Meet The Candidate: Rick Mullen

MALIBU, CA — Rick Mullen said that he uses Malibu’s mission statement - which pledges to protect the city’s rural character and avoid suburbanization and commercialization - as a “Zeus’s thunderbolt” that guides all his decisions. Indeed, he lists the city’s mission statement, vision statement, and a history of the city in a section of his campaign website entitled “Malibu.”

“I see my primary function as an elected representative of the people is to be the person who upholds the mission statement of Malibu,” said Mullen, a fire captain who has served on the City Council since 2016 and is the race’s only incumbent. Mullen said that Malibu’s rural character is what sets it apart from other coastal cities around Los Angeles, and it must be protected in a time when rising population presents a sustained threat.

“A lot of the things I have to deal with - whether it’s short-term renters, whether it be rehabs, whether it be, oh those frickin’ RVs that are parked on the beaches, or developers trying to do things, that’s my directive - work within the system to ensure that Malibu retain its rural character,” he said. “What is special about Malibu is not buildings - it’s Mother Nature.”

Before being elected to the Council, Mullen served as president of both the Paradise Cove and Ramirez Canyon Homeowners Associations, where he helped negotiate long-standing disputes between park owners and residents. In Ramirez Canyon, he helped Malibu end a “Trails Incentive Dedication Program” from the California Coastal Commission that he felt was a giveaway to developers and would have brought too many tourists into the mountains.

Mullen ran in 2016 as part of “Team Malibu,” an anti-development trifecta comprised of him and Councilmembers Skylar Peak and Jefferson Wagner. Since joining the Council, he has worked on a number of initiatives he sees as in line with Malibu’s vision statement, including purchasing 29 acres of open space, preserving Bluffs Park Open Space, banning plastic straws, banning anticoagulant rodenticides on city parks, a dark sky ordinance aimed at preventing light pollution, joining the Clean Power Alliance to obtain power from renewable sources, and more.

A native of Chicago, Mullen came to Malibu in 1990 after serving as a pilot and photojournalist in the military. He joined the Los Angeles County Fire Department, and currently serves as captain of Station 72 on Decker Road. During the Woolsey Fire, Mullen served as both captain and Malibu mayor, and concedes that a lot went wrong.

“There were three major things, initially, that made people mad,” Mullen told the Malibu Times. “The traffic jam on PCH. The perceived lack of fire department resources when compared to other big fires in Malibu. And three—and this is probably the one that infuriates people the most—was law enforcement not letting people back into their neighborhoods afterwards. That is the biggest factor. And unfortunately, that’s probably the one that’s gonna be the most difficult in the future to deal with.”

Mullen feels the city has improved its fire readiness on a few fronts, including replacing water pumps that were empty during Woolsey, improving its messaging system, dividing the city into evacuation zones and working with Caltrans to improve evacuation procedures, hiring a fire safety liaison, and improving communications about these efforts.

Still, Mullen said that it’s hard to ever be fully prepared, especially for a 97,000-acre fire like Woolsey. “The fire was the largest brush fire in LA County history - in comparison to the last big fire, it was 20 times bigger than the Corral Fire...I’m not making excuses, it’s just this was the ‘Big Daddy’ of all fires,” he said. “Everyone’s looking for a simple answer to a very complicated equation. The equation won’t be the same for every fire...you just have to prepare for worst-case scenario at all times, and a lot of that has to do primarily with education of the population. And we do a good job of that, but it’s always gonna have to be improving.”

Right before Woolsey, Mullen was included in a Los Angeles Times article about enormous overtime pay for firemen. According to the article, Mullen earned $404,000 in 2017, $260,000 of which came from overtime pay. He also worked a total of 6,599 hours that year. Mullen says that he sometimes worked 24-hour shifts, and often did so voluntarily so that other firefighters could go home to see their young children. He also took extra shifts so that he wouldn’t be recalled during Council meetings.

“Every day that I worked, in those instances where people are getting recalled all the time, meant that some guy could go home and be with his son or daughter, who were at an age when they should be home. And those poor guys are getting recalled left and right,” Mullen told the Times.

Mullen has taken a strong stand on school separation, arguing like most other current councilmembers and Council candidates that Malibu needs independent control over its education. Along with Councilmember Karen Farrer, Mullen is a member of the ad hoc school separation committee that has been negotiating with the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. Mullen and Farrer recently called off negotiations, and Mullen said at an Oct. 12 Council meeting that he felt they were being held “in bad faith.” The Council voted unanimously to bypass the district and worked directly with the Los Angeles County Office of Education. Still, he remains hopeful that a deal will be reached eventually.

“That's dealing with another agency that holds most of the cards and they don't want to make a deal. But I think in the end, the deal will be had,” Mullen told the Times.

Mullen recently voted against an ordinance giving a $50 fine to people seen not wearing masks indoors in Malibu, saying that he feels people are already well-educated on the mask issue, and he hasn’t seen any problems.

“In my view there’s been a massive amount of public education on this subject since the beginning of the pandemic, and everyone’s been fairly engaged in it,” he said. “My personal experience has been that every place where I’m supposed to wear a mask I wear one, and I always see people wearing them...there’s plenty of ways to exercise your own risk management and counter-measures without having to have law enforcement handing out tickets.”