If you only paid attention to the words that tumbled out of her mouth last year, you might believe that City Manager Reva Feldman was motivated to do her job to the best of her ability and someone who truly understood her new position as City Manager.
Or that she truly believed that protecting the people was the FIRST responsabilty of government.
In reality, none of those things are true.
In the last year, Feldman’s lack of seriousness and subsequent refusal to take immediate action when it comes to public safety in this town, is both reckless, and a dereliction of duty.
Oblivious to the chaos she caused in the community by forcing out Emergency Services Coordinator Brad Davis in October 2016, and with no second in command, Feldman gushed to the Malibu Times, months later, eager to take credit for a ‘new and improved’ version of Public Safety she planned to unveil with nothing but smokescreens to back it up.
“I felt after ( Emergency Services Coordinator) Brad Davis left that it was a great opportunity to revisit how we handle public safety issues,” Feldman told the Malibu Times in April 2017. “It needed to be handled at a higher level. We needed to raise the bar.”
The “upgraded” position with a pay raise was approved by city council in January 2017. However, instead of getting more bang for our taxpayer buck from the new and improved Public Safety Manager as promised by Feldman, taxpayers are instead paying almost double to receive a substantial downgrade, if not an almost complete cessation of emergency services provided by the City. And the feedback from residents is clear;
We need more, we want more, we deserve more, we were promised more.
EMERGENCY DISSERVICES
From the moment Feldman stepped into the role of City Manager, the slow motion collapse of City Hall began.
Feldman, known for forcing out and shuffling staff, resulting in long-standing, devoted employees departing their posts with very real, long term detrimental effects on our City.
Malibu’s first big loss under the new regime, was Emergency Services Coordinator, Brad Davis. Davis was in charge of training and certifying resident volunteers as Emergency Responders (C.E.R.T), sending out emergency alerts to residents and other emergency services duties. He was an invaluable member of this community who took public safety very seriously. Malibu residents felt safer knowing Davis was at the helm as Davis’s contract included overtime reimbursement, essentially anchoring the position as a 24 hour Emergency preparedness supervisory role.
Davis’s untimely “medical leave” (forced by Feldman) happened to coincide with Malibu’s most dangerous season for weather conditions, and Feldman, had no trained replacement for Davis’s position on staff, leaving the city in a very vulnerable position.
Noticeable deficiencies were evident almost immediately. Emergency alerts sent out through the City’s Nixle system were untimely or not sent out at all. On November 9, 2016, a fire broke out in Corral Canyon. This was a very hot night and any change in weather could have led to a devastating outcome. Although the fire was contained in approximately 20 minutes (thanks to L.A. County Fire Department) no alert was sent to residents from the city. Furious at the complete disregard for the safety of the residents of Corral Canyon, I contacted council member Peak. He assured me he would follow up with Feldman as to why the City alert was not activated. Feldman issued no apology, instead calling the fire “brief,” making the excuse it was “outside the city limits.” In other words, and in Feldman’s mind, the residents in unincorporated 90265 are not her concern, nor did she take into account that Corral Canyon has only one access road that runs through Malibu city proper. This fire was one wind gust away from potential disaster inside the city limits, similar to the 2007 re that destroyed over 50 homes.
On December 22, 2016, Davis took it upon himself to turn that “medical leave” into his official resignation.
Immediately after his announcement. Davis landed a plum position in Foster City. Malibu’s loss became Foster City’s gain as they will benefit greatly from Davis’s invaluable experience our city was fortunate to have from for well over a decade. Shortly after Feldman took over as City Manager, the supervisory role to Malibu’s highly trained CERT force came to a screeching halt, effectively gutting the program until the community spoke up and partnerships with Sheriffs, first responders, LA County, CalTrans etc. suffered as well. While Feldman may have had contact with the agencies, there is no way she could have nurtured the type of relationship with that Davis had for over a decade. You can’t take on two important roles without one suffering – and they both did.
Instead of hiring an interim replacement for Davis to keep the Emergency Services and CERT programs operational until she could find a permanent replacement, Feldman chose to take care of her needs first, creating a new position and placing more burden on the city’s budget, by hiring yet another personal assistant, Assistant to the City Manager (she has since added an additional role, Deputy City Manager). Feldman continued to leave the post of Emergency Services completely unmanned for six months.
Sorry Malibu, you don’t really need an Emergency Services department in your disaster prone community right?
Of all the things a city manager could overlook, none touches in intensity and consequence as much as the absence of an Emergency Services coordinator, especially in a rural community like Malibu. The disconnect between the City Manager and her responsibility to protect the community was crystal clear when Feldman “took over” the Emergency Services department and one of the first decisions she made was there wasn’t any great value for our City to participate in the October 19, 2016 Great Shake Out exercise. This annual opportunity is for people in homes, schools, and organizations to practice what to do during earthquakes, and to improve preparedness. Shakeout.org reported that 10,667,89 Californians participated in the life-saving drill, yet under Feldman’s rule, Malibu was a no-show.
Malibu residents limped along for another half year, essentially leaving public safety in the hands of the residents. Timely traffic and safety alerts were posted mostly by a core group including The Local’s social media platforms (Facebook and Twitter), and the Facebook groups Malibu Disaster and Emergency and Friends of Malibu, teaming up and staying on top of vital information dispensed by verified news sources and weather agencies, circulating posts to multiple platforms to reach as many people in the community as possible, in effect making an example of what we expect for our tax dollars and subsequently a mockery of what we are actually getting for it.
MISS HIRE
Last spring, City Manager Reva Feldman said in an interview with the Malibu Times that it was her idea to “restructure the position and give it more responsibility and authority”. So how did Feldman accomplish that? By passing over Malibu-based applicant David Saul, a likely seamless replacement for the new position of Public Safety Manager. Having a local resident in charge of Emergency Services, one who has close ties to local law enforcement and first responders, would have been the best strategy for the community, given Malibu’s history of becoming isolated by weather-induced landslides, earthquakes and/or other natural disasters.
Saul received more than 30 letters of recommendations, is well respected in the community with an intimate knowledge of the local landscape. Yet, under the depraved standards of the new regime, Feldman hired outsider Susan Duenas as Public Safety manager. And while Duenas’s qualifications may look impressive on paper (according to her resume, Dueñas comes to Malibu with over 25 years experience, most recently serving as emergency services manager for the City of Oxnard), her performance in the last year, under the guidance of City Manager has been nothing less than sub-standard at best. In fact, Duenas may have taken sub-standard to a whole new level recently joking on social media about missing phone calls from Feldman and receiving 30 plus texts after a fire broke out behind the library near City Hall during red flag conditions with winds in excess of 40 mph and neighborhoods being evacuated.
I can assure you that if Duenas lived in Malibu and had experienced her home being threatened by fire during these types of conditions, as so many Malibu residents have, she would have never made the undeniably awkward remarks she did on social media. In all honesty, it was a little creepy.
But then again, I guess we should have seen this coming.
In January, when the devastating fire began in Ventura, subsequently spreading to what is now known as the largest wildfire in California, Duenas commented on a post about the fire on the Friends of Malibu Facebook page. Most residents were terrified, anticipating the fires could end up in Malibu quickly, expecting encouragement from our Public Safety director, perhaps with links to information to prepare in case disaster struck.
Instead what we got from Public Safety Manager Duenas: “Those are my peeps.”
How’s that for flexing those experienced Public Safety muscles with over 25 years experience?
Hmmmmm. Comforting.
And you can expect more of the same under the direction of neophyte City Manager who boasted to the Malibu Times that Duenas’s position reports directly to her.
MOVING ON…
Without question, Public Safety has never recovered from Feldman assuming Davis’ responsiblities as she claimed she had all the while performing her full responsibilities and adjusting to her new position as City Manager. Feldman assumed Davis’s responsibilities while on her probationary period and failed miserably at it, missing crucial traffic and emergency posts, alienating CERT team members and abandoning the program altogether forcing members to go public at a City Council meeting.
Looking back at the last 10 months of the City’s version of ‘new and improved’ Public Safety, how has Malibu fared?
So far, we’ve seen is a series of poorly attended Town Hall meetings, (our personal favorite “Active Shooter Scenario”), inconsistent emergency alerts and next to nothing out of CERT which is supposed to be Duenas’s pet project according Surfside News article written by Mayor Peak.
But hey, at least we now know how to duck and run in case a sniper opens fire at Ralphs.
Educating a rural community on how to deal with an active shooter scenario, is a waste of City resources given our landscape and the opportunities for a situation like that to occur. We are not Las Vegas.
Could an active shooter happen on the Pepperdine Campus? Absolutely and Pepperdine is equipped to handle such an occurance. Malibu, asa community has very few opportunities for an active shooter scenario to be a significant public safety threat affecting a large number of residents as say a wildfire, earthquake or other natural disaster.
Another prime example of the City wasting resources is the time it takes Media Information Officer, Matt Myerhoff, (who has been labeled the unofficial ‘Sean Spicer of Malibu’ due to his unpopular role defending the actions of the City), to troll our social media pages looking for threads calling out the Feldman and Council, mostly public safety issues.
That’s a full time job in our world.
Rarely does anyone who is passionate about this community miss an opportunity to call out Council or Feldman’s dereliction of duties – especially on social media. A world where word travels fast.
Doesn’t Myerhoff realize that with the amount of fodder the City provides us, worrying about damage control on social media is not only endless – but will make him bald?
Although, based on his public (and private) responses, Myerhoff is definitely drinking the City koolaid.
In spite of Feldman’s obvious deficiencies (and there are many we don’t have listed here) and despite a MOUNTAIN of evidence clearly showing her inability to run a single department efficiently, let alone a City, last May, four out of five Council members voted to extend Feldman’s contract, effectively leaving Feldman in charge – with a pay raise.
How many Cities do you know extend the contract of and give raises to people who fail at their job – with tangible evidence to prove they should be terminated? It’s laughable really.
As Feldman continues to do her version of cleaning house at City Hall it has only gotten dirtier… and now dangerous!
If that isn’t enough, amid the unending political inferno that has erupted in Malibu politics with the defection of two of the Team Malibu slate, Skylar Peak and Rick Mullen, to the dark side, the two who promised to drain the swamp on the campaign trail, continue to support Feldman (in spite of her failures) and her pursuit of yet another favorable review from Council.
Should we take a break from holding their feet to the fire (pun intended)?
Absolutely not.
-By Cece Woods with additional research by Mari Stanley
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