The first Red Flag Warnings of the season for Malibu cropped up today in Malibu. 

And there is an excessive heat warning … for the Malibu coast … for high temperatures up to 100 today juts inland from the ocean. 

86 for a high predicted on the beaches. 

The upper Pepperine campus hit 102 yesterday. 

Maximum temps up in the mountains today will range up to 105 … and it may hit 117 degrees in the western end of the San Fernando Valley… think Calabasas and woodland Hills.

And tomorrow will see even more stratospheric temperatures … 15 to 20 degrees above normal.

The National Weather Service says … almost as dangerous as the afternoon highs … will be the overnight lows. 

At 5am today … it was 92 degrees on Upper Latigo Cyn Rd: 92º … 81º on the ridge above Malibu High School … but just 66º at Zuma beach.   

There is a fire weather watch in effect as of noon today, and it may escalate to a Red Flag Warning.

Wind gusts from the north of 15 to 30 miles an hour are possible at times and in plkaces. 

And if any fire starts, says the National Weather Service. We may cross the Red Flag Warning criteria level today, Friday and Saturday.

A slight Santa Ana pushed hot hot air almost all the way down to the beach yesterday afternoon.

At 3:30 in the afternoon … It was 102 degrees at Pepperdine University yesterday.

90 degrees at Paradise Cove. 

And 97 degrees on the ridge above Malibu High School.

With the Santa Anas today … it will be hotter.

 

Effort To Hear From Residents Over City Manager’s Record Flops – Not One Peep From Malibu

Malibu’s city manager still has his job. 

The city council met yesterday for more than three hours .. behind closed doors … to evaluate the job performance of Steve McClary.

After 3 hours and 20 minutes … the council emerged to report … no reportable action.

Perhaps what’s more newsworthy is not what happened coming out of the executive session … it’s what happened before the doors were closed to the public.

Councilman Steve Uhring … a frequent vocal city hall critic … had publicly called for residents to make their opinions known about McClary’s job performance before the meeting. 

Uhring asked residents to email the entire city council …. And to speak before the meeting … yesterday morning. 

Uhring’s call was amplified on social media by an activist … one of his re-eection campaign supporters. 

So … the meeting started. … mayor Doug Stewart:

70554 MCCL VOTE

MAYOR: “OK, do we have any speaker cards?  I assume not.

CITY CLERK: “We do not have any slips but we do have one raised hand in zoom.”

At least … no one from Malibu. 

A semi-anonymous person … going by the name of  Jacob .. probably from outside the city … did call in.

And he turned the tables on Uhring … and fellow councilman Bruce Silverstein. 

70552 JACOB 

“I just wanted to weigh in on Steve McClary’s tenure. 

“Steve has a tough job. I appreciate that.

“ I do not appreciate how timid and weak he is in the face of bullies. 

“Steve (Uhring) and Bruce (Silverstein) ran Reva Feldman out of town. She was a great city and that was a huge loss, 

“Bruce and Steve’s egos and bullying cost the city of a quarter of a million dollars tip move on from Reva. 

“Most of our experienced and qualified staff, including Richard Mollica, have left. 

“Bruce and Steve gave Malibu reputation of being a terrible place to work …  and now we can’t hire any good new people.”

That was the only comment.

If the idea was to give a forum to political opponents of the current city council majority… well… it backfired spectacularly … to be charitable.

And city manager, Steve McClary is safe in his job… at least until after the next elections in four weeks.

SMMUSD Superintendent Reacts to Georgia School Shootings, Says Malibu Schools Bond Issue Would Better Protect Kids

A kid with an assault rifle murdered two fellow students and two teachers yesterday in a rural part of Georgia

Santa Monica’s school superintendent sent out a reassuring letter to Malibu parents within hours.

Superintendent Antonio Shelton said elementary schools have been … in essence … fortified. 

But the approach mist be different at middle schools and high schools … he says. 

There … the threats come from inside, by a student attending the school. 

Shelton says the district focusses on  reducing the threat through interventions prior to the person entering with a weapon. 

He tells parents that middle and high school campus perimeters have been fortified using previous bond dollars, the strategy to reduce violence has been on constructing and modernizing buildings to provide more supervision, mental health support and improve response in case there is an incident.

And Shelton says the there are many significant and minor security improvements in the 395 ,million dollar bond issue that goes before voters in four weeks.

That would be Measure MM.

Shelton says the district will be working with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department to increase patrols to our schools both before, during and after school.

This …  to provide a sense of security to our community in the coming days..

Prominent Malibu Democrat, A Newcomer, Endorses Trump

A prominent California democrat who has long been a critic of public schools… And who now lives in Malibu… Has had it with the Democratic Party.

Former state senator Gloria Romero appeared at a news conference on the lawn at the state capital and Sacramento yesterday to announce she will register as a Republican… And vote for Donald Trump for president.

70553 GLORIA ROMERO 

“Perhaps my biggest disconnect with my old party now has been over school choice, education freedom, and the right to have quality schools for all…  especially for school choice for poor and minority students who are trapped in chronically failing schools.”

Since leaving the state senate … Romero has retired to Malibu … and she lectures at Pepperdine. 

Romero rose to fame as a union organizer in East Los Angeles… and was Senate majority leader in the state Senate for several years.

Electric Scooters Now Legalized On 32 Miles Of Santa Monica Streets 

Qe told you yesterday that some streets in Santa Monica have had their speed limits reduced. 

What we did not pick up on was the fact that the reduced speed limits have opened up most of the city to motorized scooters in traffic lanes. 

The Santa Monica look at newspaper points out that motorized scooters are legal on streets with speed limits of 25 miles an hour.

Santa Monica is dropping the speed limit down to 25 on 32 miles of streets in the city.

And under the California Vehicle code … scooters can be operated on streets with speed limits of up to 25 mph. 

And motorized scooters are illegal to drive on sidewalks. 

One stretch of Pico Boulevard near the beach will see the speed limit drop from 35 to 25 mph.

Scooters have a statewide speed limit of 15 miles per hour … no matter if the vehicle speed limit is 25. 

Sheriff’s deputies clocked a car speeding at 101 miles per hour  up the hill from Webb Way towards Pepperdine university Sunday morning. 

A radar camera purchased by the City of Malibu and operated by a motorcycle deputy captured an image of the car and the speed readout.

The driver was caught and arrested for speeding and reckless driving. 

The car … impounded for 30 days.

Planning Commission [PAUSE] [PAUSE] [PAUSE] [PAUSE] Meets

Malibu’s Planning Commission met last night … with mostly polite behavior and a chairman struggling at times to control the meeting.

That was a bit of a change from the prior meeting … which included shouting and one member stomping out. 

Last night … chairman John Mazza strictly enforced rules of order missing from past meetings. 

Or tried to.

Commissioner Drew Leonard objected to that he called the repeat questions coming from Mazza. 

70546 MAZZA CHAIR 

“I want to be really polite about it, but if you could just try to get to your questions and .…”

MAZZA: “I am going to put my questions one at a time, and I’m trying to explain it to you if you don’t understand them.  If you don’t want to understand then I won’t explain them to you.  But don’t ask me questions then.”

LEONARD: “We just went around circles on that for a long time on that.”

MAZZA: “Because nobody seemed to came up with any answers.”

DENNIS SMITH: “Because there was no question.”

MAZZA:  “Number one your mic wasn’t on. And number two you were not recognized.”

SMITH: “There was no question.  You can hear me now. There was no question.”

MAZZA:  “You are not recognized.”

SMITH: “That’s fine. 

PAUSE 

PAUSE MAZZA:  “OK.”

PAUSE 

LEONARD:  “Can I have one more comment?”

MAZZA:  “No, when I’m done you can have another comment.”

PAUSE 

MAZZA: “Just one other thing.”

PAUSE 

PAUSE

LEONARD: “I could’ve had it out already.”

MAZZA:  “Sure could’ve.”

PAUSE.

PAPERS SHUFFLE.

PAUSE. 

PAUSE: 

MAZZA: “Do you wanna make your comment?  Go ahead.”

LEONARD: “We’re here to do a job. We have a lot of applicants here. I feel like we’re running the clock on this meeting. And as the city attorney said, I think we should try to wrap this up, if we can.”

Drew Leonard … Dennis Smith … and John Mazza … at last night’s meeting. 

The revised decorum enforcement comes after an outside commissioner told the city council that the Planning Commission needs to stick to its rules for civil and polite behavior. 

Escondido Canyon Ghost Foundation Will Sprout House

When it finally took a vote Tuesday night ..the Planning Commission approved plans for a new house on a hillside lot above Escondido Canyon. 

The proposed house will replace the foundations of a house that had been started in 1989 … but then abandoned.

Concerns were raised about the steep and narrow street … Sea Vista Drive … which commissioner Kraig Hill said was too steep for the fire department to approve.

But commissioner Skylar Peake noted that the fire department had signed off on the plans … and Sea Vista Drive has been 15 feet wide since there subdivision was built eons ago.

70548 SEAVISTA DR

“Even though the road is wider than that, when these things were done back, then they only needed and only received a 15 foot easement. So I don’t see how, if the fire department is OK with this and they’ve already signed off on this, why this is becoming an issue. I’m bewildered at that.”

It passed by a 4 to 1 vote … with John Mazza the only opposition.