No Tears For Malibu

No surprise that the Governor’s Office vetoed the local ballyhooed bill creating new penalties for speeding on PCH in response to the continued traffic related fatalities there.

No surprise that the city was rebuffed, as in most of its various pleadings before the Coastal Commission, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and other government agencies.

Then there also have been the random arbitrary shafting on occasion of residents by bureaucracies on the State level down to small claims court.

No one would dare say it on record, or be quoted, in fear of being painted publicly as prejudiced against a particular residential community, or personally as envious.

But let’s face it, in private conversations trading candor for anonymity, there is a palpable disdain for Malibu. Cry in your craft beer or good wine if you must.

To be sure, the reasons why are arbitrary among candid friends, straight shooting colleagues, and confiding politicos and publicists, based on hearsay as much as anything.

But they cannot be dismissed simply as envy or ignorance, though there is that.

From my perspective of wide associations as a veteran journalist and author, the pervasive reason, frankly, is Malibu’s local politics, which is seen as parochial and perverted. We really have had some sad sack, maladroit mayors.

Top the list is a shameless Grisanti when he was mayor, and now Doug Stewart, being identified allegedly or explicitly as voracious, sympathetic Trumpers who through public statements and appointments having put their personal financial preferences before public services, their self-serving before constituent needs.

There recently was Grisanti identifying himself as Malibu’s mayor before the Coastal Commission, lobbying as the dupe to a cabal of realtors, Smart Coast, embarrassing the city and himself.

To be sure the dominant Democrats in Sacramento also took note when Grisanti and his shuffling sidekick Stewart took to supporting MAGA spouting Republicans running for State office.

Not a good precede for a pathetic Stewart to plead in a convoluted City Hall statement for the Democrat-controlled State to reconsider the vetoed anti-speeding legislation and come upon with an alternative. Good luck to that.

This also followed the hypocrites Grisanti and Stewart, with a bleating Riggins casting a third vote, blocking traffic calming measures making PCH safer in the wake of the Pepperdine coed tragedy, apparently out of pique because it was introduced by the minority councilpersons Silverstein and Uhring. Another piccadillo.

And let us not forget the Grisanti and Stewart’s impolitic majority’s feeble slap on Nobu’s wrist for flagrantly staging an alcohol guzzling gathering without a needed permit, which was followed by yet another fatality on PCH.

The there is also Grisanti continuing to bless the convergence of pricey performance cars in the Civic Center Sunday mornings, solidifying Malibu’s identity as a speeding sanctuary and a hot rod haven.

It makes one question how anyone concerned with safety on the PCH can vote for Grisanti in the upcoming local election.

Further, how can Channing Frykman, one of the candidates professing PCH safety as the prime reason she is running for Council, stand with Grisanti, and the other, Haylynn Conrad, stand aloof?

How would they have voted for the city’s proposed traffic calming legislation, with Silverstein and Uhring, as opposed to following lock step behind Grisanti? Time for resolve, not platitudes.

LATE BULLETIN: The Governor a few days later did vote for the installation of the proposed five speeding cameras on PCH, but not for the increased penalties the city sought.