Malibu City Council Has Met For 6 Hours So Far On Revisiting The Hiring of Its City Manager

Something very strange is happening at the Malibu City Council.

The council members have been in closed door session since 10:30 today to discuss the already-announced hiring of their preferred candidate …. Ronda Perez.

The council met for four and a half hours Tuesday … in a suddenly-arranged closed door session to talk about hiring a new city manager.  As of the posting of this article … at 1 pm Thursday … today’s meeting has stretched 2-1/2 hours.

This comes five days after announcing the city had already made a decision to hire a person for the job.

As usual … no comments … no reportable action … as the council emerged from the meeting.

The sudden meeting was called despite the council announcing last Friday that it would ratify the contract offer to the new city manager … Ronda Perez … at its next regular city council meeting … next Monday.

This adds to uncertainty at Malibu City Hall … where the city is trying to recruit an entire leadership team to handle the city’s day to day business… at the same time as it is adding staff to handle the task of rebuilding one tenth of the city .. which burned earlier this year.

Several top city jobs remain vacant .. including Planning Director …  presumably awaiting the hiring of a city manager,.

Under state law .. personnel decisions may be kept secret from the public.

But they are not required to be kept secret.

Caltrans Planning 25 Weekends Of Mini-Carmageddons On 405 In Sepulveda Pass

Caltrans is planning 25 weekends of hell in Sepulveda Pass … and it might be expected to affect traffic on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

The state is going to be closing half of the freeway in capacity for 25 weekends … as it tears out and replaces concrete road surfaces in the Sepulveda Pass … the 405 freeway between West LA and the San Fernando Valley.

Remember Carmageddon?     Sort of like that.

During Carmageddon … the entire freeway was closed for a weekend while an overpass was demolished at the top of the pass.

On each of the 25 weekends …. the freeway will be reduced to three lanes in each direction starting Friday nights … and extending until sunrise the following Mondays.

There is surer to be a traffic impact in Malibu.

Every time there is a 405 closure … drivers use PCH and the canyon roads as a detour.

That causes traffic jams on the 1o Freeway … and PCH in Malibu.

Of course … PCH is already jammed on weeklends.

A Topanga Canyon Road will still have only one lane for both directions to share for the upcoming few months … until the road washouts can be repaired.

The Interstate 405 Pavement Rehabilitation Project will cost about $143.7 million.

Portions of that freeway have not been repaved since it opened in 1960… And the concrete has pulverized into chunks held together with tar.

The project will close half of the capacity in both directions on 25 Saturdays and Sundays… Starting soon.

9 Men and Boys Arrested For Burglary Inside Amarillo Beach House

Sheriff’s deputies arrested nine men and boys last night … caught as they entered a house under construction on the beach below Bluffs park.

The arrests came during the Malibu Public Safety Commission meeting … as Sgt. Chris Soderlund monitored the radio call and rushed out of the meeting.

He returned a half hour with the details.

71467 BURG IN PROGRESS

“We got there there were 9 individuals 2 of them were individuals.

“Two of them were barely adults.

“They were down there on the beach and they decided to go into a house there that was under construction on Malibu Road.”

The arrested men and boys were still being processed last night.

Their exact alleged crimes have not been released. 

The incident was on Malibu Road under Bluffs Park … at Amarillo Beach. 

Hundreds Of Complaints Filed Against Army Corps Over Debris Clearance 

The U S Army Corps of Engineers has done an inconsistent and at times dangerously inadequate job … clearing thousands of burned out houses in the footprint of the Palisades Fire.

More than 800 complaints have been submitted to a federal government hotline … in just 10 weeks this spring … according to public records obtained by the Los Angeles Times. 

Many wildfire victims complained that remediation was mostly confined to each building’s footprint … leaving significant portions of their properties untouched.

Fire-damaged home foundations and contaminated swimming pool water have neen left behind.

Either not enough contaminated dirt … or in some cases too much dirt … has been scraped away.

The Army tells the LA Times that their cleanup had overwhelmingly received positive feedback from wildfire survivors. 

Medical Journal Crunches Data: Actual Death Toll From 2 Fires Is 440

The official death toll from the Palisades Fire is 12 .. with 3 of those in Malibu.

But a medical journal article published yesterday says the actual number of people killed by the fire … and by the simultaneous big fire in Altadena … that death toll may be much much higher.

The overall number of people dying in greater Los Angeles went up by 440 … and that the 440 “excess deaths” were attributable to the two fires in January.

People were killed by exposure to poor air quality from smoke and toxins released by the fires … affecting those with heart and lung disease … the medical journal reports.

Also … there were health care delays and disruption all across the region… but particularly in fire adjacent areas. 

The research was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

It uses computer models that compare predicted mortality under normal circumstances … to actual numbers of dead people documented during that period.

Year-Round Brush Fire Season Linked To Global Warming Over 30 Years

New scientific research is backing up what has become very apparent in MAlivu. 

Malibu’s fire season is starting earlier … ending later … and climate change is the reason why.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, 

Researchers said hotter, drier conditions over the last three decades had gradually elevated the state’s fire risk. 

Between 1992 and 2020, global warming made the fire season earlier by about a week in some regions and by more than two months in others.

Fire season has historically peaked between June and October, wildfires have become more destructive and harder to predict in recent years. 

The spate of blazes that devastated Los Angeles began in early January — well outside the conventional danger zone.

Feds Use Trojan Horse And Apparently Violate federal Court order To Cease Indiscriminate Arrests

Yesterday morning … masked immigration and Customs Enforcement agents jumped out of the back of a rental truck at a Home Depot in MacArthur park area of Los Angeles

The government press agency Fox News had a camera rolling … from inside the truck … as agents sprang out and rounded up Hispanic-looking people.

That appears to be a direct violation of a federal court order … upheld by an Appeals Court … prohibiting mass roundups of suspected illegal migrants.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that ICE declined to answer a question about whether its agents had a warrant to detain people during Wednesday’s raid. 

But the El Centro Border patrol chief … who has been elevated to be in charge of ICE raids by the White House … boasted that the raid shows that the Border Patrol is “on a mission here in Los Angeles.”

He called the use of the rental truck “Operation Trojan Horse.”

Meanwhile comes news that the number of undocumented immigrants arrested around Los Angeles has dropped significantly.

That  federal court ruling may be the reason. 

The trump administration’s top prosecutor in L-A issued a statement.

“For those who thought immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again. 

“The enforcement of federal law is not negotiable, and there are no sanctuaries from the reach of the federal government.”

Malibu Heat: 100 Today At Mountaintops

A moderate heat wave is arriving in full force … in Malibu … today and Thursday …  especially away from the immediate coast.

Smoke from the Gifford fire will likely cause some air quality issues again today. 

We are looking at 3 days of heat with Thursday being the hottest.

Highs will be in the lower to mid 70s on there immediate seashore … quickly increasing to the low 90s as you cross Pacific Coast Highway.