City Council Approves Sending Staff Home, Closing Down Most City Building Inspections And Plan Checks
Written by 991KBU on March 17, 2020
Yesterday the Malibu city council ratified the proclamation of an existence of a local emergency.
And then … virtually shut down city hall.
No more appointments for building inspections or plan checks.
Except in an emergency situation …
The city council grappled with the shut down.
Building official Yolanda Bundy said there were some cases of people with loads of cement scheduled at their house today arrive today … and those will have building insopectors sjhow up.
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“But revisiting it often is what I would recommend.
“Right now we are receiving seven to 10 requests on the construction portion of it.
“I am asking my staff not be close to any of their contractors.
“Bring a laptop instead of touching the plans.
“What we do is the quality control of the construction … right.”
But Bundy will be using triage …sending out inspectors only to the most critical cases.
And all operations will eventually wind down.
That puts hundreds of Malibu homeowners in the middle of rebuilding their houses in a terrible fix.
City manager Reva Feldman says nearly all city workers have been assigned to work from home.
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“There are some people, whose jobs just do not allow them to work from home.
“There are certain things you just cannot do if you are not at the city (hall) or are a field worker.
“For those employees I am requesting that the city council authorize us using paid administrative leave. so that those people are at home and they are not tapping into their accrued sick leave … if they have any.
“I have a lot of staff who are caring now for children who are out of school.”
City council members agonized on this, as apparent from the video of the extraordinary afternoon emergency meeting.
No time frame has been determined for the effective building freeze to end.
City permit honcho Yolanda Bundy’ .. well her voice was cracking as she asked to put “Rebuild Malibu” on suspension.
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“I would recommend that you allow city staff to make those decisions and triage those projects that we must be out there on a one on one (basis).
“Weekly … and then we come back to you … assuming that this chaos and pandemic virus is happening through different cities, a lot of the workers are going to stay home … “So, to me it’s just let’s be cautious on all this.
SKYLAR PEAK: “I think we all know that it’s not easy.”
Yolanda Bundy … and city council member Skylar Peak.
Bottom line … city staff will consider individual building construction needs but will be cancelling as many inspections and plan checks as possible.
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The city council yesterday authorized paid administrative leave for non-essential personnel … about 13 people still will be at City Hall.,
and authorized a temporary 5% pay increase to about a dozen city workers who are staffing city hall around the clock during the local emergency.
The city telephones at the switchboard are s being answered 24 hours a day … 7 days a week.
And today … the city’s phone system overloaded … with the volume of incoming calls.
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Chaos at the supermarkets yesterday.
City council member Jefferson Wagner says he was at Ralph’s yesterday and alarmed by rude and aggressive behavior.
Shipping carts being used to cut lines.
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I was alarmed by what I saw and the beahbiort at the R market.
“So the sooner we come to a resolution here.
“I saw community members behaving in a way I was not expecting.
“That was at 8 o’clock in the morning.
“We need to set a guideline and behave like the neighbors we are.
