Broad Beach sand district raises taxes 3.6% — still no sand Play

The three residents who control the Broad Beach sand district have raised the beach district's property taxes by 3.6% for the sand replacement project next year.

That is the supposed sand replacement project — which has collected $47 million in tax money over 16 years — but has yet to move one grain of sand.

The three residents who sit on the Broad Beach Geologic Hazard Assessment District met Sunday to approve the increase in taxes, charged to the 108 homeowners along Broad Beach Road.

According to one ratepayer, the Broad Beach tax district now has collected more than $47 million in taxes from the landowners over 14 years. Some beachfront landowners are paying up to $72,000 per property per year for this effort.

About $15 million has already been spent on engineers' fees. $9 million has been spent on legal fees, most going to a lawyer from Los Angeles named Kenneth Ehrlich. About $27 million sits in the bank.

A handful of people turned out for the Sunday morning hearing. Stacey Coney Druck asked:

"Is it mandatory? Is there a law that says that you have to increase this? How is it that you guys get to vote, and that we do not have any say in it? And we just keep paying these increases and you have millions of dollars in our money that's just sitting there. I assume that it's earning interest, but we're not seeing any sand. It just doesn't make any sense. Don't you have enough?"

No. They do not have enough. Or so they say.

With $27 million in the bank, that's only a tiny percentage of the ultimate cost for obtaining millions of pounds of sand by either barge or truck. Once the final permits are issued — if they are ever issued — the assessments are going to increase dramatically.

On Sunday, resident Debra Kline wanted to know when the GHAD — the Geologic Hazard Abatement District — will start moving sand.

"My taxes originally in my house at 1.1% was somewhere around $30,000. My taxes now are over $100,000 per year because of the GHAD. Because I'm paying $60,000 for 12 years."

Where's that money going? The money has gone for engineers, lawyers, and the $27 million nest egg to partially start construction.

Tim Bigelow, the president of the Malibu West Homeowners Association, spoke yesterday and said this is just a waste of time and money.

"Did any of you go to the beach this morning? Take a look at it? Do you use the beach? Do you know how it works? I have 65 years of history on the beach. I went down there this morning. The waves are coming in. They are pounding. Global warming and all this. You are not going to beat it. Your contract with the Coastal Commission says you have to replenish every 3 years if it washes away. It is undoable."

The chief lawyer for Broad Beach, Ken Ehrlich, was given a pay raise Sunday. He now charges $845 per hour.

Ehrlich acknowledged that the project has been stuck for so long that its state permits are expiring. At Sunday's meeting, he blamed disagreements between two state agencies for the delays this year.

"For what it's worth, the historic Coastal Commission staff position has been different from that proposed by the Department of Fish and Wildlife. And we understand that there is Coastal Commission to Fish and Wildlife negotiations or discussions going on to see if Fish and Wildlife will change their position."

In other words, Fish and Wildlife worries that dredging and pumping of wet sand would kill fish and other marine creatures.

The latest Broad Beach scheme to get sand is to buy it from the City of Los Angeles and load it into barges dredging off the end of the LAX runways. Serious talks have not even started with L.A. City Hall, much less the city council.

It may be impossible to conceive of the City of L.A. giving up sand for the wealthy homeowners of Broad Beach. And surfers down there are in furious opposition.

A third state agency, the California State Lands Commission, owns the seabed. The Broad Beach lease for that runs out next year.

So the Broad Beach people are still looking at trucking in the sand from Ventura County — 6,000 truck loads the first year, more to replenish it. That would mean using the Zuma Beach parking lot to unload sand and store equipment.

Residents at Trancas are demanding that the City of Malibu require a permit for that, for the traffic noise and beach access loss they would suffer.

Because the original project ended at Trancas Creek, the city washed its hands of all this 15 years ago and said Broad Beach could battle it out with Coastal. But the project has morphed into something beyond what the original permits allowed — a project that did not affect Malibu residents east of Trancas Creek.

The Broad Beach district has never bothered to get a permit from the City of Malibu.