Council Candidate: Hamish Patterson

Editor's Note: Malibu Patch sent a questionnaire to the seven City Council candidates. The questions come from Malibu Patch readers and Malibu Patch staff. All candidates received the same questions. Be sure to find out the candidates' views on more Malibu issues by watching the Great Malibu Debate .

What is your name, birth date and how many years have you lived in Malibu (if there are any gaps, mention them and explain them)? Who are your immediate family members? Feel free to mention names and ages.

Name: Hamish Patterson 

Birthdate: 6/1/69 

Years in Malibu: My parents moved me here as teenager in 1986. In 1994, I moved to Oregon where I published a novel, and was heavily involved with municipal water issues in the city of Portland, where I meet with congressmen, the governor, the mayor and city council members to protect Portland’s gravity feed municipal water supply. The Municipal water supply came from a pure source high in the Cascades targeted for sale to semiconductor chip factories, leaving the city to pump and filter water from the Willamette River, which is so polluted it is a Superfund river. In the late nineties, I moved to Milford Pennsylvania where I managed the third oldest dude ranch in America, which ironically is called the Malibu Dude Ranch. I returned home in 2002. My parents live a quiet life outside the city limits in the Santa Monica Mountains where they are avid equestrians.

What is your education and work history?
Education: I went to Culver Military Academy prep school. I graduated from Santa Monica High, class of 1987, and went on to study environmental chemistry at NAU.   

Work History: Resort manager, retail, councilor, carpenter, concrete cutter, copy machine technician, caterer, writer and YouTube sensation.

Why are you qualified to be on the City Council?
I am a resident, I vote, and nobody else bothered to put their hat in the ring.

Who are you voting for in this election?
Andy, Skylar, and Missy.

What is your favorite book? Movie? Why?
Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides-the life and times of Kit Carson in the American west before it became gridded with freeways and shopping malls.  In addition, I read daily from A Course in Miracles, because life is a spiritual journey in a human experience. My favorite movie of all time would have to be Matrix, because it is about waking up to the fact that most everything we have ever been taught is a lie and we have to gather information from a much deeper source than what is being spoon feed to us.

Why do you live in Malibu?
Because it is my home, my family and friends live here.  I have lived all over this country and I have always returned home.

Who was Malibu's best City Council member? Why do you choose that person?
Pamela Conley Ulich, because she actually stood her ground and defended the Malibu way of life, and was not afraid to go against the grain and didn’t roll over to the influences of powerful people who see Malibu more as a cash machine than a community.

Do you think the agencies involved in lobbying for sewers have any connection to the developers that will profit from them in our community?
Absolutely! I wonder why the journalists in our community have not done more to expose the connections, it is a sad state of affairs that a rag-tag group of surfers and concerned citizens has done more to expose these connections than our cities Journalists, but then again some of them are rather cozy with city hall. I defer all questions regarding this to Andy Lyon, who can link it all together, but I will throw a bone here RMC-Katherine Tyrell-Heal the bay, journalists do your job, citizens ask the questions.

How will you help Malibu retain its beautiful rural charm?
Standing up to a city government that seems to play our community lip service, and bend over backwards to promote the agenda of commercial property owners and developers, the chamber of commerce, and large chain retailers in pursuit of filling the city coffers. Our city government is addicted to spending money, and like any addict will sell anything of value to get another hit. So do not be surprised our city government is willing to sell our community down the river for some loose change. The time has come for a community intervention.

Some of the candidates seem to have hung their hats on being born here or living here a long time. What's more important, being a long-time resident in Malibu or having a track record of showing up at City Council meetings and volunteering in Malibu organizations?
This is a loaded question, and everybody in Malibu is a valuable member. Many people have lived here  long time and still don’t know who the Chumash are, have never stood on Sandstone Peak, haven’t picked up trash at the beach after a long day of surfing, have never helped any of our communities kids get sober, or helped prevent their suicide. I commend anybody who has been civically involved, but as far as those who are participating in our city government and can get past the intimidating and fraternity like environment, I wonder if they are part of the problem or true residents with sheer bravado and courage.  The question is not what we have done, because if that is the test, we have all failed, our community is dysfunctional at best. We need to focus on the “now” in our cities evolution, and ask the question; are we a community of residents or is Malibu merely a platform for commercial development.  Regardless of being born here or length of residency, if you are for sewers and commercial development you are the antitheses of what Malibu is not.

The Tapia sewage treatment facility was built without Malibu community input and has caused grievous harm to Malibu's main watershed. It is set up to get worse as it processes more than 10 million gallons of sewage a day. Will you support an effort to hold the Army Corp of Engineers accountable for coming up with a plan to reroute that processed sewage to the Valley for irrigation purposes? 
It is always about blaming somebody instead of the real problem being addressed, which is over development and over consumption. Tapia has been given free reign and it is time of all residents of the watershed to take responsibility for what occurs in Malibu Creek, the truth is very little of Malibu is in the Watershed and yet we take the vast majority of the blame for the creek’s ills, it is time for our community to stand up to the powerful entities that treat Malibu like a redheaded stepchild, and if that is about taking  on the army core of engineers so be it. We really need to begin to ask why up stream communities are listed on the permits for the waste water treatment plant that threatens our community. 

Do you support a livable wage for City Council Members, such as $2,000 per month or more, plus benefits?
I am not in this for the money, benefits seem reasonable though.

A voter-approved city law restricts candidates to serving two terms on the City Council. But terms served before 2000 do not count toward that total. Is it appropriate for a candidate to use this loophole to run for three or more terms?
It is absolutely inappropriate to use a loophole to run again, it shows utter disdain and contempt to the voters and residents of this community who voted for term limits, which I was one. Fresh faces and ideas are essential to keep a city government cutting edge and honest. I think we are beginning to see the effects of what some call the, "Barovsky-machine" on our community.

How do you feel about the Malibu Bay Co. Development Agreement (Measure M) that voters rejected in 2003?
Yeah we dodged a bullet on that one, but I think it shows that if you put the issue of commercial development before the voting public you will get  the answers that developers don’t want to hear, which is take your bulldozers and Spanish tiles somewhere else. Measure M was a developers dream come true and fortunately our community stood up to the city council and their cohorts and defeated it. I think it was some of the players that supported this measure that inspired term limits. However, our city is always threatened by these entities, and we must always remain vigilant, as we have seen the players from measure M regroup and infiltrate our city staff, planning commission, and now run for city council again.  This election about sending the Barofski-machine packing. 

Malibu shopping centers in recent years have started to resemble Rodeo Drive, especially in the Cross Creek area. Many shops and services used by local shoppers have closed due to high rents. What do you think of Preserve Malibu's proposal for a diversification ordinance that would require a broader offering of services, or do you have a better solution?
Government involvement is always questionable unless it is to protect the community. Malibu’s heart and soul is being sold-out to a few well-connected commercial developers who have no interest in preserving the “Malibu way of life” but rather exploiting it. It is in the cities best interest to protect local business owners who actually service the community. The real problem is local retailers are being forced to compete against deep pockets of retail chains, which can subsidies their outlets. Malibu is not a retail-shopping destination; our infrastructure cannot handle it, as the PCH and the canyons are all choke points that prevent any retail operation that does not service the community from being financially feasible without subsidies. I am against more commercial development, there is already too much and most of it remains vacant. Let us focus on occupying the commercial spaces we have. I am absolutely in support of the retail diversification ordinance, and personally think it does not go far enough to protect the retailers that service Malibu’s essential needs!

How do you propose working with other council members with whom you might disagree on contentious issues?
Disagreement is part of life; the trick is not to take it personal.

How would you change city government (larger, smaller, different emphasis)?
Technology is cheap, the first thing that can be done to include the public is to allow public comments via Skype or similar platforms, second wire the entire city hall with cameras and sound, and stream all that occurs there live, so that anybody, at anytime, anywhere can see and hear what is occurring in their city hall. The public has the right to know whom their staff is meeting with and what they are meeting about. A live streaming city hall is the future; it is time to remove the barriers between the public and its hired staff. I would bring more of the citizens groups into the fold like a safer PCH and Save Trancas nursery and empower them to get things done that our city government seems in capable of, citizens think outside the box have connections government officials don’t and are not hamstringed by bureaucratic procedural molasses. I also will be moving to have the four major city staff positions face a public confidence vote every election so that voters will know who inhabits these positions in our city that wield immense power in our city and who apparently run unchecked by the city council and community as a whole.Finally the City of Malibu website is a joke!

Do you support the acquisition of land for additional parks and recreation facilities? If so, how would you finance this?
Absolutely. We live in a community with vast capital resources and yet those who would buy land and donate it to the community will not because of a city government that cannot be trusted and a city council that rolls over to the whims the city government that does not work for the community but rather special interests. Who in their right mind would buy up huge tracks of land, donate them to the city, and have it end up as Legacy Park. Until the environment of city government changes, those who will be willing to donate to the city will not. 

How do you plan to better prepare the citizens of Malibu for the next fire? Do you believe the last fire was handled well, and how will the Corral Canyon Volunteer Fire Department affect the next fire that will be coming soon?
As a person who had their family home burn down in the 1993 firestorm this is, an issue that sits heavily with I think every canyon ought to have a volunteer fire department. Fire storms are just that storms, when the conditions are ripe for them there is very little to be done except to save structures that can be saved and ensure that lives are not lost. I feel that the abandon ship approach during fires in some instances equals a loss of property that could be saved. I would like to see localized fire drills where our superb fire departments gets together with communities and works together to strategies on ways to safely evacuate as well as defends structures, i.e. make sure that there is a localized inventory of what is available and where it is, pools pumps and who knows how to use them properly. Neighbors need to know neighbors and work together to prepare for the next disaster, because it is not if but when.