Setting of Date for Malibu Cityhood Election Delayed

In a major blow to Malibu cityhood supporters, the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday put off for an unspecified time setting an election date for residents to vote on whether they want the seaside community to become a city.

Furious Malibu residents, who have long accused the supervisors of holding the incorporation effort hostage to the county’s plans for a sewer system in their community, jeered, hissed and refused to leave the room for several minutes after the decision.

A Malibu citizens group announced that it will file a lawsuit to force the supervisors to set an election unless the supervisors change their minds and do so by late December.

“We intend to take legal action. Make no mistake about it,” said Walt Keller, co-chairman of the 1,000-strong Malibu Committee for Incorporation.

By law, the supervisors have 60 days from when they began hearing the matter (Oct. 19) to set an election date. Until Tuesday, it had appeared likely that an election would be held in April.

The vote to delay scheduling the election was 4 to 1, with Supervisor Ed Edelman dissenting.

Lawyers for the county have suggested that the state law governing the time limit for setting elections is “directional, and not mandatory.”

Moreover, on Tuesday the county’s top public works official urged the supervisors to delay scheduling an election until the county receives assurances from the California Coastal Commission that it will approve the necessary permits allowing work on the sewer system to begin.

County Public Works Director Thomas A. Tidemanson said the supervisors should delay the matter until “at least mid- to late April.”

Cityhood supporters, many of whom have long opposed the county’s sewer plans as a recipe for widespread development, see incorporation as their best chance to wrest control of the sewer system from the county.

“There comes a point in time when one has to say that the interest of people in cityhood is as important as the county getting the sewers,” Edelman said. “These people have been before us over and over, and I can’t in good conscience deny them their right to vote on the matter.”

But other supervisors expressed a different view.

Supervisors Pete Schabarum and Deane Dana, whose district includes Malibu, blamed the Coastal Commission for causing the delay, chiding the panel for approving a regional sewer plan for Malibu that was substantially smaller than county officials wanted.

The commission last week approved a plan that cuts by half the capacity of the system proposed by the county to serve commercial users and also trims the capacity for residential use. Opponents of the county’s plans say the action will result in a sewer system 25% to 40% smaller than what the county had insisted upon.

As proposed, the 20-square-mile city would stretch from Topanga Canyon to Leo Carrillo State Beach along Pacific Coast Highway and nearly one mile inland. About 20,000 people reside within the proposed city’s borders, including 8,300 registered voters.

In approving a bid by Malibu residents to vote on cityhood, the Local Agency Formation Commission in May stipulated that the county be able to retain control over the sewer system for up to 10 years after incorporation.

However, county officials, fearing that a newly elected Malibu government would mount a legal challenge to that provision, want to make sure that a sewer they consider adequate is under way before Malibu residents vote on cityhood.

In deciding to delay the election, the supervisors voted to ask both the chairman and executive director of the Coastal Commission to appear before them next week in pursuit of a compromise that could enable them to go ahead and set the election date.

But county officials were not optimistic about the chances for compromise, and some supervisors expressed doubt that the Coastal Commission officials would even agree to appear.

John B. Murdock, an attorney for the Malibu Township Council, called the delay “absolutely outrageous,” and said the invitation was “an attempt (by the supervisors) to shift the blame for their own failings to the Coastal Commission.”