City Council Passes Levies on 4 Landslide Areas : Government: Refusal to tax a fifth sets up a showdown with the county over the maintenance of a road and drainage facilities.

An unhappy Malibu City Council slapped pricey assessments last week on hundreds of property owners in four special landside areas, then set the stage for a confrontation with Los Angeles County when it balked at taxing a fifth neighborhood.

Faced with an outpouring of written protest from virtually every property owner within the Rambla Pacifico district, the council on Wednesday night declined to levy a $51,840 a year assessment on 36 parcels to maintain a county road and drainage facilities there.

Councilman John Harlow described the area as too large and too prone to slides for a small number of property owners to properly maintain.

“To take $50,000 a year from these people, it may make you feel like you’re doing something, but I think we’re just wasting money,” he said.

Until now, drainage and water monitoring facilities at Rambla Pacifico, and similar equipment in the four other assessment areas, have been maintained through the county’s general fund and in many cases through special county assessments on property owners.

But because Malibu incorporated as a city last year, the county has indicated that it intends to relinquish responsibility for the upkeep of about $16 million worth of county-installed drains, wells and other landslide abatement structures within the city limits. County officials say their maintenance of the facilities will stop at the end of this month.

In four of five assessment districts--Big Rock Mesa, Calle del Barco, Malibu Road and Latigo Canyon--the council agreed on Wednesday to pick up where the county will leave off. Members reluctantly acknowledged that in the event of a slide, the city would be open to a lawsuit if it failed to make a good-faith effort to maintain the equipment.

“If we had a slide, you’d all sue us,” Mayor Walter Keller told the audience.

But at least for the time being, residents of Rambla Pacifico have been spared. On a 4-1 vote, the council decided to notify county officials that Malibu does not intend to assess the proposed $51,840 in annual fees--a whopping $2,880 per parcel holder on average--on that district.

Instead, the city will ask the county to retain responsibility for the area pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by Rambla Pacifico residents against the county over the status of the road. A portion of the road near Pacific Coast Highway has been closed since 1984 because of landslide danger.

To the obvious irritation of Harlow, who dissented, several council members stopped short of an all-out refusal to levy the assessment, choosing instead to revisit the issue at the council’s July 7 meeting.

Councilman Jeff Kramer, an attorney, was among the more cautious, even as he grumbled about how the county has essentially abandoned Rambla Pacifico. “Saying, ‘Take this road and shove it’ to the county is attractive to me, but I’m uncomfortable with the legal implications,” Kramer said.

Apparently, so is City Atty. Michael Jenkins, at least with the idea of the city allowing a known landslide area to go untended.

Jenkins predicted that neither side would fare well should a judge be forced to assign responsibility to such an area.

“If we fail to maintain it, and the county fails and there’s a slide, there’s no way to predict (how a court would rule),” Jenkins said. “It’s a question that does not have a clear answer under the law.”

For many homeowners in the assessment districts, the switch from county to city maintenance will mean little more than making their yearly checks out to a different jurisdiction.

At Big Rock Mesa, for example, owners of the 290 parcels in that district will actually see their assessments drop under city control, to $683 annually compared to the average $741 county assessment now.

Residents of the Malibu Road assessment district, meanwhile, are expected to skip their first city assessment fee--averaged at $641--altogether, because of a surplus in the county fund into which they have paid over the years.

It is a different story in the districts of Latigo Canyon, Calle del Barco and Rambla Pacifico--where the costs of preventing deadly landslides will be shouldered by a relatively small number of people rather than the entire county.

In Latigo Canyon, for example, 23 parcel holders will share a $25,850 annual assessment--an average of $1,124 per property--while Calle del Barco’s 35 parcel holders will pay $800 each.