sweeping two-story-high point would tower above the site currently occupied by the school’s outmoded library, pointing to the east over a new main school entrance and drop-off area. Most of the faculty parking currently at the southeast side of the school would be moved to a new lot east of the school’s amphitheater.
Planted shrubs and grasses would cover the roof of the new building, as well as that of a complementary new library/learning center/ café to be built where the current office is now. The top of the point would be covered with photovoltaic cells.
A series of artists’ conceptions show roofs covered with greenery angling down to the surrounding schoolyards, but do not show how pupils might be prevented from walking, or running, up the roofs to the proposed greenswards atop the principal’s office.
The plans also include using natural lighting, thermal mass, and green roof technology to cut utility costs, and stress that preservation of a classroom wing originally slated for demolition and replacement is a better idea from a conservation standpoint,
The former plans to demolish a single-story complex of 12 classrooms on the campus’s east side were shelved because the existing building is structurally sound, said Virginia Hyatt, who is heading the district’s efforts. Those classrooms would instead be gutted and rebuilt as science labs for the middle school.
A new administration building, under the massive point, and new library facility would both be two stories high, stretching along Morning View Drive where the offices, front parking lot and driveway exist now. Both new buildings would be about as tall as the existing library, Hyatt said, and would be set back from Morning View at angles, with the closest point about where the existing office building sits.
The library would include new computer labs, conference rooms, larger reading and shelving areas, and a student café.
A new amphitheater would be added in the middle school quad, in the interest of providing additional separation between the middle and high schools. Portable classrooms and a parking lot in the senior high school quad would be demolished, and a new quad constructed, under the plan.
Hyatt said the new design has been drawn up after listening to the Proposition BB Advisory Committee of parents, faculty and staff. But controversial provisions for traffic, circulation and the football/track stadium may generate opposition, given past concerns raised by Malibu Park residents.
The new plan also retains the chaotic student parking lot in the center of the educational campus made up of Malibu High and adjacent Juan Cabrillo Elementary School, and does nothing to eliminate the twice-daily Gordian knot of pedestrians, high school drivers, school buses and parents there. The current version of the project does not add significant parking east of the football stadium, where some parents have advocated relocating the student parking lot.
In addition, the project calls for lights, permanent seating and artificial, petroleum-based plastic turf to replace the grass football field. Malibu Park residents have claimed a promise was made more than a decade ago, as a condition for building the fields, that no lighting would be installed.
This week’s public meeting was announced in a small legal advertisement, and district officials said they were not sure other publicity followed. But they stressed no decisions are coming out of this first meeting, and vowed to do a better job publicizing subsequent sessions.
The district plans to wrap up environmental studies and design work next spring, start building the new parking lot in the middle of 2009, then start demolition and construction in the fall of 2009. Total completion is targeted for February 2013.
A specific budget for the Malibu project was not released in the preliminary study.

Superintendent Selection Heads List of Concerns at Candidate Forum

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

The five candidates running for seats on the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board met on Monday in Santa Monica for their first public forum, which was sponsored by a new advocacy group called LEAD, Leadership, Effectiveness, Accountability, Direction for Santa Monica-Malibu Public Schools, and CEPS, Community for Excellent Public Schools.
Incumbents Jose Escarce and Maria Leon-Vasquez are both seeking a third four-year term, Ralph Mechur, who was appointed two years ago to fill a vacancy, is running unopposed for a two-year term. Newcomers Ben Allen and Chris Bley, both Santa Monica natives and alumni of Samohi, are running for the first time. Kathy Wisnicki, the only Malibu resident on the board, decided not to run for reelection, leaving Malibu without a representative for the first time in decades.
Each candidate was given a minute for an opening statement, a minute to answer each question and a minute for a closing statement. The participants in the forum were polite and appeared relaxed. No mud was slung, no tempers lost. But there was also little disagreement and not much difference of opinion.
Priority issues for all of the candidates are the upcoming selection of a permanent superintendent, special education, the budget, addressing the so-called achievement gap and the issue of transparency. Malibu was only mentioned by newcomers Allen and Bley, who both advocated greater outreach and participation.
Allen was the only candidate to allude to tensions between the two communities. He suggested sending board members to PTA meetings at all district schools, including Malibu, and to events like Malibu High School football games, but neither he, nor any of the other candidates address the growing Malibu separatist movement that wants a Malibu school district that is not attached to Santa Monica.
Allen, a recent graduate of law school at Berkeley, has spent the past year serving as the University of California student regent.
Bley, the only district teacher running for the board, stated that he entered the election because of the special education issue. Bley said, “[The board] needs new faces, new way of thinking, and new community outreach.”
Incumbent Escarce, a professor of medicine at UCLA who has been a researcher at RAND, acknowledged that there have been problems, but that he has learned from his mistakes. He cited two areas of improvement for the board: improvement in leadership and transparency. “It is clear to me there hasn’t been satisfaction.”
Incumbent Leon-Vasquez also acknowledged that there have been problems. “We have to do a better job,” she said.
Ralph Mechur, who is running unopposed and is consequently not on the ballot, had no apologies to make. “We are in excellent shape, students are doing well,” he said.
The hiring of a new superintendent was the first issue the candidates addressed.
Allen stated that a potential superintendent should demonstrate educational leadership, manage relationships, and be skilled at politics. He said that an argument can be made for a closed process in the search, but that “we need an open process.”
Bley said the superintendent needs experience with finance and with a district the same size or larger, and should be “someone who enjoys kids and have more than just a broad vision.”
Escarce prefaced his remarks by saying that it is “an incredibly hard job. The core thing,” he said, is “an incredibly strong leader, conveying vision, honesty, transparency and relishing working in a diverse district.”
Leon-Vasquez stressed the importance of communicating with the community, and the need to find a candidate with the “longevity to stay for more than three or four years.”
All the candidates agreed that math and reading should be priorities. The closest thing to a disagreement during the forum occurred over the issue of beginning algebra in the eighth grade, a policy that recently came out of Sacramento.
Bley came out strongly in favor of eight-grade algebra, “algebra teaches logical thinking skills. We have some amazing students. We should continue to work for algebra.” Mechur appeared to agree, and stated that “We are ahead of other districts.”
Escarce, Leon-Vasquez and Allen found fault in the state recommendations. Escarce said, “Algebra in the eighth grade is a problem now,” adding that “equality of access did not equal equality of mastery.”
Leon-Vasquez expressed concern that “all it does is put more pressure on students. We need a foundation before we can do algebra in eighth grade.”
“The rules are overly ridged,” Allen said. “We haven’t got the foundation.”
All of the candidates endorse the upcoming Santa Monica College bond issue, Proposition AA, which is the third college bond issue in six years. Opponents of the bond charge that Santa Monica College still has unspent funds from the previous bonds, and warn that this bond, which, they say, will be used to recruit the students from outside of the Santa Monica-Malibu area, will hurt the school district's chances of raising future bond money.
The candidates disagreed with the claim that the bond could hurt future school district funding. All five were optimistic about future bond issues for the school district, despite the current economic crisis, and expressed enthusiasm for a proposed joint project with the Santa Monica Civic Center that is currently being discussed.
“The Community always supports bonds in Malibu and Santa Monica,” said Bley, “as long as we put forward projects that show sustainability.”
Leon-Vasquez stated that the board needs to make sure “we get a lot of our construction started [on Measure BB projects] within a year. We need to get going, have results, and move on to a second phase.”
“Facilities are a big concern,” Allen said, adding that on a recent visit to Samohi he observed areas of the campus hadn’t changed since he was a student. “They looked just the same as they did in the early ’90’s and they didn't look good back then.” Allen called the proposed Civic Center project “exciting,” and also praised the Measure BB plans for Malibu High School.
“We’re at a historic point rebuilding from Prop. 13,” Mechur said. He added that he was “looking forward to combining with the Civic Center into a public space.”
The candidates were also asked about out-of-district permits that allow a limited number of students, such as the children of city and school employees, to attend district schools. The permits have also been used to fill empty seats when class sizes shrink, a problem that the district has been facing recently. Most viewed the permits as a positive asset.
“It helps to create diversity,” Leon-Vasquez said.
“We’re fortunate to be able to tweak the numbers. It’s an advantage on budget day,” Allen said. Bley agreed that the permits are a tool for both diversity and budgeting. “It’s an advantage,” Bley said. Escarce warned that the practice can lead to overcrowding, which is what led to a district moratorium on the permits.
The forum ended with as much civility as it began. Mechur said he was “honored and humbled to serve,” and acknowledged that there were “a lot of issues to resolve.” Escarce called the opportunity to serve on the board “a remarkable responsibility,” Leon Vasquez said “I had no idea what I was getting into. I’ve learned a lot.”
Both of the new candidates expressed a desire to give back to the community. “I want to come back and help,” Bley said.
Allen concluded by saying, “I bring deep roots and a love of community, as well as a different generational perspective.”
Malibuites will get a chance to meet, question, and hear the candidates at a second forum on Monday, Oct. 6, at Malibu City Hall from 11 a.m.-noon. The regular school board meeting will also be taking place in Malibu next week, on Thursday, Oct. 2, at 5:30 p.m., at Malibu City Hall. The public is encouraged to attend.

Wildfire Policy for Residents Changes

• County Unveils Major Policy Modification at Local Expo

BY BILL KOENEKER

A Los Angeles County fire official said the fire expo scheduled on Saturday, Sept. 20, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Malibu Performing Arts Center will spotlight a major paradigm shift for the department—an acknowledgement that homeowners may want to stay to protect their homes during a wildfire.
“We still strongly support evacuation, but we believe you have a right to stay [during a fire disaster],” said Battalion Chief Anthony Williams.
Williams made the announcement at last week’s Malibu City Council meeting when he explained that county fire officials will now start talking about how to survive in the fire zone during a wildfire. “It is definitely a shift in our philosophy,” he said.
A fire department press release issued this week stated it is a “somewhat unprecedented move, the department will also offer a presentation featuring guidance and education directed to homeowners who become trapped and cannot evacuate or simple make their own decision to stay.”
Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman said, “For those who make a decision to stay, it must be an informed decision. They need to understand the conditions to which they can be subjected, they need to be properly prepared and equipped and, most important, they need to fully understand the risk at which they are placing not only themselves, but also firefighters.”
Williams told council members that folks who contemplate staying to protect their homes, have much to learn before they can be considered equipped to do so.
“You can’t just prepare by using some equipment and then standby. This is just a start. People will have to be versed in fire behavior, fuel modification, what to do when the fire arrives and other elements of a wildfire,” the fire department spokesperson noted. “It will be a program much like our CERT program.”
The expo will have on hand a number of experts and vendors to provide information, products, services and demonstrations.
Attendees can learn what are called the five important steps to prepare for wildland fire: Understanding one’s vulnerability, offering a defensible zone around the home, making the house ready for an oncoming fire, preparing a wildfire action plan and getting ready for evacuation.
County fire officials in the past only reluctantly acknowledged there are people, especially in Malibu, who will stay during a wildfire.
“It is important to understand that the department does not advocate a property owner’s decision to stay,” said Freeman. “We believe it is in everyone’s best interest if everyone would evacuate early and quickly. However, the sad truth is that, despite orders to evacuate, some property owners just won’t.”
It is those property owners, according to Freeman, the department is trying to reach.
Some of the vendors at the expo will offer emergency supplies, demonstrate personal protective equipment, sell fire suppression systems and emergency response vehicles.
But there is somewhat of a Catch 22, city council members discovered about the vendors and their equipment. “Do we know if any of this equipment works?” asked Councilmember John Sibert. Williams replied, “Our agency won’t make recommendations.”
The council discussed how homeowners should evaluate those products and services carefully.
Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich reiterated the refrain of the fire department and the municipality, that life should always take precedence over property.

Brown Act Violations by City Alleged (Again)

BY BILL KOENEKER

A non-Malibuite is challenging how the Malibu City Council and its city attorney handled the decision to file a lawsuit against the executive director of the California Coastal Commission—accusing municipal officials of violating the Brown Act.
In a letter to the city, Paul Merritt charged municipal officials with violating the so-called sunshine law by holding serial meetings to agree to the lawsuit.
Merritt, who indicated that he lives in Laguna and Hollywood, handles trusts and brokerage accounts for clients and is an “advocate of open space, clean water and clean government,” said, just on the face of it, he believes the council violated the Brown Act.
Merritt said he became concerned about the matter after reading the local newspapers. He noted that he neither owns property in Malibu, nor has any trust clients here at this time.
“Lawyers don’t go out and file lawsuits without the consent of their clients,” he added.
Merritt, who said he has no affliation with the Coastal Commission, though he has had several runs-ins with the state agency, also sent the letter to the city attorney asking her to drop the lawsuit against Peter Douglas, the executive director of the CCC.
The council sued Douglas over a determination he made that the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy’s park plan was eligible for an override of the city’s Local Coastal Program.
“It seems clear that the action by Malibu’s city attorney was not, nor could have been independent of the council…therefore must have occurred by a serial communications between elected officials, outside of the purview of the public,” Merritt wrote.
City Attorney Christi Hogin, who has asked the city council to take action in response to the allegations at next week’s meeting, said Merritt’s allegation is based exclusively on his assumption that serial communications must have preceded the city’s decision to file the lawsuit.
“As you know, no such communications preceded the filing of the lawsuit,” wrote Hogin in a memo to council members.
She said, as city attorney, she is authorized to take action to protect the interests of the city and seek subsequent authorization or ratification.
She acknowledged because of the council’s meeting schedule and other considerations, without council discussion, she filed a complaint a few days before the city council met. Hogin said she did not attempt to serve papers until after the city council authorized the lawsuit.
“The council’s unanimous decision to pursue the litigation was reported in open session of the meeting. This procedure was in accordance with the procedures of the Brown Act,” she added.
Hogin, in a memo to the council, asked them to take no action “to cure or correct in response” to the allegation “because it is based on the incorrect premise that the council members engaged in a serial meeting.” The city attorney wants the council to respond to Merritt in a letter and to acknowledge that the council ratified the city attorney’s decision to file the lawsuit and authorized the lawsuit.
The city attorney also included a letter for the council to approve to respond to Merritt’s allegations. Meritt said he had not heard from the city attorney, or other municipal officials, and was waiting for a reply. He also indicated he would not be attending the city council’s meeting next week.

Released White Shark Was Recaptured on Her Way Back to Malibu Waters

• Young Female Was Inadvertently Caught in Net But She Appears to Be Healthy and Eating

BY ANNE SOBLE

The young white shark from Malibu returned to the wild 10 days ago by the Monterey Bay Aquarium was homeward bound when she was caught and released last Thursday by a commercial fisherman working his nets.
Described as “very lively,” the shark was caught by the tail in a net about 22 miles southeast from the point where she had been released the previous Sunday, according to Jon Hoech, the director of husbandry for the aquarium.
The shark appeared to be heading back to waters off Malibu that are hospitable to young whites, and where she was originally caught and kept in the MBA ocean holding pen off Point Dume.
The small female was on exhibit at the aquarium over the Labor Day weekend, but she was released after 11 days because she had eaten only once during that time period.
Hoech said, “From the description the fisherman gave us, she’s in excellent condition. That’s great news. At the same time, the fact that she was caught is a reminder that young white sharks face very real threats in the ocean.”
The fisherman told MBA he had deployed his net to catch thresher sharks and found the young white in his gear when he checked it shortly before 7 a.m. last Thursday.
After putting the apparently unharmed shark in the bait well of his boat, the man called aquarium animal care staff and was told to check the young white’s physical condition and release her immediately.
Hoech said, “The fisherman checked her body and eyes for any injuries, and set her free,” adding that “his description was that she was very lively, a very hot fish. The fisherman also said that from the appearance of the shark’s belly, it looked as if she had recently fed.”
During her brief stay at the aquarium, the 4 1/2-foot-long, 55 1/2-pound white shark was not eating. She was said to be swimming well in the million-gallon Outer Bay exhibit, but the MBA animal care staff “decided it was best to return her to the ocean.”
“Decisions on release are always governed by our concern for the health and well-being of the animals under our care,” Hoech said. “The fact that she’s doing well reaffirms that we made the right decision.”
Like the three other whites that spent between four and six months at the aquarium before being set free, the young female shark was fitted with a tracking device that documents her movements in the wild. That tag is still intact.
The pop-off tag will collect information for 148 days on where the shark travels, and the depths and water temperatures she favors. It is set to pop free in late January and deliver its data via satellite.
The aquarium will begin an eighth field season of white shark conservation research next summer. Because the Outer Bay exhibit will be closed for remodeling and renovations in fall 2009, there will be no attempts to bring a young white shark back to Monterey for exhibit until 2011.

Journalist Organization Voices Concern about Malibu Paparazzi Ordinances

• Rescheduled Local Meeting to Include L.A. Regional Task Force Members

BY ANNE SOBLE

Upon learning that the City of Malibu has been presented with five draft ordinances to regulate paparazzi activity in the community, the board of directors of the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists conducted an emergency meeting by e-mail and publicly voiced its concerns.
Board members said, “We are alarmed by the process and product of efforts by Malibu Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich to draft an anti-paparazzi ordinance. The process was conducted largely in private, in possible violation of open meeting laws, by a group at the Pepperdine Law School.”
The board’s statement added, “The product, as revealed this week, includes five draft ordinances that appear to raise serious constitutional issues and restrict not only the activities of so-called paparazzi, but all journalists.”
SPJ board members stressed that “we share Mayor Conley Ulich’s concern for excesses committed not only by the paparazzi, but any news gatherer. But we, along with major segments of law enforcement, believe there are adequate laws on the books right now, which, if properly enforced, could contain reckless activity by any member of the media.”
SPJ has nearly 10,000 members nationally, and is regarded by many as the nation’s largest and most broad-based journalism organization “dedicated to promoting high standards of ethical behavior and encouraging the free practice of journalism [and] protecting First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press.”
Attorney Peter Eliasberg, the First Amendment expert of the Southern California Foundation of the American Civil Liberties Union also “is interested in reviewing [the ordinances] for potential issues of concern.”
A meeting called by Conley Ulich, in her capacity as the volunteer coordinator of the non-official local paparazzi regulation effort, that was originally slated for Sept. 29 has been rescheduled to Thursday, Oct. 2, to not conflict with Rosh Hashanah.
Conley Ulich has invited the members of the Los Angeles Regional Paparazzi Task Force, a non-legislative, multi-city panel that is critical of paparazzi behavior and calls for stringent laws to curb them in the public arena, to take part in the meeting.
That group’s chair, L.A. City Councilmember Dennis Zine, assumes a “bring ’em on” stance toward SPJ, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other groups concerned about possible loss of First Amendment protections.
Zine says any fear of possible litigation over free press and free speech rights should not impede municipal efforts to control what he calls “packs of wolves on the prowl.”
The Oct. 2 public meeting will be held at the Malibu Performing Arts Center (behind City Hall) from 2 to 4 p.m.

US EPA to Do Beach Study

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to conduct a study of public health risks stemming from bacteria and viruses found commonly on local beaches and further assess pathogens attributable to birds and other wildlife, Los Angeles County officials announced last week.
The federal action is the part of the settlement of a lawsuit taken to U.S. District Court by the county, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies.
“We welcome this effort to better understand the sources of contamination that could provide important information on how to reduce it,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Director of Public Health and Health Officer for the county.
In the recently signed settlement, the EPA agreed to study water quality impacts on human health at a beach that is subject to urban runoff. The EPA agreed to make its findings available to the public no later than December 2010 and publish new water quality criteria based on the study by October 2012.

• The Publisher’s Notebook •

Malibu and the First Amendment: The Paparazzi Follies

BY ANNE SOBLE

It’s show time for the paparazzi regulation debate in Malibu. None other than the impresario of the so-called “Britney Bubble Law” is bringing his traveling troupe to town. Los Angeles City Councilmember Dennis Zine, having taken his anti-paparazzi crusade to The Daily Show (complete with PG-13 comments), Dr. Phil, and nearly every talk radio show within earshot of Southern California, is coming to the Malibu Performing Arts Center on Oct. 2 to bring the community the word that the First Amendment shouldn’t stand in the way of one of the best publicity vehicles that a politician in a world entertainment center could have, even if there aren’t many celebrities in their own district.
Zine chairs the Los Angeles Regional Paparazzi Task Force, which is unofficial and is not even endorsed by most of his council colleagues, let alone his city’s police chief who says enough laws exist to curb miscreant paparazzi. If this sounds familiar, that’s because the volunteer legal-scholars-from-one-law-school-only Malibu committee-commission-project-task force, or any of the other terms used by its sole creator and coordinator, is also unofficial, and the rest of the community’s city council members have declined to give it official status.
Legal scholars who espouse a philosophy that the First Amendment should be construed more narrowly in the “post-9-11” era (but not necessarily the Second Amendment, or other rules of law they might favor) may think they can ramrod free press and free speech constraints through a U.S. Supreme Court that is friendly to their cause, but it appears that the majority of Constitutional experts who are not engaged in similar polemic and proselytization see things very differently.
First Amendment experts are still studying the Malibu draft anti-paparazzi ordinances, but many have already weighed in on Councilmember Zine’s bubble notion. He wants a law that would create a “personal safety zone” between the paparazzi and celebrities. Just don’t ask for specifics. There’s no definition of how large the bubble would be—five feet, 50 feet or 500 feet? And don’t ask what a “celebrity” is. Or who. Would a master list have to be created of who qualifies for special camera-free status? How often would it be updated?
Apart from gutting First Amendment protections, how enforceable is a law that would require a police officer or sheriff’s deputy to carry a tape measure and a celebrity handbook, as well as be able to differentiate in an instant between paparazzi, traditional news media and camera-toting tourists?
What is certain is that Zine and his acolytes in Malibu want to create special taxpayer underwritten privileges for whoever meets their definition of celebrity. Those in the limelight enjoy many perks. If they want to protect their privacy, there are ways. But when they, or we, are in the public arena, the First Amendment has to prevail. If the government can decide who is allowed to take photos in public, content control is not far behind.

Sweetwater Road Fracas Continues

• Serra HOA Appeals Planning Decision to City Council

BY BILL KOENEKER

In an attempt to prohibit a mountaintop road being built from Piuma Road through Sweetwater Mesa to Serra Road to Pacific Coast Highway, the Malibu Planning Commission last week approved a private access road for land on Sweetwater Mesa, but added a condition accepted by the applicant requiring easements going north of the five-lot project to be extinguished.
The complicated legalistic approach was taken after numerous homeowners from the Serra Retreat neighborhood urged the commission to not grant approval for any project that would enable vehicles to travel from Piuma Road onto their private roads.
However, the Serra Canyon Property Owners Association has appealed the commission’s decision and wants the city council to weigh in on the matter.
The highly controversial project was being heard again because the commission was asked to approve a coastal permit for the construction of a 20-feet-wide, 1669-foot-long private access road located northeast of Sweetwater Mesa Road, including variances to allow grading in excess of 1000 cubic yards, retaining walls exceeding six feet in height and building on slopes greater than two-and-a-half to one.
Commissioners were told once again by the same land use consultant, who indicated the property was under different ownership, that the owner wanted to build a house for himself on one of the lots and the others would be developed, or sold. The house lots are outside the city boundaries, but the access road is in the city.
The project has been wending its way through the approval process for the last eight years under different ownerships and the city was ultimately taken to court when it tried to deny the application. The court ruled that there was no credible evidence supporting the supposition that anyone north of the proposed project has any easement over the property that would allow them to travel the road down to PCH.
Some Serra Retreat residents and Sweetwater Mesa Road homeowners had been riled up by handouts from Jim Smith, who lives on Sweetwater Mesa Road, that the applicant had obtained an agreement from the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District for a pipeline and water that would require a service road and easement from Piuma Road.
Don Schmitz and the landowner’s attorney, Stanley Lamport,vigorously insisted no road was possible to the north. “It is an easement for a water line. But we can’t build a road. We have a fixed easement. That is why there are special circumstances,” said Schmitz, who said the owner is a member of the Sweetwater Mesa Homeowners Association. “We have a right to access the road to PCH,” he added.
Commissioner Jeff Jennings asked Lamport questions about easements, and, after a considerable amount of time, and after Lamport said he discussed the matter with his client in Georgia, the applicants agreed to the condition.
Ed Gillespie, who was chairing the meeting since both Commissioner Joan House and Chair Regan Schaar were absent, said he too would vote for a condition to make sure a road to the north would “never, never happen.”
Jennings said the easement provision of the resolution would be recorded against all five properties and show up in the title report. Mazza voted against the resolution, but did not elaborate on his dissenting vote.
Serra Property Owners Association attorney Fred Gaines unsuccessfully argued the commission could not make the findings for the required approvals and insisted the proposal needed an Environmental Impact Report.
STORMWATER TREATMENT
By unanimous vote, the planning commission approved an application to permit the demolition of the concrete pad and related improvements of a temporary pilot water runoff treatment facility and allow construction of a new, permanent water runoff treatment plant.
The facility, which will treat flows from Ramirez Creek, is located at the creek outfall in the Paradise Cove parking lot.
The purpose of the project, according to city planners, is to reduce the bacteria levels of the creek water. The new facility was been custom designed for the site, with the capacity to treat all dry weather and most winter wet weather flows.
Bo Bowman, project manager, said the city has learned quite a bit from the treatment facility at Marie Canyon built by the county, which failed after the fire-ravaged area dumped more water and debris into the facility than the unit could handle.
The new treatment unit will use settling to remove sediment and debris prior to motile-media filtration and ultraviolet light to remove finer particles and sterilize potentially infectious organisms in the influent. The treatment flow capacity for sediment removal will be 3600 gallons per minute and will be 900 gallons per minute for filtration and ultraviolet disinfection. The plant is designed to treat multiple pollutants. It also has the potential to be upgraded in the future as needed.
A masonry enclosure eight-to-12-feet high will be constructed around the tanks and equipment to secure them from vandalism, protect them from the 100-year creek flows and to reduce their visual impact on scenic resources.
The treated creek water will be discharged into the ocean adjacent to the existing culverts, in a manner that ensures that no scouring will occur, according to planners.

View Protection Task Force Gets Ready for Its Close-Up

BY BILL KOENEKER

The View Protection Task Force has only met once, but the Malibu City Council agreed this week to sunset the committee in six months, pay for videotaping its sessions and hire a facilitator to move the panel along.
Councilmember Sharon Barovsky, who said she observed the first meeting and found it contentious, wants the public to see what is going on. She asked, and the council agreed, to having the meetings videotaped for broadcast on City TV-3.
The panel would also be required to work within a deadline and present a product for staff and council review in six months.
There was some debate about whether the task force should produce a draft ordinance or a set of recommendations. Councilmember Andy Stern said he was opposed to the committee preparing proposed legislation and said he thought that might be a waste of time.
City Attorney Christi Hogin said that how the work product was delivered, including a draft ordinance was not a problem, and indicated there were many issues the task force needed to deal with.
The cost of the staff time for videotaping meetings, including set-up and editing time, is estimated at $4000 based upon 12 two-hour meetings.
The cost of hiring a consultant to facilitate the meetings is estimated to be $25,000 for six months.
Councilmember Jefferson Wagner said he thought the expenses were small in light of the millions of dollars a future ordinance could cost the city. He also thought there was nothing wrong with videotaping the meeting, since it might temper remarks.
Barovsky indicated she wanted the council to consider videotaping the meetings for community viewing. “This would keep the public informed and would encourage participation. It would also relieve staff time and provide additional reference to the action minutes,” she added.
Councilmember John Sibert said he agreed with broadcasting the meetings. “There were 67 percent of the voters in favor. They need to see how the law gets made. It is also important to have a deadline,” he said.
Stern reiterated his position that he probably would not support any law being brought forth if it did not have the input of the council. “I am opposed to the city spending a lot of money on this. The task force could spend a lot of time on a draft ordinance that might be a waste of time,” he added.
Sibert said the task force could also recommend doing nothing. “That is an option,” he added.

Malibu White Shark Returned to Local Waters after 11 Days on Display

• Could Push for Labor Day Crowds Have Shortened Adjustment Time in Point Dume Holding Pen?

BY ANNE SOBLE

Last week’s positive forecast for the young white shark transported from Malibu to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Outer Bay exhibit on Aug. 27 proved short-lived as the report that the female shark had eaten on her third day in captivity turned out to be the only time she fed over the span of 11 days she was on display.
The shark was swimming well in the million-gallon exhibit, but the aquarium’s animal care staff decided it “was best to return her to the ocean” immediately. She was tagged and released at 1:30 p.m. Sunday in offshore waters of the Santa Barbara Channel.
MBA released the other three sharks that were formerly on display in the waters of Monterey Bay. Ken Peterson, the spokesperson for the aquarium said, “This was the first shark released down south. Our animal care staff decided that since the latest shark was smaller and younger than the others, and hadn’t been eating regularly, it was best to release her closer to the warmer waters where young sharks are typically found. That spared her a long swim south on an empty stomach.”
The first shark put on display in 2004, also a female, was over five pounds heavier and six inches longer when she was caught. She spent the longest time on exhibit—198 days. The shark caught Aug. 16 only spent 11 days in the holding pen off Point Dume, somewhat less than her predecessors, but MBA crews said she appeared to have adjusted to captivity.
Like the three whites that spent between four and six months at the aquarium before being released, the recently returned shark is fitted with a pop-up tag that will collect information on where she travels, the depths she dives to, and the water temperatures she favors for the first 148 days she’s back in the wild.
The tag is scheduled to pop free in late January. On the pre-programmed date, it disengages from the shark and floats to the surface. The data on it are sent via satellite back to the laboratory where they can be analyzed.
In some cases, the tag itself is recovered and can provide even more detailed information.
After this shark’s transport to Monterey, Peterson said renovations to the Outer Bay Exhibit slated for late 2009 meant that this young white would be the last to be displayed until 2011.
The MBA spokesperson said it will not try to find a replacement. “[There will be] no further attempts this year; the pen is gone and that part of our conservation research project is completed for 2008. We could still tag young sharks down south, but that’s the extent of it.”
As for 2009, Peterson said, “Next year we do not plan on bringing a white shark to Monterey, because of the planned exhibit closure after Labor Day,” adding, “We don’t plan to set up the ocean pen until we’re again in a position to consider bringing a shark to Monterey [in 2011].”
In October 2004, white sharks gained new protection in a global wildlife treaty approved by the U.N.-affiliated Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Under the new regulations, trade will be closely monitored and may be banned if white shark numbers keep falling.
On Friday, Sept. 12, at noon, Peterson will host a live video webcast on white sharks featuring MBA’s curator of field operations John O’Sullivan and white shark researcher Chris Perle.
The webcast will feature exclusive video of past MBA sharks, including their arrival, care and release back into the ocean.
Instructions on how to register to participate in the webcast are available at www.montereybay aquarium.org/whiteshark/

Broad Beach Group and Coastal Commission Tackle Erosion

• Western Stretch of Prime Malibu Shoreline Now Looks Like the Perimeter of a War Zone

BY HANS LAETZ

With big winter storms on the horizon and western Broad Beach looking like a fortified battlefront, a group of homeowners says it is spending big bucks to quickly come up with a plan to save the remaining sliver of what used to be, in fact, a broad beach.
Oceanographers, attorneys and coastal engineers are conducting studies paid for by the Trancas Property Owners Association to find out why the sand at what was once one of Malibu’s most beautiful beaches has suddenly eroded, said the group’s attorney, Ken Ehrlich.
More importantly, the Broad Beach homeowners group hopes to put years of enmity and dispute with the California Coastal Commission and public access advocates behind them.
“We’re trying to take a leading role in doing this for the community as a whole and doing the right thing,” Ehrlich said. “We have well-respected coastal engineers, including some who were recommended to us by the Coastal Commission and who have done work for the commission, studying why the tidal action has been so strong.”
Coastal Commission enforcement officer Pat Veesart said the homeowners are showing good faith by getting emergency coastal development permits from the City of Malibu to install stopgap sandbags. “We’ve encouraged them to come up with a universal solution for the entire beach, and they are taking the right steps,” he said.
“We are looking forward to helping them find a solution.”
The permanent plan has not been settled on yet, and it’s too early to discuss options publicly, Ehrlich said. But homeowners at a recent meeting were told longterm restoration solutions might include trucking sand from a distant open pit sand mine to the beach, or asking for permission to dredge nearby waters and pump sand onto the beach.
But Ehrlich said the plan for now is to work on saving the existing shore.
As of this week, sandbags, walls of thick cloth fabric and some huge sand-filled plastic sacks line the western section of the beach, home to some of Malibu’s priciest oceanfront villas. At anything more than a modest high tide, the beach is gone, and persons walking up the shore find themselves in waves at least a foot deep.
The Pacific Ocean has behaved strangely in the last two years and munched into the beach, as usual, during the winter storms. But the normal summertime beach expansion, called accretion, seems to be AWOL. This summer’s normal high tides have chewed into sand dunes that appear on aerial photographs of the shore taken as far back as the 1930s.
Ehrlich said possible repair and replacement plans are being drawn up now, and will be presented to homeowners for financial review next month. The cost, he said, will be “in the millions.”
“The Trancas Property Owners [group is] hiring the best people it can find to come up with a cause and a solution,” Ehrlich said. “We believe the work will only entail property and land masses inland of the mean high tide line.”
But exactly where that property line is, right now and historically, is a matter of continuous dispute. And beneath the current tide of good will lie years of court battles, public relations offensives and bad blood between beach access advocates and homeowners, who have at times hired private guards who have harassed people on public beach sand.
And the path ahead may require intimate coordination and agreement between the two sides, both Veesart and Ehrlich agreed. Veesart noted that any possible plan to alter the shoreline would likely require approval from the Army Corps of Engineers, California State Lands Commission, state Fish and Game Department, City of Malibu and—last and most certainly not least—the Coastal Commission.
Then comes the contentious fight over public access, Veesart said. “and that is always an issue.” No homeowner owns any land beyond the average high tide line, and that line is not permanently fixed and has moved towards the houses this year.
Any additional sand placed on the beach might be seen as a move to push the property line back out to sea, and could mean placing sand on what is now public property. The public, Veesart said, would have every right to demand unfettered access to that beach.
Ehrlich says engineers are working on a plan for some type of hard protection on land that is unquestionably private property, but said that may not be the best concept.
“I don’t believe it would serve the public’s benefit to see a beach to be allowed to erode, and to allow a beach dune system to be destroyed,” he said.
On top of the issue is the fact that the Trancas Property Owners Association is a voluntary group without the power to levy mandatory fees, or force its solution on any landowner in the midst of the hundred-plus homes who may object to the plan. But Ehrlich says he has “never seen the beach owners so unified as they are now.”
Ehrlich and Broad Beach residents vigorously deny allegations that the problem may originate in the 2005 construction of a sand berm using Homeowners Association-paid bulldozers, an allegation leveled by some public access advocates. The berm was quickly bulldozed flat after the Coastal Commission staff issued an order, and pointed out that publicly-owned sand had been scraped onto beachfront lots owned mostly by private parties.
But this year’s erosion has occurred only from Trancas Creek westward, where the berm was built and then bulldozed flat. East of Trancas Creek, regulars say Zuma Beach is wider than in years past, in some places by more than 20 feet.
The public beach at Zuma, however, has been strewn this summer with thousands of small plastic strings that have washed up with the seaweed, apparent litter from early attempts at Broad Beach sandbagging using fiberglass-weave bags. Those bags quickly fall apart in wave action, and homeowners have filled and lost thousands of them this summer.
Hardier sandbags made of jute appear to be the only ones capable of withstanding high tides, and are now the fabric of choice on Broad Beach. In the meantime, county crews have carted off the fiberglass string that washed ashore.
Veesart said the Coastal Commission is watching how the City of Malibu handles the emergency permits for the temporary sandbags, which are by state law good for 90 days and will start expiring next month. The city has jurisdiction on the emergency permits because they are for installations on the landward side of the high tide line, but with that line moving towards houses, the commission may reassert initial jurisdiction on the emergency permits.
And the permanent solution, Veesart and Ehrlich both said, will require the cooperation of all involved.

Study Planned for MHS Athletic Field Lighting

• School Board Seeks State Panel’s OK

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

At its Sept. 4 meeting, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education took another step forward with plans to install permanent field lighting at Malibu High School’s athletic field.
The board was asked to approve an agreement with the firm of Glenn Lukos Associates for biologist study report services, described by the board as “a biological field study and recommendation for the athletic field lighting project, for the Measure BB program.”
The Orange County firm also provides landscape monitoring report services at MHS.
The meeting agenda stated that “The district is in the planning and design phase for the lighting of the athletic field at the Malibu High School. A biological study of the effects of the lighting will be required by the Coastal Commission prior to approval of the project.”
At its Aug. 21 meeting, the school board voted to approve hiring CAA Planning to facilitate negotiating a new Coastal Development Permit with the California Coastal Commission to allow permanent field lighting at the MHS athletic field.
That move has been sharply criticized by Malibu Park area residents, who contend that the athletic field was permitted with the condition that there would be no permanent field lighting.
Rental lights have been used for MHS’s nighttime athletic events. The existing coastal development permit prohibits both temporary and permanent field lighting.
Funding for the plan to develop permanent field lighting at the high school has been allocated as part of the Measure BB budget.

Malibu Paparazzi Document Files Include Five Draft Ordinances

• Mayor Had Said No Measures Were Being Drafted Days Before Copies Were Submitted

BY ANNE SOBLE

Despite repeated assertions by the mayor that no new laws to restrict local paparazzi activities were being drafted, the texts of five ordinances that do just that are included in a one-foot-thick stack of documents compiled for her by faculty and staff at the Pepperdine School of Law.
The ordinances were provided for Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich, acting as an individual, ostensibly without the city direction. However, a questionable city council consensus vote at its spring quarterly goal-setting meeting—that was reworded but never revoked—raises issues of culpability for her actions.
At that meeting, Conley Ulich specifically said that her efforts would focus on drafting an anti-paparazzi ordinance with the free advice of Pepperdine Law School Dean Kenneth Starr. Starr, however, headed overseas shortly thereafter, and the task was assigned to other faculty members.
The mayor also said at that time she had enlisted the Southern California offices of the American Civil Liberties Union in her cause, but the ACLU indicated it would not participate in an effort that a spokesperson said would likely fail because of First Amendment free press and speech protections, and indicated there are sufficient laws on the books to address trespass, unsafe driving and other illegal behavior cited by Conley Ulich.
All summer, the exact nature of Conley Ulich’s anti-paparazzi project remained muddy. Even law school faculty, taking part in an Aug. 1 public meeting called by Conley Ulich after a freelance reporter threatened litigation over the until-then secret deliberations on paparazzi regulation, said that they thought that their efforts were a city project.
On Aug. 1, Conley Ulich repeated what she had told the press on numerous occasions—that no draft ordinances existed and none were planned. Yet, just three working days later, on Aug. 7, five proposed measures were submitted to her by Pepperdine.
The stack of documents is available for public review at City Hall, but that had not been told to Conley Ulich’s council colleagues, according to the comments and questions at Monday night’s city council meeting.
Most of the materials are First Amendment and Constitutional Law boilerplate, including journal articles and case law that was compiled by the law school’s research librarian.
As for the ordinances, all five are footnoted on each page as “provided for general informational purposes only [and] not intended to be, or substituted for legal advice.”
Yet “free legal advice” was part of the pitch Conley Ulich gave the city council in April when she sought their approval to pursue the paparazzi project.
In addition, the footnoted proviso states there are “no representations as to the accuracy of the information provided herein,” and there is a disclaimer of “all liability for actions taken or not taken on the basis of such information.”
The white paper accompanying the ordinances states that Conley Ulich requested them, although she is now trying to squelch critics by saying a new law may not even be needed.
The white paper notes that among ways the city might try to skirt First Amendment protections is to argue that the paparazzi do not gather “news.” However, there is no definition of what news is.
A legal case is made for differentiating between restrictions on content versus those of “time, place and manner,” an approach that has allowed some court-sanctioned restrictions on press behavior.
Acknowledging “it is difficult to say with any certainty which analysis a court would apply to the proposed ordinances, there is a sense that the Malibu draft ordinances’ emphasis on “the privacy and security of school children” might resonate with the current high court.
Ordinance One focuses on privacy and security concerns of celebrities and their children at local schools, creating photography-free zones, apparently without recognizing that all children should be entitled to the same protections. And also without acknowledging the proviso that currently exists in the Malibu Municipal Code that exempts news coverage by the media from comparable restrictions.
The proposed ordinance could especially impede the work of freelancers, such as Hans Laetz, the journalist who threatened the legal action that led to Conley Ulich calling the Aug. 1 public meeting.
The proposed media constraints also appear to create a double-tiered legal system for celebrities. City of Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, who regards the paparazzi regulation projects as a “waste of time,” has said he finds these kinds of proposed laws offensive because “celebrities have no more rights than the rest of us.”
Ordinance Two has further restrictions, prohibiting access to drop-off and pick-up areas, which could prohibit the photographing of dangerous driving and parking conditions at Malibu High School, or elementary schools where vehicles create logjams. Ordinance Three is a variation on this.
Ordinances Four and Five address possible harassment and physical and emotional harm from being photographed by paparazzi, with Five the most restrictive as it could ban all newspaper photographers from school grounds.
The controversial Morse v. Frederick ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court—the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case— in 2007 is viewed by the Pepperdine legal team as a reason the proposed ordinances might be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Dean Starr argued the Morse case that underlies the white paper’s stance that the court “has traditionally evinced a strong concern, even where competing interests are at stake, with maintaining a school environment that minimized undue disruptions to the educational function of those institutions.”
However, the ACLU and media interest organizations, as well as most major law enforcement officials, contend that enough laws are on the books to address issues of dangerous driving, trespass, and all forms of harassment.
During the public aspect of the paparazzi regulation project, Conley Ulich floated several proposals for special celebrity protections, including a separate 911 line to report paparazzi intrusions, and the placement of cameras throughout the commercial centers of Malibu to catch errant paparazzi on film.
After criticism and questionable news coverage from coast-to-coast, the mayor now appears to be modifying her stance and saying that an ordinance may not be required if the community does not want one.
Regarding Laetz’s original challenge of Conley Ulich’s efforts, he had indicated in August that his First Amendment concerns were satisfied with the availability of what was supposed to be “research” by the Pepperdine team.
After looking at the documents this week, Laetz told the Malibu Surfside News, “This is just what we were afraid of. The City of Malibu has now gone to the most conservative law school in the country, and asked them in secret meetings to come up with a draconian ordinance to ban newsgathering at or near schools. And Ken Starr’s faculty delivered.”
Laetz, who freelances for The News and a number of other media outlets in the region, added, “[These ordinances were crafted] without the public being allowed to watch the public’s business being done. It doesn’t matter that the ordinances are only proposals, or that they were drafted at the request of a committee of one council member, Ms. Conley Ulich. California’s open meetings laws require government agencies to conduct law-drafting exercises in public. This committee of one violated the law and continues to violate the law.”
The freelancer continued, “Judge Starr is already aiding and abetting the City of Malibu to openly flaunt the state’s open meeting laws. Now, he and his staff have drafted proposed city laws that would drastically restrict the news gathering that I do on a daily basis.
“Judge Starr successfully convinced a slim majority of the Supreme Court that freedom of speech should be restricted in the interest of maintaining a distraction-free school environment, in the infamous “Bong Hits” case. Now, his colleagues would take that one step further and ban news reporters from schools and public streets near schools.”
Laetz said he had decided not to pursue legal action against the city after Conley Ulich publicly said at the Aug. 1 meeting that her “committee” was only engaged in research.
Laetz added, “That appears not to have been the case, as we see that the committee also drafted potential ordinances for the City of Malibu, at the request of the city council, through the power it gave by consensus to the mayor.”
He concluded, “I don’t want to sue the city, but this needs to be reevaluated.”
In what she calls her Mayor’s Update, Conley Ulich said this week, “I am trying to determine whether people in our small town concur with L.A. Police Chief Bratton that exploring the paparazzi issues further is a “waste of time,” or with the ACLU that current laws are adequate.”
Conley Ulich has scheduled a meeting at Malibu City Hall on Monday, Sept. 29, from 4-5 p.m. “to hear from the public at large” on the matter. She said that comments can also be mailed to her at City Hall.

• The Publisher’s Notebook •

In Malibu: Always Read the Fine Print

BY ANNE SOBLE

All of the attention being heaped on the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 7025, has prompted some musings on forms of local government. For example, Wasilla’s municipal government consists of an elected mayor and a six-member city council. The mayorship is an independent executive.
The City of Malibu, with almost double the population, is a general law city that operates under what is commonly referred to the council-manager form of government. The five-member city council is elected at-large to serve four-year terms.
The local mayor’s office is rotated among all council members and is essentially ceremonial. The mayor presides at council meetings and serves as a public face for the city in times of crisis, but the mayor has no authority not shared equally by all of the other council members.
However, one now has to wonder whether the current city council is consciously, or subconsciously, subverting its design to be closer to that of Wasilla’s, especially on the issue of new laws to regulate local paparazzi. Are the powers of the city council being diluted?
The mayor ostensibly has no authority to unilaterally oversee the drafting of legislation, but that is exactly what has been done if one looks through the files of what is supposed to be solely research on paparazzi regulation now available for public review at City Hall.
This is material, judging from the council member comments at Monday night’s meeting, that the mayor didn’t bother to tell her colleagues even existed. But perhaps that’s not so surprising, since the mayor has repeatedly stated there “are no draft ordinances.”
We have already noted that faculty at the Pepperdine School of Law who worked on this material thought they were performing a city service, not a personal one that essentially was a citizen’s request. But again, as also has been noted, when the title of mayor is used in an unofficial capacity, it gives the impression of official sanction, especially among those who may not realize the specific nature of the Malibu mayorship.
Is this the way potential municipal legal conflicts with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution should be undertaken? Especially since these ordinances are appended with fine print stating they are “not intended to be legal advice [and] no representation is made as to the accuracy of the information.”
Sometimes, the smallest size type is the most important of all. The “Mayor’s Update” on this issue and others also comes with its own fine print: “It should be noted that the above is provided for information only. The opinions and views expressed by the mayor do not necessarily reflect the views of the entire city council or the City of Malibu.” Is another title in order?
Perhaps Malibuites could be issued official municipal magnifying glasses to guarantee that they don’t miss any of the fine print. The expression “caveat emptor” becomes “caveat voter” at Malibu City Hall.

Malibu Green Machine Short of Funds

• But May Be Long on Potential Liability Issues

BY BILL KOENEKER

There was a good news, bad news scenario for the Malibu Green Machine, the volunteer organization that is attempting to beautify the Pacific Coast Highway median.
The Malibu City Council agreed to assume liability and maintenance for the project, which stretches from Cross Creek Road to Malibu Canyon Road on PCH.
However, with just 23 days to go before construction is supposed to start, the project is short $300,000.
That was the word from Jo Giese, who heads up the group, and told the city council it has been using the $50,000 in funding given to MGM by the city to try to raise additional funds.
What kept the project alive this week is the city council’s approval of an agreement with the California Department of Transportation for maintenance of landscape areas within the state highway right-of-way.
Prompted by comments from local activist Ryan Embree, who cautioned that the Caltrans agreement would subject the city to liability on PCH, the council spent a considerable amount of time discussing the pros and cons of entering into an agreement that indemnified the state.
Caltrans had made it clear that it would not issue an encroachment permit if the city did not agree to its terms.
City Attorney Christi Hogin said the request was a standard indemnification arrangement, and the city would be assuming the same liability it does for any public works project it is involved in that requires a complete assumption of risk.
“The alternative is to sit here and do nothing,” said Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich.
Councilmember Sharon Barovsky said it was clear to her that without the permit, there would be no project, when she asked Hogin to weigh in on the matter.
Eventually, the council members were reassured, and unanimously approved the agreement.

The First Week of School: It’s All about the Numbers

• Declining Enrollment Allows More Out-of-Area Students Access to School District Campuses

BY HANS LAETZ

Hundreds of Malibu students, and seemingly that many SUVs, returned to local campuses this week as school began, with enrollment up at every school except one.
The biggest changes clearly are at the two campuses in Winter Canyon that were left slightly charred after last winter’s Malibu Canyon Fire. Both Our Lady of Malibu and Webster Elementary schools have completed the cosmetic painting and gardening tasks left after the fire, which took out one classroom each at the neighboring campuses.
But one classroom at Webster remains sealed; its contents burned and its blueprints for remodeling held up by bureaucratic delays in Sacramento, said principal Phil Cott.
“The Office of the State Architect has to sign off on the blueprints, and they can’t find the original set of blueprints, so we’re stuck right now,” lamented Cott, as he supervised a new crop of kindergartners slurping ice cream and making friends at a Friday party.
The closed classroom means band classes, reading help and other school activities are happening in the cafeteria or library.
Across the street at Our Lady of Malibu Parochial School, trenching began last week for a new computer lab to replace the one lost in last October’s fire, said co-principals Edie O’Brien and Suzanne Ricci.
Changing demographics in the Point Dume Marine Sciences Elementary School have resulted in a student drought, with enrollment dropping to 252 pupils and the school losing two classes, down from 14 to 12, said principal Chi Kim. The school has accepted some youngsters from outside the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District that were turned down by the other two local schools, which are full.
In fact, waiting lists exist for non-Malibu residents for most elementary classes at Webster and Juan Cabrillo elementaries, their principals said.
At Webster, enrollment is up by 20 to 400, said principal Cott. “We have new kids in every grade, probably some of them coming from the private schools during this little economic downturn,” he surmised. “Good thing we had room for them.”
At OLM, the school has been recarpeted and the office remodeled, and enrollment is up 5 to 160, said Ricci. The school has hired a new Spanish teacher, Irma Seminario.
At Malibu’s westernmost elementary school, Juan Cabrillo in Malibu Park, principal Barry Yates said enrollment is up 20 to 310 kids. “We are closer to capacity than we ever have been before, as the school board has decided to allow us to enroll more children from outside the district, but whose parents are in Malibu during the day,” he said. “That certainly adds to our strength and diversity.”
Cabrillo has added Smart Boards, those computer-linked combinations drawing slate/ whiteboard/TV screens, in 10 classrooms and will have the remaining four rooms equipped soon, “Thanks to the generosity of our PTA,” Yates said.
A new class for special education students has been added at Cabrillo, with the school now able to have each child start the day in a mainstream classroom and then receive individual instruction, as needed, Yates said.
A new teacher, Tamara Anderson, joins the Cabrillo staff this year, Yates said, and Sheryl Murdock transfers west from Webster. Margo Dunn has transferred from Point Dume to Webster, as the district dealt with the loss of two classrooms on the point.
At Point Dume, “Through the generous donation of our PTA, we have Smart Boards in every classroom,” principal Kim said. That school lost two teachers due to declining enrollment, and has no new teachers this year.
All three public elementary schools have new math textbooks, and they are integrated into the Smart Board systems so that math lessons and drills can be projected onto a screen, and students can use their fingers to manipulate objects or solve problems, Kim said.
LEAP programs, an after-school enrichment program for elementary students, are going to be offered at Cabrillo and Point Dume. CREST before-school and after-school education programs are still offered at Cabrillo.
At Malibu High School, enrollment is up slightly to 1180 students, said principal Mark Kelly. No major changes are seen there, with the exception of a new middle school principal, Jennifer Tedford. She comes to the local district from a teaching position at Beverly Hills High.
Kelly said there are no changes in class times, parking rules or circulation patterns on jammed Morning View Drive.
New teachers at Malibu High this year are John Allen and Wendi Hoffman, Spanish; Chris Byrne, science; Jordan Ervin, social studies; Amy Loch, vocal music; and Laree Reynolds, humanities.

Beachgoers Aren’t Deterred by the Clouds over Labor Day Holiday

• The Relatively Quiet Local Scene Pleased Residents

BY BILL KOENEKER

A problem free Labor Day weekend in Malibu on Pacific Coast Highway and along the beaches was reported by local authorities.
“It was a pretty routine holiday,” said one lifeguard, who reported that small waves kept the rescues down, and the overcast weather for two of the three days contributed to less than staggering beach crowds.
Lifeguards said they estimated the number of visitors to all of Malibu’s shoreline for the total three days at 386,500.
During Saturday, Sunday and Monday, there were 121 rescues and lifeguards attended to 132 emergency service calls.
The surf was about three feet and water temperature reached into the upper 60s, according to lifeguards.
Traffic on Pacific Coast Highway was considered unremarkable for the last summertime holiday of the year. There were a total of six accidents with the most serious being a motorcyclist who was knocked down by a vehicle behind him, according to authorities.
“They were mostly bumper taps and two DUI arrests. The motorcycle accident was the most serious,” said a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
The motorcycle accident took place on Monday afternoon at the intersection of PCH and Trancas Canyon Road.
A woman driving a Honda was in the left turn lane at the intersection in PCH waiting to turn, when she decided to go straight ahead. She said she felt the impact as she began to turn when the right rear end of her vehicle collided with the motorcyclist, who suffered a fractured left ankle, according to a sheriff’s report.

Malibu ‘Great’ White Shark Now on Display

BY ANNE SOBLE

Monterey Bay Aquarium spokesperson Ken Peterson said the young white shark that journeyed north last week to be placed in MBA’s 1.2 million-gallon Outer Bay exhibit “is settling in well and fed over the weekend for the first time.”
The female shark’s demeanor and health, including her swimming and feeding patterns, will be key determinants in how long she remains on display before being returned to the wild with tracking tags to record her travels.
The shark is the fourth of the species to be put on display at the aquarium, but was the fifth to try out for the part this summer. A half dozen other sharks were caught, tagged and released during the same time frame.
The 4 1/2-foot-long young white weighs 55 1/2 pounds. She was caught by commercial fishers in a seine net off Malibu on Aug. 16.
MBA does not announce when a shark is going to be transferred from the ocean holding pen located off Point Dume to the Monterey aquarium to avoid a media circus during the loading of the animal at the Malibu Pier into the special vehicle equipped for marine transport.
But it doesn’t take long for a new great white on display to become a major news event.
For more information about the exhibit, check out the information about white sharks and the Outer Bay Cam at www.mbayaq.org.

Photo credit, MBA/Randy Wilder

City Attorney Slams Unauthorized Usage of Municipal Logo and Seal

• Developer’s Consultant Says It’s a Misunderstanding

BY BILL KOENEKER

While both sides battle at this week’s Malibu Planning Commission meeting over a proposed road in upper Sweetwater Mesa, the opponents have been quietly circulating a document that is raising some local eyebrows.
It is a letter from the Malibu City Attorney to the land use consulting firm Don Schmitz and Associates, demanding that formatted documents being submitted to the city by Schmitz’s office should immediately cease.
“The purpose of this letter is to demand that you immediately cease all unauthorized use of the City of Malibu’s logo, seal, letterhead and planning commission agenda report form,” wrote City Attorney Christi Hogin.
“I am informed that you have submitted what purports to be a staff report and resolution to the planning commission. In fact, you or your associates prepared the document and submitted it in a format that could be confused with the city staff’s true work product.”
Schmitz declined to speak to the Malibu Surfside News on the record and referred for the record to a letter his attorney sent to Hogin about the matter.
“The document to which you refer was submitted as a draft, which staff was free to use or reject. It was presented to staff on that basis. There was no attempt to mislead city staff as to it purpose,” wrote Schmitz’s attorney Stanley Lamport.
Both parties agree that it is not unusual for private planning consultants to submit information for inclusion in a staff report, or even to submit a suggested draft of the report.
However, Lamport acknowledges this submission went much further. “What distinguished this situation is that the submission appeared on a city format. This unique occurrence has never happened before and, in light of the concerns you expressed in your letter, will not occur again. It occurred because a Schmitz associate used that format with the thought it would make it easier for staff to complete the report,” Lamport went on to write.
Hogin indicated the uses of the city’s logo and “the documents you prepared mock the city’s format and fraudulently state that the report was” prepared by staff, reviewed by the planning manager and approved by the head of the department.
“In the future, however, the city will not accept documents fraudulently styled as ‘staff reports.’ We view this as an aggressive and inappropriate effort to usurp the city’s role as an independent evaluator of a project application,” the city attorney concluded.
Lamport disagreed, noting the draft was delivered to the city personally and the Schmitz planner showed the document to the city planner and specifically discussed the use of the city format with the planner at the time.
“The city planner did not raise any objections to the document and took it knowing how it was formatted. What occurred was not ‘an aggressive and inappropriate effort to usurp the city…’ as you claim. All of us, Schmitz and Associates included, have always understood that your city’s staff has the ultimate say on the content of the report to the planning commission and city council. For that very reason, Schmitz and Associates submitted the document in question not only in a printed form, but as a word document on a disc so staff could modify if and as it chose. We hope that this situation can be recognized for the honest effort to provide information to assist city staff that it was, rather than presumed to be something it was not,” the Schmitz attorney concluded.

Charges Filed in Paps Scuffle on Point Dume

• Two Locals Told to Appear in Court

BY HANS LAETZ

Misdemeanor battery charges have been filed against two Malibu men in connection with the now infamous shoving match between paparazzi and local beachgoers at Little Dume Beach on June 21.
Skylar Martin Peak, 24, and Philip John Hildebrand, 30, were not arrested, but letters was sent to them Tuesday by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, directing them to appear for arraignment in Malibu court on Oct. 14.
The men could be sentenced to a maximum of six months in jail and a $2000 fine if convicted, but such sentences are rarely imposed unless defendants have a prior record of similar offenses.
The victim, Richid Altmbareckouhammou, who was working for a French news agency at the time, was thrown into the water by the defendants on that Saturday afternoon, authorities claim.
That was the first skirmish between the beachgoers and a dozen paparazzi who showed up to photograph actor Matthew McConaughey surfing.
A second contretemps the next day remains under investigation, officials said.
Video of the incident was posted on websites, but local residents complained the tape was edited to remove provocations by the photographers.
The entire incident gained worldwide attention and prompted Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich to publicly call for study of a potential ordinance regulating paparazzi. That effort, assisted by Pepperdine University law professors, continues, although support for it from the other four city council members appears to be weak.

LADWP Gets TRO against Paragliding Instructor and Club for Malibu Site

• City Agency Seeks to Prohibit Further Use of Corral Canyon Land and Files Trespass Charges

BY ANNE SOBLE

The owner of acreage in Corral Canyon that has been used as a de facto paraglider launching and landing site for years, allegedly without authorization, has obtained a temporary restraining order against paragliding school operator Claude Fiset and the Malibu Paragliding Club.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power also has filed a complaint for trespass against the same parties.
The grounds for the TRO are that “the city needs immediate protection from liability, as well as its legitimate interest in making sure the public and these trespassers are not hurt as a result of their illegal use of city property.”
On Aug. 8, a paraglider being instructed by Fiset was killed when his craft smashed into a hillside on LADWP property. The agency still declines to formally comment on the specifics of Jonathan “Jake” Langbehn’s death, attributed by the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office to “multiple blunt force injuries.”
A spokesperson for the agency, who provided the court filings to the Malibu Surfside News, said, “We have a September date for a hearing on an order to show cause why a preliminary restraining order should not be issued.”
The LADWP, which provides electricity and water for the City of Los Angeles, has owned the 102 undeveloped acres for over 50 years, and the land is visibly noticed as private property.
Fiset, the owner of the Uptimal paragliding school, and the Malibu Paragliding Club, which, until recently, listed Corral Canyon as a site for its members’ use, were slated to be served by Sept. 3.
The defendants are to appear in downtown Los Angeles Superior Court on Sept. 17 “to show why a preliminary or permanent injunction should not be ordered, restraining [all] persons acting for you, or on your behalf, from entering [or] using property of the City of Los Angeles DWP...”
In a declaration by Deputy City Attorney Mary Dennis, who prepared the court filings, Dennis said she asked Fiset “if he would be opposing the motion, [and] he stated that he did not know and that it would be the subject of discussion with [Malibu Paragliding] Club members.”
Fiset told The News that there are “no comments just yet.”
Jai Pal Khalsa, the president of the MPC, said, “We would not comment upon pending litigation.”
In the trespass complaint, LADWP alleges that on Aug. 8,
“the defendants...were involved in some way with the death of [Langbehn, and] that at the defendant’s instruction and direction, the decedent began his paraglide from a precipice on the subject property and soon thereafter crashed into a hillside, causing his death.”
It alleges unknown past trespasses and that the acts of the defendants “were willful and fraudulent in that each defendant knew or should have known that none had permission to use [the Corral Canyon site] either for personal pleasure or personal financial gain.”
The city attorney’s office is seeking general and punitive damages, court costs and a permanent injunction against all future paragliding at the site.
LADWP has not stated whether there is any indication of possible legal action by Langbehn’s estate.
The accident has been a major topic of discussion on local and regional paragliding websites.
In a Web posting on the date of Langbehn’s death, an acquaintance of Fiset wrote about a visit to the Corral Canyon site a week or so before the fatal accident, “Claude was deep into training a newbie, who, when not doing confusing things with lengths of string and paraglider fabric, was a professional photographer named Jake.
“Unfortunately, what became clearer and clearer over the course of several hours was that the wind conditions were terrible. The wind was far too strong. Jake kept trying to launch, and for his pains was dragged around, flipped over, and generally abused by the environment.
“I watched his white t-shirt slowly become brown and amused myself by taking videos of his efforts.”
This narrative is still online, although it now offers condolences on Langbehn’s death.
Other websites include commentaries on the accident, including several that refer to “the hole”—a depression on the hill where Langbehn crashed that is said to produce rotor, or wind turbulence, under the very conditions that make Corral ideal for flight.
One paraglider wrote, “I can tell you that I have gotten whacked flying too close to the hole, and I’ve witnessed others taking collapses skirting this area. Based upon the placement of the pilot in the video [of the accident recovery operation], it appears that he flew deeper into the hole than I personally consider safe.”
Many of these paragliders think that there should be sites in Malibu for free flight and training.
There appears to be a consensus that since deaths of hikers and bikers occur in the local mountains, a PG fatality should not deter potential authorization of the use of motorless craft, even if motorized paragliders are prohibited because of the high fire danger in brush areas.

• The Publisher’s Notebook •

The Malibu Paragliding Paradox

BY ANNE SOBLE

Since we ran the first in a series of articles on Aug. 14 about the recent fatal paraglider accident and the response by public agencies to what was allegedly widespread unauthorized use of publicly-owned lands for paragliding instruction and flights, we have received numerous emails from paragliders urging that local residents support keeping as many Malibu locations open to the sport as possible.
The early tenor of some of these communications was that paragliders have the same right to use public lands as everyone else, but that tone has been modified as pilots learned that people and groups that claimed to have authorization to use these lands did not. If tough talk from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy isn’t enough to prevent unauthorized use of parklands, the agency may have to go the route of the Los Angeles City Department of Water and Power and seek court action to protect its sites.
Malibuites are beginning to ask why this unauthorized land use that often involved trespass, and which was anything but surreptitious, went unchecked for so long that some paragliders developed a proprietary mindset with regard to these locations.
Photos of paragliders with obvious backdrops of Malibu Bluffs Park and Corral Canyon have appeared in many types of publications, and paragliding groups openly posted photos on numerous websites. The perception that prevails on many of the sport’s numerous blogs is that, if there wasn’t outright approval, there appeared to be tacit consent. The expression “turning a blind eye” is repeatedly used to describe the public agencies’ behavior.
Paragliding is often described as the simplest form of human flight. Non-motorized paragliders have a foot-launched inflatable wing made of rip-stop nylon from which the pilot is suspended by lines. The pilot is clipped into a harness in a sitting position. The paraglider literally can soar like a bird, utilizing currents of air. Having gone on tandem rides in British Columbia and New Mexico, I agree that it offers an extraordinary sense of airborne freedom.
But paragliding has risks—even if it is statistically safer than entering an automobile—so site selection has to take the general public into account. Accidents occur, and the potential for a serious one taking place over Pacific Coast Highway, or at a park site that is thronged with picnicking families, is reason to urge that, before authorization is granted in a community like Malibu, public safety issues are carefully vetted.
Those who yearn to make the Icarian dream a reality have done so with the paraglider, but they are not above the law, and they may face a similar fate.

Malibu Farpoint Site Listed in State Register of Historic Resources

• Propertyowner’s Opposition Keeps It Off Prestigious National List of Historic Places

BY ANNE SOBLE

An elated Gary Stickel, the chief archaeologist for the Farpoint Site on Point Dume, reports that it was recently determined to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.
As a result of this eligibility, California State Historic Preservation Officer Milford Wayne Donaldson said the property has been listed in the California Register of Historical Resources.
Donaldson pointed out in a letter to Stickel that “no restrictions [are] placed upon a private property owner with regard to normal use, maintenance or sale of a property determined eligible for the National Register.”
However, Stickel told the Malibu Surfside News that the site’s owner “adamantly opposes” the national registration. The owner’s approval is part of the registration process for the prestigious list.
Stickel says the owner, citing privacy, which is why her name is not published, has also prevented additional excavation on the periphery of the site where an authenticated Clovis cultural era spear point was found in 2005 that could date back as much as 11,000 years.
However, others in the vicinity have indicated their interest in having archaeological exploration for artifacts on their parcels.
The archaeologist said possible finds would enhance the pool of cultural resources, and emphasizes the ability of these resources to provide potential answers to some of the many questions that exist about prehistoric North American migration and habitation.
Being debated in this context is whether there is sufficient data to support the “European origins” theory for the beginning of Clovis culture in the New World, as opposed to the traditional theory of cultural development, which holds that the first Clovis people were ancestors of Native Americans who came from Siberia across the Bering land bridge into Alaska and then inhabited North America.
Stickel indicates he is reserving judgment until more evidence is available, including any from the Farpoint Site, and that is why he says he is lobbying for assistance from government entities and private organizations to try to protect the property.
Stickel also emphasizes that sites such as Farpoint and other locations on the Point may offer data on the Chumash Native American people who occupied the area for thousands of years. The Chumash are Malibu’s first recorded residents.
He also sees a need to do more work at the site because the Clovis Point was haphazardly unearthed by a backhoe. Stickel has indicated that as new archaeological techniques are developed, there will be more ways to study artifacts with less disruption.
He has said, “Farpoint has been suffering destruction in the forms of many long trenches, pits and excavations for a reflecting pool, all of which were unnecessary as there were other options to provide those facilities for the new mansion complex, and all of that destruction was done without any archaeology on those affected areas.”
As part of his full court press for the site, Stickel contends, “It is a sad fact that our laws, not just in the City of Malibu where the site is located, but in general, are not strong enough to protect and allow us to conserve such a unique, highly significant site, one that may well yield critically needed information on how our continent was first inhabited.”
Anyone seeking more information about Farpoint can contact Stickel at 323-937-6997 or e-mail him at dregarystickel@netzero.net.