Council to Hold Public Session to Revisit Trancas Park Plans

• Majority Votes for Session to ‘Bring Transparency’ to the Public Policymaking Process

BY BILL KOENEKER

An as yet unscheduled Trancas Park workshop is being planned to allow the public an opportunity to discuss and comment on revisions or redesign of the neighborhood park that has become increasingly embroiled in controversy.
That is what a majority of the Malibu City Council decided this week at another raucous meeting, when an ostensible shift of power occurred and Councilmember John Sibert joined Councilmembers Pamela Conley Ulich and Jefferson Wagner on a motion put forward by Conley Ulich to offer park supporters and critics a second bite of the apple.
At the same time, a majority of the city council, with Conley Ulich dissenting, voted to approve directing the staff to make revisions to Trancas Park plans sought by a citizens group. Wagner, who had previously voted no, joined the majority in voting for the motion put forward by Councilmember Sharon Barovsky.
The revisions were crafted by a select handful of individuals at an invitation-only meeting three weeks ago at City Hall.
However, some members of the informal planning group were not satisfied, saying the revisions did not go far enough. Lynn Norton, who had helped organize the City Hall meeting, said she told council members this week the park should fit the contours of the land, not the other way around as the city has planned.
At first, Conley Ulich took a position that the city has “wants and needs,” and should tend to its needs in hard economic times. She said the park is something that some people want, but the $4 million park proposal is not needed. “It is fiscally irresponsible at this time,” she said.
Conley Ulich went on to say it was time for another workshop and she would support that but not the proposed revisions.
Dubbed the Trancas Canyon Park Plan, the agenda item was to formalize a council vote to direct staff to make grading and retaining wall changes to the Trancas Park plans and bring back those changes to the council for “a substantial site plan conformity review.”
Monday night’s meeting was the first time the rest of the council and the public at large could hear and comment on the modifications that were made at the meeting three weeks ago described by the attendees as a settlement or compromise.
Sibert said he agrees with Conley Ulich on the economic issue, but said that is a discussion for the council’s quarterly meeting. “If we vote no, we go back to the older project,” he noted.
Sibert said he encourages the staff to look at other suggestions and recommendations made by the public. “I am going to vote yes, so not to go back to the other project,” he added.
The revisions call for the proposed dog park to be reduced in size by approximately 10,000 square feet. In addition, retaining walls would need to be incorporated into the design, according to the City Manager Jim Thorsen, who said staff believes that the changes are still in conformity with the approved plan.
Barovsky, the lone council member at the controversial meeting on March 26, put the matter on the council agenda, hoping the majority would agree to recommend the city staff complete the grading plan changes and have them brought back to the council on May 11 for a substantial conformity site plan review, after the park plan was approved after two separate council votes.
Wagner said he wanted to thank Barovsky for heading up the meeting. “It may have not been the proper way, I don’t know, I don’t deal with that. It was a bold step, I think heartfelt,” he said.
Wagner said he was encouraged by the compromises so far made. “It is a good starting point,” he added.
Mayor Andy Stern, throughout the meeting, reminded his colleagues and the public that the vote this week was not for or against the park, but was limited to voting whether to send the staff to the drawing board for the proposed revisions.
The mayor cited both the Malibu West Homeowners Association lawyer in an e-mail encouraging a yes vote and also the Malibu Coalition for Slow Growth supporting the revisions. “I am going to vote yes, based on those comments,” he said.
A spokesperson from the Malibu West HOA read a letter from the law firm the group hired, indicating that the property owners group would support the park and the revisions if certain other conditions were met by the city, including a deed restriction on league play, moving the picnic tables off the knoll, and moving and reducing to about 5000 square feet of the 10,000 square foot tot lot/playground.
Some of the most heated moments involved park supporter Justine Petretti (who alternates signing her letters to the editor as Justine Kingman), who at the outset of the meeting admonished Conley Ulich saying, “We know you are against the park. We hope you will vote to save the ridge,” she added.
For inexplicable reasons, she spoke at the beginning of the meeting when speakers are supposed to comment on items that are not on the agenda.
Conley Ulich shot back that she took offense at those remarks and reprimanded Petretti for assuming how she would vote. “I don’t know how I am going to [vote],” she said.
When the agenda item came up later in the meeting, Petretti attempted to speak again. The audience began shouting out to council members that a speaker should not be given a second shot at the podium.
However, Conley Ulich then called Petretti to the podium and allowed her to make her comments in another time slot.