City Council - Regular Meeting

I are you down the street. and

you know there was supposed to

fix that. I gotta talk.

question ready to go All right, the August 25th, 2025, regular meeting in this no, this is what what am I what? Regular media in Malawi City Council is not called to order. In-person participants who you'd like to speak, please submit your request to speak form to the clerk. Remote participants, if you would like to speak, please join the Zoom webinar meeting printed on the agenda, and raise your hand in zoom when the item you wish to speak on is called. May we please have a roll call? Councilor Ber Conrad, here, Councilor Stewart. Councilor Uri, Mayor prote Silverstein. Mayor Riggins, here you have a quorum. Uh, do we have any remote speakers? I know I have an in person, but you're looking for speakers on the closed session item? Yes, ma'am. No, we don't have any raised hands for the closed session items. OK, so our in-person speakers and K. hello, and Kay, Kamarak I start using my name, um. just uh I don't know, words of wisdom. I'm a business owner. I run. corporation sometimes, um. you guys have tough decisions to make, and uh I was given some advice a while back and that was when you walk into a room and it looks pretty weird, you kind of just stop and you kind of slowly walk out of the room and just kind of make the decision and kind of approach it a different way. Sometimes you make mistakes and we have to do it over again and that that's what you guys. get to do. no one's perfect and at least we know now, not to go any

further. so. I think most folks forget that the city of Malibu is an incorporated entity, the corporation, and so they're a business. and uh anybody who understands that, um. works in the business knows how that works, um, in my case, I was once time 49% owner, which I didn't have controlling interests of a business, and that was hard. I learned the hard way how much 51 49% matters. So um do your best and um make us all proud. Thank you. Thank you Um, we will now recess to close session to discuss the items listed on the closed session agenda. We will reconvene at 5:30 to begin the

regular session and hear the

closed session report. The

regular meeting, uh, the August 25th, 2025 regular meeting in the Malibu City Council is now called to order. In-person participants, if you would like to speak, please submit your request to speak form to the clerk, remote participants, if you would like to speak. I can't speak today myself. Um, please join the Zoom webinar meeting printed on the agenda and raise your hand in zoom for when the item you wish to speak on is called. May we please have a roll call. Councilor Ber Conrad, here, Councilor Stewart, here, Councilor Eing Mayor Prote Silverstein, Mayor Riggins, here, you have a quorum. Thank you Um, let's see, Kevin, will you lead us in the pleasure of allegiance, please. Shankman. Do you observe the pledge of allegiance? I guess I should ask first if you don't. Oh, OK. Would you like me to call in someone else? OK. Michelle how are you good? Pass? OK, I'm gonna do it then. Great. I know. I thought I'd give a chance, right, right hand over your heart. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with the liberty and justice for all. Hey, may we please have a closed session report. Yes, at 4:00 p.m., the city council met in open session, recess to closed session. All 5 council members were present and no reportable action was taken, but the council unanimously asked me to make to, uh, share the following statement. The city of Malibu has been informed that Rhonda Perez has withdrawn her candidacy for the city manager position. The city thanks Miss Perez for her original interest in the position and wishes her success and her future endeavors. The city will now consider other applicants for the position and expand its search for a city manager candidate. Thank you Um, may we please have a report on

the post of the agenda. The agenda for this meeting was properly posted on August 15th with the amended agenda posted on August 22. Um, may we please have an approval of the agenda, and I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second. Um, I think did staff have an alteration they wanted to consider? No, we do have a note for the consent calendar when you get there. OK, thank you. Um, may we please no objection, all in favor. Aye. Any opposed? None. So ordered. OK. We're onto the consent calendar. Uh, remote participants, please raise your hand and zoom if you would like to speak on the consent calendar? Do we have any remote speakers? We have two raised hands. I'm sorry, that's 3 races that, that would be 4 raised hands. And it's holding it for. OK, let's hold that at 4. No additional hands. Um with OK, so our first in-person speaker is Darren Graves on item 1B6. Uh, good evening, Madam Mayor, honorable City council members. So this item is on the calendar, the agenda to talk about the disposal of the temporary skate park. Um, I was under the impression, and I believe many of the Malibu citizenry was under the impression that the temporary skate park was going to stay in effect and usable until the day of the permanent skate park being opened, but on July 29th, the Parks and Rec Board decided that on September 2nd, that would not be true. Um, they would dismantle and then

discard the temporary skate park. I drive by Malibu bluffs all the time, and every time I do, I see a plethora of skaters enjoying the skate park and now because of the scheduling issues that a contractor presented, they're gonna be taken or they're gonna be like, they're gonna have that skate park robbed from them for the next 6 to 8 months on that July 29th day, the contractor didn't even show up, but they did have somebody make the claim that they were. saddled with a 3 to 4 month delay because of the temporary skate park and blocking their ability to put in electric conduit for the electrical vehicle parking spaces, well, had a contractor been there to explain a logistical plan that made it impossible to put that, you know, 3 ft wide trenching without disturbing the temporary skate park. Maybe I'd believe that lie, but it seems like in a bold outright lie, and the, the kids and the skaters of Malibu shouldn't suffer just because a GC didn't figure out their schedule in a timely manner. I think the city should be holding that GC to to keep their original schedule and figure out a way to keep the temporary skate park in place until the permanent skate park is opened as they agreed upon way back when. Thank you. Thank you. Um, our first online speaker? Our first speaker is Hamish Patterson. Hamish, can you hear us Good evening, council members. Can you hear me? Yes. OK, I'm up, it's about 1B6. um. so, so I think there's a, a couple things going on here and I only got 3 minutes, but um, the first of all is that the, the concept of it being a temporary skate park is a misnomer implying that it's a disposable amenity of the city, and it was never meant to be a disposal amenity of the city. It was just meant to be temporarily placed there on

site until the permanent skate park. got built and, and the contractor and someone down at City Hall, made a decision to view the, the what is this, the wooden skate park as garbage to be demolished at the first beginning of the project and that there lies the whole problem with this situation and you know, having met with the city last week, and, and, and public works and that the parks and racks, they finally gave us the timeline to the goal towards completion, which did eliminate a lot of the questions and makes me almost OK with removing the, that, that, the wooden skate park, but it should not be surplused in any sense, and we're asking that, that a lot of the skaters are asking that it not be surplus and it be decommissioned when the time comes appropriate, but you know, having thought about this a lot in the, in the last 12 hours. I don't know if it's a, if it's if it's the skateboarders have to carry the burden of the city, someone that's down at City Hall made a decision out of the city council's purview to view the the wooden skate park as garbage and bid it to the contractor as garbage, and I brought this up when the when the the bid was being approved that, and I think it behooves us no matter what we do to have the wooden skate park deassembled and stored on site on Malibu property so that it can be, can so we can slow down. We spent the, the previous skate park was surplus for $500. That skate park is still in use at at Canaan. This is, this is bad moves all the way across and it do, it's due to someone down at City Hall making a decision out of the public's purview and the city council's purview and, and, and, and something's not right here, and

I, and I, and I'm caught in a rock in a hard place. I don't want to be the stick in the mud, but I, but I, I don't really know what to do, and I think the skateboarding community's going to get double crossed in the long run. about the ridable surface, even though the city said they would allow us to use the, the concrete surface as soon as possible. I have my doubts about it as much as I wanted. to go along with it. I, I'm, I'm really hesitant to, to, I, I'm willing to say yes, but I'm also like this has been bad management down at City Hall, as much as I appreciate our staff like someone made Hamish. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ryan Ryan. Um, can you hear me now? Yes. Um, I wanna speak to the item that says Townsend Public Affairs. And this is a consultant contract for the city, and these may be fabulous contractors to the city, but they appear to be um consultants to the staff and to the extent of what is the, the approved use and what are the goals and the uh the fact that it costs a whole lot of money just to call these people on the phone. is incredible. The contract, I believe, was not attached. It's an amendment to a contract and when I went to look at the original contract, it didn't didn't look like it was a, and it looked like they were chosen. Um, maybe not in the most competitive way. So as I said, be cognizant when you just renew these things over and over, um, there's a huge

price to pay. This is a very high priced uh firm and just uh remember the procedure processes are important because the money is limited. Thank you. Thank you Our next speaker is Meryl. Meryl Hello, can you hear me? Yes Yes. Yes. All right, good. Um I'm in support of the, the temporary skate park staying in place as long as possible. And, um, I'm not, I've lost track of the timeline, but if it's gonna go We lost you, Meryl Merrill, you are unmuted, but your audio is not coming through. All right, we can hear you now. OK, so I think that we should keep the temporary skate park in place as long as possible, and I, uh, keeping it offline as short as possible. Um, another thing I don't know, um, if this is the right time, um, Mayor Riggins, but I think that the city needs to have a number that when people observe unsafe issues. um that they can call this number and it can get directed to the appropriate department. I was somebody told me of an issue that was a very hazardous situation. It took me 4 weeks to get it resolved, and you know how persistent I am in emails and phone calls, um, so if people see fires or if they see unsafe traffic or if they see people parking in the right wrong place if they see things in the road, anything people observe, I think there should be sort of a hotline number that they can call and report

it and then somebody at the city can then direct it to the appropriate number. Obviously, you know, the sheriffs, if there's reckless or dangerous items like that, everybody can call the Low Hill Sheriff's station, but other items in our city, I think there needs to be a central number which is easily findable on the city's website for people to call and report issues and then the city can direct the appropriate person, whether it's a sheriff or Caltrans or the county whoever it is to to correct the problem. Thank you very much for everybody's everything you're all you're all doing right now. I'm out of state, but I'm coming back tomorrow. Thank you Our last speaker Our last speaker is Andy Lyon. Annie, go ahead. Can you hear me? Yes. OK, great. Um, yeah, skate park issue. uh, sorry to be taking up more time about this, but um, I just, I feel that this, that we were never really informed of what was going on. I didn't know that there was a bid that the contractor bid this out just to demo it. and it's always been told to us, we've been told that this, this skate park is past its useful life, which is clearly not the case. It's being used daily and it can keep being used. Um, once it's gone and out of that situation where it is now, we don't have anything and, and as much as I want to believe that the city could make it so we could skate before it's done, the reality is the liability is gonna be so high and the, you know, you sneeze and say you're gonna sue Malibu, we just caved, so I don't see that that's gonna, that's gonna really be a case and and so on the timeline we were given, it's going to be like January, so if this thing comes out in the next, you know, the beginning of September.

That's, you know, best case 4 months, you know, I, we, we really have no guarantees and we haven't been told the straight story from the get-go. So I really, I, I think that this thing needs to stay as long as possible there. I do think that um if it's gonna come out when it's gonna come out, it needs to be put on one of our city-owned properties. We have tons of land, and it could go there. It should not be skinned for the skate light that, you know, aparks and Recs commission didn't even know really what skate skate light is, and that's what the same guy that bought the other Papa Jack's wraps. He just wants the skins and and the rest of it going into the dump goes completely against everything that our city stands for. I mean, we banned plastic straws, but we're going to put in a $300,000 ramp into the dump. It just makes no sense fiscally. It makes no sense with the liabilities, and it's just, it's just not fair to us that we're going to take the skaters are going to take the brunt on this uh parking lot, charging station, and bathroom. Um, I don't want to be like Hamish said, a stick in the mug. I want to get the thing done, but really I can't take the word of public works saying that, yeah, we're going to do everything we can to get in there and skate it, and I don't know that that's, you know, really what we want anyways. I think we want that, that wood ramp to be eventually put on another lot, maybe in the West Malibu up on Heather cliff. It does not have to go on asphalt. The bowl can be placed on the dirt up there. It could go there at any time. We have the money, we have the land, we need to do something with it smartly, not stupidly, just get rid of it because nobody wanted to deal with it. We weren't told. Had we been told We could have been dealing with getting this thing handled, but we were not told. I was told that, you know, the, the lot or the uh the temporary was needed to go because they needed the space for, for construction materials and and staging and that was not true and they knew that it was in the bid that it was gonna be demoed, you know, that I was never told that. I was never told that that was the, the original plan was to demo the ramp. I mean, it's, it's been such a huge part of my kids.

Thank you. Please do the right thing. OK, so that'll conclude our public speakers for the consent calendar. correct. OK, I have a note, um, with anyone like to pull anything, um, staff is requesting that we pull 1B7. I OK, so we have a request to pull 67, and 8. Uh,,, 25, and 6. OK, is there anything left on the consent calendar too. Yes, if the council could approved the balance, pulling, uh, 1B2, 1B5, 1B6, 1B7, and 1B8. I think councilmember A1B5.. 0, leaves 2 and 4. Thank you. I pull 4, please, and it also leaves one, which appears only on the agenda and does not have a supporting staff report. OK, so do I have a motion to approve items 1B1 and 1B2? I believe it's 1B1 and 1B3. I believe the council member pulled item 1B2. Councilmember Stewart, OK. 3 and 4. I pulled 4. OK. Move to approve the consent calendar 3B 1B1 and 1B3. Can we have a second How a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? OK, so the first one is 1B2. OK, that's me. OK, do, would you like a staff report? Uh, don't need a staff report. I just have a question on one of the items. It's, uh, page 11 in the warrants. It's uh for ali Bukovich and Sons. It's $1.8 million. Just want to know, it says it's for Big rock, just want to know if this is FEMA money, what the repair was. It's almost half the uh warrant

for this month. This week Oops, sorry That's a good evening, counsel, and, uh, Councillor Mary Stewart, yes, this is for, uh, the contractor doing all the storm drain repairs up in Big Rock. OK, and it's FEMA 100% reimbursable. This is, this is part of our FEMA reimbursement at 100%. I, I, I think that's, that's a percentage. I don't know, top of my head. I, I won't hold you to it, but any idea how much money we've got outstanding for receivable from FEMA at this point. Once again, I, I don't have that figure right top of my head, but it's substantial. I, I, I think it's over uh I think it's in the eight-figure numbers probably by now. I would think so too. Yeah. So when we say we have a lot of extra money, we don't have it anymore. We're now in the banking business, OK, thank you very much. That's all the question I had. I'll make a motion to approve, uh, 1B2. be All in favor? Aye, and a post? None. OK, um, 1B4. Would you like a staff report? Would you like a staff report? Yes, thank you. OK, Richard Just a minute while we load the presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Great All right. So we've provided some slides for your consideration to better understand the scope of the request tonight. and, um, essentially what we're proposing to do is extend the agreement that the council

approved in 2023. that uh whereby staff went through a standard RFP process. It received 14 proposals, um, it selected Townsend based on its stellar track record um, a review of their website reveals that they are utilized by a significant number of cities in Southern California and across the state. And I'm going to keep talking to fill the time um Townsend has significant expertise and a broad array of areas that we find to be particularly useful. This fiscal year as we prepare to pursue numerous funding opportunities to address recovery demands. Maybe you could highlight um any of the grants that they have been successful and other things that they have. attempted to. Yeah, they've helped us pursue a number of grants in the past 2 years, during the 1st 2 years of their agreement, um, the total of those requests of those pursuits was over $4 million. They were successfully, they've successfully helped us receive $460,000 and there's just over, uh,, $2.4 million that's pending. Earlier this year, March, July and August, if we're, we feel like we have a very strong chance, as they are to help us pursue funding to address dead and dying hazardous tree removal, some workshops to enhance our educational offerings and um to help us update our community wildfire protection plan, priorities as we've heard them voiced numerous times over the past several months. and we're back in action. There's the,

the table that summarizes what I just described. and we have many more ideas on the horizon. The tricky part with grants is that you never know what's, uh, what funding will be available, especially in the federal environment that we're all working in right now. Um, we just don't know if the previous funding opportunities that we've all counted on, pursued, are going to be available, uh, in the coming calendar year, we're certainly hoping for that because we have many programs that we see would be eligible and very successful, um, as we pursue those competitive grant opportunities. but we just don't know. Nobody knows at this point in time. So the proposal before you is to keep the terms of the 1st 2 years of the agreement, the monthly and annual rate would be as they've always been the past two years, roughly 6500 per month. We feel that this is a very worthwhile investment as we don't have a specialized expertise in-house, nor do we have it through any of the other consultants that we have under agreement with the city to help us focus and address these specialized needs as they arise. So I'm available for any questions if the council has any. Thank you. Um, yeah, I, I'm all for grants. I was just looking at their track records, so I had a I had a few questions about. about that. So. the 460,000 that we got from the OTS, so Office of Traffic and Safety. So that was for DUI and enforcement initiative. Does that mean that there's like an actual DUI checkpoints? that are happening in Malibu. That's my understanding, Susan. Do we have more detail on that? Or I guess. because for the last two years, that looks like the only grant that was awarded

to us. um That's actually I saw that we were denied for the body bottle refill stations. um We don't have to address that, we can wait for. Yes. Yeah, you want to address that part of it. Yeah, yeah, uh, the funds received are being used for DUI checkpoints and for traffic saturation patrols currently right now. That's terrific. So is there like a breakdown of when and where the DUIs are, not to like tell the public, but just so that we know. I don't have the exact date for the next DUI checkpoint on hand cause they need to recruit um sheriff personnel to Rahman, and so they're, I know they're in the middle of doing that. Um, I don't have any other specific information on him right now. I'm sorry. Well, that's OK. I, it's just good for me to know, and so I'm clear when a grant listed as pending, does that mean we're pending the money or we're pending an answer for the funds. It means we've completed it successfully completed an application and submitted all the required elements and we're waiting on a decision from the funding agency. I see Um and so once we get the grant money. does the council discuss how the money's spent, or is that through the city manager. What, uh, the standard procedure is that we then, um, you know, if successfully awarded the funds, we do present those to council because what's typical is we have to enter into a formal agreement. with the funding agency, whereby we commit to the activities that we proposed in the grant application, Staff doesn't have the authority to accept those large awards, so

we have to present those to council. and then if there's a need to to contract with specialized services, we'll have to go through an RFP process, select a vendor, um, and then those that selection of a vendor is also the authority of the council. OK, so once you guys or we all are granted an uh granted a grant. we get regulate the council receives regular reports. like you let us know. That's something that is customary. Um, I don't know what has occurred here in the past. Um, you know, with the fire, I know there's been several disruptions, but one of the things that we've been trying to do more recently. is as part of the biweekly city managers update is to provide more regular updates on funding that's been awarded, grants that we're pursuing, um, because those are kind of the things that typically go unseen when we submit letters of support for, you know, grant pursuits when we solicit those and so we want to make sure that we do a better job of communicating that level of activity from staff, um, so that everyone is aware of all the hard work we're doing. Yeah, that would be, that would be great, because I know that there's been some trees that we've been removing that were damaged at Las Flores, and I wasn't sure if that was part of this, the grant because you guys are, were pending for the dead and dying hazardous trees, so it can't be from that. That's 2 million that's pending. That's an additional like that program that's removing trees. is through what money that we've been doing. That's a good question. Thank you. Uh, the funds came from the mountain recreation, that grant, I want to call it MRCA, but it wasn't MRCA. It was the organization

about them, and those funds have been used up at this point. We've had that for the last 3 years. Perfect, thank you. That's all I have. Any other questions? Yeah, um, Richard, is it, is it correct or incorrect that there are some grants that are basically as long as you um provide the justification as a municipality for it, you're entitled to up to a certain amount, and there are others that are completely discretionary. Are, are there, are there the, the former type? Yeah, we think of them as formula or discretionary or competitive grants, uh, formula are based on either something as simple as, you know, your population or um, you know, uh, that's typically the most common um disbursement amount, uh disbursement method, competitive means anyone can apply if they meet the eligibility criteria, the outcome is usually quite varied, um, but they involve um you know, riding up a proposal, scope, budget timeline, if awarded funding, gathering letters of support from agencies and organizations that may have some experience or involvement in the particular uh funding program, um, we're always encouraged by Grant writing agencies as well as funding agencies to so to solicit as much comprehensive support from the community as possible and the trick is that you're, you're rarely given sufficient time. It's always kind of a race you're given, you know, 60 days, 90 days, um, which sounds like sufficient time, but with all the different things going on, it's, it's, it tends to be a race by the time you get a project description together and so, uh, you just, you know, you submit fingers crossed, and then hopefully more often than not you, you received good news. OK, now on the formula grants, um, you still have to submit the paperwork and justify why you're going to get the amount that you're requesting. Yes, you have to submit what's

typical is quarterly reports on on how you're appropriately using the funding. and then annual reports that show um um major outcomes. Which of those two types of grants was the the um Office of Traffic Safety Grant. I believe that was a competitive grant, if I'm not mistaken, but Susan will clarify. I wasn't involved with the front end of that gram, but my understanding that it was a grant that was put together specifically to help us with PCH after the pepper dang incident. put together at our request or put together and then we just had the funds were put together because I've, we, we've had to submit some reports since then, and they took funds from various funding streams and put it together into a grant for us to help us out. OK, but I'm trying to figure out is, is, did we have to make an application to get them to do what you just described. I'm sure we did or did they do that and then we had to ask for that money and show how we're going to spend it. In this particular case, I don't know cause Alexis Brown was involved with that being, so I don't know how that happened in the beginning, but inherited it afterwards, which is fine. I have many years of experience with grants, but um I don't know how it originated, but it usually you have to put in all the paperwork with your, your project. It's so very similar to a competitive grant. It's just, you're not competing, which is nice, because the reason I ask, I, I had been under the impression and I easily could have been mistaken that that money was available almost as a matter of rights, so long as we explained what we were going to use it for, and that fit the purposes for which the money was made available. That particular grant, it was

the amount was granted to us, contingent on submitting an application that they were agreeable to, right, but we weren't competing with another jurisdiction for those funds. They had set aside for us so long as we provided the right use for them. Correct. OK. Did the grant writer facilitate the creation of the fund or simply the allocation of it to us. I don't know. I wasn't involved with that part of it, so I don't know. I don't know their involvement I think that's an important thing to understand because if they did only the latter, they wouldn't have been doing very much if they did the former, then they'd be responsible for the creation of the money. Yeah, I mean, I know I did the tail in because we finished it recently and we brought it to the council probably about a month or two ago, uh, to approve. Susan, we can lean on Alex Gibbs from Townsend to help clarify the complete history. Alex, are you available? to address this question from council member? Yeah, yes, I am. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Hello, uh, council member. My name is Alex Gibbs. I am the grants director at Townsend Public Affairs. Uh, so for the Office of Traffic Safety Grant, that was in fact a competitive grant solicitation. Um, you had to compete with all the other cities that were applying for this. Um, there was a meeting that took place prior to the grant announcement with city staff and the Office of Traffic Safety, given the recent events that did take place on PCH, um, so the city was requested to apply. Uh, we put together that application. We put together all of the elements of it and submitted it to ensure that you would be, uh, in competition. Um we additionally helped with follow up to make sure that all of this materials of the application, um, were submitted correctly, uh, and that was awarded in that roughly 400 and something $1000 amount. So, uh, it was a competitive solicitation that we went through, uh, and we worked very

closely with Alexis and C manager's office at that time, uh, to make sure that you would be receiving those funds Thank you for that clarification. I appreciate that. Uh oh yeah, um. I go back to when we approved this idea of having a grant writer because we didn't have one. This concept was there's grants out there, we weren't taking advantage of, we didn't know about, um, I'm not impressed by the track record so far, not so much by the lack of success because you don't win them all, but there's not very many grants being requested. and that was not not our objective on this. It was to get more grants requested and of course win them. So uh I'm OK carrying this another year, but I gotta tell you I'm not happy with the results. This is, this is not what I expected. I'm in the exact same place I would concur Um, I agree. I would just like some clarity if he's still on the line about, is there an accounting of the 460,000. How it was spent and if we have any money left, because I guess for 2 years that was the only grant that they. got us, so I'd love to know I just want to clarify the $460,460,000 was spent or how the contract amount was spent. How much the 460,000 that would be staff's monitor, they, they're the ones that have received the grant and then they got um allocated based upon. We can prepare that to fulfill that. Uh-huh. Yeah. Um, again, I'm not impressed and, you know, either, but maybe now. it'll be different, it's fiscal year 26, amounts requested, there's some earmarks that were canceled due to Congress passage of a year-long continuing resolution?

Can you explain that to me? please? So the, the, uh, community, uh, community projects or sometimes uh referred to as the earmarks process has been very inconsistent over the past few years, it's fluctuated depending on um who, you know, which administration is in charge but typically what it amounts to is early in the calendar year, cities are responsible for generating uh lists, descriptions of funding needs and um working with their uh grant writing lobbyist teams to uh essentially uh solicit support from their congressional representatives, and then depending upon how the budget process plays out for that calendar year, finding an opportunity to include those requests and um it just depends on the, the economic conditions for that calendar year, the influence of your legislators, um, I don't know specifically what the situation was here in Malibu the past two years, but, um, I would say that uh in general, cities were more successful in the former administration and they're having a harder time in the current administration. City Manager bond I just want you to, um, notice that in 2025, you're seeing 3 different grants that are being applied for. One of the reasons for that is that, um, upon arrival into this position and along with Richard, we realized grant writing was very, very important, and so we had to hunt down where the solicitations were going and they were being fed into a department that was, you know. going to one person and they were not being communicated. So

we revised that structure so that they are coming to the front office and, um, that we are basically looking at what these opportunities are and what our priorities are, and that's why you're seeing more activity is because we had to restructure um how that process was was being delivered, so, um, I just wanted to add that. So Townsend writes the grants who decides what grants to solicit in the first instance. We actually reviewed them, um, with him based upon the priorities given by the council, and Richard and I will look and see like what the priorities are and whether these opportunities do they match a particular grant, and so what you see here is pending are things that we know are priorities and that they match opportunities but do, do you or we within the staff. figure out what grants that are available make sense to seek and then ask Townsend to make the application or does Townsend also find grants for us and say, here's one that makes sense for you. Let's, you know, if you want to, uh, we'll apply for this one. They send us a plethora of of grants available, um, and then that's when we make the determination what really fits with our priorities here in the city of Malibu, so they hunt them down and then we narrow the list and then they make the applications for us and then we approve them. Yes. OK, thank you Any additional questions So whether you want to make a motion? I'll make a motion to approve with the comment that given our financial position going forward for the next couple of years, uh, we're not gonna be able to pull off many of the luxury items without having grants, so, um, this is, this is the only way we're gonna get some of the depth and breadth that we wanna see in the city, so I'll make a motion to approve. You know, I'll second that, and I would even be supportive of spending more money if it would increase our

chances of getting more money. And I would ask that we can get updates. Thank you. OK. We have a 1st and a 2nd. All in favor. Any opposed? None? I passes. Uh, next item was, uh, 1B5. Who pulled that one? I think I pulled it by mistake. I thought it was, I've got miss down here. OK, does anybody else want 5? Yeah, I'd love 5, please. OK, would you like a staff report? Um I just have questions. OK. I don't want to belabor it too much. So, Susan. Good evening. OK, good evening, Susan. Thank you. So this is the update of the city's evacuation plan. Yes. Um, and I was wondering, and so we are here to approve this company which we which I've read about, um and you have we worked with these guys before? We did several years back. actually, on an evacuation exercise. Was it after, um, Woolsey, oh, OK, so they know the city and they know, OK, great. um, I was just gonna ask if they knew of any alert systems when you speak to them. um That's the, the million dollar question for every community around here, I think, um, yeah, they don't have any other ideas outside of what we have been looking into. And so they're going to make a plan for evacuation. for different scenarios, and then will they, will we as a city go through an exercise, or is it just gonna be on map. Like how does that work? So there's going to be a lot of community engagement,

which is one of the reasons why it's just really, I mean, we should update it for a lot of reasons, but one of the things that has really come to light in the last, say, you know, 3 to 5 years, is that it's become absolutely critical that when you have an evacuation plan, you need to fully socialize it with the community to both get input. And so also for them to understand what the plan is. And in prior iterations, there wasn't the level of community engagement that's really needed. So that's a big part of this is to do a lot of community engagement so that people not only input, but also can understand what the plan is. That's great. That was my question, I think it's about community involvement, I think there's and that's like the uh RJS the story map, that is, we saw examples that they have done for the communities and basically then it becomes a tool for us on our website, so people almost like an illustration of what the plan is to help people visualize how it will work. That's great. I see that there's the vulnerable population's assessment with corresponding evacuation strategies and so that would be maybe in partnership with the senior center, and they would be coordinating with that, yeah, just looking at, we have various vulnerable populations, you know, um, people with mobility issues, people with large animals, or people who don't have their own transportation, whatever it is, and so looking at that and then having almost like a like a list of different strategies we can employ based on the situation and what we have available. And yeah, there will be an exercise as well. That's why this is a little more than some other contracts we've had because we wanted to also do a full exercise with our agency partners to kind of test out the draft to make sure it flows well and we can make any minor adjustments before it's

finalized. Cosmember your microphone. Thank you. If we approve this tonight, we get started on this. What's the timeline for the engaging. the engagement, uh, will probably start right now, because we try to avoid the holidays too much. I mean, it'll probably start before the holidays, but it will really be fully engaged after the holidays, and then we'll do the exercise in the spring as well, should be finalized by the next spring. Thank you. That's my questions, yeah Yeah. Um, I think for me what I wanted to um there was community outreach, but I wanted to make sure, uh, urgent care and UCLA medical specifically, we're on that list, um, not just as a notification, but they are brought in because we did see so much, um. medical needs, especially in the days following the fire, um, just making sure that we have the days after, even after the evacuation plan and such. OK, we'll make sure that they are fully integrated in. Thank you, yeah, OK, um, anyone want to make a motion? Are there any other questions? I'll make a motion. OK. I'll second. Great What's the motion to approve this? Oh, is that a question? Approved the staff recommended action? Yes. Approve this staff recommendation. All in favor? I, Lea post then, Adam Carey's, um, item 6, 1B 6. Skip park Who pulled this one I pulled it. OK you asked staff report? I, I just got a bunch of questions and maybe we start with that, you may have some background in

your staff report we can cover. two things I was under the impression. that we leads temporary skate park up until the final skate park was done now. I'm pretty sure that's what I heard, uh, and I, and I guess I really don't understand. I mean, I've heard a bunch of different stories and spoken to a lot of different people regarding why we've got to pull the skate park or the temporary skate park now and a lot of people have suggested had we did, did we build the plan in the beginning with the contractor says, here's what we want to do. So position your equipment, position all that stuff, wherever the hell's got to be positioned to enable us to keep the temporary skate park going, uh. and I like, I like to learn maybe a little bit more about that. And then the second part of it is, and I agree with, you know, the arguments that say we're going to trash this thing, and there seems to be, there should be a better solution to that, whether we can take it and put it up at Heathercliff or some other piece of property and let kids continue to skate on it, uh, maybe make something for Western Malibu, you know, there's the guy that bought the skate park equipment from Papa Jack's, who's currently got, he's currently using it, so I mean, he's found a way to take this stuff and and, and make it a viable option. Uh, and if those don't work, I mean, I gotta, I gotta believe there's a city out there someplace All right, who would love to have a temporary skate park and you know, if, if, if it's got to be refurbished or something that, you know, if we could get it to them, they may have the ability to refurbish it and give their community something to work with. So I think just some options we have to explore and I just haven't seen any of those. addresses we've gone through this thing. So I'll start there. Sure, I'll start, uh, good evening, everyone. Um, thanks, thank you for the questions. Um, when council

initially had the skate park in place. Um, there was, we were under the assumption that that skate park would stay until we needed to use the space for the permanent park. Um, I don't think there was any promises that the temporary skate park would be open until the permanent Skate park was open, but we definitely wanted to keep that park open until we needed this space for the permanent skate park. Um, as far as relocating the equipment, um, the temporary skate park was only supposed to last 2 years. Um, unfortunately, due to COVID, some management, um, turnover, the temporary skate park has lasted us 5 years. Um, I know that we've done some repairs, we invested in those. It is a wooden, um, skate park, so the equipment doesn't last as long as Papa Jack's, which was a metal skate park. So, um, to relocate it, it would be costly and timely. Um, we would have tot, if we wanted to move it to a different location. Also, additional considerations would be a sequa, uh, we may have to go through that process and to review zoning as well, so. um, we're putting this in front of you as a surplus item, um because it's the way to move forward on the permanent skate park, um, quickly and ifrson wh equipment from Papa Jack's has expressed interest in purchasing this equipment as well. Um, and we can negotiate

with that person on purchasing the equipment. If I could ask a question on that. Uh, so, put it in for surplus is just a mechanism in order to transfer from the city's possession to somebody else's possession. It's not throwing it away. It's, it's how the city, um, moves product from there to somebody else. That is correct, and that price could be set at any price, whether it's something competitive or something, um, maybe less expensive, so somebody could afford to. Of course we'd, um, do a bid process, so we would sell it to the highest bidder, um, and then take, takebis after that. Nobody bids it goes into trash, right? Well, once someone purchases the equipment, right? But right now we've got nobody, nobody has come to you and said, I want to buy this thing. Um, just one person has expressed interest. So, um, but we haven't done any soliciting for it or marketing for it. So when it gets through this process, we will heavily put some marketing efforts into this. But when you do, by the time you start marketing at the skate park will be taken down, right? We'll try our best to, I know that the skate light is, um, something of value and people are have interest in that. So we will try our best to salvage what we can as far as the skate light goes. OK, I'm just trying to understand how this is gonna work. I mean, if, if we take the skate park down and, and you wanna remove it but I think August, end of August is his date was gonna be closed, right? Yeah. It will be closed on September 2nd, so right now the plan is if it's closed at the end of August, what, what, what happened to

that skate park? What does, what steps are you gonna take? with that in place? Quince is closed down. Uh, so you, I, I, I'll go over the schedule of how things are going to play out, um, so today was a very big day for the skate park. We had our first concrete placement out there today. It, it was, uh, so, um, um, so, so that was a big event we saw first thing they were this morning, they were putting the concrete out there and it it looked pretty good. Um, that's gonna be continued. There's a lot of concrete work out there, and that's going to be continuing until November 25th. So all that work is going to be done. There's some other work, um, some coping and some minor details that are going to have to be completed and that's scheduled to be completed by December 9th. So technically by December 9th, after that, um, you know, barring any kind of last minute kind of touches the skate park, the concrete work, and everything else will be completed by then and um at that time, we can make a determination that if everything's safe, everything looks good, we could open up that skate park. um, shortly after December 9th and after our making sure a couple little clean up things we can open that up to the public to kind of, to kind of use, uh, keep in mind that there's items out there at the park that we're still going to be working. There's the, um, the restroom, uh, there's some other, uh, landscaping, irrigation, there's a fence, there's a number of items that are continuing to be kind of worked, but I think we could work um to open up majority of, of or not all of the skate park temporarily for for use, but it sounds like the, the earliest you would get it open is sometime around mid December, December 15th, if we're lucky. Correct. OK. And, and then, um so let's see here, uh, the restroom building will be, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna start working, uh, we started working

on it this, this, uh, last week. That's going to continue until January 2nd, um, you know, I mentioned the irrigation, there's irrigation on the project that's going to continue, uh, that's going to start in November and work through January 16th, uh, um, there's a parking lot that's gonna be worked on, that's gonna be completed by January 9th. and by January 16th, um, all the landscaping will be completed and, and right now we're looking at January 20th to be completed with everything within the project. and none of those last things you talked about assuming cements all poured and and you've done by December 9th, and you got a couple of days there to clean up so the 15th. Any of those last things, the parking lot, the res, they were not gonna they will not impact the opening of that park. Is that a fair there's a process that we have, um, under the contract that the city can take over part of of a completed part of the project that we feel is completed up to our satisfactory and we can take ownership of that and so that relie ve s the contractor from their responsibility for that part of it, the city takes over ownership and liability from that part on and and as it is right now, we're looking, like you mentioned, in the middle of December, it is, it is when that date could could go um this is all the schedule is in place for, um, everything we have going on, the temporary um park being demoed and that part of it, any anything that gets modified could affect overall schedule too. I, I just want to point that out too. OK, cool. So now let's go back to the temporary skate park. August 31st, we should close it down whatever the date is, right, someplace in there. What

happens to the temporary skate park after that date? Sure. So, um, our plan is to solicit for the surplus for about 2 weeks, um, and do a bidding process, and then try and try and salvage as much as we can, and, um, so the skate park stays in place for another 2 weeks. Is it the skate park will close on September 2nd. OK, closes, but then you said you're going to, you're going to be soliciting so it's a skate park still in place as it is today while you're soliciting, or do you start taking it apart? A little combination of, of both. So what we can take out as far as the skate light that can't be sold as a unit. We can, we can do that. And then if the equipment that can be sold as a unit, such as the bowl, uh, we'll keep that in place and hopefully sell that entire unit to someone. OK, so yeah I'm I'm, I'm trying to understand what's gonna be left and how fast you start taking this thing apart. so that cause you're gonna have solicitation it's probably not gonna get, probably not going to close that in 2 weeks. And I would think that whoever's gonna, if they're looking at it or you've got multiple bids coming in, they're gonna wanna see what the skate park looks like before they pay any money for anything. So that would suggest that it'll be still be in place for a lot longer than 2 weeks. It might take, right? I think that the 2 weeks will start actually this week, while we're soliciting, um, and then, and then close on September 2nd, and then we'll start selling, uh, the products the next week.

And, and, OK, it's probably got more the, the, the reason we have to close it on whatever date we're gonna close it is because why? What, what, what is driving the the decision to close that darn thing. So right in the middle of the of the uh um parking lot is a bunch of utilities that we got to put in for, for the um restroom for the facility, water line, um, wastewater line, electrical lines, uh, and so, um, the only way to do that would be to remove. a large portion if not all of the, the temporary skate park. The lines go right through where the state park is today. Correct. OK. Anybody else? Halan? Um yes, I was wondering, this all sounds like a big process. um, why don't we just gift the park the skateboard park to the skateboarders. Instead of going out for bid and possibly piecemealing everything and RFPing this and RFQing that. We could give it to them They can donate it to a city that doesn't have one, or they can take it and build it somewhere else, it just sounds like staff time. and I don't see why we don't just give it to them. So, so is, is the question to not to sell it, but to give it to the skate park. I think that'd be a question. So I see here it's $28,000 to the initial bid for the completion of the permanent skate park was allocated for the removal That's a lot of money to remove the skate park, if they're gonna use $28,000. Sounds like they're going to do a pretty good job and not just demo it. Just give it to the skate community So that's a question

for a city attorney if we can give property don't know how much it's worth. We don't know how much it just sounds like a lot of effort on your guys's part to you might not get much money for it. Is there someone that's willing to accept the property? I could find some people I mean seems simple. As long as somebody is helping that skateboard community, if they agree to it, they have to work with you or the contractor to just get it out of there. At this timeline, and then we open up a, hopefully it doesn't rain, there's no fires, no snow, no earthquakes, and we just open up the skate park, but in the meantime give him the skate park that's there. There is a process that's required by the code for disposal if you want us to look into um the options for potentially donating yet, we would, the first step is that we would need to have someone that's willing to accept it and that would be able to remove it on a time frame that won't interfere with the construction, correct? Yes. Thank you. If, if that's the case, then I think we just, just, just get with me and and we can kind of figure out the process of that. I think, uh, um, if, if we're able to do that, I think there's that could be a solution. We just need to kind of work to figure that out. Great. Yeah. Castoring it sounds like not a good idea. it's, yeah, yeah, we can, we can, we can figure that if once you have the name, once you know anybody, then kind of work with Kristen and I and we'll, we can figure that out. Terrific. Thank you. When, when did this process start of getting a permanent skate park in Melba. Problem before 2020, I'd say 2019. earlier than that, I thought I had to go back to

Papa Jack's. Well, so 11+ years at least, so more than a decade, and, and when is it going to open? Officially, I, I'm gonna say January 20th for the whole for the entire project. It's 5 months from now approximately. And, and then with the potential of it being the middle of December. OK, so that's great news This decade process is coming to an end. The end is actually in sight, even without glasses, it's right there, and we're going to open the skate park. And what we need to do to get there is dismantle, close down, dismantle the temporary park and get it out of the way, right? And the way that the contractor and the city have determined is the best way to accomplish that is to close it and then surplus it and and have it gone. right Correct, yeah, yeah, that's the quickest way of completing the project, right. And anything that's done different than that now risks this decade-long journey taking even longer, right? Time frame and overall budget, yes, right, so I support doing what the staff has recommending and if anybody has a good use for it, they'll bid for it, and the person that bids the most will have the best use for it. That, uh, just a couple of quick questions. So $28,000 to take it down, is that to take it down with a bulldozer or is that to take it down and put it somewhere. So that's the contractor's bid. on what he put down to for that work OK, so yeah, would it cost more or less to take it apart. and take it away That's his bid to to do the work. Well, what's the work, I guess is the question. It's, it's actually removing it and demoing it and probably probably getting rid of it one

way or the other. um the other question I have is why is it being shut down before it's ready to be taken away. Why can't you reuse it until the last day? That would be the last day. It's gonna take some quiet time to kind of remove all all of that equipment and materials so they can actually do the work. So it's gonna take 2 weeks for sort of to take it apart. Correct. OK. All right, um I'm, I'm kind of with Bruce, uh, let's don't slow this puppy down, and if somebody wants to bid. an amount of money to take it away. um. and honestly if they'll take it away and save it $28,000 that would be a better deal. And as Chris, as I think you pointed out, or person. if we try to put it in Malibu, we're gonna have to have a CDP and that's gonna take what, 2 to 5 years? So, yeah. I don't kid ourselves. It's not coming, it's not going up in Malibu. Yeah, uh, you know, and this whole conversation, it, it's a, it's appropriate, it's good, it, it, it's the kind of conversation that could have happened and should have happened a couple of years ago because if these things were better alternatives, they could have been part of the plan, but now we have the plan where it's in place. We're at the end of the line. It's not the time to start tinkering with the plan. Anyone have a motion I'll move to approved I'll move to I'll move to approved I'll move to Staff's recommendation. I moved to 2nd All in favor? I. Any opposed? I am. I might be too Well, it's a yes or no at this point, so I'm opposed. I'm opposed. I would like to give it to the skateboarders. Well, they can certainly put in a bid for it, so, and then they can, you know, if they bid $1 maybe they're the only ones that do it. OK so it goes to the highest bidder, so, OK, there is a process that there's another, there's another process. Do we need a roll call or is it a 32 vote? No, just confirming that motion carried 32 with Councilmember Uri and Councilor Conrad opposed. Correct OK Uh, so we'll now move on to item 1B7.

Who pulled that one? I pulled that one. Do you like a staff report? No, I do have a question. Uh OK, let's give Richard a second. All right. All right, it's you'll, you know, beware of Greeks bearing gifts. comment, uh, what, what they're gonna give us these projector what are they expecting in return? A better movie experience. I, I want to hear what did, what did they want in return for this? Thank you Oh yeah Um that's an important question and one that we have not specifically addressed. because this is a request that came up quite suddenly, and one that as staff, we didn't feel that we had the authority to appropriately determine. And so, after brief consultation, we decided to present it to all of you for your direction. Um, we do know, of course, that the Malibu Film Society, which is the donating authority. They have, um, for many years, hosted events in this facility and um. this would not in any way obligate the city. to for anything in the future but right now, Scott, as he's expressed to us, he wants to enhance the the programming that he has scheduled for this, you know, the coming months, um, he sees the current. equipment as obsolete and uh he's willing to cover the expense of upgrading

the equipment to give a better experience to I I don't have a problem with any of that. I just, I'm just wondering, you know, typically, like I said, beware of Greeks bearing gifts, uh, typically people want something, you know, the next item on the agenda, Southern California Edison, gonna give us 100, but they want something for it. I, if, as long as you can tell us it's going to be done without any obligation back, I, I don't have a problem. If we can, I'd like to defer to Scott. I'm told he's available online. I didn't see him in the audience, but is he online? if you are online. Yeah, I am. First of all, I'm not, I would be proud to do it. Not that I need to change my ethnicity, but I think they're fine people. Um. and I also want to share the fact that part of the reason why we want to improve this experience is because we have 195 people already confirmed for the show that we're going to be doing this Friday when we have the sneak preview, an exclusive sneak preview of Big Rock burning. We now have 244 Malibu residents signed up for the free membership, and that number's going to continue to grow as more and more people find out that in addition to this week we also have Cheech and Chong coming for live appearance in October. So what we want out of this is very simple. We want to be able to use the bigger screen. Great. Is anyone have any questions for Scott? Uh, Scott is Doug Stewart, um, tell us where this screen is gonna go when it's not in use. I'm sitting here, uh, I assume underneath where it would go, but I don't see where it's gonna go. It's so what's there. It's a motorized retractable

screen that will be completely pulled up out of view and it's not in use, just like the screen you have now. Unfortunately, the screen you have now does not even match the projector you have. It's the wrong format. OK, and the, the other question is on the lens, is it, is this a lens for our projector or your projector? No, it's for your projector. They're interchangeable lenses, and in order to um for whatever reason the reason length that's on that projector is what's called a long throw lens that produces a very small image and for us to show a modern movie on that screen that you have now, the image would be less than 5 ft tall. The screen that we would like to put in and would be anywhere from 7.5 to 10 ft tall, and it would be much, much wider on the stage. It's what's known as a constant image height set up that will require that new lens which we will provide, uh, you push a button on the projector, twist the old lens off, twist the new lens on, and it locks into place. OK. All right, Scott, thank you very much. Thank you Chris I understand this is a gift. Gifts come with no strings attached and gifts are good to get, so, um, I would think that as long as we're not obligated to do anything, and this provides an enhancement to what we have now, we should accept the gift and say thank you. Um, thank you. Will this interrupt any of our, with this work for installing the GIFs. interrupt council chambers, staff. Scott, what's your time frame for Yeah, in our consultation with Scott, he's assured us that the installation could occur in a single day, so it would just involve um. removing the existing um equipment and

replacing it with the new equipment. And what happens with the old equipment? Do we surplus it? That's correct. Wait, seriously? With the skate light. OK, um, OK, that's it for now. So that will come back on a future agenda for us to approve the surplus of the old scrape. He has tentatively scheduled for the next council meeting. OK, um, anyone else have any other questions? Anyone want to make a motion? I'll make a motion to approve. Second? Don't you need direction about which size? that was their staff. the recommendation Bruce, do you concur with Option 2? Is that the stash record? I, I would say the staff should choose which of the which of the options they think is best. Option 2 is the better. Larger alternatives. OK, so we have a 1st and 2nd for option 2. All in favor. Any opposed? None? OK All right, 1B 8. and who, who pulled that Everyone kind of did, OK. I'll, I'll just say a 18, notwithstanding what I just said about gifts are good. Not all gifts are good, I guess. Um, do you want a full staff report or how do you want to proceed? I don't see a need for staff report, do you? Anybody? Susan's available for questions, so. Oh. How do you want to proceed We get the staff report. She, Susan is ready to give it to us right here. And I'll be quick. Uh, thank you. Yeah, um, our annual public safety fair is scheduled for Saturday, September 6th, and we're very excited this year. It's probably gonna be the biggest ever. Um, we have animals

coming, goats and ponies and you name it, and shakey quaky and Tommy's Burgers, um, it's, it's gonna be really great. We're really excited. And of course, we invited Edison because we know people have a lot of questions for Edison on the PSPS especially with our announcement that there's going to be more, so we thought it was important that they be there to answer people's questions and provide information. And at the same time, we ask them to help sponsor the event because it's becoming more expensive with more people coming, we had to rent more parking, etc. And so they agreed to be the sponsor for the event. Who's gonna start the questions? Um, to add to that, I was once a uh community rep for Southern California Edison and very much aware of the fact that they have budgets to give to communities for events such as this and so sitting in a meeting requested them to give us money for this event. So, um, this is because we asked for the resources which we are due. And so this is not anything more than that, than a sponsorship. I didn't appreciate that we had asked for it. That changes the complexion of my analysis, cause it seems like a very small amount for them to be offering us and it's, I mean the way I was coming into here thinking was, it's so little to them and it's relatively little to us that it's almost not worth taking because it just signifies that we like like them, but if we asked for it, it's pretty hard to say no after they when they agree to give us what we asked. I agree. I didn't know we asked for it. I was hoping that they were gonna come with uh generators and dry ice, have we? I mean

we've asked for it, and so that changes my comments Anyone else Do we have a real clear, crisp definition of what we're gonna have to provide for the $10,000. I mean, I've, I've, I can't remember what, you know, they won't recognition all they wanted was acknowledgment that they were the sole sponsor of the event, which is true and which is normal if you have a sponsor for, we do that, and that's all we've promised. That's all, that's all we got to do. OK, let's, it's, it's all right. I will just say to the community, since Edison is going to be here to listen to everybody on September 6th from 11 to 5. Is that correct? When you're getting your Tommy burger, you can certainly express to Edison your pleasure on the excellent customer service. They are so proud of of our community. So yes, that was a little bit of spice in there. So. but I do encourage the, the residents to come out and, and talk to Edison, tell him how you feel. So. um, I'll entertain emotion. I'll make a motion for food. OK. Anyone want to second that motion? I'll second the motion. OK, all in favor? Any opposed Any? None? OK. Motion passes. All right, is that the end of our consent. OK. Wow. Sorry for the, the lateness, everybody. Um, so now we will move on to something fun. So we have a ceremonial

presentation. Um, I'm gonna meet down here at the podium. Stretch my legs anyway. Hi Congratulations. Thank you so much. OK, so our presentation of commendation to Barbara Brutalin in recognition of her service to with the Malibu Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce, whereas Barbara Bruelin has selflessly served as CEO of the Malibu Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce for nearly a decade, guiding the organization and the community with a visionary leadership, compassion, and strength, and whereas during her tenure she led the chamber and its members through multiple unprecedented crises, including the Woolsey fire, the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent Franklin and Palis inspire, offering unwavering support to businesses and families during their greatest times of need. And whereas Barbara established the rebuild Malibu mixers and expos, creating critical spaces for homeowners and contractors to connect in the wake of devastating wildfires, ensuring the community always had access to tools for recovery and rebuilding, and whereas she elevated the chambers at community presence through impactful events, including a 3-day art festival in Cross Creek and the annual Women ' s Leadership Awards, which celebrated the creativity, talent, and leadership within the region, and whereas

Barbara's leadership has left an indelible mark on Malibu and the surrounding communities, creating a legacy of empowerment, resilience, and unity that will continue to inspire for years to come. Now therefore, be it resolved that we on behalf of the city of Malibu do hereby honor and commend Barbara Ruelin for her outstanding service, profound impact, and enduring legacy. We extend our deepest appreciation and heartfelt congratulations as she enters this new chapter of her life, presented on the 25th day of August 2025 on behalf of the Malibu City Council. Thank you so, so much. You Thank you, thank you. Would you like to say a few words? Oh, I just, I'm just so honored to be part of this legendary community, the city of Malibu, and I was beyond my wildest dreams to ever think that I would be able to be the representative to work with all of you. And I want to thank you for listening to me when I was concerned about things and meeting on a Saturday and pulling everyone together and for where is she? For, um, inspiring me. I'm good. I'm inspiring me to, uh, try to achieve things that I never thought I could, but you challenging me and and we established the rise and Thrive Fund to help businesses going forward, and I want to thank you who hit the ground and went door to door to help, uh help all the businesses. I, I'm just, I'm just so grateful and to the people of Malibu who are the true heroes who keep going no matter what the odds, and I just want to thank you. Thank you so, so much. Well, thank you, thank you. Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody. stretch my legs. I OK All right, now we will move on to item 2B. So item 2B, we have a presentation by our fire rebuild ambassador, Abe Roy. Yeah, he will meet us at the podium and give us an update Great, thanks Hey, Ed, go ahead. I think she's pulling up my sleds Yay. All right, well, thanks everybody. Hi counsel. Um, 8 months in, I'll do a little bit of a look at the macro picture, and there are some uh trends that we're starting to see. We'll have a discussion on those. This is a slide that you guys are all familiar with are rebuild dashboard. The numbers are starting to tell a story If I look at the top 2 numbers, which is, well, let me take a step back, so for. several in the audience just to refresher, it's a two step process. You get planning approval, and then you get into the building phase, which is plan check. So the top two numbers on the upper right side, 64 and 45. If you add those up, 109, those are the

total number of planning applications, 45 of them have been approved, 64 of them under review, that number has changed a little bit. So that represents about 15% of all the homes that we lost, which is about 720. So the question that comes up is 8 months or so later. where are the other 85%. Why aren't we seeing more people come through? If you look at the pure number of people visiting the rebuild center, that number is actually pretty good. It's almost like 500 or so, so, and then the bottom number which is the number that is implant check that is step 2, we have 7 hold on to that number, we'll come back and talk about it, but I just wanna go into the 85%, so. we did a little bit of an analysis of what the barriers are. to rebuilding There are quite a few, and sadly there'll be some that may not ever come back and rebuild because of a number of reasons that we may or may not be able to control directly. Top of, uh, in the top of the surveys that we looked at from all communities ravaged by fires is under insurance, gaps in the amount of money that people actually need versus what they actually have. People are very afraid of permit complexity that's not a Malibu specific issue. It's across the board, you know, California laws in general are more restrictive than other states, and Verraz review clocks are set. There are practical delays that happen. People are afraid of the insurance market in terms of what that's going to do after the rebuild. They spend $3 million building a house? Are they going to be able to insure it. The other note that came to

us was the temporary housing costs the rise of it which causes people to move away, and therefore having difficulty in managing the rebuild. Doc talks about this all the time. There is an emotional budget and there is only so much that people can spend from an emotional standpoint, there is inflation that people are worried about And the last one is abundant misinformation. you know, over here in Malibu, we are the hot benefit all there's been talks that you can't build on the beach anymore. That's not true. Everybody must go on Caissons. That's not true. Um, Cal's cost a million bucks, otherwise you can't. That's not true. So there is abundance of misinformation and a bunch of other factors. Now some of these we can address some of these we have to accept is what they are. Um our city's different, no doubt. but nonetheless, there are some directional indicators that we can probably get from a comparison with uh Los Angeles, in particular, what, what I've pulled here is specific palisades. So this is what on the left side, we have a look at what's happening in Pacific Palisades, and on the right side, we have what's happening in Malibu. So, you know, we have a, a bunch of unique things going on over here in Malibu. We have a coastal topography. We have a lot of customizations. We are a customs city. and there can be some differences that can be reconciled. If you look at pure percentages the number of applications in palisades and Malibu, we are about a 27% and a and a 16%. And the differences can likely be reconciled. But as we sort of go lower in the table and you

look at the permittissue that starts to, you know, raise questions about what's happening as we go into step 2. Why are we not seeing as many go into step 2. So here's another look at step 2 itself. I'll go back. I, I don't know if I can go back or not, but a key difference between Malibu and Los Angeles is whereas Malibu is a two-step process. You get planning approval and then you go into plan check billing and safety. Los Angeles is actually a single step process. You submit for planning and building and safety, all at the same time. So when you look at the planning applications for Los Angeles actually includes the building and safety numbers. And that's where we're seeing a very dramatic difference between the city of LA and Malibu. 27% versus 1%. In pure percentage basis, I mean, you know, it's a 30x difference. Now, are our differences in Malibu, the coastal topography, etc. that I just mentioned, the customization, enough to warrant such a difference, or is there something else going on that we need to that we need to address Here's another look. This data comes to us from Diane Moss, who wrote an excellent paper. I encourage everybody to take a read. She lost her home in Woolsey, um, and this paper got published from uh Berkeley Goldman School This is a trending of what we have been noticing post Woolsey, uh, of course, you all know total homes last summer in the mid 400s. and then the trend lines indicate the uh the total applications, that's the light blue line, if I have any critique with her paper, she could have picked different colors and not shades of blue, but, um, in any event, the first line is your total

applications, the second line is, is the total permits. Now, if you draw a line at one year. what do we see? We're seeing 186 applications received? and we're we're seeing 32 permits issued at year number one, at the end of year number one. How are we tracking relative to Woolsey. So if you look at pure applications received. not bad, because we are at about 115 or so and we still have 4 months to go. We are at the 8 month mark, so we may catch up with 186. However, if you normalize it to the number of homes we lost not a great picture. I don't know if we'll be able to catch up on a percentage basis. This represents about 45%. We are right now, as I shared about 15% in total applications received. Permits issued this is where we have an issue, right? Um we just don't have enough in the pipeline. We have 7 that are in-building plan check. Maybe it's a little bit more as of today, but uh there are 7 in the building. So even if we approved everything that we got we can't track unless we get a boatload of applications come through to Plan check. We can't track with 32 So the most charitable interpretation is we are faring as good as Woolsey, but a more realistic interpretation is we're not doing as well as Woolsey in terms of the initial numbers. And this is despite a faster debris clearance that we had in Wolsu. Um there are other, you know, simulations. We won't go into all that, but if we project out the initial numbers that we're seeing, the picture is pretty grim in terms of what the long-term outlook looks like. The city's not been

sitting idle. The city's been working very hard, and I've been working with them. for the last 3 months. There's a number of activities and initiatives that are underway. On the left side, that's all of what's going on, the rebuild center was an excellent idea. There is still work that needs to be done. Everybody that is feeling like they are misinformed, needs to go to the rebuild center. People there are there to help guide. updated policy re resolutions. There is a full day meeting. that's gonna dive deep into all of what's happening. There's additional hiring that's gonna happen. Arcata is going full steam ahead. It's already live in the city of LA in the early reeds are quite favorable. The, the, the, the beta launch off it when it comes on board architects and professionals need to leverage it. That's gonna to speed things up. There are a number of info sessions that the the task force along with the city, we have jointly done my position along with establishing the zones and the captains are creating channels where residents can uh bring up their issues that we can address at the staff level. So, so there's a lot that's happening. What else do we need to continue to do? Now look, the one thing that I'll state again and again is, is, uh, the the city staff heads are stretched extremely thin. There is a full city you guys have said it a number of times. It's a tale of two cities. There's a bunch of things that are going on and uh sometimes folks get pulled, so we need to continue to see what we can do to maintain focus on the rebuilds. for the genuine like for likers, and this is a comment to the residents as well, is several folks are trying to do more than a vanilla light for like or like for like plus 10%. Let's try to see if we can add an ADU. Let's see if you can push the roof line a little bit higher. Let's go flatter, let's go higher on the bulk, and so on and so forth. Those create complexities, but we need to set examples where there are

genuine like for likes, let's approve them in an express way. All the stats, all the comments are going to stay quiet if you, if you get that. The nuts and bolts of the process itself, and this I'm talking about Plan check, whereas at a planning level, the process has indeed been streamlined with coastal lines, etc. out of the way at a planned check level, the process is largely the same for fire rebuild versus any other rebuild for 8000 square foot mega mansion or a 2500 square foot ranch style in a single family, single story home. So at a nuts and bolts level. there is work that can be done to streamline simplify the process. Let's look at the affidavits and everything else that needs to be done. The next point is an important one, the perfection mindset. You guys add the DS have said often perfect is the enemy of good. We need to address that. We are looking at every plan, you know, as if uh it was just another plan coming through pre-fire or unrelated to that, and there are a lot of comments coming back. Some of the, some of them are getting overruled, but still that exchange is taking a toll, costing money, costing time. Every time people, a homeowner send stuff back to their architect or design team takes more time. We have talked a lot about comprehensive guidelines, uh, a survey to understand what is preventing rebuilders from coming forward would be helpful, so we can more specifically dissect and analyze the issues. Uh, this was also talked about in terms of as we are getting more plant check corrections through trying to analyze them and seeing if they're recurring themes, if we can create buckets and we can educate people that these are the most commonly occurring items and with AI and other, with, with Aristar that should be easily doable because it's all going to learn with every plan check that it does, and we can broadcast that to the to the community and the architects. Institutionalizing learnings.

Like I said, we are a customs city. There are plenty of corner cases. Every time we have an edge case, we are learning, but it's important to document the learning and make sure everyone disseminating that information is up to speed with the learning. There are certain tools that Richard has brought on board that can help with that, and we would strongly advocate to adopt tools like that. So a number of things that we need to do but a number of things that's underway, uh, as well. Now, here's uh here's actually some good news. This is also from Dan Moss's study. And if you look at the top 3 bullets, it basically says the percentage that were not built after 6 years. So we all know this, 60% not built uh after Woolsey after 6 years. But if you look at the last bullet 32% After the Thomas Fire, after 6 years. and guess what? We have Yolanda sitting right here who made that happen. 32%, um, which is a statistically significant difference with uh relative to all the other fires. So, uh, we do have the capability within staff, certainly with her on board at the helm of all of this. And um there's clearly things that we can do to affect the outcome, as is evidenced through Diane's work here. So in closing, I'd say our biggest focus, in addition to all of what's going on is to try to get people into Plan check and through PlanCheck. The process is daunting for everybody. We have set it out openly that our process complicated by design to slow development, that's to preserve Marborough's rural character. Um, it's not working at the moment for fire rebuilders. We have to figure out a way to uncomplicate the process and do it right now. With that, thank you. Thank you, Ed. We really appreciate it. Um,

other there any questions or? I got a couple OK. OK, go ahead Here's what I don't understand, all right? I mean, some of the, the issues you brought to us I thought were issues that you were going to try and resolve in dealing with the residents. I mean, why aren't these things coming in? You're the one talking to him. I'm not, all right? And I anticipated, at least as I understood the process was set up was one that you were gonna work with the residents. I, you know, make sure they understood what the rules were so they could get the projects from, you know. done right, bring him into, into the city if there were speed bumps that they they hit, um, you would learn about those speed bumps and you could figure out how to go back to them and explain if they did something right or something wrong, and if there were things that we had to get fixed, you would bring those issues to us specifically, so we had some way to sit down and I, you know, and fix those issues. I mean, I, I listened to your presentation and I understand you know, stats and look at, but I can't, I'm sitting here today, I mean, my takeaways, you want us to sleep faster so we can get more done. Uh, you wanna, you know, you wanna, is there something about perfection, you, you know, I don't know how to deal with that. I mean, because the answer is, is I wanna start making, I wanna let people do make some decisions that doesn't have to be perfect. I don't know that's a slippery slope. I don't know how you deal with that because whoever's making the decision of what's perfect or not perfect, uh, they're gonna get different decisions, and I'm gonna to be all over the *** board. So I'm just trying to figure out what it is, what's the action of, yeah, what are you doing and, and how is this interfacing it? I mean, why aren't these people coming in? I mean, I, I've been to the rebuild center a couple times now. Those people are busting their chops over there. They're talking to the people, they're trying to make, you know, if, if they, they, they've got rumors, you're supposed to be talking to those folks and your other lieutenants you're

talking to him, and I would assume that's that's the way to to sort of deal with some of these rooms. I'm just trying to figure out. I mean, I, I hear, no, it's a, uh, I think, I think your questions are very well placed, Steve. The it's a work in progress and what I'm noting here is the current issue that we're seeing. Now this is stuff that we haven't discussed within or with my meetings with the city staff. This is collectively what we're trying to tackle, and I don't know how to go back on the slides if it's possible at all, but uh, um the items on the right are things that we are actively working on, and this is a work in progress. What I'm sharing right now is the initial numbers from a macro standpoint isn't painting a very good picture. We got a lot more work to do. With myself, with the MRTF, with the city, uh, staff, and, and, uh, like I said, the rebuild center is an excellent resource We've got all the right ideas, and we've still got more to do. I'm just looking for some specifics, right? If I'm going to sit down with somebody and say, here's what we want to fix. I want to know what the hell those are, because I can't, I didn't get those from the presentation. Yeah, and, and, you know, let's, let's speak on one of them. We have spoken for a while about streamlining the processes. This is, I'm not talking about code stuff. The code stuff is the code stuff. I'm talking about the nuts and bolts, which is, OK, you got to get an affidavi here, you gotta get this notarized, you gotta do this, you gotta do that, so you gotta upload the thing. Our process is a lot more complicated that way. And we've um been talking a lot about trying to get to the bottom of it. That was the point that I think a few weeks back when, when YLI was being being brought to the fore to help with some of that, and we just haven't been able to make as much headway with specific items like that. Are you getting feedback? I mean in terms of the ones that are in,

in Planche and if, if they're beings of what the issues are that the people are experiencing. And are you taking those back to the residents and saying, here's the stuff you got to make sure you don't, I mean, I, and I don't mean it. Joe Drummond, she would get her house done, all right? And I know it got delayed and she was complaining that it got delayed, but we found out that there was a, a DDSF issue that slowed it down. I mean, so did its job. I mean, I think they're trying, but you know, if, if stuff comes in and isn't correct. I, I want to be very clear that none of what I'm saying is to be interpreted or should be, should come across as a slant against the city, not at all. Uh, quite the opposite. I'm actually, uh, very impressed with how they're handling a number of different priorities all at the same time. The point here is our process, and let me walk you through some very specifics. When a plan gets into a plan check um there is a number of meetings with folks at the rebel Center. The plan then gets put together and there is already some pre-corrections that happen. Then it gets shipped out to our consulting firms that that review the plans. Many times they are coming back with corrections north of uh 100. And these are not from rookie architects. These are folks that have been working in the city. for a while. They're very familiar with the processes. When these initial corrections come back. There is another discussion that has to happen as to whether these corrections are OK, whether some of them can be overruled, etc. etc. But this process is lengthening the entire setup. And that's what's being discussed right now. So, as we speak, our plan check process is got a number of different steps. And uh that is

possibly causing people to sort of balk. and not come right in. Look, I want to get this stuff rebuilt as much as you do, maybe more. All right. Yeah. Uh, and, and I'm just trying to figure out it's back to the comment you made in your presentation. I got 3 calls this week from somebody that was trying to rebuild They wanted to like polite, like for like plus a little extra. You know, I want, uh, can I put this on there, and you sit back and it's not like for like anymore, right? And I, I don't know how much of that is going on, but that's, if you go back to Woolsey, one of the problems we have with Woolsey is, you know, we did this like for like deal, and then you could add another 50%, and a lot of people took that option and that slowed everything down. So you know, a, a straight light for like should be able to go through and part of the comment is to the resident community as well. It's exactly that, is if, you know, it is a good opportunity for people to try to reimagine their homes. But if they do so, you know, beyond the construct of the rules that have been established, then it'll make things complicated. Um, and that is happening to some extent, uh, but in addition to that, there are things which I've outlined on the right side that we need to put impetus and continue to work through. Look, the more specifics you can get us, I'm more than happy to work with you or anybody else to say let's figure out what we can do to make this thing, you know, less painful for everybody, but it's going to be a painful process, I mean, you're right. I mean, you know, I'm out of insurance. I've got workers. I'm trying to, I mean the house across the street from me, they started building a year ago. There's nobody showing up anymore, right? They can't get workers there. I get, I get terrorists coming down. I don't know what the hell that's going to do. So. the sooner we can get some of this stuff moving, the better off we're gonna be. And if I can help you out, that you got, you gotta help us out too. I mean, this, I thought the original role said, you know, we're gonna be exchanging specific information. I, I

thought it was a good idea. So whatever that's worth. Bruce, yeah, I'm gonna follow up on what Steve said because I've, I've been saying from the beginning every time I hear these generalizations that I want to see specific examples I want to understand when someone believes they're being unreasonably held up by a specific issue, what that issue was, how it arose, so I can figure out whether I think that it's the resident or their professionals that are causing the problem or whether the city is being unreasonable in the thing that's causing the delay, and I've yet to see one I, I mean, I, I ask over and over. I, all I hear when I hear these uh lies, *** lies, and statistics, and I don't mean to suggest by that that they're being purposefully manipulated. They're not, but these are just, these are just abstract numbers, and to me they're like in Charlie Brown, they're blah blah blah blah blah. I want to see specific examples. So the, you, you, you identified the probably the number one difficulty with rebuilding with with why people are not moving forward is under insurance. OK In Malibu, far more so than in Los Angeles, California Fair plan is the insurer, for for many, many people. That's cause, cause the other the other insurers all left Malibu after Woolsey. If you're lucky you had someone else. If you're lucky you got to fight with someone else who might fight a little less ridiculously, but fair plan is limited to $3 million in total coverage. The maximum you can get from Fair plan for a dwelling is $2.1 million. That's it. That's what you have to rebuild a house with fair plan. If your broker didn't undersell you your insurance, which happened to a lot of people. They don't even have 2 million The other million dollars of the $3 million fair plan a maximum is $250,000 for alternative living. They call it fair rental value. That'll get you maybe a year or two of somewhere to live in

Malibu while you're undertaking your 3 to 4 year process of rebuilding. There's a quarter of a million that they set aside for code upgrades. That's if and when you build, then you can get, you can tap into that money. And there's a half a million potentially available for your content so that's not what you're using to rebuild or if you are, you're, you don't have it, you don't have your stuff. OK. Um I doubt that the 100 and whatever number that are moving forward in in Los Angeles, our fair plan. I suspect that a vast majority of the ones that are not moving forward in in Malibu are fair plan. That's a major distinction, and it's a and it's a specific that I'd wanna understand. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm just speculating, but I, but I do know that that's a big issue. The um terrain in much of Los Angeles in the even in the palisades, I mean, the fire started in the hills in the area that's not unlike parts of Malibu, but a large part of the palisades that was decimated looks like Hiroshima, was flat and it was laid out neighborhoods. I suspect also that a number of the permits that were being told or being issued there are are for rebuilds of flat. neighborhood houses. I don't know this, but those are the kinds of facts I need to know, but beyond that, I need to know exactly what are the issues. What are the specifics? Building is comp and the other thing is this perfection can't be the mindset. My understanding is, for the most part, the building and safety issues that are coming up are engineering It's science, it's math. Well, math does demand perfection. because there's only one right answer. It's not there, there's not multiple choices when it comes to engineering and math. It is what it is, unless you talk perhaps to our federal government. I don't know, they don't believe in that. OK, well, you know, again, so I, I want

to see, I, I keep saying this, don't, don't tell me more houses are getting rebuilt elsewhere. Don't tell me people are afraid to come forward. Tell me Joe had the following experience, and this was a problem because this caused an additional 3-week delay that shouldn't have existed, and I will look at that and try to get to the bottom of, is it a problem of her professionals or it is a problem of the city if it's a problem in the city, I assure you they will hear from me. They'll hear from me right here in public, and I suspect they'll hear from Steve and I, I actually suspect we'll hear from all of us, but to just spout very general high-level statistics doesn't get me anywhere, and I've told you that over and over again. I've told other people to bring me the same issue. Doesn't get me anywhere. It doesn't, I don't know how to help somebody who's just telling me things are moving slower here than they are elsewhere. So that that those are my comments respond if you wish. Let me make a couple of quick comments there. Uh, the issues, the insurance issues, they're generic across the board. Malibu may have more fair plan. Palisades has a number of people on fair plan as well, the terrain, there is a number That Palisades has conversely, there are a number of homes that are sitting on fairly flat lots uh that are cut on hillsides in Malibu as well. So there is granted, there is a little bit of difference. Does it have to be a 30 or 50x difference, I don't know. Uh, it seems like a lot. In terms of specifics, you guys keep asking for specifics. The issue is we'll be sitting here 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, if you have to go through each one of those plants. Um I'll, I'll dive into the weeds of one of them. A come comes back about uh adding a note to the exterior cover of a stucco.

that has to show three layers. That was a comment from a consultant and so on and so forth. It is assumed in construction that Stucco will have 3 layers a base coat, a scratch coat, and a finish coat. Do we need to dot the i and cross the T on that one? or not? Now, every time a common like that comes, and there are 104 comments like that. Several of them are being reviewed by staff, and they're getting overruled. OK, cast that aside, cast it aside, and so on and so forth. So that work is happening. There is no need for me to escalate that to you, right? But the point is that that process is taking a toll. That process is adding time in the mix. Here's how it works. If you're ready with your re bu il d plans, you go through planning approval and then your team is putting together the package of grading plan, your geop plan, your structural engineering plan, then you have a meeting at the rebuild Center with the staff. They go over it one more time and then note what is there, what is missing, what additional needs to happen. I want the elevation of the survey. So you go back and those are all good comments, those are all good points. There's no dispute there. The package then, there's a link that gets sent. The package gets uploaded on the portal and then it gets sent over to a group of consultants that for the first time are actually reviewing the plants. OK They come back with oftentimes frequently there was a guy in our neighborhood building a burnt out garage, came back with 104 comments on, on, on something like that. Has the slab, you know, been this, that, and so on and so forth. That is my point. It's like, look, each of these can be founded. The several of them, you know, may not directly be germane to the structural integrity or safety. Several of them are assumed in the city of Los Angeles, that's kind of how things are going because I can say that because

I'm actually building percent in the city of LA, uh, and, uh, you know, that's why we are adding time, adding the emotional burden to and adding costs to the process. I'll give you another stat. OK, OK, but wait a minute, so just, so are, are you saying you gave one example in all that. You gave the stucco example. So are you saying that in the city of LA, if the plan was submitted and it didn't show that they are fine with that. They accept that they don't tell you you need to show 3 levels. That's what I'm saying. OK, so I don't know whether that's accurate or inaccurate, and I don't know how I'd have to hear from the city as to why that's important for us or isn't, but I would think it would be beneficial every time, every, every single of the 1st 10 or 15 or 20 that comes through if you and the residents identify what you believe to be extraneous requests. Let's see them. Let's see every one of them, and let's go over them with the staff and figure out whether they need to be there going forward can do that, but let me give you a counterfactual to that. Day after tomorrow, this is the workshop to talk about the policy updates. That workshop got put off by a month, uh, because when the workshop happened at the last week of July, out of the 16 agenda items, I think 2 were dealt with, and uh it was a good decision that was made. The residents cheered it, and then there was no time. There is practically no time, so you're asking to dive into the specifics, which from a practical standpoint, I just don't know how we're going to be able to accomplish. We don't have to dive into them up here at at a meeting just provide them to us so we can eyeball them and we can have discussions with the staff. Uh I have a Yeah, I, I'm gonna to allow councilmember Conrad, I think Bruce has made a very good point that we need to have better feedback, and we also need to know how that's

disseminating into the community, so, and I would say that the rebuild ad hoc, you guys have a direct line. I think this is a great exercise for them to both do with you. as much as possible, as much as needed. We are, we are happy to dive into every plan, um, as we go through it and uh. we, we, we can try that. I'm skeptical of the practicality of it because it's an enormous amount of detail. If you have to dive into every discussion on if the geo consultant is recommending 3 footer recompaction and, you know, removal and recompaction and uh the, the geo consultant from the city's asking for 8 ft. That's gonna be a very lengthy process. What I'm trying to draw attention to is that there are a lot of asks that are being made for like to like fire rebuilds that are similar to any house, whether it's a small house, large house, whether, you know, wasn't even a like for like Bill or fire rebuild at all. And that has been the process in Malibu. It's just that for fire rebuilds, if that continues to be the process that we'll be left with an outcome worse than Woolsey. OK.. 11, just one last comment, and your last slide, you had something about the building of male boos designed to be slow or something. If you think you're slow, take a look what's happening up in Carmel. I think in Carmelh, a lot of time it takes to build something or car. Do you read a newspaper that when the guy, one of the builders is leaving the city because they can't get anything done, so. just for what it's worth, yeah. Go ahead. I asked for 2 minutes and, and first of all, let me say this, hey, thanks very much. I, you know, you've got a thankless job because every house that gets built, the architect takes credit for it. Everyone that

doesn't get billed, everybody gets to blame, so I understand, um. if you look at um classic operations theory, and I go back and I'll try to do it real quick in the space industry, they have a philosophy about how do you determine what you need to do next on a rocket design. You started at 90% thrust until it blows up. You figure out what it blew up, you start at that point, you fix it, you start again, 90%, 100%, 110%, 120. That's how they get these kind of numbers. And I looked at your number, that numbers we have on the dashboard and it was actually one of the comments I had for tonight's meeting, and I hope, and you covered it. Where do we have the critical log log jams and as far as insurance goes, I don't think the insurance is an issue once you get past planning. So I'm looking at that 17 or so that are in planning, why are we're only getting 7 into uh permit or construction approval. and I'd like to know if there isn't something in that gap between planning approval to permit application that's holding people back, and I was thinking there's probably a cluster of something in there that we could address, whether it's, you know, don't mean to pick on the geo people, but the geology or if it's the grading plan or what I, I don't know what what it might be, but if you could give us some specificity, like what we just talked about here, of places where the, the, the clumping that takes place. You know, when you look at a scattered diagram of issues quite often you see that bull's eye, and that's what I think we're looking for, not to solve everybody's problem, not to go into detail, but tell us where the cluster is, and that will help us get some of these people through cause I'm more

concerned about the fact that Verification is relatively easy to do. It's the building plans that take all the rest of the sheets, and I'm somebody like you. I've seen a lot of building plans, and the ones you get for zoning or the 1st 5 or 6 sheets, it's the other 70 sheets that make up the the permit application. So if you can tell us where it's holding people back to get that permit across, I think that'd be a real help and I appreciate everything you're doing. Now Doug, you nailed it. I mean, I think that's where we are seeing the biggest gap and what's what I'm hearing from the residents is once you have the planning approval, you get the checklist of the mills. That is a very long checklist, in many instances they don't apply to the particular plan, and that is a discussion that they're having with folks at the rebuild Center and the folks at the Rebel Center are doing a great job explaining. But in several other instances there. being confronted with new as that they hadn't appreciated before. I'll give you examples. A geotech consultant and a structural engineers are pretty much necessary for all projects across the board in Malibu. Um. a civil engineer may or may not be necessary. Um, do you hire a civil engineer to do your grading plan, drainage plan? um, erosion control plan. And then after some discussions, um, you, it may be uh adjudicated that an erosion control plan could be done by the architect on record, so on and so forth, so. um, it's that then do you need night sky? Do you need landscape? And folks are finding out, and this is information that we are trying to get out to the community as well. I said, no, you actually

don't need landscape. You can do landscape later, but that checklist, you know, comes back with a plethora of items. That's one thing. The other thing that we also grappling with is. when the residents are hiring their consultants, the consul consultants are defaulting to a position of being most conservative. So if you hire a geoconsultant in absence of knowing exactly what will get their plan to pass. They want to be as conservative as possible and will propose a full length boring study, for instance, it's only a few geologists that will say, OK, let's, you know, we won't do subsurface study, let's do other ways to establish that. And that is easier on the consultant's part, you know, obviously they don't, uh, they're not footing the bill for it and uh it makes for a cleaner submission as well When the homeowners are getting confronted with all of that. Um, MEP plan is another example. 110, 120. They're well over 1000 spent outside of the architectural fees and and whatnot. Just on these consultants. Um, and that is causing a lot of angst when they're confronted by those bills. Um and it's causing some delays OK. This is what we need to know, uh, especially for Wednesday, anything we can get it's guidance on the, I'll call it the cluster. All right, thank you very much. OK. Thank you very much for giving us an update and a report on this and um I hope to see you and others on Wednesday. That's when we talked about some others. OK, um, so we are on to commission committee reports. I have one in person. Do we have any online? No, we don't have any commissioners with raised hands. OK, Kevin. Thank you. And, and I, I understand that uh some of

this may bleed over into item 7A, so I'll try to keep this confined to just a report. Thank you. Um, following this commission's last meeting, I confirmed that uh the other commissioners and I are all available, um, September 11th for the next meeting, uh, this afternoon I received an email from uh Ms. Petitjah confirming that uh facility was available September 11th, and I understand the meeting will be scheduled for that date. Um, at that meeting, I planned to suggest the commission uh establish a place and time for its regular meetings that's required by government code Section 54954, um, and that will also, um ensure that we don't repeat the issues that have caused obstacles to our progress over the past 7 months. Thank you. Thank you very much City manager Thank you and good evening, Malibu. I hope you are enjoying the last of the hazy days of summer um, and for you moms out there, I know that back to school can literally be the most wonderful time of the year. Um, so after the school free summers, so please enjoy. Um, I'd like to address a point of ongoing frustration in our community, which is a continued unexpected SCE power shutoffs and PSPS events, um, I just want to assure you we are working with our lobbyists to coordinate with assembly member Irwin and State Senator Ben Allen's office to address this matter and demand more accountability from SE on this matter, so we are fighting this Last week, we submitted a letter of support to the CUPC, the California Public Utilities Commission to make Malibu High School a resiliency center for emergency management services so that we have a local emergency center, um, but tonight I'd like to give a big

shout out to Public Works director Rob Leeau and and the voices of the community for getting Caltrans to back off their plans to remove the stoplight at Guernsey. It's amazing. Oh, what we can do and we all work together and we also thank the community for their voices on this issue, we will stay on top of this and provide updates to the community on this. Um, we have some good news from our community development department, Yolanda Bundy has been selected by the American Society of Civil Engineers Committee on Advancing the profession, to receive the 2025 Professional Practice ethics and Leadership Award. This national award recognizes ethical leadership in civil engineering, honoring professionals who demonstrate integrity, public service, and a commitment to advancing the standards of the profession. Congratulations Director Bundy. Um, also on the rebuild front are Malibu rebuild team recently received its 100th single-family residences rebuild some middle, 7 months after the Palisades fire. um, and just for comparison, we were talking about Woolsey. It took 8 months to reach this milestone after the Woolsey fire. Um, we had great turnout at our household hazardous waste and e-waste collection event, August 16th here at City Hall with 72 households participating. uh looking ahead, we have a coastal cleanup day at Surfrider Beach on September 20th in partnership with Heal the Bay? Uh, I encourage everyone to visit and subscribe to our environmental programs calendar at Malibucity.org backslash calendar to stay up to date on these and other events going on. I'd also like to highlight that the temporary use permit ordinance to assist

local businesses and is in full swing. We've received 3 express temporary use permits and staff will be conducting on the ground outreach with local businesses in the next couple of weeks to make them aware of local measures taken to assist them during this time. On the policy front our accessory dwelling unit item was recently presented to the Planning commission and staff is now ready to bring it forward for council's consideration, this item is scheduled for the October 27, 2025 meeting. Finally, I want to remind everyone about our special meeting. I think it's been mentioned before this Wednesday, August 27th at 9:00 a.m. to discuss planning rebuild policies. Members of the public are welcome to attend in person at City Hall or participate virtually via Zoom. The Zoom link can be accessed through the Malibu Agenda Center at Malibucity.org backslash agendacenter. We especially encourage fire rebuild families to join and take part in this discussion. from public works construction continues to advance on the city's permanent skate park, as you mentioned, Rob before and concrete was poured today. The Clover Heights storm drain improvements continue and should be wrapped up in the next few weeks, from public safety, the city's safety, preparedness fair is coming up Saturday, September 6th, and the fair as uh Susan mentioned, will offer valuable resources and information on preparing for wildfires earthquakes, storms, and other disasters, as well as PSPS events from the SCE booth. There will be events uh for the children there and the kids and food trucks rock climbing walls and so it'll be fun for the family while also being educational. This city will soon be receiving 2 mobile

sirens, high-powered speaker stations from the city of LA The city of LA purchased 6 sirens with Homeland Security grant funds with the idea that 4 would be deployed throughout the region and our staff requested to and is in the process of finalizing the agreement for these sirens, which will be brought to the city council for acceptance, um, and for community services, uh, Wednesday, August 27th at 10:30 a.m. there will be a nature walk and storytime event, um, meet at the Malibu Library and tour Legacy Park. It's complimentary, however, registration is required. Thursday, August 28th from 12 to 1 at the senior center at Malibu Hall is a senior luncheon Mediterranean escape. Enjoy a delicious Mediterranean lunch and socialize and enjoy a Greek dancing performance, uh, RSVP is required, um, and then register on September 12th. By September 12th for the adults slow pitch softball league, um, games on Sundays from September 21st to November 9th at Mabu Bluffs Park, Pony Field. So go to the city's website to register, and that's from that's it for me. Thank you. Thank you Uh sergeant I remind you to I put you on my notes today, so. Good evening, City council. Um we've had quite a variety of incidents over the past several weeks. So there's been a few dull moments. So if that sounds exciting to anybody we're hiring LASD.org. Uh, OK, after my little recruitmentspiel is done here.

So let me get into it, um. so on the 18th uh of August. uh deputies were patrolling, uh. on Pacific Coast Highway where moon shadows used to be when they noticed a uh a male loading scrap metal into his vehicle, which was parked illegally on the shoulder of PCH, the deputy stopped to investigate and discovered that the suspect had no reason for being there, and he was taking property that was not his, uh, scrap metal copper. and there was additionally more scrap metal and copper inside his vehicle, and he was arrested for uh. uh reasonable cause grand theft of copper material, which is a felony, so uh we're still patrolling the uh the palisades burn area and we're still on the lookout for people that who would like to take advantage of people's misfortune. um On the 19th of August, so the next day, uh, deputies were patrolling the library parking lot. uh when they discovered a pickup truck with a license plate from a Mini Cooper on it. They stopped to investigate and discovered that the uh truck hadn't been registered in about 15 years. And while waiting for the tow truck, the owner of the truck arrived and they contacted him, and he ended up being wanted by the US Marshals for absconding for his federal probation from a 1996 conviction in the state of Georgia for aggravated child molestation. So he was arrested and taken into custody and transferred to the US Marshals.

Uh the 19th, August 19th, same day, uh, Deputy's responded to uh a Malibu Country mart. Let me find it here. uh, to the shopping center there on Cross Creek, uh, for a call for service of a dog locked inside the vehicle. When they arrived, uh, one window was rolled down approximately 1 inch. When they looked inside the vehicle, they saw an infant inside the vehicle, and immediately they uh made entry into the vehicle. They broke the window and the outside ambient temperature was about 75 degrees, and inside they estimated it was about 90 degrees inside the vehicle. Uh, fortunately, the infant was alive and well, and the uh suspect, the mother, she, uh, came back to her vehicle while the deputies were there and in questioning her she was gone for about 20 minutes. and left her infant inside of the vehicle, so she was arrested for felony child endangerment, but the deputies were there and were able to uh rescue the child out of the vehicle, so thank you for the good Samaritans who called it in because they did not see the infant, they only saw the dog, so. The dog's OK also dog's OK. um finally, on August 20thel see if you have the video a chance, uh, on Malibu Road, the deputies responded about 10 o'clock in the morning, to a, um. person who was who had fired a bow and arrow at two victims who were walking their dogs on the beach. and. the uh the homeowner refused to come

out of her house in a standoff ensued. Uh, we had our mental, if you wanna play it, our, we had our mental evaluation team respond um we try to negotiate with her this lesson with possibly two victims. The suspect is now barricaded inside of a home there. Let's get straight to Rich Prickett. He's overheading Sky 5 with the latest. Hi, Glenn and Lou. Yeah, it's on the 25,000 block of Malibu Road, which is a small road just off of Pacific Coast Highway here in Malibu. Now at about 10:15 this morning, there were the sheriff's department responded to an assault with a deadly weapon. They did not say what the assault was about. They did say that there were two intended victims that were not struck. Now, according to witnesses, this is unconfirmed that there was a woman that may have fired an arrow at people that were on the beach, but again, that is unconfirmed. We're awaiting more information from the sheriff's department, but you can see deputies here on the sand here in Malibu. This person barricaded inside this home here. We have not seen the person that's in the residence. We do see a lot of things that have been going around on the sand here and quite a mess on the patio. Uh, that's about what we have seen since we arrived here within the last 30. So yeah, so uh with we had about an 8 hour standoff with the, uh, homeowner, um, she was suffering from mental illness. We were able to uh get a search warrant and arrest warrant going to that residence, and we were able to take her into custody without incident, and she's re receiving the treatment that she needs, that is all I have. Any explanation of everything on the beach. Part of the, part of the incident. That's quite a monkey hit. Yes. Labor Day's not even here yet. Uh, anyone have any specific questions? Just a quick question. Any update on Surfrider? I know you guys expanded the beach patrol up

there. Right. We, uh, we're still going there every weekend, uh, with extra patrols and this uh coming weekend, Labor Day weekend is our last one, and we'll be out there, uh, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and inor heavily for the Labor Day weekend, so we'll be at Surfrider. Anything you'd like to say about traffic, uh, tickets scofflaws. Uh, we've been having some pretty good success at uh enforce some of the parking laws that we recently towed a uh vehicle from Corral Beach, who has been uh. a thorn in our side, to put it lightly. He has approximately $18,000 for the parking fines, and we were able to tow them successfully over the weekend. Congratulations. I still don't want to forget about the, uh, boot, but good news. Yeah. Thank you. Good luck this weekend. Everybody stay safe, um, if you're coming to Malibu, please obey all the traffic laws and come here to have a good time and everybody leaves safe, so thank you. Thank you. OK, so on to written in oral communication from the public. Do we have any public speakers? Do we have any online I think everybody who's in here put in a a list. Yes, we have two raise hands for, I'm sorry, that's 3 holding it 4 raised hands for public comment. And let's lock it in at 4. OK, um, our first public speaker is Melissa Ireland, followed by Peter Island, followed by Ann K.

Hi Good evening, Mayor Riggins and council members. My name is Melissa Ireland, daughter of Peter Ireland. This is my service dog, Bishop, for PTSD caused by the fire rebuild permitting process. We haven't spoken publicly until now about the extreme difficulty and hardship of trying to rebuild a cherished old Malibu property from the Woolsey fire, despite our all-out efforts to comply with the ever shifting requirements. Planning was a breeze and a real pleasure to work with the city staff to obtain clearance. Plan, check, and notably geology, is where we have been stuck in what feels like a torture chamber. Th delays and hurdles preceded the palisade fire, so this is nothing new. I was 35 when the Woolsey fire happened. I was getting married the following year and starting a family with my husband. We thought at most it would be a 2 to 3 year process. Therefore, we reluctantly postponed our marriage and starting a family. By age 39 with no permits in hand, I knew the window of opportunity to start a family was closing, and we had to prioritize that in addition to the rebuild, due to the perplexing permit delays, and no doubt the toll caused by the rebuild process, not the fire itself. We had to turn to IVF in the hope of having a child. We are now into year 7 of the rebuild with 1 permit under our belt for a manufactured home. We have several more permits stuck in the quagmire plan check process. I finally got married last year and thankfully most of my family members were still alive to attend this important mil est one in my life. After enduring six IVF cycles. I am pregnant with my first child at age 42 with a high-risk pregnancy and still knee-deep in permit processing purgatory. I often hear that waiting on settlements and insurance funds were a big reason behind the delays of rebuilding. That is not the whole truth. Constantly changing goalposts, 4 to 6 months for reviews to be issued

or questions to be answered, contradictory statements made in meetings that are not allowed to be recorded, endless review sheets, or simply no response at all. These unnecessary delays have undoubtedly been costly and caused additional financial hardship, extreme frustration, and low morale for our team of consultants. As someone that dedicated nearly a decade completing my degrees and career training. Don't get me started on Once in a Lifetime dream opportunities I've had to pass on due to this never ending process. That's the tip of the iceberg. We've lost crucial years of our lives being patient, polite, following the rules, and rolling a massive boulder uphill only for it to roll back down near the top and start again. What are we being punished for? All we have ever wanted is to put back exactly what we lost. I don't want to be here sharing my private life and personal business, but this has been the cruel reality of the rebuild in the city of Malibu. Now we are lost at sea among the palisade's fire victims. We continue putting 1 ft in front of the other day in, day out, mustering up the fortitude and praying for continued health to cross the finish line of what feels like a system set up for people to fail or give up Thank you, Melissa Peter Um, good evening, Mayor Riggins and members of the council, Peter Ireland. I guess there is a real human reality associated with not only losing your property and maybe even more than just losing it because that occurred in one day or one night. but it's the rebuilding of it that really has caused my family extreme suffering. Um, most of my comments, I think I'm going to bring in on Wednesday, or at least I will try to participate in that part of it because I

really think most of it is policy-related, and I think that can be changed, not only for the remaining Woolsey fire people, but hopefully for the palisade fire people as well. That will conclude my comments for tonight. Thank you. Thank you. And Kay, followed by Joe Drummond, followed by Darren Graves. Hello, uh, Anne Kamarrok, uh, I put my name here somewhere, uh, when I put the time code version up. So, uh, basically, um, I'm very sorry Um, I know it's been a lot of loss and hardship here in town and all over the California, so we know. um, I'm here to do the work, so. but first, you guys have to also do the work and. take the politics out of governing in general, so, um, you guys can all do that, uh, NPP 26, I made it easier. NPP 26.com and PP 26.com. That's the way you can reg, I mean, that's my run for governor, but can also register when eventually we get to it, you'll be able to register as a no party preference person. You're not red, you're not blue. You're just about getting business done. It's pretty good cause I'm not allowed to do politics in my home or anywhere, so I just stay on business, and you guys, you guys are bored. and the mayor you're chairman of the board at the moment, so we all know how business works and uh I hope that we can kind of make that all happen for the people who all look at you guys to to do it and uh. no more burning, and I really want to put an end to the whole fire being a business. cuz there shouldn't be a business in the first place, so thank you very

much. Uh, once again, I'll repeat that site and we'll be updating it. This register to vote NPP. Change it from Democrat, Republican, to NPP. The website again is NPP 26.com. Thank you. Thank you Joe Drummond, followed by Darren Graves. followed by Aman Mohammed. I apologize Thank you, Melissa, for speaking. Honorable Mayor and council members. It's been now 8 months since the January fire, and in that time, the city has issued only one rebuild permit, 1 permit in 8 months. That is not only unacceptable, it is unfair. Families who have already lost everything should not also have to fight red tape to come home. We know from her prior record that our building manager Yolanda Bundy is capable of approving 60 permits a month. The capacity exists, so how can we make it as a city happen The barriers are clear, and there are too many as Abe stated. Here are just a few since you asked. Abe will supply you with all of them, and you will be overwhelmed. For instance, overhangs that should count as original TDSF are being excluded. Driveways and 3-foot garden walls, even though less than 2 ft, are being sent for excessive geotechnical review, TDSF limits are blocking even modest rebuilds within setbacks when going slightly larger would not encroach on them at all. And the like for like plus 10% policy is being applied so narrowly that families can't even add a simple bathroom or a small ADU to live in while they rebuilt. All of this comes from treating homes that stood here for 2030, even 50 years as if they were brand new construction projects. Instead of what they really are rebuilds. These are not luxuries. These are reasonable, practical steps that allow people to come back home. It makes no sense that a multi-family home is not allowed to convert into a single family without adding ADUs to replace the additional units, yet at the same time ADUs which help preserve affordable hous ing are being blocked. That is not fairness for fire families. Let me be

clear, our city staff is second to none. They work tirelessly and know this community better than anyone. The problem is not staff, it's the reliance on outside consulting firms that slow down everything and give over 100 corrections after our professionals have already submitted materials that meet the codes. That layer of barracuy needs to go. We also know the city manager's staff and hopefully our council are loving, have loving empathy for us fire victims, but we need to harness this compassion into real action that gets families home. Tonight was the first time in 3 months that our rebuild ambassador Abe Roy was allowed to present. His slideshow was meant to show how the process is moving slowly and where the bottlenecks are. This is not about blaming him, it's about listening to him. He is our representative and his voice in the data he brings must be heard if we're going to fix this. Every roadblock means rebuilding a slower, harder, and more expensive. Meanwhile, investor buyers are circling and each month another longtime Malibu family leaves for good. So my question is simple, what steps will you immediately take to empower staff, streamline approvals, eliminate unnecessary outside consultants allow ADUs as temporary housing and honor the intent of like for like plus 10%. So families can in the most generous way possible, finally get back home. These are decisions you can make on Wednesday during the all-day rebuild policy meeting. The solutions are in front of you. It's just a matter of choosing to act. And finally this Friday is big rock burning. I hope you will come to the documentary and see how we are doing our part to protect our neighborhoods and rebuild safely so this never happens again. Thank you. Darren Uh, good evening once again. Um, the Ireland family story is uh very saddening. Thank you for sharing it with us. That is exactly what we're trying to avoid with the Palisades fire rebuilds, um, yes, Abe's presentation was a long time coming. I think it was very well informed and well

intentioned. We as MRTF are doing our best to disseminate information to the public. Unfortunately, you know, we have to wade through very, very deep layers of misinformation that are being fed to the public by people who don't live in Malibu. There's a lot of outside influence that picks on Malibu for some reason. I don't know why, but they are just dropping a lot of rumors into the public social media sphere and people believe that rather than listen to us, so that is, I think, a city problem and an MRTF problem, but it's really a public relations problem. I don't know how to solve it. All I know is we can keep on trying our best to give the right information to the right people at the right time. um for the bottlenecks or log jams that Doug was asking about. uh, from planning verification to building permit application. My point of view is the city isn't creating the bottlenecks, but there is a plethora of Boomacs tied to design team timelines, um, the planning verification process does not rely on a lot of engineering, uh, but the building permit application process does. Unfortunately, Malibu does not have a good reputation in the design world because consultants end up losing money on Malibu projects. I've spoken to many of them that worked in Woolsey Fire rebuild, and they are not willing to come back to Malibu because they lost their shirts on Woolsey Fire rebuilds, probably because of outside plan review consultants like True North that create problem comments simply to drive up their billings to the city. If there's a way we can put them on a leash, like give them a flat fee for every rebuild project rather than an hourly allotment for every rebuild project They might trim back their comments, but the problem of design engineers and architects that don't want to come back to Malibu. That's going to be a long-standing problem just because of how

difficult it's been to get approvals here for 20 years. Um, there are a lot of talented architects in LA, but they're all taking easier jobs. Altadina, the palisades, they're easier, so of course, an engineer or an architect is going to choose that rather than the problems here. so we can keep on asking people to come in, but it's going to be a problem getting them to be here to help people rebuild, so, um, I think the city council has done an amazing job. I think the Wednesday workshop will be great. Unfortunately, I can't be here, but I hope you guys have a wonderful, um, session. Thank you. Thank you Ahmad OK, I just want to verify um Mohammad. is here? OK. Um, I see norm. Zumache and is Alexandra Partiers, OK, and could you raise your hand Oh, it's, are you Alexandra? No, OK she's Yeah, she's just here a moment ago. OK. It counts as one of your minutes, so. OK. Yeah, go ahead But you might want to miss. OK. Good evening, counsel. Um, appreciate the time and effort on your parts for uh helping with the rebuild. Uh, my personal home, just about 1/3 of a mile from Doug's home is 9/10 of the way done. Floors and cabinets, and then I'm moving in. The survey you're about to see, um, was very creative It's about fuel loads, and it's going to be very educational. It's going to be informative. The survey was done just about 1/3 of a mile from Doug's house above the Malibu Falls, known as the Escondido Falls. It's a bit scientific, but it is our

future, and it will help our firefighters in the future as well as our homeowners, and the biggest part of all of this is our insurers will have to look at this data and reappraise a lot of the homes after you see what we've created here tonight. There you go, Alex. Thank you. You wanna say something? OK Hi, my name is Mohammed and I want to give my time to my dad. Merrigan's an honorable Malibu City council members. Uh, you can play the uh PowerPoint, please. Is there clicker here Abe, did you leave the clicker OK All right. So, uh, my name is Ahmad Moman. Uh, my nickname during my tour in Afghanistan with the Department of Defense is Alex, my first interaction with fire started in Afghanistan, where I spent 10 years of my life shutting down the horrible burn pits that was causing harm to our war fighters, and I successfully did that. After the Taliban takeover, I came back to the United States and I met a person at the LA City Fire Department, Stephen Hamilton and his problem was identifying vegetation hazards. Well, he was using binoculars. When I took a few layers deeper within what he's dealing with on the back end when he gets to the

office. It's 1970s and 1990s era technology. 30 m per pixel, fuel models and fire models that are not to date. And what does that do? I am really sorry to be here first and foremost. I wish I could be here on another occasion, but unfortunately, this city has seen the harm to that. We're not doing that anymore, and that's why I'm here today. Next slide. If you take a look at Cal Fire's high fire hazard severity zones. That's what it looks like. That's Lahara Heights, who's one of our first implementers of our technology, Fire Marshal Jorgensen and Mayor Papisa. If you take a look at Lahara Heights, it just recently had that huge blob of red come down. There's no granularity, and you'll see that shortly next. Next slide. It comes down to pixels. Next slide. This is the best uh satellite imagery that's currently being used right now, that's 30 m per pixel, and that's over Griffith Park. I do not know is that Chaparral, Arundo, tobacco plant, uh, dead palm fronds, what's there? And this is what is currently being used for a fire model. Next slide. So I colorized it with the European Space Agency Sentinel II, and I took a zoom out. And if you see those homes highlighted with the red outline, those are properties in Griffith Park, the colorize is supposed to show the vegetation index. Again, I do not see anything. Next slide. Sometimes when you zoom into things, you can see things. Unfortunately here, I still see Minecraft and Atari level graphics. Next slide. The world's best fuel model. There was an attempt taken by Nbiia and Lockheed Martin, the invested over $15 million when I went back and talked to the researchers, what did they base their fire model off of. It

went back to 30 m per pixel. Next slide. Well, we're not doing that anymore. We're utilizing boxholes. This is volumetric data, and it carries moisture, humidity, flame length, and it comes at a 6.8 centimeter per pixel with hyperspectral. What NASA uses on their satellites. Next slide. All right, I think this one we have to play and then. volume up please Just so you know we don't have the greatest technology. Yes After getting sun poisoning out in the field with Zuma J, I realized that. You want to go ahead and describe what it's. Yeah, it should, it should play. OK. All right. Is there any sound? If we could go back to the beginning Is it possible to just describe what it's gonna say? Uh, yes, I can describe it. and if it doesn't work in the

next few seconds, we can just describe it. That's fine. Thank you. What if AI understood not only text, but also current data describing the physical world. Imagine asking a query about buyer risk without spending years to learn specialized GIS or CAD software. Our system looks at current vegetation, not historic. Here, for example, you'll see biomass from last week, not 3 years ago, like the best available federal data, and here our system is accounting for live fuel moisture, which changes on an hourly basis. The combinations of these layers is a fuel model, which describes fire risk in detail. The next map will show risk within each individual parcel at 900 times the resolution of the best currently available systems, but risk is not only a two-dimensional issue. Bayer moves vertically even faster than horizontally. So imaging a system which can classify vegetation and buildings in 3D. That way you can look at not only the canopy, but a fire hazards underneath it. By having 3 models of fuels around each property lets you run fire scenarios and simulations to explain where specific homeowner actions are required to disrupt by our pathways to structures. that future, it starts today. Join us in building the future of fire resiliency, where AI transforms physical world data into life saving decisions. And that platform is available now. Uh, what I would like to request

from the uh city council is their opinion to direct staff to provide a memorandum of understanding, providing fire score AI access to the city's Lariac image data subscription for a period of one year. This will give me image to test the product against the latest available high resolution data, yeah, Um I will say, um, city manager could you provide contact information for a staff member or. Absolutely. Thank you very much. OK, um online speakers Yes, our first speaker is Craig Hill. Craig, are you there I am here. Can you hear me? Yes, we can speak up just a little bit. That'd be great. Oh well, OK, I'm yelling already. OK. Yeah, hi, greetings from Super Hot Ohio Valley. I do watch most of your meetings in the planning commission. Thanks for your focus on bottlenecks. Thanks for Abe's presentation. Um, this isn't my main topic, but regarding delays, I'm one data point, but one reason we haven't made more progress, uh, is that I'm still living the disaster, still wrangling with FEMA, my debris clearance was supposedly done last week but isn't complete and they've managed to significantly damage my property. Um, multiple things going on along that level. What I wanted to talk about, oh well I should say, I have started the planning verification process and that so far is going well, but I'm still not confident that we have enough. uh waivers to restore what we had before, specifically, I'm gonna be concerned about geology and access issues, which isn't really the city's problem, but anyway, my main point, I wanted to get an update from uh

Manager Bond and uh anybody else about Edison and what they're doing on the undergrounding because there's a lot of talking about misinformation and rumors. There's a lot going around and the short line is that um they're blaming a handful of us for holding up the process in Big Rock when in fact it is they who are holding up the process. I, right at the beginning of this, I pointed out to them that the proper instrument they needed was an easement, not a right of entry, and, uh, eventually they agreed with me after saying things like, yeah, well, we're, we're making this up on the fly and we want to rush and they finally did agree and they finally agreed to verbally to the things that we need to have done, uh, happy to go into that in detail if anybody cares. Um and that was several months ago. On July 31st, I had a phone meeting with Manager Bond and Rob Dubo and Richard and Kellen and everybody understood that, yeah, what they need to do is easement. So we've just been waiting on easement documents, uh, any kind of draft in front of us, but I, they're trying to pit neighbor against neighbor and telling people, obvious mistruths about what's going on and uh I don't know. I'm sorry, I don't have a written presentation here, but um we are, we're doing our best in trying to get it done and they're the ones dragging their heels. So, uh, hopefully if you've heard anything new, let me know. Thank you. Thank you. And our next speaker Our next speaker is Hamish Patterson. Hamish, are you there Hi, counsel Um, yes, I, I, I wanted to talk about something that I think is a general theme with with American government is today we today the city council

made a mistake. and they made a mistake on a nuanced detail. I'm not going to go into that, but the and the way I see the problem is this, is you have you have people that are experts about stuff. and they they're knowledge was not looked forward to. I, I only got one response from one council member about what was at stake, and I tried to be very clear about about a situation down there. You have a city staff that is not an expert about this subject matter. And if you go back and listen to that city staff talk about that subject matter, their lack of expertise is quite obvious And the fact of the matter is this expert on this subject spent 15 years, ran for city council twice about this subject. and, and the reason in Bruce 10 years, we could have solved this problem, but we got boxed out the last year and a half by a city stout that did not choose to involve its local experts in the community, which would have solved the problem, which is why we made a point of this. It was on principle. It was on the principle of short-sighted thinking by staff. short-sighted thinking about the general government about what we do as a green community. We're supposedly a green community, which means we're supposed to involve our community to have long-term thinking about what we do, and I see this across the board, and it needs to change. You have experts in this community and city staff, not the people that are city staff, the institution of city staff does not understand how to inter fa ce with the experts in the community, and you as the council members have to, to, to rely on experts in your community to give you good information and the fact that I only heard from one city

council member about the subject on the docket tonight speaks a lot because I had a viable solution that would have gotten everybody happy. but we are making a giant mistake and we will film the giant mistake and broadcast it out and put everybody who voted against it tonight on the mantel, and every city staff member who chose to be a non-expert in subject to task about this and the city manager and everybody because in 2 weeks from now, we're gonna watch bulldozers do the most ungreen thing that Malibu can do, which is not reuse, reduce, recycle. And I do appreciate the two council members that understood that there are people in this community that are experts about a particular subject. So I just hope that moving forward, that, that somehow the city council gets the city staff to invoke the expertise. of the community. Like I hear it everybody in the public comments tonight. You have experts out there. Sorry, thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Andy Leon. Andy, are you there Yes, I'm here, and I'm going to echo on that. because, I mean, just what, what happened just now with the report from the uh sheriff about Malibu and surf rider, um, you know, he came and gave a report on, and but you know, when you asked about Surfrider, oh yeah, we're down there. Well, not really. It's like an open-air asylum down there, mental ward, you know, we didn't hear tonight about the lady that's living in the closed down bathroom with an ankle monitor on that assaulted an 8-year-old girl in the shower and grabbed her and scratched her and was then taken away. We don't hear about the guys that are smoking crack and tweaking all over the place

because this is an expert. He tells you he comes in and he says we're taking care of it, so you take that as being what's going on. Um, and it's a mess down there. That's just sort of ties into the whole thing of everything else. I,, I, I ran with Hamish for city council in 2012 because of the lagoon. you know, and we had, I, I, I grew up right by there, and that's like expertise, but I was never involved. I was like looked, I never, my, my opinions were never validated, and look what happened to the lagoon. Right now we have a moat in front of the Adamson House. Um. you know, heal the bay and surfrider Foundation are these experts that came in and presented, and they had more weight to, you know, you're getting information and from these experts and you have to take it as what it is. Um, and it ties into like the the sewer project, same thing, you know, being blamed, you know, blaming the colony and all this stuff. Now we've got this *** project and we've got more presentations from experts, and I really hope that you know, because I wanted to talk about that. I'm really so upset about the other issues tonight, but this, this dam coming down, you've got experts and you better listen to the, the people of Malibu that have expertise, knowledge before this disaster of the same people that ruined the lagoon that I fought so hard to, to warn everybody about are going to do this project, the state parks cowfish um, all, all these, these groups are, it's going to be a massive disaster. You look at that bridge project down on Corral which what a joke that is, and this is going to multiply the lagoon fiasco by 1000 times. So, you know, like everybody said, you know, we've got experts in this community, and we should be not

relying on people that don't really know and are just bringing you this stuff and because they may have a degree. I, I spent way more time in that lagoon than anybody that was making money off that project. Um. and same with skate park. I'm, you know, I, I have, I was like on the skateboard team original Malibu skateboard team, 1975. But like nobody listens to, nobody listens. Thank you, Andy, appreciate it. Our last speaker Our last speaker is Ryan. Ryan, are you there? Yeah, I had 3 consecutive unmute uh to have to, I don't know what's going on. OK, so I'll speak to a lot of things. I hope the staff takes note cause I don't think it makes it into any of your minutes But um on the earlier items that you took at 4th at 5:30, the um consent calendar still contains a whole bunch of new and somewhat controversial stuff, which I contend is not really eligible for consent because look how many things got pulled and you spent over an hour discussing them. And it's inconsistent with the open government transparency, sunshine, intent of things like that famous Brown act. So I just wanted to say if you, you really do expect the the residents of the community, you won't aggregate their time. for all the things that you can pack on consent as one motion. So that needs to be corrected because that was an interpretational change by you, your city council that did that. First time in 30-something years of this city that you decided to curtail public comment on, on consent items. So that's one. The other is the

prior assignments of former city councils were the Caltrans attend the public safety meetings quarterly. They willingly participated and consented. We need to get back on that schedule, if not more frequent now that we have all these problems. Um, there's the crosswalk to nowhere at the old uh moonshadows location, and now there's a bus stop to nowhere at the Moonshadows location. and that needs to be reassessed because we might need to crosswalk at Guernsey and you know, a permanent signal there and the resources time, Caltran's time, attention and funding needs to go where we really know it should be. This is our town. The second is, um, California Public Utilities Commission. Safety and Enforcement Division. You know, before Woolsey fire, they, they put a lot of stringent standards on uh what this PSPS was all about and it's snowballed into something different and worse. And that should not be The consolidated fire developer fee that we participated in with the county doesn't give us one cent and doesn't benefit us at all. We need to take that in-house. That needs to be assigned and done. Uh, the 2024 agreement with the CHP. We've had changed conditions called Woolsey fire. We might need to reallocate or even scale that back if we're gonna be 25 miles an hour on the east end from now on. So, um, please assign the Public Works director to implement item 6 of the Civic Centerway Task Force recommendations from 22 years ago to put a reactive speed radar sign in front of the city's sewage treatment plant driveway on Civic Center Way. That should have been done decades ago. I don't know why it wasn't The council appointed over 10 members to meet for 3 months. That was recommendation

number 6. and I believe that concludes our Yes, that was the final speaker. OK. So that brings us back up to council table, Steve? Yeah, I can be quick. I'm gonna go back to the city manager's comments. You're gonna have Greek dancers at the senior center. I hope you got a governor there cause I, I've seen some of those old folks and that's gonna brighten their day up here. I'm sure, uh, couple of things. I, I would also like to congratulate you, Yolanda and and Rob Deboau. Yolander for a reward and Rob for the work you did getting the Guernsey signals taken care of. Thank you very, very much. I mean, I, I called him on the day before and the next day before lunchtime, he had it figured out, so it was one hell of a job. Thank you very much. And why don't you just close up making a few comments about our city, the city manager we almost had. After an extensive recruiter-led search. Our city council unanimous unanimously voted 50 to appoint Ron Perez as our next city manager. She brought the background the experience, and tenacity that I believe Malibu needs to move forward. Unfortunately, on the very day of her appointment was announced, local attorney Kevin Shankman and his business partner from Palmdale, Andreas Eortan launched a campaign of personal attacks against Mrs. Perez. I cannot speak to their motives, but it is clear that these attacks are rooted in personal animosity rather than the facts and may be fueled by some of the alcoholic problems Miss Elkcorn is dealing with. To ensure mail made the right choice. The council spent more than 12 hours questioning Miss Perez about the accusations, and in my opinion they had no substance. That conclusion is supported by the fact that as of today, the city of Palmdale still lists her as the city manager on their website. Despite this, the Nebu Times

recently chose to publish an article repeating Mr. Shankman's unfounded claims. That reporting does a disservice to this community. It lowers the standard of journalism and undermines the credibility of the paper itself. Some of that reporting makes the National Enquirer look like a legitimate newspaper. Finally I believe we lost a real opportunity in rejecting Mrs. Perez. And, and, you know, I, and I, I wanna just compliment Ambassador Bond. She has done one hell of a job and sort of hoping, helping us hold the fort together while this process is going on. That said my prior priority remains clear. Malbom must have a permanent city manager, capable of leading us through the serious challenges ahead. I'm committed to ensuring we have that right person in place, and I will not give up until that happens. The mayor back to you. Thank you. I would like to go next. OK, uh, first off, I want to start off and do another at a boy or at a girl for Yolanda, I mean. the recognition that you get on a regular basis just highlights how good you are and how to value glass that you are to the city. Thank you very much for being here and I know just as you referenced tonight about what you did at Mindura. I know you're gonna do it for us here as well. Yolanda magic, as I referred to it of the franchise. and to Rob, yeah, I got on the phone with you as soon as I came up and you were on top of it and thank you very much for making it happen. It's your relationships and the city's relationships with uh Caltrans, the county, and so forth that we value and, and you're a thank you very much for that. um, I'd like to ask, uh, the city manager to at some point in the near term, let's bring back code 4 for review. It's costing us a lot of money, and I'll don't mean to sound like the broken piggy bank holder here, but we used 2 years ago

we had a $9 million surplus on a $60 million budget. Today we have a $6 million deficit on that same budget. It's not, and I recovering with resource, it's not like we don't have the money, but uh it doesn't last forever. So we need to watch our pennies and dimes and nickels and uh we need to make sure we're getting value for our money and I know they're doing a good job at Code 4, but we gotta, we gotta evaluate how valuable that is. Next thing I want to talk about, um, there's been some work done on Alert FM, uh, that's something we talked about for learning system for in times of emergencies, whether it's an earthquake or a fire, uh, there has been some work done already about trying to determine where the signals will be coming in. And in fact, people from AlertFM are going to be here tomorrow to talk to some of us here in the city and I'll be part of that. So we are pushing that to see if it's workable. It's not necessarily a guaranteed process for us, but it isn't use in other states, Alabama, Louisiana, and Butte County, California very effectively. Lastly, I want to echo part of what um council member, uh hearing said, and she came to us as a well experienced city government employee with over 20 years' experience in the field, but positions has assisted city manager, city manager, economic development dirdevelopment dirl roles. Right out of central casting to be our next city manager. And I'm very disappointed that she has withdrawn uh this evening and being considered for the physician I would say that a very aggressive campaign was waged to smear her reputation It's exactly the opposite of the American ideals of innocent until proven guilty. and there should be an opportunity for all the facts to be heard. With that, I'll turn it back to you, Madam Mayor. Thank you. Hail it or Bruce, I'll go. OK, all right, I echo, everybody, great job. Guernsey light,

um, Doug, did you mean covered 6? agree. I would like to see covered 6, that's OK. Code 4 is a security system that we're using one of our companies, so yeah, sorry about that covered 6. No problem. I wanted to clarify. I'm interested in that too. I'm very interested in Alert FM, um. I wanted to give the skaters the, the equipment to have. because they are the experts and I agree with them. I am working right now to try to bring horses back to Malibu, which means using the Malibu equestrian facility, the park. I am leaning on the experts. which are, you know, old time Malibu residents, maybe bring back the shrimp show. rankis, ropers, um, maybe a rodeo. So I do agree with Hamish We could lean on our experts in the community, um, more often. I have a meeting with them this coming Thursday. If anybody is interested in the horses of Malibu, please reach out to me. Uh, let's see, hey, did I hear that the high school is going to be an EOC possibly city manager. No, was I imagining a resiliency center, is it possible if you could tell me what that entails? Well, with a resiliency center, we're talking about for events for charging events and things for PSPS as they go on to, they can go there for the community to have someplace local to go to. So you guys are working on that? Oh, fantastic. Yeah, OK, great. I'd love to hear more about that. Um, Guernsey took up a lot of my my week, but that hopefully will turn out to be a success for the residents, we could use a. little bit of a

victory here Um, I also wanted to manage my own expectations about the meeting on Wednesday. Is this a good time to ask it's, if it's like gonna be more of a workshop or up here where we're up here. um the brief overview and the director can speak to it more if you have questions. Um, we are, it's more of a hybrid of a few different formats we've tried. We're planning to have the council on the dais so that we have good audio quality for the hybrid component so that we can serve both of those audiences, and then we are going into some speaker slips and truly structured public comment. We're going to open mics for each policy we're discussing. So staff plans to present the policy, open it for the public comments, then close that item so we can get couns el ' s final direction, and then repeat that for the next policy. And then we can straw poll or straw. OK, great. We can use the idea is to get the council's direction, um, likely will bring the policies back for final adoption of future meetings so we can have clean documents for you to approve, but we, we want to get the direction we need out of this meeting. Yes, thank you. We definitely have to do that. Um, I also would like to, to take the council's temperature on, um, bringing back the homelessness task force, because while I was at the equestrian center, I was harassed and chased out by a woman who I learnt lives there, but I also learned that she's always there and visitors don't feel comfortable going there. And I, I hear a lot of what Mister Soderling says, and it, I think, um, getting prepared for fire season. to be proactive, I think we need to reestablish a resident-based homeless task force that is not a Brownack body, does not require staff time. Is that something that I need to get you guys to sign off on, or do I just do that on my own? Like

I've done with horses and ferries and. all sorts of fun. I know that this in in this particular individual, you know, they approached her, they offered her, uh, housing, etc. and she turned it down, so, um, I know that um that they're uh dealing with that person right now, um, and that they're, they're continuing to try to get treatment for her, if not, then other actions will be taken, but you know, our homelessness situation, um, I know that the safety director Deanna and her team has done an excellent job of actually reducing the number of homeless, and Louis is doing a really fantastic job on that, so I'd be curious what what you're envisioning for this task force. Sure, yeah, I just, um, I think with fire season, there's still a lot of encampments that I see, um. it's just a matter of feeling safe. I do know that duennas and Luis do a great job, they do, but maybe we could be doing more, they can't remove that woman, so when I have my meeting on Wednesday, we're gonna go through this again. She's going to be there and I don't know if uh well, this is over here if you wanted to comment on it more, um, but they are still working on that. So it's not over yet. Yeah, um, didn't we, did we have a homelessness task force a few years ago, I think Doug, you were on it. I'd like to speak to them for a second. Yeah, we had it. It was very, I don't think it was very effective, and we actually transferred it into the public safety department commission where it's actively being managed and if you look at the results, we've got the results that we hope for, and we really just don't have the staff to put another commission in place. Yeah, that's what I was thinking it could be outside the staff's purview, cuz that I

know trying it, I do not want to put more on the staff. but maybe, I mean, there's no solution to. I, I just suggest that you really work with Louis and Susan on the things that you're seeing and that you're concerned about that you report it to them because they are, you know, doing a very good job bringing those numbers down. I just thinkg and what you're feeling. OK. Thank you. Um, I also had a question, soil testing, are residents before they rebuild using their land, what is the soil testing? There's they can, they've gone into the rebuild center and still asking me and I'm wondering I would like to know an answer so I can answer them. Good evening city council and thank you for the uh question. uh soil testing, um, that conversation came um during the debris removal. Um, during the Wool see fire, the state of California, Kalo Yas, um, assisted the city with the debris removal. At that time, the standards for uh for the ris removal was soil testing. During the policies fire, it was a region event, and a federal government gracefully came and helped us out. Army Corps of Engineers uh then brought their standards for cleaning the part, every parcel during that conversation, uh, there was a stating that the federal government didn't think soil testing was necessary. They were going to remove 6 inches of soil, and with that they feel it was sufficient. There were several conversations all throughout the region and as um result of that, um, the Evi county Environmental Health is started

a um a pilot program. Um, the, uh, they reach out to different universities. And they are this different universities have started doing testings on several parcels throughout the region. The study is still is ongoing, uh, we are hoping that we are keeping monitoring, we're monitoring that and we're hoping that as soon as that is released, we can provide counsel with an update. OK, thank you. That's it, uh, for me. If I had more time, I'd do the softball for adults and. go to Greek dancing with the seniors, but OK. Bruce. All right, well, first of all, I'm gonna follow the pattern of echoing the uh congratulations to both Yolanda and Rob, I think that. they were yet another recognition for Yolanda. Well, well earned, and Rob, really appreciate your picking up the ball and and taking it across the finish line with the Guernsey light. I think you, uh, Rob did this, Rob did it, and uh Rob deserves the credit for that. Um just to, I wasn't going to talk about this, but the,, the com this homelessness task force. I mean, we now live in a post-grants pass, um, era. I mean, so for those of you who don't know what that means from a legal standpoint, years ago, the Ninth Circuit, um, misguidedly ruled in Martin versus Boise that um government had very little it could do about um homeless living lawlessly, basically on city pro on on government property on local on um. public property Um, it took many years and finally in a case called Grant's Pass when the Ninth Circuit even further expanded upon that ruling, the US Supreme Court said nonsense. It's the government has every right to deal with this. Um, so

the, the homelessness task force was formed, um, actually, it might be Hest because we had what was called a homelessness task force, um, so it was home, yeah, there was a group of private citizens who were in association with the staff deal ing with homelessness in Malibu and what they were doing was they were enabling the homeless in Malibu. They're actually doing things that were causing more homeless people to come to Malibu because they were being given things in Malibu that they weren't necessarily getting elsewhere, and it was causing our population to increase. The city task force was created to take that authority away from those individuals and put it into a city organization where the members of that commission were responsive to the residents, not to the well, responsive to the residents in general, not just to a small handful, and they did a great job. They, um, they, they came up with some solutions that were consistent with um Martin versus Boise, but which would help us to limit the problem in Malibu. Um, once that was done, there was no longer a need for it. I would, I would argue that there's even less in need today because today the law has been settled by the US Supreme Court, and what we really need to be doing now, I mean, look, I have empathy for people who are living unhoused in Malibu and elsewhere, but I have responsibility to the residents who are being harassed and and um caused all kinds of difficulties by people who are living lawlessly on public property. So now it's in the hands of the authorities and I think our city council actually needs to take a look again at our no camping resi um ordinance. No camping is is euphemism basically for you can't live on the city streets. Uh, we need to take a harder look at that because we had weakened it in light of Martin versus Boise to keep it constitutional, at least in the Ninth Circuit, and now that it doesn't need to be, we need to go back to where it was before, if not make it more um strict. Um, I was going to talk tonight

about the Fernandez lawsuit to give people an update on what's going on there, but, um, we've already taken a lot of time and we still haven't gotten to our main agenda, so I'll talk about that perhaps the next meeting. Back to you, Marianne. Thank you. OK, I'm gonna be really quick too, um, Yolanda, do you just continue to amaze, so thank you very much. Appreciate that. Um, I'm gonna expand on Rob, because not only am I thank you for the Guguernsey, but, um, I was, uh, lucky enough to attend the public works, um, conference in Chicago last week, uh, where he and Nadia, um, and our consultants from Kimley Horn did a presentation on our PCH signal synchron ization project. And um it really just highlighted the great work that our city is doing to improve safety on Pacific Coast Highway and the um innovative and new technologies that they're utilizing in order to do that, so I'm very excited for that project. It was very well received and very well attended as one of the conference items. So thank you very much for that. Kristen, hang in there. You know, Parks and Rec is always, you know, the fun place to look for forward to all the exciting things coming up for everybody. I don't want to leave you out there. Um, yeah, the homelessness tax source that was kind of wrapped into the Public Safety commission, so if residents have issues or problems, I encourage you to attend those meetings and talk with those commissioners. and um I had the pleasure of delivering two CFOs to two Woolsey rebuilds today, uh, which was really excited, uh, completely different homes. Uh, they both built, um, one built in the original footprint, changed a little bit, but they got their CFO today. The other one did modular construction. It was really exciting to see, uh, just the difference that different people, uh, chose to to go forward on that, and I

wanted to ask that we adjourn our meeting, um in the memory of uh Toshi from Zuma Sushi. He passed away on May 19th, and for anybody who lived in the community on the west side and and went to Zuma Sushi for years and years. He was one of the sushi chefs that um was just a, a great, great person and everybody admired and enjoyed his sushi skills and just his personality and his family is here, um, so to his wife and his daughter, I, you know, um, express my uh, condolences to the loss of your um dear sweet man, um, in your life, so, and that's all I have. Um, I will ask before we go on to the next thing if we can take a short 10 minute break, um, and then we will come back

and complete the rest of our

agenda. Thank you. stand up

band the elections. He's a crazy man Hey, we're back and we are on item 5A. We have a staff report. Yes, uh, thank you, Mayor, members of the council, uh, here we're, um, just doing some quick amendments to uh our temporary use permit and signed permit ordinance we adopted last month. So quick little background, uh, on July 1425 2025, the city council adopted ordinance 526U, the urgency ordinance, which is in effect, and then introduced on first reading the follow-up ordinance 526, uh, to amend the Malbo Municipal code uh for businesses that were impacted by the, by the fire. Um, upon the second reading, uh, at the August 11th meeting, the council directed staff to come back with some additional changes and that's what we're here to do tonight. Those changes were, um, really asked for by a shopping center representative and um the staff with the city attorney adapted those requests into the code here, um, so the, uh, Texan Black is the original language that was approved and then the red language shown here is what has been requested to be added. And so as we, um, made our events, oh, that they must be open to the general public, um. they just asked that the requirement does not apply to attend an opening events, private gatherings for friends and family of the business only, and similar events hosted by the business or shopping center for the sole purpose of promoting goods and services. Um, that was added in Section H, and um, following that section 2 is, uh, instead of, it's the same amount of events that

would have been permitted um in the original ordinance, uh 48 over the course of the year, but they just asked for more flexibility and instead of being limited to uh 4 events per month, they asked to be limited to 8 events per month, 1 day events, and, um, the request was originally for the uh businesses, not in a shopping center to be limited to a total of 20 events, but we just figured that to to round it off and make to be uh an even 2 event,, 21 day events per business per month, uh, 2 times 12 is 24. So that just seemed more appropriate here So our, our recommendation is to, um, after the city attorney reads the title of the ordinance, introduce on first reading ordinance 526 and approve the zoneex amendment to amend the Malibu municipal code for standards and procedures related to temporary use permits and signed permits, and then two direct staff to schedule a 2nd reading for the final adoption of Ordnance 526 for the September 8, 2025 meeting. That ends my presentation Thank you. Do we have any public comment? No, we don't have any speaker slips or raised hands for this item. OK, so that'll close public comment, who wants to start? Bruce? I I'd like to propose one further change to this, um, in H, I'd like to ask that, um, the, the added language, this requirement H does not apply to tenant opening events, private gatherings for friends and family of the business only, or other similar events, I would like to add a small ruminate I in parentheses there such as one hosted by the business or shopping center owner for the sole purpose of promoting the goods and services, the business provides, and Romanette 2, where no compensation directly or indirectly is provided to anyone for the use of the

facility beyond the normal rent paid by the tenant. May I Yeah, can you do that one more time and just tell me what you mean. What I'm trying to do is make clear that this is solely for the benefit of the tenant and that they' one's getting paid to host this event. It's, it's, it's to promote the business, so what I would do is I'd make the hosted by the business the first condition and then expressly add a second condition. I mentioned this at the last meeting. I'd asked that it be included. I didn't give the specific language, but the, the second condition be where no comp ens ation directly or indirectly is provided to anyone for the use of the facility beyond the normal rent paid by the tenant. In words, you're not, nothing's being paid whatsoever in addition to rent. That if somebody pays an entry fee or a, I don't know. No, for the use of the facility. OK, so I can't rent you can't r exactly what I thought we agreed on, that we're not, we're not renting the space out to somebody to have an event. We're not getting compensation directly or indirectly from someone else to have the event. It's for the benefit of the person who is, who is the tenant. And with this change, does that mean that this is going to hold up the. proprietors being able to have events while they're waiting for us to come back with these changes? No, because OK, great. The proposed we read it into the record today, this would still be the first reading, so it would not delay it further if you, if you actually specify the exact change today. So what I worry about is the I'm sorry, no, no, please, Mayor, I, I was just going to say I, I'm kind of worried about what the effect of that is because the point of this is to help the businesses. gain um, and so I think I need a little bit more explanation why this language

that staffs presented doesn't do that, and the further language does. OK, so my thinking, I I, I think we make mistakes a lot of times when we adopt legislation at city council. The mistake we make is we don't think about what are the ways in which very good lawyers could read what we write to find ways around what we say. The purpose of this provision, as I understand it, we all, I think we're all in agreement, is that you're actually, we, we, first we said you can't rent out your space open to the public in general. as for free here and asked us, can you give us some leeway to have events that aren't open to the general public, but which are um for special people that we want to invite to our facility to promote our business, not that we want to make money renting out our, our place for a bar mitzvah or a wedding or whatever have you, but just something that furthers our business. Well, if that's the case, you don't need to be being paid by anybody to have the event. People could find, you know, a, um. an alcohol company could say, hey, why don't you promote my um product that you sell in your store. I'll pay you $500 or $1000 or $5000 to open your store tomorrow to an event where you're going to promote my product. Well, that, that's covered by this language, arguably. I'm trying to make sure that we add language that creative people aren't going to find ways around. So if we make sure that no compensation directly or indirectly is passing for the use of the of the facility. There wouldn't be a reason to do that. It's interesting how you think, Bruce. It's very interesting because it it's funny cuz in government I think that we put so many restrictions on things that we end up choking

ourselves to death by red tape. So what I'm trying to do is help our businesses and small like the homeowners rebuild without adding restrictions. Well, well, don't forget this is supposed to be an exception to what we said already, so I'm just making sure the exception is a limited exception. And I, if I can ask you a question as a former business owner and especially one with alcohol or something like that, you know, is that commonplace that you might have something and, and would that be beneficial to the business owner? to have that opportunity. Thank you for that. Um, I was trying to make money and hustle any which way I could to survive. the rents of New York, and so there were times where somebody would say, hey, can I rent out your bar? And these are the terms, and I would say, OK, and then they would get the bar from this time to that time, and we would have an agreement. It didn't have all these restrictions. We had a CFO, the fire department would come sometimes and shut us down. you know, people were outside a little too much, but it wasn't like I had to do all this. Well, that was exactly what we agreed. I don't know if it was unanimous, but that was exactly what we agreed. This was not going to allow When we first drafted it, and then the shopping center came in to us and said, well, your language is too strict, it doesn't let me have my own event, for which I'm not getting paid. So I just want to make clear that they're not getting paid for it. If I could throw in a comment. I think uh Bruce's example about the uh. alcohol issue. I know in our winery business, while we don't pay to promote in places. We do have instances where other people will promote and put us, you know, for $500 we'll pro500 we'll pro your pro we'll promote uh your bar and our product, so you're getting compensation, so so you're

starting to slip over that slippery slope, and I'm with Hale on this. I you know, we're not talking about, you know, Los Angeles here, we're talking about the locals, local stores and businesses, yeah, somebody may beat the system, you know, a couple of times, but it's not the end of the world, and it actually starts raising more questions in my mind about what you can and can't do. And if I get paid for, you know, putting up banners or something to promote the product in the in the restaurant. Have I violated this provision because now I'm being paid for it. So I, I, I think we're going maybe a bridge too far and I've, I'm comfortable with the languages here. I understand why you want to do it. But I don't think it's really gonna be an issue, so let's don't try and squash a bug that isn't there. Um, do you have any other comments? No. OK. Um, do you have any additional comments? Um, no, Steve. Doug OK, I don't either, um. are we ready for a vote? Some may want to make a motion. I'll make a motion to approve as recommended by the staff. OK, maybe one second I'll seconded, OK. Trevor, do you, do we vote? Do you read first? What do you? That would be to introduce on first reading ordinance number 526 in order, the city of Malibu approving Zonex Amendment number 25-002 to amend Title 17 of the Malibu Municipal Code to modify standards and procedures to stimulate economic recovery for local businesses as a result of impacts from the 2025 Palisades fire, including modification to the provisions related to temporary use permits and signed permits in funding the amendments are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act. OK. Uh, all in

favor? I? Any opposed? Opposed. OK. Great. Item 6A. It's. Thank you, Tyler and Yolanda. And this is my Aamir if you just give us a moment to get the PowerPoint up. Thank you. Hey, good evening, Mayor and City council. Tonight items we are bringing forward a more comprehensive discussion item for the council discussed its meeting time and format and the rules of procedure and decorum. This is to address both the hybrid meeting format and the general structure of the meeting. Some background information over the last several years, city council meetings have been evolving for multiple years during the COVID-19 pandemic, the city council and the city's commissions met virtually under executive orders and then under AB 361, which sunset in on January 1st, 2024. Since then, the commissions have been meeting exclusively in person, while the city council and Planning commission have allowed the public to participate remotely. The city council has discussed its hybrid meeting format several times, and the most recent direction to staff was to bring back options for providing reasonable limits on remote participation. Separate from the hybrid issues last summer, the city council adopted Resolution Number 2439 to address the late city council meetings, late running city council meetings by creating a 5:30 p.m. block of the meeting to hear the consent calendar, ceremonial items, and

commission and city manager updates. That change was implemented in October 2024, which is just before the fires. The 5:30 p.m. block does typically allow at least a few ministerial items to be heard earlier in the evening, but it has not fully addressed the issues with late city council meetings. Malibu has historically had long meetings and the Franklin and Palisades fire recovery items have only added to the workload of the city council meetings. We have seen a lot of new new speakers participating in public meetings, but one of the consequences of the late meetings is that we do often see public participation drop off after general public comment. So we don't have as much engagement on the scheduled items for the city council can actually deliberate and take action. As an example, I did look specifically at one of our issues from the spring to give you some numbers. I looked at the local business recovery items that kind of tipped off at general public comment at the March 24th meeting where we had 11 individuals speak on issues on that topic, and at the council's direction, we brought back an item on April 14th to discuss those options and how the council could provide support, and we only had 8 speakers on the scheduled item and on April 2 8 th we had 5 speakers on the actual small business grant program since the items are scheduled and the programs are refined, we do actually see a little bit less participation often. um and it can be due to a number of factors, but my concern is when business is taken up so late in the evening, it's hard for the public to participate and to even see the business of the city getting done. And to give us a bit of a frame of reference, since most of us only participate in Malibu public meetings. I did do a comparison of the average median length for a few of our neighboring cities. I looked at a 3 month period and the length of their regular meetings, excluding any closed sessions. So you can see that our cog cities typically have a meeting around 1.5 to 2.5 hours, although there can be outliers, um, in our meetings run much longer. I compared both 2025, but also knowing that was

heavily impacted by the fires. I compared it to 2024 as well. and our typical meeting length even last year was 4 hours in that same window. Um, it's more similar to a city like say, Santa Barbara, which is an example of a city that meets during the daytime. or begins their meetings during business hours. So to try and address all of this comprehensively, we have a proposal for you to consider and provide direction on, um, we are proposing moving the start time to 2 p.m. so residents could participate during the day instead of late in the evening on a work or a school night when it's challenging for many of them. They can still participate remotely. So if if they do have a conflict with work, there might be more flexibility for them there, um. and to put more controls over remote participation, we're suggesting moving to a registration model for speaker signups, including remote speakers. There are a few other cities that are doing this. One of our neighbors, 1000 Oaks, is actually, and you can use this uh Zoom webinar registration feature to both service registration and speaker sign up. So members would have to sign up in advance of the meeting, but this registration also ties them to the name they choose to register with, which is not required to be their legal name. And so you have a complete list of people who signed up to speak and who they will be speaking as during the meeting, which is one of the issues we had with the previous registration tool we had for speaker signups. um it can also help address some of the Zoom bombing because when you do have to register in advance, and I'd recommend setting a for It, uh, you don't see as many um organized groups scheduling as far in advance, more of the Zoom bombing incidents have been people kind of dropping into meetings even when they're partway through or towards the beginning. Um, so we are proposing, we start with the 100 a.m. deadline if we're looking at a 2 p.m. start so that staff has time to take all those registrations, compile a speaker list, and then when the mayor calls the item, we will have a complete list of all of the in-person and virtual speakers for you. And then I know it's important with, you

know, a change like start time, the council really likes to maintain that connection to the public through general public comment, make sure they have that opportunity to raise issues the council may not of other otherwise heard of. So we're suggesting moving that to the end so that general public comment is still heard in the early evening. Typically our meetings run 4 to 5 hours, so that would be heard sometime between 6 and 7 p.m., um, but to help tailor that item and really focus on its best purpose, which is raising for raising new issues for the council to decide to follow up on or suggesting eliminating time deferrals only for public comment for items not on the agenda, so the residents can use it as a chance to raise a quick issue but save their time and their energies for more comprehensive presentations if the item is actually scheduled by counsel for a future meeting. And another streamlining effort we're proposing just to make the meetings a little smoother, you know, we see we bumps along the road, especially with AV support at times, um, is that we're suggesting both setting a deadline for written public comments so review it um and so that we can be more consistent with the public on that. And then we're also suggesting no longer accepting audio visual presentations from the public, but still taking their materials either in advance in written form or in hard copy here at the meeting and also adding more instructions about that process to the agenda, so everyone has that notice and can be prepared. And then the last matter is just a scheduling issue. You've probably heard that we do have a backlog of appeals as of last month when I checked with Community Development. We had 6 appeals in the queue, which doesn't sound like a significant backlog, but these are lengthy items and some of them have been in the queue for over a year. Um, so we do have some of these scheduled for upcoming regular meetings, but we'd like to start scheduling more special meetings to hear these items so they don't bog down the city council's regular agenda as often. And then on the commissions, um, if the council's going to make significant changes to its meeting format, I'd recommend bringing back an item in the

future to provide direction to the planning commission to hold its meetings in a similar format. Those bodies typically meet in the same style and you have a lot of overlap between members of the public who expect the rules to be consistent between them, but with the council can serve as a pilot is the proposal, and then the council can also use this opportunist item to discuss resources for other commissions, particularly for the recording of commission meetings. And then to briefly touch on some of the other alternatives we've discussed and we can discuss more if you'd like. Um, we have her proposals to require members of the public tour I'm sorry, to appear on camera. There are some logistical challenges challenges with this option, enabling video options does add lag time to the time each speaker is called. It's, it's a technical matter of what permissions they have to be granted in that moment and how quickly they can acknowledge them, but for the user, they might have more issues turning on their camera with technical inexperience. disability, or just bandwidth issues that can't support a video stream. Most importantly though, members of the public do have a right to anonymous speech at public meetings and requiring on camera participation may infringe on that. Um, we'd also heard requests from the planning commission in the past to require applicants for development applications to participate in their meetings in person. If the council would like to require in-person participation for zoning matters and applications, it could require all interested parties to participate in person. Um, other, the council could discontinue remote participation, continue the use of the raise hand feature for that remote participation, continue meeting in the current format as is or provide other direction to staff. And then final issue, I do want to make the council aware of. There is some legislation that may impact how city council meetings could be conducted in the future. SB 707 has not been adopted yet. It's still in the committee process, but if approved, it would make significant changes to the Brown Act, relevant to our

discussion tonight. It would require all regular and special meetings of certain legislative bodies to offer members of the public the opportunity to participate remotely. Based on language in the most recent draft this council would be required to hold all meetings in a hybrid format, although it wouldn't impact the city's commissions. Um, we are waiting to see if that, you know, legislation will be adopted, but with the timeline of the legislative session and the timeline it takes us to implement changes to our meeting format. It's possible that there would be um we would need to come back with changes before we could complete our implementation. And if you're looking at that list of eligible legislative bodies, you'll see we fit under C, which is a city council of a city located in a county with a population of 600,000 or more. Um, but tonight I'm looking for direction from the council on how you would like your meetings to be conducted under current regulations. I just wanted you to be aware that this bill is approved. We'll need to revisit the hybrid component of your meeting format. And with that, I'm here for any questions. Does anybody have any initial clarifying questions. OK. Do we have any public speakers? Yes, one moment. And do we have anybody online Yes, we also have 3 raised hands online. OK, if you can lock in the three raised hands. So we'll start with Ann, followed by Joe, followed by Kevin Shankman. Oh, could you hit the button, please for me? Do you ever wish you could kick somebody off the agenda, not deal with it. This is it. No more kicking the can down the road, but kick it off the agenda. You guys are in a tough position. I wouldn't do anything with it, um it's got to make it sweat all the way to the governor's office. Um, I don't know if you want to wait. I know it's become a full-time

job just to cover your meetings. It's a moving target. 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock, 11, it moves 2 o'clock. It's hard to keep up. It's a full-time job. I don't know how the public is expected to participate. In terms of a remote, that's keeping up with technology, I guess we have to allow it and to accommodate it in an updated version of a 1950s Brown Act. That makes sense. So you're in a tough position. I don't. think. if here's the deal, this has happened before where where a city council moved the public comments to the end of the meeting. so they can then lop it off, and then there was no public comments where in technically, realistically, they were always at the beginning of the meeting, so if there was anybody left, it means the council wasn't doing their job. There shouldn't be anybody here at all. Otherwise, you're not doing it right. You don't want people. watching especially from over there, so, um I don't know, I, it's your decision. You're the board. and we had to follow So if you decide to move public comments to the end, what we're going to do is re-edit it. put the public comments at the beginning. So that was to give the public an opportunity to critique your actions and stuff and. pretty much everybody tunes in for the first part of the meeting. That's what we do. That's what we'll do. Um, we'll reorder the agenda as we see fit at that point. That means the public's input comes first. and at the end in the beginning Thank you. So just to clarify on that, that that's your private video that you're doing. The city's video will stay as the live meeting occurs and so if they want the actual presentation that will go to the city website for that. Um, Joe, go ahead. Good evening, Mayor and council members. I

appreciate the work that you're all doing, and I'm glad this is finally up. I'm here to raise a concern about the fairness and accessibility and respectfulness of our public meetings. First, council meetings should not start at 2:00 p.m. because many of our community work during the day and cannot attend. The 5:30 p.m. start used this past year worked well, and the 6:30 p.m. start for public comment was especially effective, allowing more people to participate without waiting until late at night. Why push public comment to the end of the meetings and why end time deferrals when you have many people supporting one subject. This saved saves time doesn't add time. Having presentation materials should not be an issue either. This all discourages participation and clarity and brevity. I also asked the council to hold weekly meetings, one special meeting dedicated specifically to rebuilding until fire rebuilds are being processed in a timely fashion. Families who lost their homes cannot afford years of delay and Mali bu cannot afford to lose more of its community fabric while these projects sit idle. We must also encourage anonymous callers who attack residents without stating who they are or where they live, participating via Zoom is a privilege, not a right. Past soon bombers prove why we need registration for virtual speakers and a requirement that all who speak remotely be on camera, if not here in person. I fully support the First Amendment and civic participation, but that freedom does not extend to knowingly false defamatory statement. s too often fire victims, including myself, and some of you on the dais have been targeted by anonymous attacks in city forums and misleading mailers, these claims claims are truly are untrue and deeply painful, especially given what my family has endured after losing our home and almost everything we had in the palisades fire. Despite that loss, I've stayed engaged and supported others, especially fire victims. Malibu's success depends on volunteers like you and other resident stewarts of this city. That's why it's disheartening to see these

efforts undermined by anonymous attacks without accountability. When I speak here in person, I sign my name to my words. requiring Malibu residency verification and on-camera participation for virtual speakers or worst case a webinar format would align with online participation with in-person standards. Malibu is a small, close-knit town, and most of us care deeply about constructive engagement, even when we disagree. Let's all keep our meetings open, respectful to all, and accountable to the truth. And let's meet weekly with one meeting dedicated to rebuilding until fire survivors can finally move forward with certainty, especially residents like the islands, the Olssons, the Lynxus who have been struggling for the last 7 years to rebuild from Woolsey. We do not want to repeat this with the Palisades fire. We need to solve this sooner than later. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin and Darren, I'm gonna allow your comments, so. be prepared. So it's always fun to be attacked by a council member from the dais. It's ironic that that occurred just prior to a discussion regarding meeting and decorum, among other things. and uh, you know, for what for for voicing my opinion. um for informing my elected representatives. of things that I know and maybe they didn't. I mean that's the right of every resident. and you know, I I, I have pretty thick skin I, I, I need to in order to do what I do in my profession. But I, I hope that you will reflect on those in the public who don't have as thick a skin. right? What is it like to come up here and express your opinion, express your your views, may be something that you know to you know, a number of elected

officials up on an elevated platform. Are people gonna wanna do that if they get attacked? by me by elected officials. Um you know, rather than than air the details of what occurred and and what didn't, um. you know, I'll just try to take the high road and quote Ron Burgundy and Stay classy, Steve. Um, and maybe maybe learn to to pronounce Spanish surnames. This is California. Thank you. Darren Uh, good evening and thank you for, uh, letting my late slip, uh, be heard. I actually wasn't gonna say anything because as you all know, I'm relatively new, uh, here, and I don't have any complaints until I saw the presentation and I freaked out when the proposal to move the meetings to 20 p.m. was brought up, um, I couldn't be here if the meetings were at 20 p.m., so I never would have met any of you, and I probably would not have been able to call in and I would have just let the city do its best without my input, and you would have been. done a good job, but I might have suffered because of it, so, um, please keep the meetings in their current time slot if possible, maybe move the uh. special, I guess, planning commission, zoning meetings to a different meeting, that'd be great cause yes, that is a huge time suck on your, you know, task list, which is never ending, so I think all the rebuilds would appreciate it if you could do that, um, and then finally regarding the Zoom registration, I think that would be a good idea. It would prevent people from making crazy accusations without being responsible for making those accusations and um I don't think anybody should have to suffer that, so, uh, yeah,

please keep the time slots in the evening, thank you. Thank you. Um, that concludes our in person, um. there were 3 hands, so what? Correct. We have 3 hands. The first speaker is Ryan. Ryan, are you there Yeah, and now I got two pop-ups on mute this time. Well, I wanted to start off with My apologies, I accidentally muted the speaker. I'm so sorry, Ryan, please unmute again. Yes, timer has not started. You will have 3 minutes. So when Riva was a um uh accounting person with the city, we, and I was on a um telecommunications, uh, commission, we had an item of something like $200,000 to pay for all this upgraded audio, video, high-def equipment for remote participation. This was even before Woolsey fired and we did it. We bought all this equipment and the idea was that we were going to use it. Well, you know so much for government promises, but um I, I viewed this in totality as attack on residents of this city. It's the 2 p.m. thing, forget it. Um, anybody who works during the day, and you would shortchange all the public because you'd have department heads sitting in this meeting from 2 until 5 p.m. and they'd be inaccessible to their own staff and for the public on it as needed basis for the work that they're actually hired to do during business hours. So that doesn't work either and it's just non-traditional. Um I would request you have no voted on items before 6 p.m. period.

That would include your, your little um everything you can put on consent as well. Uh, you can do presentations and uh other things, you know, in 5:30 to 6. But uh publics should begin at 7:00 p.m. and no later and no earlier, I think, really, so that we can count on our public participation because we do save you a lot of time. If you just take advantage of a lot of volunteers. I suggest the meeting date, day be Tuesday. It costs you nothing and gives your staff the benefit of an extra day of the week. before the meeting to get everything polished and presented and it gives you time to meet with staff and ask any simple questions. So the meetings flow faster and better. Just try it. You meet on Tuesdays anyway when the Monday is a holiday. You should meet weekly. We have so much business. You can do appeals on the alternate week if that helps you streamline Um but this is a war on council candidates. because you would be saying that basically anybody with a job could not serve on city council because you're gonna start your meetings at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, when nobody can come who has a job or working or they're in the middle of construction on their house and busy doing work. So, um, the picture's worth 1000 words. So the AV requirement needs to continue as it is. and it likely will continue with SB 707 when it passes. I think it's gonna pass. So, uh, the meeting format. Our next

speaker is Danny Danny, are you there Yes, good evening. Um, I'm a little surprised and uh bothered that there was a suggestion to move public comments at the end of meetings. That would be extremely damaging to the public's ability to have their concerns heard, considered, and met. The council needs to meet more frequently. I've said it before. why that most obvious solutions is being overlooked. It's odd to me. There's too much work to be done There are two cities to be served, as you like to say, and neither one of them is being given its due. One of them, in fact, is dying You saw numbers tonight that should shock you. They're not lies, lies, and statistics, Bruce, they're just plain numbers. Set aside for a moment all those who don't have enough insurance or haven't submitted for various other reasons. Roughly 100 people have submitted They are ready to rebuild and one permit has been issued Malibu will not recover at the rate we are going, so there is work to do. Don't sit back and say, show me a problem. The problem is right there for all to see. It's becoming regional and national news. Even if you've given up on the fire survivors and expect most of them to sell their lots. The next owners will need to rebuild as well, and they will be stuck in the same bureaucratic quagmire. and Malibu's revenue, its local businesses, and its community will suffer indefinitely. Why can LA approve its houses at such a drastically faster rate. That's the question. It's not topography or whatever other excuse you want to cling to. The topography in the palisades is not exactly the flat plains of Kansas. So what is it that's holding Malibu back? To be blunt, it's either A, the processes we have in place, be the people we have in place, or see the direction that they are being given. Let's fix ANC, shall we? Because I like the people. Assuming you perceive one permit issued in almost 8

months in issue, then it is your duty, as our elected representatives to figure it out, to look a problem in the face and figure it out. If you do not, someone else will sit in your chair who will. Yes Our next speaker is Salwa. Sawa, are you there No, hi, sorry, can you hear me? Yes. Hello We can hear you. Yikes. OK, sorry, apologize for background noise because I'm literally on a plane waiting to take off. Um, the, uh, moving the public comments to the end of the meetings as basically going to give you no public comments. So it really depends on whether you wanna listen to public comments or no? Um, also, I do agree with everyone else. We do need more frequent meetings, um, it was actually shocking that last time you met and decided to have a workshop at the workshop was scheduled a whole month. later, as if this is just normal. business and there is no disaster happening and there is a disaster happening. Also, the meeting on Wednesday, it's my understanding that the council asked for it to be a workshop. The definition of a workshop is uh a meeting at which a group of people engage in intensive discussion and activity on a particular subject or project. So unless there is gonna be an actual discussion. and not just comments, then this workshop is not going to be successful and should not default the workshop. Thank you. Thank you, said, conclude our speakers. That concludes public comment. OK. So we're back up here with the dice and let's give it the first stab. I will. OK, because I've been thinking about this

for 3 months. um OK, I totally I love the public comment. It's my favorite time of the meeting. I don't think that anybody was thinking of, like, I, I wasn't thinking that we would like move public comment to like midnight or anything. The way that I was reading all of this. was we have 3, let's say we have 3 meetings a month. We leave Mondays at 5:30 p.m., as is. We make a second one at 2 p.m. with a study session, which is what Laguna Beach does and all these other cities where the council can learn about things that are complicated, which I would like, and then public comment would be at like 6 p.m. So that would be the same public comment. for the first meeting and then the 2nd meeting, and then a 3rd rotational meeting, which I know we don't may not have staff for, but it would be the appeals, and if we don't have appeal, it would be a rebuild meeting, so we would have flexibility on that. This is just an idea. um I think Sawa is correct, though for Wednesday, I don't want it like formal. I can't operate. this way I need to have like discussion. So I don't know who I'd direct that to because we need microphones, it just needs to be a little bit more of a laid back discussion, and then we can, I can understand these big complex problems that will affect the homeowners for the next how so many years? You know, after hearing Melissa, Ireland and Peter, it's like heartbreaking all of this. and I would like to be sitting at a table with everybody so that I can understand bulk. a little bit more um, that being said. that's my suggestion. I know Ryan says Tuesday, I would think staff would have a

recommendation because I've also heard that like you guys drive home really late. and some people have to pull over on canyons. at one in the morning so that they don't fall asleep at the wheel. That is not OK. in my opinion So there has to be a balance where everybody can get what they need and what they want, um. that's my stab I do think we need Zoom. people registered I think we have to have hybrid. People are too many people are displaced. I would love the other commission meetings to be filmed. Ah I don't know anything about something that's coming down the pike about the Brown Act, but we'll cross that bridge when we cross it. And I think that's what I have right now, I think it would be nice to do study sessions. but not like where we have time to. really discuss TUPs and things, how that affects all of the decisions that we make affect many, many, many people, and I don't like to feel rushed into decisions, and I don't like to do them late. So I'm not trying to limit the public or do anything nefarious. I'm trying to find some balance for everybody. I'm gonna turn the. OK, who would like to go next? Doug, I'll take a whack at it. You know, I think this is a good opportunity for us to evaluate the changes we made a few, uh, I guess last year or 1516 months ago, it seems like forever, uh, you know, what we do right, what did we do wrong? What do we need to improve on? Um and let me kind of give you some feelings that I have on this. First off, let me make one suggestion to the staff about the uh non-planning

commission on the city council. Uh, I've been in board meetings where we use a device called an owl. It's been very common in the two companies I've been involved with this and what it looks like, it actually looks like an owl sitting on a table, but it has a 360 camera and, and, um. we don't know how big the room is, uh, one device can cover the entire room and 2 or 3 can pick up the volume and the sound for the others, so whoever's speaking comes upon the on the camera. They're $1900 apiece There's, and I don't think there's even a licensing fee once you buy one, it's in place and all it does is sit in the center of the room. So you might want to take a look at that for the other meetings as a way to do this, just a suggestion. OWL um on the planning commission about doing in person. I've been in enough of those planning commission meetings to know that you never know when you're going to be called upon. and quite often your your event is canceled, uh, or postponed. to drag somebody from you know, downtown Los Angeles or some expert to have to come here. It could be very expensive for the applicant, unnecessarily so, uh, especially if you deal with your professionals are when you're on camera or on scene, it's when you get to bill me and you can be billing somebody else while you're waiting for your turn on on camera, so I do think we want to look at uh not having in-person as a requirement. If the applicant thinks it's better to have his uh professionals there in person, that's one thing. but I don't know that we should require that. Uh, appeals on a special date, absolutely. Uh, we owe it to these people to get this turned around quickly I would even go so far as to say we put a deadline on this if the city council hasn't heard the appeal within X

number of days. the uh planning commission ruling stands. I don't want to do that, but I think we gotta get some certainty with uh these appeals so they get turned around. But, uh, having a special day may clear that out. Now it comes to the real question or one other thing I wanna mention, I like the idea of the Zoom webinar. Uh, we're never gonna be able to get people on camera. I appreciate the the steps you have to take, and it's hard enough to get people to come off mute, much less to get him on camera. Uh, I do think that the idea of having advanced sign-ins. webinars, uh, where you've got people with their name and they're they they go on and they're it's more formal than our sort of zoom activity. I think we'd be better off with the web uh uh Zoom webinar. Also don't think you need to go to teams or anybody else. Zoom is the universal system these days, and for nonbusiness, let's stick with Zoom and the webinar feature I've seen it used a number of times, works very well. Now, um bringing up the question, why 2 o'clock? Um, and I think well I think everybody here is able to manage their time either unemployed, semi-retired or whatever, uh. we can manage it, but it's gonna preclude people who are trying to make a living during the day to be here at 2 o'clock and you think about closed session, you might be here at noon. So can you really give up a half a day to be here during your business hours. Um, so why too? Maybe if we take another step and say instead of 5:30 start, maybe at 3:30 start. I do think we want to keep the consent calendar where it is that lets a lot of our professional, our staff people get in and out, um. and while we have a format for our uh. agendas that's been set, I

think it's actually a policy agenda. I prefer that the city manager and the mayor have more latitude about the order they put things in. so that uh we don't necessarily have to have everything in this fixed order and put some of the things that could be resolved more quickly or keep staff late put earlier in the evening, so I would recommend what we, we change the agenda schedule around at the direction or co-direction of the mayor and city manager. Now, as far as uh public comments. it's a nonstarter for me to put them at the end. Um, I do think we need to have them lighter in the meeting. We get a lot of things out of the way with their public comments. and we need to let people have their their moment in the sun. It's a real-time a killer when it comes to trying to get through the agenda. I don't know how we do that. This is a town that wants to have their 3 minutes. I do think the idea of sharing, uh, minutes on public comments on general comments is probably an appropriate thing to avoid. I think some of the presentations have been made in the uh public comments, it's the general comments, presentations that are video stories and so forth. Mail email them to us. Let us watch it there. It takes a lot of time, takes a lot of staff to get this done. So I think if you're gonna have a particular topic and we've got a agenda item that's about a particular item and it's worthy. I think we can allow there and share time. So those are my thoughts and I'm put it in summary, I think I'd be in favor of say at 3:30 time, let's take a stab at moving it up a couple hours because if you're gonna have uh closed session, this might be a 2 o'clock, a bit more workable for. uh other people I think we want to keep the uh Zoom webinar. I think we want to have say, uh, if we start at 3:30, maybe at 5:30 uh time for

public comments or earlier no earlier than. Peels on a special day, planning the commission in person, uh, is a non-starter and look to the owl or something similar for uh our commission meetings. and that's my comments right now. I'd love to hear what everybody else has to say. Bruce All right, I don't know how we're gonna ever resolve this stuff tonight. Uh. first of all, Kelsey, thank you for the presentation. It was very well done, and I, I, I followed it all really easily. Some good suggestions, some that we're just not going to accept them, sure, um, and some I think you inherited from Joe and Alexis. if I'm, if I remember correctly, the conversations we've had before. Uh, I think the starting at 2 is a non-starter. I don't even agree that we should start at 3:30. I think the timing that we set in place about a year ago that we have now is about as early as we can go and, and I would keep it that way. And I, and I am mindful of the fact that um somebody made the comment, um, maybe um Ryan, maybe that, um. you know, right now the city council members may be um able to attend a meeting during the day, but we don't want to foreclose candidates who work full time. This is in basically uncompensated part-time job and um. anybody who works or doesn't work should have the ability to run for city council and be able to serve on city council and starting in the middle of the day, early in the afternoon or even in the middle of the afternoon is going to foreclose a lot of people from being able to do that. Um, I think moving the public comment is a nonstarter as well. So I don't, and I don't think it really needs to be much more set on that. Um, I do agree that there should be sign up at bare minimum for Zoom participants in advance of the meeting beginning. If I remember correctly, that's how

we started when before we went to hybrid, when we initially started the COVID Zoom meetings, you had to sign up online in order to be able to speak and the clerk had the list. In a fashion, it was an implementation very, very challenging because the registration for me at the time was in no way tied to Zoom, so I was generated a list for me of all the names people said they would speak under, and that did not necessarily relate to the names they were present in the Zoom meeting under, um, and also at the time, there were changes in executive orders and uh law about speaker signups and how it could be regulated. So we did reach a point where you could not require advanced registrations, although we had a registration option, we had to continue accepting them live. So we're in a different place right now with the regulations. Well, as long as it's lawful, and I believe it is today, I would, I would support sign up issue specific sign up in advance of the meeting beginning. I would go so far, I've said this before, I would go so far as to require that to extend the courtesy of Zoom participation only to Malibu residents. I do not believe we have a legal obligation to extend a courtesy to anyone, uh, so when we extend that courtesy as long as there's a rational basis for a distinction between people. Um, we are allowed to utilize that rational basis and a rational to me, it is rational when we are extending the courtesy of participating at our meetings when anybody in the world is welcome to walk in this door and sit in a seat and sign a form, but I think it's rational to say that we, we are sufficiently concerned about the views of our residents that we want to give them the additional ability to sign up on Zoom, especially since so many of them have been have been displaced. I understand that there would be some administrative difficulty at the beginning of such a process to figure out how we determine whether somebody is a resident or not, but I, I don't think that impinges on anonymity. I

don't think it impinges on any legal right to participate because again, someone could come in here, I guess with a paper bag on their head if they want from Texas and get up to the podium and speak. We're not going to stop them from doing that. They don't have to give their name. That's their legal right, but they don't have a, no one has a legal right to participate on Zoom. We can create whatever rational rules we want, and I think non non-anonymous pre-signed up participation, limited to residents, um, issue specific on Zoom are perfectly appropriate, rational distinctions. I suspect I'm going to be in the minority on that one, but I, I think it, they're all appropriate and I think they're important. um I go further than special meetings on um land use appeals. I don't think there should be, I don't think any land use appeal should be heard unless a report has been prepared and promulgated by the staff at no, no less than 30 days before the hearing on that matter. I know the argument's going to be, well, it takes us a lot of time to prepare the report and sometimes we can't get it prepared until just before the meeting. Nonsense. That just means the meeting will be later. I don't, there's, there's no need to get it prepared to meet the meeting date. The meeting date just can't be set until after the report's been prepared and promulgated, then there could be a meeting no earlier than 30 days from that. The parties also would then it would be incumbent upon the parties to the extent they have comments on the staff's report. Both the applicant as well as the opposition to submit their written comments, including any PowerPoints they want to give to the city council, at least 10 business days before the hearing. That way, 10 days before the hearing, or actually 14 days because 10 business days, we'll have the opportunity to read everything that's going to be submitted by the city and the parties pertaining to that appeal. Public gets to submit their stuff until a day or two before

the meeting, I suppose, but the parties always say, well, we can't prepare our papers because we don't get the report until late. We end up getting sometimes report Wednesday or Thursday before the meeting. We then get the party submissions the day of the meeting. That's not a good way to handle a quasi-judicial matter. So I would propose that for land use appeals, the appeal doesn't even get set for hearing until after the report has been published no later than no earlier than 30 days from that report and that the the parties have to provide their written submissions no later than 10 business days before the hearing, and then we can proceed. And I think that the planning commission would benefit from that as well. I know they complain all the time about being dumped off hundreds of pages to read days before the meeting, and they're also working part-time uncompensated. Um I personally would favor disposing of the Pledge of allegiance. You all know I don't stand for it. I, I have a long litany of explanation I could provide for why we shouldn't continue to have it as part of our city council meetings, many other cities have disposed of it, but I suspect I won't get a majority for that either, so I'm just flagging that and I won't get into all the details. um those are my comments Steve Yeah,, 001 more, I'm sorry, because if one more. I, I think that we should amend the way in which the agenda is prepared so that the mayor and mayor pro tem have input before the before the agenda is published and have a veto right on items as well as a right to submit items, um, and, and I don't say that because Mary Anne's the mayor and I'm the mayor pro tem right now. Obviously that will change over time. OK. Uh just in Bruce, in, in terms of the appeal thing. So if the person, they

submit their documents to us ahead of the meeting. Did they get still get to speak at the meeting? Yeah, but they're limited to the written record that they've provided they can't add anything new. That's right. No new facts OK you know, because, well, we'll see, you know, I,, I, I, I think I agree with the ability, you know, to get the information in 30 days ahead of time, a lot of times there are things that come up near the end. I mean, you think of something new or, you know, and, and I'd hate to not have the ability for them to put that in, but, but I'll, I'll retract that just, just whatever they have in writing that they want us to read, and that they want to put up on a PowerPoint, they give that to us 22 weeks that'd be great. OK. Uh, you know that you had a comment and for a public comment to not allow presentations, uh, is there a reason for that? I mean, is, is it because it takes so long for the staff to prepare those, or you think it, it's a result of slowing down the the meaning when it's there's presentation materials and then, um, kind of the longer public comments with time deferrals that can also be referred to presentations. Which one were you asking about? There was, I thought there was a point of not allowing public comment to use presentations. They have to audio submit audiovisual materials to have them displayed. Um, yes, there is a not insignificant amount of staff time that goes into coordinating that both before the meeting. Um, we do spend a fair amount of time going back and forth with some members of the public trying to help them get us some material that we can accept and be able to display and actually download and access. And then it's also a function that requires live support from the meeting. If you noticed things were a little extra bumpy tonight. It's because we're shorthanded and didn't have that that normal staff. It's mostly a staff issues, um, and there's still opportunity to submit a hard copy and in advance, which are just a little more streamlined and don't impact the function of the meeting as

much. I just wanted to understand where the speed bump was that that that's good. OK. Uh yeah, I think 2 o'clock is a non-starter. I mean, if you, I don't know how we, how, how the people who were actually working can deal with that. I mean, I'm, you know, but my, if I tell my boss, I, I like to have this meeting with you now, but I got to call up, he called, and it's not going to work. So I think, you know, I would, I would be willing to, you know, starting at like maybe 4:30 or you move it up an hour so we get a little more time. I mean, I think I, the thing that the that that does bother me is keeping staff here late at night. I mean, and I'd like, you know, if there's a way to rearrange the agenda. I mean, the, the to get the atoms that are impacting them off early because I think he's right, you know you don't want people sitting on the side of the highway trying to get some sleep because they can't get home. That's, that's pretty dangerous, um. that having people sign up their names ahead of time, OK? What does that do for us? I'm just trying to, I mean, I, I, if I'm gonna give you a phony name, doesn't make you, um, you know, that's what I'm trying to if I wanna do a presentation to keep myself anonymous, I'll give you a phony name. What's that? you're crutch. People still could do that, um, and again anonymous participation is kind of fundamental part of the Brown Act, um, but it's more so that requiring advanced planning is where the organized groups, you don't see them targeting those meetings as often. Now this is new territory. Um, we don't know what a lot how the public will respond to a lot of things, um, but we do see more and more cities. There are a handful out there now that have move d to this registration model. In response to Zoom bombing, to try and find a way to solve hybrid meetings and minimize

that kind of hate speech, and the other issues that were disrupting public meetings. So we've had a couple different groups come to our meetings before. I'm sure as you remember in being someone looking at the Zoom participation and seeing how it spikes and drops off. It, it, it was typically, it would typically spike at some point when we're already into the meeting. So I don't know how they organize themselves. I don't know how far in advance they coordin ate um, but have requiring them to plan in advance and organize themselves before the meeting even begins, I think would create some barriers. Yeah, I'm willing to try that. I don't know how well it's going to work, but I think that may be worth. taking a shot and see where, where it goes. Uh, I agree, moving public comments at the end of the meeting, I think is a non-starter for me. Uh, I, I, I do think that people had the the desire and the right to sort of say, you know, say what they want to say, and I think it's important for us to hear it. And if we have to put a comment back at him, I think we should be able to do that. And that's probably not going to happen that well if it takes place late at night. Um. it's pretty much, you know, I look I think moving in 2 o'clock doesn't work, 4, 4:30. I'd be willing to try a couple of meetings at that point and let's just see what happens. I mean, you know, to get us out of here early, does it make it easy for the staff, you know, none of this stuff is in cement, so if it doesn't work, we can always tweak it later on, but you know, if we can try some of these things and see if they help us out, I'm more than happy to do that. OK. Um, great comments by everybody um, yeah, I think let's let's do an incremental would be my suggestion, uh, you know, I'd say 4:30. 4, whatever we kind of agree. I do think pushing it any earlier than that, we do run the risk, um, but then

again, as other people get elected, as you said, they can always make proposals to to change the meeting times, um, you know, I think if we, we look at the public comment if we were to have gone with the 2 o'clock suggestion, public comment then would have probably occurred at 5:36, 6:30. So that would have been a little bit more reasonable of a time for um having that um available to people, so, um, I'm with let's let's move it maybe an hour earlier. See how that works out. If that does help on the, the back end of getting staff members out a little bit earlier in the evening, um, it does allow a little bit more participation while they're still technically on the clock instead of into overtime or or flex time. um I do like the idea of the other meetings with a an owl. I think that that's something, uh, you know, cause I don't think that we're actually looking to have remote participation for, um, those um, commissions other than planning commission, but just a recording because I did find it really helpful to be able to when they were on Zoom to be able to go back and watch those meetings and and hear the comments and things like that, so um just it's a simple recording of the meeting only, not, um, any kind of interaction for the public. Quick, the the, does it make the mean live so people can watch it. if, if we can do that, I mean, look, I in a board meetings that we have where we've used owls, everybody's around the country, so you're, it's a live conversation. It's like a Zoom meeting, but you could put it on YouTube just as easily. I, I just think the, the ability, whether they recorded giving people the

opportunity to public safety. It's like one of the most important groups that everybody should have a chance to see what the hell's going on during that session, so I mean if we could do something like that, I'm, I'm sorry, Miran, but I agree with you, I, I, I welcome the comments because I think it is something, I think our community would be very interested in making sure that we have that record kept and, um, as I said, I find it very valuable, so I'm sure there's others that find it valuable, and if we can make sure that it's just a simple setup. The recording secretary can just place the item there, plug it in, and forget about it and then unplug it at the end of the meeting. It should be something that's a very um simple subject to or uh item to do, um, let's see where we are. The zoning matters, um. I see merit in the 30 days and the, the items, the 10 to 14 days, however you're counting the calendar, um, but I, uh, with Doug's, I agree, if we don't have it in a reasonable amount of time, there should be a de facto approval, you know, if we can't get it on the schedule and we can't hear it, we're not being responsible and um getting these matters resolved, uh, one way or the other, whichever way it's gonna go, um, is there something that we can do to speed up the scheduling of them that they have to be heard within. um, 30 to 60 days of the appeal, uh, just to, to make sure that we're trying to deal with these things in a timely manner, um, because we've got 6 and they have been waiting out there, some of them for over a year. One of them's a single family home that's. a quasi Woolsey rebuilt, you know, so it's not fair that that that person has been waiting, um, all that time, and I think that we have a responsibility to hear things in a timely manner, um. so I would be in favor of

the staff report being out 30 days in advance and any materials by either the appellant or um, the applicant in that. 10 day uh advanced business, but I want to see it also coupled with having that um meeting scheduled early as fast as possible and not a year, so. um, let's see. Oh, with regards to remote participants, um, and limit it to Malibu residents. I think that, um, unfortunately, we have a large amount of surrounding community members that don't live within the city of Malibu, but still have an impact, whether it's the um school district boundaries for Malibu because there's kids from Corral Canyon. There's kids from Sunset Mesa, um, sometimes over the hill. We have a large area that is beyond the um just the city limits that actually interact with our community and are a part of our community, um, either by having businesses or um participating. So I'm not in favor of limiting anybody being able to do on things, but if we were going to move forward, I would want specific um boundaries beyond our city limits that include that and obviously anybody who's been displaced by a fire is exempt from that, uh, regardless of where their, their registration is and you know, even that we're going to have to kind of put a time frame on, um, how long they're considered a resident, um, if they're not actively moving forward with rebuilding their home if we're going to limit. My first choice is not limit ing it at all, but if the votes are there to limit, I think that there are some parameters that we need to put on that, so. uh I think that's all I've got, so let's hear

people's. I'm just wondering if it'd be a good idea to maybe do a straw poll to give some direction on each one of these items to Kelsey. Sure Uh, let's start with meeting time is everyone in favor of moving to 4:30? I am. I mean, yeah. OK, so that looks like we're gonna. I know, but that's OK. OK. And is that for two, the two meetings a month? That's for the Monday, our regularly scheduled Monday meetings. this is primarily intended to get direction on how to set your regularly scheduled meetings. Um, we can determine the scheduling of special meetings as needed, but, um, your regular meetings need to be set by ordinance. Well, I said, I said before, one, it's gonna interfere with both council members as well as participants who work, um, but secondly, if we do that, we're gonna keep the requirement that public comment not be till any earlier than 6:30 because if you start the meeting an hour earlier, you have the potential for public comment coming up at 5, 5:30 when public may not be here. I'm just, I'm just trying to understand. they know why, I'm just trying to get started, OK. I went, I, I hear. Well, it's just make straw poll question is what time for public comments. I, I do think the format that we adopted where you say it's not going to be before 6:30 was a good way to do that. And the only question I would have is what time do we start, but I'll leave it to the mayor. Well, I mean, let's take tonight, for example, what time did we start public comment? It was 8 o'clock. It was about 8 o'clock, yeah. so it's not supposed to be heard till after 6:30, and we didn't even get close to even having it at 6:30, so um and I mean, I think the vast majority I can only recall one

meeting. where we actually had to wait maybe 2 meetings that we had to wait for public comment, because we were too fast. There, there may have been a couple, especially when we first adopted the format. Um, what also might be helpful for the council to consider and let us know if you have a position on it, is that the way the agenda is currently structured, it's not just public comment that can't be heard until 6:30. It's all following items, um, so we can deal with that a couple different ways. If it's only important for the council to hold public comment at a time certain. We could notice it for just that item. Um, I'm also, I've also heard at least some members of the council that they'd like more flexibility in how we order the agenda, the council can also change the sections we have. We could schedule some discussion items before general public comments. Um, we'd want to discuss more about what would be appropriate in each section. But if, if the council's trying to hold business other than public comment after 6:30, that would be important to know if you're just trying to hold public comment. There's a lot of other ways we can work the agenda OK, do we wanna tackle that or go on to another strawbo item, my suggestion is that if, if the counsel is indicating that the meeting should begin at 4:30. Then the agenda should provide for it should be the same order that we currently have, except that it should state explicitly that if the public comment item comes along before 6:30. It will not be heard until 6:30 and you'll just move on to the next item that's on the agenda until such time as 6:30 comes hit hits, yeah, I, I'm in favor of that, I think, I think the one thing that we want to anchor are probably comments at a reasonable time at 6:30 seems to be the reasonable time. I agree with that I, I, yeah, I'm just contemplating it. I'm.

practically so the suggestion is that we would have consent calendar. presentations. um and then if it's 6:30, the public would comment, if it's not yet 6:30, you move on to the next item. And then you'd come back to the couple wouldn't comment as soon after 6:30 as an night demands. An item or a category. Any item that you're on as the 6:30 mark hits, you continue that item until it ends, and then you call public comment. Will that work for you I'm, yes, we, we could do that. We'll play around with the notice. Um, one point of clarification. Do you want to hold the section written in oral communications to 6:30 to keep those items together, or would you want the flexibility to have council member reports and city manager reports before general public comment. I don't think you can have council member comments before you hear from the public. Yeah, I agree. I just wanted to clarify that so we would know what we're noticing. Yeah, I would agree on that. We're quite often responsive to what the public said, and I think we owe the public a a conversational a mode of conversation for what they brought to our attention. OK, and so this is for both Monday meetings. We're not thinking about changing one for a different time where we have more ceremonial things, heavy in a different meeting, let's say it's a Wednesday, and we, is that just too complex, so we do some things on one meeting. always public comment, always. I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about if there's a not appeals cause we're gonna maybe do a special meeting. but we can do like Barbara's certificate. in a different

meeting The 2nd meeting a month Is that I just think we're too small to be that uh sophisticated. We got 5 hour meetings like we're, I hear you, I don't know why we have, how do we get out from under 5 hour meetings. Well, quite often it's because we talk a lot. OK, I'll mute. I, I mean, I, I would like to hear what it is that, um, you feel we're lacking and that you would like more of, um, yeah. Um well, I mean, I, I was just looking at the times that other meetings have, and they're just 1 hour or 2 hours. I know that we're a complicated city because we have fires and things of that nature, so I wasn't, I don't know if we're lacking, but maybe it's just not organized where we do like the ceremonial stuff, the presentations, and one meeting. we organize it just differently. always with public comment, um. we just kind of stagger some of this stuff with a third meeting held for appeals and a workshop if possible. Councilor Conrad, are you trying to pull out the ceremonial presentation items specifically, or are you more so trying to look at um different ways to schedule business more consistently for the first meeting of the month versus the 2nd. Yeah, I think what I'm looking for is sometimes we get really big agendas and then things get pushed off, which is natural, um. it would be, I don't know, a different way of organizing the two meetings, so it's not to not overcomplicate your life, it's the same format, except one is maybe more ceremonial. where we have those presentations from people or instead of doing it, like last time we had Chief Drew Smith here. He could be the, those

could be the 2nd meeting of the month. So we have one a month, the 2nd regular meeting of the month, would, are you envisioning other business being conducted after the ceremonial presentation items. Yeah Just council meetings with organ reorganization so that some of the fluffy, fun stuff can go into one separate meeting. If the council wanted to consolidate its ceremonial presentation items to typically only be scheduled on one meeting a month, um, we certainly could. We need to talk about a little bit more. Um, the only consequences would be that occasionally we might miss a proclamation because the month has already passed and we didn't get on the first meeting of the month, and then of course we just wouldn't be able to schedule a presentation updates for the other meeting of the month. Um, we do have internally have some kind of rules of thumb we use to try to manage those items. Um, I typically try never to schedule more than 3 for a meeting. We advise the presenters to limit their presentation to 10 minutes, um, although that they often run over. That's something we could also codify in your rules of procedure and decorum, if that's the kind of tightening up we're trying to do. I'm not sure, but thank you. I'm not pretending this is simple. This is all complex. Um, the amount of times I've like researched something and then it's been pushed and pushed and pushed. I can't remember what I researched. I'm trying to also avoid that, especially with appeals, um. which is maybe we do the one meeting. we got the 2 meetings and then one extra meeting, yeah, Bruce, I, well, I think it's a good idea to limit the ceremonial presentations to one of the two meetings a month. I like that. In fact, and I also think it's a good idea to explicitly limit the amount of time for those presentations. Sometimes they do go on for a long time, um, I would go so far and I may be in the minority on this, but I, I actually question why we need to do them at city council

meetings. I mean, the mayor or or or some or the city manager or somebody could do them with the presenter on video and just post it on the city's website. I mean, I, I find for the few people that are usually at the meeting and the very few that are watching the meeting live. the use of that time is probably wasted in comparison to the amount of people that it would reach in any event if you just recorded it. So I don't know if I'm the only one that feels that way, but I find that when we're doing those presentations they take us away from doing business. I'll, I'll throw in a quick comment on this. First off, if you have it limited to one time a month. Not everybody's gonna be able to make that. One of, one of the advantages of having two meetings is you have a little more flexibility for the people that are not going to be here anyway. The city staff is here, but a lot of the visitors may not be here The other thing is the reason why we give these proclamations and presentations, it's because it's to make them feel special, it's a special moment. If we can't do it in front of the city council, and we have to ask ourselves, why do we even have these, uh, I, I really think this is a special occasion needs to be treated as such. Psycho like in the military when you get uh a service award or something. Everybody in your unit or your group is there. That's what this is for So I, I'd, I'd recommend we keep the same format for that. Yeah, I was thinking more of the presentations than the proclamations, the ones where somebody gets up and shows a video and talks for 10 minutes or gives us a report on things for 10 minutes or more. You know, you had the presentation from Drew Smith, OK, which I, it, it was very informative and I think there were questions when we got to the end, and you don't want to lose that. I mean, that made us all, I think made us all smarter, so uh, and Drew's not always available to meet our schedule. and people like Drew. Yeah, so I, I would

say if we've been moving up the meeting to 4:30. I think we're going to allow ourselves the time in order to have those. still be able to keep the community involved in that. Um, I agree with Doug. I think it is something that is is special and um. people feel honored by that, and I, I think that's an important thing that, that we continue. So let's see if we're knocking any of this out. We could just draw a vote on the signups? zooms? OK. Yeah, I'm, I'll, I'll, I'm, I'm meant for that register in advance, yeah, I am too. Is that with an address, the address, or we restricting people? I need more specifics. Let's, let's start off with just sign up and figure out if we're in for anything else. Well, when you think about it assume a webinar, you have to sign up for those. Um and yeah. that just you don't get in unless you sign up. I think we agreed to that. OK, cool. All right. Uh, Trevor, is there? I mean, I understand the point about the Brown Act allows people to walk into a meeting and participate anonymously, although again, unless you put a paper bag over your head or something, you're really not anonymous because you're standing there, um when we're extending the courtesy of Zoom, can we require them to provide their true name and maybe even an address. I think it would be potentially problematic. I wouldn't recommend doing it. There's a lot of protections for anonymous speech and also could be due process rights depending on what the particular item is, um, I think you would be likely to draw a challenge from a number of groups if, if we did try to put a program through that did that was requiring verification of who people are in order to participate in the virtual portion. I think that we have by and large, you know, other than a few isolated times we've been relatively um lucky

and not really. I know that there have been times when it has been um aggressive and um there have been issues and problems, but for the most part, we're getting our, our residents doing that. So, um, unless we see an uptick, I think we just stick with having people sign up, do the registration, see how that goes. See if that, um. gets anybody excited to do some stuff, and we'll see if there's any consequences for that. So so far we've got 4:30, not to hear general public comment before 6:30. Keep the presentations. um, and proclamations and other ceremonial items, uh, require remote participants to register in advance. So materials from the public. Um, do we want to put a deadline? Well, staff report on the zoning mat on land use appeals 30 days before the hearings, 30 day scheduled, yeah, I'd probably like to try that and see what that gets us. I, I agree the 30 days in advance give us a chance to look at it. Yeah, I, 10 days in advance for participant's responses. Right. And then, what about public comments or public Friday before the meeting Friday, yeah, and honestly, I think that needs to go also to our meetings, so we have, uh, well. I'm not, I'm gonna change my mind and in sentence here when we change the agenda for a public meeting, people have to have time to respond if they can't respond. uh, 3 days in advance cause we didn't have the agenda. I'm just talking about land use. I know the pills. OK, I'm with you. I'm with you on that. So the, uh, the direction is, is, uh, published report 30 days in advance. Any uh written submission from the applicant or the appellant would be due 10 days, including the PowerPoint they planned to show

during their argument. OK including the, the PowerPoint, um, and then you're saying the any other written comments need to be submitted. You're you're basically saying 3 days in advance of the of the meeting. It it could make an issue if you with the PowerPoint because if there's public comment that comes in about, you know, the item of them being able to respond to it, they, if they have a graphic or they want to be able to do it prevents them from doing that. It's up to the council. I don't think there's a requirement that they let them talk, they'll abuse it. And Mayor, if I could also just clarify, um, we were saying Friday before the meeting further written comments, but if we're having the land use items on special meetings, they may not be on Mondays. That's why I was saying 3 days. So if, if we're going for about 3 days, if we can adjust that a little bit based on weekends, um, most likely we'd have special meetings on Wednesdays just because that's been scheduling and room is available, um, but we can be a little flexible with that. 3 days, but then not to land on a on a weekend and just advance farther backwards, right? The Friday before. So if it was if 3 days in advance would fall on a Sunday or a Saturday, it rewind and you would need to submit anything on Friday so staff could receive it. Is that what you want or do you wanna move it the other way? I think 3 calendar days is fine. We're given modern technology. even if it lands on a weekend. Yeah Does the council expect to have the materials distributed to them over the weekend? Yeah, because I mean if they come in we have a couple of issues with that. First is just staff being available, but then they're, OK, you always know yeah, we're thinking that they're gonna email us directly, but yeah, if they use the but not all the time. All right, 3 business days? Yeah, 3 business days instead of calendar days. Yeah, OK. Or do we just say the Friday before, whatever day it lands on, it has to be in by the Friday before. We're gonna

have a special meeting on Thursday 3 businesses will be more consistent if that's 3 business days. That's OK. Cool. Uh, I, I'd like to make one other suggestion on that, on the land use appeals. I, I believe that the applicant should go first, whether the appellant or not, because it is a de novo hearing, and we need to decide whether to grant the application, so it's their application they should go first. And Just so I'm trying, I'm just again trying to absorb some of this, OK, Halan comes um. with my application for the house that's being appealed, you're asking that I go first because we need to decide whether to grant your application. And then the appellant goes. Is that not what we do? No, the current way it goes is whoever, uh, whoever's appealing, so if the applicant's appealing if the project was denied, then they would go first if the project was approved and someone's appealing it and challenging it, then the appellant would go first. OK, sorry Yeah, cause the person that is bringing the issue, so they should be the ones that are that's making their argument why, why the decision is wrong. That's, that's the way it's set up now. No, he's, because what's that that would make sense in court and that's the way it works in court, but what's strange about our land use appeals is that they're really not appeals. We're really deciding in the first instance whether to grant the application. just like it's, you know, it's as if there was no planning commission hearing. We're now deciding the same thing they decided. But it, it has been decided by the planning commission. But it disappears upon appeal. No, I still think about it. I get it, it's like, what did the planning commission say? Oh, they denied it 3-2 vote, or they approved it, and then it's

been appealed. That's, I, I do have that record in my brain. Uh, OK, let's do a straw poll. Do we do we have a majority to change the way that we've been doing it currently. I like the way we're doing it now. I like it too. I'm leaving it. OK. All right, go back to the uh one thing about people sending in correspondences and so forth. We get inundated quite often on the day of the meeting. Yeah. And there's no chance to review it. I mean, I, if I leave the office at 2 o'clock and stuff's coming in at 5:30 or so. I can't read it. Make it 3 days and 3 business days, 3 business days, unless the agenda's been amended. It also depend. It will, it will also count on the, the council being diligent and not accepting any, you know, correspondence on one item coming in afterwards. Yeah, I mean, Hamish made the comment about, I saw his email. I wanted to respond to his email, but because of the things that I had on my schedule today preparing for the meeting in addition to other things, I didn't have the time to dedicate to actually read it and formulate something. So I acknowledge I got it. I did do a cursory review of it, but nothing substantial to be able to respond to it. And so I think it's difficult on the day of to be able to because with respect to an a quasi-judicial matter, it's important that the record be closed sufficiently in advance of the hearing for us to be able to contemplate what's been submitted. When it's an ordinary matter of business, if somebody wants to wait till the last second to make their view known, it may never be known. That's their problem. It's, we're not responsible for making sure we see everything that comes in at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, but I believe in an appeal, people should be responsible to have to get us the material sufficiently advanced so that

we don't overlook it. So I don't think we, I think we're, I think it's overkill to worry about a deadline for normal matters, just quasi-judicial matters, yeah, I, I understand the conflict there and the amended agenda item should throw some more complexity into it. but for as long as everybody realizes that, you know, when you shoot something to my email at one o'clock on on council day, it's probably not gonna get red. I was walking up to closed session reading that last email going skate park, skate park. Oh my goodness. So, if they send it, then we read it, if it's short, you know, other residents send well in advance. I read it, I respond. I don't think we can control everything. um, but I do think what you were saying about evidence. I need time to like look at evidence or whatever we want to call it, and then I need to look at YouTube videos and then I need to look at environmental resource videos, so I would like to have some of that timing for the appeals. Related to this is that two people have written, Marianne and Doug both raised some kind of a de facto approval. I, I think one that would probably violate the law because we have to give find, we have to make findings and you can't make findings without a hearing de facto, um, but I would support a 3 a requirement that the report that has to be 30 days in advance of the hearing has to be prepared within 3 within 90 days of the filing of the appeal unless the staff member responsible for the report provides the city manager an explanation for why it can't be done in the city manager agrees that that's acceptable. OK We got 2 teams can go 60 days? We got 26 open seats. in the city. I think, was that the number? 24, OK. I, I mean, I, I, I hear what you're saying, but I'd like to see some of those seats filled with people who wink at this down before we start squeezing people to get uh you know, look,

well, I don't favor that. I just, that was an accommodation to Doug and Mary Anne wanting it to be a de facto approval. I thought at least give a, I, I. we hear, let's try to, you know what, I, I'm fine. I will accept 90 days because then at least we're, we're moving it forward. I think that's something, so I, I'm, I'm saying until we get more people in place and we've got the bodies to get it done. Just if you impose that, you're gonna force staff to stop doing everything else that I don't wanna do that. Yeah, we, we, it's a great idea, but we don't have the staff and we got too many of those. I disagree. These people are waiting over a year. That's a de facto den ial and they are in limbo and they can't move forward we're not moving forward with their thing and, and especially if they got an approval by the planning commission, and it's an appeal to request the project be denied. They can't do anything until we make a decision. Maryanne. I couldn't agree with you more, but I think until we get the staff in our best, our best interim how many of those are planning? Well, our best interim step is to have these uh stand-alone meetings to hear them because right now it's just a matter of scheduling. and we got, we've got two appeals I know are just waiting because we couldn't schedule the meeting. We've got 6 appeals waiting because we could schedule meetings. You know, fortunately for the Palisades fire rebuilds. if they do them right like for like, they're not gonna be a peel a bull. That that would not putting any deadlines in creates a huge incentive to do a clean sheet project that isn't subject to an appeal. See, that's my and I agree with that. I mean, if if a berry There were clean sheets projects that are on appeal. and that have been on appeal. So that is not about a deadline then for just a clean sheets project? Look, right now, let's just keep it where it is until we get more bodies. Let's get to standalone

meeting and take that as our first step. OK, well, I, I, I suspect Mary Anne would support that. I mean, maybe, maybe we have a third vote. What about a, a 3, a 90 day deadline for an appeal to be heard on a matter that does not involve any discretionary approvals. No, because a site plan review is considered discretionary approval. Ah, we'll give people a huge incentive to do something that doesn't require discretionary approval. There aren't any appeals of nondiscretionary items. I think they're all done at a staff level Could you repeat that? I don't believe that there's, there would be any appeal of a, of a non-discretionary approval. They're all just done at a staff level, so that's what I thought, but I was hearing otherwise. Well, what would there be a site, a site plan review has findings and coastal development permit has discretionary findings, um, the only things that really an administrative coastal development permit is approved by the staff, and SPR is approved by the staff. It's reported to the Planning commission, so there's still discretionary. OK Yes. Withdrawn Let's go to the next one. I, I think, uh, what else is there? We are talking about I lost track a presentations. that time limit on presentations, do we agree on that? presentations. How about, how about a five-minute limit on presentations unless the city manager specifically authorizes an extension. This is, this is for the public comment. section? No, on the on the special presentations like when someone comes and tells us about some nature issue and wants to bring us up to date on what they're doing, give them the ceremonial presentation items heard after the consent calendar, a 5 minute limit for each of those. Does that apply also to commission reports. They're limited to 3 already. OK. So Drew Smith is is supposed he had 10 minutes, he's only going to get 5. City manager can give them 1015,

whatever, just, just this the default would be 5 minutes unless they ask for and get an extension in advance of the meeting. You would be that I mean, I don't think those are the ones that are really causing that much of the, the issue. It's the um well, I'd like to turn technology honestly I mean it's, I like to differentiate like the Drew Smith versus the, you know, um. whatever the lovely charity who came two weeks ago, and they spoke for a while. Um, actuay, his was pretty, I told him 10 minutes, so well, he stayed pretty close, I think maybe he went 12, are those that, so the Drew Smith seems very, they all seem very important to me. That's why I was like, let's put them on a different meeting than the business meeting, then we, we can give those people the 10 minutes. OK, how about we do this? Look, let's, let's move the meeting start time to 4:30. Um, that will allow, and if we're not going to have public comments start before 6:30. That gives us a two-hour thing. to do this. Staff is already limiting those to a maximum of 3. presentations of maximum 10 minutes. Um, the mayor will be more diligent at making sure the clock is there to cut them off. and um so we've got start time meeting at 4:30, remote participants sign up on Zoom. We all agree on that, correct? OK, uh, general public comment will not begin before 6:30 and we will just adjust items on the um agenda to fill that space if for some reason we do get through other things first um, materials from the public um, on just general items, are we saying that we

want those things by Friday or are we fine with those coming in? Submit them at your risk. Um, but if they do, if we do have a um speaker and they want to bring in a PowerPoint? Are we still going to allow that? I thought we said no on that comment because I disagree with that one, just, you know, I, I, I, I know a lot of times members of the public will come in and 2 or 3 of them will have recorded 3 minutes each of a 6 or 9-minute presentation. I think it's very clever, and I actually appreciate the way they do it. I wouldn't stop them from being able to do that, but OK. So does staff need those items, um, submitted earlier in order to resolve Well, I think we, we, when I talked to Kel we actually talked Kelsey earlier that that it's the time suck for staff to deal with all this stuff. We, our tech technology isn't exactly booming at the moment. Uh, so why don't we sort of work on stuff that we know is going to work. and say no to the presentations. Yeah, I think, uh, in the public comments, um, you know, you thought about a particular item, it's just a general statement they can give us a hard copy. They can, uh, uh, tell us about it verbally. We've got a particular agenda item I can see having a presentation, but just, you know, doing your butterfly, uh, uh, collection doesn't do us any good, and let's, let's. let's leave the presentations for the items we're actually considering. It usually does occur during a regular item. so I agree with that. It's OK, is that clear? So general public comment, no. um AV materials, um, and I just want to make sure that that's the consensus of the body. So

general public comment, no AV materials, but for all scheduled business, we should still accept and be prepared to support video, PowerPoint, any presentation materials that are submitted by the public. Is there a deadline for submitting that? It's currently noon. Um, I would ask to have a chance to review all of our deadlines, and we'll need to bring this back for final adoption so the council could make further adjustments at that point, but we may be changing it with the move on the start no earlier than noon. Um, no, I, I would say no later than noon we might consider looking at it earlier. We'll discuss it internally I would consider it 2 or 36 hours. With Monday meetings, it's not typically very meaningful since we don't work on the weekends typically, um, but we could set very early in the morning or um even by midnight the night before and have everything ready the day of, but it would also be helpful to fine tune that guidance on the written materials to be submitted, so I could think about how these could all play in alignment. I heard Friday before, I also heard 3 business days, not for land use matters, but for all general matters. What would the council, we didn't set a deadline for submission of written comments on general matters, just on the land use appeal. Only on the land use appeals and then correspondence for all other items can continue to be submitted up until the meeting? at your risk. I like that. Um, one thing that we should make clear, I think, is that those audio visual presentations regarding a land use appeal are written materials, are the same thing as written material. So if somebody wants to submit a video where they're talking for 3 minutes. They'd better submit it 3 business days before the hearing, or else they're not going to be able to play it. It it may be simpler to just set the deadline the same for for those meetings, the deadline for their written corresponsor deadline for the AV materials. Um, now, my point is that that's really part of the advanced public comment that we should be getting, so they should be submitting it no no later than 3 business days before the hearing. So you want it distributed to you no later

than 3 business days before the hearing. Do you still want them to be allowed to display it during their 15 minutes at the podium And what about the general public that's not one of the applicant or appellant. They don't have 15 minutes. No, this is the general public. This is their 3 minutes of. Oh, I'm, I'm sorry, I understand the distinction now, um, because the applicants and appellants must submit their materials 10 days before the appeal is heard, and then the general public must submit their materials, 3 working days before, so you would also want any of their presentation materials submitted at that time, they'd still be allowed to present them or speak whichever they prefer, but if they have an audiovisual presentation, if they don't give it to us 3 days before the hearing, they're not going to be able to show it. So for land use matters, no materials would be accepted within 3 business days of the meeting. that that works for me I just wanna make sure we've, we've clarified we're going to, we're going to have the appeals on a separate meeting date, yeah, we've, we've done that. OK. Yes. Did we? No, we didn't, but, yeah, I think we've referenced it enough, but I would, I would just leave it that the city can schedule them for a special meeting, but doesn't need to. There might be a very light agenda and a very easy appeal, in which case why relegate that to a special meeting when it doesn't have to be. Yeah, I would recommend leaving that flexibility also because at some point we hope to reduce this backlog so there just might not be enough appeals to warrant special meetings, but I understand that these deadlines are giving us would apply for the regular meetings as well. So even if we had an appeal on a regular meeting, that staff report would need to be published 30 days in advance and by the, the subject matter, not that type of, so we'll we'll work on how we'll explain that to the public, but that's

possible. OK, I've lost track of where we are. So if you have anything else outstanding you want us to address? I don't think the council specifically addressed time deferrals for general public comment. That proposal to try to focus those on more short introductions, but I, I just need your direction on any limits if you'd like any. I want to take a stab at that one. For general public comic items not on the agenda. Correct. Yeah, I, I think it. it gets abused as much as anything else cause it's always. we don't always know who's in a room that's supposed to be here to give up their time. The general public comments they ought to be able to do it in 3 minutes or if they want to tag team it, they can do that. So you're saying eliminate the time deferrals on general public comment. I'll support that. Sounds good. They can still do it on the subject matter ones, but for the general comments, it's, if you look at how our meetings get uh uh delayed or extended. It's because we have a lot of uh public comments, so it's not trying to take, take any away from anybody, but we do need to do everything we can to move it quickly. OK. Anything else outstanding? I think it was clear, but the council's consensus that they'd like direct direct staff to find the appropriate resources to film all of the commission meetings. Yes. Um, and then my final note is I I have your direction here. We're going to take this and we're going to also do a review of the rules of procedure and decorum, just to make sure that they're in alignment with all of this. And, you know, if there's any 21st century updates that need to be made since 1998, um, and we'll be bringing that back to you for a final adoption and we'll look at timeline for implementation then um that's probably going to be the end of September is what I'd be targeting. And by then we might also have more information on the legislation, but you can take that action and give us a date, uh, implementation schedule. I do

want to note we do already have a fair amount of work in the pipeline and some appeals scheduled um just to be clear, we won't be able to meet these 30 day deadlines or change, um, the submission deadlines for these things already in the pipeline, but we're looking at the big picture and how we want to run the city going forward. We we omitted one. are we, do we or do we not want to require people to be seen when they participate by Zoom, and I understand the technological issue that's been identified that it causes some potential time lag. I think it's worth, I, I don't think the lie is going to be all that substantial, and I think people should be seen if they want to participate by Zoom. They shouldn't get to be a black screen and completely anonymous. I'm a now. Anybody else I don't think Zoom webinar allows you to, uh, go online, does it? That's the complexity. It does not. So we would have to be promoting in each individual speaker speaker to what's called a panelist, so we'd have to promote them to panelists, ask them to unmute, ask them to turn on video if they're not responsive to the request to turn on the video. I don't have the power to remotely turn it on for them. Um, so the council would have to decide how it would want to deal with those situations. That's they turn off their camera and just have their, uh, photo image. They could turn off their camera they could cover their camera if they turned it on. It's they could have Mickey Mouse on there. Well, then they wouldn't be allowed to participate, would be my view. I mean, what I'm saying is you, you show yourself or you don't show up at all. I don't know if that's legal, is it You have to come here and stand up in front of everybody. Is anybody else? Yeah, I, look, I mean, I don't mean people turn in the video, I mean what, what are we gonna see? I mean, I, you know, it could deter people. I don't know, it could, you know, it could deter people, but then they could put on the cat suit and be cat woman. But that would be entertaining. If you have video too, you can have inappropriate things put on

also so it opens up issues too. We did have an incident of zoom bombing ourselves um with a group back in probably 2021 where they were trying to display very young, just uncomfortable images is the best way I can describe it. So it does happen. I look. I think we got, we're making enough changes. Let's get those in place and then once we get, if we think what we've got so far is gonna work, we can always come back and revisit that island. I mean, my, my suggestion. OK. Anything else No, I think we're clear on consensus, and again, we'll bring back that kind of item that's more refined and ready for hopefully a final action, but you can make additional adjustments then if needed. Great. OK, so it's, uh, after 10:30. We do have one item left. I'll move that we hear this one because I think that the residents of the mobile home parks really have been waiting for us to do something. But didn't we do, didn't they get their meeting? set? This is more than just setting a meeting, isn't it? Uh well, frequency, meeting schedule and frequency. I go to the bathroom while we decide, or you need me here. I'm happy to hear it if so that's the 2nd All in favor? none opposed. Here we go, keep the code a car. No, yes, I think I need the card. Sorry I don't We can continue on, Gary. Yeah. Uh, I think they need a minute, so. Are you guys ready or do you do you want to

continue without all of the council members present? I'd rather wait for her and I suspect that she'll be back quickly. So if you guys need a minute or are you ready to go? Have a very brief staff report. OK, just give us a go ahead, yeah. Sure, we're really just here at the council's direction at your last regular meeting after some public comment, um, you requested us to bring back an item to schedule to discuss the mobile home park rent stabilization commissions, uh, meeting schedule right now, it does not have a regular meeting. Um, we have been scheduled for many, I'm sorry, let me, let me go back a moment. Um, the commission's primary purpose is to consider applications for rent increases or decreases. So it has not met in many years. It had about 20 years dark, um, but we've, you've reappointed members and we've restarted meetings. We had our first meeting in June, um, and now we are scheduling the next meeting for September 11th, but the council wanted to have the opportunity to discuss this body and what an appropriate meeting schedule would be, so you can discuss that now. It's also something we could revisit in the future if need be. Um OK. Uh, do we have any public comment? We do one speaker Do we have anybody online Yes, we have one raised hand on Zoom. OK, let's lock that in. Samson must be awake. Excellent I'm gonna wait for the council member to come back before you speak, though. So you have the opportunity to address the entire board. OK Kelsey gave us a very brief staff report, but we're on our first public speaker now. So thank you, Mayor Reagan's council members. Um, the agenda item is specifically directed to the scheduling and frequency of the mobile home commission meetings, um, and now that it appears

fairly certain that we will have our next meeting on September 11th. The future scheduling and frequency can and should be addressed by the commission at that meeting, uh, presumably staff can, can, uh, will be prepared with information concern ing the availability of, of, um, of facilities, um, and what and when a regular meeting can be scheduled to comply with the Brown Act, um, still, I, I, I want to address a few things in the staff reports, respectfully, of course. um, first, the staff report seems to misstate the jurisdiction of the commission. The jurisdiction of the commission is established by Section 5.16.050 of the municipal code, um, and what is reproduced in the staff report is, um, the language of that section and then things added, um, and I, and I think generally speaking, when, when you have to add language to the to a statute in order to interpret it in the way that perhaps you want it to be interpreted, um, usually that interpretation is wrong, um, and I, I think this is certainly the case here, um, second, while the staff report is correct that no application for a rent increase or decrease has been filed with the city in accordance with the with uh with the Malibu municipal code section 5.16. The reason for that may be that it's actually not possible to do so, currently, um, and it hasn't been possible to do so to my knowledge, for at least the last 17 years because to submit such an application, the code, uh, specifically 5.16.100 requires that such an application be made on the form provided by the Commission. To my knowledge, there is no such form provided by the commission. I've been an attorney for over 20 years. I tried to find one. couldn't find it, and frankly, I wouldn't myself know how to

uh make such an application, um, and, you know, 17 years ago at the meeting, there were several people that came to the meeting and said my rent had been increased dramatically, quadrupled, but they didn't go to the formal step of making an application, perhaps because that form was nowhere to be found, um, and then third, uh, the SE report seems to suggest that the commission can't opine on council legislation or policy. I, I'm not suggesting that the commission or any commission can usurp your role in establishing legislation or policy, um, but any citizen, any resident can opine on council legislation or policy and why wouldn't this council want um any commission designated with a particular subject matter to take the first stab at figuring out what what perhaps an amendment to a statute might look like. Thanks, Kevin. Thank you. Our online speaker Our speaker is Bill Sampson. Bill, are you there? Can you hear? Yes. Oh, I can barely hear you. OK, um, I am using, it may say Rose Marie, I'm using her machine because mine isn't working and I'm not in Malibu. I'm not in California for that matter. I Mr. Shankman is the chair of our commission. I'm the vice chair. I will second his remarks I think the agenda was simply to get item was simply addressed to getting us scheduled. I would say I, I'm I'm concerned because we as a commission told a lot of people who lived in the mobile home parks, who had a lot of things to say that we were gonna meet

in the next 30 days, and we failed. I don't want that to happen to the people that I was appointed to, at least respond to, I guess, as a quasi-judicial officer. Um. so let's try to do better on that. Um. I agree with Mr. Shankman on some of the uh I guess the legal analysis, I do agree with him. Uh. let's have us meet and we'll try to work on this. I I have found no forms at all. There was a lady who said she was getting a $25 a month charge. I believe it had to do with water. and there is no way for her to do anything about that now. Uh, maybe that's the minimus, but it's 25 bucks a month that she may or may not owe. I don't know. I can't, I have no opinion. I haven't seen her release. I I don't even know if it's true Uh, but she doesn't have a form to tell us about it. So it looks like we're going to have to work on that unless you guys want to and I think you have some other things to do. So that's one of the things, but thank you for getting the meeting arranged. um I, I know Hale uh mentioned it. I don't know who else did. I've been in a way and I'm supposed to be sleeping 2 hours ago on my vacation, so this is Samson's glad I'm not up there with you Um thank you for your attention Thanks for having a meeting I'd like to have them every 30 days for a while. uh because the um residents apparently want us to do that. um but that's gonna be up to you guys. Thank you. And Mayor, I did have a member of the public contact me telling me they were trying to indicate their desire to speak by

flashing their hand up and down, but it was not raised at the moment I checked for you, if you want to acknowledge them. Yes, please, I would ask all members of the public your indicating your desire to speak, please raise your hand and do not lower it until you are recognized. Agreed And this is Ryan. I thank you. I appreciate staying up uh after 11 so I can come on this. The city's existing ordinance has basically 3 categories of investment for annual, I think submission of reports to the city. So that's another reason why the commission needs to meet is they need to kind of maybe review the materials that have been submitted for rate increases. and it's could be quite uh complicated or voluminous. It might even require some verifications. Uh, in particular, for instance, the long-term capital projects, things that, you know, wear out every 2030 years is one category. Then another one is, what do you do every, you know, 4 to 5 years and you're gonna re-slurry the streets and, and fix things, you know, on that level. And then there's the more day to day annual operating costs. Now, if a new buyer uh decides to start shifting around what is a, a medium or a long-term or uh you know, starts deferring uh maintenance when this can lead into um things where a stitch in time doesn't work anymore. And now they're becoming big expenses that they're just gonna saddle on to the residents. So it is important that the commission meet and go over this information to make sure all of this accounting is, is accurate and correct uh, as well as, um, that they're taking care of business and getting the feedback of maybe

um you know, when maintenance is deferred. for whatever cash flow reasons might be happening. But um anyway, those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you. That'll conclude public comment. OK. Uh, who wants to go first? Well, I think, uh, I'll go first if it's OK. I, I think we satisfied the requirements to get the next meeting up, uh, I am a little disturbed that there's no forms. uh present for this and I also am disturbed too that we've not really clear what their mission's supposed to be. Uh, it's one thing to talk about rent increases, but what about individuals and so forth, so I I'm not sure that uh they have a clear objective what they're supposed to be doing to hold the meetings, and I can't imagine, you know, schedule meetings and not being sure what you're supposed to be talking about, uh, and I'm not sure we've either given them enough direction or or clarified with the requirements are for the municipal code. um Trevor, are we, do we know what we're supposed to be having them do? uh cause I looked at Bill Samson's list of things that he sent over. I did get a chance to look at that today. and I think there's 9, There's 123456 items that he's supposed to be, uh, probably 5 items supposed to be dealing with and there's some conflict about what the staff report was relative to what they're supposed to be doing, so are we sure that their mission is clear. The primary function of of what they're dealing with is rent increases or rent decreases and applications that come in. It sounds like the forms need to be updated and there might be some administrative work that needs to happen about that. It is very critical that the body remains a quasi-judicial body that is unbiased and doesn't create any type of advocacy

positions where we would have an issue, um, with them ruling out any type of application. We only have 4 commissioners on there, and if we had a problem, it would be um we may lose that core amount of particular application, so, um, it does lay it out there I think there are things that need to be done to update this. I think staff is working out, um, the staffing for these meetings and and how um these items are gonna come forward. I don't know, Kelsey, if you need more direction at this point in time, but we do need to get the next meeting. going forward and there are num there are a few items, you know, that are already on the agenda for that meeting. Uh, correct, and we do have forms, I think unfortunately over the decades, um, they didn't make the digital jump. So we've digitized them now, they were available upon request, but that's not the ideal way to make a form available. That's certainly something the commission can review and I'll get an update for the 21st century. I don't think they've been updated since the 1990 judging by the fonts. script OK, but so as I understand what you're saying is, um, their judicial operation. They can only operate based upon someone actually submitting a request form or uh some kind of a form. Is that correct That's the general way that it's, it's designed to operate. There are other, um, duties and needs here, you know, talking about, you know, administrative rules and effectuating the the purpose of the of the chapter and and other rules, other aspects that are supplementary to, um, you know, the work that the primary function of them is to, you know, be able to rule on these applications, you know, for rent increase or rent decrease when they come in and make sure that the operation and the rents charged do comply with our ordinances. That's the primary function of what they're set up to do. So if we're talking about individual properties having a rent increase. that would be uh

administrative nightmare. I would think there's 150 units there or more, so every time somebody's rent changes, they get to file a complaint. If it, if it, if it doesn't comply at the chapter, I mean, the, the rules are set up about how, you know, the rents can be increased or decreased and the rules that apply to that and um, you know, we, we expect that the people that administer these mobile home parks comply with that. If they don't, then an application comes in, there's a dispute and needs to be resolved by the body. OK. OK, so, um I don't think the commission is a quasi judicial body. I think the commission is a commission which which conducts both quasi-judicial matters as well as regular commission matters just as we do, um, we hear land use appeals which are quasi-judicial. We also establish the rules, both substantive and procedural for land use matters. We, we create the zoning laws. We determine the way in which appeals will be heard. Those are not quasi-judicial decisions. Those are, um, statutory legislative decisions that we do that we make, and I believe the way the statute is written um empowers and obligates the commission to do that same type of work, uh, so for example, the very first um. the powers and duties include, first of all, and I'm gonna note, I don't know what this means, receive investigate, hold hearings on, and pass upon all issues relating to mobile home park rent stabilization. as set forth in MMC Section 5.16. There's further words there that are in the report that aren't part of the statute, as Kevin pointed out, um, I don't know what it means to receive because it doesn't say received reports. It says receive if you and if you then

skip investigate, hold hearings on and pass upon, maybe it says receive all issues or maybe it just says receive nothing. I don't know what it means. It's another example, as I said before, of some of our statutes which are drafted horribly. Um, but in any event, they also investigate all issues relating to mobile home park rent stabilization. They hold hearings on it doesn't say on things that are subject to an application for an appeal. They hold hearings. A resident, I assume, can complain about an about a rent increase that wasn't properly applied for, that they believe violates the ordinance and there can be an investigation and a hearing on that. They pass upon again all issues relating to the rent stabilization. I take that to mean what the statute means, because that's an issue relating to mobile home park rent stabilization. Um they then go on to, they also can make or conduct investigation, independent hearings or investigations as may be appropriate to obtain information necessary to carry out their duties. That seems pretty broad to me, and it's not quasi-judicial in nature when they're doing that. Um, they can adjust space rents either upward or downward upon completion of a hearing. It doesn't say only if there's been an application made for the for the adjustment. It just says they can adjust the space rents upward or downward. Uh, after they've had a hearing. I guess anybody can request a hearing. And then they, they also have to or can they can and have to adopt, promulgate, amend, and rescind administrative rules. So it seems to me they, they can and should be meeting to decide what their rules, their administrative rules should be. They can and and must meet to decide what if any investigations they should conduct with respect to issues

relating to the mobile home park, rent stabilization. um, they can do those investigations, what powers they have to do this and you know, whether they have subpoena power, I don't know whether they have the power to, I, I just, it's just the, the, the statute's clear as mud, as I said to Kevin a couple of days ago, but it does seem to empower them pretty broadly beyond their quasi-judicial acts, and I understand they want to meet every 30 days or at least they want to decide how often to meet. I'm, I'm concerned that if we don't say they should meet once a month, they're gonna say they should meet once a month and then the staff's gonna tell them there's some complications. It's gonna end up coming right back to us anyway, um, so I think we ought to just set a monthly schedule subject to them deciding to defer a meeting, um, and I think we ought to let them work out what they think their powers mean, and, and if we disagree with them once they work that out, we can say so, but I don't, I don't think them doing that um impairs their ability to conduct quasi-judicial hearings any more than our deciding what the laws are. impairs our ability to later conduct quasi-judicial hearings, applying those laws And, and, and go with it and that's the view of the two lawyers that are on the commission and the one lawyer who's on the city council. So I, I think that should mean something. What does our city attorney say? As I said, the, the, the duties are primarily quasi-judicial, that's what it's set up for, and it says, you know, A is setting up the what it is to receive, investigate, hold hearings on, and pass upon all issues related to mobile home park and rent civilization as set forth in the chapter, and the chapter has a process for registration, for limitations about, you know, how the process works or the rent increases and the rent decreases. that's how it's set

up and so, you know, there is room of course, for them to um. to go about the business of setting up the rules to investigate when there's, you know, something that's brought forward that falls within their jurisdiction, but, you know, I would disagree that it's a carte blanche that, you know, it has no limits about, you know, what the powers are of the commission to operate. So it it is, you know, that there is room for interpretation on this, you know, it's, but that is generally what these commissions are set up throughout the state is to deal with these. It's a rent stabilization commission to deal with rent increases and rent decreases and you know, that's the primary function of, you know, how these operate. Could I make a suggestion that we empower empower them to have meetings for the balance of this year once a month. and to review their, their, uh, commission forms has submitted or proposed by the staff. and uh come back to us with a set of broad rules about how they are uh planned to operate. And the other thing I'm worried about is, I'm not saying we don't have power over the mobile home operator, uh, park operators, but we need their cooperation on this, and I'm surprised we haven't heard anything from them at all. Uh, primarily the one for Point Doom, but even Paradise Cove. And, and to be fair too, the first meeting I thought was very productive of the rent stabilization Commission. A number of issues were brought up. I think there needs to be further discussion with staff to, you know, work these out and that's probably part of what the process will happen at the September 11th meeting. OK, um, so. that's the 2nd Thursday of the month. If I'm looking at my calendar correct? I think you may want to let the commission work out exactly what days of work on a regular basis if you wanna set, you know, the direction to have monthly meetings for the rest

of the year, maybe the commission can help coordinate what dates will work best for them and with staff. I don't know that the September 11th date will work. Well, I'm concerned that that we're going to get back into what they had a meeting July? June. Um, and then there was um difficulty getting their next one scheduled, so if it benefits everybody that we assign a date and then those commission members can meet and if um it's problematic on that. I know, you know, other commissions have a set date, but if that doesn't work out for some of those commission members, they've adjusted the time or they've adjusted the day based upon um the recording secretary and staff that staffs those meetings availability. So is it better for us to just go ahead and suggest the 2nd Thursday of the month. I, I don't think that is, um, you know, we're we're taking direction from the council if you expect the commission to meet monthly. Staff will need to adjust if the city manager's direction, what we need to adjust to make that happen. Um, the other commissions do have set meeting dates, but they were also determined by the body and can be changed by the body. So that gives them a little flexibility based on their scheduling and offhand I don't know if the 2nd Thursday of the month is a good day. I'm also going to be looking at scheduling many more city council meetings in the near future. So if my staff is recording secretary, we'll need to figure that out as well still. Are there, is there a possibility of another recording secretary available to daft that or, OK, that, that would be a question of staff resources for the city manager's office. Does the statute say it has to be here? I think. I believe it does those things can often be delegated. I, I don't think historically and necessarily

was the city clerk, um, but it's, I think it's specified to make sure there is someone to act as the recording secretary, and there is always a city clerk. OK, so, um, I'm getting the sense that we need to say that yes, we would like to have a monthly meeting for this body for the foreseeable future for the foreseeable future or for 2025, just to understand the direction of, of the council. OK see what the requirements are. Let's, let's get some feedback. uh, from the staff, from the commission members and the public. I just would like to not have the same where we're having a quarterly meeting instead of a monthly meeting. And I think for the initial portion. um, whether it's to identify um some updates to the statute that needs to be done, or, um, actually processing um applications from tenants. of things that they'd be given some time to be able to do that. So on Doug's proposal, the last part of it, I think was he said that they should create the form or review the form and decide whether they want to make changes to it and then I think he said, um, create whatever rules subject to our approval, but that the, the statute doesn't require them to get our approval. The statute just tellshem to adopt, promulgate, amend, and rescind the rules. Um, within any limitations provided by law or rules adopted by us, but if we in the absence of having such a rule they're not required to come to us for approval of the rules they create, and I don't know why we'd create that because it puts another burden on us that we don't need to have at this point in time. The other thing is, before the fire, we had created an ad hoc committee, Doug and I, which are not the council created an ad hoc committee, which is Doug and I, um, to go over the statute and propose amendments to it because the statute does

need some amendments, um, and we've just been totally consumed, as has everybody up, um, with the post-fire recovery effort. So it seems to me that since what we were going to do, arguably falls within the very broad language of the statute as one of the duties and repos duties and right and powers of the commission, they should review the statute and, and come back to us with any recommendations they have for bringing it into the 21st century and, and, and making clearing up some of the ambiguities and um holes, and then we can decide as a council whether we like their changes. you want to come back to some poli and the policy committee or uh ad hoc committee or come back to the council. I, I think they should form their own rules, which they're empowered to do, and they should review the code and, and put together a proposal for any changes they think should be made, give them to the staff, and the staff can present it as a counsel item. Yeah, that's what I was proposing. Oh, I was going to propose to the ad hoc. which is you guys, right? Oh, present it to the ad hoc, and then we can figure out whether to present to the council. That works for me. Yeah, either way. Cause there when I remember seeing was there was an ad hoc for the mobile home. There is an ad hoc. Who's on the ad hoc? it's a policy committee. Policy and the check. No, we created an ad hoc specifically for the for the statute. We did, but then the fire got in the way. Right, so I think that's a great idea is for them to work with those guys, yeah, it might be too broad for the topic here, but the ad hoc, if they want to work with the, with the mobile home commission and the members of it, they had the ability to go and do that as it is and and then come up with that, I'm I'm saying let's direct the commission to under its very broad powers to receive, investigate all the language that I read before, develop its own proposal for what amendments, if any, are appropriate for us to consider, they can give them to the ad

hoc. I don't, I don't want to ad hoc meetings to have to occur where we have to meet with them because it's just gonna never happen. I'm, I'm just trying to deal with the Brandoc issue because this was noticed for the meeting schedule and frequency, not providing direction on the reach and duties of the of the commission, but the ad hoc has the power to reach out to that commission and get input, um, you know, towards regulation which I think is the purpose of what you're looking to do is get the input from them and then present it to the council, correct? Well, I'll put it this way, I, I, I think they have that authority without us directing them. The problem is, as Kevin pointed out, the staff report suggests otherwise, and I want to clar clear that up. I, I don't believe that the statute limits their powers from being able to do what I just described, so. implicitly it's in the staff report that was published, and I, and I'm trying to correct that so that they can. go forward, not being constrained by what's been presented publicly. But let's put it this way, if the commission I'll be able to come up with their own recommendations. There's 5 smart people in there for. 4 + 4 + 1 to come. Um and have been submitted to the ad hoc committee with along with staff. I mean, this is a working process and what we're looking for as a result, not necessarily. um, you know, dotting the T's and dotting the I's and crossing the T's. Yeah, maybe they could also propose to the council of Fifth Persons so that they don't have ties on any applications that end up getting presented to them. I'm happy to appoint somebody just. OK, uh, what direction do you need from, counsel? Does the

council have consensus to direct staff in the mobile home park rents legalization Commission to schedule at least monthly meetings for the rest of 2025. Some make a motion? I'll make a motion for that. Second, all in favor? Aye. We have concluded our meeting Um, again, we are adjourning in Toshihito Ozawa, who passed away on May 19th, and I also we adjourn in Howard Ferguson, Hubbs, candies. Candy, I don't think we did. Well we we did that last week, did we? Let's do it again. and we adjourn, we

adjourn those memories. adjourned in memory of.