Given the millions in padded salaries and consultant fees of those processing Malibu fire victim reconstruction plans—and the multimillions more in commissions for realtors, who hover like vultures over burnt property as owners grow increasingly frustrated with a protracted process and contemplate selling their properties—it was perhaps inevitable: Exposed in a current Malibu City Hall controversy involving the short tenure of the respected resident rebuilding ambassador, Abe Roy, and an intractable council member, Marianne Riggins, is the grave question of the future of Malibu’s municipal governance.

Indeed, if you’re a Malibu resident, care about the value of your home, and take pride in living in this seacoast village (as I do), you have to be concerned about how Roy’s recommendations were received and the blowback he endured as a volunteer trying to fast-track the city’s rebuilding process.

There are ominous overtones in Malibu’s ordeal for the other Los Angeles area communities going through the anguish of rebuilding—although the planning process in the devastated Pacific Palisades and Altadena are reported to be better than Malibu’s. Still, the ever-present cloud of greed and malfeasance on the horizon as the rebuilding process drags on here and elsewhere feels like a warning to other vulnerable communities, for a future fraught with similar climate-induced catastrophes. 

The cloud of greed and malfeasance on the horizon as the rebuilding process drags on here and elsewhere feels like a warning to other vulnerable communities, for a future fraught with similar climate-induced catastrophes. 

 

In Malibu, the conundrum included a clumsy attempt by Councilperson Riggins to hinder Roy, and then—with support from her colleague Councilperson Doug Stewart and a circumspect city clerk, Kelsey Pettijohn—she added to the insult by giving him a concocted sendoff replete with hypocritical comments at a farcical council meeting. In response, Roy has called for the resignation of Riggins, whom he has charged with representing not residents, but special interests that include local realtors, developers, and commercial entrepreneurs who treat Malibu as a Monopoly board. 

Roy is a reputable builder who, in good faith, had volunteered in the wake of the Palisades fire that spared his home but not his neighbors, advocating for burnout victims and trying to find ways to expedite the city’s convoluted approval process. But to no surprise of the city’s weary old-guard residents, he ran afoul of entrenched bureaucrats and fat cat consultants for whom the rebuild process has been a generously monied trough in which they have had their noses in since the Woolsey Fire seven years ago—a trough now replenished by the Palisades fire.

Roy contends that his efforts to make simple changes in the rebuild requirements to fast-track the process, which were cheered by applicants, were met with a mixed response by select city staff and consultants. He noted that though they might have welcomed the recommendations in words, many quietly connived to thwart them, particularly the consultants who brandished their credentials in a haze of amiability and expense-account lunches, holding sway over the neophyte council and its limited construction expertise.

Whether it’s vanity, laziness, or simply a lack of qualifications, some past and present councilpersons have clearly allowed themselves to be manipulated over time by a bloated bureaucracy and avaricious consultants. So, too, the amiable but maladroit Yolanda Bundy, the director of the city’s Community Development Department, who is an exemplar of the bureaucratic axiom of A-people tending to hire A-people, while B-people tend to hire C-people, resulting in a C-level Malibu. As for the acting city manager, Candace Bond, design and development are obviously not her strong points.

Whether Roy can be wooed to return to his quixotic quest and Malibu City Hall can be reformed to keep its promises to aid resident fire victims is an open question. The roots of municipal rot here run deep. And now that Roy has lifted the curtain and exposed the sham of the touted rebuild, naming culprits and generating news stories beyond Malibu, other fragile cities have been put on alert.

Featured image: aerial photo of Malibu via Pepperdine University and Wikipedia Commons.