County OKs Plan to Tax Big Rock Mesa Residents

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a county plan to tax Big Rock Mesa homeowners more than $100,000 each to help pay for stabilizing the landslide-plagued community above Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

Rejecting pleas by residents that the county help pay for part of the project, the supervisors gave the go-ahead for an elaborate drainage system to reduce the risk of a massive slide such as the one that damaged or destroyed 250 Big Rock homes in 1983.

“We had hoped that they would realize this is too much of a burden for us to bear, and instead the county sold us out,” homeowner Dennis Sinclair said.

Residents say the plan to shore up the slide-prone promontory, which will nearly triple their property taxes, is too expensive and does not guarantee against a disaster on the order of the 1983 slide. The homeowners would have to pay the $100,000 over a 20-year period.

Several homeowners said that they may sue the county to try to block the plan. However, a spokesman for the Big Rock Improvement Committee, which includes most of the property owners, said it was too early for the group to decide its next move.

County officials first recommended the $13.8-million improvement package in September, but the supervisors delayed approval after a storm of protest from Big Rock residents.

After 4 1/2 years of litigation, the county, the California Department of Transportation, dozens of insurance companies and attorneys for about 240 Big Rock homeowners reached a settlement last January that will pay the homeowners $97 million--or about $200,000 apiece after legal fees--for the damage they suffered as a result of the massive 1983 slide. The county’s portion of the settlement was about $35 million.

But many of those same residents, as well as some who were not part of the lawsuit and others who bought their homes after the litigation began, were stunned by the county’s plans to increase their property taxes to help stabilize the mesa.

About 50 property owners, whose homes on Pacific Coast Highway suffered little or no damage as a result of the slide, are upset that their properties were included in the assessment district, insisting that the plan to shore up the mesa will not benefit them.

“I don’t want a dime from the county; my house is fine,” said Don Tollefson, whose home faces the highway. “I don’t think it’s right that I have to pay $500 a month for the next 20 years for something that’s not going to benefit me.”

In a last ditch effort Tuesday, homeowner spokesman Sinclair told the supervisors that “a significant number” of residents would drop their protest if the county agreed to pay up to 30% of the cost.

But the suggestion drew a chilly response from supervisors.

Supervisor Pete Schabarum lashed out at the residents for having “a narrow point of view” and blamed “greedy attorneys” for standing in the way of the county’s stabilizing the mesa.

However, John B. Murdock, an attorney for homeowners, called the assessment “unfair,” and he said it violated a promise made as part of the settlement that the county would not try to recoup money from Big Rock residents by means of new taxes.