Rebuilding Malibu: The Rhetoric and the Reality

Bouncing between the Malibu Planning Commission and City Council these gray days is a bundle of proposed amendments to ostensibly “facilitate the rebuilding of structures damaged or destroyed by natural disasters.”

This is a response to the Palisades Fire, the worst in the city’s scorched history, and belated acknowledgment to past disasters, presumably including I would hope the Woosley Fire of six long years ago. For all the crocodile tears shed by locals officials, shamefully there are still hundreds of rebuild plans in the city’s clogged bureaucratic arteries.

Several ad hoc proposals and programs including a mix and match of palliatives to expedite the rebuilding also have been put forward by individuals. This includes comprehensive packages by a local, Michel Shane, and the newly elected councilperson Haylynn Conrad, addressing the associated limitations of the PCH, and the city’s problematic communications and infrastructure.

All are laudable, presenting issues vital for Malibu’s fragile future as a livable, distinctive seacoast village and not another pricey town for deep pocketed weekenders and tourists, and a pig’s trough for rapacious realtors and real estate developers, as it is threatened to become.

Then there also was the special meeting of the Planning Commission Thursday night to review the proposed package, which if anything exposed conflicted feelings of a bruised public in the aftermath of the fires. Actually, most provocatively, and welcome, was the reaction after in a widely distributed email by councilperson Bruce Silverstein.

In it, the indomitable Silverstein took exception to the way the public was treated, and called for at least one extended workshop, before the council meets on March 4. Here he suggested, “the City Council, the City Staff, Private Sector Professionals, and Residents can hash out their respective (and, hopefully, shared) visions for an expedited, efficient, and economical rebuild process.”

As for the specific zoning amendments, time is of the essence for they are vital in the processing of the hundreds of rebuild plans expected to pour into City Hall within the next year.

Meanwhile, the question I raise, as do others familiar with the churlish history of processing design proposals through governmental agencies: will the amendments actually accelerate and make the approval process less arduous?

Yes, but to a limited degree, and definitely not as much as they should. This is my view as a past public and private developer and planning authority, on both sides of the counter.

Permit reforms or not, central to the approval process are people, with common sense and self-confidence to review plans, while not being coddled, coerced, or compromised by special interests, as in Malibu's past.

Noted that despite the city’s inflexible codes and planning morass in the wake of the Woolsey fire, a few proposals somehow breezed through the muddle. This included a rebuild plus, of a burnout surreptitiously purchased by the family of a past mayor. And eventually sold at a great profit.

Another dubious rebuild, no less the very first one blessed by the City, was a rental eventually sold as a scorned Pacaso. Shepherding that questionable project was present planning commissioner Drew Leonard, who as a realtor has displayed a cold shoulder for local slow growth advocates and a warm hand to developers.

An appointee of Doug Stewart, given the present rebuild perplexities, Leonard clearly is unqualified and should be removed, as should Skylar Peak. An electrical contractor appointed by mayor pro tem Marianne Riggins, he has displayed conflicts of interest on the Commission, for which he is now being investigated.

Both politicos Leonard and Peak should not be on the Commission, given the pressures on the rebuild process now and in the foreseeable future for the transparency and fairness.

To be sure, our City Hall, indeed most local governances, were never designed at a scale or pace to deal with these disasters, though that is not to say they couldn’t step up to meet the challenges, if they had the support of qualified leadership.