Deadline Looms For Woolsey Fire Victims

MALIBU, CA — Malibu victims of the Woolsey Fire can still rebuild without having to pay permit fees, but time is running out.

The deadline to apply for the permit fee waiver is June 30, and no new fee waivers will be granted after December 30. More than 400 residents whose homes were damaged in the catastrophic fire may be eligible for the waiver, which has already saved applicants $2.1 million, according to a city staff report. On Tuesday, the City Council voted not to expand or simplify the fee waiver requirements. Only folks rebuilding their primary residence are eligible for the fee waiver.

On May 11, Mayor Pro Tem Mikke Pierson sought to amend February resolution waiving permit fees for rebuilding. Currently, applicants must apply before June 30 and prove that it was their primary residence by showing their active voter registration, a driver's license, or another form of government ID. City staffers project that total waivers for the current fiscal year will total roughly $4.2 million.

Pierson wanted to make the process easier because he felt that some residents were getting left behind by all the bureaucracy.

“My worry was: Were we doing this correctly? Were we being fair, and was this working all the way?” Pierson asked at Tuesday’s council meeting. “I don’t know that I even know a method to account for it, to be honest. It’s just my sense of justice – I didn’t want to exclude a resident that should’ve been included, but just wasn’t caught by this.”

However, other Malibu City Council members said the existing criteria were enough, and any changes would result in undue headaches. On Tuesday, they voted 4-1 not to make any changes to the requirements for waiving fees related to Woolsey Fire rebuilding.

“I think it’s probably wise to stick with what we’ve done thus far and not expand the scope of this to open up the referenced can of worms,” said Councilmember Skylar Peak. “As much as I can try to feel the pain of anyone that’s lost anything in the fire and the hardship of having to rebuild and go through the process, I think the city’s really stepped up and done a lot for many of the people in our community, and especially those where it was their primary residence, and I think the criteria moving forward is reasonable.”

Councilmember Rick Mullen also said he thinks the existing criteria requiring a primary residence in Malibu are flexible enough, and also pointed out that Malibu is one of the few cities that waived rebuilding fees.

“We wisely anticipated that there would be some gray area,” Mullen said. “I know some people who have been longtime residents, and moved to another place, and were renting out their property just shortly before the fire. They said, ‘Wait a minute, I was there so long, how come I don’t fall under that?’ But the rules are it has to be your primary residence … we can’t really open up the Pandora’s box of ‘My situation’s similar to this guy, and if I could just press my case…’ In order to forgo that, we established a policy that you need x amount of documentation, and if you don’t make that documentation, you have not established per our criteria in the policy that we put forward that it’s your primary residence.”

Mayor Karen Farrer echoed the sentiments that existing criteria are flexible enough.

“I express my deepest sympathy to anybody who lost their home in the fire … we all have too many friends and neighbors who’ve been through that, and we feel for all of them,” she said. “We really did try to help out the community by doing that, and I believe we have been doing that, and the amount that the city has allocated to that in lieu of other things in the budget can attest to that. I thought that the policy was broad enough to give primary residents the opportunity to prove it as such.”

Peak made a motion to keep the existing criteria as they are, and Mullen seconded it. Farrer and Councilmember Jefferson Wagner voted yes, while Pierson said, “There’s no good vote here, so I’ll vote no.”

For more information, visit: https://www.malibucity.org/958/Fee-Waiver-Deadlines.