From The Desert To The Ocean, Across All Of Southern California: Malibu Hires City Manager From Palmdale

Malibu’s city government has a new boss … waiting for official confirmation of her appointment next month..

Ronda Perez … the city manager of Palmdale … has been offered the job. 

It was a unanimous vote by the city council yesterday morning … after weeks and weeks of indications that they were having difficulty selecting the person to head day to day city operations. 

Perez leaves Palmdale … a city with 162 thousand residents … but the number of employees is just a little bit bigger than Malibu.

City council members in Malibu had three top canddisdatesd … and all of them apparently had Internet complaints.And ,mebersof the search committee investigated those complaints.

Doug Stewart tells KBUU … in this era … there is trash talk about everyone.

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“She has the same Internet and social media baggage that every other candidate that we looked at had. 

“It’s just part of the job being a city manager. 

“But the results are what is important, and she has a excellent track record for results, and for working with people, and the city will be very fortunate to have her join us.”

Perez was let go by the City of Palmdale city council last summer … as is typical in such contracts … no reason was given. 

And she had bene named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by a former top city official in Lancaster … where she had worked as an assistant city manager.

Under legal agreements … Perez cannot talk about those.

We will have an interview with the new boss at Malibu City Hall … later in this newscast.

At yesterday morning;’s meeting … council member Marianne Riggins heaped praise on the current temporary fill-in city manager … Candace Bond.

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“I just want to say some kind words to our interim manager, Candice Bond for filling in in our time of need of leadership.

“And we look forward to continuing to work with her as we make these transitions forward.”

There will be a formal ratification of the selection on August 11… At which time her contract will be made public and voted on.

One hour after her name was announced… Ronda Perez was on the phone to KBUU to answer any questions.

Q:  Who are you?

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“I have been in government for 18 1/2 years now… 19 in October.

“And worked in all facets of local government to Public works and recreation, public works, economic development. And I’m very intrigued and excited by the unique opportunities in the city of Malibu and I’m looking forward to getting started there very soon.”

Q: An objective observer would look at the past history of the city of Malibu and conclude that there has frequently been a really tortured relationship between the city council and the city manager. Yet we can also look at City Hall and see a great deal of progress made on things like fire recovery. What is your assessment?

“Setting up fire response what’s your assessment very much I think it works very much and I think the city Council is very committed to working Malibu forward in a very Brazilian and measured way. I think they are committed to working together and it may not have always been that way in the past.

“I think they are willing to put aside their differences when it’s most important to get the rebuild going and work for the betterment of everyone rather than you know the historic …

“Look. this is not unique necessarily to Malibu. There are a lot of cities that just like to … fight.

“But in everything that I’ve gleaned, through this entire process, they really want to work together and move forward and be collegial, and I am really excited to be a part of it.”

Q: Where you were – Palmdale and Lancaster – they didn’t have outside agencies performing part of the role of cities and usurping role of the cities …outside agencies like the Coastal Commission, the MRCA, Caltrans agencies like that. How do you assess your new job?

“A:  Palmdale is not all that different in some of those ways.

“Palmdale had a major highway… The 138 in the city going through the backbone of the city of Palmdale. And learning how to navigate with those agencies is something I have a great deal of experience with.

“I’ve also worked with the county Board of supervisors very closely to advocate on behalf Palmdale. So it’s really all about relationship building. I find that you breakdown a lot of barriers by building open and available … communicative… By building those kind of relationships.

“The world works on relationships and so the coastal commission in that way is no different than Caltrans than the dirt no different than the county. We just have to get in there and work together.”

Q: sometimes you can see tension between city staff, and the city commissions that are set up here by the city council. I’m sure that’s not unique to Malibu, but how do you assess the role of citizen commissions in the structure of running the city of Malibu.

A: “I think it just goes back to what I just answered as well.

“We have to have good working relationships with our commissioners, we have to educate them, we have to respect where they’re coming from as well, and hear each out.

“Obviously, we always have to follow the law, we have to dispose of property in a certain manner.

“And it’s making sure everyone understands we are all on the same team.

“I’ve experienced that before in local government, where it’s sort of combative, and the way I have persevered through is just by building relationships.

“You can’t get everybody all of the time, but if you can get them 80% of the time you’re doing pretty good.

“It’s OK to disagree, but you need to do it respectfully and everyone needs to understand  that the goal is to move the city forward. And if we agree on that, then we will make good decisions.”

Q:  Palmdale and Lancaster also contract with the LA county sheriffs office to be their municipal police force, just like in Malibu how is your relationship with the LA county sheriffs office?

A:  “In Palmdale and Lancaster as well we contracted with LA county for police and fire, very similar to Malibu.

“So my entire government career has been working with these contract agencies.

“I’ve worked very closely with them, they attend our staff meetings, they attend our council meetings, we have each other on speed dial.

“There are challenges with LASD, obviously, filling vacancies and things like that.

“Obviously, Malibu is in a much different demographic and much different crime rate than where I’m coming from, in Lancaster and Palmdale.

“But the challenges still exist and persist and having a close relationship with our commanders and captains will be critical.

“And I understand there’s a great one now, there’s a great working relationship as I understand it.”

Ronda Perez … the newly hired City manager for the city of Malibu.

Her contract is up for ratification by the city Council at a meeting August 11.

One other note … Ronda is spelled, RONDA.

Small Attendance At City Hearing on What Public Wants In New Arts Center

Only a very small number of people turned out for last night’s public workshop on the proposed design for a city arts center.

The workshop was supposed to be getting community input on the concept of a new Performing Arts Center at Cross Creek Ranch … the new shopping center next to the Malibu Library.

But no concepts were displayed to comment on … the community was given only a map of the site with two black boxes on it. 

And other than two city council members and the arts commission. … only a dozen people attended. 

A universal theme emerged from the public.

Malibu needs a city building to replace the old Malibu Community Theater ,,, 

Soshanna Kuttner founded the Malibu Young Actors Project … which has been homeless since the building holding the community stage was sold to a private partner. 

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“We need a multipurpose theater for performances, for film screenings, for film festivals. 

“We need stage productions, we need dance performances. 

“We need to be able to attract things like the American Ballet Theater.

“And we need musical pewrfomances.   We have wonderful quartets in town.  

“And with the theater comes the need for rehearsal spaces … so that we need so that we can run concurrent productions.”

That was pretty much the consensus last night .. but there were complaints. 

And many of them complained that the questions they were given matched exactly what they had responded to …. at meetings of a city arts task force … a dozen years ago years ago.

Some residents favored converting the existing city hall to a new arts center. 

But others said building a new City Hall for 130 employees would be too big for the two acre site at the shopping center. 

Resident Howard Rutzke … said the lot at Cross Creek ranch should be the site of a city arts cventer. Howard Rutzke.

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“We can get most of what we want, we are never going to get everything we want.

“Because that’s not reality. 

“We’ve been talking about this kind of thing since 2012, maybe even earlier than that. 

“We’ve got 70-page studies.

“We really went through all this exercise last year.”

And other residents complained that they do not know how big the building can be … and cannot possibly decide what to include in it without knowing how big it can go. 

The owner and developer of Cross Creek Ranch … Brian Golden … is campaigning to put the Arts Center on two acres of that his company deeded to the city.

His archItectural firm says that lot … next to the hillside behind the shopping … could support two theaters plus artists galleries.

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“There is sufficient room to be able to create two stages, the exact dimensions will be determined.

“But first we need to understand the programming desired by the citizens of Malibu. 

“We can build a large theater, a 300-seat auditorium, and a 150-seat auditorium next door, and there is room for this on the (Cross Creek Ranch) site in the one building.”

“The other building could be reserved for artist studios.”

As we said… attendance was very scant.

Coming in the middle of the summer vacation period … there was not one person who identified themselves as the parent of a child in Malibu in attendance.

People can still send in their opinions to the city of Malibu arts commission.

The commission will go over the suggestions and make a priority list next September.

LA County Supes Call Feds Chicken For Hiding Behind Masks

Los Angeles county is setting up another showdown with the Trump administration … this time over the issue of law enforcement agents wearing masks to conceal their identity.

But it is unclear how on earth the proposed county ordinance would be enforced. 

The L-A board of supervisors yesterday approved banning law enforcement from wearing masks and refusing to wear identifying badges.

Malibu’s county supervisor … Lindsay Horvath … 

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“Our law enforcement officers at the local, state and federal levels must operate in commitment and in practice  in the open, with their badges and insignia invited identifying who they are. 

“They should not hide. They should not conceal. And they certainly should not pretend to be something other than what they are are.”

The federal Department of Homeland Security sent a statement to the Los Angeles Times.

An Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that agents with their Enforcement and Removal Operations section need to disguise themselves to avoid having their identity publicized. 

She said … and we quote … “These sanctuary politicians … have clearly never been on an ICE operation.” 

South Bay supervisor Janice Hahn begs to differ. 

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“It is ICE that was conducting these horrible raids in the beginning.

“I was out there. It is ICE that is doing most of the harm to our communities.”

The county supervisors voted 4 to 0 to ask attorneys to draft a rule that would bar all law enforcement officers — including local sheriff’s deputies and federal immigration agents — from disguising their identity.

Mo’s Buddy Describes Surfing During Tsunami Down In OC

Mo In The Morning has a buddy who went surfing yesterday … during there tsunami alert … at Doheny state Beach down in orange County.

He has the story:

“My friend paddles out at Doheny yesterday.

“He leaves his board on the shoreline to go to his car to get some stuff, he’s gone less than 10 minutes. 

“The surf came in so fast it swept his board out into the ocean.

“So he swims out, grabs his board, paddles out.

“But the fuel dock from Doheny Beach has broken up because the surf had moved and it broke up into pieces. 

“Now he’s out there he got stuck on the tide. He couldn’t go one way or the other.

“He sees a whirlpool. He uses that to help him get back to shore, he uses the edge of that to help propel him to get back to shore. Then he sees a little wave coming from as far as he can see from one direction and then the other, he thinks that may have been the tsunami. 

“And it’s breaking. Anyway, it’s a good story.”