Campaign Rhetoric Heats Up at City Council
Meeting
• Accusations Exchanged with Longtime
Critic Are First Noteworthy Flare-up
While campaign rhetoric has been kept to a
minimum by the council candidates at the various forums,
sparks flew at this week’s Malibu City Council meeting
when one council member was asked to apologize for remarks made
at the last council session.
Steve Uhring said he wanted an apology from
Councilmember Ken Kearsley when he talked about “Ozzie
Silna and his toadies.”
“That is a pejorative
statement,” said Uhring, who ticked off a list of
Silna’s extensive financial donations to the community.
“The comments were below a professional
level.”
Uhring charged that Kearsley made the
comments because of Silna’s support for candidates that
Kearsley has not endorsed.
Kearsley has given money and endorsements
to council hopefuls John Sibert, Kathy Wisnicki and incumbent Pamela Conley Ulich.
Silna has given money and voiced support
for Conley Ulich, but backs candidates Susan Tellem and
Jefferson Wagner.
Uhring used the opportunity then to bash
Kearsley’s candidates, saying Sibert “had left a
trail” of bad planning decisions. He accused Sibert of
embracing overnight camping by voting for the recommendations
that were forwarded to the city council in its Local Coastal
Program amendment. “You rejected that very same
plan,” he added.
Similarly, reading from a history of local
media headlines, Uhring charged that Sibert also voted for
the La Paz shopping center, despite a report from the water
agency that the project does not have an adequate water supply
for fire protection. “John voted for it. Is this the
decisions you want to see?” Uhring added.
Wisnicki also came under attack by
Uhring when he accused the school board member of being
absent for an important vote of the school district that
involved BB Measure funding for Malibu. “Wisnicki
was not even there,” he said.
Uhring ended by admonishing Kearsley.
“Shame on you for using the council table [to insult
Silna],” he said.
Kearsley was quick to respond, and
Councilmembers Andy Stern and Sharon Barovsky also had words
for Uhring.
Kearsley offered an apology to Silna and
said he meant to insult Silna’s friends and followers.
But before Kearsley had a chance to reply,
Stern took on Uhring and the opposing candidates by pointing
out that Wagner did not live in the city when he first set
sights on the council race.
Stern charged he had his paperwork
initially rejected by the city clerk and only when he moved
into the city by renting an apartment was he able to continue
his campaign.
Stern accused Tellem of being silent on the
LNG issue while Malibuites campaigned against it. Stern
charged that Tellem did nothing, while her husband was working
for LNG public relations firms filming the meetings and
other activities at the alleged behest of the company that
wanted to build a floating regasification facility off the
Malibu coast.
Stern also noted that when he was running
for office two years ago, and his wife, “who used to be
in your crowd” was ill, Uhring wrote lies about him in a
letter to the editor, saying Stern was “good at
lying.”
Kearsley said council members get
pilloried, beaten up and said sometime, “Enough is
enough.”
He charged that Tellem sent him an e-mail,
accusing him of insulting the voters of Malibu. He quoted the
communication as saying, “‘Your term is almost up,
so shut up.’ I am not going to shut up,” added
Kearsley, who said he would offer an apology to Silna. “I
did not mean to insult him, I insulted the people around
him.”
Barovsky, who at first indicated that she
did not want to get into the fray, quipped, “I still have
a two-year sentence.”
She said there have been statements made
that were not accurate because they were either
“incidentally wrong or wrong by design.”
Barovsky insisted the planning commission
did not vote for overnight camping, since it was simply
making recommendations passed on to the council.
“[Sibert] did not vote for camping,” she added.
Additionally, Barovsky defended Sibert on
La Paz saying he had, with a majority of the
commission, recommended the smallest possible development.
Barovsky also defended Wisnicki and said,
as an explanation of her absence from the school board
meeting, “She was in New York and fell and broke her
nose. The doctor there treating her said she should not fly in
a pressurized cabin. She came back and fought for the funds
and, I might add, got them back.”
Barovsky, while acknowledging she
“should not be using the council table for this,”
nevertheless accused Tellem of writing letters in support
of the LIP “which gave us camping.”
“She was supporting something she did
not read,” she added.
Neither Mayor Jeff Jennings, nor
Conley Ulich, who took part in the meeting by teleconference,
made any comments during this segment of the meeting.
