Dana Position on Malibu Coastal Plan Challenged

I was shocked to see the letter by Dana on the Malibu Local Coastal Plan. No backroom political deals brought forward the so-called 17 pages of amendments to the Malibu plan adopted by the Coastal Commission.

Those amendments were proposed by the Local Coastal Plan Committee of the Malibu Township Council. The 16 members of that committee worked hard for 2 1/2 years trying to have issues of critical importance to our community addressed adequately in the Malibu plan.

Hundreds of letters were sent to Dana and the Coastal Commission supporting the position of the Malibu Township Council on the Local Coastal Plan. However, despite this support and despite statements by the Coastal Commission members in public hearing supporting the township recommendations, the so-called county-coastal staff compromise reflected almost none of our key recommendations.

We responded by working to develop our own alternative language for the plan based on careful professional advice and the contributions of other interested organizations. We sent this information to the Coastal Commission well in advance of the commission hearing. We sent it to the newspapers. Judging by the comments made by commissioners prior to voting on June 13, those in the voting majority seemed quite familiar with our recommendations.

This is more than could be said of the county. For the second time in six months, the county staff brought in their own specific motions to further change the so-called coastal-county compromise on Malibu. These motions were submitted to the commission at the moment that the hearing began. No group, including the Board of Supervisors, had a chance to look at their recommendations before the public hearing. The commission did discuss and voted on each motion brought in by the county. I didn’t see Supervisor Dana write about that as a questionable process on the part of the commission. It appears that the supervisor, in the long run, feels that the county should stand above the public hearing process and the public should stay outside that same process.

GEARY STEFFEN

Los Angeles