Public Safety Issues Continue to Take Center Stage in Municipal Rhetoric

• Council Is Told Money Will Help Solve Major Concerns

BY BILL KOENEKER

Some Malibu City Council members balked this week when asked to approve a memo of understanding between the City of Malibu and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department regarding traffic control services.

Councilmember Lou La Monte led the charge. “We pay them $6.3 million and they can’t find the time or personnel. I can’t understand that,” he said, about the city having to pay overtime costs for deputies to direct traffic.

City Manager Jim Thorsen explained the practice allows overtime deputies to be hired for traffic control in the event of a signal malfunction. Deploying deputies to direct traffic through the impacted area removes those deputies from normal patrol, he said, so the use of overtime deputies.

“I expect that it happens a couple times a year,” Thorsen said, resulting in about $1000 to $2000 in costs.

The MOU would spell out these services on an as-needed basis. The overtime personnel would respond to the affected intersection and assume traffic control duties, but would not be subject to call except in the event of a “significant emergency.”

The cost would be based on the prevailing hourly rate of the current law enforcement contract and the city would be billed on a monthly basis.

Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich said this was the kind of thing the city’s Public Safety Commission should review.

The council gave the green light for the city manager to execute the MOU with the condition that the matter be reviewed by the commission.

On another public safety matter, the council approved going forward with the recommendations of the city’s Public Safety Commission on traffic improvements for Civic Center Way, but stopped short of providing any kind of funding.

“We will seek funding when it becomes available for use from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority,” said Thorsen. 

The recommendations were previously identified by the Civic Center Way Task Force and approved by the council in 2004.

While some of those recommendations were implemented by the city, the Public Safety Commission reviewed the remaining recommendations in May and reprioritized them for council consideration.

The council approved those recommendations and added another requiring a pedestrian pathway that connects the Malibu Pier to the Civic Center, which would continue from the Civic Center up to the Bluffs Park.

In another matter, the city council, responding to a challenge of whether it had the political will, gave the go-ahead for ridding the encroachments along public portions of Busch Drive.

For years, Malibu Park residents Marshall Thompson and Susan Tellem have cautioned about the hazards and attempted to get the city to move forward.

“It is impossible to walk or ride a horse or a bike and not step into the roadway,” said Tellem, who is  a member of the city’s public safety commission.

City officials contend the right-of-way is 60 feet, but the roadway easement next to the pavement is littered with vegetation, trees, irrigation systems, mailboxes, driveways and retaining walls.

“It is a severe problem. But we can’t just go have people go in there and chop down trees,” said Councilmember Lou La Monte.

Councilmember Laura Rosenthal talked about how Busch is the ingress and egress for most of Malibu Park. “There are a lot of people who walk on that street,” she said, explaining she has stopped walking on the road because of the dangers.

Rosenthal said Busch would be a good test.

Other council members agreed on both points and said they wanted first for folks to be informed about the encroachments by letter and then a face-to-face meeting with homeowners and staff about how clearing encroachments could be accomplished.

At first, council members could not decide how they wanted to proceed. After some initial suggestions, City Attorney Christi Hogin stepped in. “It is a matter of political will. It is a matter of prosecution. We want to know which way you want to go. We need your backing,” said the city attorney, seeking a clear-cut answer from the council for staff direction.

In other action, the council decided to cut in half the time for a contract with a public relations firm from one year to six months.

Fionna Hutton and Associates has been working with the city and the staff wanted to extend the contract for another year.

However, Tellem, who heads up her own public relations firm, questioned why the contract had not gone out to bid and told council members the city might be better served by a local PR firm. She said there are about 10 agencies in Malibu. She also questioned the amount of the retainer at $8000 per month, saying that was too high for this economy.

The council debated for some time about what it wanted to do. Both Rosenthal and La Monte, who head up a communicators subcommittee said a year was too long since they would have made their recommendations by then.

Sibert said it was not the time to “changes horses,” given how Hutton had worked closely with the city on regional water board issues and a big meeting was coming up in September.

Conley Ulich questioned how much was being spent per month on the contract.

The council agreed to shorten the contract to six months and then have it go out to bid or revisit the Hutton contract.

When it came time to appoint youngsters to the Harry Barovsky Youth Commission, members said they just could not leave anybody out and decided to change the rules of membership so that all 18 youths who applied would be able to serve on the panel.