Planning Commission To Vote On PCH Safety Plan Tonight

2 years ago … 4 women were killed on PCH …and there was a wave of support for traffic safety. 

Tonight … that wave may smash into the rocks of a Malibu political establishment that likes things unchanged. 

Malibu may reject 55 million dollars in state construction money …. If the city planning commission rejects the first of several PCH projects being proposed by Caltrans. 

Tonight … the Planning Commission will make a decision on the western half of the city … a decision that may hinge on bike lanes. 

The state engineers originally proposed a series of discontinuous bike lanes … painted lines on most of the highway … but not where parking gets too close to the traffic lanes. 

There … bicycles may have to merge in with 50 or 55 mile per hour traffic.

Planning commissioners last month asked Caltrans to come back with a plan to keep the bike lanes continuous  … and remove parking where there’s not enough room. 

That’s a big problem for the California Coastal Commission … where a staffer says the loss of 495 parking places will unfairly restrict beach access.

Coastal wants Caltrans to find alternative parking. 

And this may set a precedent for the eastern half of Malibu. … where a second Caltrans project may also try to wedge in a bike lane where dozens of residents are used to parking on the street.

Battle lines are being drawn before tonight’s vote.

Some Malibu residents have called the bike lanes a threat to Malibu’s rural character … and they worry that they will invite even more bicyclists onto the coast highway … 

They call that a deadly mix. 

Safety advocates lie Michel Shane argue that Malibu should be rural … but we are not in the 1950s. 

He says Malibu needs to change, adapt, and create an environment that may not be 100% of what we want, but is enough to keep people alive while preserving the Malibu we love.

It’s a state highway … and voices are being raised from outside Malibu.

A traffic safety crusader from a group called Streets Are For Everyone … points out that Malibu leaders “trumpeted how road safety was the #1 priority for Malibu” after four women were killed two years ago on PCH.

Damien Levitt says he cannot believe that “the Malibu City Planning Commission is poised to kill these safety improvements because they are more concerned about preserving the ‘rural look’ of Malibu, than the need to save lives.”. 

Two weeks ago … rural advocate and planning commissioner John Mazza made it clear that a traffic circle proposed for western Malibu … to slow traffic … was not rural. 

MAZZA MUST BE RURAL 71636

“We have a general plan and we have other safety factors to figure in.  Evacuation is one off them.

“So if we go thru each one of these and think safety and the general plan at the same time. 

“Because the general plan said specifically for this project that everything north of Malibu Creek has to be rural.”

He voted for the bikeways … but only after the Planning Commission asked for the bike lanes to made continuous. 

That may not be possible … given the Coastal Commission stand … 

The issue of noncontinuous bike lanes might give anti-bike lane commissioners a fig leaf … a pretext for shooting down any bike lanes at all … to preserve their vision of a rural town that existed 50 years ago.

The meeting is at 6:30 tonight.

One Person Killed On Freeway Detour Around Malibu

One person was killed when their vehicle spun out… and was hit head on by another vehicle on the 405 transition to the 101 this weekend.

This was at 3:30 a.m. Saturday on the northbound 405 Freeway ramsps at the bottom of the hill … approaching the 101 Freeway.

A Mazda sedan was in a single-vehicle crash … and became disabled in lanes facing the wrong way.

A Ford SUV sideswiped the Mazda sedan, and then a Toyota SUV struck the Mazda head-on.

The driver of the Mazda was pronounced dead at the scene. 

No name … age or gender released.

The Toyota driver was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, the CHP stated. 

LA Mayor Demands Probe Into Why Her City Failed So Badly At Palisades Fire Ignition Site

Late last week .. the L A Times revealed that city firefighters were ordered to abandon their efforts to keep water on the smoldering underground fire …. that later became the Palisades Fire.

On Friday … L-A Mayor Karen Bass called for an investigation into that.

On January First … the Lachman Fire burned 8 acres near Palisades Highlands … in the City of Los Angeles … a small fire. 

A day later … firefighters told their battalion chief that “the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch.”

But the battalion chief ordered LA city fire crews to “roll up their hoses and pull out of the area … despite the official forecast of a possibility of very strong Santa Anas blasting into the area five days later. 

The winds arrived … hurricane force winds … and blew the smoldering Lachman fore into the monster that killed 12 people and destroyed 68 hundred houses … talking out the Eastern one tenth of Malibu.

Bass has sent a letter to the city’s new fire chief … calling the LA Times revelations “tremendously alarming”.

Multiple failures within Los Angeles city government have been unfit, uncovered after the palisades fire.

The fire department had failed to increase staff as hurricane force wins, were in a forecasts for five days before the second fire broke out.

No firewatch team was left at the smoldering smaller fire.

And there are questions about why city firefighters were allowed to go home for the night instead of being kept on to battle the blaze.

Bass’s handling of the January wildfires has emerged as a flashpoint in next year’s mayoral race.

It is not clear why L A Mayor Karen Bass had to wait for the LA Times to print the story … before she demanded the new investigation. 

The United States Senate … federal investigators … the state and the city have already launched parallel investigations, as have private attorneys who have sued the city of LA. 

SCE Power Cut To Areas Well North Of Malibu

High winds last weekend caused Southern California Edison to kill the power for a few scattered areas north of the 101 freeway in Ventura County last weekend.

But there were no intentional outages within 20 miles of Malibu.

1556 customer accounts in the nearby area were intentionally blacked out in the mountains north of us … but another 22,000 customers were warned that their power might get blacked out.

Again … none of those affected power company customers were in Malibu itself.

October Was 2.5 Times Wetter Than Normal,. And It All Came In 1 Day

LAst month’s heavy rain in the Malib mountains was not enough to end the fire season.

But it may have slightly delayed the arrival of the most-severe fire conditions.

The amount of moisture in the brush and trees in the Santa Monica mountains remains at around the 60 level … right at the critical line.

During the month of October… Malibu got about one and three-quarter inches of rain along the coast… All of it on one day.

That would be October 15th.

That’s almost 2 1/2 times the normal total average rainfall for the month of October… When it’s very likely that we may get a shower or two… But certainly no substantial rain.

After that nice gentle rain in mid October … temperatures soared back up, hitting 97 in Los Angeles last week.

Daniel Swain … a climate scientist with the UC division of Agriculture and Natural Resources … says the fire season in Northern California may well be over … before it really even began in earnest. 

Zone Zero Delayed, May Be Refined

The controversial Zone Zero state free requirements are not coming out on schedule.

An obscure state of California commission is supposed to publish its rules by the end of this year… Two months from now.

Zone zero is a controversial new law that requires all plants and trees to be removed within 5 feet of any occupied structure.

Thousands of Californians have objected … they say well trimmed and well watered plants next to houses actually prevent fires from spreading into occupied structures.

The final regulations will be watched closely by insurance companies.

Fir eunsurance may become impossible to get … impossible to keep … unless houses are brought into compliance

SM City Council Was More Transparency On Housing For Homeless

Santa Monica officials are looking their wounds after a community uproar developed when a real estate developer suddenly swooped into the north of Montana neighborhood with plans to build a homeless shelter for mentally ill people on ocean Avenue.

The city council in Santa Monica is now requiring more transparency … in placing homeless shelter in the city … 

There are 14 homeless developments and facilities currently operating in Santa Monica, 

Five of them are Downtown and five in the Pico Neighborhood. … along between the 10 freeway and pico Boulevard.

Mayor Lara Negrete complains that homeless projects “are being put in the City with no advanced notice” and are putting a stress on public safety.

70 percent of 911 calls in Santa Monica involve the homeless.

Malibu does not have a shelter for homeless people… But hires a Santa Monica outreach program called the people concern to try to find emergency and long-term housing for homeless person who show up here.

The people concern has a large homeless shelter… Occasionally used for clients living on the streets of Malibu… In downtown Santa Monica.

But as Malibu city Council members are quick to point out… None of those clients are actually from Malibu… But are people from elsewhere in the nation who gravitate to the beaches and warm climate.

Caltrans, SCE Plan Nearly Continuous Construction

Caltrans and Southern California Edison will continue to have massive construction projects under way in the eastern Mallbu fire zone this week.

One lane only in each direction … with frequent complete closures … between 4 a-m and 3 p-m can be expected. 

That’s from the power company … which is installing underground wiring.

The highway workers will continue to have crews working in traffic lanes … as they rebuild landslide walls and rebuild the road between Big Rock and Coastline.

Expect traffic to come to a complete stop frequently … as material is delivered or pavement cut into … dug up and replaced.

Voting Today and Tuesday At 2 Places In Malibu

Voting continues today .. and ends tomorrow … as Malibu joins the rest of California  Los Angeles County in deciding on congressional voting districts.

140 voting centers are open as of 10 am today.

Two of them are in Malibu … at the church at the corner of Zumirez and PCH .. and at Malibu city hall. 

Tomorrow … there will be 250 voting centers open in Los Angeles County.

They will be open until 7 o’clock tonight … and from 7 a- m to 8 p m tomorrow. 

Any voter in Malibu or elsewhere in the county can cast a ballot at any voting center in L A County. 

There are three of them in the COnejo Valley .. along the 101 freeway.

KBUU Journalist Honored By Arizona Journalism School

KBUU reporter Hans Laetz was one of 15 alumni who was inducted this fall into the University of Arizona School of Journalism Hall of Fame.

Laetz was honored for his 45 year career in radio and television news … at news radio stations and then TV news departments at KTLA … KCBS and at CBS News Los Angeles. 

Laetz and his wife Diane Laetz founded KBUU radio in Malibu as a community news outlet … 12 years ago.

They were honored at a ceremony in Tucson Saturday.