Planted palms a problem

The parents had the best of intentions. They planted 80 palm trees to spruce up a forlorn hillside at Malibu High School, between the athletic field and the asphalt parking lot.

A number of volunteers spent two days over the Thanksgiving weekend putting in the tropical Queen palms.

Now, it looks as if they are going to remove them after a raft of Malibu Park neighbors weighed in with complaints about obscured views and fire danger.

“We don’t see how it’s disrupting anybody,” said Valerie Grant, a volunteer on the school landscaping committee, “but if it is we’ll try to rectify it as best we can.”

The dispute came to a head at a community meeting earlier this week. Even some critics of the trees praise the parents for trying to beautify a less than picturesque section of the city. But they argue it’s not just the issue of views but safety in a community prone to brush fires.

“They’re beautiful and add to the ambience of the school, but living in Malibu safety is the key,” said resident Francine Greene. She added that during the 2007 Corral fire she saw trees aflame “like a burning match.”

Malibu is a city rife with controversies, from beach access to septic tank leaks to paparazzi swarms. But those often take a back seat to what, for many residents, is the top priority: preserving their views of ocean or mountains or both. It appears the efforts of the parent volunteers slammed into the issue of the moment.

“The palm trees are only part of a larger problem,” said Sam Hall Kaplan, chairman of the city’s view protection task force committee.

Earlier this year, Malibu residents voted overwhelmingly to support a strict view protection ordinance, and the task force is busily drafting one. To help in the effort, the city has hired Coleen Berg, a consultant who has worked for several years as a “view restoration mediator” for the city of Rancho Palos Verdes.

Neighbors used to resolve such issues over a bottle of wine, Kaplan said. Now they go to court, spending tens of thousands of dollars in legal battles over “offending foliage,” he said.

The problem, Kaplan said, is that affluent part-time residents, particularly entertainment industry people, have “ignored neighborhood pleas,” saying they needed elaborate plantings to ensure their privacy.

Kaplan knows about view controversies firsthand, having fought a legal battle over a neighbor’s plantings that Kaplan contended obscured his ocean view.

Grant, the school volunteer, said some of the objections appear to have sprung from misunderstandings about the palm trees planted at the school. She disputed widespread local reports that they would grow quickly to 50 feet. In fact, she said, the trees, now about 5 feet tall, would grow to about 25 feet at most over 15 to 20 years.

Moreover, she said, fire officials had approved the plantings, saying the trees, if properly maintained, would not create a fire hazard.

Grant said volunteers spent more than $7,000 in donated funds to buy the trees and repair the irrigation system. Since the trees are on a hillside, she said, she wondered how they would disrupt anyone’s view.

“We didn’t want to ruffle any feathers,” Grant said. “We’re just trying to make it look nice.” She said the campus is in disarray because of the lack of district funds and personnel to maintain the grounds.

“It’s horrible,” she said. “It’s tumbleweed, which is even more of a fire hazard because of the dried brush.” The idea of having to remove the trees is disheartening, she said. The committee is out of funds.

Jay Griffith, a landscape designer who has volunteered his services to the parent group on other plantings but was not consulted on this one, said he told worried residents that he would oversee the removal of the palms and the replanting of native plants and trees.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” he said of the parents’ efforts. He added: “I don’t know what they’re going to do with all of these palm trees.”

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