Lee Baca Slams Idea of SMC Campus in Former
Sheriff’s Station Building
• Says Malibu Law Enforcement Costs
and Response Times Are Adversely Affected by
Facility’s Closure •
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca says he
is perplexed that no one from the City of Malibu or Santa
Monica College has asked him about county plans to sell off the
abandoned sheriff’s station at Malibu Civic Center, a
plan he calls a mistake.
The sheriff said restoring the
mostly-unused building back into a functioning sheriff’s
substation serving Malibu and adjacent unincorporated
coastal areas is a high priority for him, and a proposal to
build a community college branch on the site “would be a
mistake that would endanger lives” and waste money.
The sheriff’s broadside on the fate
of the structure built in 1963 may have been aimed at the Los
Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which is under
intense financial pressure as the state’s budget
melts down, and has been trying to sell surplus property.
Westside Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky
has been brokering talks to sell the site to the Santa Monica
College District, and at a Jan. 8 board meeting, said he knows
the sheriff would like to have a substation in Malibu.
“I’d like to have a field
office overlooking the Malibu Lagoon, I’d like to be able
to say every morning, ‘I’m going to work in
Malibu,’” the supervisor said. “But they
don’t need a substation in Malibu.”
Baca sought out a Malibu Surfside News
reporter at a law enforcement appreciation lunch in
Calabasas Tuesday, and said that negotiations between the City
of Malibu and Santa Monica College over the building,
which is controlled by the county Board of Supervisors,
“would remove from the Malibu community a crucial
lifesaving law enforcement facility that is irreplaceable.
“Once it’s gone, it’s
gone forever and will never come back,” the sheriff said,
noting that its radio tower, helipad, fueling facilities and
much of the building itself are still in use by county road
crews.
The sheriff said not having a substation on
the ocean side of the Santa Monica Mountains increases
deputies’ response times, endangers Malibuites in
times of fires or other disasters, and is a waste of city
taxpayers’ money.
“Right now, Malibu is throwing away
10 percent of its law enforcement dollars, because our
deputies have to drive back and forth over the
mountains,” the sheriff said. The city hires
Baca’s office to provide municipal police services, but
the local sheriff’s station was closed in 1991 when
the new Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station was built about
15 miles north of the Civic Center.
The old building was used as Malibu’s
first City Hall, but has sat mostly unused for about five
years, Baca said. County Department of Public Works
workers are still using the fenced equipment yard, fuel pumps
and radio relay tower.
Yaroslavsky’s chief deputy,
Alisa Katz, said the 43-year-old building is unusable due
to water damage, and that its helipad and radio towers are not
part of the proposed sale to the college district.a
“We think the college branch is a
great deal to benefit the people of Malibu,” Katz said.
“The sheriff is doing a great job enforcing safety in
Malibu from the consolidated office in Calabasas.”
Santa Monica College is obligated under
terms of a 2004 bond issue to build a 25,000-square-foot
satellite campus in Malibu, and three-way negotiations are
underway to transfer the old sheriff’s station site to
the district. An earlier plan to build the campus on the
so-called “Yamaguchi Site,” an old flower farm on
Stuart Ranch Road near the present City Hall, failed.
Baca acknowledged the financial
difficulties facing the county, but said “the county
really needs to do a real assessment of the practice of selling
a $25 million facility for $5 million to the college
district—particularly when it’s something that you
cannot replace under any circumstance.”
No similar plot of flat land is owned by
Los Angeles County anywhere in the western county, Baca said.
Yaroslavsky’s chief deputy said no
value has been placed on the old building and its site, but the
college district would pay market value for the land.
The longtime sheriff said the boarded-up
station “played a key role in the recent fires, when we
were back there filling up fire trucks and patrol cars from the
diesel pumps.
“I have been listening to the
residents of Malibu who have told me they want an emergency
clinic—and the helipad behind this station is a key piece
of the emergency health system for this area.”
“I’m not against a community
college there,” Baca said, “but shouldn’t
they build it over by the library?
“The college project is not
predicated on building it inside the sheriff’s
station,” Baca said, “but the sheriff’s goals
are predicated on that building.
“The key to this decision should be
one of saving human life, and public safety first,” he
said. “Then let’s worry about incorporating a
community college into a new, state of the art library at the
Civic Center.”
An official at Santa Monica College was
unavailable for immediate comment.
