Reform Malibu's Rebuild To Serve Residents

Perhaps the headline should more specifically read: “Reform City Hall“ to serve residents, not staff who inhabit the Civic Center edifice along with a shadow gaggle of consultants, expeditors and other politically connected suspects.

That is the feeling I am left with after reading the mixed replies received in the social media and heard in the Trancas Canyon dog park to my recent commentary suggesting that the rebuild process be expedited by the city instituting “self-certification.”

For the record, that could eliminate the multiple odious over-the-counter reviews for most single-family homes and accessory dwelling units by allowing licensed and insured architects and engineers to sign off on their plans, and initiate construction. Only isolated site inspections would be needed.

The exception being the 100 or so La Costa beachfront properties perched on the sand and edging PCH. They no doubt will require heightened reviews, if indeed not condemned because of sewage problems. Think of a scenic open beach and an improved PCH.

High among the fears to self-certification was that some professionals pressured by deep pocket clients advised by voracious realtors would abuse the trust, and over design and over build, just as they do now, with or without the city’s blessing.

That nefarious maneuvering I fear will always persist among the trophy house hunters and commercial space pirates who haunt an iconic Malibu and see the wildfires as an opportunity to profit.

But most of the above-board locals pursuing rebuilds saw self-certification as way to speed their return to Malibu; and most importantly a way to avoid the depressing endless reviews by some staff nitpicking plans to cover up their own professional deficiencies or slavishly catering to self-important applicants and their unctuous facilitators.

Unkind such as this description might be, the fact that 200 or so proposed rebuilds from the Woolsey Fire of six years plus ago are still sweating in the permit process is utterly shameful, especially now when expected to be added to that sorry multitude is an estimated 500 more from the Palisades Fire.

From the inferno of the fires, through a permit purgatory, to the hell of construction, with a nod to Dante Alighieri’s 14th century narrative poem, “The Divine Comedy,” the faith, resources and patience of those who lost their homes and want to return surely will be tested. Most frankly are not expected to persevere.

Even before the fires, Malibu’s permit process was notorious for its delays; its infamous City Hall mantra being, when in doubt, don’t. In support are the swarm of its favored legal and technical consultants, and their penchant for declaring why things cannot be done, rather how they can. And for this advice being paid millions in fees.

Of course, if somehow you had a special relationship to a developer-friendly Mayor, such as the present Doug Stewart, pressuring an interim City Manager, things could happen overnight, such as the recent leveling and accessing of the so-called Weintraub site at PCH across from Bluffs Park.

This was ostensibly done quietly under a post disaster emergency act to park fire debris removal equipment in the Civic Center. But it is certainly also fortuitous if someone soon after would want to build a resort hotel there, as has been previously proposed for the site by Weintraub, followed bv local protests and rejected by the city.

In contrast as a welcomed action, self-certification for rebuilding homes could also be instituted as an emergency act.

This would give fire victims who wanted to rebuild the choice of a permit processing path they wanted to pursue, self-certification, or over-the-counter as at present.

If burned out in the predictable future wildfires, I know what process I would choose.