Opponents Find Much To Object To, As Malibu City Council Tries To Rewrite City Policies
Written by 991KBU on March 23, 2021
The issue of a rewrite of the city council policies landed with a giant thud at the Malibu City Council yesterday.
Two new city councilmembers have demanded what they call an injection of transparency and honesty at city hall.
Three other city council members really don’t like that description … or the details of the plan offered by councilmemembers Bruce Silverstein and Steve Uhring.
But the current policies are a mess … an agglomeration of unrelated specific polciies and general philosophies passed by various city councils over the past 29 years.
The majority ..,. as you know… appointed Karen Farrer and Paul Grisanti to come up with revisdions.
And that major revision was released late last week… with very little supporting rationale or reasonings listed.
That really made some people mad … as judged by the public speakers yesterday.
One after one … they asked for details on the major rewrite of city policies.
And they asked why Bruce Silverstein and Steve Uhring were not part of the process.
Carla McCloskey was one.
NEWSCART 73334 CARLA MCCLOSKEY
SUSPECT WOULD HAVE EVER HAPPENED
“It was originally having the idea of trying to have transparency … and this has been like the opposite of it … it’s like a left turn … it is like nothing any of us would have expected to have happened.”
The two city council members who rewrote the policies did not get much time to speak … the meeting was limited to 90 minutes and much of that time was taken up by outraged residents.
No one liked the fact that this major rewrite of city policies was published just two business days earlier … with very scant information on what looked like very substantive policy changes.
And yes … the proposals were rushed out … said council member Karen Farrer.
She says that’s because Steve Uhring set a demand that they be rushed back before the council.
Uhring disagrees.
And … Farrer says there is a need here … because the current policies are a mess … a hodgepodge of concepts that have stacked up.
NEWSCART 73335 POLICIES KF THEY DESERVED A THOROUGH REVIEW
“A comment that if it not broke don’t fix it. … as many have noticed…. we had literally a hodgepodge of policies put together over 15 … 20 years …
“They deserved a full and thorough review.”
If that was the intention … that was not presented in the agenda.
And Farrer and Grisanti did little to explain that last night.
In fact … Grisanti said they ran out of time to explain what was happening because … in his words… the public took up all the time reacting to the proposals.
That infuriated some speakers … some of whom pointed out that the proposed changes should have been enumerated for evaluation.
That was also the request of Steve Uhring. … and Paul Grisanti tried to explain an evaluation procedure that apparently was beign made up on the fly.
NEWSCART 73333 PG SU THE AGENDAS WHEN THEY COME OUT
GRISANTI: “The next meeting we are going to go through and explain …
“We’ve given you something here with the polciies list and where you can find each OF those individual policies and where they are incorporated into this document that we are proposing … okay??
“You already have that.
“It’s up to you to look at it and decide if there are any parts that we have left out.
“And for the ones that we’ll change we will write about we why we have changed them.”
UHRING: ” No it’s not my job.
“You’ve got to tell us what you’ve changed.
“I’m not going on a witch hunt … Paul.”
“If you’ve changed something … explain why you’ve changed it.
GRISANTI, INTERRUPTING:: “Steve .. Steve … Steve …
UHRING: “Yes Paul.”
GRISANTI: “It is your job to read the agendas when they come out.”
But … there was nothing in yesterday’s agenda that explained what was going to be changed … and how it was going to be changed.
The next step … the city attorney will work with Farrer and Grisanti to come up with a list of proposed changes.
