Publisher’s Notebook

• Double-Edged Politics •

ANNE SOBLE

There was no small amount of irony—along with usual array of tensions—at this week’s Malibu City Council meeting, as citizens were treated to an example of the political maxim that not only can an issue live by the crowd, it can die by the crowd. Of course, that’s a terrible transmogrification of the concept, but the reality is political tables are easily turned in a small town and the example of the Morning View Drive parking imbroglio vividly illustrates this.
Some of the people who helped broker a deal to eliminate public parking on Morning View Drive are the same individuals who not long ago mobilized large numbers of citizens to show up at City Hall and force the city council to back away from an impending agreement on overnight camping with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. Negotiations had been duly completed. A supportive staff report was crafted. The opponents of camping used strongly worded newspaper letters, non-stop email campaigning and top-notch political organization to kill the plan.
However, this week, some of those same citizens were on the other side of the lobbying process. Thus they shouldn’t have been too surprised to see that very similar tactics worked to get the Morning View Drive plan that they had shepherded to completion, including extensive municipal staff consultation and support, postponed at Monday night’s meeting. Some well-crafted rallying cries on the very effective high school communications network started the ball rolling. As more and more parents realized that their children would be directly affected, and that school volunteers and part-time staff would be adversely impacted, a groundswell was in the making.
Some might not agree, but a parallel to the current Morning View situation was when the city council several years ago attempted to implement traffic flow changes in the Webb Way-Civic Center area, partly, critics alleged, at the behest of a council member’s close political ally. The council approved the Webb Way proposal with minimal public input, set up concrete barriers, and appeared dumbfounded when the populace erupted and demanded the project be dismantled. It is unlikely this council wants to face a repeat of that scenario. Someone in our not-too-distant political past described hockey moms as pit bulls with lipstick, some local PTA moms (and dads) might make those pit bulls look like cuddly kittens.
This Malibu City Council is easily intimidated by groundswells, especially if none of the members has a personal stake in the issue’s outcome. The council members do not, for the most part, espouse consistent public policy orientations. Whenever that type of open-ended pragmatism prevails, head counts and waving signs may matter more than any notion of comprehensive policy.