Meet The Candidate: Paul Grisanti

MALIBU, CA — When Paul Grisanti was starting out in Malibu real estate, he was advised to grab a beach chair and a big hat and talk to potential buyers as they came to see the property. Almost four decades later, the Pinnacle Estate Properties associate broker and associate manager has been talking to a lot of people about Malibu.

Grisanti, who moved to town in 1978, soon became involved with the Kiwanis Club, where he helped chair the Chili Cook Off for many years, the Township Council, the Chamber of Commerce, the Malibu Association of Realtors, and the La Costa Swim Club. He has served on the public works commission, and the LA County Waterworks District 29 Fire Flow Task Force, which helped analyze water supply deficiencies, still serves on the CERT Team, and written 78 editorials for the Malibu Times.

Grisanti, who previously ran for Council in 1990 during the city’s incorporation proceedings, lists some of his top priorities as fire readiness, public safety, and residential and commercial development.

Grisanti likened the Woolsey Fire to “getting slapped upside the head,” and like many other candidates criticized firefighters said to leave residents to fend for themselves.

“There were way too many people in Malibu who had the experience of seeing their house being approached by flames, going out into the street, seeing a fire engine, and asking them to help and being told, you know, ‘That’s not my orders,’” Grisanti told the Malibu Times.

Grisanti says that a crucial part of being ready for future fires is ensuring that all parts of the city have enough water to put them out. In 2010, he was appointed to the LA County Waterworks District 29 Fire Flow Task Force to identify deficiencies in the city’s water systems’ ability to fight fires. A roughly 600-page report identified Encinal Canyon, Malibu Park, and parts of Point Dume as areas out-of-step with fire flow requirements and in bad need of upgrades. But a five-year improvement plan was shelved by Los Angeles County due to what Grisanti says are false complaints by Agoura Hills homeowners. When Woolsey hit, those areas were among the hardest hit.

Grisanti called LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl’s office and told them they needed to issue a new environmental impact report.

“I said look - people are really angry about the fact that the firefighters did not fight the fire and we lost all these homes,” he told Patch. “When they wake up and discover that not only did their house burn down, but they’re not gonna be able to rebuild because of the fire flow requirements that were put in 2009 and the fact that we’ve made absolutely no progress on the recommendations that the fire flow group came up with, they’re not gonna be happy.”

The task force worked with the LA County Fire Chief and Public Works Head to implement a number of improvements, including changing the fire flow requirements so Point Dume and Malibu Park can rebuild, changed the pipes at Encinal Canyon, and are starting the permitting process for a water tanks to ensure enough water will be pumped throughout the city.

Still, Grisanti told Patch he feels that most or all the mistakes from the Woolsey Fire have not been corrected, and Carbon Canyon, Carbon Mesa, and Las Flores Mesa areas still have water tanks that don’t carry enough water. He also said copper wire lines would allow cell phones to operate without power, and said getting rid of them was a big blow to readiness.

“I’d love to see us pressure District 29 to get at least the first five-year plan done as quickly as possible, because it looks right now like the 25-year-plan, if we started today, would take 35 years,” he said.

Like many other candidates, Grisanti wants to see more aggressive parking and speeding enforcement along Pacific Coast Highway. He says that tow yards worked well for the city in the past, and it’s essential they identify a temporary one as soon as possible. He said he would also like to see a deputy assigned to giving tow-away tickets.

He feels the two-hour overnight parking ban has served Las Tunas Beach well, and feels strongly that more action needs to be taken to prevent the type of permanent camping seen all along the highway, including calling the Health Department to examine reports that some of the RVs are dumping sanitary tanks into the ocean.

“If people want to live like it’s the 1700s, this is not an appropriate place for that,” he said. “This place is too crowded to have the kind of sanitation they had in the 1700s.”

Grisanti said that some kind of facility where the homeless can park and also receive a variety of services is the “only solution, unless someone has a better one.” He does not feel that a homeless shelter should be built in the old Civic Center, and is unsure where it would be placed, but the city must work with the county and neighboring municipalities to find the right spot.

Grisanti feels that the safety situation along PCH has deteriorated since Woolsey, and there needs to be more traffic enforcement. “If you pull over people and give them a fix-it ticket enough time, gradually the word gets around: don’t bring your modified vehicle to Malibu.”

He generally feels that the city is not getting its money’s worth from the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station, and told the Malibu Times that he would like to see a substation built in Malibu to save deputies the time of crossing over the Santa Monica Mountains. He also feels that there need to be more volunteers on patrol who are given more authority to write tickets.

As a real estate agent in a city where all new development is controversial, Grisanti has been accused by some of being pro-development. He recently led a campaign to stop a proposed ordinance to institute a blanket reduction in total development square footage in Malibu, and has helped sell a number of parcels in town, including a subdivision that once belonged to the Crummer family into five mansions next to Bluffs Park.

Grisanti also lists a speedier and more efficient home building permitting process as part of his platform, writing that, “Our codes should be clearer and less subject to the whims of a capricious Planning Commission.” He told Patch that he considers this an important part of cutting costs, saying that, “Our permitting process for somebody who wants to remodel their house and do a significant addition is somewhere between 18 months and two-and-a-half years long. We could do a fire rebuild in six months, so maybe there are some ways we could speed that up, so instead of taking two years of man hours to issue a permit we take six months of man hours to issue a permit, all of a sudden we’ve cut out necessity for staff time by at least half.”

Grisanti pushes back against the charge that he is overly friendly to developers, saying that while he has sold property to developers, this has been done for a long time. “I have sold places to people who wanna build a house. But subdividing has been done in Malibu for a longtime,” he told the Malibu Times. “The vast majority of all our clientele is people who already live in Malibu and are either downsizing or upsizing.”

Grisanti said that in the particular instance of the Crummer property, the Coastal Commission wanted to turn the property into a hotel, while the city wanted it to remain residential.

“The Buyer, during their due diligence period and after extensive consultation with Biologists, decided that the property could more sensitively be developed into a 5 lot subdivision that honored all of the [Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area] surrounding the home sites,” Grisanti wrote in response to a Patch post from Patt Healy, a co-founder of the Malibu Coalition for Slow Growth, asserting that Grisanti has advertised himself in Land and Homes Magazine and realtor.com as a subdivision specialist working to mitigate impacts of the Interim Zoning Ordinance criteria on new construction.

“A fair observer would say that the City had done a good job of protecting the ESHA and had ended up with a less impactful project than the Resort Hotel that Coastal wanted while gaining another recreational property for our residents.”

Grisanti is adamantly against the land swap to the MRCA that traded 80 acres near Pepperdine in exchange for Charmlee Park. The MRCA announced that it would build 60 campsites and parking on-site. He said in a video on his website that this is ironic, given that the property was sold because the city did not think it could be approved for any recreational activities.

“We must budget what we can to help preserve our neighborhoods and fight the development of the Malibu Bluff property,” he wrote.

Grisanti is also in favor of an independent school district, belt tightening to keep up the city’s bond rating, and the ordinance requiring masks. For more information on his platform, visit https://www.paul4malibu2020.com/.

Learn about other Malibu candidates:

Bruce Silverstein

Steve Uhring

Lance Simmens